Read Online In the Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty - Free Book Online

his wife left him for a fancy man over the water. Left the bairns too. Boys, I think.”
    “Yes, it looks like he has had a couple of trials and—”
    “That’s his second wife, of course, his first wife died, car crash, he was driving. Three sheets to the wind, they say, although that’s just what I heard.”
    “What? Carter killed his wife in a vehicular—”
    “Well, I won’t keep you, Mr. Duffy, your phone’s been ringing off and on for the last hour. Someone’s looking for you.”
    I went inside, made a cup of tea, put on some nerve-calming Delibes.
    I got the phone on the fourth ring.
    “How was your first day back?”
    “It was fine, Kate,” I told her.
    “Have you made any progress locating our friend?”
    “Not . . . as such. This was more of a settling-in day.”
    “I see.”
    “Anything from your end?”
    “Nothing. He’s not calling home or sending letters home and there’s no trace of him anywhere. Frankly I’ll admit that it’s got some of us a little rattled.”
    “He’s biding his time. When he shows his hand it’s going to be something big. Dermot knows his history. I remember him telling me once that it was the King David Hotel bomb that got the Brits out of Palestine.”
    “True. But it was Gandhi who got us out of India a year earlier.”
    “Dermot’s no Gandhi,” I said.
    “No, he isn’t. So what’s your plan of attack?”
    “Nothing special. I’ll just start interviewing people.”
    “When?” she pressed me.
    “You’re hassling me a wee bit, aren’t you?”
    “Because they’re hassling me. We all have our bosses.”
    “How about tomorrow? I’ll go up to Derry to see his mum and his sisters, and his uncle’s not a million miles away. They won’t tell me anything, but all I can do is ask.”
    “Derry?” she asked.
    “Aye.”
    “You want me to join you? I’m in Rathlin. It’s not a million miles away either.”
    “You live on Rathlin Island?”
    “I have a house here. It’s been in the family for a long time and it’s better than sleeping on the base, I can tell you.”
    “Don’t you have better things to do than attend a wild-goose chase?”
    “Not really, no.”
    “Dermot’s mother lives in a bad area. The Ardbo Estate. This will sound dramatic, but I couldn’t guarantee your safety, Kate.”
    “I can look after myself.”
    I thought about it for a moment. It was always useful to have a partner who could pick things up that you couldn’t. A female partner was even more useful.
    “All right. I’ll meet you at the Ballycastle ferry car park at nine. Will that give you time to get over?”
    “Yes.”
    “See you then.”
    I made beans on toast for dinner and watched the TV news.
    Things were quiet. A couple of attacks on police stations. A few fire bombs left at shops in Ballymena. It looked like the Libyan boys were still waiting to make their presence felt and I knew they wouldn’t wait forever.

I set the alarm for six, checked under the BMW for bombs, and ran it up the coast to Ballycastle. Driving rain made the road slick and dangerous on the clifftop sections but I kept the Beemer at a quare old clip anyway.
    Kate was waiting for me at the Ballycastle ferry car park.
    She was wearing a long black wool duffel coat and a black beret tilted to one side. It was fetching. It made her look young. Twenty-something. Fashionable. On her way up.
    “You live on Rathlin Island, then, right enough?” I said, pointing across the Irish Sea to the L-shaped island five miles from the mainland.
    “Yes.”
    “I never met anybody who lived on Rathlin.”
    “Well, several hundred people do.”
    “Is it not inconvenient for an MI5 agent?”
    “Not in the least. There’s a regular ferry service. Phone line. Electricity. Views to die for, of course.”
    “And safe too, I imagine,” I said.
    “Oh yes. Safe. There hasn’t been a murder on Rathlin in a couple of hundred years. Of course, that was a multiple murder. The massacre of the entire