Gallagher’s light swung away from her intended path toward the sound. She dashed forward, trying to judge the distance. Her hand hit the brick outer wall of the crypt, and she moved left toward the corner. Gallagher’s light swung back. She ducked below the beam, then slid around the corner, bracing her back against the cold crypt. She sidestepped with her back against the wall, watching the beam of Gallagher’s light as it passed off to her left. She felt for the nylon around her neck and swung it from her shoulders. She conjured up a picture of Frank Gallagher: pleasant looking, sort of vacuous expression. Big, too. She wrapped the nylon tightly around her hands and looped it.
The beam of light was growing in thickness and intensity, bobbing closer to the corner of the crypt. She could actually hear Gallagher’s footsteps around the corner, could hear the tight-lipped nose-breathing she knew so well. God, she thought, God, I never wanted to kill so badly.
Discretion. When to run, when to fight. When in doubt, said Brian Flynn, run. Watch the wolves, he had said to her. They run from danger without self-recrimination. Even hunger wouldn’t cloud their judgment. There’d be other kills. She steadied her hands and took a long breath, then swung the nylon around her shoulders and moved along the wall, to her right, away from Gallagher’s approaching footsteps. Next time.
Something brushed across her face, and she stifled a yell as she swatted it away. Carefully she reached out and touched a hanging object. A pull chain. She reached up and found the light bulb, unscrewed it, and tossed it gently underhand into the crawl space in front of her. She pulled the chain, switching on the electricity. She thought, I hope he sticks his fucking finger into it and burns.
Gallagher came to the corner and knelt. He swung his light in a wide arc under the crawl space that began a few feet from the wall.
Maureen saw in the light in front of her the bottom of the steps that led down from the raised sanctuary above her. Farther back, in the crawl space, she saw the glowing red eyes of rats. She moved down the length of the crypt wall. It seemed to go on for a long way. Gallagher’s light swung up from the crawl space and began probing the length of the wall.
She moved more quickly, stumbling over building rubble. After what she judged was about twenty-five feet her right hand felt the corner where the wall turned back toward the sacristy. The beam of light fell on her shoulder, and she froze. The light played off her jacket, then swung away. She slid around the corner just as the light came back to reexplore the suspicious thing it had picked out.
Maureen turned and kept her right shoulder to the wall as she moved toward the sacristy foundation. She found another light bulb and unscrewed it, then pulled the chain. Rats squealed around her, and something ran across her bare feet.
The crypt wall turned in to meet the outer wall of the sacristy staircase, and she judged that she was on the exact opposite side of the staircase from where she’d come down through the brass plate.
So far she had eluded them, gotten the better of them in a game that was the ultimate hide-and-seek. Every Belfast alley and factory park flashed through her mind. Every heart-thumping, dry-throated crawl through the rubble came back to her, and she felt alive, confident, almost exhilarated at the dangerous game.
The ground rose, and she had to stoop lower until finally she had to crawl on all fours. She felt to her front as she moved. A rat scurried across her hand, another across her legs. Sweat ran from her face and washed the dirt camouflage into her eyes and mouth. Her breathing was so loud she thought Gallagher must hear it clearly.
Behind her the beam of Gallagher’s light probed in all directions. He could have no idea that he had actually been following her … unless he had heard her or had seen her footprints, or had found one of the empty light-sockets and guessed…. Stick your goddamned finger in one of them and fry. She hoped he was as frightened as she was.
She kept crawling until her hand came into contact with cold, moist stone. She ran her fingers over the jagged surface, then higher up, and she felt the rounded contour of a massive column. Her hand slid down again, and she felt something soft and damp and drew away quickly. Cautiously she reached out again and touched the yielding, putty-like substance. She pulled a piece of it and brought it to her nose. “Oh, my God,” she spoke under her breath. “Oh, you bastards. You really would do it.”
Her knee bumped into something, and her hands reached down and felt the suitcase that they had carried down into the hole—a suitcase big enough to hold at least twenty kilos of plastic. Somewhere, probably on the other side of the staircase, was the other charge.
She wedged into the space between the stairway wall and the column’s footing and took the nylon from around her shoulders. She found a half brick and held it in her right hand.
Gallagher came closer, his flashlight focused on the ground in front of him. She could see in the light the marks she had made when she had to crawl through the earth.
Gallagher’s light swung up and focused on the column footing, then probed the space where she was hiding. He crawled closer and poked the light between the column and the wall.
For a long second the light rested directly on her face, and they stared at each other from less than a yard away. Gallagher’s face registered complete surprise, she noticed. A stupid man.
She brought her hand down with the half brick in it and drove it between his eyes. The light fell to the floor, and she sprang out of her niche and wrapped the nylon garrote around his neck.
Gallagher thrashed over the earth floor like a wounded animal. Maureen hooked her legs around his torso and rode his back, holding the garrote like a set of reins, drawing it tightly around his neck with all the strength she could summon.
Gallagher weakened and fell forward on his chest, pinning her legs beneath hem. She pulled harder on the nylon, but there was too much give in it. She knew she was strangling him too slowly, causing him unnecessary suffering. She heard the gurgling coming from deep in his throat.
Gallagher’s head twisted around at an unbelievable angle, and his face stared up at her. The fallen flashlight cast a yellow beam over his face, and she saw his bulging eyes and thick protruding tongue. His skin was split where she had hit him with the brick, and his nose was broken and bleeding. Their eyes met for a brief second.
Gallagher’s body went limp and lay motionless. Maureen sat on his back trying to catch her breath. She still felt life in his body, the shallow breathing, the twitching muscles and flesh against her buttocks. She began tightening the garrote, then suddenly pulled it from his neck and buried her face in her hands.
She heard voices coming around the crypt, then saw two lights not forty feet away. She quickly shut off the flashlight and threw it aside. Maureen felt her heart beating wildly again as she groped for the fallen pistol.
The beam rose and searched the ceiling. A voice—Megan’s—said, “Here’s another missing bulb. Clever little bitch.”
The other flashlight examined the ground. Hickey said, “Here are their tracks.”
Maureen’s hands touched Gallagher’s body, and she felt him moving. She backed off.
Hickey called out, “Frank? Are you there?” His approaching light found Gallagher’s body and rested on it.
Maureen crawled backward until she made contact with the base of the column. She turned and clawed at the plastic explosive, trying to pull it loose from the footing, feeling for the detonator that she knew was embedded somewhere.