His smile faded.
And then, in another instant, somehow, he understood.
Jon Jo fixed his jaw tight but still found a way to speak through it. “Somethin’s ’appened to Charlie.”
She did not answer for a moment, did not move her body, did not soften her eyes.
Her hair whipped in the wind for several seconds, and then, finally, she spoke one word.
“Aye.”
Six
The driver’s license of the man in the tweed suit who lived at 28 Tullywinnie Lane just north of Camlough, Newry, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, displayed the name Jon Jo Sheehan, but the license had been created by forgers in Belfast, the name taken from a child’s grave in a cemetery somewhere up in County Tyrone.
The locksmith and security camera installer was not a Jon or a Jo or a Sheehan.
In truth, his da had the surname Coyle. His ma had decided to call him Campbell shortly after his birth in a hospital in Belfast.
And twenty-four years ago, Campbell and his then-wife Annie had named their son Charlie, after her grandfather, because there wasn’t a male in Campbell Coyle’s own family, himself very much included, that he deemed worthy of commemorating with a namesake.
With his craggy face still impassive, and just a slight crack in his voice, Campbell Coyle said, “Dead, is he?”
Those blue eyes of Deirdre’s bore into him like diamond drill bits. She said, “Hung on for eight days. Fought like the devil, he did. But the infection got him.”
“Wha…what happened?”
“Shot in the leg. Then stabbed in the ribs. But that’s not what’s done it. What’s done it was the shite medical care.”
“Where?”
“Bulgaria.”
“The feck was he doin’ in Bulgaria?” he asked, but deep inside, he knew.
“Whatcha think he was doin’? He was working, wasn’t he?”
“Bodyguarding?”
“For a bleedin’ gangster. A gangster who got himself slotted, same as Charlie.” For the first time, she reached to her face and swept her chaotic hair away from her eyes. “A right proper slaughter.”
“When?”
“Some weeks ago. We buried him in your family plot up in Ballycastle. He’d always said that’s where he wanted to end up if this happened.”
Campbell felt the cold in his bones, deep. He bit the inside of his mouth. He’d somehow known this day was coming, not the particulars, of course, not this soon, of course, but he’d long thought his only child’s trajectory could only lead him to one singular fate.
“He had straightened himself out,” Deirdre said, as if his daughter-in-law could read his thoughts. “They did blood work. In Bucharest. Not a drop of alcohol. Not a hint of drugs.”
When Campbell Coyle did not respond to this, she further confirmed that she was in his head right now. “You’re thinkin,’ ‘Then why the feck was he killed with criminals in Bulgaria if he’d got his life so bloody sorted.’ Aren’t ya?”
He was, indeed.
“He had some debts, told himself he’d take it back to the knife’s edge just one more feckin’ time, just to get the money he needed to put everything right, to start fresh. We was ninety days away from a real life, we were.”
Campbell nodded, feelings he hadn’t allowed himself to feel welling up inside him. He fought his emotions, told himself he was fighting them for the good of Deirdre. “Come in. I’ll make some tea. I’ve already got the kettle on.”
But Deirdre did not move. “I won’t be drinkin’ tea with you, Campbell Coyle. Some gangster brought hell down on Charlie. Some assassin fired the gun and stuck the knife.” She pointed at him. “But you was the one what sealed his fate. Your son’s blood is onyourhands, and always will be.”
