Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  Once O'Driscoll had gotten out, Duggan put the metal ramps at the back of his VW van back in place and climbed into the seat of the Grizzly.

  O'Driscoll turned toward him. “Dessie, don’t you think that, just maybe, this welding cock-up is a sign. Maybe we should just abort this job. It’s not looking good to me, not after Johnson escaped. He’s bound to have alerted the cops and every other man and his dog—they’ll all be looking for us.”

  “They won’t be looking in the place we’re going,” Duggan said. “And anyway, the way I’ve planned it has taken the risk out of it.”

  He had to admit to himself that O’Driscoll had a strong point. But Duggan wasn’t going to say so. His finance director was an intelligent man but wouldn’t have been his first choice for this kind of hands-on operation. Anyway, Duggan’s reasons for wanting to complete this particular mission ran very deep inside him. It was personal.

  Duggan started the Grizzly and then slowly maneuvered it up the ramp into the back of the van.

  Then he secured the quad bike with tension straps, closed the van’s rear doors, and clicked his remote control to open the electric door to the garage.

  Duggan, as he drove across the city, felt far more apprehensive than he normally did on jobs. His biggest concern was that someone might have seen his van parked near the spot where he had shot O’Neill and that police had put out an alert for it. Although more police cars than usual were patrolling, white vans were everywhere too. Which was exactly why Duggan had bought such a ubiquitous vehicle in the first place. When the tight-fitting sniper flap at the rear of the van was clicked into place, it would take a close examination to distinguish it from any of the others out on the streets. In any case, that morning he had also put on a fresh set of plates, stolen by one of his volunteers from an identical van at an accident repair center the previous week.

  Less than ten minutes later, without having noticed any police surveillance, the two men were outside Higgins’s unit on the industrial park. As Duggan had expected, the large vehicle entrance to the garage was already open. He knew Higgins was an early riser.

  “Just leave this to me. It could be tricky,” Duggan said to his colleague.

  “Because of Dennehy?” O'Driscoll asked.

  Duggan nodded. He strolled into the garage and raised a hand when Higgins looked up from his workbench. But the older man didn’t return the greeting. Instead he stood staring and slowly removed his large polycarbonate welding glasses.

  Duggan stopped when he saw Higgins’s reaction.

  Higgins slowly walked up to him. “You bastard,” he said. “What the hell? I wasn’t expecting to see you here again, after what happened.”

  “Whoa, hold on a minute,” Duggan said. “What are you talking about?”

  “What d’you think I mean. Martin Dennehy. That’s who I’m talking about.”

  Duggan stared at him. “Don’t make accusations when you don’t have any proof.”

  “I don’t need proof. I know what happened,” Arthur said, almost choking on the words.

  “No, you don’t. Anyway, he was a tout. A complete tout. In the pocket of the Brits. He had what was coming to him. I warned him several times.”

  “Bullshit,” Higgins said. “You’re a liar. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but just get out of my yard. Go on, move. Out, now.”

  “I need a repair done first, on that welding job you did. You didn’t finish it properly. A joint’s come undone,” Duggan said in a level tone.

  “No way. You’ll have to get somebody else to do that for you. I’m not touching it.” Higgins folded his arms and stood, legs apart, staring Duggan in the eyes.

  Duggan shook his head, reached inside his jacket, and took out a Browning pistol, which he pointed at Higgins. “You’ll do it now,” he said quietly.

  Higgins slowly unfolded his arms and raised his palms in front of him. “There’s no need for that. Leave it here, I’ll do it, then. You can collect it Wednesday. I’ve got something urgent I’m trying to finish today.” He nodded at the workbench behind him.

  “Nope, it’s got to be now, right now, buddy.”

  “Today? Why today?”

  “Because I’ve got a job I need it for.”

  Monday, January 28, 2013

  Belfast

  Once the welding repair had been completed to Duggan’s satisfaction, he took a circuitous route through Belfast to his next destination, first driving southwest along the Andersonstown and Stewartstown roads before cutting a sharp right northward toward Hannahstown.

  His encounter with Higgins had left him feeling uneasy. He never planned to force the old man to do the welding repair at gunpoint. After all, Higgins had been a loyal servant to the republican movement over several decades. But Duggan had no other option.

  Arthur’s relationship with Dennehy must have been closer than Duggan had imagined.

  “What you going to do about Arthur now?” O'Driscoll asked. “I hope he doesn’t start playing silly buggers.”

  Duggan shrugged. “I’ll sort it out with Higgins, talk him around. He won’t do anything stupid.”

  BBC Radio Ulster, which Duggan had tuned into on the van radio, was focused on the G8 meeting. There were interviews with political leaders, commentators, and other random analysts, who queued up to give their interpretation of what the event signified in terms of Irish politics and the regional economy.

  Duggan steered the van past the Lámh Dhearg Gaelic football club, just off Upper Springfield Road, and continued out of the city and up the hill until he reached a junction signposted to Black Mountain and Divis, off to the right.

  There he took a narrow, potholed road past a few houses and small farms, where cows and horses grazed. The number of trees diminished rapidly the higher he climbed, and the landscape turned to moorland.

  There was only one car at the Divis and Black Mountain National Trust tourist parking lot, a rough expanse of concrete near the top of the hill. It probably belonged to a dog walker, so there was nothing for him to worry about there. He turned right, the giant TV transmission aerial now ahead of him, and drove another few hundred yards along a single lane until he reached the empty, much smaller parking lot next to the low-slung stone coffee shop, which was closed. It was the same place where he and Dennehy had met Kane at the beginning of the month.

  Duggan pulled into a space in the parking lot, making sure he could see back down the road where he had come from, and glanced at his watch. It was quarter past ten. Despite the unplanned visit to Higgins he was still on schedule.

  Now he needed to wait for the man to arrive. He knew from the reconnaissance trips he had carried out over the previous couple of weeks what the guy’s timetable was almost certain to be. He also knew that the presence of white vans in the coffee shop parking lot was unlikely to attract any attention: they were there every day because of ongoing maintenance work.

  “He’ll be here by about half past. You can set your clock by it,” Duggan said.

  A couple of miles or so to the south, three helicopters flew slowly over the city of Belfast, which was spread out far below them at the base of Black Mountain. Another helicopter was stationary, hovering somewhat nearer to them, over the boundary between the Whiterock and Highfield areas where the school visit was due to take place later that day.

  “The police chopper guys’ll be getting nervous now, ahead of the G8,” O'Driscoll said.

  “So they should be,” Duggan said. “Doubt they’ll be looking up here, though.” Sure enough, the helicopters remained in a steady formation over the city itself, sweeping across from east to west, roughly in a line that appeared to follow Falls Road.

  To Duggan’s relief, there was no sign of rain and none was forecast, although there was a blanket of white clouds above them, with only the occasional break that allowed the sun to shine through. There was little chance of the school football match being called off for bad weather.

  Just over a quarter of an hour later, a
nother white van appeared in the distance near the National Trust parking lot and slowly made its way up the lane to the small coffee shop parking lot. Duggan sat up in his seat.

  The van, a Mercedes Sprinter, turned into the parking lot and came to a halt twenty yards away from Duggan’s vehicle, its rear doors pointing toward him. The driver, who Duggan recognized from his previous reconnaissance trips, got out, walked around to the back of his van, and opened the rear doors. Inside he could see the same pale green quad bike with a storage box attached that he had seen the man using before.

  “Time to move, Kieran boy,” Duggan said. They had previously agreed that Duggan would make the initial contact with the van driver, and then O'Driscoll would follow.

  “Yep. Go for it,” O'Driscoll said.

  Duggan pulled his woolen hat down over his forehead and ears, put on a pair of black-framed plastic glasses, and opened his door. He walked toward the man, who was dressed in a yellow high-visibility waterproof jacket with the words Belfast Landscaping emblazoned across the back in black four-inch-high capital letters.

  “Hi, mate,” Duggan said. “Are you on path repair duty again today?”

  The man jumped slightly, turned around, and looked at him. “Yes, that’s right. Why?”

  Duggan removed his Browning from his pocket and pointed it at the man. “Not today, you’re not. You can take a break. Day off. Throw your phone and the keys for the van and that quad bike on the floor.”

  The workman’s eyes widened, and he raised both hands to above shoulder level. “What is this? I haven’t done anything. What’s this all about?” His voice rose sharply.

  “You’ve done nothing, and nothing will happen to you provided you do exactly what I tell you,” Duggan said. “Now put the phone and keys on the floor.”

  The workman slowly reached into his pocket, removed his phone and two sets of keys, and threw them on the ground.

  “Good,” Duggan said, as he picked up the keys. “Take that jacket off, then get into the van, slowly, and lie down behind that quad bike.”

  The man slowly removed his jacket and climbed into the van, just as O'Driscoll appeared at Duggan’s shoulder. When the man was flat on his back behind the quad bike, O'Driscoll climbed in and secured his wrists and ankles with white plastic ties while Duggan pointed his pistol at him. Then he removed a piece of cloth from his pocket, stuffed it in the man’s mouth, and wound some thick masking tape several times around the man’s head to hold the gag in place.

  That done, O'Driscoll fetched some thin rope from Duggan’s van and lashed the man’s wrists to the frame of the Mercedes on the passenger side, at about a foot above floor level, and his ankles to the frame on the driver’s side at a similar height.

  “That’ll stop him from banging on the floor to attract attention,” O'Driscoll said. Duggan nodded his approval. “Yeah, good idea.”

  Duggan threw the man’s yellow Belfast Landscaping jacket to O'Driscoll. “There you go, team jacket. Stick that on,” he said. There was another matching jacket lying on the floor, but Duggan ignored it.

  He grabbed two shovels, a rake, and a fork from a rack on one side of the Mercedes and threw them out of the back of the van.

  Then he took a ramp that was lying on the van floor, put it in position, climbed onto the quad bike, and started it up. He slowly reversed it down the ramp onto the parking lot.

  Finally Duggan shut the Mercedes van door and locked it.

  “Right. We need to go and do some hard labor,” Duggan said, picking up the tools he had thrown out. “Path repair work.” He grinned at O'Driscoll and threw him the quad bike keys. “At least, you can do the hard labor. You drive this guy’s quad, and I’ll get the Grizzly out of our van.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Monday, January 28, 2013

  Belfast

  It was Noreen who got back to Jayne first. She sent a list of potential vehicle mechanics and welders with known republican links who might have carried out the customization work on Duggan’s van.

  Noreen had run a search through the files on MI5’s system and had come up with a list of four possibles, all small one- or two-man businesses.

  One, based in Derry, was a vehicle repair garage run by a known Republican who had been active in the past. Another was a commercial truck customization business based in Antrim, and there were two in Belfast, fairly close to each other, in the Andersonstown area.

  Johnson leaned over Jayne’s shoulder and scanned down the list she was reading on her phone. The note from Noreen said these were just the most likely candidates, known to have done work for dissidents previously. She had restricted the list to those four, given that time was critically short. But she added that there were lots of other options she could have included in a second tier of names.

  “We’re just not going to have time to get to places like Derry or Antrim,” Johnson said. “We need to be here, so let’s try the Belfast ones.” He pointed to the two bottom names on the list.

  “Agreed,” Jayne said. “Let’s get moving.”

  “She’s obviously not made any progress on the Nottingham files?”

  “No, otherwise she’d have mentioned it.”

  The clattering of three police helicopters flying low overhead in a slow-moving formation accompanied their ten-minute journey down Falls Road and then Glen Road, to the Andersonstown suburb.

  The first business, McCague’s Body Shop, was tucked away in a dilapidated corrugated steel unit in a plot sandwiched between Glen Road and Shaws Road. Outside, two rusty cars were propped up on bricks, minus their wheels, and a black puddle of sludgy engine oil had gathered in a dip in the concrete yard.

  Johnson and Jayne got out and banged on the large steel vehicle entrance and on a small side door. But there was no response, and the unit looked deserted.

  “We haven’t got time to hang around. Let’s move on. Next one,” Johnson said.

  Jayne gave him directions to the next business, Arthur Higgins Welders, in an industrial park about two miles from McCague’s.

  The three helicopters sweeping across the center of Belfast had now been joined by a fourth, which was hovering over the suburbs slightly farther to the west.

  The industrial park was somewhat run-down but busy. Cars and vans were parked outside most of the units, and men were loading and unloading vehicles with boxes and crates.

  They found Arthur Higgins Welders in the corner, next to a Chinese food importer. At least this one was open. Johnson parked the Mazda outside, and they walked in through the vehicle entrance.

  There was only one person inside: a gray-haired man in blue overalls who was watching a small Ford van as it rose slowly on a mechanical vehicle inspection platform. When he saw them, he pressed a big red button, and the platform squeaked to a halt; then he walked slowly toward them, his lips pressed together.

  “Can I help?” the man asked, looking at them from beneath bushy eyebrows that were lowered so far Johnson could only partly see his eyes.

  “We’re looking for Arthur Higgins,” Johnson said.

  “You’ve found him.”

  “Okay, good,” Johnson said. “I’m really sorry to bother you, as I can see you’re very busy here, so I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re actually investigators, private investigators, just trying to locate someone you may know. So just a quick question. It’s about a man named Dessie Duggan.”

  Higgins’s eyes flickered and his chin jerked a fraction. “You’re American. What sort of investigators are you, and why are you looking for Duggan?”

  Jayne cut in. “We’re private investigators, nothing to do with police or intelligence, but it’s related to the G8 meeting. We need to find Duggan for security reasons, and we gather that he’s had some welding work done on a white van. So we’re just checking people who might have helped him with that work. It’s him we would be interested in, definitely not the person who did the work.”

  Higg
ins looked first at Jayne, then at Johnson, through gray eyes surrounded by a spiderweb of wrinkles. He looked like a veteran chess player, calculating his next move, Johnson thought.

  “He might have been here, yes,” the old man said eventually.

  Johnson breathed in sharply. “Okay, when was that?”

  Higgins looked at his watch, a cheap black plastic digital device. “I’d say about an hour ago.”

  Shit! Johnson tried to calm his thoughts. He felt surprised that the man had given him that much information. “An hour ago? Had you done some work for him on the van before that?”

  “Yes,” Higgins said. “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Right. A Volkswagen Transporter, by any chance, plain white, no markings or logos on it?”

  “That’s right, a tall VW. Not the normal height, and no markings.”

  “And the work you did, that involved putting an opening, a flap, in the back, did it?” Johnson asked.

  Arthur shrugged and said nothing for several seconds. Then he said, “Might have done.”

  “Thanks, that’s helpful to know,” Johnson said. “And can you remember the plate number?”

  Higgins groaned and closed one eye, clearly trying to recall the number. “I think it was a 55 plate, but beyond that, I can’t remember. Had no reason to make a note of it.”

  Johnson had enough detail about the van, but a key question remained unanswered. “Why did he come back this morning?” Johnson asked.

  “That was to do with another job I did for him at the same time,” Higgins said. “Some welding had come undone, and he came in and insisted I fix it immediately.”

  “And was the welding work also on the van?” Jayne asked.

  “Nope. That was on a quad bike, a Yamaha Grizzly, a big beast. The welding work I did for him was to install a flat rack on the back of it, a kind of detachable platform made of black metal sheeting. The sort of thing you could strap boxes to—it was flat. He had the Grizzly in the back of his van.”

  A quad bike. What the hell? Johnson tugged at the old injury at the top of his right ear. “Did he say where he was going or what he was going to do with the quad?”