Page 66 of Hang on St. Christopher

I admired the targets some more.

“What are you thinking, Sean?” Crabbie asked.

“I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”

“And what’s that?”

“The hit man got hit.”

Crabbie nodded. “It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?”

“Alan Locke was a player. Probably an assassin. Probably working for O’Roarke.”

“We can’t quite make that connection, can we?”

“Question is, why? Why was he sent north by O’Roarke and living under an alias in Carrickfergus for the last few months? This top bloody soldier of one of the most dangerous men in Ireland. What was the game here?”

“I don’t know.”

“It wasn’t to paint pictures of old ladies and their cats, that’s for sure. He was a sleeper agent. Waiting for his orders. And then for some reason, the assassin himself is hit. Hit by another pro who had almost fooled us into thinking he was killed in a joyriding gone wrong. Almost.”

Crabbie shook his head. “I doubt it would have fooled any half-decent detective.”

“Look around you, mate. Competent detectives in the RUC? In a busy Belfast force, they would have just logged it as such. Aye, Crabbie, it was a good play by this assassin’s assassin, and he would have gotten away with it if not for us meddling kids. And then O’Roarke’s men come up here to this very caravan to remove the late Mr. Locke’s weaponry? Sticks in the craw, mate. If we’d gotten his ID four or five hours sooner, we could have staked this place out or, at the very least, recovered guns that had been used in various murders and robberies.”

“Aye,” Crabbie agreed sadly.

I put the targets in a plastic evidence bag, and we closed the door and reset theDo Not Crosstape.

It was four-thirty in the morning now, and at this time of year that was when the sun would show its face over the Scottish hills. Today, the sun was hidden by gray clouds and rain, but it felt ridiculous to still be on the job at the beginning of a new day.

“We both need to go home and get some sleep. I’ll not expect to see you in the office until the afternoon,” I said to the Crabman.

A grave look blew across his features. “I won’t come in until the afternoon if you promise you won’t come in until the afternoon either.”

“I promise,” I said.

We looked at one another. Someone had fired a machine gun at us earlier. And now we were supposed to go home to our beds and sleep as if nothing had happened.

“It’s a stupid job,” I said. “A bloody stupid job for men of our advancing years.”

“We were almost both out of it.”

“Aye.”

I sighed and looked at the big ganch. A man pumping hot lead at you will turn the stoniest heart philosophical. “What?” he asked.

“I’d shoot you aWhat’s it all about, Crabbie? But there’s no point. You’ll say we have to discover God’s will, and I’ll say I’m not even sure there is a God running this charnel house. And then you’ll say that if you believed that you’d give in to despair. And then I’ll say why do you think I’m so depressed. And you’ll say how does your belief in Saint Michael the Protector square with this no-God business. And I’ll say well, there’s more things in heaven and earth, et cetera. And you’ll say well, maybe one of those things is God. And I’ll say look around you, mate, does it look like a deity is in charge of this dump? And you’ll say this is getting us nowhere, and I’ll agree.”

Crabbie nodded. “I’m glad we got that sorted.”

We started walking to the car and were almost back to the Beemer when one of the older tinker kids came out to accost us about stealing his motorcycle. He was giving me a long diatribe in Shelta and Irish about police high-handedness when I recognized him as Killian, a well-known teenage car thief and con man whose police record was already as long as your arm. He was a joker and a thief, and how he had avoided a long stretch, I had no bloody idea.

“If that wasyourmotorbike, I’m a Dutchman. Now, leave us alone. We need to get home to our beds,” I said in Irish.

He looked shiftily about him for a moment. “Well, I’m no informer,” he said to us in English.

“Go on,” I said.