Page 149 of Hang on St. Christopher

“How far is it from Knock to Shannon?” I asked the bleary-eyed man from Hertz.

“I think it’s about a hundred and fifty kilometers.”

“What’s that in real money?”

“A hundred miles.”

“So about two hours?”

“No, the roads aren’t good, it might take you nearer three.”

I was there in one hour forty minutes, in a Toyota Corolla whose suspension would never be the same again.

Shannon to Inverness.

Now, why the hell would Mr. Williams go to bloody Inverness?

I sat at the airport and thought about it.

Williams or Daley or whatever he was called was a good Catholic.

He killed people, clinically in cold blood, but he was a good Catholic, and before he had ended his mission he had gone to Knock to seek compassion from the Holy Virgin.

And then?

Then he would either go back to Belfast and continue to do what he had been doing, or...

He’d go back to America.

Why Inverness rather than Belfast?

Because he was careful. He wanted to jump from airport to airport, from identity to identity, to shake any pursuers off his tail.

I took the photos I had to every desk at Inverness Airport, and finally someone recognized my traveler.

Williams had flown out of Inverness last night on Iceland Air 134 to Reykjavik on, get this, a US passport. His name, apparently, was Brian Smith, and he was from Philadelphia.

When I called the embassy, it turned out that there were more than a hundred Brian Smiths from Pennsylvania, forty-three of whom held valid US passports. But when they faxed me the passport photo pages to the airport police offices at Inverness Airport, none of the photographs matched.

“When’s the next flight to Reykjavik?”

“They’re not very often. The next one isnae until six o’clock tonight.”

“Book me on it.”

I couldn’t take my gun to Iceland, so I had to leave it with the police in Inverness.

I called Beth and Emma and explained that the lead was taking me to Iceland.

I had a feeling the trail was going to go cold there. Mr. Smith was a very cautious man indeed, and no doubt, in Reykjavik there was yet another identity waiting for him.

“Be careful, Sean,” Beth said. “It sounds like you’re following a very dangerous man.”

“It’s Iceland. I don’t think there’s been a murder there in ten years.”

“Well, don’t be the first.”

“I won’t, and I’ll bring youse back something. Something Icelandic.”

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