‘So that’s it,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s as much as I know,’ said Miles, while another lorry clattered past, pouring out rich, choking fumes.
‘Maybe,’ said Collins, ‘you know more than you think.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, since we’re in a mood for stories, how would you like to hear another one?’
Miles nodded, watching while Collins lit another two cigarettes, then jumped down from the gate again, leaning against it while he watched the traffic.
‘It makes me nervous, all this traffic. Everything moving so fast while I’m standing still. We’re targets.’
He stared intently at the traffic, using up the burning tobacco as though it were oxygen and he a drowning man.
‘I did a job once, rather a strange one, when I was very young. An assassination, you could call it, no questions asked. I’d been told that this man was a spy, something like that, and that he was dangerous to us. My job was to get to know him, then eliminate him. But then I found out that it wasn’t quite as straightforward as I’d thought.’
How straightforward is the murder of a stranger? Miles wanted to ask.
‘Go on,’ he said instead.
‘Oh, the man was a spy all right, just like you, Mr. Flint. But he wasn’t any danger to us. No, there was payment involved. A hundred rifles, as I recall. I’d been used as a hired assassin. There was nothing political in it, nothing to do with the cause, just plain payment of some guns in exchange for my services. I couldn’t do anything about it, of course. That would have been dangerous. So I played it by the book, their book, and I looked for a way to burn the pages. But I found a martyr instead.’ He rested for a moment, stubbing out the cigarette and lighting another. ‘The weapon I used, and the rifles, were delivered by an Israeli gentleman.’
Miles felt his fingers go limp, the cigarette threatening to fall to the ground.
‘Coincidence?’ he said.
‘Maybe. But you say that this Israeli who died in London was a gunrunner?’
‘A suspected gunrunner, yes.’
Collins nodded. ‘A couple of years ago,’ he said, ‘an old friend, still active in the north, sent me a message. It was brave of him. If he’d been caught, Christ knows what would have happened. He told me that there was a man asking questions about me. A funny guy, my friend said, spoke like an Englishman but carried an American passport.’
‘Did he have a name?’ asked Miles, thinking of Richard Mowbray, his heart beating wildly.
‘Yes, Gray. Andy Gray. I remember because it’s the name of a footballer, too.’
‘Andy Gray,’ Miles repeated, thinking hard. But he was thinking through great wads of cotton, his head like a dispensary. The name meant something to him. Andy Gray, yes, a footballer. Andrew Gray. An anagram of Mowbray? No, not even close.
Then he remembered: Billy Monmouth’s friend.
I’ve been in France. A company-funded shopping trip.
Billy hadn’t mentioned that he was American, though. What was it Richard Mowbray suspected? That there might be CIA moles within the firm. Billy Monmouth and his American friend. The ‘company’ being slang for the CIA itself. Well, well, well. Was it all coming together at last? Or was it exploding into too many fragments, like Kew Gardens this last half hour?
‘Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Miles, ‘not yet.’ Here perhaps was the trump card that would save his life: Collins was curious, and Miles held all the answers.
‘What about the assassination?’ he asked now. ‘Did you learn the victim’s name?’
‘Yes,’ replied Collins, staring into a distance of his own, ‘and I’ll never forget it. His name was Philip Hayton.’
‘Philip Hayton?’
‘Did you know him?’
‘I know of him, yes.’ And Billy had brought him into the conversation only a few weeks before. There was no coincidence.
‘Did he have a family? A wife and kids?’
‘No, I’m sure he didn’t,’ said Miles generously, unsure of the facts.
Collins nodded. He seemed almost soporific now, while Miles’s thoughts were moving faster and faster, trying to identify the terrain through which they traveled. Billy. Andrew Gray. The Israeli. And now Philip Hayton. Where was the connection?
There had to be one. There had to be.
‘What happened to this Gray?’
Collins shrugged, as though trying to heave a great weight from his back.
‘He asked around, flashed around quite a bit of money according to my friend, but what could anyone tell him? I was a traitor as far as they were concerned in Belfast, and no one wants to advertise their traitors, do they? Not unless they’re dead. I’d have thought you’d know about that.’
‘I’m not a traitor.’
‘Then why the hell are they after you?’
‘It’s not me they’re after, it’s us. I couldn’t see it until now, but the Israeli is the connection. He’s the lowest common denominator. What’s more, I know where we can find out more about this man Gray.’
‘Where?’
‘From a friend of mine.’
Collins gave him a steady look, his next question a formality.
‘I don’t suppose this friend lives in London, by any chance?’
‘Yes, he does.’
Collins shook his head.
‘No way,’ he said. ‘There’s no way on God’s earth that I’m going to let you go to London.’
‘Then come with me.’
‘It would be suicide.’
‘And if you stay here? Do you think they’ll stop coming at you?’
‘There’s a chance.’
‘Sure there’s a chance. A chance that you’ll be blindfolded and shot in some field, dropped into the sea like so much dead meat.’ Collins shivered, and Miles knew that he had hit another nerve. Of course: Hayton had been dumped at sea. It had been called a sailing accident, hadn’t it? A sailing accident with a great big bullet hole in the victim’s skull. The firm had covered that one up nicely, but why?
‘A chance,’ Miles continued, licking his parched lips, ‘that you’ll die without ever knowing why. At least if we go to London we might find out what it’s all about.’
He jumped off the gate, hoping it wasn’t too dramatic a gesture, and began to walk down the field, just as Collins had done. Will Collins was not a stupid man, and Miles was sure that finally he would agree to go. There was just the one problem now.
Would they reach Billy Monmouth alive?
Collins was lighting another cigarette from the butt of the old, and Miles, approaching, was about to say something about chain-smokers dying before they were forty. But he thought better of it when he saw the pistol in Collins’s hand.
‘No,’ Collins said, ‘no, we’re not going to England, Mr. Flint. We’re going to Drogheda, where I can be rid of you once and for all.’
Twenty-Two
‘It’s on the coast, then, this Drogheda?’
Collins nodded. He had been silent throughout the rest of the drive, and had given Miles a cold look whenever he had attempted to start up a conversation. So Drogheda was on the coast. The coast meant boats, and boats meant quick and invisible trips across the Irish Sea. Perhaps things were working themselves into a pattern much more to his advantage than anything he could have planned.
‘Drogheda,’ said Collins at last, as they turned into the town. Miles imagined himself as Perseus, entering the stony land of the Gorgons, but it was no use. The last thing he felt was heroic.
‘It was near here I killed Hayton. We went out to sea, and I shot him.’
‘Very neat,’ said Miles.
‘Not really. Have you ever killed anyone, Mr. Flint? Neatness doesn’t enter into it. There’s blood everywhere. It finds you and sticks to you. I kept finding flecks of it on me for days afterwards.’
‘And no questions were ever asked about Hayton’s disappearance?’
Collins shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I went back to Belfast and tried to forget all about it.’
‘Until you found out you’d been tricked.’
‘You know, I’ll be glad to be rid of you, Flint. You sound like a conscience, but your eyes are full of tricks.’
Miles tried to smile. ‘I’m parched,’ he said. ‘Can we get something to drink soon?’
Collins pondered this. Yes, they had not had anything to drink for a long while, and there had been much talking since then. Miles watched as Collins was forced by the workings of his own mind into a remembrance of their joint confessions.
‘Yes,’ he conceded finally, ‘let’s find a pub.’