14 - Stay of Execution bs-14

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Okay, I’ll find that out.’

  ‘Thanks, Colonel. I have to go to deal with this, but my assistant, Jack McGurk, will wait by the phone. You can tell him everything. He has my complete trust.’

  As he ended the call, he rose to his feet. ‘What if the kids are okay, boss?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘In that case I assume that Malou’s a terrorist, and he goes the same way as the rest. But they won’t be okay.’

  ‘Then what if they’ve been taken somewhere else?’

  ‘That could be tragic, but they’ll be at home, held prisoner. Why take the risk of moving them and having someone see it?’

  ‘But what are they planning to do? We still don’t know that.’

  Bob Skinner laughed; he actually laughed. ‘I do. It’s fucking obvious, when you weave all the threads together. We’re a couple of days off the date, Jack, but . . . remember, remember, the fifth of November.’ He headed for the door. ‘Get me on my mobile when Winters calls back, and ask him to contact me direct with any news about Malou’s family.’

  ‘I’ll do all that. Anything else?’

  ‘Keep your fingers crossed. I’m still short of one piece of inspiration.’

  He rushed downstairs to his car, turned on the engine and slotted his cell phone into the hands-free holder. As he moved off he dialled McIlhenney. ‘What’s happening there, Neil?’ he asked.

  ‘The crowd are all in place, but there’s no sign of our two.’

  ‘Where are the Belgians?’

  ‘In the entertainers’ marquee, as far as I know.’

  ‘Make sure. Count them. Then find their bus driver, wherever he is. He’s a plant.’

  ‘What do I do with him when I spot him?’

  ‘Who have you got there you can trust?’

  ‘Stevie’s here, like you asked, and Maggie, as the two of our people who’ve actually seen the woman.’

  ‘Keep them looking out for her, then. Ask Adam to lend you one of his plain-clothes soldiers. Are you armed?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Then arrest the bus driver as soon as you locate him, but without letting Malou see you, or any of the band for that matter. And, most important, don’t let him communicate with anyone.’

  ‘If he’s a plant, why not let him run and hope he leads us to them?’

  ‘Too risky. I want him out of the way. When’s the papal convoy due there?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes, maybe a bit more; they’ve just left the infirmary. The VIPs take the stand in ten and the bands march in as soon as the Pope’s in the arena.’

  ‘If I’m not there in time, stop the Belgians. In the meantime, I know the army has a bomb team there just in case. Have them gather outside the tent.’

  ‘Repeat?’

  ‘Don’t let the Belgians out of the marquee. Bomb squad to wait outside.’

  Skinner hit the red button on the phone and put his foot down; he roared up towards Queensferry Road, swung into it on an orange light and headed past Stewart’s-Melville College. He had just turned left at the roundabout when a call came in. ‘Sir?’ McGurk’s raised voice filled the car.

  ‘Speak, Jack.’

  ‘Colonel Malou’s daughter phoned their school the day after the band left for Scotland. She said that both girls had chicken-pox. No other kids have it. As for the bandsmen, neither the First Guides band nor any other military unit sent replacements for Hanno and Lebeau.’

  A smile crossed Skinner’s face. ‘Thank you, son. Has Winters got my number?’

  ‘Yes. He said to tell you that an anti-terrorist squad will be at Malou’s apartment block within ten minutes. They’ll be dressed as firemen and the cover story will be that there’s a gas leak. It’s a ploy they’ve rehearsed but never used.’

  ‘Let’s hope they get it right first time.’ He turned right at a set of traffic lights and raced along Ravelston Dykes Road. Suddenly the traffic was heavy; the diversions put in place for the rally were taking their toll. He overtook a line of traffic, blind, and swept down Murrayfield Terrace, waving his warrant card as he approached the barrier at the foot. The officers on duty recognised him instantly and waved him through.

  He drove as fast as he dared along the approach road to the stadium until he drew to a halt on the grass, in front of a big tent that had been set up behind the north grandstand. At its entrance, he saw Neil McIlhenney waiting, beside two soldiers in uniform. One was an officer; Skinner recognised him as Major ‘Gammy’ Legge, a bomb-disposal veteran of Ireland, the Gulf and other less famous conflicts.

  ‘Bob,’ the soldier exclaimed, as he approached, ‘what’s the panic?’

  ‘No panic. Just stick around and you’ll see.’ He turned to McIlhenney. ‘Have you got the driver?’

  ‘No problem. We went to his bus, and found him taking a knapsack out of the boot. He was getting ready to run.’

  ‘Did he give you any trouble?’

  ‘Nothing that having a Glock pointed at him didn’t sort out fast. There’s a secure room at the back of the west stand, not far from the shop. It’s a cell, really, but the SRU doesn’t like the word. The soldier who helped me lift him is standing guard at the door.’

  ‘Does Adam Arrow know he’s there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Willie Haggerty?’

  ‘Him too. We didn’t make a fuss, though.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ He saw Legge’s eyebrows rise at the mention of the first name; he knew who Arrow was. ‘Come, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk to the bandleader.’ The soldiers made to follow but he stopped them. ‘Not you guys, not yet. I’ll give you a shout.’

  As he led McIlhenney into the marquee, he was aware of a commotion behind him and of the sound of growing excitement in the stadium, and he guessed that the Pope’s approaching convoy had been picked up by the television cameras and was being shown on the giant screens inside the ground. The great assembly of kilted pipers near the entrance had come to the same conclusion; they were stirring themselves as the two policemen pressed through their ranks.

  Skinner was smiling as he approached Malou. It was forced, for he read the look on the old colonel’s face, the mixture of uncertainty and fear that he had seen on so many guilty men before. The bandsmen and the scarlet-clad musketeers were getting to their feet behind him, readying themselves to play. The DCC knew the two replacements instinctively. They held bass drum and side-drum respectively. They were younger, fitter-looking, their blue uniforms were newer and they stood slightly apart from the rest. They, too, had a strange look in their eyes. Yes, it was fear, but there was something else, something he had not seen before and could not describe even to himself.

  Still he made sure. ‘Those two?’ he asked, still smiling.

  The old man was trembling, but he gave a tiny nod.

  ‘Neil,’ Skinner murmured, ‘show.’

  The inspector’s hand slipped inside his jacket, and reappeared holding a pistol.

  ‘Even if you don’t speak English,’ the DCC exclaimed, as they stepped up to the pair, ‘you’ll understand gun, I take it. Face down, arms stretched out.’ One of them understood exactly; he did as he had been told. The other looked around wildly, then leaped at Skinner. He jumped into a short right-handed punch to the temple, and dropped like a stone.

  The big policeman looked round towards the entrance. The Belgians and the pipers were staring at the scene, many of them open-mouthed. ‘Panic over,’ he shouted. ‘You guys near the door: there are two soldiers outside. Tell them they can come in.’ He turned back to Malou. The old man seemed to have shrunk into his uniform, his hands were covering his face, and his shoulders were heaving.

  Skinner stepped close and put his hands on his shoulders. ‘I know what you did,’ he said, ‘and why. They gave you a choice; your old friend or all your family. I don’t blame you, and neither will he.’

  ‘But my children,’ Malou wailed, as forty thousand young voices cheered the arrival of Pope John the Twenty-fifth in the great Murrayfield bowl,
‘they’re as good as dead. You’ve killed them.’

  ‘Have patience, Colonel. And have faith too. Nobody’s going to die today.’

  ‘What the hell is going on, Bob?’ Major Legge’s voice boomed over his shoulder.

  Skinner smiled and pointed to the discarded drums of the two men on the ground. ‘Your guys have swept this place every day for a week. There’s not a chance of anyone getting any modern high explosive in here. But what about the old-fashioned stuff, if you could get enough in?’ He glanced at the musketeer platoon, and their antique weapons. ‘What makes those things go bang?’

  ‘Gunpowder?’ Legge exclaimed. ‘They were planning to use gunpowder?’ He took a big red knife from his pocket, knelt beside the side-drum, slashed a great X across its skin, then peeled it apart. It was full of a black, sulphurous material. ‘They were planning to use gunpowder!’

  ‘That’s right. And we more or less helped them bring it in. I would empty those pretty quickly if I were you. I reckon you’ll find a couple of incendiary triggers inside, ready to be detonated remotely whenever the Pope and the Prime Minister were close enough to the carriers.’

  ‘Stand back, then,’ said the soldier, ‘and don’t light any matches.’ He upended the side-drum, and lifted it up, pouring the black powder on to the ground. He repeated the process with the much larger bass drum, then sifted through the residue with his gloved hands until he emerged, triumphantly, with two small packages wrapped in brown paper. ‘I wish they were all that simple,’ he exclaimed. He handed them to his assistant. ‘Take these away and do something to them, Corporal,’ he ordered, ‘then get one of the lads in here with a water-based fire extinguisher to damp this lot down. It’s useless when it’s wet,’ he explained. ‘The drums are waterproof, of course, which makes it such a bloody good idea.’

  ‘Enough to do the job?’ asked Skinner.

  ‘That amount? Anyone within yards, old boy. This was a real suicide mission, no mistake.’

  As he spoke, the DCC’s cell phone sounded. Legge winced. ‘Take it away from the powder, please, Bob. Just in case.’

  Skinner walked to the other end of the tent before he answered the call. ‘This is Winters,’ said a voice in his ear. ‘The children and their mother are safe; the terrorists who held them prisoner are dead. Three of them. How about your end?’

  ‘I’ve got three live ones; there are still two to go.’

  ‘How is Malou?’

  ‘Terrified. I’ll put him out of his misery in a moment.’

  He thanked Winters, then called Willie Haggerty. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘In the command centre.’

  ‘Brian?’

  ‘He’s outside. Where are you?’

  ‘In the band marquee.’

  ‘Where are the fucking bands?’ the Glaswegian demanded. ‘The Pope’s here. They should be marching in.’

  ‘Relax. They will be. I want two armed officers here now to take two prisoners into custody. They’ve to cuff them, strip them, and put them with the other bloke. But quietly, Willie. The threat’s over, but I want the other two.’

  He turned to the pipe-major; the man was highly agitated. ‘Okay,’ he told him quietly. ‘Line them up, and march them in.’

  ‘Sah,’ the man barked, with huge relief.

  ‘But one thing,’ Skinner added. ‘None of your guys saw anything in here. You’re all military; anyone who leaks anything about this will be court-martialled and that is a promise you can rely on.’

  He walked to the back of the tent. McIlhenney stood, motionless, his gun on the two men on the ground. The thirty-four remaining bandsmen and musketeers stood in bewildered groups, while their leader sat disconsolately on the remains of the booby-trapped side-drum. He looked up as Skinner approached. ‘What now?’ he asked, weakly.

  ‘Your daughter and her children are safe, Colonel.’ He saw the old man’s face light up, and the tears spring to his eyes once more. ‘So go and do what you were invited here to do. You can tell me the whole story afterwards, but now, you go and play for Father Gibb.’

  He left Malou to organise his men; they were stunned, but they were stolid and they would play and march as best they could. He returned to McIlhenney and waited until the armed escorts arrived to take the prisoners away, watching as two soldiers turned the black pile on the ground to sludge. ‘So what . . .’ the DI began, but he was interrupted as Skinner’s phone sounded again.

  ‘Boss?’ It was Mario McGuire and he sounded anxious. ‘Am I on time?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘It’s taken a while, but I’ve got a result. First, no newspaper, website or broadcast station anywhere reported the fact that Colin Mawhinney was staying in the Malmaison. Second, I’ve been through the list of all the journalists that Alan Royston’s accredited for this visit. As you can imagine, there’s quite a bunch with the telly people and everything, but there are two of them who stand out; a photographer called Geoffrey Bailey, and a news reporter called Verena Cookson. They’re listed as working out of the London office of a news agency with its head office in Venezuela. That’s an accommodation address, but the thing that makes them really different is that three years ago Bailey and Cookson were working for a South African newspaper on a story in Angola when they stepped not just on one landmine but on a cluster of three strapped together. If that’s them, they’ve been reassembled.’

  ‘Photographs?’

  ‘He’s bearded with glasses, and I can place him. He was the photographer at the press briefing who asked Colin at the beginning where he was staying. You couldn’t tell her from Eve, though . . . or maybe even from Adam. She looks weird: she’s got short silver jaggy hair, no eyebrows at all, wears blue glasses, has studs through both nostrils and her bottom lip, and three or four rings in each ear.’

  ‘In other words she doesn’t look a bit like a corporate banker?’

  ‘Not like any I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Thank you, Superintendent. Your late friend Colin owes you one.’

  Skinner clicked an end to the call, then found the media-relations manager’s number in his phonebook. ‘Alan, it’s Bob Skinner. Where are the press at this moment?’

  ‘Telly’s on the fixed platform, up in the stand, with two free cameras out on the ground. The photographers are in rows just to the side of the tunnel and the reporters are behind them. I can see them now.’

  ‘Two names: Bailey and Cookson. Are they there?’

  ‘Yes. She’s sat directly behind him, in fact; they’re in the seats next to the aisle. He’s got the usual enormous camera and she’s got a pocket recorder, for all the good that’ll do her. She won’t get that close. Bob,’ Royston asked, ‘do you know when the action’s going to start? Everyone’s getting fidgety.’

  ‘Tell them one of the pipers fainted with the excitement, but that he’s okay now. Neil and I are on our way there. One thing; whatever happens, you do not let anyone leave. Who’s the nearest senior officer?’

  ‘Brian. He’s ten yards away.’

  ‘Good. Tell him. Nobody leaves.’ He replaced his phone and turned to McIlhenney. ‘Come on.’ He led him, running, out of the tent.

  The massed bands were in their ranks outside, inflating their pipes, almost ready to march. Skinner raced up to the lead pipe-major. ‘Two more minutes,’ he said. ‘Then go. It’s important. Wait two minutes.’

  Leaving them behind, the two policemen ran from the gateway to the ground, round the curve where north stand became west. ‘This way,’ said Skinner, still breathing easily as he led the way up a flight of stairs to the first level. He looked along towards the centre of the stand and saw Maggie Rose in her uniform, standing by an entrance door, looking out into the ground. Somewhere in the background he heard the skirl of pipes, and the buzz of forty thousand children turn once more to cheers. He ran towards her. ‘Press? Where?’ he called out, his breath coming harder now.

  She pointed to her right. ‘Next stairway and down.’ Skinner and McIlhenne
y sprinted on, the DCC wishing that he had asked for an extra minute.

  He saw her as soon as he turned into the entrance, her back to him, silver hair, spiked up, seated to the left of the aisle, in the second row from the front, behind a burly man. He paused, gathering himself, and allowing McIlhenney a few seconds to recover. ‘I’ll take him,’ he gasped, ‘you take her. Get the recorder, I’ll get his camera; pound to a pinch of pig-shit that’s where they’ve hidden the transmitters to detonate the bombs. I don’t want those triggers going off in any soldier’s hands, and when they see their boys are missing . . .’

  ‘Christ, no,’ the inspector muttered. ‘But I’ll take him. He’s bigger and I’ve got the gun.’

  ‘Deal.’

  They slipped quietly down the stairway as the last of the long parade of pipers made their way into the stadium. They reached their targets just as the first flash of blue appeared in the gateway, as the colonel, diminutive in the distance, but marching straight-backed, led the Bastogne Drummers into the stadium.

  Skinner was close enough to hear her exclamation as she realised that the front rank was two men short. He slipped down beside her and snatched the small device from her hand. The man in front turned, in time to look into the barrel of the Glock, as McIlhenney grabbed his camera with his free left hand.

  ‘Show’s over,’ Skinner exclaimed, above the noise. He yanked the woman quickly out of her seat and pulled her towards the stairway, as McIlhenney motioned her companion to follow. He was glancing behind when she slammed a stiletto heel into the instep of his right foot. The pain was momentary but intense, loosening his grip for long enough for her to twist free and run up the stairs.

  Maggie Rose seemed to step out of the shadows, to catch her in the doorway, spin her round and slam her, face first, into the wall, as hard as she could. The DCC whistled. ‘Who the hell’s been annoying you this morning?’ he asked, as he limped up the stairs.

  The incident was barely noticed, so intent was the crowd on the scene outside. McIlhenney held Bailey’s arm twisted up behind his back, as Rose restrained the woman who had been Cookson for the day; together they forced them out on to the concourse. As they did so, Chief Superintendent Mackie appeared, with Alan Royston by his side.