by Roger Pearce
‘Let’s be patient. These thugs never disarmed. No-one with a scintilla of insight ever doubted their capability to bomb London.’
‘Including us,’ said Finch, unconvincingly. Fork still in hand he scratched the bridge of his nose, revealing a Help for Heroes wristband in the tri-service colours. ‘So when do I get to interview him?’
‘You don’t. He’s Wymark’s asset. Code name Sidewinder, and that’s all I can give you.’
Finch lay his cutlery down and gave a small laugh. ‘Look, you know I have to assess the source, give him a score.’
‘And how many do I get out of ten?’ said Deering, enjoying the other man’s awkwardness. ‘Accept my word. Please. The call is less than two hours old, a heads-up from our impeccable source. You’ll meet others like him when you come aboard.’
‘Philip, if you’re telling me you have material info…’
Deering leant in. ‘My informant is a veteran soldier who never closed the door because he loves his country,’ he said crisply. ‘Let’s just leave it at that. The government thought they had Ireland sorted, didn’t they? Surrender to every republican demand. Betray the unionists. Power-sharing around Sinn Fein’s agenda. Line drawn, game over.’
‘Police never stopped monitoring them…’
‘…and the IRA never stopped making threats but everyone ignored them because the truth was inconvenient. Some of us always knew they would come back one day.’ Breakfast over, Deering lay his cutlery neatly across his plate. ‘Yesterday they did just that. Fact. The IRA got real again and innocent Londoners are paying the price.’
‘Will he find out more?’
‘I imagine so.’
‘Well, I’m grateful. Obviously.’
‘That’s not all.’ Deering threw a glance at Walker, who handed him a white A3 envelope. ‘We’d like you to have this on account,’ he smiled, sliding it across the table. The package was bulky, only just fitting beneath the rim of Finch’s plate. ‘And Sunny also transferred another ten into your bank this morning. An advance on salary for when you join us. But mostly a sign of good faith. Of friendship.’
The envelope lay untouched while the recipient looked from one to the other. This counted as a potential flight moment for Deering but he stayed deep in his chair, legs stretched out, fingers interlinked. The heart of Wymark’s operation was the integrity testing of public officials with secrets for sale, and bribery was the oxygen. A lifestyle check on Derek Finch had revealed a poseur chasing a lifestyle higher than his income and with credit card debts through the roof. His recent leap up the property ladder from neo-Georgian semi to mock-Tudor mansion had coincided with the failure of his wife’s office cleaning business. He was already three months in mortgage arrears, and Spanish attorneys were threatening to foreclose on his holiday villa.
A profile of such ruinous, eye-watering recklessness should have arrested the attention of Finch’s vetting officers; instead, it was Philip Deering who studied Finch’s hand, knowing he would reach out to save his acre in Bromley and slice of heaven in Andalusia.
Finch’s mobile was vibrating but he ignored it as he buried the envelope in his breast pocket. It took a couple of fumbled attempts because the bundle inside was so thick.
‘Naturally,’ said Deering, ‘I shall channel you the product from Sidewinder as it comes in. My act of public duty,’ he chuckled, ‘before your escape to the private sector.’
Finch stared from one to the other. He looked physically diminished, as if he knew they knew. ‘And how do you want me to help in the meantime?’
It was the surrender Deering had been expecting, the deflation from braggart to mere instrument. ‘My proposal is that you reciprocate with a daily update on your investigation. The sort of thing we heard just now.’
‘How?’
‘I suggest we speak each evening by secure phone? To compare notes, in confidence. A sort of rolling of the pitch for the day you join us.’
As soon as Finch had left them alone Deering ordered two Kir Royales. ‘Christ, Sunny, we have to kiss a lot of frogs in this business.’
‘None as ugly as that one,’ grumbled Walker, reaching into his pocket to settle their bet.
Chapter Eleven
Wednesday, 12 October, 12.17, Europa Hotel, Belfast
In Mark Bannerman’s memory the Europa in Great Victoria Street, Belfast, endured as the most bombed hotel in Europe. To English TV viewers who had never visited Northern Ireland the blasted structure and its boarded-up windows came to symbolise the Troubles; and for a wave of reporters, government officials and reckless tourists, dangerous nights risked within its battered walls had been a rite of passage, a war story pepped-up by the breakout of peace. For two decades, check-in at the Europa had been a trip to the front line.
The hotel sat adjacent to the Grand Opera House, which had also suffered blast damage from Europa’s bombs, and a grenade’s throw from the railway station. Viewed from the street, its central core had a wing with four pillars extending obliquely on each side, like arms outstretched in welcome. Bannerman had stayed here twice, about six weeks before the final, devastating attack in 1993. The pockmarked ruin that had once shamed Belfast now enjoyed multiple stars on TripAdvisor, with plate glass everywhere and a plaque in Reception telling the world Bill Clinton had slept upstairs. While Bannerman was spying around the globe the Europa had grown unrecognisably chic, the icon of a city transformed.
He relaxed with a coffee in the fifth floor junior suite the Office had reserved for him, waiting for the call. Despite the travelling, he felt refreshed. The previous day’s recreation in Penny’s bed had cost him the scheduled 15.40 flight from London City with Flybe and it had been well after ten when he checked into the hotel, time enough for a nightcap in the Piano Bar before a dreamless sleep.
The suite had a small, separate lounge, but Bannerman sat on one of the upright chairs between the bed and the window, the holdall at his feet. He was entitled to one of the deluxe rooms to the rear of the hotel, with a view of the Black Mountains, but the operational plan required clear line of sight to the hotel forecourt and the street. It had rained for a while mid-morning but the sun was gaining the upper hand, drying the slick pavement and warming Bannerman’s knees through the glass. Traffic was light, with buses and trucks passing easily in the wide thoroughfare, and a convoy of cyclists from the right veered wide to avoid a puddle radiating from a blocked drain. Squeezed between two pubs across the street were a hair salon stacked on a bookmakers; beneath him, the shiny black roof of a stretch Merc, still speckled by rain, glided through metal bollards into the space once cratered by a massive van bomb. A taxi rank occupied the opposite kerb to his left, and workers on early lunch were risking the rain to converge on Sandwich Express. Earpieces in place, hands in pockets or working iPhones, they overflowed the shop in a neat queue trailing back along the pavement.
Bannerman had stayed in bed until eight, flicking between Sky News and BBC Breakfast but thinking mostly of Africa, then showered and dressed in a fresh shirt with the tan cords and blue linen jacket he had worn the day before. Penny had advised him to keep his profile low by ordering room service, but he had gone for breakfast in the Causerie restaurant to the right of the lobby, checking for watchers while enjoying his first Ulster fry in a decade.
A pay-as-you-go Nokia rested in his right palm, slipped him by Penny at the airport drop-off as they kissed goodbye. Noticing flecks of mud still clinging to his suede shoes from the lunch with Rico, he resisted the urge to call Nairobi on his SIS encrypted mobile to check the Office had hooked up with him.
Suddenly the Nokia was purring in his hand, Unknown Number. ‘David’ was all he said, as directed. He listened for a moment, then peered through the window to his left. Loitering in the middle of the sandwich line was a young woman in combat trousers and denim jacket, wearing a baseball cap with a knot of hair above the back strap. He had clocked her with the rest on his initial scan, two or three minutes earlier. Mobile to her ear, she
looked directly up at him, then cut the call and walked slowly away. Bannerman kicked the holdall beneath the bed, grabbed his jacket, slipped the room key into his shirt pocket and made for the lobby.
He spotted the girl again as he emerged through the hotel’s revolving door. She was waiting for him across the street, just beyond Subway and a modest travel agency, Belfast by Bus. Ignoring the pedestrian crossing he kept to his side, strolling in front of the opera house. Jacket hooked over his shoulder, he acted like a visitor with all the time in the world as he paused by the ‘What’s On’ hoarding to study the posters and steal a look around. Penny had warned him the pick-up would be like this, a female working alone, no surprises or hostiles sniffing at his heels, but Bannerman always listened to the survival instinct that had extricated him from more threats than he could remember.
He maintained this leisurely pace even when she took a right turn by the clock tower above the Assembly Rooms and disappeared from view. By the time he reached the corner she was fifty paces away, lingering outside a menswear shop before vanishing again behind the building. He crossed the street and followed in the lee of the stone wall, pausing by an electrical supply shop just inside the junction.
The meeting place turned out to be no more than a potholed lane just wide enough for one vehicle, with shuttered, defaced buildings on the left side facing a high metal fence and padlocked gates. A barrier prevented access from the far end, sixty paces away, and beyond that towered the patchy green dome of Belfast City Hall in Donegall Square. The lane was deserted apart from a beaten-up black taxi halfway along, its diesel engine spluttering against the walls. The suspension sagged on the driver’s side and he could make out a stocky figure behind the wheel, visor down. The clapped-out engine gave a cough as Bannerman stepped away from the safety of the wall, and he felt the first pulse of anxiety.
The nearside passenger door swung open and he clambered inside without hesitating. The girl was sitting in the far corner, diagonally to the driver. She looked more like a student than a courier, but the cream canvas bag cradled in her lap might have held coursework or a gun. Bannerman offered his broadest smile, pulled the door shut and sat beside her. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said, neatly folding his jacket in his lap.
Face impassive, the girl held out her palm. ‘Mobile.’ As soon as he handed her the Nokia she expertly flipped the back panel and removed the battery.
‘No calls home, then.’
The hand appeared again, the voice sharp. ‘And the other one.’
Bannerman searched inside the jacket for his work mobile, an ancient Samsung Galaxy, battered and scratched on the outside, its innards reconfigured by SIS coders. Pressure on the Calendar app transformed the phone into a recording device as he surrendered it; and the moment the girl flipped out the battery she activated a back-up power cell secreted above the camera lens. Bannerman had routinely used this trick for meetings in Tehran and, sometimes, against Rico’s director: on this mission, the button was second nature. Sitting back in the seat, he watched her dump the batteries in the door pocket and hide both phones in her bag.
The taxi was damp and dirty, with a sliding glass partition separating them from the front, and there was a whiff of stale vomit. The pale-skinned driver did not turn his head or make the slightest movement. Bulging shoulders strained the seams of his white T-shirt, and the bull neck was as wide as his head. He looked dangerous, but drove off the instant the girl caught his piggy eyes in the mirror.
Bannerman tried another couple of perfunctory remarks, then gave up and stared out at the city, reduced to a bleak monochrome through the tinted glass. They were heading west for the river, the engine echoing off the canyon of buildings, and ran into a heavy shower on the centre of Albert Bridge. Only one wiper worked and it stuttered across the windscreen as they descended into the Short Strand, reminding him of the drive with Penny a little over twenty-four hours earlier.
They filtered off the bridge, keeping the river to their left, then followed the high walled perimeter of the bus depot into the heart of republican territory. Bannerman soon lost his bearings, confused by rows of new housing punctuating the Victorian terraces that had once lined every narrow street. The enclave was as small, claustrophobic and impoverished as he remembered it, its warring factions kept at bay by tall steel fences euphemised as ‘peace lines.’
The faces of republican martyrs commemorated in Gaelic looked out from giant murals on the ends of many terraces and, from street corners, watchful eyes of the living tracked their vehicle through every turn. Suddenly they swung into a cul-de-sac of new starter homes, sweeping round the turning circle in one go and stopping by the end house.
Bannerman studied a low, curving wall inset with ceramic images of paramilitaries. ‘Is this it?’
A balaclava had appeared in the girl’s hand. Bannerman gave her a long sideways look. ‘You said no dramas.’
‘Put it on.’
Two young men had appeared at the junction twenty paces away, observing. Bannerman shrugged and stretched the coarse black cotton in his hands, looking in vain for eyeholes. It smelt of sweat and stale breath as he pulled it over his head. Wondering who had preceded him, he felt another beat of alarm.
The taxi moved off again as he sat forward to struggle into his jacket, then steadied himself with both hands as they regained the street. Disorientated, nauseous from the stench, he tried to breathe through his mouth, but the suction pulled at the material and made him gag. The girl slapped his hand away when he tried to reach a couple of fingers beneath the hood. ‘Do that again and we’ll tie you.’
After a couple more sharp turns he felt a bump, as if they were mounting the kerb, then the taxi rolled to a halt with the engine switched off. It rocked when the driver’s door slammed shut and Bannerman felt a stream of cool air as someone grabbed his wrist, pulling him outside. Rain drummed on the hood, compensating for his suffocation and loss of sight. He heard a gate squeak open, then something brushed against his trousers, as if he was being pulled through brambles, and he was inside again. No voices. Kitchen odours of burnt toast, blocked sink and stale dishcloths filtered through the hood, and he kept bumping into things as he was led deeper into the house.
Then he was pushed down into a soft chair. The hood was whipped away, snagging his nose, and he caught the driver disappearing through the door as he looked around to get his bearings, taking deep breaths to recover his senses. Bannerman found himself in the musty, rundown front room of a Victorian house. Purple velvet curtains had been pulled shut, with everything thrown into shadow by a single frosted bulb in the ceiling. The reek from the hood still lingered and he blew hard into a large blue handkerchief, trying to clear his passages.
He was sitting in a dark brown armchair to the right of the window, facing a bulky silver TV. A bottle of Evian had been left in the cup holder built into the armrest, but the seal had been broken and the rim tasted of someone else’s mouth. On the floral carpet between him and the door were two dining chairs, evidently placed there for his interviewers. Apart from a crucifix on the opposite wall and an image of the Virgin, the room was impersonal, giving no hint of who lived here, with streaks of dust on the table beside him suggesting a recent clear-out of family photographs.
He heard the front door open and slam shut, then voices. Tommy Molloy entered the room followed by taxi girl, and he clocked the canvas bag now strapped across her shoulder. Through the gap in the door, lined up neatly at the foot of the stairs, he glimpsed a woman’s mauve Crocs and two pairs of children’s trainers. Bannerman started to stand but Molloy stopped him dead: there were to be no handshakes, no preliminaries at all.
Molloy sat down and stretched his legs, crossing his beefy arms. From Penny’s photograph Bannerman immediately recognised the working boots, steel toe caps glinting beneath the light bulb, the brightest objects in the room. The woman sat to Bannerman’s left, nearest the door, and he saw the bag drop to her feet. Noone said a word. Molloy was wearing the same wo
rk clothes and looked clammy, as if he had been labouring in the rain and come straight from the site. Away from the sun his eyes were wider, but the look just as belligerent. Bannerman let silence cloud the room, waiting for the targets to break first. There was a sudden crack and the rickety chair almost collapsed as Molloy lurched forward, his boots smearing the carpet with mud. The voice was harsher than granite, the face so close that Bannerman could taste tobacco on his breath. ‘Why are you here?’
Bannerman leaned back in the armchair, cross-legged, and swept back his hair. His interrogators looked down on him, but he had done this before and felt in control. ‘Surely London covered that?’
‘I want you to tell me.’
‘First things first, Tommy,’ said Bannerman, blowing his nose again and tucking the handkerchief in his sleeve. ‘This business with the hood. There was no need for the condemned man routine. Your uncle never did that.’
Though Bannerman had fired his rebuke as a provocation, the gangster’s overreaction took him by surprise. Molloy shot forward again, jabbing a warty finger in Bannerman’s face. ‘But he’s not here, is he? Fuck it, you’re dealing with me now.’
Bannerman did not flinch as it occurred to him that, for all the bluster, Molloy’s position as IRA thug-in-chief might be less secure than MI5 realised. ‘Alright. We need to know urgently if the IRA put the bombs down in Victoria station,’ he said levelly. ‘I believe you have the answer.’
‘Why would you think that?’
Bannerman held out his palms. ‘Which part?’
‘Don’t be clever.’
‘Okay,’ said Bannerman mildly as another wave of hostility washed over him. ‘The code words used in the warning have been used in dissident IRA operations. The bombers placed a secondary device, probably to trap the bomb disposal guys. A favourite tactic around here, right? And number three, the target was a bank, same as a lot of IRA attacks since the credit crunch. Is that enough?’
Molloy sat back again, regarding Bannerman’s tanned face. ‘And why did they send me a ponce like you?’