Page 33 of The Circle

“Where are Rory and Angus?” he asks.

“Near,” I tell him. “Being looked after.” I don’t talk about them having been shot and doped up on opioids. Doesn’t feel like it moves the needle in a positive direction.

“Danny with ’em? And that bitch?”

Hearing Christine referred to that way really stiffens my spine.

“Danny and Christine are there. Yes,” I retort pointedly.

He nods, thinking. “Ask you a question?” he inquires.

“Asking if you can ask me a question obviates the need to ask, as you have already, in fact, asked me a question.”

His face twists. “What?”

I sigh. “Yeah, bru. Ask me a question.”

“Did you know? Did you know your brother and the bit—Christine were planning on trying to fuck me? That she killed David?”

I shake my head, honestly. “I did not. I had asked Christine to take care of this oke called Jimmy Sotoro. I had no idea what she and Lars were up to until well after the fact. Honestly.” Strange feeling, telling the unvarnished truth, but I don’t dislike it. “Quid pro quo,” I say. “How did you know where to find Lars?”

He grinds his teeth or chews at the inside of his mouth or something. Then, “I was told where I could find you.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t feckin’ know, mate. I had moved on from all of it, figurin’ that Danny, Christine, Lars… you… you were all in the wind and that was the end of it. Wasn’t happy about it, but I had made my peace with letting it go. Clearing it off the ledger. Then, suddenly, I get a message about where I can find Danny and Christine. That you and Lars are holed up in the grand country estate and that Danny and Christine are coming for you.”

This doesn’t make any sense and I’m disinclined to believe this naaier, but he’s being incredibly earnest, so I let him continue and wait to see if I can find any tells that he’s making it all up.

“But when we got there,” he continues, “there was no one there but Lars. We wandered throughout the whole damn estate and he was all we found. So… we did what we did.” He says it with a mixture of fear and challenge. Like he’s daring me to do something to him in response. “We were going to wait for you all to maybe come back, but then we got orders to pull out. So we did.”

“Orders?” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“Whatever. Don’t feckin’ matter. Are we going to resolve this now or not?”

He’s suddenly much jumpier. I wouldn’t be inclined to refer to the mickey in front of me as “chilled out” by any measure, but he just got even more coiled. Which, in kind, causes the two lackeys he’s shepherding to get springy as well.

“Lynch,” I start, “let me make a few things abundantly clear, my dear bru. One, you killed my brother. Now, I’ll grant you, he was a lunatic and had set out to do me the greatest of harms, but he was still my brother. And you, effectively, killed him. Two, it’s vividly apparent to me that you being here today has only incidentally to do with us having killed your uncle and taken your cousins. I suppose you’re not happy about it, but the far more obvious reason you’ve chosen to make yourself seen is because you want to exact vengeance on Danny and Christine so badly for whatever perceived injustices they’ve done you and grudges you’re holding that you’re willing to risk this level of exposure just for the chance of, as you might say, clearing your ledger.”

I get the feeling that most people don’t communicate with Brasil Lynch using a great many compound sentences, because I can see him struggling to understand what the fok I’m saying. No matter. His rudimentary education is not my problem. I go on.

“And three, someone has my child. Based on what you just said, I suppose it’s possible that you’re not lying about not having her. Perhaps you are only the errand boy, sent to carry out the commands of some greater figure than you. Nothing more than an insignificant speck of man who isn’t the fearsome monster you’ve been made out to be. Do these laaities know that?” I point at the two mismatched bully kids standing behind him. “That you are not at all the great and powerful Oz? That you are evidently beholden to someone else? Someone behind a curtain somewhere? Someone pulling your strings and compelling you to dance at their will like the pathetic marionette you clearly are?”

I tsk at him in mock sympathy just to get my point across.

“You know,” I begin again as his ruddy complexion gets redder and redder to the point that I think he might spontaneously catch aflame, “I’m glad we killed your uncle. Better that he should die thinking that his nephew was a man of power and substance than ever discover what you really are.”

The whole monologue spills out like a waterfall. Crashing into a pool of words collecting at Brasil’s feet and rising to engulf him until he drowns in them.

He vibrates in place and I see the okes behind him lay hands inside their jackets. I tilt my head at him and smile with self-satisfaction. He steps into my personal space far closer than would be my preferred proximity, so close that I can smell the single malt still on his breath from the night before. Or maybe just this morning. Who can say?

“Van den Berg,” he huffs out, “I don’t know feckin’ shite about what’s going on any more than you do right now. I really don’t. But I will tell you this…”

It’s like he’s winding up to throw a cricket pitch. I feel the energy building behind his words as he prepares to unleash them. And, being as close to me as he is and as worked up as he appears to me, he must have neglected to think about the fact that when I reach for the semi-automatic pistol I have just inside my topcoat, no one will be able to see me grab it and he’ll be too close to stop me putting a bullet in his heart.

He continues. “I hope your daughter—that’s who she is, yeah?—I hope she fuckin’ dies a slow, painful death. I hope whoever it is who has her tortures her and makes her cry out in pain. And more than that, I hope you’re somewhere near, watching, unable to do anything to help. And I hope that Danny and that bitch are there too. I hope she’s good and raped and that when Danny goes down, it’ll be with a gun in his mouth. That pretty mouth of his that he’s used all these years to suck. Your. Feckin’. Cock.”

Well. That was more impressive than I would’ve given him credit for. Good on you, Brasil Lynch. You ticked every possible box that you could to get under my suddenly very hot and itchy skin.