Present Danger

by Stella Rimington

  The man with the gun was coming around the rear of the car now, and the van driver stood back to give him space. He turned to face Fergus, who was still lying sprawled on the drive. His gun was a semi-automatic, and as he raised his arm to fire, Jimmy could only think this is it.

  But nothing happened. The man stared at his weapon with disbelief. It must have jammed, thought Fergus. He tried to roll underneath the car but he couldn’t move, and he sensed his stay of execution would be short-lived.

  Calmly clearing the jam, the man stepped forward, lowering the gun to shoot the policeman.

  Suddenly a scream broke through the air, like the sound of shattering glass. Even through his pain, Jimmy Fergus realised it was Moira, coming out of the front door, still wearing the pink housecoat he had given her for Christmas.

  The man with the gun jerked back, obviously startled.

  ‘Get back,’ Jimmy tried to shout. He saw the man turn to face Moira, who was running towards them down the path, still screaming. To his horror the man raised his weapon. And then Jimmy found his fingers could move after all, and he managed to lift the Glock an inch or two off the ground with his hand, and with more hope than expectation, pointed it and fired.

  The gun kicked with enough force to fall from his hand. As its sharp crack echoed in the air, Jimmy heard a muffled shout – ‘Agghh!’

  He saw his would-be executioner reaching down, to where a dark stain was seeping through one leg of his pristine white overalls.

  In obvious agony, the man dropped his gun. The driver of the van ran forward and picked it up. Fergus prayed he would not finish the job. Instead the driver put a rough arm around his wounded accomplice, then half-ran with the hobbling, bleeding man to the cab of the laundry van. Seconds later the van’s engine started up. With a long squeal of tyres, it turned a sharp one-eighty degrees and shot off down the road.

  Then a hand was gently stroking his hair, and as he slumped down he heard Moira sobbing.

  ‘Jimmy, Jimmy,’ she was saying through her tears. ‘Can you hear me? Are you all right? Oh God, please God, tell me he’s alive.’

  ‘Leave God out of it,’ gasped Jimmy, ‘and ring the ambulance.’ Then he passed out.

  18

  ‘How is Mrs Ryan working out?’ asked Judith Spratt. She was sitting in Liz’s office, waiting for Dave to join them and review where they had got to in the Fraternal Holdings investigation.

  ‘I haven’t lived in such order since I left my mother’s house. I hardly ever see her though, and when I do she’s not exactly chatty. The strong, silent type, I’d say.’

  In her first weeks working for Liz, Mrs Ryan had already reorganised almost everything in the flat, from the pan cupboard to Liz’s underwear drawer. Liz was enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of being able to find things.

  Judith took a last swallow of her coffee and put her mug down. ‘Yes, I know. But thank goodness she and Daisy seem to get along OK. Daisy says she talks to her all the time; that’s her excuse for not doing her homework. It’s funny, because she never says much to me, either.’

  ‘Perhaps she just likes children more than adults,’ said Liz with a shrug.

  Dave hurried into the office. It was clear from his face that something had happened. He looked at Liz grimly and didn’t sit down. ‘There’s been an incident. One of the PSNI officers has been shot. I don’t know who.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ exclaimed Liz. ‘When?’

  ‘An hour ago. The man’s in surgery and they don’t know if he’s going to make it.’

  ‘Does Michael Binding know?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s at Stormont in a meeting. I’m sure they’ll have heard.’

  Liz exchanged a look with Dave. What had Brown Fox said? Had the threat been carried out, and so soon? She mentally shook herself. Until they knew more there was no point in jumping to conclusions.

  ‘Okay, we’d better get on with things here. Judith, are there results from the number plate enquiries?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Judith, taking her cue from Liz and passing folders round. ‘We’ve got an ID on the owner of the Astra that hung around outside the Fraternity offices.’

  Liz looked at the first sheet in her folder, where she saw a photocopy of a driver’s license. The mug shot was of a now-familiar face, and when she turned to Dave he looked up from his folder and nodded. ‘Yes, it’s him.’

  Liz said to Judith, ‘This is the walk-in Dave met yesterday, Brown Fox. What have you found out about him?’

  Judith consulted her notes. ‘He’s Dermot O’Reilly, a long-time Provisional IRA volunteer. Interned in the Maze in the seventies, and believed to be the quartermaster for Belfast Brigade. After he was released he stayed involved, though he managed to escape prosecution for terrorist activity. But he’s got convictions for two criminal offences: a drunk and disorderly outside a pub – got a fine for that, and a charge of receiving stolen goods – suspended sentence.’

  ‘So what is he now, a crook or a terrorist?’ mused Dave.

  ‘It looks like a bit of both,’ said Judith. ‘He lives just off the Falls Road. When we checked his credit history it was terrible, not surprisingly – he’s had cars repossessed for non-payment of loans, mortgage arrears, credit card debt – though God knows how he got a card in the first place.

  ‘Here’s the interesting thing, though: starting two years ago his situation improved dramatically – suspiciously so, I’d say. He wiped out the credit card debt, paid off half his mortgage, and now has over ten grand in the bank.’

  Liz said, ‘He said he’s been working for Fraternal Holdings. Given the pictures we have of him at their offices, that’s pretty clearly true. They must pay well.’

  ‘I’d like to know exactly what for,’ said Judith. ‘He’s certainly had a lot of cash for doing something in the last two years.’

  ‘Do we know anything more about this man Piggott who runs the show?’ asked Liz. ‘According to Brown Fox – O’Reilly – he’s the one we’ve got to worry about.’

  ‘Not much,’ said Judith, with a puzzled shake to her head. ‘He owns a flat here in Belfast, and that farmhouse in County Down. He’s got a local driver’s licence he applied for three years ago. The Audi we’ve seen him in on the camera at the National Trust gatehouse is registered to Fraternal Holdings. That’s it.’

  ‘O’Reilly said he’s a Yank, Boston Irish, a university type who designed missiles that didn’t work,’ Dave remarked. ‘Though all that may be just sour grapes. O’Reilly’s obviously got a big grudge against him.’

  ‘I’d better start looking there then. Did he have any other information?’

  ‘Not much. But it’s all in my contact note. Our Mr Big seems to be a bit of an enigma.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Thames House and get Peggy to work her magic. She can see what’s in the files and perhaps get onto the Americans. If all that stuff’s true – about designing missiles for the IRA – then there’s sure to be loads of stuff in the back files.’

  Liz nodded. ‘If there’s anything to find, Peggy’ll find it.’

  A shadow fell across the open door. Liz looked up and saw Michael Binding standing there, his face pale and strained. He was still wearing his long overcoat.

  ‘You’ve heard about the shooting?’ he said.

  Liz nodded and asked, ‘Do we know who it was?’

  ‘Yeah. Some chap who was supposed to be at my meeting in Stormont. He’s an old RUC officer, semi-retired. His name’s Fergus – Jimmy Fergus.’

  ‘Oh no, not Jimmy,’ said Liz. ‘I know him. Dave and I went to see him last week – he’s helped me before.’

  ‘Do they know what happened?’ asked Dave.

  ‘He was just setting off for work, backing out of his gate when the gunmen attacked – two of them. A neighbour said they were in a laundry van. They must have had him under surveillance because the van’s been seen before in the street. Fergus managed to fire back: he hit one of them – well, we think he did. There was blood where the van had
been parked.’

  ‘Is he very badly hurt?’ Liz could hear her voice shaking as she asked the question.

  ‘He took a bullet in the chest.’ Binding’s voice softened almost imperceptibly. ‘That’s all I know. I’ll keep you posted.’ He gave a little bow of the head and left.

  ‘I wonder why they chose Fergus, if he’s semi-retired?’ asked Judith. She sounded shaken too. ‘Do you think it’s someone settling an old score?’

  Dave stood up and walked to the window. ‘God knows,’ he said.

  There was silence in the room. Dave went on standing by the window, shifting from foot to foot, looking agitated. Judith was obviously stunned. Liz stayed sitting at her desk. She felt as if all her energy had suddenly gone.

  She found herself remembering when her first boyfriend, Freddy Simmons, had been involved in a car crash, and the news had reached her at home. There had been several hours without even knowing how badly injured he was; there was nothing she could do to help, just sit and wait for news, all the time expecting the worst. As it turned out Freddy had been all right (a broken collarbone was the extent of the damage), but she remembered how her father had made her go out and help him with a bonfire in the garden to take her mind off it.

  Judith broke the silence. ‘I’ll come back later, Liz, if you like.’ She stood up and started to gather up papers. The movement triggered something in Liz and she felt a great surge of anger.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave, Judith. We’re going to find out who’s behind this and what it’s all about. So let’s get on with what we were doing. This makes it all the more urgent.’

  ‘I just thought you might want to be alone. I know you were close to Fergus.’

  ‘No,’ Liz corrected her. ‘I wasn’t close to him. But I was very fond of him.’ Then she realised what she was saying. ‘I am fond of him.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing we can do to help Jimmy Fergus right now, so let’s just try and stop thinking about it.’

  She turned to Judith. ‘We were talking about the number plate enquiries. You’ve mentioned O’Reilly. Now what about the other car? The one with the foreign-looking bloke?’

  ‘We traced the car. It’s rented from Davis Hire at City Airport.’

  ‘When I first came here I picked up the keys to the pool car at their office.’

  ‘Yes. The manager’s a long-standing agent. He’s been on the RUC’s books for years and he’s given us a lot of useful stuff too,’ broke in Dave. ‘I’ll get onto him and see what he knows.’

  ‘Is that the car that had the blowout?’ asked Judith.

  Liz nodded and Dermot O’Reilly’s words came back to her: What he really wants to do is kill policemen – and he wants to kill one of your lot, too. She shuddered.

  Pulling herself together she said, ‘What do we know about this guy? O’Reilly said he’s French.’

  ‘He is. Antoine Milraud. He flew in from Paris the day before yesterday. I checked with Interpol but they’ve got nothing on him. So to cover all the bases, I rang the DCRI. You know, it’s the new French internal service. They’ve just had a reorganisation. I thought it might be difficult to find the right person to speak to so I wasn’t expecting anything—’

  ‘But?’

  Judith pursed her lips, musing for a moment. ‘Well, I got through to a senior officer called Florian. Her reaction was a bit strange, I must say. Her English was even worse than my French, but she managed to get across that they knew Milraud, or knew of him anyway. But she wouldn’t tell me anything. When I pushed a bit she said they did have information about him, but someone would have to go and talk to them about it. I think what she was saying was that it was complicated and she wasn’t going to tell us anything until she knew why we wanted to know. Shall I ask the MI6 station in Paris to go and talk to her?’

  ‘Why the secrecy?’ wondered Liz aloud.

  ‘Do you know what that sounds like?’ said Dave. ‘It sounds as if he’s a source of theirs. That’s just how we’d respond if someone asked us about a source.’

  ‘This is getting really complicated,’ said Liz frowning. ‘Who’s at the MI6 Paris station, Judith? Do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know who the head of station is, but the deputy is Bruno Mackay.’

  Dave looked at Liz.

  ‘Oh no. Not him.’

  ‘Your favourite old Harrovian, Liz,’ said Dave with a grin.

  ‘Speaks fluent French as well as Arabic, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘He may speak fluent French, but he’s the last person to put

  into a delicate situation,’ responded Liz crossly. ‘I’ll go myself.’

  19

  Danny Ryan wished Sean would shut up.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ Sean was saying, again and again, in between great shuddering racks of sobs. Danny couldn’t concentrate. He was trying not to drive too fast, or do anything to call attention to the white laundry van he was driving.

  More than one policeman was going to be looking for them soon enough. He needed to get off the road fast, before the call went out across the radio bands with a description of the van. The number plates were false, but that wouldn’t help them if someone on that street had noted them down. And even though no one had been around, they must have been seen, especially after the gun had been fired.

  Two guns in fact – and that was the problem. He looked sideways at Sean, sitting bent over in the passenger seat. Blood was dripping on the floor and had completely soaked the leg of his jeans. He had to get him to a doctor fast, or the poor bugger was going to bleed to death.

  ‘Hang on,’ he urged him, ‘we’re almost there.’ But they weren’t: he didn’t dare run the risk of driving through the centre of Belfast – rush hour was just starting and he wasn’t going to sit in traffic, waiting for the PSNI to pick them up.

  So he took the Knock Road south through Castlereagh, almost to the countryside, until the road swung west and brought them to the beginning of Andersonstown. Here Danny drove fast, under the A1 and into the large industrial estate built on the edge of the Catholic neighbourhood. He turned the van into a small side street running around the back of Casement Park, the ageing football stadium that the city fathers kept talking about replacing.

  Suddenly he braked sharply, and Sean groaned. There was a police car parked at the front of the stadium on Andersonstown Road.

  Reversing would simply call attention to the van. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out. He slowed to a crawl as he neared the intersection. Would the van’s description have been circulated? Would they notice the number plates?

  As they passed, he sneaked a look. The patrol car was empty. He speeded up again. Two blocks away he pulled off St Agnes’s Way, where a row of eight lock-up garages occupied one end of a small plot with a FOR SALE board stuck in the muddy grass.

  ‘Hang on, Sean,’ he ordered as he pulled up and the groaning started again. ‘Help’s on the way.’

  Without looking around, Danny unlocked and lifted the steel shutter, then ran back to the van and drove it into the wide garage. Once he’d turned on the lights and pulled the door down again, he did his best to make Sean comfortable, lying him across both of the front seats. Blood was no longer spreading across his leg. Was that a good sign? Danny didn’t know. He’d never seen anyone shot before.

  He stood by the steel door to make sure the signal was strong, and dialled a number on his mobile.

  ‘Hello.’ The voice was terse, emotionless.

  ‘Mr P, it’s Danny.’

  ‘Yeah.’ His voice was terse.

  ‘We’ve got a problem. It didn’t go according to plan.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It wasn’t our fault, Mr P. We got the bastard, but he got Sean and—’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the lock-up. I’m sure we were spotted. But Sean’s bad—’

  ‘I told you not to go back to the lock-up.’

  ‘We’ve got to get Sean help,
Mr P.’

  ‘Sean can wait. He’s cocked it up.’ There was cold fury in his voice. After a pause, he said, ‘Now listen. Wait there till I send someone over. He’ll take care of Sean. Then you get that van out of there. Drive it out, well out. Find a place, and torch it. Do you hear me? Torch it.’

  ‘I hear you, Mr P.’

  ‘Good. And don’t call me again, understood? Just sit tight, then do it.’

  Twenty minutes later, there was a sharp rap on the steel door of the garage. Danny peered through the window slit and saw the Spaniard, Gonzales, in his black leather jacket, standing to one side. He reached down and slowly pulled up the shutter.

  Gonzales looked at him with cold eyes. ‘Donde?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  Gonzales pushed by him and walked to the van and looked in. He nodded, satisfied.

  ‘He’s hurt bad,’ said Danny. ‘He needs to see a doctor right away.’

  Gonzales ignored him, and went out and got into his car. Starting it, he pulled quickly into the garage, forcing Danny to jump to one side. As he got out he opened the rear passenger door, then walked over to the van.

  ‘We’ll have to be careful with him,’ said Danny. He peered in. Sean was slumped on his back across both seats; he was quiet now, breathing but barely conscious. The blood on his trouser leg had congealed into a black mess.

  Without saying a word, Gonzales reached in and put his arms roughly under Sean’s back, propping him up.

  ‘Mind his leg!’ Danny shouted. ‘He’s been wounded.’

  The Spaniard ignored him, pulling Sean back out of the door until only his legs remained on the seat. He lowered his arms and wrapped them round the wounded man’s waist, then with one movement he hoisted him out of the car, leaving his legs dangling on the floor. Sean screamed as the Spaniard lowered him onto the back seat of his car, where Sean fell, moaning continuously.

  ‘Jesus, will you take care? He’s been shot.’

  Gonzales turned suddenly and stared at Danny. There was a cold menace in his look that frightened the younger man. In heavily accented English, Gonzales said, ‘You know what to do with the van. Get going.’