A head turned on the train. A woman stared at him. Court glared back at her until she turned away.
After a long moment, the Englishman said, “You’re going to play that card? That I owe you this?”
“If I have to.”
“Very well. Write this down, but I’m warning you, nothing good can come from it.”
“ ‘Good’ left the chat a long time ago, Fitz.”
Fifty-Three
No one on this side of the city called it Londonderry. Londonderry was the name the loyalists used, and there weren’t many loyalists here in Bogside, a community just west of the River Foyle.
Tiny row house communities stretched for dozens of blocks in each direction; paint was chipped from the walls that surrounded every tiny back garden.
Someone had spray-painted “IRA” on a wall nearby—quite recently, it seemed—and a crafted stone sign at the head of the development read “End British Internment of Irish Republicans.”
This was the heart of Derry; these people weren’t pleased to be part of the United Kingdom, to put it mildly, and even though the vast majority of the IRA killing had stopped with the peace accords decades earlier, there was still dissent, and counterdissent, and some people here continued to suffer for their disloyalty to the Crown.
The skies were low and ashen gray; darker wisps of pasty clouds hung seemingly within reach, and the frigid wet air kept most people in their homes. Christmas decorations in windows did little to brighten the day.
Those who did walk the narrow pavements towards the few low-end shops here on the east bank of the River Foyle were all bundled up in coats and hats, many carrying umbrellas.
On Meenan Drive, the sixth tiny house on the left looked like all theothers: flaked paint walls, a tile roof that needed repair, a wooden gate on rusty hinges that led to the car park.
The woman who lived in the sixth house on Meenan stood in her tiny back garden, arms across her chest to ward off the cold that her heavy coat couldn’t keep out, and she stood there on a cracked patio watching her son crawl in his heavy jumper. He was eight months old and moving surprisingly well, his head up, his curly blond hair blowing in the wet breeze as he awkwardly played with an orange ball on the ground. Bumping it with an arm, a hand, his head.
It was silly, but he was having fun, and it made the woman smile.
Twenty-four-year-old Deirdre Coyle reached for her phone to take a video for her ma, but realized she’d left it inside on the kitchen table, so she darted in to fetch it.
Inside, she answered a quick text from a friend; it only took her a moment, and then she stepped back out into the back garden, tightening her jacket as she did so. She had her attention focused on the device in her hand, and it wasn’t until she looked up towards little Ronan, still sitting there on the wet concrete with his ball, did she realize a man was there, in her garden, standing next to the wet linen hanging on the line, the wooden gate door shut behind him.
She lurched back when she saw him, and her phone dropped to the ground. He wore a coat with a hood, had a dark brown beard, and his hands were stuffed in his pockets.
He stood three steps away from her child.
Though instantly terrified, she manufactured a little strength in her voice when she spoke. “Who the feck are you?”
Her eyes flitted down to her son, and she saw him looking up at the man now.
The man put a gloved finger to his lips, indicating she should keep quiet.
He stepped a little closer, then surprised her by sitting down on a small chair by the table. “Can I talk to you for a moment? Then I’ll go. I promise.”
He was American. She sat down across from him; her eyes kept checking her son.
He said, “I’m not here for him.”
“Why would you be here for him?”
The man did not respond for several seconds; he almost seemed confused by the comment. Finally, he said, “I’m not here for you, either.”
“What you want, then?”
“I’m here for him. For your father-in-law. I know thatyouknow where he is. And you know how to get in touch with him.”
“You’re the American. The killer.”
