Stand By, Stand By

by Ryan, Chris

  ‘Fine. Got it.’

  ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not a lot. But I’ll work it out. Thanks anyway.’

  In the morning I phoned Morrison on his direct line to ask if I could go and see him.

  ‘You got my note, then?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘D’you know a pub called the Old Bell, out on the Comber road?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘Fine. It’s on your right going out. I’ll meet you there at seven-thirty tonight.’

  Settled in a quiet corner, the chief could have been any old businessman having a pint on his way home after work. But what he had to say related to business far beyond most ordinary people. Basically, he was trying to warn me not to tangle with Farrell, because of the sheer nastiness of the character.

  ‘You’d be the better for leaving him alone,’ he said, ‘For instance, when two harmless young lads were caught trying to nick his car for joyriding, he had them brought to him, and rather than crippling them in the traditional way, using an electric drill, he had them held down while he himself used a hand drill to perforate their kneecaps. So pleased was he with this arbitrary sentence that he went straight out and gave himself a lavish dinner.’

  Morrison took a swig from his pint of stout and went on in his quiet, tired voice, ‘And did you hear about the young woman they battered to death this time last year? You remember that one? No? Well, Farrell thought she was a Protestant informer, or working for us. So they grabbed her. Of course she couldn’t tell them anything, because she didn’t know anything. She was perfectly innocent, not involved at all. First she was raped, then they took her out behind a pub and beat her to a pulp with hammers. When they found they couldn’t kill her by stamping on her, they finished her off by hurling a breeze-block down on her head. That’s Farrell for you. There’s nothing subtle about IRA torture; it’s just the most basic and brutal thuggery.’

  He went on to say that Farrell was one of the IRA’s chief extortionists, and that he raised many thousands of pounds a year from running protection rackets. ‘He’ll go to the manager of a big building site and say, “Look, if you don’t want your machinery to go missing, or you don’t want your walls to fall down, it’ll cost you a couple of hundred a week.” Security firms – that’s another racket. The IRA charge for seven or eight men to guard a factory, when in fact there are only two working. The irony is that, with the IRA on the scene, the place isn’t going to get raided anyway; one thing thieves can do without is getting kneecapped.

  ‘The same thing with drug-dealers. The PIRA limit the number who are allowed to operate, either on the streets or in clubs, and they take a percentage of their profits.’

  Morrison stopped, giving me a steady look. ‘Your man Farrell has his finger in every fecking pie – and if anyone else tries to get a hand in, he doesn’t hesitate to cut it off.’

  SEVEN

  In the morning I happened to see Pink Mike crossing the warehouse on his way back from the bog. He was looking pleased with himself, as if he’d had a monumental shit. His hair was on the mend, too – it had gone a kind of rich auburn.

  ‘Hey,’ I called, ‘got a minute?’

  ‘Sure. What is it?’

  ‘Have you heard of a player called Declan Farrell?’

  ‘Christ, have I!’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘It’s like asking if I’ve heard of the Pope. He’s one of the big bastards.’

  ‘Really! D’you have any info about him?’

  ‘There’s a bloody great file that lists all his villainies. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything about him – what he looks like, where he hangs out.’

  ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘I heard someone talking about him. He sounds a vicious sod.’

  ‘He is. I’ll sort you out something. Where will you be?’

  ‘I’m on standby, so unless something breaks I’ll be around the warehouse. I’m going to the gym now for an hour. Then I’ll be in my cabin.’

  ‘I’ll be over, then.’

  Never had the weights seemed lighter. I suppose it was the flow of adrenalin that pepped me up, but I found myself going through the lifts with incredible ease. It was my day for back and chest. Before the injury to my arm I’d been a member of the 220 Club, bench-pressing four big 55-lb Olympic discs on the bar – and even though that was no big deal in real weight-lifting terms, I’d only recently climbed back to it. Some days I still found it a strain, but that morning an hour flew past. Then I did twenty minutes on one of the stationary bikes, and after a shower and a dhobi session in the laundromat, I was bouncing around the cabin when Mike reappeared.

  Under one arm he was carrying a rolled-up towel, out of which he produced a big brown envelope. ‘For Christ’s sake be careful,’ he said, handing it over. ‘This stuff is highly classified. It’s not supposed to leave our ops room. The most up-to-date sheet is missing, because Box have borrowed it, but everything else is there. I’ll come back for it after lunch.’

  With him gone, I closed the door and pushed a wedge under the inside, silently praying that we didn’t get a call-out in the next hour. Then I opened the envelope.

  The first things I saw were two photographs, mug-shots, taken with a telephoto lens but well focused – good, clear pictures. I stared at them in consternation. I’d been seeing Gary Player in my mind so clearly that I had his likeness firmly in my head – and this wasn’t him. It took me a few moments to sweep away the figment of my imagination and concentrate on reality.

  In place of the scruffy, tousled, sandy-haired fellow I’d invented for myself, here was someone dark and definitely good-looking, in his thirties. Far from having thuggish, Neanderthal features, the face was rather distinguished: high forehead, thick eyebrows, dark hair well cut and neatly brushed back, and a strong, square jaw. The eyes were dark as well, and, even in those unflattering photos, lively. At some stage the nose had been broken and left with a slight flattening at the bridge, but that only added to the appeal of the face.

  If the man’s appearance disconcerted me, the notes on his career and character gave me still more of a shock.

  TERRORIST SUSPECT NO. 608

  Name:

  FARRELL, Declan Ambrose

  Date of Birth:

  1958

  Place:

  Fruithill Park, Andersonstown Road, Belfast.

  Education:

  Christian Brothers’ School, Glen Road, Belfast. 8 0 levels. 3 A levels B B B. Queen’s University Belfast. 2nd Class degree, Mechanical Engineering, 1979. Rugby, trial for University XV. Wing forward.

  Religion:

  Catholic.

  Height:

  6’ 2”

  Build:

  Broad shoulders, good figure.

  Appearance:

  Tends to dress well. Wears suits.

  Weight:

  210 lbs approx.

  Distinguishing Features:

  Nose broken while boxing as boy. Flattening at bridge. Limps slightly on left foot as a result of car accident.

  Politics:

  Fanatical nationalist.

  Cover Occupations:

  Has sometimes posed as Consulting Engineer.

  Finances:

  No special sources known.

  Aliases:

  Seamus Malone. Has also used the name Fearn.

  I had to read these details several times to make them sink in. No moron, this. On the contrary, he was far better educated than me, with three A levels and a university degree. Bigger, too – an inch taller, and a lot heavier. A physical sort of guy, he’d played rugger almost at university standard. A boxer as well. A big, strong fellow, and aggressive by the sound of it. Sure enough, the accompanying notes described him as ‘aggressive, assertive, likes to throw his weight about. In his youth, much given to fighting in public.’ (In the margin somebody had added in pencil, ‘Still likes a fight. The Black Barrel brawl, 1988’.
) He was said to have a sadistic streak, and to favour torturing prisoners. Once, it was reputed, he had tied an enemy up and cut him to pieces with a chain-saw. At home he kept dogs, generally big ones – Rottweilers, Rhodesian Ridge-backs or Pit Bulls.

  His career in terrorism was poorly charted, because he had always been too clever to be caught, or even to leave clear traces of his activity. His involvement in incidents was usually recorded as ‘suspected’ rather than ‘confirmed’. For a time he had been active around South Armagh, near the Border, and it seemed that he preferred rural operations to those in towns. But later he had concentrated on Belfast, and now, at the latest entry on the sheets, he was down as the adjutant of the PIRA’s West Belfast Brigade. Although the dossier listed several specific incidents which he was thought to have orchestrated, it did not mention the Queensfield bomb; this, I assumed, was because the incident had taken place after my last sheet had run out, and it would appear on the page which Mike had said was missing. I didn’t stop to think why Box – our name for MI5 – should have borrowed it. I just assumed they were investigating some aspect of Farrell’s career.

  Alongside the heading ‘Address’, several lines had been entered and crossed out. Evidently he had moved around a good deal. The latest entry said simply, ‘Ballyconvil’. It looked as though that was where he had last been heard of. Altogether, he seemed to be in the same category as many IRA suspects: the authorities knew who he was, and where he was, but so far hadn’t been able to pin anything major on him. I remembered Chief Superintendent Morrison saying, ‘We know who the feckers are, so we do – if only we could just go and get them.’

  Ballyconvil was the only name on any of the sheets that I needed to remember. I made a note of it on a slip of paper, and sat staring at the photograph until the face had burned into my mind. Yes – on more thorough inspection, the mouth was thin and cruel. The eyes could well be the same. But why in hell had a man of such intelligence chosen to become a scumbag? What had turned him into a terrorist?

  My study of the dossier left me feeling personally threatened. Inadvertently, I had chosen to take on a hell of an opponent. Farrell sounded a powerful man in all senses of the word. Yet in a way all his attributes only strengthened my feeling of enmity. Before I’d known anything about him I’d hated him. Now I felt jealous of him, too. It was a useful combination.

  I got the file back to Mike without incident, and went straight to the big gazetteer in our ops room. It gave several Ballyconvils, but there was one which stood out from all others as the most likely: a village on the back of the hills just to the north of West Belfast. From there anyone could drop on to the motorway, and in less than ten minutes be safe in the Republican fastnesses of the Falls or the Ardoyne.

  Before I could do any more research, another operation came up. Once again, through a tout, the Det got wind of an attempt to shoot a prominent Unionist, this one a farmer who served as a part-time volunteer in the Ulster Defence Force. Like Quinlan, he had openly defied the PIRA for years, and lived in his isolated farmhouse with very little security. Now, when the tip-off came, it was clear that he urgently needed a team of babysitters.

  At the same time, we got word that the weapons for the shoot would be deposited in a transit hide some ten kilometres from the target. The hide was in an old barn, part of a property that had been on the market for a year or more. Because we didn’t have a precise date or time for the shoot, the head-shed decided to put an OP on the barn, so that we could keep an eye on what was happening, and warn the babysitters when the villains were on their way. There was also the chance that we might catch them in possession of weapons when they returned from their hit.

  Guess who was detailed to man the OP? Yours truly. It didn’t worry me, because I enjoy that sort of job. What did worry me a bit was when I heard that I’d got to take a Det guy in with me, because the head-shed wanted some experienced observer to get a good look at this particular bunch of terrorists, to see if he could identify any of them. Some of the Det boys could be real tossers when it came to any sort of hardship, so when I learnt that my companion was to be Mike Grigson I was relieved. Having been in the Paras, he knew how to carry on in an OP, and could look after himself.

  At the preliminary briefing, the boss detailed Pat Martin and myself to carry out a preliminary recce of the place. It turned out that the property consisted of a semi-derelict cottage as well as the barn, and ran to some six acres. It was out in the hills south-west of the city, and as we pored over the map on the ops room table, I found myself thinking that a shitehawk could fly over the mountains from there to Ballyconvil in five minutes or less.

  ‘One pass only,’ the boss was saying. ‘There’s so little traffic down that road it’s not worth risking a second look. There could easily be eyes on. Just a straight drive past. Don’t even slow down.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘What do we know about the house?’

  ‘It’s up for sale. The agents say it’s empty, but we’re not sure. Somebody could be using it.’

  ‘If we want to do a thorough recce,’ said Pat, ‘why doesn’t one of us put on a suit and pose as a potential buyer? Get the keys from the agents and go along all pukka?’

  ‘Good suggestion,’ said the boss, ‘but again, it’s not worth the risk. If there is a player inside, he’ll probably have a video lined up on the entrance. There’s iron gates across the approach, secured with a padlock and chain. While you’re tinkering with that they’ll get a nice film of you, from which they can take mug-shots for their files.’

  ‘Normal OP, then,’ I said. ‘What’s this? Looks like a wall or hedge round the farmyard.’ I pointed to a faint mark on the 1:25,000 map, a dotted line which seemed to define the property. ‘It could be a ditch as well. The best thing might be to dig in out in the field – here – and then to move in close at night. Where’s the hide supposed to be?’

  The boss consulted a note. ‘As you face the barn, in the right-hand back corner. A 45-gallon polythene water-butt has been dug into the ground, top flush with the floor, and covered with straw.’

  ‘So, to get a view of anyone putting a weapon into it, or taking one out, we’ll need to be about . . . here.’ I picked a spot in the hedge or ditch that looked as though it should give a view into the barn.

  ‘That’s right.’ The boss straightened up with a muttered curse. He’d hurt his back parachuting a few months before, and it was still giving him gyp. ‘You’d be very close to the action there – have to take it easy. Well, there’s not much more we can tell from the map. You might as well be on your way.’

  ‘Fine. We should be back by four.’

  Operation Deadlock was under way. Pat and I took the scruffiest, least remarkable of the ops cars, a green Marina covered with dust and grime, and set off by a roundabout route for the high country to the south-west. Our target, Ballyduff, had been advertised by the selling agents as ‘in need of refurbishment’. It sounded just the sort of place that players would use as a transit hide: well isolated and out in the country, yet only twenty minutes from the IRA heartlands of West Belfast.

  Pat drove while I read the map. ‘Hang a left here,’ I said as we came over a shallow crest. ‘Then it’s straight down.’

  Up there on the hills the farmland was rough as rough could be. The hairy-looking fields sprouted clumps of rushes, and rocks poked up through the coarse grass. In the depths of winter the whole landscape was dun-coloured and dead-looking. Rusty barbed-wire fences sagged, and in the hedgerows a few stunted trees were all bent in the same direction by the prevailing west wind. Puddles of water glistened in every depression of that upland bog. It was the exact equivalent of West Belfast in rural terms – scruffy, clapped out, a shit-heap, ideally matched to the mentality and habits of the PIRA.

  ‘Glad I’m not a bloody cow up here,’ said Pat.

  ‘You’d need to be able to live on pure grot. Look out, now – the house’ll be down here on our right.’

  We were on a minor road, mar
ked yellow on the map, which ran gently downhill. Though straight as a ruler, it wouldn’t be any use for overtaking in a chase because it was about seven feet wide, with ditches on either side.

  ‘You’d never get past,’ said Pat, reading my thoughts.

  ‘Not a chance. Here we are, now. Ease off a touch, but keep rolling.’

  For moments like this, when there wasn’t much time, I had trained myself to concentrate intently, so that my mind took a series of snapshots. Now in quick succession I got the following: along the back of the property, a line of bare trees; a long, low, whitewashed bungalow facing away from us, downhill; rusting corrugated iron roof, no windows in the back; beyond it, farther from the road and to our right, a sizeable barn, set at right-angles to the house, corrugated iron walls as well as roof; barn thirty metres from the far end of cottage; front of cottage decrepit, some window panes broken and boarded; pale blue door, same colour as wrought-iron entrance gates; gates chained together – old chain, but shiny new padlock; grounds gone to seed.

  Ten metres out from the front of house, and parallel to it, a line of ash trees ran along an overgrown ditch – the feature I’d picked out on the map. Outside the ditch, rough pasture sloped down into the distance. Maybe there was a stream across the bottom.

  In four or five seconds we were past.

  ‘Notice anything particular?’ I asked.

  ‘Brand-new padlock. I bet they’ve put it on there until they’ve done the job.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘No mains electricity.’

  ‘I don’t reckon it’s got mains water, either. See that hand-pump outside the door?’

  ‘Yep. Good place for a CTR, that ditch under the trees.’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll come in up that field.’

  ‘The front door of the house wasn’t properly shut,’ Pat added. ‘I reckon someone’s been using it.’ Then he mimicked a la-di-da estate agent’s voice as he quoted derisively, ‘ “In need of refurbishment”. I should fucking well think so! The place’d fall down if you farted.’