Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  “I had to,” Connolly said quietly, “I had to do it. I had no choice.”

  “No?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “The woman’s dying. She has an ulcer the size of your fist. We need to get her to hospital.”

  Scullen nodded and glanced at his watch.

  “When are you expecting your … ah … friend?”

  Connolly shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “She may not come.”

  Scullen looked at him for a moment. “Where is our guest?” he said.

  Connolly indicated a door at the end of the hall. Scullen walked down the hall, knocked briefly, and went in.

  The room was tiny. There was a small, deep window, and a view of the mountainside and the valley below. Beside the window was a high single bed. Jude lay in the bed, her head turned towards the window. There were spots of high colour in her cheeks, and she was having trouble breathing. Her breath rasped in and out, irregular. Hearing the door open, she turned her head. Sweat glistened on the pale skin. The pillow was visibly damp. Scullen stood by the bed for a moment. The smell of dead flesh was overpowering.

  “Good morning,” he said quietly.

  Connolly watched him from the hall. He might have been the priest, he thought, or the doctor, a grave, professional presence at the bedside, someone to banish doubt and disease. Jude was looking up at him. She was finding it hard to focus. She obviously didn’t have a clue who he was any more. She licked her lips.

  “Water?” she whispered.

  Scullen gazed at her for a moment, then laid a hand beside her cheek. He held it there for a moment or two, then stepped out of the room. He glanced at Connolly.

  “She needs a drink,” he said, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Connolly nodded and began to say something, but it was too late. Scullen was already at the front door. Connolly heard the front door closing behind him. He went out, into the hall. Through the window beside the front door he watched Scullen open the boot of the Mercedes. He took out a long canvas carrier with a buttoned flap at one end, and a white plastic bag. Connolly stared at the bag, recognizing it. It was the bag he’d brought south from Belfast. He’d given it back to Scullen only the previous day. It had the handgun inside it, and the box of shells.

  Scullen closed the boot of the car and walked back towards the house. Connolly met him in the hall. Despite the hour, it was nearly dark in the narrow passage. Scullen handed him the long canvas carrier and told him to give it to the nurse. The nurse’s name was John. Connolly nodded, taking the carrier. It was surprisingly heavy. He leaned it carefully against the panelling in the hall. Scullen smiled, watching him. Then he gave Connolly the plastic bag. Connolly opened it. The automatic was in there, and the shells, too. He looked up.

  “What do I want this for?” he said.

  Scullen was still watching him. He began to do up the top button of his coat, the long white fingers searching for the hole.

  “You may need it,” he said.

  He nodded solemnly, the usual farewell, and turned to the door, pausing only when he’d opened it.

  “Don’t forget the drink,” he said. “Water may well be best.”

  Back in Jude’s room, a glass of water in his hand, Connolly knelt by the bed. Jude’s eyes had closed now, but her breathing had quickened, tiny, shallow gulps of air. He moistened his finger in the water and held it to her lips. Her lips were dry and cracked. She began to lick his finger. Her eyes opened. He offered her the glass. She shook her head. She was smiling.

  “Strange, huh?”

  Connolly leaned in, towards her. Her voice was nearly inaudible.

  “What,” he said, “what’s strange?”

  She looked at him. She was still smiling.

  “Dying,” she said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Buddy arrived at Warsash at noon, parking the Jaguar on the waterfront and carrying his diving gear in a holdall down onto the pontoon where the yacht was moored. Eva, he knew, would already be there. She’d stayed at the cottage for no more than five minutes, picking up the sponge cake and offering a wary hand to Gus when Buddy did the formal introductions. Gus had watched her walking back down the path towards the car.

  “Friend of Jude’s,” Buddy had told him, “keeps an eye on me.”

  He’d left the cottage an hour or so later, abandoning Gus with his feet up in front of the telly. Stepping out of the house, his holdall looped over his shoulder, he’d left him with final instructions on where to find the rest of the booze. Help yourself, he’d shouted through the living room window, but leave enough for a decent wet. He’d be back, he said, sometime Monday. And he’d probably need a drink.

  Now, he clambered aboard the yacht, and down into the tiny cabin. Eva was bent over the stove, coaxing a flame from one of the Calor gas rings. There was a small fold-down table set for two. There was a red gingham tablecloth and a basket of black German bread and a plate of thinly sliced cheeses. There was salami and two other kinds of sausage and newly boiled eggs, fresh coffee on the stove, and two Sunday papers neatly folded on the bench seat beside the table. Buddy stood in the open doorway and shook his head. For a terrorist, Eva was remarkably suburban.

  They ate in silence. Buddy read the papers, keeping to the sports reports, trying to avoid the pages and pages of analysis. The only photo that interested him was an aerial shot of Portsmouth Harbour. He studied it over the last of the salami, wiping the grease from his fingers and marking the halftone with a pencil. According to the text, the photo had been taken at six o’clock the previous evening. The three capital ships – Invincible, Hermes and Fearless – were still moored alongside at their respective berths. Overnight, he knew, nothing would have changed. With deadlines this tight, the last game the Navy would play was musical chairs. He gave the photo a final glance and pushed it to one side. He looked across at Eva. She was reading one of the arts pages. She didn’t look up.

  “What will you do with all the gear,” she said, “afterwards?”

  Buddy smiled. It was true what they said about the Germans. They never got off the job. “Which bits?” he said.

  “The vest. The bottles. The stuff the old man gave you.”

  “I’ll dump it. Before I get back on board.”

  She nodded, still deep in the article. After Buddy’s return from planting the charges, they’d agreed to lie up for the rest of the night beside the marina pontoon. Then, come daybreak, Eva would take the yacht back to Warsash, single-handed. She’d go through it inch by inch, wiping every surface, removing every last trace of their presence. Then she’d return the keys to the office with a smile and a thankyou and drive back down to Portsmouth. Buddy, by now, would be over the water, waiting for the Task Force to leave. The job done, they’d meet up. He’d collect his car from Warsash. And his responsibilities would be over.

  The plan, like anything on paper, seemed foolproof. He and Eva had spent the previous afternoon practising basic manoeuvres with the yacht: casting off, making way against the tide, then nudging back in against the pontoon. It wasn’t a big boat – no more than twenty-seven feet – and they’d be using the engine throughout, but after she’d dropped him in the harbour, she’d have to get the yacht back into the Gosport marina single-handed, and in the dark that wouldn’t be simple. But the girl had been remarkably good, and the rehearsals had gone well. She was gentle on the throttle. She wasn’t frightened of the odd thump. And she seemed to have an instinctive appreciation of current and tide. Buddy had been impressed, and now he said so.

  “You were good on the helm,” he said, “for a woman.”

  Eva shrugged and began to clear the table. “We should go soon,” she said. “Is there anything else you need?”

  Buddy yawned, folding the paper.

  “Yes,” he said, “there’s a list.” He looked up. “And it begins with my wife.”

  The two cars from Nineteenth set off from Bessbrook at one in the afternoon for the long run down to Kerry. Miller and Thompso
n led in the first car, Thompson driving. Camps and Venner followed, a mile and a half behind. Both cars, once again, were plated with Republican registrations.

  The lead car, a white Ford Capri, crossed the border thirty minutes later, heading south on a small unadopted country road that connects the two villages of Cullyhanna and Mill Town. At Mill Town, a mile into the Republic, Thompson had to slow to a crawl to pick his way around an ancient Fordson tractor with a trailer full of sugar beet. The tractor had broken down, and the trailer had somehow jack-knifed behind it, leaving only the narrowest of gaps. The spot, on a sharp left hand bend overlooked by a big old stone barn, was an ideal location for an ambush, and the two men exchanged glances as Thompson dropped into first gear, ready to accelerate out of trouble. Beside him, Miller reached for the heavy Browning automatic, pushing the seat back against the runners to give himself the maximum freedom of action.

  The car edged slowly forward. Then a child appeared in the road, a girl of about seven with a smile and a puppy on a length of rope, and both men relaxed as Thompson threaded the Capri through the gap, and the road opened up, and the car accelerated away again. Turning to wave at the child, Miller failed to notice the dull glint of light on the binoculars of the man in the hayloft of the barn. Neither would he have seen him writing down the registration number of the car, and its colour, and the time it passed by. Elsewhere along the border, there were a handful of other breakdowns, equally innocuous, each with its own small diversion, and its hidden observer, with his binoculars, and his notebook, and his three-digit telephone number in Waterville, County Kerry.

  “Thank you,” Scullen said carefully, when the phone call came through, “I’ll pass the message on.”

  Ingle got to Paddington Green police station a little after half past two. Kee met him in the office. He’d been to the Mount Pleasant sorting centre and returned with the contents of envelope A 4561. He’d had all the appropriate clearances, but evidently it hadn’t been easy.

  “Pakistani bloke,” he said despairingly. “Tricky bastard.”

  Ingle ignored the comment, picking up the photocopy. The letter had been handwritten, on a single sheet of paper. It was addressed to someone called “P”. It talked of a Captain Harrison. Captain Harrison, it seemed, may have retired. But his good lady, whoever that might be, was sailing on. He read the sentence again, frowning, then finished the rest of the letter. The rest of the letter boiled down to a couple of brief sentences. There was a mention of some article or other, and talk of “a second try”. At the foot of the page was a scrawled signature, the single letter, “E”. There was a Southampton address at the head of the letter, and a phone number as well.

  Ingle read the letter again, then looked up. Kee was deep in the paper.

  “There’s supposed to be an article in here,” he said. “Where is it?”

  Kee glanced up, one finger deep in the sports pages. “I dunno,” he said, “I noticed that too.”

  Ingle frowned again. “What about your Asian friend? Didn’t he have it?”

  Kee shook his head. “It was down in the log. Two items in the envelope. But,” he shrugged, “he could only come up with one.”

  Ingle looked at the letter again. “Shit,” he said.

  He got up and walked to the window. The letter told him nothing, except the fact that it had been addressed to Scullen. Scullen he’d heard about from Connolly. The boy had met him. Scullen was the man who knew about Qualitech. Ingle had drawn the file that same afternoon, checked him out. He had serious form – nothing in the way of convictions, nothing as careless as a single court appearance – but the man had left a trail through countless Intelligence assessments, a sighting here, a word or two from a tout there, heads put together, conclusions drawn. One of the firmer rumours had the man in charge of a mainland ASU in the early seventies. There was nothing as concrete as an address, or a positive link with a specific operation, but Ingle knew that one of the ASUs had been quartered in Southampton, and had caused more than a little heartache for a month or two. He wandered back to the desk and picked up the letter again. The thing had come from the south. It had a Southampton address. Idly, he dialled the number, listening to the burr-burr at the other end, putting the phone down again after a minute or so when there was no answer.

  He sat down behind the desk, deep in thought. Kee mentioned tea. The machine in the corridor was on the blink, but the canteen was open again on Sundays and he said he’d do the honours. Ingle nodded, saying nothing, reaching for the phone again.

  A call to a Scotland Yard number gave him the name he wanted, the officer in charge of the Hampshire Anti-Terrorist Squad in the early seventies. He wrote the name down and picked up the phone again. The girl on the switchboard at Hampshire Force Headquarters, in Winchester, answered on the first ring. Ingle introduced himself. He said he was on a Northern Ireland job. He said he needed to talk to Inspector Wilby. There was a short pause.

  “He’s Detective Chief Superintendent Wilby,” the girl said, “and it’s Sunday.”

  Ingle was patient. He said he knew it was Sunday. He told her again it was important. The girl began to get flustered.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “I can’t give out private numbers on the phone.”

  Ingle nodded and gave her a number to ring at Scotland Yard. They’d vouch for him, he said. It was all kosher.

  “Then phone Wilby yourself,” he said shortly, “and ask him to bell me here.”

  He put the phone down and reached for Kee’s paper. Three minutes later, the boy still in the canteen, the phone rang. Ingle picked it up.

  “Ingle,” he said briefly.

  There was a silence. Then an oldish voice came on, speaking slowly, softish country accent.

  “Wilby,” the voice said, “I hope this is important.”

  Ingle pushed the paper away and said it was. He explained again that he worked for Special Branch. He said he’d looked out some files. Stuff from the early seventies. There was a name he needed some help with. He paused, waiting for a response.

  “What name?” Wilby said at last.

  “Harrison, sir. A Captain Harrison.”

  Ingle leaned back in the chair, the phone clamped to his ear, hearing the short bark of laughter.

  “Harrison?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ingle paused. “Who was he?”

  “A sailor,” Wilby said, “used to work for Cunard.”

  Ingle frowned, looking at the letter again, the mention of the “good lady”.

  “So why would his name be in the frame?” he said. “Back in your day?”

  There was a long silence. Ingle could hear music in the background. Some theme tune. “Desert Island Discs”. Then Wilby returned to the phone.

  “He was Master of the QEII,” he said, “the night they tried to blow her up.”

  “Who tried to blow her up?”

  “Scullen’s lot.” Wilby laughed again. “Doctor Death.”

  By the time they got to Kerry, Thompson knew Miller was in trouble.

  They drove down from Tralee, hitting the Ring of Kerry at Killorglin. From here, the road skirted the southern arm of Dingle Bay, winding steadily south-west, glimpses of the sea on the right, range after range of mountains rippling away inland, the sun beginning to dip towards the western horizon. They drove in silence, Thompson still at the wheel, Miller beside him, gazing ahead, saying nothing.

  Thompson had never seen him so preoccupied, so withdrawn. He’d known, of course, that Miller’s relationship with Charlie had been close. Everyone had noticed it, and drawn their own conclusions. The man had treated Charlie like the son he’d never had, with trust and encouragement and a slightly exasperated affection. He’d given him free rein, permitting him six- or seven-day absences from base, certain that the fruits of Charlie’s latest trawl through the markets and villages of South Armagh, or the pubs of West Belfast, would make their own case. On many occasions, he’d been right. The lad had delivered some real windfalls – scraps
of intelligence cleverly jigsawed together, Provo operations anticipated and left to wither on the vine, even half a dozen or so Grade “A” informers, men and women who’d been bribed or blackmailed into a reluctant flirtation with the gentle wee boy with the Galway accent and the pony tail and the nicotine-stained fingers. Charlie had been a priceless asset – no question – but even a covert, undeclared war imposed its own rules, its own obligations, and one of them was never to get too close, to risk too much. It was true of fieldcraft and it was true of the lives they led together, of the ways they got by. If you showed too much of yourself, if you let too much hang out, chances were, you’d pay for it.

  Once or twice on the journey Thompson had tried to talk about it, to remember the good times with Charlie, to coax a smile or a shake of the head or even a story or two from Miller. But whatever he said, however he came at the man, the reaction was always the same. Miller just looked at him, a chill emotionless stare, an expression that carried with it the unspoken suggestion that he should keep his mouth shut and his eyes on the road. Charlie, Miller seemed to be saying, had been a part of himself. And now his own war had turned abruptly personal.

  They reached Cahersiveen at five fifteen, the other car several miles behind. Miller had already stipulated a rendezvous in the town, and now they drove slowly down the main street. The place was small, and sleepy, an eye not quite open for the start of the tourist season. Many of the shops were closed, last year’s wares shrouded beneath sheets of yellowing newsprint. There were dogs everywhere, and ancient cars half-parked on the pavement, and old men in twos and threes, brooding in shop doorways. The light was soft, the beginnings of a fine sunset, and when Thompson pulled in and stopped on Miller’s curt instruction, he wound down the window, smelling the bitter-sweet tang of peat smoke in the air.

  Miller nodded at a shop across the street. The shop was narrow fronted, a single door and a window. In the window was a cross and a small casket. Across the top of the shop, in fading gilt letters, was a line of Gaelic script. “Sean McGrew”, it read, “Undertakers”. Thompson looked at it a moment, and then turned back to Miller.