by James Deegan
‘Sounds good,’ said Pat Casey.
‘First thing is how to get over there without them noticing,’ said Dessie. ‘How’s about I fly to France and hire a car in a false name? Then…’
For the first time Freckles spoke up. ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ he said, dismissively. ‘What d’ye think this is, a fucking TV show? Take the Larne ferry. You don’t need to show a passport nor nothing. Go over as a foot passenger, there’s a bus to Stranraer. Once you’re in Stranraer, someone can meet you with a car. Why make it harder than it needs to be?’
Dessie Callaghan looked at him, and then looked away. After a few moments, he said, ‘Aye, that would work. Okay. I can do the job and then get back before anyone knows. I’ll need a clean car in Scotland, clean weapons, and a routine for the both of them… Where they live, what their daily movements are.’ He smiled. ‘And I will need them current photos. Don’t want to be killing the wrong Brits, do I?’
‘That can all be arranged,’ said Casey. ‘Freckles?’
‘Just say the word. I’ll get Flan on the car. Mickey can sort the weapons from the Kosovans in Coventry. Give us twenty-four hours for that.’
‘Good,’ said Pat Casey. ‘Well, that’s settled, then. Unless there’s anything else?’
The man in the black jacket cleared his throat, nervously.
‘There was one thing, Pat,’ he said. ‘I know where the SAS man’s family is, if it’s any use. His ex-wife’s originally from Bangor, but they got divorced a wee while back, and she moved back. They’ve a couple of kids.’
Pat Casey looked at Freckles.
‘Interesting,’ said Freckles. ‘Might be good leverage. You never know.’
‘Where’s she live?’ said Casey.
‘At Crawfordsburn,’ said Black Jacket. ‘With her new fella.’
Pat Casey leaned back in his chair.
‘We should find out a little more about them,’ he said. ‘Send someone round, Freck. No-one linked to me, and tell him to be careful.’ He looked at the man in the black jacket. ‘That’s good work. Well done.’
The man coloured in pleasure at the praise.
Casey turned his gaze on Dessie Callaghan, and now he spoke firmly. ‘Okay, we’re done here,’ he said. ‘I repeat, Dessie, this cannot come back to me. Ever. Under any circumstances. Understand?’
Dessie returned his stare. ‘I understand yous all right, Pat,’ he said. ‘Sure, I’m just a volunteer, avenging three volunteers. I know my place.’
39.
JOHN CARR AND Terry Cooper took Konstantin Avilov and Oleg Kovalev back to City Airport, waited while the tycoon boarded his Sukhoi – after he’d hugged Carr and kissed him on both cheeks – and watched it depart.
Oleg said his goodbyes and took a cab into the city, and Carr and Cooper walked back to the Range Rover.
On the way, Carr said, ‘You did well last night, Terry. Apart from parking half a mile from the club door.’
‘Yeah,’ said the Londoner. ‘Sorry about that. That Merc blocked me out. Scary times, eh?’
‘Aye, right enough,’ said Carr. ‘When you drop this off at the garage, I want you to sweep it for bugs and trackers. Just in case.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Cooper. ‘The boss doesn’t think…?’
‘Och, no,’ said Carr. ‘No, not at all. But if there isnae a bug, we’ve got a lot of thinking to do. Presumably you’ve been doing all the usual counter-surveillance stuff?’
Cooper’s Special Branch years had made him expert both at tailing people and at avoiding being tailed.
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Always. And you saw the routes I took last night. If we were followed, they were bloody good.’
Carr nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I…’ he began, but then his mobile vibrated in his pocket.
Another text, from that anonymous sender.
‘Did you get my text John?’ it said. ‘Do get in touch.’
40.
ACROSS THE IRISH SEA, a man sat on a sofa, brooding.
For once in his life, he just wasn’t sure what to do.
He tried to think it through.
Make the call, his handler would take the necessary action, Dessie would be pinched, and the two men would live.
But the circle of knowledge was very small, and there was the risk – however tiny – that it would come back to him. He’d headed things like that off before, and he was confident he could do it again. But you never knew.
Alternatively, don’t make the call, let Dessie go, and allow fate to play out.
It wasn’t like those two didn’t deserve it, after all.
But if his handler found out he’d known…
His thumb hovered over the keys on his phone.
And hovered.
41.
IT WAS ALL GOING off on Emmerdale, so Frances Delahunty wasn’t best pleased when the phone rang.
Tutting, she muted the TV and picked it up.
‘Hello?’ she said, in broadest Dublin.
A familiar voice spoke.
‘Who? Right... Well, he’s in the bat’ dere at the minute, so… Alright, alright, will you settle? I’ll fetch him out. Would you hauld on.’
Shaking her head and muttering, she trudged upstairs with the cordless phone, and along the landing to the bathroom.
‘Mickey,’ she said, putting her ear to the door. ‘It’s for you.’
‘Who is it?’ came her husband’s muffled voice.
‘It’s Freckles.’
A sound of splashing and cursing.
Then, ‘Sure, am I not having a fucking bat’, here? Can it not wait?’
‘Can it not wait?’ said Frances Delahunty into the phone.
Then, ‘No, he says it cannot wait, and you’re to get your fecking arse out of that water right now.’
More muffled cursing.
‘I’ll leave the phone by the door here.’
She placed it on the floor and then, shaking her head and tutting some more, she hurried back downstairs.
Where Charity Dingle was behaving like a mare in the Woolpack, as usual.
‘Sure, that’s typical,’ said Frances, to herself. ‘Typical.’
42.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Mick Parry arrived at work in his blue VW Passat.
He’d been tailed from the moment he left his house until a half-mile earlier, when the follow car had broken off after alerting the man with the long lens camera.
Parry’s employer provided a staff car park, and the car park was conveniently overlooked by a small stand of trees on a hill a quarter of a mile to the north. As the former paratrooper got out of his vehicle and leaned back in to collect his sandwiches, the man with the camera – dressed in dark trousers and an old Army surplus camouflage smock, and standing behind a large beech tree in the copse – fired off thirty or forty frames.
Parry disappeared into the main building, and the cameraman looked down at the screen on the back of his Nikon.
Perfect.
Five or six very clear shots showing Parry’s face.
He put the camera in his bag, and trudged back through the copse to the lane below.
There was an internet café in Burnley, an hour to the northeast. He’d crop and upload the clearest two or three images into a draft post on a new blog which had been created the day before.
Later that day, someone in Rosnaree, just south of the border in Co. Meath, would log in to the blog, using a VPN to hide his location.
He would print off the photos of Parry, along with images of his house, and his car.
Then the draft post would be deleted, along with the whole blog, and the paper versions driven north across the border for whoever it was who needed them.
The man in the lane whistled tunelessly to himself as he got into his car.
A little Five Live, or maybe some Radio Two, and the journey would pass in no time.
43.
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT KEVIN Murphy had only just sat down at his desk in PSNI headqua
rters when there was a knock at his door.
Detective Sergeant Nigel Johnson – a very good friend, and a highly trusted operator in his part of the Historical Enquiries Team – stuck his head in.
‘Morning, boss,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had confirmation from Five that they’ll see us next week on the Bernie MacMurray case.’
A few months earlier, they had discovered that MI5 was sitting on old telephone intercepts which might help clear up a murder from thirty years ago. The spooks – keen as ever to protect their sources – had at first denied any knowledge of the transcripts, but they had now at least admitted their existence, and were prepared to discuss a limited release.
‘Thames House,’ said Johnson. ‘Next Friday, 10am.’
‘So that’s what… a week today?’
‘Aye. I’ll sort flights for the day before.’
‘Grand,’ said Kevin Murphy. ‘I doubt we’ll get anywhere, but it’s a start.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll just get myself a cup of coffee and then we can get out and see the woman in the Sean Casey–British soldiers enquiry.’
An hour later, Kevin Murphy and Nigel Johnson arrived in the car park of a small office complex where the Divis met the Falls, five minutes from the Bobby Sands mural on the side wall of Sinn Fein’s HQ in Sevastopol Street. There were still plenty of Republican headcases, active ‘Continuity IRA’ terrorists, and people who just plain despised the polis in the area, so they’d travelled in an unmarked car crewed by two uniformed policemen, with Glocks on their hips and rifles in the boot, and followed by a second vehicle with two more cops aboard. Murphy was glad of the back-up.
He and Nigel Johnson left the uniformed officers in the vehicles and made their way to reception.
The receptionist, a pinched-faced woman in her fifties with a badge on her left breast which said ‘Aoife O’Mahoney’, looked at their warrant cards with undisguised hostility.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘What d’yous want?’
Murphy beamed at her. Thirty years of bitterness and antagonism, and this stuff just washed off him now.
‘I’d like to see Marie Hughes, please,’ he said.
‘What about?’
‘Police business. Can you get her for me, please?’
‘She’s busy.’
Murphy smiled. ‘Not any more,’ he said.
The woman looked as though she was about to respond, but instead she picked up her phone and dialled a number.
Marie Hughes arrived in reception a few moments later.
A nervous-looking woman, she was wringing her hands and would not meet the eyes of the two officers.
Kevin Murphy introduced himself, and then turned to the receptionist. ‘Would you have a wee room when I can talk to Mrs Hughes in private?’ he said. ‘I’d be ever so grateful.’
Grudgingly, the woman opened the door and showed them through into the office.
‘You can talk here,’ she said, indicating an orange sofa next to a watercooler.
‘I really would prefer to talk in private,’ said the detective. ‘No offence.’
But Marie Hughes spoke up. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Aoife’s a friend. And I’ve not much to say, anyway.’
Murphy nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘As I said on the phone, I just wanted to go through the statement you made the other day about the death of Sean Casey?’
‘I don’t want to say nothing,’ said Marie Hughes.
Murphy raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’ he said. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Murphy and Johnson exchanged looks.
The senior officer opened his case and handed her a couple of sheets of paper. ‘Is this the statement you made?’
Marie Hughes refused to look at the document.
‘Do you want to retract it?’
‘I don’t know. Yes.’
‘Is everything okay, Marie?’
‘I’m just confused.’
Kevin Murphy sat back.
People were always retracting statements, or not showing up to court, or changing their evidence in the dock, and who could blame them? He well remembered one particular case, where a man who’d helped officers to arrest a gang of IRA blaggers had been taken out and crucified with tent pegs – literally, half-inch diameter steel rods, hammered through his shins and arms. After a lengthy spell in hospital, and the loss of his left leg from the knee down, the man had remembered that he hadn’t seen the robbery take place after all, and the blaggers had walked away laughing.
All it took was for a couple of bhoys to pay someone a visit, and pretty much any case could collapse.
‘Okay, Marie,’ he said. ‘Listen, I grew up in this city, and I’ve been a policeman here for a long time now. I’ve seen it all, don’t you worry about that. People change their minds, and I don’t condemn anyone for doing it. I don’t have to walk in your shoes, do I?’
‘No.’
‘So I’m going to give you a wee while to think about it. In the meantime, I do have to ask you one question, formally. Is that okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you been told not to talk to us?’
She hesitated. Then said, ‘No.’
Murphy leaned forward. There was no point at all in trying to put pressure on this woman, even if he’d wanted to.
‘Okay, Marie,’ he said. ‘Well, I think we’ve gone as far as we can for now. Thank you for your time. Here’s my card so you know how to get hold of me if you want to.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’
He and Nigel Johnson both stood up, and shook her hand in turn, and the receptionist opened the door and showed them out, scowling.
In the car on the way back to the PSNI HQ, Johnson said, ‘Who’s got at her?’
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ said Murphy. ‘The Brits? They don’t know about it, and if they did they wouldn’t put the arm on her.’
‘Republicans?’
‘Aye. But why? You’d think they’d want to shout it from the rooftops.’ He sighed. ‘To be honest,’ he said, eventually, ‘I don’t really care. There’s no case to answer, and we’d only have wasted weeks on it. It’s not like we’ve nothing else to work on.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’ve done our best. Sinn Fein can’t say we’ve covered anything up.’
By the time they were back at the office, they’d almost put it out of their minds.
And that would have been that, except for the fact that Aoife O’Mahoney went home that night and mentioned to her husband Joe that the peelers had been in talking to Marie Hughes about the death of Sean Casey, and Joe O’Mahoney mentioned it to a couple of the lads down the club that night, and those lads mentioned it to others, and before you knew it it had reached the ears of Pat Casey.
And Pat Casey was not best pleased.
Sure, had he not expressly told that stupid woman not to talk to the peelers?
And, if she couldn’t follow a simple fucking instruction, then how could he be sure she’d not talk about her meeting with him in the Beehive?
And if she talked about that…
A horrifying thought struck him.
What if she already had?
Cursing, he reached for the phone.
44.
A COUPLE OF DAYS after he’d photographed Mick Parry in Huyton, the same man parked up in a street in Primrose Hill, north London.
This time he was in a scruffy white Renault van, which had only three hubcaps, a rack of paint-splattered ladders on the roof, and a magnetic vinyl sign on the side, which gave the name and number of a bogus building firm. On the dashboard was a yellow hard hat, a copy of The Sun and a Thermos flask.
No-one gave it a second glance in this part of London, where everyone was always in a desperate hurry to get somewhere, and every other house had builders beavering away on loft conversions or extensions to take advantage of the upward spiral of property prices.
But if they had looked at it they might have noticed that the rear windows had been sil
vered over.
The man was sitting in the back of the van, on a wooden chair, looking out of those silvered windows. At his feet was the camera with the long lens. In his hand was a Motorola walkie-talkie, of the sort that you can buy for thirty quid in any electronics shop.
And just now it crackled into life.
‘On his way,’ was all it said. ‘Jeans, blue shirt, brown jumper.’
The man put down the walkie-talkie and picked up the camera and waited.
Fifty metres away, a man in jeans and a brown sweater appeared between two parked cars, waited for a gap in the traffic, and then crossed the road at an easy jog.
Camera guy zoomed in.
Black hair, combed back in a slight quiff.
Fit and strong-looking, big shoulders and arms.
Eyes that were busy, and a big fuck-off scar on his chin.
The sort of face to make you think twice.
John Carr.
‘I’m glad I haven’t got to take the fucker on,’ murmured the man to himself, as he pressed the button.
The camera clicked thirty times before the target reached the opposite side of the road and disappeared around the corner.
The man in the back of the van stood up, crouching, and climbed past a curtain into the front seat. He put the camera on the floor and picked up the copy of the Sun. Two minutes later, another man opened the passenger door and climbed in.
‘Get him?’ said the new man.
‘Perfect.’
He started the van and waited for someone to let him out.
An hour or so to get the pictures placed where they wanted them on the internet, and then it would be time to head back home.
45.
A DAY OR TWO LATER, John Carr’s ex-wife was putting out her bins before driving off to work when the old lady next door popped her head out of her front door.
‘Morning, Stella,’ she called. ‘I’ve been hoping to catch you.’ She came out of her door and hurried over in her slippers and housecoat. ‘There was a fella in the close yesterday, acting funny. I seen him walk by your place a couple of times. He didn’t know I was watching. I was behind me nets.’