by Tom Bradby
She sat with her head bent, still able to see their eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL. THAT WAS HIS FIRST THOUGHT. THE PHOTOGRAPHS didn’t do her justice and he took in the smoothness of her skin, her pink, perfectly formed lips, and a small dark mole to the left of her mouth.
For a few seconds he was thrown, but he took a step forward and sat opposite her, looking down as he pulled the files and notebook from his bag. He raised his head and met her stare. Her look betrayed nothing, neither defiant nor submissive, but she held his gaze.
He could feel his heart beating faster.
He noticed her clothes. Not what he was expecting. A chunky gold-coloured necklace, fine gold earrings, a suede jacket. A bit dishevelled, perhaps, but feminine and elegant. She looked like one of his friends, only with something more.
He sat in silence for a few seconds, then began. ‘My name is David Jones,’ he said. It was the name he’d written on the custody record. Even if this went well, he didn’t think she’d ever learn that his real name was David Ryan. ‘I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to know who I am and why I’m here.’ He paused, wondering if she would know where he was from. ‘I’m not from Special Branch,’ he said. ‘How have you been treated?’
He looked for a reply, and knew from her expression he wasn’t going to get one. She held his gaze for a few seconds more and he thought he saw hostility or hatred in her eyes. Then she turned in her seat a fraction and fixed on a single point on the wall behind him.
She sat stock-still. The room was silent. It was almost comic. He waited fifteen seconds, perhaps thirty.
He leaned back in his chair and smiled gently. ‘I apologize for the police. They’re not very gentle … a necessary evil, I’m afraid.’ He leaned forward again. ‘But perhaps you wouldn’t agree?’
Silence.
‘The police tell me you’ve not asked for a solicitor.’
Silence. Longer this time.
‘Why is that? I should have thought you’ll be needing one.’
Silence. She stared at the wall, her head still, her face expressionless.
‘The police tell me the case is clear-cut. They say conviction is inevitable.’
Silence.
‘It will be an English court, of course.’
Nothing. Not a movement. Not a flicker. He spoke quietly. ‘I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t know, but you’re going to go to prison for a very long time.’
Nothing.
‘You’ve been to prison before, I know. I think this is going to be much harder.’
He kept his eyes on her face.
‘You have children. I should imagine that will be the hardest part.’
Silence.
‘How do you tell your children that you’re going to be in prison for the rest of your life?’
He saw a flicker, of recognition, perhaps, or fear, in her eyes. There had been some sort of reaction, he was certain.
‘Mark is five. Is that right?’
Silence.
He looked down at the file in front of him. ‘Sorry, no, Mark is four and Catherine is three. Is that right?’
Nothing. She sat absolutely still. Perhaps it had been his imagination.
‘So, by my reckoning, Mark should be about twenty-five when you get out.’
He felt like a bully, but he was comfortable with it.
‘That is supposing you do get out, of course. What have we had now, twenty-five years of terror? That’s a hell of a long time. People are so sick of it. They want life sentences to mean life. The climate in England is not in your favour. I’m sorry to say that, but it is a fact.’
He tried to speak gently now. ‘You and I know, of course, that there are extenuating circumstances; you were born a McVeigh. Your father was in the IRA, your eldest brother is head of the Belfast Brigade, your second brother is head of a unit in the Lower Falls. What chance did you have?
‘I understand that. I also understand that you only became reinvolved after your husband was killed – murdered, possibly – by the SAS down at Coalisland.
‘I understand that, Mrs McGraw, but a court won’t.’
He leaned back again. ‘Twelve good men and true. Isn’t that what they say? Not in this case, though. Mentally, they’ll have convicted you before they even start.’
He leaned forward, his voice animated. ‘Mrs McGraw, I don’t want to patronize you, but it is going to be hell. I couldn’t do it. I could not do it. You are going to miss your children growing up.’
He paused, trying to see a reaction in her face.
He waited patiently. The silence dragged on. A minute? Two? He felt comfortable waiting now. He had nothing to lose. He tried to think carefully about what he was saying. He tried to think about what might make her want to reply – what might make her unable to resist talking. He knew he had so little to go on, the file suddenly seeming flimsy and inadequate. He wanted to know her and needed to know her pressure points.
‘According to our files, you joined the IRA in 1980. It’s been a long time. Do you still believe in it?’
Silence.
He looked into her face, moving his head to try and catch her eye, without success.
He changed tack. ‘Since I don’t think you’re going to tell me about you, perhaps I can tell you about me?’ He sat back in his chair, as if visibly relaxing. ‘I served in Belfast in the Army. Several times, in fact. Always west Belfast. Perhaps that makes you hate me? I can understand that, but the feeling’s not mutual. I did a job, but I’m not sure I liked it. It’s not much fun being despised. But perhaps you understand that?’
Silence.
‘I read a great deal when I was there and after I came back – and I think I can say I came to sympathize with your point of view in many ways. Ireland is partitioned in 1921, the northern quarter or so is given to the Ulster Protestants, effectively. But nobody bothers to ask the Catholic minority in that quarter if they are happy about being fed to the wolves so that everyone else can live free from British rule. The Protestants rule badly. They’re bigoted, deny Catholics their civil rights and attack peaceful protests that are only designed to demand equality of treatment. So you rebel, in the only way you can. You try to sap the Brits’ will to stay – their willingness to go on underwriting what you see as a Protestant mini-state.’
He leaned forward again. ‘Now you might say the IRA has gone a long way to achieving that, but I believe – and it is a sincere belief – that you have damaged what could have been a noble cause. You may not believe me, but I think the English – the British – are a reasonable people and would have been willing to listen, and don’t forget that in 1969 we were beginning to really enter the television age. The demonstrations were being broadcast to a mass audience. I do not believe that all this bloodshed, all the terrible tragedy, has got anyone anywhere, do you?’
He looked for a response, but her eyes didn’t flicker. He could not tell if she was listening, but he continued. ‘All this bitterness … atrocity, counter-atrocity, tit-for-tat – for what? Nothing is clear any more, is it? Except that it will continue. Or will it? Is all this peace talk going anywhere? Maybe you can help us finish it.’
He lowered his voice. ‘You tell me, Mrs McGraw. Are your children going to die the same way your husband did? And your children’s children? How long is this war going to continue? Are my children going to join the Army and be shot by your children? Or yours by mine?’
Silence.
He took his arms off the table. A soliloquy. He felt self-conscious, but there was no other way. ‘There has to be a way out of this. There has to be. There has to be a way out for you, too. Now, God knows, I don’t know you – and you’re certainly not helping me, so I’ve got to make a few guesses. I don’t know why you came back in. I don’t know if it was because your husband was killed. I can understand revenge, but there has got to be an end to it. There has got to be a way to stop it killing your children and mine.
‘I have to say, and I get no pleasure out of this – you can believe me or not, to me it is immaterial – but you are going to get several life sentences for this, plus twenty years for conspiracy to cause an explosion. You are not going to see your children for at least fifteen years. You are going to miss their entire childhood and come out not knowing who they are or how they got there.
‘I don’t have children, but I know enough to know I couldn’t stand that. It would kill me. I would do anything to avoid it. Anything.’
Colette moved and, for a moment, Ryan thought she would speak, but she simply leaned forward, took a cigarette from the packet on the table, lit it and drew the smoke deep into her lungs. She didn’t once take her eyes off the wall behind him.
Ryan had no idea at all whether he was getting through and he paused for a moment, looking closely at her, as if she were a statue. He noticed how wide and sensual her mouth was and how clear her skin. It was almost perfect.
He wondered if she’d already guessed they had nothing on her. He wondered how he was doing. He wondered what the hell she was thinking. He could feel the frustration growing, but kept his patience and waited. Another minute, perhaps two. He sighed. ‘You’re not really helping me. I fail to see how refusing to acknowledge my presence here is going to help either of us. You know I’m not a police officer. You can see nothing is being recorded. You know what I’m offering. How can you gain anything by refusing to discuss it. Aren’t you curious?’
He swept the file off the desk and put it in his bag. He looked directly at her. ‘I’m not going to bully you, Mrs McGraw, like those thugs in the police force. We’re both human beings and I’ve told you frankly I couldn’t face what you face. I couldn’t risk being taken away from my children for half a lifetime. Not for anything. Nothing, to me – no cause, no work, certainly not the shit I have to do for a living – is worth that. You know what I’m offering. It is an honourable and simple way out.
‘You’re intelligent enough to know that it is not without cost, so I won’t patronize you. But from my perspective, it is a cost worth paying.’
He stood up. ‘Think about it. I’ll be back tomorrow. I don’t know how long the offer will last.’
As he reached the door, he paused and looked back. Her head was bowed, as if in defeat. He thought she might be crying.
He waited quietly outside in the corridor for a few minutes. This was his first big break and he thought he should feel elated, but he didn’t. To begin with, he’d had a strange desire to reach out and touch her. To feel her. But the sales pitch had made him feel queasy. He walked away and was grateful he could. He wanted to go home.
It took him twenty minutes to get to his flat in Clapham’s Latchmere Road. Nobody was in, but there were three pints of stale milk on the sideboard, a huge pile of washing-up in the sink and debris all over the kitchen table. There were three messages on the answering machine. None were for him.
His bedroom was the smallest, the noisiest and the nastiest. In the summer, when it was hot and he needed to open the window, the noise of the street was overwhelming and the sound of a lorry grinding down a gear always figured prominently in his dreams.
He switched on the bedside light and noticed the flowers and the note. ‘David. You looked a bit low this morning and I thought these might cheer you up. We’ve gone to a club in Brixton, but I can’t remember the name and I know you wouldn’t be interested! Sorry about the mess. Love, Claire.’
He opened his bag and pulled out a file and a brown envelope. He sat down and opened the file. The first page read:
Subject: Colette McVeigh/McGraw
Born: Belfast, 3 September 1960.
Note: this file was last updated on 20 March 1992, following the death of McVeigh’s husband David Sean McGraw (Davey) during an IRA operation in Coalisland, County Tyrone. Despite the involvement of the SAS, there is no indication that the resulting bitterness has led her back into active service with the IRA. She appears to have been outside that organization consistently since her release from Armagh prison in 1987.
Ryan smiled to himself. Perhaps that wasn’t so wrong. Having seen her, his own guess was that she was too good – too presentable – to risk too often.
He thought that if he’d been an IRA commander, he’d have wanted to keep her away from suspicious eyes. She didn’t look anything like an IRA terrorist, but then what was a terrorist supposed to look like?
He closed the file again and put it on the floor. He shouldn’t have taken it out of the office, but it was one small rebellion amongst many.
The brown envelope underneath was thin and he turned it over. It had been given to him by one of the management secretaries with whom he remained on friendly terms – largely, from her point of view, in the hope that they would become more than friendly.
It contained two sheets of white A4 paper, stapled together in the top left-hand corner. In the centre of the page were the words ‘Annual Assessment’ printed in bold. He read.
TO: ALAN GRANT, DIRECTOR OF COUNTER-TERRORISM.
FROM: DESMOND JENKINS, HEAD OF PROVISIONAL IRA SOURCE UNIT.
CC: PERSONNEL.
DAVID RYAN.
GENERAL INTELLIGENCE GROUP.
In his annual appraisal interview, Ryan identified himself as a motivated and determined individual, who was prepared to take risks in order to get results. He described himself as hard-working, patient and independent-minded.
Ryan has developed well over the past few years and has shown a certain mental toughness. He is self-confident (bordering on the arrogant at times) but he remains a reluctant team player and sometimes seems curiously immature – unable to adapt to what he describes privately as ‘the Service mentality’.
He has performed a useful subordinate role in the running of one or two minor assets on the UK mainland during the past year and he has indicated he is impatient to be given the chance to recruit and run assets himself. He has expressed a strong desire to return to Ulster.
Our own assessment is that, whilst Ryan is competent and capable and has made a significant contribution to ‘T’ branch this year, question marks remain over his suitability for high-level field work at this stage. We would hesitate to use the phrase ‘maverick’ so early in his career, but several officers have expressed reservations about his attitude.
Ryan took his clothes off, climbed into bed and turned off the light. For a few minutes he lay awake, thinking about Colette McGraw. He could see her face vividly.
McIlhatton had picked his target carefully and, as she left, the woman didn’t see him leaning against the wall reading his paper and didn’t notice that he followed her.
She walked towards the tube and he watched her slip her pass into her handbag. She bought a copy of the Evening Standard at the entrance and then joined the crush inside, apparently lost in thought.
The platform was busier than usual and, as the tube arrived, she had to force her way into it. It was packed inside and she was crushed between two men.
At Embankment station she was propelled out of the train like a champagne cork and switched to the Northern Line. The next tube to arrive was packed and she decided to wait. She noticed the man but did not seem to register that he made the same decision.
She only had to wait a few minutes and the next train was slightly emptier. She got in, pushing herself to the middle, and the man got in beside her.
She tried to read her paper, but there wasn’t much space, so she gave up and stared blankly ahead.
The train started to empty at Clapham North and by the time they reached Clapham Common she could read her paper comfortably. She got off, ignored the beggars and made for the shop on the corner.
She bought herself some supper and chatted amiably with the shop’s Indian owner. Business was good, he said, as he always did.
She turned out of the shop and began the short walk up to her flat in the centre of Clapham’s Old Town. There were only a few people on the street and she looked over
her shoulder.
She saw the man behind her.
She broke into a run. The man was faster. He gained ground. She felt the impact of his shoulder and the impact of the pavement, sudden pain mixed with fear. Then he was gone. She picked herself up, confused. He was still running and she later told the police all she could remember were his eyes – and the fact that he was limping, favouring one leg, though she couldn’t remember which.
She felt numb. It took her a few seconds to realize she’d been clutching her handbag to her chest and it had now gone.
She almost wept with relief. Only the handbag.
Later, the police listened to her politely, but held out little hope of getting her bag returned. She said she was annoyed. She didn’t care about most of it, but her Commons pass was in the bag and it meant she’d have to spend hours going through security on Monday morning.
By the time she had finished with the police, McIlhatton was on his way back to north London, stepping off the tube train at Highgate and walking back to his small terraced house with no discernible limp.
The contents of the handbag were stuffed deep into the pocket of his trench coat and he was pleased with the night’s work.
CHAPTER FOUR
RYAN WOKE EARLY. HE THOUGHT OF COLETTE MCGRAW. THE IMAGE from last night was firmly imprinted on his mind. Had she been crying?
Outside, Claire’s clothes lay in a pile on the stairs and he wondered how he could not have heard them come in, since he was usually a light sleeper. He cleared a space on the table, poured a bowl of cornflakes, realized there was no milk and sat in silence.
As he picked up the phone, he wondered why Grant had said to call him in the office, since it was a Saturday and Grant always spent the weekend in the garden.
There was no answer in the office and Grant picked up the phone at home on the second ring. He had clearly been up for some time and had other things on his mind. ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting anything, David, so don’t worry. Ask the Met to hold her for the weekend and give it another try. Be gentle, she’s been in it a long time and I don’t think the rough stuff will cut much ice.’