Vengeance

by Price, Roger A

  ‘So, glad you’re safe nar, but are you sure you’re ok? Bury said.

  ‘I’m fine, bit of a sore head but ok, thanks for your concern,’ Christine said.

  ‘As glad as I truly am, I’m selfishly glad too, if you’re up for it?’

  Christine wondered exactly what Bury was about to say, and asked, ‘Depends what you mean?’

  Bury laughed, and then said, ‘Sorry, I mean a bit of work. Any chance of meeting you tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure, why?’

  ‘It’s the main man, I know where he’ll be later on tomorrow, if you’re still up for an ambush?’

  Christine said that she was and arranged to meet Bury in the morning, but this time at the coffee shop near her office. She then rang June straight back, not just to update her, but to ask her to sort out an outside broadcast unit.

  ‘I’ll need to speak to Sally, but I can’t imagine she’ll want you to ambush the First Minister of Northern Ireland, without due cause and provenance.’

  Christine expected this, and knew they needed some proof from Bury in the morning, but knew also what great TV it would make. June agreed to have a camera and sound team on standby all day so they could use them at a moment’s notice, and Christine promised to get what they needed from Bury. She pointed out that he knew their terms so assumed that he had what was required. She’d known better than to ask him more over the phone.

  She quickly brought Vinnie up to speed and asked if they could postpone the evening. He said he fully understood and in truth could do with getting up to Preston as early as possible the following day. He said he’d taken up enough of her time as it was and didn’t want to get in the way; they both had jobs to do. She loved this about Vinnie, no edge; her job was just as important to him as his.

  ‘There’s just one problem, though,’ Vinnie said, as he prepared to leave.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be missing, with just an ever so slight hint that you’re dead?’

  ‘Shit. I forgot. What now?’

  ‘Don’t panic, I’ll get Harry to release something to the press office tomorrow saying that the ‘hostage has been found fit and well’. Then at least your family can stop having to pretend. We can say you were found unconscious but are fine now. No one needs to know the details. And as your name hasn’t been released publically it shouldn’t create too much of a media storm for you.’

  ‘Will he be ok with that?’

  ‘He’ll have to be, you have your job to do.’

  ‘Won’t that put you back at risk,’ Lesley interjected, ‘I mean if that madman hears that you’re alive?’

  Lesley had said what she herself had not wanted to think, but Christine had her job to do. They discussed it further and Vinnie suggested that they prepare the press release but hold back until Christine knew for sure what she was doing. No reason to out herself prematurely if the decision was not to ambush McConachy. If they just ended up covering an address or speech or whatever, she could sit at the back with Bury and observe. She could get a junior to sit at the front and ask the usual questions.

  That agreed, she kissed Vinnie softly on the cheek and watched him walk away a while before closing her door. He’d keep, but for now she was buzzing with what might play out tomorrow. It was good to be back doing what she loved; she’d leave the cops and robbers stuff with Vinnie for now.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Quintel was at the hotel bar for nearly an hour after they had eaten. It was gone eight now and McKnowle had said he’d only be a short while; he had some calls to make. Quintel figured he obviously had another phone with him. Eventually, the thin, haggard looking oddity that was McKnowle came rushing into the bar. He wondered what the other customers would make of him; someone’s granddad, probably. He certainly didn’t have the appearance or aura of an ex-terrorist. Not that Quintel had met one before. That said, who would know that he himself was also a dead-hearted killer.

  ‘Sorry ‘bout that, Jackie-boy,’ McKnowle started.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ Quintel said.

  ‘Oh away with you, it won’t be for much longer, nar.’

  ‘Sounds encouraging.’

  ‘Get us a drink and we’ll find a corner.’

  So suitably refuelled Quintel chose an alcove with a crescent shaped seat set away from the main bar.

  ‘Right you are,’ McKnowle started, ‘I had a chat with one or two boys over here that I still trust, just locals you understand, not volunteers. And they’ve sorted out an O.P. for us to use the morrow.’

  ‘Is er “the morrow” game on day?’

  ‘Oh no, but we need ta build up arh reconnaissance.’

  ‘Where’s the O.P?’

  ‘I’ll telt yous when we are on arh way, not before, no offence. But it’s a small office cum flat above a shop, that much you can know.’

  ‘Where are the owners?’

  ‘Ah the owners of the shop and flat have decided to take a short vacation, so they have. Same again?’ McKnowle said, and headed to the bar without awaiting an answer. He was back a few minutes later with two more drinks.

  Quintel knew better than to ask McKnowle about the target yet, so concentrated on the man’s fascinating past. ‘You said you’d tell me where you’d been, the last twenty years, or however long it was?’ he said.

  McKnowle put his arm around Quintel’s shoulders and pulled him in close with a strength that surprised Quintel, before whispering in his ear, ‘Back in the day over the water, had you been asking these questions, you’d have been made as a tout of the Brits and would had been sent to have a chat with one of our Security Officers, and there never was a more ruthless set of bastards than those guys.’

  He then let go of Quintel and roared with laughter, before adding, ‘Nar would you look at yous, I’m only feekin joshing you, Jackie-boy.’

  Quintel sighed in relief. There was something alien about McKnowle, and his laughter had an unhinged tinge to it. ‘I meant no offence,’ he said.

  ‘None taken. I‘m just readjusting to living by today’s rules. Different times.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Oh course you don’t. It’s not the nick that those Brit bastards put me in, it was a living hell. I’ve spent the last twenty years, until recently, suffering Locked-in Syndrome. It’s taken the last two years to learn how to freekin walk and talk again.’

  Quintel sat back, amazed at what McKnowle had said. He only had a rough idea what was meant by Locked-in Syndrome, but he needn’t have worried as McKnowle was off and running. He just sat back and listened. McKnowle told him how on one of his unannounced visits to an ASU – active service unit - the plan had been to shoot and kill a ‘Proddy-dog’ – Protestant – as he returned home to his wife and two teenage kids at their mansion home out in the countryside, west of Belfast. The ‘Proddy-dog’ whose name McKnowle couldn’t remember, apparently owned a large office cleaning company who had the sole contract to clean all the police stations and some other civic buildings in Ulster. The plan was to assassinate the man as he arrived home for the crime of taking the Brit’s money, and to send a message to anyone else who fancied getting rich working for the enemy.

  ‘So what happened?’ Quintel asked.

  ‘I wanted the ASU to kill the bastard’s family too, so I did. They’d been enjoying the wages of sin, and the message would have had all the more meaning.’

  ‘Does that mean the ASU didn’t agree?’

  ‘Let’s just say I had to remind the soft bastard who was leading the ASU who the feck he was talking to.’

  Quintel replenished their drinks and McKnowle continued. He told him how that when they were getting into position they received the warning that the target was approaching, and at the last minute all hell broke loose. ‘Go on,’ Quintel urged.

  ‘Those Sass bastards were everywhere, jumped up out of the feckin ground, so they did. Two of them materialised out of a feckin hedge, the same hed
ge I’d took a piss in five minutes earlier, would you believe.’

  ‘Sounds like you had no chance?’

  ‘They had dropped everyone but me and the ASU commander in seconds. I ran at the bastards firing, and then went down. A round sliced through the top of my neck at the back of my head damaging the Pons,’ McKnowle said, before leaning forward to show Quintel a lateral welt of twisted scar tissue about three inches long, which was under his shoulder length hair at the back.

  ‘What’s a Pons?’

  ‘It’s at the base of the brain stem, and it’s taken all these years to gradually repair itself. Connections slowly re-established themselves. Nar, I’m not saying I’m not grateful, but it’s the never knowing.’

  “We live by it, so we die by it” Quintel thought, but instead said, ‘I think I’d have rather died.’

  ‘Aye, I thought that many times later on. But back to the night, I was laid down but wide awake. I felt no pain, nor anything else for that matter. I couldn’t move a muscle. Eyes open, starring up. They must have thought I was unconscious, but I could see and hear everything.

  ‘The ASU commander had legged it and two Sass had gone after him. That left two with me before one left to go and see the Proddy-dog. But before he did they had a quick chat about me.’

  Quintel was hooked on the story now, not sure whether to believe it all, but guessed it was probably all true. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘One examined me and told the other I was alive but noted my neck wound and added that I was not responding to painful stimuli.’

  Quintel asked what that meant.

  ‘It meant, they reckoned I was either unconscious or paralysed. One wanted to finish me off, but the one who was obviously in charge said no.’

  Quintel was surprised to hear this, and asked, ‘What, the leader of the troop wanted to save you?’

  ‘The feek he did,’ McKnowle said, before realising his rising tones were starting to draw attention. He paused and returned his voice to normal. ‘No, he didn’t. He said as my eyes were open I couldn’t be unconscious. He then stuck his knife in both my legs to prove I was paralysed. I never felt a thing. Then he told the other soldier to call a medic on his way to see the Proddy-dog.

  ‘I was laid there and the bastard lent over me and said, “I want you to live the rest of your life as a fucking vegetable; death is too good for scum of your depth. You even give terrorists a bad name.” He probably thought he was talking to himself, but I heard every word alright.’

  ‘I thought about little else for the next few months.’

  Quintel was starting to see where all of McKnowle’s rage came from now, and asked, ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Next, I spent twenty years hearing, seeing, but never moving.’

  ‘Wasn’t there an inquiry? Quintel asked.

  ‘Aye, a sham sack of shite by that bastard Reedly working as Carstair’s bitch, so it was all covered up.’

  Quintel wasn’t too sure what McKnowle meant by that, but he said that if he’d get him a double-Irish whisky to finish the night, he’d explain. And as Quintel rose to head to the bar, McKnowle said, ‘And tomorrow when you can clap eyes on arh main target, it’ll all make sense.’

  Quintel was convinced more than ever now of whom their main target was. He knew the man would be twenty-odd years older but still would be a formidable adversary if they didn’t get it right first time. He was glad about the O.P. now; reconnaissance was good. He was halfway to the bar when Mcknowle shouted.

  ‘And none of that Scottish shite; Irish Jackie-boy, Irish.’

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Christine had slept fitfully and was relieved when her alarm went off. At least her head had stopped pounding and she was now glad the evening had drawn to a premature end, as far as her sore head was concerned; a hangover wouldn’t have helped. Lesley was already up and was again brighter than she’d have expected. ‘You seem in a good mood again?’ she asked.

  ‘That nightmare at mine the other day has given me some perspective on what’s not worth worrying about.’

  Christine was glad to hear this; it would be nice if a positive became the legacy.

  By 9.30 am she was sat in a window seat of the coffee shop near her office. It was busy with office workers but most were buying ‘to go’; there were only a handful of people seated. She’d taken the liberty of getting two lattes and hoped Paul wouldn’t be too late. Then he walked in with a genuine look of relief and joy on his face. She quickly gave him a fuller version of her ordeal, setting the scenes but without too much detail.

  ‘I hope I’m in no way responsible, for this?’ Bury said.

  He explained. He wondered if it had anything to do with her trip to The Blarney Stone, or his suspecting of a tail on him. She smiled on hearing this and reassured him that it was not. She explained how she had been followed from her office. All that out of the way, she asked him what had come up?

  ‘The First Minister is due to give a speech or something later today.’

  ‘Well, if he is, then our office will already know all about it.’

  ‘Aye, but I’ve got proof that he has been systematically removing pro-Brits from senior positions, all the while whilst playing the game. In fact today’s address is just another example of his “look at me, aren’t we all just the best of buddies nar”.’

  ‘Well, if we are even thinking about ambushing him, it better be pretty good.’

  Bury then took a small Dictaphone from his pocket, which had earbuds attached, and handed it to her.

  ‘Just press play,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The last senior officer still in place in our squad who was signed up to the power sharing but has not had his contract renewed,’ he started.

  ‘Another Protestant?’

  ‘Surprisingly no, a Catholic, which probably makes it worse, for the likes of McConachy.’

  ‘And I’m guessing he’s been replaced with a suspected Republican sympathiser?’

  ‘That he has; nar press play.’

  Christine did. And what she heard was a very brief, but heated exchange between two men. Both addressed the other by their titles, which was handy. The First Minister of Northern Ireland and an assistant chief constable. Once the ACC is told his services are no longer required he accuses McConachy of arranging his demise.

  “It’s up to your chief who his top team are, not me,” McConachy says.

  “He’s already told me that you were behind it,” the ACC says back.

  “Well, I do have to have confidence in your chief and his decision making.”

  “I suppose once you’ve got control of NIUCS and the PSNI (Northern Irish United Crime Squad and the Police Service of Northern Ireland) the regional government will be next?”

  A pause followed and then the ACC carried on, “Then you’ll no doubt tell the Brits to fuck off and declare a union with the south?”

  “How fucking dare you. Get out of my office.”

  “I’m going McConachy, but as we are here alone at least have the bollocks to stare me in the face and tell me the truth.”

  “Those wankers in Whitehall are so blinded by their desire to make power sharing work; they fall over themselves to keep me sweet. I have no more intention of making that work than I would in keeping scum like you in office. We will be victorious; and those British bastards will need a visa to drink my piss.”

  Christine was utterly stunned by what she was hearing, and glanced at Bury’s smiling face, as she listened in. McConachy continued his deranged rant.

  “And you being Irish and a Catholic are the worst of the worst. So now you know what you thought you knew. I Hope it eats away at you. Now get out before I have you thrown out.”

  “Thank you,” the ACC said.

  “What the fuck for?”

  “You’ll find out.” Then there was a click and the recording ended.

  Christine pulled the earbuds out and handed the kit back to Bury. ‘When was this?�
��

  ‘Two days ago. The guy is a friend of mine. We shared our views and after I went he started taking note. Started taking precautions. This is the very Dictaphone he took with him to see McConachy. That’s one reason I’ve been frantic to get hold of you. Now will June sanction our little ambush?’

  Christine knew that June would. This was gold. This would become TV gold. This was why the press and the media in all its guises had to remain free. This was why she got out of bed in the morning and did the job she did. This would be the scoop to end all scoops.

  ‘Come on Paul, I can’t wait to see June and the producer Sally’s faces when they hear this.’

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  After breakfast McKnowle insisted that they take everything with them, and not just the holdall with the hardware in, everything, just in case they didn’t return. They “were operational now, approaching the wet end” as McKnowle had put it. He even insisted they empty their room bins and wipe down things they had touched. The guy was definitely an old pro and Quintel respected that.

  By 10 am they left the hotel and were walking towards the old Nissan, Quintel was relieved to find it still there, and five minutes later they were on their way to Preston. Quintel suggested they go via a different route and picked the A586, which pretty much runs parallel to the M55. He told McKnowle it was good tradecraft to vary their routes, which McKnowle accepted. He has glad, as he knew he couldn’t tell him the real reason, not that it would matter for too much longer.

  En route Quintel picked up where they had left off the night before. ‘If I’m guessing who the final target is, would I be far wrong if I said he was present on the night you were shot all those years ago?’

  ‘That much I can confirm, Jackie-boy, you’ll be clapping eyes on the bastard soon enough, so you will.’

  ‘So where are we headed?’

  ‘A row of shops near to Fulwood Barracks in the north part of Preston. It’s a huge place off a road called Watling Street Road which itself is off the main A6. Head for the centre and find the A6,’ McKnowle said.