Go and get some water, he needs a drink.’
Megan went off downstairs, muttering. Rory watched her go. He stood there a moment, staring at the landing carpet, thinking that Big Don was going to want blood for this. He could understand why Rufus had come here, of course he could, but in doing so he’d brought trouble to Rory’s door. Still, who could turn their oldest friend away?
Not him.
He went to the landing cupboard and fetched more towels. Right now, there was only one thing on his mind: keeping Rufus alive.
When at last the bleeding stopped and Rory had cleaned and bandaged his friend’s wound, Rufus lapsed into troubled sleep. Rory collected all the blood-soaked towels and went off downstairs. He loaded the dirty washing into the twin tub and made a mental note to fill it up and start it going later. Then he went through to the lounge.
‘It’s on the news,’ Megan said, barely glancing up at him. She hugged her fat stomach, rocked in the armchair, listening intently to the radio.
And so it was. Businessman Jonathon Pardew had perished in a fire, thought to have been deliberately set by one of the rival gangs in his area. A second corpse, later identified as Peter Pike from Moyross, was also found at the scene. IRA involvement was suspected. When the newscaster went on to national news, talking about Nixon, Watergate, and the French detonating an H-bomb at Mururoa Atoll, Megan switched the radio off.
She looked up at her husband. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.
‘Get the boy better,’ said Rory. ‘What else can we do?’
Rufus was feverish for days, and Rory was worried sick about him. It was lucky the wound hadn’t needed stitching and that the bullet had passed through his bulk unhampered. It must have been a small-bore gun, maybe a lady’s weapon, easy to conceal, and it had spared Rufus too much damage.
It took a couple of weeks before he was able to sit up a little and take some soup instead of water. After that, he healed quickly. He was strong, he’d always been fit. It helped.
Megan kept her distance from him. His presence threatened her composure, made her fearful for her own safety and that of the child she carried. Before Rufus arrived, her only concern had been whether Rory would keep on the straight and narrow with a baby on the way. Now Rufus had pitched up, she knew there’d be trouble and Rory would get dragged into it.
‘Will we go for Diarmuid if it’s a boy, what do you think?’ she asked, trying to get Rory’s mind back to where it should be.
‘Huh?’
He wasn’t even listening to her. His whole concern was for his friend.