Thunder in the Blood by Graham Hurley Page B

adored them all. I looked at my watch. It was nine-fifteen.
    ‘Would you have a car?’ he said. ‘Only the wife dropped me off.’
    ‘A car?’ I gazed at him in mock alarm. ‘What did you have in mind?’
    ‘I … we….’ He shrugged again, tapping his wallet, the closest reference he’d yet made to the evening’s real business. ‘I can give it you all. I’ve written it out.’
    ‘Why not give it to me now?’
    He hesitated a moment, frowning. Then he tossed the napkinto one side and began to get up. ‘There are things we ought to talk about. It’s not a lot of your time I’m after. You’ll be away in ten minutes. Unless …’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You’ve got a room of your own.’
    I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve booked somewhere else.’
    I paid the bill and we left the restaurant. Outside, in the car park, it was still raining. I stepped out of the shelter of the hotel porch, Padraig at my elbow, his coat already on. He’d get a taxi afterwards, he was saying. I paused by the hired Escort, bending quickly to the front wheel, looking for the spare key. The key, for some reason, wasn’t there. I glanced up, feeling foolish, the rain dripping off the end of my nose. The last thing I expected to see was the gun in Padraig’s left hand. It wasn’t small, a Browning Parabellum, eight-shot magazine, accurate to thirty yards. I’d used one at Hereford. At point-blank range, like now, they could leave an exit hole the size of a ten-pence piece. Padraig was already walking me round the car.
    ‘Get in,’ he said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Get in.’
    The passenger door swung open. There was someone else in the back. I could see the shape of a head, silhouetted against the lights of the hotel. I hesitated, knowing that now was the moment to run, to make a move, knowing that in a second or two it would be infinitely more complicated, but Padraig was already pushing me into the car, forcing the door shut behind me. A gloved hand had appeared from the back, clamping hard across my face.
    ‘You feel this?’
    I nodded.
    ‘You know what it is?’
    I nodded again, recognizing the pressure at the base of my skull, something cold and metallic, another gun. The hand unclamped its grip, but the pressure of the gun never wavered. Watching Padraig circling the front of the car, I could feel the man’s warm breath on my ear. I could smell him, too, a sour mix of spearmint and wet clothing. Padraig got in, not looking at me, adjusting the mirror, closing the door.
    We drove out of the car park and on to the main road. Weturned north, skirting Lough Foyle, headlights coming at us out of the rain.
    ‘You’ll have a short,’ Padraig said to me after a while.
    I didn’t answer. ‘Short’ is Provo slang for a handgun. We were going faster now, the car rocking from time to time in the buffeting sidewind from the lough, and I wondered whether it was sensible to risk a bullet in the head by waiting for a corner, grabbing the wheel and trying to force the car off the road. Unlike Padraig, though, I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. If anyone was going through the windscreen, it would probably be me.
    ‘You’ll have a gun?’ Padraig asked again.
    I looked at him.
    ‘Nice meal,’ I said drily.
    I saw his eyes flick up to the mirror, the merest tilt of the head, then the hand was back, plunging inside my coat, searching left and right, finding the little Beretta at once, clipped neatly inside the shoulder holster they’d given me at Hereford. Best on the market, the instructor had told me. Unlike its new owner.
    We drove on in silence. I heard the scrape of a match behind me and the car was suddenly filled with the bitter tang of cheap tobacco. For the first time it occurred to me that there might be more than one person in the back. I looked at Padraig again. He was concentrating hard, peering ahead through the rain, then up at the mirror.
    ‘Nice odds, too,’ I said, ‘three against one.’
    Padraig appeared not to