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.Kieran took a moment to steady himself.The handgun that he’d acquired from Cormac’s lock-up weighed heavily on the inside of his jacket; the job weighed heavily on his mind.Mikey was a good man.A friend – or as near to a friend as Kieran had.His blood tie to Cormac meant that people always trod lightly around him.He stepped round the child’s bike as he approached the house, then knocked on the door.Mikey’s wife answered.Maddy was a good-looking woman, but as fiery as her flame-red hair.Her piercing green eyes now looked at him with suspicion.‘What is it, Kieran? We’re about to go to bed.’ She didn’t like him and she never had.‘I just wondered if I might have a quick word with Mikey.’ He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.‘Business, you know.Won’t take a minute.’Maddy didn’t move from the doorway.Instead she looked over her shoulder and called to her husband.When Mikey appeared he had a beer in his hand and a slightly vague look on his face.He’d been drinking.Might make it easier, might make it harder.Could go either way.‘Let the man in, Maddy,’ he said.Maddy stepped aside, but she didn’t look any less unwelcoming as Kieran stepped past her.‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ he asked Mikey.Mikey looked at his wife.‘Why don’t you go upstairs and check on the boys, my love?’ he said.‘Kieran and I won’t be long.’Maddy gave them both a cool look.But she knew her place.She shut the door and wordlessly climbed the stairs.The men walked through the ground floor of the house until they reached a living room at the back.The decor was chintzy, but it was comfortable enough, with a large sofa and smoked-glass coffee table.Mikey was a music lover, and he had a large selection of classical music CDs that took up most of one wall.Kieran’s host pulled a bottle of Jameson’s and a couple of glasses from a cabinet at one end of the room, before pouring out two shots and handing one to Kieran.‘That’s quite a collection,’ Kieran said, nodding at the CDs.‘More than a thousand,’ Mikey replied.‘More Beethoven there than you get at the Waterfront Hall.So what’s the craic? Business good, as far as I can see.’‘Put one of those CDs on, why don’t you?’Mikey shook his head and pointed at the ceiling.‘The kids,’ he said.‘Wouldn’t want to wake them.’‘Put one on, Mikey.’ Kieran took a sip from his glass.Mikey’s eyes narrowed, but he did as he was told.Classical music seeped through the speakers of his stereo system.Kieran’s eyes caught the CD box.Wagner.It meant nothing to him.That shit all sounded the same to his ears.But as the orchestral strings swelled, he pulled his handgun from his pocket.‘Sit down, Mikey,’ he said as he nudged the gun in the direction of the sofa.Mikey didn’t seem to know, as he stepped backwards, whether to look at the gun or at Kieran’s face.He’d gone white, though.He flopped backwards on to the sofa as the music grew louder.Kieran placed the whiskey bottle on the table.‘Go ahead,’ he told his friend.‘Pour yourself another.’Mikey did – half a tumbler, which he necked in a single gulp.‘Nice music,’ Kieran said, as if he was just making idle conversation.‘Jesus, Kieran.What the fu—’‘I’ve got a message from Cormac.He’s worried, Mikey.Worried that he can’t trust you.Worried that he might have a rat on his hands.’Mikey shook his head.‘For God’s sake, Kieran.I’m not a rat.’And Kieran knew it was true.He also knew that if he’d tried harder, perhaps he’d have been able to talk Cormac out of making an example of the terrified man in front of him.As he stood over his friend, though, the image of the female cop rose in his mind.She had him by the bollocks, and his only option was to carry out Cormac’s instructions to the letter if his uncle wasn’t going to start getting suspicious.‘That’s not what Cormac thinks, Mikey.’ He raised the gun, pointing it at his victim’s head.A trumpet fanfare over the speakers.And, almost as if someone had orchestrated it, Kieran saw a wet patch spread across Mikey’s crotch; moments later, liquid started dripping from the hem of his trousers.‘Will you not turn that music down, Mikey?’ Maddy yelled from upstairs.‘Mind your own business, woman,’ Mikey shouted back.Then he closed his eyes and spoke more quietly.‘I’ve got kids, Kieran.’ he whispered.‘You can’t leave them without a pa—’‘Turn round, Mikey.Hands on your head.’Mikey was shivering with fear.He’d performed enough punishments like this himself, so he knew what was coming.It looked like a huge effort to twist his body round so that he was face down on the seat of the sofa, his legs kneeling on the floor, his hands on the back of his head.The music was loud now.Just loud enough.Mikey’s head was pressed into the cushions so he didn’t see Kieran lower the weapon so that it was pointing not at his head, but at his bent left knee.Kieran sniffed.Then fired.Kieran liked to think of himself as something of a kneecapping expert, thanks to his days in the nutting squads.A shot through the front of the knee was commonplace for minor offences; going through the back like this was a more serious punishment because it would fuck up all the soft tissue and blow the kneecap away from the body – a much more difficult wound to repair.But the surgeons had begun to get adept at both, so the nutting squads started targeting the ankle.You’d need Christ Almighty himself to lay hands on you if you wanted to be healed from a wound like that.During the Troubles, punishments like this were two a penny.Nowadays a kneecapping was rarer, but just because the IRA had gone the way of the dodo, it didn’t mean their techniques had.It was a messy business.As the round slammed into Mikey, his whole body shook like he’d been given an electric shock, and blood sprayed over the carpet, some even landing on Kieran’s shoes.And then the scream.There weren’t many more painful places to shoot a man.Mikey’s short, sharp scream only stopped because he bit on the fabric of the sofa.By that time, though, Kieran was already walking out of the room.He strode to the front of the house and quietly let himself out.Outside, he could still just hear the Wagner playing.Tucking his gun back into his coat, he bent down and picked up the child’s bicycle.As he propped it neatly against the wall, he knocked a button on a brightly coloured electronic bell [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]