"He would've killed me."

McGinty leaned down. "You think I won't?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. McGinty, I never-"

"Bad enough you didn't get him, you even had him shooting up the street. The cops were called. He's done a runner and they'll be looking for him. Our friend in Lisburn Road Station let Patsy know. If they get him, and he talks, it'll get out it was him killed Caffola and McKenna, and him beat Eddie Coyle's head in. How am I going to look then, eh? The press will rip the shit out of me. I'll be a fucking laughing stock."

"Did anyone see me?" Campbell asked.

"Someone saw a silver car, that's all they got out of the neighbors." McGinty pointed a finger at Campbell's face. "And you're bloody lucky, 'cause if they'd tagged you you'd have a fucking bullet in your head right now."

Campbell gritted his teeth to quell a scream as he righted himself on the table. His left leg felt heavy and wooden, and a roman candle burned in his side. "Any ideas where he went? To the woman, maybe?"

"No." McGinty handed Campbell his shirt. "Get dressed. Patsy Toner's parked outside her place now, keeping an eye on her. He's going to make sure she goes to the airport and takes that flight I booked for her."

"Why not just do her?" Campbell asked as he struggled to get into his shirt. It had a ragged hole in the fabric, underneath the left sleeve.

McGinty's eyes flickered. "That's my business."

Campbell sensed that pressing the politician would be unwise. He lowered himself from the table, feeling a deep throb in his thigh. "Fair enough, but you could use her to draw Fegan out."

McGinty thought about it briefly. "No, too risky. Not with the press conference in the morning. If anything went wrong I'd be fucked."

"What, then? Just wait for Fegan to make a move?"

"I don't think we have much choice," McGinty said.

"I was right about one thing. He's going to come after you. And me, for that matter. He talked about that cop, too."

"The cop can look after himself."

"Maybe," Campbell said. "Can you?"

An hour later, Campbell lay on the threadbare couch in his flat on University Street with a bag of ice resting on his side and the phone to his ear.

"Well, this is a fucking mess, isn't it?" the handler said.

"Oh, don't start," Campbell said, wincing at the sparks in his side. "I've been shot twice, been pistol-whipped, been roared at by Paul McGinty. I don't need any shit from you."

"Need it or not," the handler said, 'you're going to get it."

Before the handler could continue Campbell hung up and dropped the phone to the floor. One of McGinty's thugs had driven him back to the flat in his Focus, leaving Campbell to struggle up the two flights of stairs. Tom the bartender had given him a large bag of ice for his troubles, most of which was now in the small freezer that hummed in the flat's tiny kitchen.

The phone buzzed on the floor and Campbell groaned. He picked it up. "What?"

"Hang up on me again and I'll blow your cover. I'll leave you stranded there without a friend in the world. Understood?"

Campbell sighed. "Understood."

"Okay. Now, what's happening?"

"Nothing much," Campbell said. "We've just got to wait until Fegan shows his face again."

"Well, wherever and whenever that is, you better be ready to take him out."

"Christ, I'm in no fit state to-"

"I don't give a flying fuck," the handler said. "You've got a job to do, so bloody do it. You better pray Fegan doesn't do any more damage before you get him. This is a bad situation for everyone. Maybe we shouldn't have sent you in there in the first place. You've been under too long. For Christ's sake, don't let it get any worse."

The phone went dead, and Campbell threw it across the room. He covered his eyes, frustration burning as brightly as his injuries. Today he had come as close to dying as he had in fifteen years of service, and he'd had some scrapes. He'd let Fegan, a crazy man, almost get the better of him.

Almost?

No, there was no almost. Fegan would have killed him if not for the phone going off. Blind luck was all that had saved Campbell. He shuddered at the thought.

And there was a bigger question, a more troubling idea. How had Fegan known? He was dead right: there had never been a threat from the UFF boys. The Ulster Freedom Fighters were the militant wing of the Ulster Defence Association, the working-class Protestant movement that claimed to defend its people from Republicans. In reality, they were common thugs, the kind the Loyalists bred in abundance. The kind who could walk into a pub and open fire on anything that moved, or call a taxi, wait for it to arrive, and then shoot its driver. But a real hit on a dangerous target? Never. They just didn't have it in them.

It was Delaney. Campbell remembered the night the slimy bastard had cornered him, saying he knew he was a plant. Even now, Campbell could smell Delaney's breath and cheap aftershave.

"Get me fifty grand," Delaney had said, grinning as his oily black hair spilled into his eyes. "Just fifty grand and I'll forget the whole thing."

Campbell had searched the bar with his eyes, looking for eavesdroppers.

"Even if you weren't talking shite, where do you think I'd get fifty grand?" he asked.

"From your handlers. They'll pay it to keep your cover." Delaney smoothed back his hair.

"You're talking out your arse. Go fuck yourself," Campbell said, pushing the stocky man aside.

"I'll give you a day or two to think about it," Delaney called after him.

Campbell phoned his handler that night, and the plan was in place within twenty-four hours. He would take care of Delaney, and a plant in the UFF would serve up a couple of stooges to complete the story.

When Campbell went to McGinty with the fictitious plot on his life, the politician was furious. Why hadn't Campbell kept Delaney alive? The UFF boys were to pay a heavy price. They would receive a special death, an agonising death. It just so happened that Gerry Fegan was out of the Maze for three days to attend his mother's funeral. The honor system between inmates and their captors, the next man's furlough depending on the previous man's return, meant Fegan could move around freely while he was outside. There was no better man for inflicting a painful end, seeing as Vincie Caffola was on remand for assault. McGinty would take care of the arrangements.

So, seventy-two hours after Delaney took Campbell aside in McKenna's bar, thirty-six after Campbell beat Delaney to a lifeless pulp, he and Gerry Fegan stood over two weeping Loyalists, one of whom had wet himself.

A sour smell filled the room; the stenches of sweat, piss and blood combined to make Campbell's stomach turn on itself. They were in an empty unit on an industrial estate just north-west of the city. Hard fluorescent lighting washed the high-ceilinged room in whites and greys, and the UFF boys' sobs reverberated against the block walls. Blood already pooled on the concrete floor.

Fegan had said little on the journey here. Someone else had lifted the two UFF boys and left them bound to chairs, ready for Fegan and Campbell to interrogate. Campbell watched the other man circle the two Loyalists. Fegan's face was carved from stone, and something deeper than hate or anger burned behind his eyes.

Fegan used a pickaxe handle. It took an hour, and neither of the Loyalists talked. Not because they were brave or strong, but because they never knew of any plot to hit McGinty. All the while, Fegan's face remained blank, his eyes far away. Apart from one moment, that was. When one of the Loyalists wept for his mother, Fegan might have come to himself. Campbell thought he saw a wave of revulsion or pity - he couldn't be sure which - on the other man's face. It was gone before he could be certain.

When the screaming was over, and there was no more blood to spill, Fegan dropped the pickaxe handle to the floor. He finished them with a .22 pistol. Its sharp report boomed in the empty concrete room.

Fegan stood silent for several minutes. Campbell noticed the tear tracks glittering on his face.

"They didn't know anything," Fegan said.

Campbell leaned against the wall, fighting his own churning gut. "Delaney said it was them. He named them."

"He lied," Fegan said.

"Doesn't matter," Campbell said. "McGinty wanted them dead. That's all there is to it."

Fegan wiped his face with the back of his hand, leaving a red smear. "I put my mother in the ground yesterday," he said.

Campbell said nothing.

Fegan's eyes turned glassy, staring at something miles away. "She hadn't spoken to me for sixteen years. She told me she was ashamed of what I did. That was the last thing she ever said to me. They let me out to go and see her in the hospital. She wouldn't let me into the room. She died hating me."

"Why are you telling me this?" Campbell asked.

Fegan snapped back to himself and looked at Campbell, his face creased with confusion. "I don't know," he said. "Can we go now?"

Campbell followed him out into the darkness. As he drove them back to the city, he kept one eye on the road and one eye on Fegan, his heart thundering in his chest.

That had been nine years ago. And now Fegan knew of Campbell's deceit. Did he know he was a plant? Campbell had to assume as much.

The handler wanted Fegan dead. McGinty wanted Fegan dead. Campbell needed Fegan dead, because if McGinty learned the truth ... well, the politician wouldn't let Campbell die easy.

30.

Fegan waited in the darkness. From downstairs he heard the patient ticking of the clock over the priest's fireplace, marking time as the last of the day's light faded to black, chiming on the hour. Just past ten, now. Marie's flight for London Gatwick would be in the air, somewhere over the Irish Sea. An associate of McGinty's was to meet her at the other side when it landed at eleven, and escort her to whatever accommodation had been arranged for her and Ellen. That didn't leave much time, but it shouldn't be long until Father Coulter staggered home. Caffola would have been in the ground and the last speeches made by early afternoon. Father Coulter would have drunk his fill by now.

Fegan sat on a hard wooden chair in a corner of the priest's bedroom, behind the open door. The followers wandered between the shadows. Sometimes it was hard to tell where the shadows ended and the followers began. If he concentrated he could focus on them, draw them out of the dark, and separate them from the blankets of gloom. He tried pushing them from his vision, and then drawing them in. But they were always there, watching.

Always watching.

There was no danger Fegan would fall asleep, even as tired as he was. Every time his eyes grew too heavy to bear, their screaming snapped him awake. When tonight was done, when the work was over, maybe they would let him have some silence. There were long hours ahead, but he could steal some sleep on the road, and the promise of a soft hotel bed somewhere miles from here made the task easier to imagine. He would make it quick for Father Coulter. He was a man of God, after all.

Fegan shifted in the seat, trying to dislodge the pain that clambered across his gut. He had stopped spitting up blood hours ago, but the aches still picked through his organs whether he was moving or still. And it was warm. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Father Coulter kept his house well heated, even during what was for Belfast an unusually clement spring. The heavy overcoat Fegan had found in the priest's wardrobe didn't help, but he needed something to keep the blood off his clothes. There shouldn't be much if he did it right, but he had to be careful.

But it was more than heat making Fegan sweat. He remembered the symptoms from watching his father fight the drink. Nearly forty-eight hours had passed since he'd swallowed that last mouthful of whiskey. The shakes were mild yet, just the slightest of tremors, but bouts of clammy nausea came and went. Dryness dusted his tongue, and he gathered saliva to roll around his mouth. He remembered his father's screaming nightmares, the horrors that would send him back to the bottle. Fegan wondered if the followers would let him dream.

Shafts of light moved across the ceiling, squeezing through the gap above the drawn curtains, and the clattering of a diesel engine came from outside. The creak of the taxi's handbrake, a door opening and closing, a hearty voice wishing someone goodnight. A grumble as the taxi moved off, then the scratching of a key trying to find its home.

The shadows stirred and drifted to the darkest corners.

Fegan felt a cool draught around his ankles as the front door opened below. Light switches clicked on and off. There was a flutter and a high screech as the cockatiel in the living room was angered by the priest disturbing its sleep.

Fegan heard Father Coulter slur, "It's all right, Joe-Joe. Sure, it's only me. Go back to sleep, now."

Another light switch clicked off and Fegan heard the priest begin to climb the stairs, huffing as he went, the steps creaking beneath his weight. Fegan heard the bathroom light's pull-cord, then a fly unzipping. Father Coulter hummed to himself as he thundered into the toilet bowl for what seemed like hours. There was a softer running of water, then the rustling of a towel. All the while, the priest hummed some tuneless song.

Fegan tensed as the lumbering footsteps came closer. He kept his own breath quiet and even, while Father Coulter's came in heavy rasps. He heard the priest pause in the doorway and then the click of the light switch.

"Aw, shite," Father Coulter said when the darkness remained. The light bulb lay near Fegan's shoeless feet.

Father Coulter sighed and entered the bedroom. Fegan and the shifting shadows watched his dark form as he kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the bed. He turned onto his back and pulled the white collar from his black shirt. A few seconds of fumbling and his top buttons were undone. He let his arms fall to his sides, and he sprawled on top of the blankets. Within a few minutes his guttural snoring filled the room.

The three Brits emerged from the darkest corners to stand alongside the bed, miming the priest's execution. The woman followed them, her baby's tiny hands clutching at her dress as she rocked it in her arms. She smiled at Fegan. He nodded and stood up. Campbell's knife was light but the grip felt solid in his hand as he crossed the room. He felt for the thumb stud, cold through the thin membrane of the surgical gloves. The blade opened with a small snap.

The snoring stopped. Fegan could just make out Father Coulter's round face and blinking eyes.

The shadows receded.

The priest's voice was a small whisper. "Who's there?"

"It's all right, Father," Fegan said. "You're just dreaming. Go back to sleep."

"Dreaming? I . . . I ..."

"Shush." Fegan raised the knife.

"Gerry? Gerry Fegan? Is that you?"

Fegan froze. "Yes, Father."

"What do you want, Gerry? What are you doing here?"

"Remember you told me about the dreams, Father?"

The priest tried to raise himself up on his elbows. "What's that you've got there?"

Fegan reached down and smoothed Father Coulter's hair. "Remember? Those Brits. You could have stopped it, but you didn't."

Father Coulter slowly shook his head. "That was so long ago, Gerry. I was scared."

"Aren't you scared now?"

The priest nodded.

"You won't have to dream about them any more," Fegan said.

"Please, Gerry, you're frightening me. What do you want from me?"

"Nothing at all," Fegan said. "You know, I would have let you live."

Father Coulter stiffened on the bed. "What?"

"I was ready to do it the other night, but I lost my nerve. I could have lived with the three Brits, maybe. I thought you didn't deserve it."