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Michael sighed as if this were the most stupid question ever. “Because I won’t know our exact co-ordinates, will I? Tides, currents, that kind of thing...”
“He’s lying,” I whispered desperately to Ciaran. “I know. Like I knew about Albania.” I watched as a man who struggled to deal with one concept at a time tried to deal with about a dozen. He was definitely rattled, but it still might be too little, too late...
“Right, enough of this bullshit. Get Finn in the boat,” Michael ordered.
Ciaran didn’t move.
“What, are you bloody deaf now? I said, get him in the boat,” he repeated.
“Nah,” Ciaran said, and spat noisily onto the cobbles.
Michael’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I beg your sodding pardon?”
“Maybe you’re the one goin’ deaf,” Ciaran retorted. “I said no. I’m not doin’ another fuckin’ thing for you until we renegotiate my terms of engagement.”
“What ‘terms of engagement’, for God’s sake?” Michael asked incredulously. “I pay you a considerable amount of money, you do what I tell you. They’re your terms.”
“Yeah, well that’s all changed,” Ciaran said. “I don’t think you were ever planning on tellin’ me any co-ordinates, so I’m not movin’ from this spot until I hear you say I’m with you on that wee boat of yours right now.”
Michael shook his head. “Oh don’t be so bloody ridiculous, man! You know I need you to wait back a while and run the operation here, and then you’ll join us later. It was planned like that from the start.”
“And like I said, things have changed. She knows too much stuff for a start. I mean, she even knows about the priest, for fuck’s sake!” Ciaran was starting to panic now, as his plans for a glorious future as an Albanian mobster dissolved in the rain.
For a moment, Michael didn’t say anything at all. Just stared at Ciaran in disbelief. Then asked, “She what?”
“She knows! She knows I offed McKenna!” Ciaran said frantically. “There’s no fuckin’ way I’m staying here after that!”
“Don’t tell me. She ‘guessed.’” Michael said. “Just like she ‘guessed’ about Albania?”
Ciaran nodded. “Yeah! I’m tellin’ you, she’s like some kind of fuckin’ witch!”
“I think you’ll find that one’s on you,” Michael said, trying to recover some ground. “What you do in your spare time is entirely your business.”
And in that moment, Ciaran O’Halloran must have realised that there would never be a trip on a luxury yacht, an Albanian villa, or a bright and shining future as mainland Europe’s most feared gangster.
“You fuckin’ bastard!” Ciaran roared. “You told me to kill that bloody nonce of a priest! Got me to tell him to turn up at the shittin’ wake, too. ‘Pay his respects to the family’ my arse.”
That made sense. I assumed that Ciaran must have heard rumours of the investigation into McKenna, and Michael had guessed that the disgraced priest’s presence would give Finn an ideal motive for murdering the man and give a perfect reason for his disappearance afterwards. Even if it were disproved within days, the rumour of his guilt would always remain, endlessly circulating in the tabloids and online, and by then Finn would be long gone anyway.
On paper it was a decent plan, but right now I was watching two maniacs unravel right before my eyes as each tiny crack started to widen as it met human frailty.
Michael didn’t respond to anything that Ciaran had said, which was pretty much the same as admitting that his hired muscle had finally figured things out - even if he had needed a little help from me along the way. He just used the gun to point at Finn, and then the little dinghy. “I’m not telling you again. Get this man into that boat. Now.”
Then he levelled that same gun at Ciaran.
Ciaran stared at the weapon pointed at him then at Michael in disbelief, and laughed. “Ah, what the fuck now, daft lad?”
Michael was twitching as though he were wired to a car battery. “You heard me. Now do it.” He had his finger on the trigger of the Glock, and his hand was trembling so much that he could have been aiming at anything, or nothing at all.
“No -” Ciaran began, and took a step towards Michael and started to reach for his own handgun in its swanky Hollywood-style chest holster.
Michael blindly pulled the trigger.
He could have shot me or Finn or even an unlucky seagull, or fired into the ink-black sky. But he didn’t.
The bullet smacked into Ciaran’s right temple at approximately 1,700 miles per hour from a distance of no more than four yards and half his face exploded in a pink mist of blood, bone and brain tissue. He was dead before he crumpled on the wet stones beneath our feet.
Michael stared dazedly at the Glock in his hand as if it had just landed there from on high then started yelling something, but all I could hear was a high-pitched shriek, and all I could feel was the wetness on my face. Partly sleet, partly sea-foam, and partly fragments of Ciaran O’Halloran.
