Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  Annie thought about the conversation now, as Windsor Castle slipped beneath the starboard wing and the first streaks of cloud hid the ground from view. It was the first time she’d found herself at close quarters with Hennessey and she hadn’t enjoyed the experience. He was thin and sallow with an abrupt manner and a nervous tic beneath one eye. He’d sat in the corner of the taxi, his briefcase on his knees, sketching in the background for the job she had to do. Annie recognised the technique from her exchanges with Wren, the way he carefully parcelled out the information, keeping the facts to the bare minimum, twitching the curtain from time to time, giving her just a glimpse of life backstage.

  The thing was tricky, he seemed to be saying. Top secret ‘conversations’ were under way in Northern Ireland. These involved certain factions on the Provisional IRA Army Council and go-betweens reporting to Whitehall. Both the Unionists in the north, and the coalition government in Dublin, had scented the smoke in the wind, and neither party was happy. The Irish cabinet had been further incensed by the way the British were reporting the Sabbathman murders. Pointing the finger at the Republicans, implying that somehow an Irish hand lay behind the killings, had the ugliest possible implications, especially now, when there appeared to be prima facie evidence that a top Fianna Fail supporter was smuggling explosives into the UK. What were the Brits up to? Did they really believe that the Irish government – properly constituted, democratically elected, fellow members of the EEC – would really behave in this way? Where would the innuendo and the accusations lead? And when would they ever stop?

  Hennessey had raised the questions in turn, emphasising the importance of each with a tiny chopping motion of his right hand, and when he’d finished he’d leant back against the corner of the cab.

  ‘How much of that did you know already,’ he’d said, ‘as a matter of interest?’

  ‘About the conversations? Sinn Fein? Whitehall?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Most of it.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘I was briefed. In fact I passed it on. To a journalist.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Willoughby Grant, off the record, of course. It was part of a negotiation. The lunch I described when we all met at Queen Anne’s Gate.’

  Hennessey had nodded, gazing out at the traffic. ‘So who told you?’ he’d asked again. ‘Who authorised all that? I assume it was authorised?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘So who was it?’

  Annie had shaken her head, shielding Wren, under no obligation to do the bidding of some apparatchik from Smith Square, and when Hennessey had mentioned Wren himself, asking her for a simple yes or no, she’d once again declined to answer. The exchange had soured the rest of the journey, and when they’d finally pulled to a halt on the Departures ramp at Terminal One, and when she’d inquired about practical help – names, phone numbers – he’d simply handed her an envelope from his briefcase and then opened the door for her to get out. Standing on the kerbside, shaking the creases from her coat, she’d turned round to say goodbye, but the cab was already half-way down the ramp, looking for a gap in the traffic, heading back towards London.

  Now, glad of the coffee at her elbow, Annie opened the envelope. The brief occupied a single sheet of paper. At the top, it was stamped ‘SECRET: ADDRESSEE ONLY’. Annie read it through, recognising the odd echo here and there, phrases that Hennessey had already used in the taxi. The brief had come from his pen. Definitely. In essence, it boiled down to a single contact, an inspector in the Garda’s Special Branch. The man’s name was Dermot Reilly. He was based at SB headquarters in Harcourt Terrace. He’d be meeting her at the airport. He had access to the files on O’Keefe’s business, and he was part of the team that was tracing every mile of the journey from Longford to Fishguard. If anyone had an answer it would be Dermot Reilly and he was under orders, for once, to share everything with London.

  Annie reclined the seat a little, gazing down at the grey corrugations of the Irish Sea, wondering exactly where Hennessey fitted into the picture, and what gave him the right to the information he carried in his briefcase. Her hour on the computer at Gower Street had included a series of phone-calls to all the major intelligence sources for Northern Ireland. She’d anticipated, at the very least, reports of a rumour or two about new arms channels but wherever she’d gone, whoever she’d spoken to, the answer was always the same. The young Army captain on the intelligence coordination staff at Lisburn reported a total blank. The same went for MI5’s own desk officer at Stormont. And when she’d phoned E3, the RUC’s intelligence specialists at Knock, her inquiry had drawn a grim chuckle. They’d no advance knowledge of the seizure but there were hundreds of firms exporting from the Republic and all of them would be sitting ducks for the IRA quartermasters. O’Keefe’s prominence in Fianna Fail, the fact that he had a high profile politically, simply made him an even sweeter proposition. ‘Who’d ever dream of going through Dessie’s stuff,’ the inspector had asked, ‘when the wee man has so much to lose?’

  Dermot Reilly stepped aboard the aircraft the moment the cabin crew swung the big door open. He was younger than Annie had expected, with thick dark curly hair and a battered tweed jacket. His tie was loosened at the neck, the shirt button at the top undone. He had a fresh country complexion but there were signs of exhaustion around his eyes. Annie followed the stewardess up the aisle. The young detective had a farmer’s handshake and the smile brought his face alive.

  ‘You’re supposed to be six foot nine with a moustache,’ he said, ‘the way I heard it.’

  They stepped out of the aircraft. At the end of the access pier there was a door. While the rest of the passengers hurried towards the arrivals complex, Annie followed Reilly down two flights of wooden steps. Another door at the bottom opened onto the concrete apron. Annie stood in the gathering dusk. Coloured lights winked red and green and the air was heavy with the sweet tang of aviation fuel.

  Reilly was standing by a battered Ford Sierra. ‘The limo,’ he said simply.

  They drove beneath the arrival piers and out towards the perimeter road. Reilly kept a pair of glasses on the dashboard and he put them on now, peering uncertainly into the gloom. On the far side of the airfield, Annie could see some kind of trading estate, a collection of steel sheds, brightly-lit islands in a sea of black tarmac. There was a control point at the main gate. Reilly held his ID against the windscreen and a finger rose in salute as they drove through. One corner of the compound was occupied by a big green warehouse, slightly shabbier than the rest. Folding doors were concertinaed back and there was a line of container trailers parked inside. Men were working under the big overhead lights, transferring packages from one container to another, while a supervisor in a white coat scribbled notes on a clipboard.

  Reilly stopped the car at the mouth of the warehouse and turned off the engine. They’d been talking about the consignment of office furniture, the packages from Longford that had rolled off the ferry at Fishguard. Reilly had spent the last eight hours at O’Keefe’s factory, going over the workforce roll with the personnel manager, looking for employees with Republican sympathies, or family connections in the north, or some private problem serious enough to warrant risking a brief flirtation with the Provisionals. The factory, he said, was smaller than he’d expected, no more than sixty people, and most of them had been with the firm from the off. They’d known each other for years. They were like a family. There were few secrets. As Reilly talked, Annie was thinking about Fat Eddie’s fortnight on the factory shop-floor. He’d said the same thing. Almost word for word.

  She looked across at Reilly. He seemed half asleep. ‘So what do you think,’ she said, ‘about Longford?’

  ‘I can’t believe it happened there. There’s no evidence that I could find. No motive, either. O’Keefe’s not an eejit. There’s no votes in Semtex. Not any more.’

  Annie smiled. She liked this man, his soft voice, his easy wit, and she believed him, too. She looked at the c
ontainers again. The woman with the clipboard was examining a pile of cardboard boxes.

  ‘So what happens here?’

  Reilly reached for a peppermint from an open roll on the shelf beneath the dashboard. He examined it for dust and hairs and then put it in his mouth.

  ‘O’Keefe sends consignments all over,’ he said. ‘Anything for the UK comes here. There’s usually not enough to fill a whole container so they off-load it from his wagon and add it to other part-loads. It’s cheaper that way, and quicker. According to Dessie.’

  ‘And?’

  Reilly was still staring out through the windscreen. Annie found herself wondering when he’d last had a shave.

  ‘There’d be no problem switching goods here. You could do it. You’d have to have another pack ready, another little parcel, like, with the same goods inside, plus whatever you wanted to get through. As long as you’d sorted it all out, there wouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘But how would you lay hands on the replacement?’

  ‘You could have bought one.’

  ‘And leave a record? A name? An address?’

  ‘Sure,’ Reilly yawned, ‘or you could steal one. Earlier. Weeks earlier. Months earlier. O’Keefe’s stuff comes through here about every ten days. So you’d need to have been around a while.’

  ‘So one consignment, an earlier consignment, would have been short. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve checked?’

  Reilly smiled, reaching for another mint, returning the supervisor’s wave when she caught sight of the car.

  ‘Dessie,’ he said at last, ‘Dessie’s checked.’

  ‘O’Keefe?’

  ‘Yes. It’s his theory, the switch, not mine. But I don’t blame him for that. Yes,’ he yawned again, ‘he checked and he found a customer in the UK, a Mr Perkins …’

  His hand disappeared into his jacket and he produced a crumpled invoice. With it was a photocopy of a letter. He gave both documents to Annie and switched on the interior light over the windscreen. She peered at the letter. Mr Perkins ran an insurance agency in Gloucester. Three of the items he’d ordered from O’Keefe Discount had arrived. The fourth hadn’t. Annie looked up. Reilly’s head was resting on the steering wheel. His eyes were closed.

  ‘I promise you,’ he murmured, ‘even the date makes sense.’

  Annie looked at the invoice. Under ‘Description of Item’, against the missing piece of furniture, it read ‘G26SSCD-47 Space Saver Conference Desk’.

  She glanced up, her finger anchored on the form. ‘You know how they found the stuff yesterday,’ she said, ‘at Fishguard?’

  ‘Sure,’ he nodded, ‘we all read the English papers.’

  ‘Same item number.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Same piece of furniture.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Neat.’

  Reilly said nothing, running a hand over his face and then leaning back against the seat.

  Annie was looking at the invoice again. ‘May,’ she said. ‘That’s four months ago.’

  ‘It is. It’s plenty of time. You’d maybe need that.’

  ‘But it’s an age.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She glanced across at him, frowning. ‘So what are you saying?’

  Reilly didn’t answer but opened the door and got out. Annie did the same, following him across the warehouse to an office. The window of the office had been repaired with masking tape. Inside, the woman with the clipboard was sitting at a cluttered desk, adding up a list of figures on a calculator. Reilly shut the door behind him and introduced Annie. The woman’s name was Mairead. She went to a drawer in the filing cabinet and produced a form. She gave it to Reilly and asked Annie if she’d like a cup of tea. When Annie said yes, she disappeared into a tiny kitchen next door.

  Reilly gave Annie the form. Across the top, in heavy black letters, it read ‘Flanagan and Co.’. Underneath, in childlike capitals, someone had filled in a series of personal details.

  ‘Flanagan’s the name of the shippers,’ Reilly said. ‘This place belongs to them. They’re the ones you come to if you want to work here. And that form’s the one you fill in if you want a job.’

  Annie bent to the form. The man’s name was Sean Quinlan. He was thirty-three years old, married, and had last worked for Centra Supermarkets.

  ‘Where’s Ballynoe Road?’ Annie asked.

  ‘North Dublin. Corporation housing. Working class area. Just down the road here.’

  ‘But why’s the address underlined?’

  ‘It doesn’t exist. Not 205.’

  Annie looked up.

  Mairead had reappeared in the open doorway. She was holding a spoon.

  ‘Two, please,’ Annie said.

  She looked at the form again. Quinlan had started work in the warehouse in March. His timekeeping had evidently been exemplary.

  ‘So where is he now?’ she said.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘No one knows. He didn’t turn up for work yesterday and no one’s seen him since. When we went looking for him this afternoon, that’s what we found …’ He smothered another yawn, indicating the heavy red line underneath the address.

  ‘Does the firm have a photo?’

  ‘Only the one for the ID badge. That’s gone, too.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  Mairead came in with the tea. She gave it to Annie. Annie sipped it, glad of the warmth. The office was freezing.

  ‘There’s one lead,’ Reilly said at last. ‘Quinlan made a friend here. Young lad. Name of Jimmy. They were both football crazy. Used to play against the far wall there, during lunchbreaks. So Mairead says …’

  Annie looked across at Mairead.

  She nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘both of them mad for the game. More’s the pity.’

  ‘Pity?’

  ‘My window.’

  ‘Ah.’ Annie grinned, looking at Reilly again. ‘So? You’ve talked to this Jimmy?’

  ‘Aye, I have. And it turns out yer man Quinlan may have been from the north. Talked about one of the Derry teams. Linfield. Knew Windsor Park as well.’

  Annie nodded, looking at the form again. Windsor Park was the biggest stadium in Belfast. The Northern Ireland team played internationals there, and she’d been a couple of times, once with Kingdom.

  ‘What else does Jimmy say?’

  ‘Nothing. Except he thinks he may have a photo. One of the guys here was leaving, back in the summer, and they had a drink or two. Jimmy took some snaps. He thinks Quinlan may be in one of them.’ Reilly smiled his soft country smile. ‘Now how’s that for starters?’

  An hour and a half later, Annie and Dermot Reilly met Jimmy at a bar in Drumcondra, an inner-city area just north of the Liffey. The bar was shabby. The walls were yellowed with nicotine, and the floor was littered with discarded crisp packets. There were curling sausages in the hot cabinet on the counter and when Annie made her excuses and found the lavatory, the light bulb had been stolen. She sat in the dark, thinking about Reilly, and when she got back to the bar she found him talking to young Jimmy.

  The boy had arrived late. He was barely sixteen: pale, thin, freckled, with a shock of red hair. His accent was even thicker than Reilly’s and when Annie asked him what he wanted to drink, he settled for a Coke.

  Annie got the drinks. Back at the table, the two men were bent over a handful of photos. They spread them over the greasy formica, peering at them one by one. Annie sipped her drink. The second Jamieson’s was beginning to soften the pub’s harder edges.

  She looked down at the photos. Jimmy must have had problems with the flash on his camera because most of them were very dark, but she recognised the ghostly bulk of the big containers in the background, and Mairead’s face under a green crêpe paper hat. Jimmy picked up one of the photos and showed it to Reilly. Reilly held it up to the light, nodding. Then he passed it to Annie.

  ‘The one on
the right,’ he said. ‘No marks for focus.’

  Annie examined the photo. It had been taken outside the office where they’d been earlier. The window was intact, no masking tape. Two faces dominated the photograph, big men, clearly drunk, one holding a can of Harp lager. In the background, on the right of the photo, was another man. The focus was awful and his face was in near-darkness but there was enough to register certain features under the thinning hair. The mouth, for instance: wide, with fleshy, almost feminine lips. And the eyes, deep-set, with a startled expression.

  Reilly was looking at the boy. ‘Just the one photo? That’s all you’ve got?’

  Jimmy explained that Quinlan hated having his photo taken. Famous for it in the warehouse. Never looked a camera in the eye.

  Annie gave the photo back to Reilly. ‘How well did you know him?’ she asked Jimmy.

  The boy looked nervously at Reilly. Reilly told him to go ahead. He turned to Annie and explained they’d played football a lot, but not much else. He’d often suggested they went into the city together, maybe even get a ticket for one of the end-of-season cup games, but Quinlan had never been keen. He’d said his wife was an invalid. She needed looking after. She spent most of her time in a wheelchair.

  ‘Did you ever see her?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘I don’t even know where he lived,’ he said. ‘He never told us.’

  ‘Wasn’t that odd?’

  Jimmy shrugged. A job was a job. People came and went, and it was just nice to kick a ball around with someone who really knew what they were doing. He gazed at his drink, uncomfortable again.

  Annie watched him a moment, then nodded at the photo. ‘Can I keep that?’ She found her bag and put an English ten-pound note on the table.