He ate a salad, a piece of blueberry pie, and drank a coffee for dinner, waiting in his room. What was wrong with dedicating oneself in this way? For the greater good? How could someone in his position ever take a vacation when evil was so industrious?

Darkness would give him more cover than a pair of glasses and a ballcap would. The most important part of a disguise was that it didn’t look like cover. Just something subtle. People look like each other all the time. A skillfully applied black moustache and a good quality hat were all he needed. Even to himself, he only looked like someone he’d once met. He had his cellphone on him, but it was on vibrate.

He walked into the Eagle at nine o’clock, confirming first that Feldman’s cab was waiting at its post. He kept his distance from the counter, browsing the magazine rack. He’d gotten a decent look at the cabbie behind the wheel as he walked in. The man’s head was lowered to a newspaper. This was Thurlow. He looked to be a white man in his fifties, with a circle of bare scalp surrounded by a fringe of hair. One arm hung out of his window with a cigarette dangling from the fingers. Inside the shop, Wingate thumbed through a car-buyer’s guide. He waited five minutes, and then his phone rang on schedule and he picked it up and said hello.

“In place?” came Hazel’s voice.

“Yes.”

“We’ll be on with you the whole time. We’re tracking you as you go, so if anything goes wrong, ask for a cigarette in a clear voice and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

He was out of the store. He walked directly to the cab, pretending to talk to someone on the other end, and got into the back seat. “I told you, Ronnie, I’m coming right now.” He performed this line with real, contained anger. “You just wait there for me!” He passed his casino ID to the driver without comment. The driver held it in his lap and looked at it. “Fine. Just wait for me. I didn’t come all this way to have you do it without me.” He held his hand over the phone and spoke to the driver. “Let’s go, Clemons.”

“What?”

“Aren’t you Clemons?” He talked into the phone. “No, I’m not talking to you, you fucking idiot.”

The driver had turned around to look at Wingate. “Sir?”

“Hold on a second,” he said into the dead phone. “This guy looks as confused as you are. Are you Clemons?”

“No,” said the driver. “Who are you?”

He snatched the ID back. “I showed you who I am. Where the hell is Clemons?”

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know.”

“Well, whoever you are, let’s get going.”

“Where?”

Wingate glared at him. He said into the phone. “I’ll be there in less than ten minutes. Don’t start without me.” He said to the driver: “You know where I’m going.”

“I don’t.”

“What’s your name?”

“Thurlow.”

“Well, Thurlow,” he said, digging into his pocket, “this is where.” He tossed him the Sparrow’s chip. Thurlow studied it. His discomfort was evident.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t, uh –”

“Where is Feldman, then? I know Feldman will take me there.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know where Feldman is.”

“But you know ’im.” He stared at Thurlow in the mirror. “Fine,” he said. He pretended to dial again. He put the phone against his ear. “Put Ronnie on again,” he said. Thurlow was watching in the rear-view mirror. “Who’s Thurlow?” he asked and then listened to Hazel breathing on the other end of the line. “Well, you fucking talk to him or you’re going to have to hire another ferryman. Uh-huh. Fine. You want me to come in my own car?” He noticed Thurlow had his hand on the gearshift. “Hold on. You can tell him.” He held the phone out to Thurlow. “You want to talk to Ronnie?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Well then, drive. Before I lose my composure. I was supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago.”

“Fine, okay,” said Thurlow, and he pulled out of his spot. Wingate watched the door of the Eagle as Thurlow made his right-hand turn onto RR26. No one emerged from the building.

“Good,” Hazel said to him on her end. “Just pretend to make a couple more phone calls. Talk to a few more people.” She and Forbes were listening to Wingate’s progress from a speakerphone in the community policing office in Dublin. They’d made it their headquarters. There were only two people here from nine in the morning to five at night, and only six days a week. Someone had to come down and open the door for her. They’d set up and tested the phone, tested the tracking signal, a signal that was being emitted by a device the size of a matchbook under the insole of one of Wingate’s shoes. There were eight hours of battery life in the phone, and the high-test trace was good to about seven metres underground. They were lucky, too: there was a tower in Dublin. The relay was only eight kilometres from the field. “Be nice to someone now,” she said.

In her ear, Wingate said, “I’ll be back in the morning, sweetheart. You know Daddy sometimes has to travel for business. That’s right. Kiss Daddy goodnight now.”

Obviously he was someone higher up, a VIP no one had ever told Thurlow about. The cabbie drove slightly faster than he needed to: he was frightened of his passenger now, and he had excuses to fall back on if he got into any trouble. No one wanted to talk to Ronnie if they didn’t have to, and this busy guy had come all this way for a reason. Best let someone else deal with him. Wingate was willing these thoughts into Thurlow’s skull. They made the turn onto Ninth Line and the sound of gravel pinging off the chassis filled Wingate’s head with images of tiny bullets flying around the car. There would be a black Mercedes waiting by the side of the road about six klicks in; Thurlow radioed ahead with the single word incoming, and then Wingate saw the Mercedes leave the shoulder about five hundred metres in front of them and lead the way to the little grove. Wingate saw that there was only one person in the car. His head rose about two inches above the headrest, suggesting the driver of the Mercedes was tall, over six foot. The car turned right and then Thurlow pulled up beside it. He said into his radio, Just a drop, and he turned around to Wingate. “This is it.”

“I know this is it.” He dug into his pocket for the American twenty they’d decided would be the tip, something unexpected to keep Thurlow inside the illusion that Lupertans was some kind of fat cat or out-of-town boss. Wingate handed it over to him and the man thanked him.

“Good luck,” he said.

“I don’t rely on luck, Mr. Thurlow. Now keep your mouth shut. Only Ronnie knows I’m here.”

“Okay, sir,” said the driver, and Wingate stepped out of the cab.

] 22 [

James Wingate walked into the trees. He put the phone against his ear and whispered, “You there?” and heard her faint reply from the other end:

“We’re here.”

He slipped the open phone into his pocket so she could continue to listen to his progress. Immediately he stepped into the shade, and he saw that the copse had more trees in it than appeared from the road. Three metres in, it swallowed him whole. A scrap of old deciduous forest, untouched because once a river had flowed here and people had used it and they had not cleared the land. Instead, they brought the boulders they dug up in their fields and put them here, among the trees and in the riverbed. Eventually, the river had disappeared. You could see the history of the place in it.

Apart from trees and boulders, there was nothing here, though. He walked in deeper. Behind him, he heard Thurlow’s car pulling away, and his skin horripilated. Sticks and last year’s leaves cracked and tore under his feet and he imagined that the sounds were booming out to the ears of whoever was going to find him here and, perhaps, put an end to his meddling.

There was no one here. He saw no structures at all.

Wingate stood in the midst of it and turned in a slow circle. He looked up and saw only the trunks of trees, pouring upwards into a dimming sky.