Read In the Morning I'll Be Gone for Free Online

What is it that I bring to the table? Eh?”
    I gave the man a wink and his lip curled in distaste. He didn’t like my new-found pantomime joviality. She, however, smiled. “You bring several things, Sean. First, you’re very good at what you do. Second, we don’t want the man we’re looking for to know that we’re making a special effort to find him; of course, he knows that the police are after him, but if two people like Tom and myself were to go around asking questions . . . Well, that just might set the alarm bells ringing a bit louder than we’d like. And third and most important of all, the personal . You actually know the individual that we’re seeking.”
    “You went to school with him,” Tom added.
    I digested this information. Part two was a half-truth. She and Tom wouldn’t be going around asking questions—they’d have proxies in the RUC or Special Branch to do that. But MI5 were like those English officials in the Raj who could never completely trust their sepoy soldiers. The RUC was leaky and unreliable, whereas I was safely outside the system. I would be grateful to have a job. Grateful and pliant.
    I sipped some more tea, had another biscuit, and lit a cigarette. Of course, it was obvious who they were talking about: I had only been to school with one man that MI5 could possibly be interested in and that man was Dermot McCann.
    “Mr. Duffy, if I could just suggest a—” Kate began, but I cut her off.
    “You see, the thing is, love, I’ve retired. I’d like to help you but you’ve arrived too late. I’m putting the house on the market, I’m selling up, and I’m moving to Spain. I’ve picked out a nice wee spot with a view of the Med and with my RUC pension coming in every month I’ll be sitting pretty.”
    “What will you do with your time?” Tom asked.
    “Nothing. Relax. Listen to music. Did you know that Haydn wrote one hundred and four symphonies? Who’s heard more than half a dozen of them?”
    Kate bit her lip and looked at me benevolently. “Look, Sean, we deeply regret the way you have been treated in the last year.”
    “Who’s we?”
    “We work for the Security Service, as you intuited,” Kate said.
    I was excited now but I let my anger bubble through: “It’s easy to say that you deeply regret it but you didn’t actually lift a finger to help me, did you?”
    “It wasn’t our purview,” Kate said.
    “Or maybe you caused the whole thing, eh? Maybe you’ve done it to get me on the way down and then you chaps swoop in as my saviors from across the sea? If that’s the case, I’m afraid its backfired pretty fucking spectacularly. I’ve moved on. I’ve moved on mentally and spiritually and very soon I’ll have moved on geographically too. I’m done with Northern Ireland and the Troubles and Thatcher and MI5 and this whole disagreeable decade. I’m very happy to take my wee bit of hard-earned scratch and go to Spain,” I said.
    Tom looked concerned but after a moment’s thought Kate shook her head.
    “I don’t think so,” she said.
    I set my teacup on the mantel, stubbed out the cigarette in the dolphin ashtray, and rubbed my chin.
    “No, believe me, I’m leaving. I’m like Macavity the fucking Mystery Cat. I’m not here. I’m already gone.”
    Kate sighed, waiting for the histrionics to be done with.
    I slipped in the dagger. “And if you want me to locate Dermot McCann for you before I go it’s going to come at a very high price.”
    Tom was shocked to hear the name Dermot McCann so early in the conversation but Kate merely arched an eyebrow.
    “What price?” she asked.
    And now we had the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. What the hell did I want?
    “Full reinstatement to the rank of detective inspector. Full remission of pay and seniority. My record to be expunged of any wrongdoing. A posting to a police station of my choosing. And something else . . .”
    “What?” Kate asked.
    “An apology for the way I’ve been treated. An apology