‘Merde!’ cried the man, gawping at the blood dripping from Rufus on to the marble floor.
‘Yeah, you got that right,’ said Rufus. ‘Now will you for feck’s sake get these ropes cut before the people who tied me to this damned chair catch up with me?’
Something in Rufus’s expression convinced the receptionist that he’d best do as he was told. He found a pair of scissors and with trembling hands cut the ropes. To his obvious relief, Rufus was not inclined to stick around. The moment he was free, he ran out of the hotel and leapt into the Rolls-Royce. Picturing the diplomat’s outrage at this disruption to his schedule, Rufus sped off down the drive. He didn’t stop until he reached the border, where he abandoned the car and crossed on foot into Spain.
Don was still on his tail through Spain. Rufus was pursued into Italy, then Switzerland. He started to know how a fox must feel, with the hounds baying at its heels. He was being chased by an implacable enemy, and despair began to eat into him.
Rufus became paranoid, jumping at shadows, seeing danger everywhere. He took a plane to Tenerife and worked the clubs along the Playa de las Americas for a while. He chilled – or tried to – in Bobby’s Bar, drinking pina coladas, touring, lying in the sun on black volcanic ash, sometimes almost choking on the red dust that blew over from the Sahara. Maybe that was the place he should head for next – Africa. Get some mercenary work; there was always trouble there.
Then one of his bouncer mates pulled him to one side. ‘Rufus, I’ve heard something…’
And there went Tenerife. The man told him that Don and a contingent of hard boys were sitting in Dublin airport ready to come and get him.
Don was never going to give up on this. Three, four, five near misses, and now Rufus was feeling truly desperate. And Christ, how he missed Ireland, his own true home. What the hell. Feck it. Don could find him anywhere, that much was obvious. So let him find him there, if he could.
Not wanting to go within a mile of his mother, the whining old cow, he went to the farm, the place by the Shannon where he’d played as a teenager with his cousins. Fatalism gripped him now. He’d given up caring whether he got caught; he couldn’t run forever. He was tired, exhausted from it all. Rory’d been right: Don was never going to let this go. So to hell with it. Let him do his worst.
As a boy, he’d visited the farm as a poor relation. Now, as a man, he supposed he still was. He stood on the drive and looked at the big imposing stone building, the same way he had all those years ago.