“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