Falling Glass Part 28

He took off his jacket and draped it over himself.

Killian was very tall but the W112 was a big car back when that actually meant something.

He closed his eyes.

It was quiet here save for a few geese and the pitter-patter of rain which was back on again of course. Killian wasn't the world's best sleeper, but he had done a good night's work. And he was shattered.

He drifted...

On the edge of sleep. On the edge of the Dreaming.

Over the water.

This was another important place in the Pavee mythology. Site of the first Neolithic settlement in Ireland. More ancient even than Newgrange or the Giant's Ring. It was here that Badhbha, G.o.ddess of crows and war, made her home. His ma and even cynical old Uncle Garbhan wouldn't have come here.

Rain clouds came and pa.s.sed above. Stars moved in a giant circle around his head, strange constellations brus.h.i.+ng against his cheeks.

It was a dream of old Ireland. In the old speak. He heard the Ernai on the water and he spoke their true name. He talked in his sleep and his thoughts were weird and when the light woke him at seven he knew that this day wasn't going to go the way he or Sean or d.i.c.k Coulter or Tom or Ivan or anyone else could possibly have foreseen.

CHAPTER 12.

FAREWELL MY LOVELY.

Tom Eichel drove from his apartment in central Belfast to d.i.c.k Coulter's house in Knocknagulla in a speedy twenty minutes. If it had been rush hour it might have taken him an hour but at this time of the morning all the traffic was going the other way.

He zipped through Carrickfergus and Kilroot and turned left at the big No Entry sign just before the Bla Hole turn.

Viv nodded to him at the gate and lifted the barrier.

Security had been tightened at what the locals called Castle Coulter since 2006 when a Continuity IRA abduction scheme had to come to light. CIRA had planned to kidnap one or both of Coulter's two daughters and ransom them back to him for a million each.

With an estimated worth of twenty million and triple that in shares of Coulter Air he could have paid easy. But the CIRA were f.u.c.k-ups and the peelers had heard about it and the whole thing had come to nothing.

But now Coulter's place here on the sh.o.r.es of Belfast Lough and the house in Donegal and the house in Tenerife were guarded by ex-SAS.

Of course, Tom reflected, as he drove up the gravel driveway, no one had expected the girls to be kidnapped by their own mother.

The early rain had pa.s.sed and the sun was s.h.i.+ning and the house looked particularly lovely today. It was an art deco affair, very unusual in Northern Ireland, where tastes in country piles were primarily for the Gothic and the Georgian. It was pink and long and arched and fluted. Someone doing a profile years ago had compared it to the Hoover Building on the A40. d.i.c.k had been incensed by that of course until Tom had shown him a picture of the Hoover Building and explained that it was the finest art deco structure in England.

What really set Castle Coulter apart from other Irish country homes, discreetly hidden away in valleys or forest estates, was its cliff-top location. Set above Whitehead it commanded 360-degree views of Belfast, County Down, County Antrim, the entire Galloway peninsula in Scotland and on clear days the Isle of Man and the Mull of Kintyre further up the Scottish coast. Coulter even claimed that you could see England through a telescope but Tom knew that the curvature of the Earth made this materially impossible.

Not that the house needed additional superlatives: fourteen bedrooms, an indoor and outdoor pool, a squash court, a stable, a snooker room and the piece de resistance - an airstrip that could accommodate Coulter's six-seat Gulfstream 270.

As places to doss went, it would do.

Tom parked in his usual spot and walked up the marble steps to the front door.

He rang the bell and since Paul was at the hospital visiting his brother Mrs Lavery answered it.

"'Tis yourself, Mr E," she said, somewhat startled to see him at 7.20 in the morning.

"It is I, Mrs Lavery," Tom agreed with a forced grin.

"I believe he's not even up yet, Mr E, and neither is the Mrs for that matter."

"Really?" Tom asked, surprised, for d.i.c.k was an early bird.

"They were watching the telly last night till after two, so they were. Come in now, don't be standing there," Mrs Lavery said.

Tom walked into the s.p.a.cious entryway. Here the marble gave way to Portland stone and little alcoves filled with beautiful statuary from eclectic corners of the world where heritage laws either did not preclude export or could be suspended for the right price.

To the left was the billiards room, to the right was a lounge; the upstairs could be reached by a gently curving deco staircase. That was where Tom needed to go. d.i.c.k's living quarters were on the first floor but Tom felt uneasy about going up to his boss's domain with him apparently still out for the count. Not even the domestics or the bodyguards went up there without a direct invitation.

"Do you want to wait with me in the kitchen? The living room's freezing, so it is. I'll make you a wee cup of tea," Mrs Lavery said.

"Make it coffee and it's a deal," he said with another fake smile.

Fake because smiling had become impossible since he had learned about the laptop.

"Aye, all right now, but I won't be making any of that Italian rubbish, it'll be Irish coffee or none at all," Mrs Lavery said, before turning bright pink with embarra.s.sment. Her mouth opened and closed like the rainbow trout Tom had tickled on the Bann only last week before the trip to China.

Mrs Lavery's voice descended to a whisper: "By 'Italian rubbish' I wasn't casting dispersions on the new Mistress. You know that Mr E, I was, you know, attempting to be jovial about your good self, sir, so I was."

Tom touched one of Mrs Lavery's ham-hock arms, "I knew that. And before the thought even enters your head, let me tell you that d.i.c.k has said he wants you to stay after the birth of the little one because - and this is a direct quote - a growing reed needs a good feed for breakfast and Mrs Lavery does the best Ulster fry in the nine counties."

"Did he really say that?" Mrs Lavery asked, her eyes watering a little.

"He did indeed," Tom lied through his teeth.

They walked into the ante-room where Tom threw his raincoat on a leather sofa and tied his tie in the Tiffany mirror.

"Okay, let's get some of that coffee and we'll wait for himself to wake up," Tom said and followed Mrs Lavery into the large, spotless, modern kitchen.

Almost directly behind them in the kitchen garden on the other side of the cypresses, the old b.u.g.g.e.r was not only awake but now completely cognizant of the pair of them as their voices carried through the open window.

Although he had indeed stayed up until 2.00 a.m. showing Helena Lawrence of Arabia after it came to light that she not only had not seen the film but had never heard of it, he had tossed and turned all night before finally getting up, with zero sleep, at six, his normal waking hour.

When the dark behind the bedroom shutters had changed from black to brown to grey he had slipped out of the bed, padded onto the back stairs and down to the kitchen garden to have a smoke.

Mrs Lavery might not have known Coulter's whereabouts, but Bill, one of the two night guards, certainly did, and had informed Viv on the gate, who was just this second texting the information to Mr Eichel in case he was looking for him.

"There you go, Mr E," said Mrs Lavery, giving Tom a Nescafe with condensed milk and brown sugar, the way he took it. It was about the only taste he had acquired from his father. Tom's dad was a German who had come to Ireland at the end of the forties to help set up textile factories and who had then become an administrator in Ulsterbus. He had a married a local girl, had two kids and stayed until the Troubles really kicked off in the seventies when he had moved back to the peaceful life in Germany. Tom seldom visited his parents, or his sister who had gone with them.

Tom had been pressured to go into law and it was at Queen's that he had met Richard Coulter who, after knocking around South Africa and Australia for a few years, was studying business administration. Tom graduated with a first and became a junior solicitor but Coulter had got an even better first and was headhunted to join the prison service, the only booming industry in the mid-seventies.

Coulter had become the governor of a halfway house for wayward youth, getting the kids to stick to the straight and narrow and parlaying the publicity of that rare good-news story into meetings with government ministers. Coulter became one of Belfast's few entrepreneurs of the Troubles, dipping his finger into many pies but especially bomb-damage contracting work, which was the pie to have in seventies Belfast.

The rest of Coulter's trajectory was a well-known and oft repeated tale: his construction firm had branched into the hotel business and the package holiday trade. He had then acquired a small start-up airline operating out of Belfast Harbour Airport and Glasgow's Prestwick: ten pilots, three Shorts 330s and a DC-10. Of course no one back in 1986 could have foreseen the monster which Coulter Air would become; by 2011 CA had a ninety-plane fleet, it serviced forty European airports, had three million pa.s.sengers a year and had flights starting at nine quid, plus fees.

Tom hadn't been quite there at the beginning, but almost the beginning. When Richard was getting out of prisons and into construction Tom had come on board and agreed to become Richard's fixer.

None of it had really been legal work.

It was all dealing with paramilitaries.

A paramilitary negotiator was vitally important. No one could do business in Northern Ireland without making deals with (in order of importance): the IRA, the UDA, the INLA and the UVF. And after you'd paid off the paramilitaries, next you greased the union wheels and finally you grafted the cops. It was hard work and you had to creatively account for the revenue. (Not that the tax men ever pressed that hard - with businesses closing left and right Richard Coulter was one of the few people in the bleak north Belfast catchment area who could provide nongovernment jobs, and no one wanted to f.u.c.k with the golden goose.) Tom had been Richard's man in Belfast and, until a few days ago, Tom thought that Richard confided everything to him.

That obviously was not the case.

Tom sipped his coffee, received Viv's text and texted Richard: I AM HR. I KNW U R AWAKE.

Richard read the text and frowned. If Tom was here it was bound to be terrible news.

"Just give me a minute," he said to himself and then added: "I wonder how those limes are doing?" He slid open the gla.s.s door and stepped inside the closer of the two greenhouses. The smell in here was comforting: compost and expensive fertiliser. He turned on the mister and walked among the lime trees, looking with satisfaction at the budding fruit on all of them. They were hardy trees from the Basque country and next season if he wasn't dead or in prison he was going to have them transplanted outside to the dell next to the oak grove. Northern Ireland got few days of frost and up here on the very mouth of Belfast Lough the Gulf Stream came right in. Jack, his gardener, said they had a good shot at surviving and what Jack didn't know about horticulture wasn't worth knowing.

He gave a wee squeeze to the biggest fruit on the biggest tree.

"A thing of beauty," he said to himself.

He sat on the wicker chair he had set up in the corner, wiped condensation from the gla.s.s and looked out at the ashy North Channel, as.h.i.+er Irish Sea and the blue waters of the Atlantic far to the north. The phone in his pocket was vibrating. It was another text from Tom.

"f.u.c.k," Coulter said to himself. The guy was going to keep after him and Tom knew he liked to come out here.

Richard scurried to the west door of the greenhouse, opened it, bolted into the kitchen garden and, keeping low, ran to the protection of the hedge that separated the house from the airstrip.

He walked along the hedge and slipped behind the Gulfstream's hanger to the estate's high stone exterior wall now topped with razor wire since the CIRA's interest in him had become apparent.

He unlocked a steel gate and went into the sheep meadow behind his house - still technically his property but outside the grounds proper.

He walked along the salt trail to Bla Hole Lane.

It was windy and gulls were hovering over the cliff face, unbending and motionless in the stiff breeze coming off the sea. The clouds were scudding through the sky but in Scotland it looked clear. He looked back at the house and saw Tom's car parked in his usual spot.

f.u.c.king Tom, what fresh nightmare was he bringing news of now?

As if on cue the phone vibrated a third time.

He ignored it and kept walking along the lane. He was dressed in his pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers and he hadn't any money but since he was de facto lord of the manor in these parts none of that mattered.

And his watch alone could be p.a.w.ned for a plane ticket anywhere. With his millions in secure accounts in the Bahamas and Switzerland, he could b.u.g.g.e.r off right now if he wanted. He didn't need the publicity. He didn't need the notoriety. He didn't need Northern Ireland or his family. The thing that no one understood was that basically he was a loner and actually a bit shy. He had grown up in conservative, backwater 1940s Ulster. His da had been a teetotal, Gospel Hall attending, evangelistic, Paisley voting, dairy farmer. His ma was a sectarian nut who believed that the Bible was literally true and that everyone not of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland was going to h.e.l.l, with a special place reserved for followers of the Bishop of Rome. Richard had five older brothers (three of whom had become missionaries in Africa) and no sisters, which meant that he had all the usual sibling hang-ups and quite a few idiosyncratic extras. And they were hardy stock, the Coulters - border warriors in Scotland and Ulster who had survived Flodden, Glencoe, Culloden, World War One and the Belfast Blitz during World War Two when a Luftwaffe Heinkel 111, miles off course, had dropped a bomb on their dairy.

Both of d.i.c.k's parents were still alive and of course they and all his siblings believed everything they heard and read about their youngest son and brother. One of the reasons he often had to go on those ghastly morning shows in person was to defend his good name. He'd even promised his ninety-two-year-old ma that he, a Free Presbyterian, would beat Michael O'Leary, a Roman Catholic, to become the first Irishman in s.p.a.ce.

ND TO TALK, Tom texted.

"In a minute!" Richard muttered to the phone.

The lane next to his estate wall was muddy and the tractor divots were filled with rain water and it was some job not to get his slippers drenched. However after five minutes of careful manoeuvring he reached the main road and the village of Knocknagulla itself which was precisely six houses and a shop.

The shop wasn't yet open and the newspapers were piled up outside in bundles. He slipped a copy of the Daily Mirror from its pile. There was nothing about him in it, or the airline. Nothing in the Express or the Star and it wasn't until he got to the Daily Mail that he found his own name mentioned in an editorial from Peter Hitchens, something about how travel narrowed the mind rather than broadening it and how Coulter Air was responsible for British people seeing how rotten Europe was and how lucky they actually were to live in glorious Albion. Coulter read it twice and really it was almost a kind of compliment.

He put the Mail back on its pile.

His phone was vibrating yet again. He called Tom back. "Okay, okay, can you come and get me? I'm at the newsagents just down the road," he said.

The soles of his slippers were soaked in mud so he sc.r.a.ped them clean while he waited. He sat on the pile of newspapers, putting his slippers up on the Scouser-and Coulter-Air-bas.h.i.+ng Sun.

Tom pulled in. He was driving the VW Touareg.

Richard got in the pa.s.senger's side. "What were you doing out here?" Tom asked.

"Reading the papers," Richard said. "Let's go for a drive. I don't want to go home just yet."

"Okay," Tom replied and turned left on the A2 which would take them north along the coast.

"So what's up?" Richard asked.

"Got a call from Sean this morning. His bloodhound has found your girl."

"Has he now?" Richard said, excited.

"Aye. I suppose yon boy knew what he was about after all."

"Of course he did. I liked him."

"Aye, well, I didn't. f.u.c.king tinker."

"Would you listen to you. You're worse than Mrs Lavery," Richard said.

"It's not racism, it's f.u.c.king experience, mate. I've been crossed once too often."

"Okay, so where is she?"

"In a lake."

"Drowned?"

"No, no. Sean won't say exactly, which is sleekit of him, but our boy's got her trapped on one of those islands in Lough Erne. He's getting the ferry over at eight and whenever he makes a positive ID, he's gonna call Sean to inquire about further instructions."

Richard stroked his chin thoughtfully and looked furtively at Tom as they drove along the Larne Road through the village of Magheramorne.