Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ingle and Kee were in Southampton by seven o’clock. All the pool motors were out, so they’d driven down from London in Kee’s car. Kee had just acquired one of the new Ford Escort XRis. With its go-fast stripes and rear spoiler it was, said Ingle heavily, perfect for surveillance work. Maybe he should have chosen something with a slightly lower profile. Like a Rolls-Royce. Or a Sherman tank.

  They found the address on the intercepted letter without difficulty. The house was tucked away up a narrow street in an area just north of the city centre, hemmed in by a grid of new expressways. Judging by the bicycles, and the oriental food stores and the rows of Bengali restaurants, the neighbourhood had been taken over by a mix of students and Asian families. Sitting in the darkened car, gazing down the street, it reminded Ingle of parts of the East End. Same smells. Same curls of dog turd. Same sodden mattresses, abandoned in the tiny oblongs of front garden.

  Ingle and Kee got out and crossed the road. Number 20 was neater than the rest of the houses in the street. The pavement outside was swept clean. The paintwork was new. There were even curtains at the window. Ingle knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. Nothing. He opened the letter box and peered through. The house was dark. There was no sound of television or music. The place smelled, very faintly, of caraway seed. He glanced at Kee. Kee produced an old credit card. Ingle took it and inserted it between the door and the jamb, working it slowly in, feeling for the tongue of the lock. For some reason it took longer than usual, but finally he found it, exerting a gentle pressure, easing the lock backwards. The door opened. Ingle grunted. Kee returned the credit card to his wallet.

  Inside, the house was spotless. With the lights on, Ingle pulled the curtains and moved quickly from room to room, putting together initial impressions, getting a feel for the place. There were a woman’s touches everywhere – the plants, the handsewn cushion covers, the blush of pink in the colourwashed walls, the amply stocked spice rack with the Indian recipe books in the kitchen. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms. One, at the back, was obviously a spare room, small, tidy, slightly clinical. The other, a bigger room at the front of the house, was where the woman evidently did most of her living. There were two big bookshelves, crammed with well-thumbed paperbacks, and there was a small desk, with a portable typewriter and an Anglepoise lamp and a wire tray. The tray was full of typescript. Curled on top of the typescript was a small marmalade kitten, sound asleep.

  Ingle stood in the middle of the room, certain it could tell him what he wanted to know, wondering quite where to start. Downstairs, he could hear Kee applying what little he’d learned about rummage jobs to the living room. For his sake, he hoped the woman didn’t make a surprise reappearance.

  Ingle stepped across to the dressing table. In the lower of the two drawers, under an assortment of Marks and Spencer lingerie, he found a passport and a bunch of keys. He took the passport out. It was West German. The woman’s name was Eva Hippke. She was twenty-eight years old. She’d been born in Ludwigshafen. She’d entered her occupation as “Lehrer”. The small black and white photo alongside showed a round, plain face with a fringe of black hair and a slightly dead look in the eyes. Ingle thumbed quickly through. There were a number of German stamps in the passport, and a six-month visa for the States. She’d been to Malaga a couple of times, and there were three entry stamps for Dublin. He made a note of the Dublin dates, and the girl’s name, and slipped the passport into his pocket. Whatever else happened, she’d now have trouble leaving the country.

  He crossed to the bedside. There were a couple of photos on the shelf above the bed. They were both framed. One showed an oldish couple, sitting at a café table. There was a tram in the background and it was sunny. The other was a head and shoulders shot, a man of about twenty-five. He was very dark, almost Latin. His hair was slicked back. He was on a beach. It looked as if he’d just been swimming. His smile had an edge to it, a knowing look, a secret shared with the person behind the camera. Crumpet, thought Ingle, replacing the photo and thinking again of the passport stamps. A week or two on the Costa del Sol. A fortnight of brisk work-outs in some hotel bedroom or other. Then back to this studious life of hers, books about Kultur and Philosophie, visits to Marks and Spencer, the odd curry in the evenings.

  He turned from the bed and crossed the room to the desk. On the wall over the desk was a calendar. He leafed back to January, finding a red circle around the 23rd. He looked at it, frowning. The GPO intercept had been logged on the 24th. On the 23rd, therefore, the letter had probably been posted. He examined the rest of the month. There was nothing. He went through February. February was empty. In March, though, the marks returned, small neat ticks beside the 22nd and the 24th. The 26th, for some reason, had earned itself a small red seagull and an exclamation mark. He paused for a moment. Then he looked down at the desk.

  The desk had three drawers all locked. He went back to the dressing table, remembering the keys. The smallest key fitted. In the middle drawer, he found a collection of old cheque-books with a rubber band around them. He extracted the top cheque-book. The last cheque had been written only three days ago, 2nd April. According to the stub, it had been made out to a travel agent. The sum involved was £65. He leafed back, curious, looking for 26th March. He found the date at once, on the previous cheque stub. The cheque, for £450, had been made out to Cruisaway Ltd. He checked the date on the calendar again, then made a note of the name of the company. There were no other cheques missing.

  He was about to replace the cheque-book in the drawer when he noticed the name on the unused cheques. It wasn’t Hippke at all. It was Weiss. He frowned. He looked at the other cheque-books. They were all in the name of Hippke. He hesitated a moment, then pocketed the Weiss chequebook, going quickly through the other two drawers. Neither gave him any more surprises, just supplies of paper clips, cartridges of ink, and a battered old stapler with “University Property” on the bottom.

  Ingle locked the drawers and looked at the kitten. The kitten was awake now, stretching out, licking the end of one paw, looking up at him from time to time, the invitation to a game. He lifted it carefully out of the tray and dropped it on the bed. He returned to the desk. The top sheet of typescript was warm from the heat of the kitten’s body. He glanced at it. It was in German. He began to shuffle quickly through the tray. More typescript, each page sequentially numbered, perfectly typed. He was about to abandon the search, nearly at the bottom, when he found what he’d come for. It was a photocopy from one of the new reduction machines. It showed an inside page from a newspaper. Half the page was devoted to a single article. The article was headlined “Unlucky Break”. Beside it was a grainy photograph of a woman on a horse.

  Ingle read the article carefully, letting the facts settle one by one. Buddy Little. Thirty-eight years old. Working diver. Jude Little. Thirty-four years old. Wife. Terrible accident. Neck broken. Body paralysed. Life ruined. Hunt for a cure. Talk of an operation. Need for a great deal of money. Ingle gazed at the article. Diver, he thought. Capt. Harrison, he thought. QEII, he thought.

  He bent quickly to the typewriter, inserted a sheet of paper, and typed through the entire keyboard. The intercept letter had probably been typed on the same machine. Later, he might need evidence. This would do.

  He was still typing when Kee appeared at the door. He was carrying a small pile of magazines. He was smiling. Ingle glanced up at him.

  “Yeah?” he said briefly.

  Kee tossed one of the magazines onto the desk beside the typewriter. It was a copy of Playgirl. “Take a look in there,” he said, “must be something about the American diet.”

  Ingle didn’t even smile. “Get the phone directory,” he said, still typing, “and the Yellow Pages.”

  Kee looked at him a moment, retrieved the magazine, and went downstairs again. When he came back, he was carrying the phone directory. “Can’t find the Yellow Pages,” he said.

  Ingle nodded, tearing the sheet o
f paper out of the typewriter and folding it into his pocket. The kitten jumped off the bed and made for one of Kee’s laces.

  “The name’s Little,” Ingle said, “try that first.”

  Kee began to thumb through the directory. “First name?”

  “B. For Buddy.”

  “You serious?”

  “I think so.”

  Kee bent to the columns of names and addresses. Then shook his head. “Only three Littles. None with a ‘B’.”

  “Any in the New Forest?”

  “No. Two in Southampton. One in Eastleigh.”

  “OK.” Ingle glanced at the article again. Jude’s maiden name wasn’t mentioned, but her riding stables were. “Fernleigh Stables,” he said. Kee began to rifle through the pages again. The kitten had teased out one of his laces. He found the number.

  “Ringwood 375664,” he said.

  The two men went downstairs, the kitten chasing their shadows along the hall. Ingle picked up the phone and dialled the number. While he was waiting for an answer, he nodded again at the directory.

  “Find the coastguard,” he said. “There’ll be a twenty-four hour number.” The Ringwood number answered. Ingle asked for Buddy Little. A man’s voice came back. Buddy was out for the night, he said. Be back sometime tomorrow. Ingle hesitated a moment. Then he bent to the phone again. “Where’s he gone?” he said.

  The voice laughed. “Haven’t a clue.”

  Ingle frowned. “Think,” he said, “it’s important.”

  There was a silence. Then the voice again, harder, more suspicious.

  “Who are you then?”

  “Police.”

  “Police?” A pause. “Is he OK?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “Oh …” The voice hesitated, then came back again, compliant, eager to help. “He mentioned Warsash. You might try there.”

  Ingle nodded, asking for a spelling, writing the name down on the pad by the phone. Then he resumed the conversation.

  “Stay where you are,” he said, “don’t go out. We may need you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr …?”

  “Reynolds.”

  Ingle hung up, making a note of the name, then looked briefly at Kee. Kee had already written down the coastguard number. Ingle rang it, introducing himself at once. Special Branch, he said. Metropolitan Division. Area Three. The coastguard grunted, and Ingle asked him about the QE2. Did he happen to know whether she was in port?

  “Negative,” the coastguard said.

  “Where is she?”

  “Florida.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My mother-in-law’s on board.”

  “Fine.”

  Ingle put the phone down again. The kitten was outside, running up and down the hall. Kee was squatting on the runner, making noises at it. Ingle picked up the phone directory for the last time. The QE2 was off the plot. Basing a Florida operation from here was inconceivable. He flicked through the directory. Under “C” he found what he was looking for. Cruisaway Ltd. His eyes followed the line of print, looking for the name that would clinch it. He began to smile. Kee glanced in through the door. The kitten was having another wash. “Where next?” he said.

  Ingle shut the directory. “Warsash,” he said. “Wherever the fuck that is.”

  Thompson lay in the wet grass overlooking the road, one hand on Miller’s arm. Against his better judgement, he was beginning to make some sense of the older man’s thinking. Thankfully, after Dublin, they weren’t going in blind. Contrary to appearances, there really did appear to be a plan.

  From Cahersiveen, after the briefing, they’d motored south, towards Waterville. En route, no warning, Miller had ordered him off the main road, down a rutted track, towards a derelict row of cottages, overlooking the sea. The second car, Camps and Venner, had followed. Then, in private this time, Miller had taken them briskly through the evening’s entertainments.

  Their first call was to be a remote cottage, out on the coast, near Rosnaveel. There, they would recruit a shy but active thirty-two-year-old called Niall Quinn, a fringe supporter of the movement, currently in the doghouse for failing to deliver on a post office job. The name and the information had come from a friendly source in the Irish police, the Garda. This source, the man they called the Badger, had supplied Miller with a number of pages of raw material about the current status of the movement in south-west Kerry. From a list of names, Miller had selected Quinn.

  Quinn, he said, had a car of his own. The car, an ancient Renault, they’d commandeer at gunpoint. The car was well known in the area. Everyone knew that Quinn owned it. When they drove inland, therefore, up through Waterville and into the mountains, no one would suspect that the Renault was remotely threatening. Miller had paused here, waiting for the obvious question. Camps had voiced it, squatting on a pile of masonry, out of the wind, his face invisible in the darkness.

  “What about Quinn?” he said. “What do we do with him?”

  Miller had smiled, a gesture of congratulation, explaining that Quinn would be driving their lead car, the one that Scullen was expecting, the one the old man in the undertaker’s would doubtless have confirmed. Quinn would be at the wheel, his co-operation assured by a kilo of Semtex and a radio detonator under the seat. Ignore our instructions, Miller would tell him, and you’re a dead man.

  And so it had been. They’d driven down to Quinn’s cottage, and covered the rear exits and knocked at the door, and stood in the drizzle while his sheepdog sniffed them each in turn. When he’d finally opened up, they’d stepped politely inside, and explained the plot, and torn out his telephone, and handed him the keys to the Capri.

  Ten minutes later, in a loose convoy, Quinn in the lead, they’d driven up through Waterville, a dark, wet night, and taken the road inland to Lissnatinnig Bridge. Thompson, coaxing a steady 35 mph from Quinn’s Renault, keeping the Capri’s tail-lights in sight, had been impressed – yes – but surprised too. He’d never known Miller ask for help before. Acquiring the Kerry intelligence had been a masterstroke.

  “Difficult?” he’d murmured, the road unwinding steadily upwards, no sign yet of the expected ambush.

  Miller, knowing exactly what lay behind the question, had shaken his head. “No,” he’d said. “More pride than anything else.”

  “Whose pride?”

  “Mine.”

  They’d been on the Lissnatinnig road for eighteen minutes when Scullen sprung the trap. The Capri had slowed for a series of tight bends, the mountains falling sheer to the roadside, the car hemmed in by the geography of the place. Two hundred yards back, Thompson had seen the first explosion, probably a planted charge, the rocky flank of the mountain jumping out of the darkness for a split second, illuminated by the blast. The Capri had been blown sideways, across the road, its nearside wing folding as it hit the rock. There’d been a lot of smoke, and the first lick of flame from the bonnet of the Capri, and Thompson had pulled the Renault into the side of the road, dousing the lights, and crouching behind the wheel, waiting for Miller. The older man had done nothing for at least half a minute, just watched the rifle fire pouring down from the mountain, stitching the Capri with holes, waiting for the one man who always wanted to administer the coup de grâce, the Volunteers’ volunteer. Finally he appeared, a tall lank figure in a balaclava and a camouflage smock. He had an automatic in one hand. He ran to the car. He paused beside the driver’s door, peering in, and then Miller blew him to pieces, pressing the button on the transmitter, watching the roof of the Capri disappearing into the darkness, hearing the endless after-tinkle of glass, falling from the rocks, back onto the road.

  Thompson grinned, out of the car now, scrambling up the side of the mountain, following Miller. On the other side of the road, he could clearly see Camps and Venner, two shapes in the darkness, making off to the left, targeting one of the other fire positions. Miller’s orders at the second briefing had been quite specific. No prisoners, he’d
said. Only bodies left in the wet, victims of yet another of Kerry’s interminable Republican feuds.

  Now, half an hour later, Miller was getting impatient. Since the explosion, nothing had happened. No one else had appeared in the road. The Capri was still down there, and the remains of the two bodies. Off to the left, a hundred yards away, Camps and Venner were listening out on the radio. Of the other gunmen – at least half a dozen judging by the muzzle flashes – there was no sign.

  Miller stirred again, glancing back at Thompson. Their eyes were used to the darkness now. The rain had stopped and there was a thin, intermittent moonlight through a broken layer of cloud. Miller gestured up the mountain, ordering Thompson into a flanking attack, the wide high sweep that would take them in the rear.

  “Get as close as you can,” he said. “One if they’re there. Two if they’re not.”

  Thompson confirmed the order, patting the tiny belt-slung radio wired to the throat mike. The radio had a system that enabled the sender to transmit Morse code. On occasions, like now, it was simpler than speech and a good deal safer. He cradled his Armalite and disappeared into the darkness.

  Miller waited for perhaps ten minutes. It started to rain again. Then he began to advance, flat on his belly, the big Browning out in front of him, his elbows and forearms levering his body over the patches of level ground. When the level ground ended, and he was out on the mountainside again, he picked his way forward at the half-crouch, making sure of each footfall, testing it for the loose rock and scree that could tumble away into the darkness and give him away. Once, he thought he saw a movement ahead in the darkness, and he froze, his body pressed against the wet rock. A hundred feet below him, at a new angle, he could see the wreckage of the white Capri. From here there was a perfect field of fire. He might be only yards away from their position.