Chapter Six
Six
The locksmith and security camera installer was not a Jon or a Jo or a Sheehan.
In truth, his da had the surname Coyle. His ma had decided to call him Campbell shortly after his birth in a hospital in Belfast.
And twenty-four years ago, Campbell and his then-wife Annie had named their son Charlie, after her grandfather, because there wasn’t a male in Campbell Coyle’s own family, himself very much included, that he deemed worthy of commemorating with a namesake.
With his craggy face still impassive, and just a slight crack in his voice, Campbell Coyle said, “Dead, is he?”
Those blue eyes of Deirdre’s bore into him like diamond drill bits. She said, “Hung on for eight days. Fought like the devil, he did. But the infection got him.”
“Wha…what happened?”
“Shot in the leg. Then stabbed in the ribs. But that’s not what’s done it. What’s done it was the shite medical care.”
“Where?”
“Bulgaria.”
“The feck was he doin’ in Bulgaria?” he asked, but deep inside, he knew.
“Whatcha think he was doin’? He was working, wasn’t he?”
“Bodyguarding?”
“For a bleedin’ gangster. A gangster who got himself slotted, same as Charlie.” For the first time, she reached to her face and swept her chaotic hair away from her eyes. “A right proper slaughter.”
“When?”
“Some weeks ago. We buried him in your family plot up in Ballycastle. He’d always said that’s where he wanted to end up if this happened.”
Campbell felt the cold in his bones, deep. He bit the inside of his mouth. He’d somehow known this day was coming, not the particulars, of course, not this soon, of course, but he’d long thought his only child’s trajectory could only lead him to one singular fate.
“He had straightened himself out,” Deirdre said, as if his daughter-in-law could read his thoughts. “They did blood work. In Bucharest. Not a drop of alcohol. Not a hint of drugs.”
When Campbell Coyle did not respond to this, she further confirmed that she was in his head right now. “You’re thinkin,’ ‘Then why the feck was he killed with criminals in Bulgaria if he’d got his life so bloody sorted.’ Aren’t ya?”
He was, indeed.
“He had some debts, told himself he’d take it back to the knife’s edge just one more feckin’ time, just to get the money he needed to put everything right, to start fresh. We was ninety days away from a real life, we were.”
Campbell nodded, feelings he hadn’t allowed himself to feel welling up inside him. He fought his emotions, told himself he was fighting them for the good of Deirdre. “Come in. I’ll make some tea. I’ve already got the kettle on.”
But Deirdre did not move. “I won’t be drinkin’ tea with you, Campbell Coyle. Some gangster brought hell down on Charlie. Some assassin fired the gun and stuck the knife.” She pointed at him. “But you was the one what sealed his fate. Your son’s blood is on your hands, and always will be.”
He expected this. He always knew that if his Charlie went off and did something stupid, got himself killed for it, Deirdre’s eyes would bore into him, and she would proclaim him at fault. He did not respond to her charge; he only asked a question. “Who did it?”
Her accusatory finger lowered. “An American, they say, but that’s all they’ll say. One man. Took out eight, five dead, if ya believe that. And Charlie, right there in the way. Doin’ a job he didn’t believe in for people he didn’t like.”
She looked back over her shoulder to the car a moment, and when she returned her attention to him, he realized that was the third time she’d done this.
He himself looked to the car but could see nothing save for the sun’s angry reflection on the windshield.
Something stirred within him. “What…what is—”
She spoke again. “You didn’t know. He didn’t want you to know.”
“He didn’t want me to know what?”
“You didn’t know Charlie was a father. You didn’t know that, did ya?”
His knees weakened. He locked them tight. “A…father?”
“We had a baby in the spring. Ronan’s his name. Seven months old, nearly.”
Campbell realized he was a grandfather, and the realization had come in the very same minute he’d learned his son had died.
“Why…why didn’t he tell me he—”
“ ’Cause he wanted nothing to do with you.” She shrugged. “He didn’t love you, you’d done too much to turn him into what he turned into for him to love you. But…for some damn reason he could never explain to his own bleedin’ wife…he wanted to be you. Wanted to be just like his da.”
A stray cloud passed, the first Campbell had noticed all day long. With it, the reflection on the Peugeot lessened and he caught a glimpse of movement in the back of the car now, and his knees unlocked suddenly, his legs nearly giving out.
He saw just the silhouette of a child’s head in a baby seat.
He began to move forward, but she put a hand up. “Not another step out of you.”
“But…but I—”
“No.”
“I can help you both, Deirdre. I have money. I have plenty of—”
“I’m sure you do. I bet you have heaps of blood-soaked money stuffed to the rafters in that wee cottage there. But I won’t be takin’ it from ya.”
“You have to let me help him…Ronan, you say? You have to let me help Ronan.”
“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of letting you think you put it all right with Charlie, helpin’ out his boy after it was too late to help him.”
There was no reasoning with this woman; he knew this.
When he’d first met her, he’d been at his son’s bedside.
Charlie Coyle had been wounded in the Legion; Campbell Coyle had learned and come to a hospital in Marseille.
A nineteen-year-old girl had been there, just a waif of a lass, but she’d been strong like an army general, ordering the doctors about, making sure Campbell’s boy had everything just right.
Campbell had been impressed with her.
Since that day nearly five years ago, he’d only seen her a few times, but he’d always taken her as strong, and his son needed strength, because his son had issues.
Trauma, addictions. Weaknesses.
Deirdre had no doubt kept him alive, but she’d also done her part to keep Charlie’s dad away.
Campbell finally said, “What can I do?”
Deirdre all but yelled back at him. “You can go right to hell! No doubt you know your way there.”
His body felt weak, unsteady. He felt much older than his forty-seven years, maybe because he’d learned his boy was dead, maybe because he’d learned he was now a grandfather, but maybe also because he felt the weight of all his life’s decisions on his back like he never had before.
But something occurred to him. “Why did you even come down from Derry? To tell me that my son died? If you want nothing from me, owe nothing to me, then why do you even care that I know?”
She pushed the shining auburn hair from her eyes. “Because I hope it will eat at you like a bloody cancer. Charlie was half your age but twice the man. He could have been anything, done anything, but your life’s what poisoned him.” She added, “I pray his death’s what poisons you.”
Campbell said nothing.
She looked away a moment, towards the sheep pen, then back to him. “One more reason I came.”
“Yes?”
“Marcus Maragos.”
Campbell cocked his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
“You wouldn’t. He’s a Greek. A fixer. A handler of men like you. He’s the one that tricked Charlie to go down and work for bloody gangsters.”
Campbell was confused. “What do you want—”
Deirdre’s eyes managed to find a way to look even angrier as they ripped into the man’s soul. She held an arm up, pointed a finger to the southeast. “You might have that wee little village fooled. They might think you are a kind and gentle stranger, a friend to all, a harm to no one.
“But I know what you are, Campbell Coyle. And if there’s one person on God’s green earth I loathe as much as you right now, it is Marcus Maragos.
“He’s in London. That’s all I know. I pray you find him.” She stared in silence a long time; the wind blew her hair across her eyes multiple times before she spoke. “And I pray you’ll do what you do. The only thing you were ever any bloody good at.”
At this, she began to turn away, but he called after her.
“You’ve come all this way. Just bring the baby in, have some tea and—”
“No!” she shouted back.
“But…what are you going to do?”
As she faced away, a gust of wind hit, but through it he thought he heard her laugh. She turned back to him, her eyes distant now, blue and shining with tears.
“I’m gonna go home. I’m gonna do my best to raise me boy right. So he doesn’t end up dead like his da, doesn’t end up broken and empty like his grandda. Doesn’t end up murdered in the bloody street for his sins like his great-grandda.”
Coyle’s fists balled. He didn’t want to hit Deirdre. He loved her. He loved her for loving his boy. For doing her best with him.
But he wanted to hit something, to pummel someone.
He hadn’t felt such feelings in a long time, but those feelings were back now, just like that.
The woman with the wild hair raging in the gusty afternoon said, “I’ve got mighty work to do to accomplish all that, don’t I, so I’d best be gettin’ to it.”
And then she turned away again, made it back to her car. He called after her once more, but his voice cracked as it was lost in another blast of swirling air.
Campbell Coyle stood there in the frigid sunshine, in the whisking wind, looking on as the Peugeot turned around on the driveway. A ray from the sky entered the backseat of the car for the first time, and it shone on a blond-headed baby boy.
He watched the car until it disappeared up the road, certain he would never see that boy again.
—
Campbell Coyle dug into the cold earth, his sharp spade piercing just a few inches with each violent stab, and then he flung the dirt into the ever-expanding pile next to the hole he stood in.
The half moon glowed through low clouds, giving only the faintest illumination to his work, but when he took little breaks here and there, he could see the steam pouring from his face.