Darkhouse. Alex Barclay

a dark blue Crown Vic overtook it. A rare heightened awareness flared inside him. He kept driving, his breath shallow as he slowed to a stop at the next corner. Then a sudden burst of activity drew him in. Two men stepped out of a Con Ed van by the entrance to the park. They walked quickly to the back and pulled open the doors. Two others stepped out. In the rear-view mirror, the dark blue car loomed back into sight, driving alarmingly on the wrong side of the road. Donald Riggs lurched across the passenger side, grabbed the knapsack, pushed open the door and tore out of the car towards the park. By the time Maller and Holmes screeched to a stop seconds later, the four FBI agents in Con Ed uniforms were surrounding an empty car. ‘Go, go, go!’ roared Maller and all six men ran for the park.

      ‘You used my pager!’ says Hayley, amazed, pointing down at the belt around her waist and the black box with its flashing yellow light. Her mother stands up, confused, searching out anyone who can understand what this is, but knowing in her heart the answer. Her pleading eyes stop at Joe.

      ‘You stupid bitch, you stupid bitch, you stupid bitch …’ Donald Riggs is running wildly across the park, clutching at his knapsack, concentrating on a small dark object in his hand. He stops, rooted. His eyes widen and deaden as his mind and body shut down. Then a twitching afterthought of a movement connects the thumb of his right hand to the black button of a detonator.

      Elise Gray knows her fate. She makes a final grab for her child, hugging her desperately to her chest. ‘I love you, sweetheart, I love you, sweetheart, I love you.’ Then a frightening, shockingly loud blast tears through them, the bright light stinging Joe’s eyes as he watches, now motionless. Then red and pink and white, splattering grotesquely, as a confetti shower of leaves and splintered bark falls around the place where a mother and daughter, seconds earlier, didn’t even make it to goodbye.

      Joe was absolutely still, paralysed. He couldn’t breathe. He felt a new throbbing pressure in his jaw. His eyes streamed. He slowly sensed warm concrete against his face. He pulled himself up from the pavement. Too many emotions flooded his body. The radio on his belt crackled to life. It was Maller.

      ‘We lost him. He’s in the park, heading your way, along by the playground.’

      Now one emotion overrode all others: rage.

      ‘I don’t think your mommy was a good girl, Hayley, I don’t think your mommy was a good girl,’ Riggs was howling, ranting, rocking wildly, bent over, his face contorted. He clawed desperately at the inside pocket of his coat. Joe burst through the trees, suddenly faced with this deranged display, but ready, his Glock 9mm drawn.

      ‘Put your hands where I can see them.’

      He couldn’t remember his name. Riggs looked up; his arm jerked free, swinging wildly to his right and back again, as Joe pumped six bullets into his chest. Riggs fell backwards, landing to stare sightless at the sky, arms outstretched, palms open. Joe walked over, looking for a weapon he knew did not exist.

      But something did lie in Riggs’ upturned palm – a maroon- and-gold pin: a hawk, wings aloft, beak pointing earthwards. He had been gripping it so tightly, it had pierced his palm.

       Ely State Prison, Nevada, two days later

      ‘Shut up, you fuckin’ freak. Shut your fuckin’ ass. I got National Geographic in my fuckin’ ears twenty-four/seven, you sick son of a bitch. Who gives a shit about your fuckin’ birds, Pukey Dukey? Who gives a fuckin’ shit?’

      Duke Rawlins lay face down on the bottom bunk of his eight-by-ten cell. Every muscle in his long, wiry body tensed.

      ‘Don’t call me that.’ His face was set into a frown, his lips pale and full. He rubbed his head, disturbing the dirty-blond hair that grew long at the back, but was cut short above his chill-blue eyes.

      ‘Call you what?’ said Kane. ‘Pukey Dukey?’

      Duke hated group. They made him say shit that was nobody’s business. He couldn’t believe this asshole, Kane, knew what the kids used to call him in school.

      ‘This hawk has that wing span, this hawk ripped a jack rabbit a new asshole, this hawk is alpha, this hawk is beta, and this little hawk goes wee, wee, wee, all the way home to you, you sick son of a bitch.’

      Duke leapt from his bunk, sliding his arm from under the pillow, pulling out a pared-down, sharpened spike of Plexiglas. He jabbed it towards Kane, who jerked his head back hard against the wall. He jabbed again and again, slicing the air close enough to Kane’s face to let him know he meant it.

      The warden’s voice stopped him.

      ‘Lookin’ to book yourself a one-way ticket to Carson City, Rawlins?’ Carson City was where Ely’s death-row inmates took their last breath.

      Duke spun around as he unlocked the door and pushed into the cell. The warden smoothed on a surgical glove and calmly took the weapon from a man he knew was too smart to screw up this close to his release.

      ‘Thought you might like to read this, Rawlins,’ he said, holding up a printout from the New York Times website.

      Duke walked slowly towards the warden and stopped. The pockmarked face of Donald Riggs jumped right at him. KIDNAP ENDS IN FATAL EXPLOSION. Mother and daughter dead. Kidnapper fatally wounded. Duke went white. He reached out for the paper, pulling it from the warden’s hand as his legs slid from under him and he slumped on to the floor. ‘Not Donnie, not Donnie, not Donnie,’ he screamed over and over in his head. Before he passed out, his body suddenly heaved and he threw up all over the floor, spraying the warden’s shoes and pants.

      Kane jumped down from his bed, kicking Duke in the gut because he could. His laugh was deep and satisfied. ‘Pukey fuckin’ Dukey. Man, this is quality viewing.’

      ‘Get back to your business, Kane,’ said the warden as he turned his back on the stinking cell.

       ONE

       Waterford, Ireland, one year later

      Danaher’s is the oldest bar in the south east; stone-floored, wooden and dim. Salvaged timber from unlucky ships stretches in beams under the low ceiling, making shelves for rusty tankards and tangled green fishing nets. Fires live and die in the wide stone hearth. The mensroom is called the jacks and the jacks is outside: two stalls, one with no door. ‘And we haven’t had a shite stolen yet,’ Ed Danaher liked to say when anyone complained.

      Joe Lucchesi was undergoing an interrogation at the bar.

      ‘Have you ever said, “Freeze, motherfucker?”’ asked Hugh, pushing his glasses up his nose. Hugh was tall and gangly, bowing his head as he talked, always ready to walk through a low doorway. His black hair was pulled into a frizzy ponytail and his long fingers tucked back the stray strands.

      His friend, Ray, rolled his eyes.

      ‘Or anything you say or do can be held against you in a court of law?’ said Hugh.

      Joe laughed.

      ‘Or found peanut shells in someone’s trousers?’

      ‘That’s CSI, you fuckwit,’ said Ray. ‘Don’t mind him. Seriously, though, have you ever planted evidence?’

      They all laughed. Joe couldn’t remember a night when he had gone for a drink without being asked about his old job. Even his friends still pumped him for information.

      ‘You guys need to get out more,’ he said.

      ‘Come on, nothing happens in this kip,’ said Hugh.

      A kip in Ireland was a dive in America, but to Joe, Mountcannon was far from a dive. It was a charming fishing village that had been his home for the past six months, thanks to his wife, Anna. Concerned for their marriage, their son, Shaun, and the family sanity, she had brought them here to save what she loved. Anna wanted him to quit after his last case, but he didn’t, so they agreed he would