The Double Tap (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  The pub was just off the Falls Road, a red brick building with metal shutters over the window and an orange, white and green tricolour flag hanging over the front door. A thickset man in a brown raincoat stood by the door, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes ever watchful.

  ‘Evening, Danny,’ said Lynch.

  ‘How’s yerself, Dermott?’ asked the man.

  ‘Getting by. Busy tonight?’

  ‘Aye, there’s a fair crowd in.’ He pushed open the metal door and Lynch heard the sound of a fiddle being played with more enthusiasm than ability.

  Lynch grimaced. ‘That should soon clear them out,’ he said, and the doorman laughed.

  Several heads turned as Lynch made his way to the bar. In the far corner the fiddler, a bearded man in his sixties, wearing a plaid shirt and baggy cotton trousers, was sawing away on his fiddle with gusto. Behind him was an anorexically-thin blonde girl with an accordion and a middle-aged man with a tin whistle, though they sat with their instruments in their laps as they watched the old man perform.

  Two men in donkey jackets moved apart to allow Lynch to the bar. The barman came over immediately and greeted him by name. There were few bars in the Falls area where Dermott Lynch wasn’t known and respected. He ordered a Guinness and scanned the bar for familiar faces as he waited for it to be poured. A grey-haired old man in a sheepskin jacket with a tired-looking shaggy-haired mongrel sitting at his feet nodded a silent greeting and Lynch nodded back. A group of teenagers fell quiet as Lynch’s gaze passed over them. Lynch spotted one of the lads who’d kept an eye on the Granada while he’d done the kneecapping, but he made no sign of recognising him.

  The fiddler sat down to scattered applause, then the blonde girl began to play her accordion, nodding her head backwards and forwards as she concentrated, her lips pursed. The barman placed the pint of Guinness in front of Lynch and took his money. Lynch drank deeply and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Pat O’Riordan appeared at his elbow. ‘You looked like you enjoyed that, all right, Dermott.’

  Lynch grinned and winked at O’Riordan. ‘You’ll be taking a pint yourself?’

  O’Riordan watched the blonde girl play her accordion. ‘She’s a fine looking girl, sure enough.’

  ‘Bit stringy for me,’ said Lynch as he caught the barman’s eye and pointed to his glass, indicating that he wanted another Guinness for O’Riordan. O’Riordan was married with four young children and Lynch knew he was devoted to his family, but he liked to pretend that he had a roving eye. O’Riordan’s Guinness arrived and he sipped it appreciatively. The fiddler and the pipe-player joined the accordion player in a rebel song that had several of the drinkers tapping their feet and singing along. The two men listened to the music for a while, enjoying the atmosphere of the pub, the well-being that came from knowing that they were among friends. Lynch drained his glass and ordered two more drinks. While they waited for the Guinness to settle, O’Riordan slipped Lynch a piece of paper. ‘That’s your man,’ said O’Riordan. ‘He’s based at Dublin Airport. His brother is in the Kesh doing a five-stretch, he’s been told to expect a visit from you.’

  There were two telephone numbers on the piece of paper, a home number and one at the man’s place of work. ‘I’ll drive down tomorrow morning,’ said Lynch.

  The rebel song came to an end amid rapturous applause and stamping of feet. ‘Not tomorrow you won’t,’ said O’Riordan. ‘There’s a wee job McCormack wants you to do for him.’

  Lynch sighed. ‘Not another capping?’

  O’Riordan shook his head. ‘Bigger, Dermott. Much bigger.’

  Mike Cramer sat on the bed, his back against the wall. On his lap lay the file on the first killing which had been attributed to the assassin. It had taken place in Miami, almost exactly two years earlier. A Colombian drugs baron had been sitting in a nightclub with his two seventeen-year-old girlfriends, sniffing cocaine and drinking champagne. Three bodyguards had been sitting at an adjacent table. The file contained photographs of the aftermath: the three bodyguards sprawled on the purple carpet, their guns still in their holsters, the drugs baron still sitting upright, a third eye in the middle of his forehead, blood all over his shirt.

  More than two hundred people had been in the nightclub and there were almost as many versions of what had happened. Even the drug dealer’s blondes differed on the colours of the Hawaiian shirt the assassin was wearing and the type of gun he was carrying. One of the girls thought it was an automatic, the other said it was a .357 Magnum. Cramer figured that their descriptions were useless. He doubted if either of the girls knew anything about guns, and in a dark nightclub with everyone screaming and panicking there was little chance of them being able to describe the weapon accurately.

  The killer had been on the dancefloor, dancing alone, and he’d walked towards the bar, waiting until he was right next to the table where the bodyguards were sitting before pulling his gun out. Leaving aside what the girls had said, Cramer reckoned that it would have been a small pistol, something that could easily be concealed. According to the Medical Examiner’s report it had been a 9mm calibre, but that only narrowed down the number of possibilities, it didn’t even come close to identifying the weapon.

  Using a 9mm for the hit made sense, it was standard issue to anti-terrorist groups around the world. Its main drawback was its tendency to go right through the target. Unlike a .22, which would spin and tumble, ripping through internal organs and blood vessels, a 9mm would pass through a human body unless it struck bone, leading to potential problems in hostage situations. The SAS used Splat frangible rounds, bullets made of a mixture of polymer and non-lead metal which were guaranteed to break up on impact, but which were also capable of passing through cover first. The killer had used a form of accelerated energy transfer rounds with plastic cores, which would spin on contact, mimicking the action and massive tissue damage of a .22. Cramer wasn’t sure why the killer had bothered – the nature of the bullet made little difference in a point-blank shot to the face.

  In all, the assassin had fired nine shots. One each for the three bodyguards, two for the drugs dealer, then two more into the chest of one of the bodyguards who’d been trying to pull his own gun out despite being shot in the throat. On the way out of the nightclub the assassin had been challenged by one of the tuxedoed doormen and he’d shot him twice. Nine bullets. Definitely not a revolver.

  Many 9mm handguns held eight or nine in the clip, but Cramer doubted if the killer would have gone into a place as crowded as the nightclub and fired off all his shots. He’d have wanted the security of something in reserve. A second clip wasn’t out of the question, but changing clips would take time and he’d be vulnerable during the changeover. Cramer’s weapon of choice would have been the Browning Hi-Power, effective up to forty feet and with thirteen rounds in the magazine, but he figured the killer had used something like a SIG-Sauer P226, which held fifteen cartridges. It was only a guess because he knew there were literally dozens of other possibilities: Heckler & Koch of Germany made a thirteen-shot 9mm handgun, the P7A13; the French had the MAB P15 with a fifteen-shot magazine; the Italians had the Beretta Model 92 series with magazines ranging from eight to fifteen; the Czechs had the fifteen-shot CZ 9mm Model 75; the Austrians had the Glock, made from lightweight polymer and available with fifteen, seventeen and nineteen round magazines. Most European countries had factories churning out large capacity 9mm handguns, and tens of thousands found their way to the States, legally or otherwise.

  Cramer massaged the bridge of his nose and blinked his eyes. Even if the killer had a favourite weapon, and even if he could identify it, the knowledge wouldn’t do him any good. By the time Cramer was staring down the barrel of whatever gun it was the killer was using, it would be too late. Bang. One bullet in the face. Bang. The second in the heart. Then nothing but darkness.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door. ‘Come in, Mrs Elliott,’ he said, closing the file and dropping it onto the bed. He recognised her knock, two
taps in quick succession, like the double tap in the Killing House.

  Mrs Elliott carried a tray into the room and put it down on a chair by the bed. ‘A snack for you, Mr Cramer,’ she said. ‘Hot milk and ham sandwiches.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Elliott. You shouldn’t have bothered.’ Most of the food she brought up to his room ended up being flushed down the toilet, though he usually drank the milk. Her glance barely passed over the bottle of Famous Grouse but Cramer could sense her disapproval.

  ‘It’s no bother, Mr Cramer,’ she said, and disappeared out of the door, her dress cracking like a sail in the wind.

  Cramer poured a double measure of whisky into the milk and sipped it as he picked up the file again. Cramer wondered what significance there was in the fact that the Miami assassination had been the first. The only links between all the killings in the files that Cramer had read were the handgun and the placing of the two shots. The Miami assassination had been quick and efficient, as if the killer knew exactly what he was doing. Cramer wondered if he’d actually killed before, but using a different method so that the deaths hadn’t been included in the investigation. The killing seemed too professional to have been a first. Perhaps he’d killed in many different ways before focusing on his preferred method?

  There was also the question of how the killer had been hired in the first place. Becoming a contract killer wasn’t like setting out to be a doctor or an accountant – you couldn’t simply move into an office and put a sign on your door. Contract killers had to have a track record, they had to prove that they could kill and get away with it, and they had to prove that they could be trusted. Cramer had heard of former soldiers and mercenaries who’d become contract killers, but generally such assassins were Mob-trained, career criminals who had served their apprenticeships before becoming fully-fledged killers. Killers didn’t just appear from nowhere. There were skills to be acquired, techniques to be mastered. Cramer knew, because he was a killer, and he’d been trained by the best.

  He dropped the file on the floor and picked up the next one. It was several times thicker than the Miami file, and as Cramer flicked through it, he soon realised why. The victim had been a British Member of Parliament, a Scot earmarked for a ministerial post who had been a close friend of the Prime Minister. Cramer vaguely remembered reading about the assassination, but at the time he’d been more concerned about the pain in his guts and the grim faces of the Spanish doctors. He scanned the police reports. The killer had been dressed as a motorcycle cop and had flagged down the MP’s official Rover as it drove away from a newly-opened semiconductor plant. The killer had calmly waited for the driver to wind down his window, then he’d shot the MP’s minder in the shoulder and killed the MP with two shots, one to the face, one to the heart. The descriptions provided by the injured bodyguard and the driver were worse than useless – the killer had kept his full-face helmet on, the tinted visor down, and he’d been wearing black leather gloves. Medium height, medium build.

  Strathclyde Police had started a preliminary investigation but a team of Special Branch officers were sent up from the Metropolitan Police to take over. Despite the heavyweights, the investigation stalled. A burnt-out motorcycle was discovered in a field outside Carlisle a few days later, but it provided no forensic evidence.

  Cramer read a memo from Special Branch to the Security Service requesting possible motives for the assassination and the reply, sent two days later, was noncommittal. The MP was married with two teenage children, had no known sexual liaisons outside the marriage, was a lawyer by profession and had no controversial business interests.

  The Security Service did however point out that the MP had helped organise a campaign to stop an American oil company developing two huge offshore oilfields for Iran. The company had been about to sign the billion-dollar contract when the MP raised the matter in the House of Commons. The British had been pressing the Russian Government not to supply the Iranians with nuclear reactors, and the MP made a stirring speech complaining that it was unfair to ask the Russians to stop trading with Iran at a time when the Americans were about to help the country develop its oil resources. The State Department stepped in and the deal was blocked. ‘It is possible,’ the Security Service memo concluded, ‘that the assassination was revenge for the blocked contract.’ Cramer smiled thinly. The memo didn’t say whether the Iranians or the oil company might have paid for the hit. The way big business operated these days, it could have been either.

  There was a sheaf of correspondence between Special Branch and the FBI, exchanging information on hired assassins who might be prepared to kill such a high-profile target, but it was clear that the investigation was going nowhere. A memo from Special Branch to the Prime Minister’s office some three months after the killing suggested as much. The Prime Minister hadn’t replied to the Special Branch memo; instead he had written a seven word memo to the Colonel. ‘Immediate action required. Report directly to me.’ The unsigned memo explained something that had been troubling Cramer ever since he had started working his way through the stack of files. Cramer had wondered why the Colonel and the SAS should be leading the hunt for a paid assassin, especially one who appeared to be most active in the United States. Now the answer was clear; it wasn’t just to prevent further killings. The Prime Minister had taken it personally. He wanted revenge for a dead friend.

  The mist came rolling off the hills around Crossmaglen, a cold, damp fog that chilled Lynch to the bone. He shivered and looked over at O’Riordan. ‘Nice day for it,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t suppose a city boy like you gets up before dawn much,’ said O’Riordan. He was wearing a green waterproof jacket, a floppy tweed hat and green Wellington boots. Had it not been for the Kalashnikov he was cradling in his arms, he would have looked every inch the gentleman farmer.

  ‘Forecast was for sun,’ said Lynch, rubbing his hands together for warmth.

  O’Riordan pulled a face. ‘You can’t forecast the weather here,’ he said. ‘It changes from one minute to the next. You should have worn a waterproof jacket, right enough.’

  ‘Yeah, now you tell me.’ Lynch had put on a black leather jacket with a sheepskin collar which was already wet through, and blue denim jeans which were soaking up the damp like a sponge. Beads of dew speckled his beard and moustache, and water trickled down the back of his neck in rivulets.

  The two men stood by O’Riordan’s Landrover which they’d parked under a chestnut tree, but it provided little in the way of shelter, as the moisture was all around them like a shroud. Lynch looked at his wristwatch. It was just before five. O’Riordan was right, he rarely got out of bed before ten and he disliked mornings, with a vengeance.

  Davie and Paulie Quinn jumped down from the back of a mud-splattered truck a short distance away, then reached inside and pulled out large spades.

  ‘Think we should help them?’ asked O’Riordan.

  Lynch grinned. ‘The exercise will do them good,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t you tell them to bring gloves? They’ll have blisters the size of golfballs by the time they’ve finished.’

  ‘Slipped my mind,’ said Lynch. He sat down on the bumper of O’Riordan’s Landrover and groaned. ‘God, I hate mornings,’ he said.

  Davie walked over, his spade over his shoulder. ‘Okay?’ he asked cheerfully.

  O’Riordan stood with his back to the tree and counted off twenty paces. He raked his heel through the damp earth. ‘Here there be treasure, me hearties,’ he growled.

  ‘How deep is it?’ asked Paulie as he joined his brother.

  ‘Six feet. Maybe a bit more. Put your backs into it, boys. We haven’t got all day.’

  As the brothers began to dig, O’Riordan went back to Lynch. Lynch looked at his wristwatch again.

  ‘We’ll be okay,’ said O’Riordan. ‘Half an hour, then fifteen minutes to load up, fifteen minutes to refill the hole. We’ll be away in an hour.’

  ‘I just don’t like being exposed, that’s all.’ He squi
nted up at the reddening sky. Birds were already starting to greet the approaching dawn.

  O’Riordan leant his assault rifle against the vehicle and ducked his head through the driver’s side window. He took out a Thermos flask. ‘Coffee?’

  Lynch nodded and O’Riordan poured steaming black coffee into two plastic mugs. Paulie Quinn looked over at them but O’Riordan nodded at the hole. ‘Keep digging, son.’

  Mike Cramer lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He was thinking about death. His own death. Cramer wasn’t scared of dying. The act was usually less painful and stressful than what led up to it. Death could often be a welcome release, an escape from pain, a way out. His right hand stroked the raised scar across his stomach as he remembered how he’d been so sure that he was dying as he lay on the floor of the Lynx helicopter, his trousers soaked with blood, his entrails in his hands.

  It had taken maybe twenty minutes for the chopper to reach the hospital in Belfast and he’d been conscious for every second. Two troopers had tried to stem the bleeding but they hadn’t known what to do about his guts, other than to cover the wound with a field dressing. There had been surprisingly little pain, and that had been why Cramer was so sure that he was dying.

  He closed his eyes and shuddered as he remembered how Mick Newmarch had died. Death for Mick hadn’t been easy, but then Mary Hennessy hadn’t intended it to be. She’d used bolt-cutters on his fingers and a red-hot poker to cauterise the wounds so that he wouldn’t bleed to death. She’d tortured him for hours like a cat toying with a mouse, then she’d castrated him and watched him bleed to death. It had been Cramer’s turn then, his turn to be tied to the kitchen table in the isolated farmhouse, to be interrogated while armed IRA men stood outside. He remembered how she’d scowled as she’d heard the men shout that they had to go, that the SAS were on their way, and he remembered the way she’d smiled as she’d shown him the knife, letting it glint under the fluorescent lights before stabbing him in the stomach and cutting him wide open. ‘Die, you bastard,’ she’d whispered as the blood had flowed, then she’d left without a backward look. But Cramer hadn’t died. The troopers had bundled him into the chopper and sat with him, urging him to stay conscious as they flew to the city, then the doctors had put him back together again, patched him up as best they could. Six months later he’d left the regiment. A booze-up in the Paludrine Club – the SAS bar at the Stirling Lines barracks in Hereford – a couple of paragraphs in Mars and Minerva, the regimental magazine, and back to Civvy Street. Yesterday’s man.