Once a Pilgrim

by James Deegan

  ‘That body in the Turf Lodge a day or two back?’ he said. ‘It was Marie Hughes. They haven’t formally identified her yet, but her sister reported her missing this morning.’

  ‘That’s the witness, is it?’ said Carr. ‘The woman from that night in the Clonards?’

  ‘Aye. They tortured the poor lass and gave her the nutcracker. Dumped her half-naked in the Turf.’

  ‘In the open?’ said Carr.

  ‘Pretty much bang in the centre of the estate. A van got burned out in Andy Town about the same time. No forensics, but they’re assuming it’s related.’

  ‘Bastards,’ said Carr, softly. ‘Sick bastards.’

  A sombre quiet descended on the car, and he pressed on through the stop-start rush hour traffic.

  69.

  OLEG KOVALEV LOOKED at the lights of some city far below and smiled to himself.

  He’d had a productive twenty-four hours with Vitaly Vasiliev, the guy who’d put the £30k hit out on Konstantin Avilov.

  Vasiliev was a sixty-year-old former Party boss from St Petersburg, who had climbed the greasy pole along with everyone else after the collapse of the USSR.

  He had two reasons for wanting Avilov dead.

  The first was that he had been promised an old Soviet tin mine in Kolyma, in far eastern Siberia, and had then watched impotently as the powers-that-be instead gave it to Avilov, in return for some favour or other.

  It wasn’t a particularly beautiful piece of real estate, and the mine – dug out of the freezing earth in the bad old days by starving political prisoners based at a number of Gulag camps around the town of Magadan – wasn’t even working. But it had potential: Russian tin was making a comeback, and it had been estimated that this particular hole in the ground could produce upwards of twenty million dollars of the soft grey metal each year. It wasn’t a king’s ransom, but it was worth having, and he hated the fact that Avilov could afford to just leave it in the fucking ground.

  The second reason was closer to home: Avilov had slept with Vasiliev’s wife two years earlier, and she had left him soon afterwards.

  The mine – maybe you could forgive and forget the mine. The new Russia worked on patronage, and it was a big place; there were other baubles yet to be distributed.

  But the wife? No, he couldn’t forgive and forget the wife.

  As soon as he learned of the failure of the hit he’d got out of town, taking a Georgian lingerie model away for a fortnight to a friend’s villa at Dagomys, in Sochi. Hopefully, those Ukrainian fools would have better luck second time round; in the meantime, he would lie low.

  But the friend had betrayed him to the FSB, the FSB had informed Oleg Kovalev, and Oleg had sent three very hard men down there to pay off his bodyguards and the lingerie model and make sure that Vasiliev went nowhere.

  And then he had two choices.

  Kill the fool, or disgrace him.

  He chose the latter: better to let him spend the rest of his life dwelling on his stupidity in taking on a man with connections in the police, the security services, the presidential palace itself.

  Which was why the fool was presently languishing in a Sochi police cell, awaiting transfer to Moscow, where he would be tried on charges of tax evasion and corruption and possession of drugs, child porn, and state secrets.

  The verdict was not in doubt – Konstantin was friendly with a lot of judges – and Vasiliev would spend the rest of his life in a tiny cell in one of his country’s grim and forbidding jails.

  A much better warning to others who might think of crossing Avilov than a simple bullet in the back of the neck and a shallow grave somewhere.

  Oleg smiled, sat back in his seat and sipped his scotch – not quite as good as Johnny’s, but the best that a first class British Airways ticket could offer.

  Konstantin was happy, the Ukrainians had been taught a lesson, and he’d even had a chance to visit the Bolshoi.

  Forty thousand feet below, Europe slipped by at five hundred miles per hour.

  70.

  DESSIE HAD NO IDEA how close he had come to being nabbed, but he was keeping an ear on the radio news, and he had heard that the police had issued a photofit.

  That mystified him, a bit. Some bullshit about a picture based on descriptions by eyewitnesses, when he was pretty sure there’d been no witnesses and it had been pitch fucking black anyway.

  Gingerly, he felt his nose, which was still sore and crusted inside with dried blood.

  They must have lifted his DNA from the fucking soldier’s fist.

  That had to be it.

  He cursed himself once again for not just slotting the fucker, and then he cursed the dickhead in the black jacket who’d got him into this in the first place.

  He shook his head. He had other things to consider.

  The Tramadol had taken the edge off the pain, enabling him to think about his plan.

  Which hadn’t changed.

  He’d be making his way to Carr’s flat and staking it out overnight.

  If he saw the bastard, great.

  If he didn’t, he’d move off somewhere – he didn’t want to attract attention in daylight hours, so he’d get out into the countryside – and then he’d come back and do it all again the following night.

  Sooner or later, the murdering SAS bastard would show up, and when that happened Dessie was going to torture him a while and then shoot him in his fucking swede.

  I’ll make sure you know it’s coming, he thought. Get you begging. Let you know that Dessie Callaghan’s sending you to hell, on behalf of Pat Casey, his murdered brothers, and the downtrodden people of Ireland.

  Everyone said the way to do it was straight in and out, no messing about.

  That was the correct way.

  But how often did you get a chance like this?

  A chance to make an SAS man beg?

  He saw it all happening in his head, and he smiled, despite the pain.

  They’d have to write a whole new series of songs, just for him.

  And paint a mural.

  He could see it now: ‘Dessie Callaghan, Volunteer, who carried the fight to the SAS, behind enemy lines in England.’

  Himself on a wall, twenty fucking foot tall, and looking like a movie star.

  His chances of getting away without a pinch were virtually nil, now, but that mural, that would be sweet.

  Very fucking sweet indeed.

  71.

  AT JUST BEFORE seven pm, John Carr, Kevin Murphy and Nigel Johnson walked through the door at the Namaaste curry house in Camden and found a table.

  They ordered Cobras and food, and while they were waiting for the drinks to arrive Carr said, ‘So, how’s the kids? Liam must be in his second year now?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Murphy. ‘He’s going well. Knows more about the law than me, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No surprise,’ said Carr. ‘He always was a bright boy.’

  ‘All from his ma,’ said Nigel Johnson, with a grin.

  Murphy chuckled and nodded. ‘And Siobhan’s just starting her masters up in Edinburgh.’

  ‘I know,’ said Carr. ‘I do keep in touch wi’ her, you know.’

  The beers arrived and the three raised their glasses to each other.

  ‘Aye,’ said Kevin Murphy. ‘She was very touched by the graduation present you sent over. Far too expensive, mind. She’d daren’t wear it out the house.’

  Carr had been invited to attend the ceremony, but work had intervened so he’d had a girl he knew pick out a white gold-and-diamond tennis bracelet for Siobhan and sent that over instead. It had been pricey, but he’d felt guilty at not seeing his goddaughter or her dad for the last year or more.

  He took a long pull on his lager. ‘Only seems like yesterday she was sitting on your knee in the front room, listening to our war stories,’ he said.

  His mind’s eye conjured up a picture of a tousle-haired little girl with a big gap in her teeth, hanging on her father’s every word as he and John Carr discussed
some recent operation or other against PIRA.

  ‘Aye,’ said Murphy. ‘Scary, isn’t it?’

  ‘And you’re nearly finished yourself?’

  ‘I’m out of there this summer, yep.’

  ‘Plans?’

  ‘Short term, I’m going to spend some time with my brother at his fishing operation in Lake Laberge in the Yukon. Longer term, I don’t know. I’ve been talking to the RCMP about a bit of advisory work on gang crime, so I might stay out there. But if not… Well, they’re always re-employing guys at Knock, so I’ll probably end up working for this lump.’

  He nodded towards Nigel Johnson, who grinned.

  ‘What about yours?’ said Murphy.

  ‘Alice is in her first year of A levels,’ said Carr. ‘Still costing me an arm and a leg in bloody boarding school fees and clothes and gadgets and what-have-you. George is in the Paras hisself now.’

  ‘My goodness. He was just a nipper when I last seen him.’

  ‘Well, he’s not a nipper any more. Thinking about going for Selection next year.’

  ‘Hope he likes blisters.’

  The waiter arrived with poppadums and chutney and the three men dived in.

  ‘How’s your love life?’ said Murphy, as he ate.

  ‘You know me,’ said Carr. ‘There’s girls here and there, but I havenae the time for anything serious. I got all that out of the way with Stella. You?’

  ‘Less complicated than yours. Would you believe, it’s Mary’s tenth anniversary soon?’

  Murphy was silent for a moment or two, and again Carr’s mind conjured up another image, this time of the policeman’s wife. A pretty and vivacious nurse fifteen years her husband’s junior, Mary had always been up for a drink and a laugh, and her death from an aggressive breast cancer at such a young age had been a terrible tragedy.

  ‘Awful,’ said Carr, soberly. ‘Not surprised you haven’t dipped your toe in the water since – you’d never have found anyone to compare.’

  ‘Truer than you think,’ said Murphy.

  The food arrived, and as it was being dished up, the Detective Superintendent turned to Nigel Johnson. ‘Nineteen years in an SAS Sabre Squadron, this one,’ he said. ‘Hereford groupies coming out of his ears.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ said Johnson.

  ‘Nigel’s a strict Presbyterian,’ said Murphy, with a laugh. ‘He’d not approve of that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m a man of the world, Murph,’ said Johnson. ‘So what do you do these days, John?’

  ‘I’m in private security,’ said Carr. ‘Russian guy. I basically look after him while he’s in London. Two weeks a month at most. Usually less. The pay’s good. Normally a pretty quiet life. No dramas.’

  ‘Normally?’

  ‘Some guy tried to shoot him the other day. I took the pistol off him and put him in hospital, but he got off a couple of shots and killed a young woman.’

  ‘Good lord,’ said Murphy. ‘Who was it?’

  Carr’s mind flashed back to the two Ukrainians, and the blood on the garage floor.

  Kevin Murphy was an old friend, and he had vouched for DS Johnson, but when all was said and done they were still police officers.

  ‘Och, some random eastern European headcase,’ he said. ‘Why he wanted to kill Avilov I have no idea. Avilov’s the kind of guy who upsets people everywhere he goes, and he goes a lot of places.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway. This PIRA shit. I should take it seriously?’

  Kevin Murphy paused, a forkful of chicken tikka masala in mid-air. ‘The Republicans are not what they were,’ he said. ‘But then neither are we.’

  Carr nodded. ‘A couple of my mates work in training with the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. They’ve told me it’s bad.’

  ‘Special Branch and Five are all over the Islamic threat, so you can pretty much count them out. The Army’s virtually gone. We’re effectively on our own, and we don’t have the manpower to deal with anything really big any more. The people we’ve lost are mostly the old-timers who knew how to fight the bastards, excuse my French. The muscle memory’s all wasted away. We won’t admit it, but we’ve conceded the streets in the obvious areas to the Republicans.’

  ‘And Dessie Callaghan?’

  ‘Every bit as bad as any of them ever were,’ said Johnson, swallowing a forkful of vindaloo. ‘You’d beat him in a fair fight, but he’s a snidey so-and-so and it won’t be a fair fight. Give him a chance and he’ll take it.’

  ‘Seriously, John,’ said Murphy. ‘Book yourself into a hotel. Why take the risk? He’s bound to get lifted in the next few days, and then you can forget him. Look at your man, Parry.’

  Carr ate in silence for a moment.

  ‘Close friend, was he?’ said Johnson.

  ‘Aye,’ said Carr. ‘He was. The guy was a legend. Instructor when I joined 3 Para and, Jesus, he was a hard bastard. But fair. Brave, too. We stayed in touch after I moved on. He could easily have gone the same route, but he met his missus and had the brains to know when he was on to a good thing. Did his time and got out and then he was all about her and their girls.’ He smiled. ‘Not that he didn’t still go off the rails now and then. Last saw him at the races a few months back. I’ve still got the hangover.’

  72.

  OVER THE YEARS, the men and women of the Provisional IRA had evolved sophisticated counter-surveillance skills.

  They had done so partly by simple Darwinism – the stupid and the rash had ended up dead, or in jail – and partly with the help of experienced operators from various sympathetic governments and terrorist organisations around the world.

  Dessie Callaghan had benefited from decades of accumulated wisdom, which was why he had stood off from Carr’s flat for quite some time.

  He was relatively confident that Carr was not at home – he had the top half of a large house at the foot of Primrose Hill, and the lights had been off since dusk had fallen three hours earlier – but he was also watching for signs of the police.

  Even after a couple of hurried walk-bys – cap jammed down, scarf wrapped around his face against the chill night air – he’d seen nothing.

  What he didn’t know – what he couldn’t have known – is that the Met and MI5 had a team in the area.

  But unfortunately for them – and fortunately for Dessie Callaghan – they’d made an almighty cock-up.

  Carr’s flat was at No 12, but somewhere along the way, an extra ‘1’ had been added to the surveillance briefing, and the Security Service team leader responsible for the error had then gone off in a shift change.

  So a dozen or more officers and agents were even now watching the wrong property, several hundred yards to the north and out of sight around a sweeping bend.

  Dessie had spent some time pondering his options.

  At 9pm – swallowing another Tramadol – he made a decision.

  Police or no police, you just didn’t get an opportunity to put an SAS notch on your gun barrel every day.

  Time for action.

  He walked up to the communal door of Carr’s building like he owned the place, and rang the buzzer for the flat below.

  73.

  THERE WAS A BRIEF silence, and then a woman’s voice answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s John,’ said Callaghan, standing to one side, away from the camera. ‘From the upstairs flat?’ Dessie could do a passable generic Scottish accent, and he was gambling on that and the distortion from the intercom speakers allowing him to get away with it. ‘I’ve lost mah bluidy key. Any chance you could let me in?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the woman, and there was a buzz and a click.

  Callaghan pushed at the door and it opened.

  He stepped inside. Ahead of him were some stairs; to the left of the stairs was an internal door with a spyhole in it.

  The door to the ground floor flat.

  He walked towards it, stood to one side, and knocked.

  Another momentary pause, and then the rattle of a key chain being undone.
>
  The door opened.

  A young woman – late twenties, big eyes, tousled blonde hair – was already talking.

  ‘Do you want to wait here for the locksmith?’ she said, ‘because…’

  And then she stopped, puzzled.

  At the very moment she realised that the thickset skinhead with the broken nose standing in front of her was not John Carr, the thickset skinhead with the broken nose punched her hard in the face and knocked her to the floor.

  And then Callaghan was inside the flat, slamming the door behind him, Glock in hand, aiming it first at the stunned and horrified woman, and then sweeping it around the interior hallway.

  Finger over his lips to shush her.

  A man appeared – the woman’s boyfriend, husband, brother, who cared – and Callaghan stepped forward and cracked him on the temple with the butt of the pistol.

  He went down like a sack of shit, and the woman started screaming.

  Callaghan leapt on her and pushed her down onto the sofa, putting his hand over her mouth, cutting the sound off.

  He waited like that for thirty seconds, all the time watching the unconscious man for signs of revival.

  Eventually, the woman wide-eyed and gasping for oxygen through a bubbling nose, he hissed, ‘Listen, if yous carry on doing that I’ll have to kill you. But if you shut your gub I’ll not hurt yous. Okay?’

  She nodded, wide-eyed.

  He released the pressure slightly; she gulped down air, but didn’t scream.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘If you make one more sound I will fucking kill you, and I’ll kill him, too. But if you play ball, yous’re going to be okay. I’ve no argument with you, I don’t want anything from you. Understand?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Okay,’ said Callaghan. ‘I’m going to take away my hand now, and you’re not going to say fuck all unless I tell you to.’

  Nod.

  He took away his hand.

  The woman started crying gently.

  Her right eye was starting to swell up, and there was a cut to her eyebrow.

  ‘I want you to do three things,’ said Callaghan. ‘First, collect any mobile phones you have in the flat and bring them to me. Second, get some tape – Sellotape, masking tape, anything. The third is I want you get a plaster and some ice and sort out your eye. I’m sorry about that.’