Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (77 page)

“Tis only relief that’s makin’ her so sharp,” Casey said amiably as Jamie rummaged about in the infamous hatbox.

“Grab the poteen, it’s the highest alcohol content, it’s in the little brown bottle.”

Jamie accordingly did so.

“Let’s get it over with then,” Casey said with grim determination, injured buttock clenching despite his show of bravado.

“Right then,” Jamie took a deep breath and poured the clear liquid onto the wound. He had to credit Casey; he only let out one small yelp before fainting.

Pamela came into the room, holding a pair of tweezers and a razor blade. “Boiled,” she said and laid them down beside Casey’s still form.

“He’s passed out,” Jamie said helplessly.

“Best under the circumstances I’d think, wouldn’t you? Now shouldn’t we get the bullet out before he comes around again?”

Sensible if not welcome advice, Jamie thought and set about his task, fingers slippery with perspiration and nerves. Casey mercifully did not wake up until the bullet, small and blunt headed, lay on the table beside the bed where he lay face down, buttock neatly gauzed and taped.

Pamela sat on the bed beside him, silent. Casey reached with his good hand and groped about until she placed one of her own in it.

“Tis alright darlin’ it’ll take moren’ a bullet in the arse to knock me down.”

“That’s precisely what I’m afraid of, you great big silly bastard,” she said and burst into tears. Jamie, surgical skills no longer needed, quietly left the room and shut the door.

He took a drink of water and was half out the door when Pamela’s voice stopped him.

“Where the hell do you suppose you are going?”

“Home?” he said.

“Not until the two of you have sat down and told me where the hell you’ve been the last four days and why it occurred to neither of you to pick up a phone. And seeing as Casey’s in no shape to talk about anything tonight it’ll have to be done in the morning. Besides you’ve no car,” she added sensibly as Jamie turned back into the entryway.

In the uncompromising light of the kitchen, she looked frail and exhausted.

“I thought you were both dead, Jamie,” she said voice drained with fear.

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded and bit her lip to stop a fresh batch of tears from welling up.

“If you just point the way to the spare room,” he said awkwardly, longing to take her in his arms.

“I’m sleeping in Pat’s room,” she said, a flicker of what almost seemed amusement in her face. “You are bunking in with Casey, my side of the bed is free. There’s fresh towels in the bath and a spare blanket on the foot of the bed. If you need anything else just ask Casey, he can tell you where it is.” She paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder, “Oh you might want to watch yourself as Casey’s hands tend to roam in his sleep.” With that, she shut the door with a firm click behind her leaving Jamie open-mouthed as a beached fish.

He stood there until he heard Casey’s voice groggily call him.

“Yes?” he poked his head into the bedroom.

“Ye may as well come lie down man, she means it.”

“I can sleep on the couch,” Jamie said.

“It’s like sleepin’ on the Cliffs of Moher,” Casey yawned one long-lashed eye looking blearily at him, “dangerous an’ none too comfortable. There’s room enough, I shared a bed with Pat half my life, I won’t even notice yer there.”

After a wash in hot water and scrubbing his teeth, with a toothbrush laid out for him, until his gums were raw, Jamie found himself stretched out next to the deeply asleep and snoring form of Casey.

Surprisingly he slept well and woke only once in the middle of the night when Casey left the bed and limped down the hall. He could hear the sound of a brief conversation and then Casey was back in the bed.

“She meant it then?” Jamie asked.

Casey sighed, “Aye she meant it, though ye can’t blame a man for tryin’. She said someone in my condition ought to be more careful. I’m thinkin’,” he grunted as he shifted from his back to his stomach in the bed, “it’s goin’ to be a long an’ cold week in this house. She had a message for the both of us as well.”

“Hm?” Jamie could feel himself slipping again into sleep’s luxurious tunnel.

“She said the two of us are not allowed to play together anymore.” Casey laughed, “an’ I think she was only half-jokin’.”

“Casey?”

“Hmm?” came the semi-conscious answer.

“What that man said about the guns, I don’t know where they are. But why didn’t you ask me?”

“Mm,” Casey rumbled sleepily, “a man is entitled to his secrets Jamie an’ I trust ye with whatever they are.”

Jamie was grateful for the darkness that touched his face and hid his eyes.

She was home long after dark had fallen and Belfast lay under fog, heavy and impenetrable, with only the odd sulfurous orange light finding its way through. The Ardoyne was even more depressing than usual, dark buildings thick with condensation streaming in dirty rivulets down their sides. Her feet ached and her throat was stretched tight with the prickle of unshed tears. It had been a long day. Since leaving Jamie’s employ, she’d worked at a meat-packing plant, on her feet for eight solid hours a day. It was back-breaking, mind-numbing work and she suspected that her hands would smell of blood all the rest of her days.

The house was wedged in darkness, complete and silent, yet still a ripple of unease fluttered its way up her backbone as she let herself in the door and put down her bag. She took a deep breath, slowly letting it out, trying to ease the knot in her chest without actually opening the floodgates. Though she could have a good cry, she supposed, and there was none to question her. Casey, gone on yet another trip the details of which seemed to be shrouded in mystery, was not due back until late tomorrow afternoon.

She put the kettle on the stove to boil and made her way up the bedroom, dropping her skirt to the floor, unbinding her hair from its knot and rubbing her scalp in an effort to relieve the prickly tension. She was just reaching for the wooden chair where she’d thrown her worn jeans the night before when she heard a sound like the sibilant hiss of a snake uncoiling. She froze there, her hand halfway in the air, poised like a petrified dancer. There was a suffocating lack of light in the room, the fog outside shrouding even the faintest bit of outside light.

“Who’s there?” she said, hearing her voice treble out and falter.

“Where’ve ye been, darlin’?” Came the reply, calmly, smoothly, oil untinged by the water of emotion.

The voice was disembodied, but a second later there was form as a flame struck out, ghostly wisps of smoke dissipating into the air, reaching with boneless fingers to curl their tendrils, deceptively tender, through her hair and into her skin.

“Casey,” she croaked. She reached for the light, but then hesitated. There was no move from the other side of the room and she knew suddenly that were she to pull the string on the light it would illuminate nothing. The words spoken would be uttered in the anonymity of darkness.

“Where’ve ye been?” came the words again, terrifyingly calm.

“At work. Betty’s been feeling poorly and so I worked the last half of her shift as well as my own. My feet are killing me and I’ve left the kettle on the boil so—” she broke off suddenly feeling the resounding silence swallowing her words whole before they could be heard or felt at the other side of the room.

“Well then I suppose a woman who’s walked half of Belfast in a day deserves to have sore feet.”

“Pardon me?” she squeaked out indignantly.

“Well forgive me but I believe it was you I saw standin’ on the doorstep of Jamie Kirkpatrick’s house not an hour ago, lookin’ like a dog who doesn’t know whether or not to wag its tail. Tell me I’m mistaken, that it was all a trick of the fog an’ my eyes, darlin’ an’ I’ll believe ye.”

“Even if you know me to be a liar?” She asked, exhausted by subterfuge and half-truths.

“Even then,” came the reply.

“It was me as you well know.”

“Do ye visit him on a daily basis or only when yer husband is out of town?”

“Only today and if you’d stayed to see, you’d know that I never so much as rang the bell.”

“So why were ye there?” There was something remorseless in his voice that insinuated without the slightest effort. He would be a brutal interrogator, she suspected, feeling once again the tightness grab and claw at her throat.

“I needed someone to talk to,” she said quietly finding that it was easier somehow to tell the truth here in the dark.

“About what?”

“You.”

There was a deep breath expelled in the corner and then his voice, tired, somehow defeated, “I think we’d best turn the lights on, don’t you?”

She felt him move, the air stirring the very slightest bit, no more disturbed than by a cricket’s passing. Had he known how to do this his entire life, been born with the ability to move in silence like a ghost, so one was never entirely certain if he’d passed or not. The light came on seconds later and she forced herself to look at him, frightened as she was of meeting his eyes. There could be no hope for lies now.

He was exhausted, that was at once apparent. There were rings under his eyes, a beard that made him look like a cross between a pirate and the devil and a great, overwhelming emanation of fatigue that said he had not slept in days.

“Why would ye go to Jamie to talk about me?” he asked, no anger in his face only a need, a desperation that was matched by her own to be held, to find oblivion.

“I couldn’t think of anyone else.”

“An’ why now, why this sudden urgency to talk about me?” His voice was flat, gentle and she almost gave in then to her desire, to be taken in his arms and told soft and tumbled lies that would hold the day at the door, until she saw, with a flash, what was happening. Inside her something curled itself tighter, refusing light.

“When did you get back to Belfast, Casey? Or did you ever actually leave?” she asked fighting hard not to tremble, not to fly across the room and strike his face.

He gave her a hard look for a moment and then something crumbled and she could see he had made the decision to tell her the truth.

“I was in Derry for the first two days an’ then an emergency came up an’ I’ve been back in Belfast since.”

“You’ve been back in Belfast for two days and you saw no need to come home,” she said quietly.

“No one was to know that I was back.”

“Am I on the list of those not to be trusted now?” she asked angrily. She turned trying to find her jeans through the red mist that clouded her vision. The bastard, how dare he! Then suddenly cold realization gripped her and she turned back to find him watching her carefully. “Where did you stay all that time?”

“With Seamus,” was the reply.

“ I went to see Seamus today,” she said uneasily.

“I know ye did,” he said, looking down at his hands which lay flat against his thighs.

“Were you there listening?”

“No, I was gone on business.”

“But he told you, didn’t he?” she asked, tears of frustration boiling up into her eyes.

Casey nodded looking half-apologetic. “He’d no choice but to darlin’.”

“No, of course he didn’t, you men never do, do you?”

“He gave me the gist of it but said he’d leave it to ye to fill in the holes.”

The kettle was screaming now, the sound rising higher and higher, like someone trying to burst their own heart with agony. She went down the narrow staircase into the kitchen, each step precise and careful as if to release any of the control she had on herself would guarantee permanent madness. She shut the flame off, removed the kettle and then taking an envelope out of her bag, walked back up the stairs to the bedroom.

“There,” she said shoving the innocuous white gummed paper under his nose. “Did he tell you that as well?”

Casey opened it slowly and after glancing at the contents held the envelope out to her. “Ye do as ye wish with it, run as far as it will take ye.”

He held the envelope towards her still, a glaring accusation between the two of them. Then finally when she would not take it, he let it fall and spill onto the floor, and she watched silently as their freedom scattered a hundred different ways.

“I asked him to order you to leave, to throw you out of the damn country if need be and he said he would if he could but that it wasn’t his place anymore. Just what,” she looked up from the thousands of pound notes that carpeted their bedroom, “ the hell did he mean by that?”

He rubbed his forehead wearily and closed his eyes for a minute before answering. “He can’t order me, darlin’.”

“Why is that Casey?” her voice was steeled, its persistence needle sharp.

His face was unguarded as he met her eyes and she saw with a sudden terrible clarity how he would appear as an old man and knew just as certainly that he would never survive to be that old man.

“It’s because he takes his orders from you, isn’t it?” she asked in a bare whisper. “Doesn’t he?” her voice began to escalate and she felt her carefully constructed control shatter and fall to the floor where it waited to cut her and leave her to bleed slowly to death. Her next words came out wearily; so far away from her it seemed that she could barely hear them. “Doesn’t he?”

Casey’s very posture gave her the answer she sought. Her knees buckled under her and she collapsed to the floor, pound notes crinkling and rising, sticking to her skin, suffocating her nose and mouth. It stank, the curious way money always does, metallic and sulfurous, leaving its stench on anything it touches. It smelled, she thought dimly, like old blood, the kind you tried to wash out but it just wouldn’t leave, the stain somehow just getting darker and bigger. She could hardly breathe for its smell sticking in her nostrils, but this did not, strangely enough, panic her. She heard things as though from a great distance. People did these sorts of things when they were in shock, didn’t they? She could feel the air move back and forth above her and someone saying ‘Oh Christ, nononono...’ and knew it was herself. The thing inside was curling tighter and tighter, refusing the light and knowing that it could not run far or fast enough now. The truth that she’d so ignorantly thought she needed, could not survive without, was here, out on the table the way she’d demanded and she could hardly stand the sight of it. She turned her face slowly, feeling the filth of the money coat her skin and knowing that somehow she would never be clean of it again.