The Janus Web
by
Ron Duffy
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Ron Duffy on Smashwords
The Janus Web
Copyright © 2012 by Ron Duffy
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
NOTE
In writing this novel the author has used information that was not made public until 1990 and later; that is, decades after the events described in the novel. See Addendum at the end of the book, but only after you have finished reading it.
PROLOGUE
The van whipped along narrow, twisting lanes in a starless dark as black and solid as tar. Then a red light swung in the pitch blackness ahead.
‘What the fuck’s that?’ The driver started to slow down.
‘It’s a road block,’ his companion said, unnecessarily. ‘Watch your language and watch your attitude. There are British soldiers up there.’
‘Fuck the British soldiers. Why here and why tonight?’
‘They’re like vermin, Jimmy. They appear anywhere any time. And you can’t control them.’
‘The guns, for fuck sake.’
‘Shut your face. That mouth and that temper of yours’ll get us into trouble. Take a downer. We’re all right. They’ve never found anything before.’
‘There’s something fucking fishy about this, Dermot,’ Jimmy said in a muted voice. ‘You don’t get road blocks on this road.’
‘You get them anywhere, for Christ’s sake. You know that. Now shut up and say nothing.’
‘Fuck this,’ said Jimmy. ‘I don’t like it. They’re fucking UVF bastards, not UDR. Let’s get out of here.’ He switched the headlights on and slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator.
‘Jimmy, for Christ’s sake,’ Dermot shouted. ‘What the hell’s got into you? They’re Brits. There’s Brits everywhere.’ Dermot’s shout pitched into the panic key. ‘Stop the bloody van. They’ll kill both of us.’
‘They’re UVF paramilitaries,’ Jimmy shouted. ‘They’ll kill us both anyway.’ He watched soldiers on the road leap out of his path. He saw others, their faces blackened, rise up from the ditch on either side, their rifles raised.
‘Watch that bloody lorry, you madman.’
Jimmy swerved screechingly to the right to avoid the unlighted army vehicle. At the same time a burst of rifle fire shattered the silence of the cold January night.
‘Fuck! The tyres. They got the tyres.’
‘You asshole! Shit! What’re you doing?’ Dermot was screaming.
The van careened wildly out of control, scraping alternately along each stone wall of Cullybane Bridge. It failed to make the sharp right hand bend across the bridge, smashed through a high, wooden gate, plunged down a steep, wet bank, brashed through brambles and whins, tipped over, righted itself, tipped over again, then overturned into the cold, black water of the Cullybane River.
Torch lights flashed on as soldiers rushed down the slippery bank, seeking a clear path between the brambles and the whins. When they reached the van, Jimmy O’Rourke, with blood drooling down his face from a gash across his forehead, was climbing out of the up-ended cab. Dazed and unsteady, he gazed at the riverbank, saw a grassy area flat enough to jump onto, then leapt to the ground. He pitched forward into the cold grass and tried to scramble to his feet, but two British soldiers, breathing heavily, picked him up by the armpits. Another was already climbing onto the van to help Dermot out. He shone his torch inside. A huge boulder in the middle of the river had smashed through the passenger-side window. Dermot Cavanagh sprawled with his open eyes staring into eternity.
Jimmy O’Rourke was aided up the slippery bank to the bridge and hauled into the back of an army lorry. He sat on a wooden bench. Someone placed a blanket round his shoulders. Another wiped blood from his face with a handkerchief.
‘You’ll live, you stupid bastard.’ The soldier dabbed the handkerchief at the long cut across Jimmy’s forehead. ‘That doesn’t look too good to me.’
Another British soldier joined them in the back of the lorry. He sat beside Jimmy, a clipboard with papers on his knee, a ballpoint pen in his hand. ‘What’s your name, sir?’
‘O’Rourke. Jimmy O’Rourke.’
‘What do you do for a living, Mr O’Rourke?’
‘I own a small transport company in Newry. O’Rourke Brothers.’
‘The other gentleman in the van with you …’
‘My helper, Dermot Cavanagh. The brothers were my father and two uncles. I inherited the business. How is Dermot? Where is he?’
The soldier ignored Jimmy’s question. ‘May I see your driver’s license, please?’
Jimmy drew a wallet from his hip pocket and produced his license for the soldier. The soldier took it, read it, copied details, returned it. ‘That was a damned stupid thing you did there, sir. Why in God’s name did you do it?’
‘I thought you were fucking UVF,’ Jimmy explained, referring to the loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force. ‘Remember the Miami Showband murders. Three years ago. At a fake British Army checkpoint. That was you lot. So-called Ulster fucking Defence Regiment, but really UVF. Remember, Fuck Face? Hauled three members of the band out of their minivan and shot them. Not fucking far from here either. I got scared. I thought I recognised one of you. Billy Hammond. He’s a UVF killer.’
‘There’s no Billy Hammond here, sir,’ said the soldier. ‘No Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitaries either.’
‘But your fucking regiment is riddled with them, isn’t it? Fucking Protestant killers dressed up in army uniforms, out to kill innocent victims.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’
‘Like fucking hell you wouldn’t.’ Jimmy looked around him with dazed eyes. ‘How’s Dermot?’ he asked again. ‘Is he all right?’
‘Don’t know yet, sir.’ The soldier looked at his companion who sat opposite Jimmy.
‘Go an’ see what’s happening, Moo Cow. Right balls-up this is.’
The other soldier climbed out of the lorry and disappeared.
‘Cigarette, sir?’ The soldier held an open pack of Players toward the hunched, dejected figure of Jimmy O’Rourke.
‘Thanks.’ Jimmy picked a cigarette, placed it between his lips and leaned forward toward the lighter held in the steady hand of the soldier. Blood still dribbled down his cheek.
Before the lighter snapped shut, Jimmy saw the theatrically blackened face and lively brown eyes of the young soldier. Not a day over nineteen, he thought.
They waited in the back of the lorry without speaking.
Jimmy worried about his cousin Dermot. Why isn’t he here yet?
The young soldier was thinking about the act of incredible stupidity he had just witnessed.
From outside, voices were too muted to be able make out what they were saying. Jimmy had finished the cigarette and stubbed it out on the floor of the lorry before he heard two of the voices coming closer, then falling silent.
The soldier opposite handed him the blood-stained handkerchief. ‘Clean your cheek with this, sir. That cut on your forehead might need stitching. Hold the hanky to it till we get it fixed. I think we should get you to hospital.’
The soldier earlier addressed as Moo Cow returned, shone his torch on Jimmy and said, ‘You come with me, mate. Help him out, Dingo.’
‘I’m all right. I can fucking manage.’ Jimmy stood up, let the blanket fall onto the bench, lowered his hand from his lacerated forehead, and climbed out of the lorry.
Moo Cow grabbed him under the arm. ‘Come with me, mate.’
‘Dermot?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Where’s Dermot?’
‘If you mean your buddy in the van, mate, I’m afraid he’s copped it.’
‘Copped it?’ Jimmy staggered, felt glad of the soldier’s supporting hand. ‘He’s dead? Oh no. Oh shit. Oh no. No. He can’t be.’ Then, like a wolf howling at the moon, he raised his head and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Dermot. Dermot. Where the fuck are you? Dermot. Answer me. Where have they put you?
The breathless cries of lovemaking reaching climax filled the darkened room. The big iron bed shook noisily, then stopped.
‘God, that was a good one, Eddy.’ The woman released her tight embrace of the man’s sweaty back.
‘You can say that again. Oh, be still my heart.’
The woman smiled. ‘I can feel it pounding away in there. You’re getting too old for this, Eddy.’
‘You’re never too old for this.’
‘For three times in one night? Maybe you’re pushing your famous luck, Mr Hunter.’
‘Never, Mrs Hunter. We’ll make that baby yet. I want to be a father before I’m forty.’
‘I hope it won’t take that long.’
Eddy Hunter rolled onto his back, stretched out his right arm and snuggled his wife’s head against his shoulder. The bed smelled of sex, a smell that always reminded his wife incongruously of mushrooms. ‘Everything in its own good time, my dear. Maybe we …’
The telephone rang in the hall.
‘Bollocks! Who could that be?’ Eddy swung his bare feet to the floor, switched on the bedside lamp and walked naked into the hall where the phone still rang insistently on a semi-circular console. He picked up the phone. ‘Hunter,’ he said.
‘Hunter, our delivery man is dead.’
Eddy had to think for a moment before Dermot Cavanagh came to his love-befuddled mind. The delivery man. ‘Shit! Begging your pardon, sir. How did that happen?’
‘O’Rourke tried to run a check stop outside Newry. God alone knows why he did it. I’d wager that O’Rourke himself doesn’t know. Moronic little twerp. He lost control of the van at Cullybane Bridge and finished up in the river at the bottom of the hill. Cavanagh’s skull was smashed open on a boulder.’
‘Jesus Christ, what a mess. Just when he was making progress.’ Eddy saw his wife in her red candlewick dressing gown approach from the bedroom. She draped his own plaid house coat round his beefy shoulders, placed her arms around his waist, closing the house coat, and leaned her cheek against his back.
Eddy can be talking to only one person like that, she thought. Trevor Philpott, Chief of Army Intelligence. Big-shot, Shit-pot, Trevor Gordon Philpott. She smiled. Like a child’s rhyme.
A child. She withdrew one arm from around her husband and placed an open palm on her stomach. She was sure a child was beginning its life in there now, a tiny nugget of humanity, too tiny to be recognised as human, but swelling with undeniable potential. Another Eddy Hunter. He so much wished for a son. She tightened both arms around him again.
Your wish will be granted, Mr Hunter. But she would say nothing yet. There had been too many disappointments in the past.
‘Can you pop over here right away, Hunter?’ Philpott asked. ‘We have a proposition for you.’
‘Give me half an hour, sir.’ Eddy replaced the phone and pressed his wife’s small, warm hands tight against his belly.
‘So we’re not going for four,’ she murmured into his back.
‘Not tonight, love,’ he replied.
‘I knew you weren’t up for it,’ she said.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Jimmy O’Rourke sat up in a bed in a private ward in Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, a pale blue gown tied behind his neck. His narrow chin was stubbled, his eyes red-rimmed and tired. The gash across his forehead had been stitched and dressed.
Eddy Hunter sat on a chair beside the bed and placed a manila folder containing several pages on his knee. ‘My name is Eddy.’
‘Eddy fucking what?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’
‘Tell me in a minute? What fucking game are you playing? Where are you from?’
‘Thiepval Barracks.’
‘Fucking British Army headquarters. You’re from Military Intelligence. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘What’re you doing down here in Newry. Your barracks are in fucking Lisburn.’
‘I came to see you, Jimmy. I heard you were an entertaining conversationalist.’
‘Fuck off.’ O’Rourke looked away for a moment, as if the entertaining conversation had been terminated.
‘That was a damned stupid thing you did last night, Jimmy,’ Eddy Hunter said. ‘This is January. On that valley road there was black ice everywhere last night, and too many sharp bends. What in the name of blazes were you thinking of?’
‘I thought your men were UVF and I panicked.’ Jimmy looked again, scrutinisingly, at his visitor from Military Intelligence.
‘You panicked, Jimmy,’ Eddy repeated. ‘The IRA have no time for people who panic. You’re in deep shit, I would say.’ Eddy glanced at the papers on his knee. ‘The van wasn’t yours.’
‘Yes it was.’
‘Then you switched the plates. They came from a car stolen in Dungannon. Why’d you do that, Jimmy?’
‘Why do you think, you smart fucker?’
‘And I have no time for people with a sewer for a mouth. You’re really in deep, deep trouble.’ Eddy looked at the man in the bed with a feeling close to commiseration. How did an insignificant little twit like him get involved with scum like the IRA? Then he glanced at a paper in the file. ‘You were damned lucky to get out of that van alive. You know that. No concussion. No skull fracture. A couple of broken ribs, but they’ll heel OK. You can leave here this evening.’
‘Can hardly wait.’
‘You’ll have a big scar across your forehead for the rest of your days. A memento of the night you panicked.’
‘What’s it to you, Fuck Face?’
‘You’ll have to wear a cap, pulled down to your eyes, so as no one is reminded of what a stupid twit you can be. Pity to cover up that curly hair of yours.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Who were the AK47s for?’
O’Rourke looked startled by this unexpected question. ‘You found them?’
‘We know where they are.’
‘You do?’ Jimmy was incredulous.
‘Yes. There’s a zip round half of the mattress in the back of your van. You have a box fitted inside the mattress. Clever, Jimmy. You can move many different things in there. Even bodies, I suppose. Alive or dead.
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Your helper, Dermot Cavanagh.’
‘What about him?’ Jimmy looked puzzled.
‘He was working for us.’
‘Dermot? Dermot Cavanagh? You gotta be fucking kidding. What fucking game are you trying to play with me?’
‘No game, Jimmy. Serious business, I assure you. Dermot came to us after his mother was blown to bits by an IRA bomb in Newry. One of nine innocent shoppers, Jimmy. Carrowgorm Square.’ Hunter leaned forward and stared into Jimmy’s eyes. ‘Remember that day? Just shopping for her and her son on a sunny September morning. Remember?’ He sat up straight on the chair again. ‘Dermot lived alone with his mother, as you know. He was devoted to her. Like any other decent human being he was disgusted by the cowards of the IRA. Sickened. He wanted revenge on the bastards who killed his mother. So he came to us. Told us you were driving for the IRA. Said he was prepared to continue working with you and pass information to us. He knew we wanted Bomber X, wanted him badly, and he promised to hand him to us. You’re the bomber’s driver, Jimmy. You know how we can nab him.’
‘Bomber X,’ O’Rourke said dismissively. ‘There’s no such fucker. And I’m no Bomber X’s driver. So go fuck yourself.’ Jimmy looked away from Hunter’s penetrating gaze. ‘Dermot fucking Cavanagh,’ he muttered maliciously to himself. ‘Treacherous, back-stabbing fucker.’ He looked at Hunter again. ‘Did he tell you about our job last night? Is that why you had the road block at Cullybane?’
‘Yes. But we didn’t expect you would try to run the roadblock. Not at a bad bend on an icy road. We certainly didn’t want to lose Cavanagh.’
‘Dermot deserved what he got,’ Jimmy said unsympathetically. ‘A real fucking Judas to me. And to others.’
‘You’re a very unlikely Jesus figure, Jimmy,’ Eddy remarked.
‘That’s not funny, Fuck Face.’ Jimmy glowered at Eddy Hunter with malignant eyes. ‘You’re a traitor too, aren’t you? An Irishman, working for the British oppressor. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’
‘I’m ashamed of so-called Irishmen who murder innocent women and children and old people for their own selfish ends.’ Eddy Hunter’s well-known anger was getting the better of him. ‘Men who skulk in hiding like rats and send children out to throw petrol bombs and rocks at soldiers. You don’t belong with scum like that, Jimmy. They’re not worthy of the name of Irishmen. You have children of your own. And one on the way. Do you think they’ll be proud of you when this is all over and they hear stories that you were personally involved. “What did you do in the Troubles, Daddy?” Will you tell them?’
‘With pride. But you wouldn’t fucking understand that.’
‘I hope they learn to talk from someone else.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘See what I mean?’ Eddy felt sorry for this thin, watery-blooded pawn pretending to be a tough-talking rook with a higher role to play in the strategy of Ulster’s deadly political chess. ‘You mean no more than piss from the pricks in the IRA, Jimmy. Someday you’ll just disappear into the dirt where you belong. Your mark in Irish history. Your stupidity last night was the panic of a scared, little coward.’ Eddy needled the Newry driver without mercy. ‘One scared, little coward. One who killed his own cousin and helper, while working for other, bigger cowards who butcher old women out doing their messages. Christ, what kind of a louse are you?’
Jimmy O’Rourke said nothing. He stared morosely at his clasped hands.
‘You can call me Eddy Ross,’ Eddy declared unexpectedly. ‘As far as you’re concerned that’s my name. You’d better get used to it because I’m going to be working for you from now on. I’m taking Dermot’s job.’
‘Like fucking hell, you are.’ Jimmy jerked his head up and stared belligerently at the man who called himself Eddy Ross.
‘Think of the alternative, Jimmy.’ Eddy stared straight at O’Rourke. ‘Do you want to kiss your pregnant wife goodbye and move to new quarters in an H-block at the Maze prison. Word will get around that you corroborated with British security. You even gave away the name of Bomber X, a psychopath who gets you to drive for him.’
‘You’re bluffing, you fucker. You don’t know his name.’
‘Try Tony Keegan.’
‘Fuck.’
‘The best-kept secret in the IRA. Dermot was on to him. I want to finish what Dermot started. He deserves that much. Keegan might have killed Dermot’s mother. And God knows how many more. We’ll get him, Jimmy. You and I. Now, what do you say?’
‘Fuck off.’
Eddy bundled his papers together in their folder and stood up. ‘Have it your own way. As I said, think of the alternative. Your buddies in the IRA don’t take kindly to informers, do they? How long do you think you’ll survive in the Maze? They kill you oh so slowly in there. Painful, horrible way to die.’ Eddy turned to leave.
‘Hold it,’ Jimmy said quickly. ‘What do you mean? Informers. I’m no fucking informer.’
‘We have a few photographs of you talking to UDR soldiers. Including one of you talking to me.’
‘You fucking, slimy bastard.’
‘Word will get out that you gave Tony Keegan’s name to Military Intelligence. What do you think a psychopath like Keegan would do to you, his trusted driver? Or one of his cronies in the IRA’s South Armagh Command. Eamon Doherty, for instance. Now there’s a man you wouldn’t want to cross.’
Jimmy licked his dry lips and looked out the window at the grey, wintry sky.
‘Think of your pregnant wife, Jimmy,’ Hunter persisted. ‘Your four children. Would they be safe from a vindictive killer like Tony Keegan?’
Jimmy swung his head round to glare at the tall, broad-shouldered figure of Eddy Hunter. ‘Shut up,’ he shouted. ‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘You’re scared, Jimmy. You’re shit-in-your-pants scared. Aren’t you?’
‘Fuck.’ He looked out the window again, while Hunter stood silently waiting.
‘Sit down, Fuck Face.’ Jimmy turned again and looked at Hunter.
Yes, he’s scared shitless. Eddy could see the terror in his eyes.
‘What do you have in mind?’ Jimmy said with resignation.
Eddy took his seat again, his papers under his left arm. ‘That’s better.’
‘What about the guns?’ Jimmy asked.
‘You can deliver them as arranged,’ Eddy replied. ‘Where were you taking them?’
‘To a farmhouse near Banbridge. There they get transferred to another van that takes them to Belfast or wherever. I don’t know where.’
‘That’s OK. We’ll be tailing them. We’ll get them back later. And the people they’re going to.’ Eddy produced a packet of Gallahers from his pocket. ‘Are you allowed to smoke in here?’
‘Who the fuck cares? There’s no one else in the room.’ Jimmy took a cigarette, placed it between his thin lips and lowered it towards the lighter that Eddy held out. He took a deep, appreciative draw on it.
Eddy lit his own cigarette and snapped the lighter shut. ‘That load of furniture you were carrying last night. You’ll have to change it to another van. As far as anyone is concerned, you lost control of your own van on a stretch of black ice at a very dangerous bend in the road. You managed to get out of the van, walked to Cullybane and phoned the police and an ambulance. The police have agreed to go along with this story. Simple enough.’
‘Where do you come in?’
‘I’ll turn up in Newry in a couple of days as an old school friend of Dermot Cavanagh. Going to his funeral. Dermot has just been killed, and you need a helper. I’ve just been laid off from my job in London. Let’s say because I’m Irish, and Irishmen aren’t too popular in London these days. You ask if I’d be interested in coming home and taking Dermot’s job. I jump at the chance.’
Eddy was aware of the chance he was taking. Philpott had pitched this plan to him last night. He had talked it over with Jennifer and then agreed to do it, against the advice of his brother-in-law, Ross Macrory, and his friend, Archie Corcoran.
‘It’s too dangerous, man,’ Corcoran had argued. ‘It’s a hare-brained idea from His Highness of the Hare-brained. Philpott is dispatching you into darkest Armagh. Bandit country. They still eat missionaries down there.’
‘Watch what you’re saying there, Archie. Remember, I was born and raised in south Armagh.’
‘Christ, man, I forgot about that. Now I’m even more worried. What if someone recognises you?’
‘I left that part of the country, Archie, when I was seventeen. After my parents were killed in a road accident. Over a dozen years ago. Most of the old folk who knew me then have gone. And we lived closer to Armagh city than to Newry. The chances of anyone seeing me and recognising me are millions to one. Have no fears, Archie, I’ll be all right.’
Eddy had stared into the generous glass of expensive Scotch that Corcoran always had to hand in his office at Thiepval Barracks. ‘We have to catch this bastard, Archie, before he kills too many more innocent people. The nickname Bomber X, that the newspapers have given him, is turning him into a kind of folk hero in certain Republican quarters. We know his name, but nothing about him. Where he lives. Where his bomb-making supplies are. Is he really a lone wolf or does he have an accomplice or accomplices?’
‘Some have said he’s actually more than one man.’
‘No. You can rule that out. He’s one man. Tony Keegan by name. I think our man down there, Dermot Cavanagh, was on to him. Cavanagh at least got his name, though it’s not an uncommon one. I was Cavanagh’s handler. So I’m going down there to finish the job he was doing.’
‘Phone your brother-in-law,’ Archie had suggested as a last-minute play to win a match he considered already lost. ‘Ross Macrory will tell you what I’ve just told you.’
‘Ross hates Philpott. You know that. He wouldn’t agree to anything Philpott came up with. No, Archie, we have a chance here to nab Tony Keegan, alias Bomber X. Even if Philpott hadn’t come up with the idea, I’d still go for it. I’m sure he must have cleared it with Brigadier Steelesmith.’
‘No, the whole idea is bullshit, Eddy,’ Ross Macrory had said on the phone from London. ‘Don’t you see? Philpott is sending you into a lion’s den. Or a den of lions. You don’t have experience of undercover work …’
‘But you do,’ Eddy countered peevishly.
‘No need for that tone of voice, Eddy,’ Ross said. ‘I’ve seen too many undercover agents end up dead. Sometimes very unpleasantly dead. And they were experienced case officers. This whole idea of Philpott’s, whether or not Steelesmith authorised it, is fraught with danger. If you must go ahead with it, be very, very careful.’
‘I will, Ross. But I just have to do it. I owe it to Dermot Cavanagh. If not to the people of Northern Ireland.’
‘Good luck, Eddy.’
Now, seated beside the hospital bed of the Newry driver, Jimmy O’Rourke, Eddy Hunter was prepared to take the biggest risk of his life.
‘If you insist on going through with this, what makes you think I won’t kill you? Or have you killed?’ Jimmy O’Rourke’s reedy voice broke into Eddy Hunter’s thoughts.
‘You won’t have me killed because you won’t want it known that you willingly cooperated with an officer in British Military Intelligence. You know what the IRA do to collaborators. You’d never see your new baby. Need I repeat myself, Jimmy? And you won’t kill me yourself, because you couldn’t. You’re not the killer type. You’re just a driver and delivery boy. A loving husband and father. Think about it. I’ll see you in an hour. You can give me your decision then.’
‘Eddy!’ Jimmy shouted down from his office window above the garage. ‘Leave that car and come up here. Right away.’
Eddy stopped hosing the dusty black Vauxhall, turned off the water and climbed the bare, wooden stairs from the interior of the garage to a small loft office.
Jimmy sat behind a cluttered desk in a cluttered, untidy room. His head was still bandaged. ‘You wanted to meet Bomber X; now’s your chance.’
‘Keegan?’
‘Himself. He wants you to drive him somewhere.’
‘Me?’
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’ Jimmy enjoyed insulting the intelligence of this so-called Intelligence Officer. ‘He doesn’t know you from Adam. He wanted me, of course, but Bernadette’s gone into labour. I’ll be driving her to hospital, and if it’s anything like last time I could be there all night.’
‘I hope all goes well, Jimmy,’ Eddy said, feeling a twinge of envy.
‘It’s not like we haven’t gone through this before,’ Jimmy said. ‘She’s used to it now. She could probably drop the kid in the kitchen and go back to washing the fucking dishes. But I guess I’d better do my husbandly duty and drive her to the hospital.’
‘Wasn’t it doing your husbandly duty that got Bernadette into this situation in the first place?’
‘Fucking comedian, aren’t you?’
‘When did Keegan take you into his confidence, Jimmy? You know, when did he let you into the secret that he was an expert in remote-controlled bombs?’
‘Before he went to London.’
‘He was in London?’ Eddy’s voice revealed his surprise.
‘For a few years,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Remember 1975? Keegan was a busy man that year.’
‘Jesus!’
The collapse of the IRA’s 1974-1975 ceasefire had triggered a wave of bombings and shootings. The bombs in London, like the one in the Hilton Hotel, another in Piccadilly, had been planted by the IRA, probably by one of its ‘active service units’.
‘Keegan was the leader of a fucking ASU in east London,’ O’Rourke said. ‘I had met him when I was attached to one here in south Armagh. When he came back from London last year he contacted me again. Asked if I would drive for him. Told me what he was doing and if I had any objections.’
‘Which you didn’t.’
‘Fuck no.’
‘You told Cavanagh what Keegan was doing. You told him he was the man the papers were referring to as Bomber X.’
‘Dermot was my cousin. I thought I could trust him. Fucking Judas.’
‘You had to tell someone, didn’t you?’ Eddy taunted. ‘Just to let them know what a big shot you were. “I’m Jimmy O’Rourke and I drive a car for Tony Keegan. He’s Bomber X, you know.” Will you boast about it to your kids later?’
‘Shut your mouth, Fuck Face. You wouldn’t understand, but I’m proud of what I’m doing.’ Jimmy gave Eddy a scornful glance, started writing on a sheet of paper and then looked up. ‘I’ve cleared this with Tony. I told him why I couldn’t come this time and asked him if he wanted to drive himself. He said he liked having a driver and wanted to know if you were trustworthy. I convinced him that you were; told him you were an old friend of Dermot’s. He’s not too keen, but he’ll put up with you this time. Under the circumstances, he hasn’t much fucking choice, if he won’t drive himself. Remember, Fuck Face, you’re just a driver. That’s all he wants. Like a taxi service. And you don’t know his name. He’s just a customer. Is that clear?’
‘Clear as crystal,’ Eddy replied, reading the address. ‘Why doesn’t he drive himself?’
‘No fucking idea. I’ve asked him that same question myself. He can drive. Just doesn’t want to. One of his little idiosyncrasies.’
‘Strange,’ said Eddy. ‘A loner like him who won’t drive himself.’
‘That’s Tony Keegan for you. A law unto himself. I’m driving him into Belfast on Tuesday night.’
Eddy was immediately alerted. ‘Belfast. Tuesday night. Whereabouts in Belfast?’
‘Don’t fucking know.’
‘Bollocks! Is there any way of finding out?’
‘From Tony Keegan? You gotta be fucking kidding. He just told me to have the Renault cleaned and polished good enough to see his fucking face in. Tuesday night. Six o’clock.’
‘Maybe he has a big date.’
‘Some fucking chance. He has no time for women. Never has, as far as I know. Oh, and I should warn you, soldier boy, that you might just get this one chance to meet Tony Keegan.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s leaving the country for a while.’
‘Leaving Ireland?’
‘What other country would he be leaving, Fuck Face? Jesus!’
‘Do you know where he’s going?’
‘Italy. Rome, I think. Then Libya. Rome I can understand. Bernadette and I spent our honeymoon there. But Libya? Of all the fucking places in the world, why would you go to Libya? Just sand and camels, right?’
‘It’s a favourite holiday resort for terrorists, Jimmy. They’ve been banned from Butlin’s.’
‘Fuck off, Funny Man.’
‘When’s he going?’
‘Don’t know. He didn’t tell me much about it. Something to do with training. That’s all I heard. He doesn’t tell anyone much about anything. Except maybe his cousin Geraldine. He’s kinda fond of her.’
‘He does have some human feelings then.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘But if you do hear anything more about this trip to Italy or Libya, you’ll tell me. Won’t you, Jimmy? And even more important where he’s going to in Belfast, Tuesday night.’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t dream of disappointing you.’ Jimmy tore a page from a notepad beside the phone and held it out for Eddy. ‘That’s his address in Tullyvarragh. 47 Derrybrack Road. Be there at five o’clock in the morning. Take the Cortina.’
‘Five o’clock.’ Eddy was reading the address.
‘And don’t be fucking late. He can’t stand unpunctuality.’
‘Another of his little idiosyncrasies.’ Eddy folded the page and put it in the pocket of his blue, oil-stained dungarees. ‘I’ll be there. Is this where he lives?’
‘It’s his sister’s house. He doesn’t actually live there. Just stays from time to time.’
‘That figures,’ said Eddy.
‘OK. You can fuck off now. Drive the Cortina home. Make sure it’s filled up. Get to bed early. I’ll clear up here.’
At ten minutes to five next morning Eddy Hunter was driving Jimmy O’Rourke’s Ford Cortina along a narrow, winding road on the edge of the village of Tullyvarragh. The headlights picked out whitewashed garden walls and hawthorn hedges from the humid darkness. Farmhouse and cottage gates interrupted the walls and hedges. Eddy peered at each gate in turn.
‘Forty-seven,’ he murmured. ‘Come in number forty-seven. Where the hell are you?’
At last a white painted wooden gate in a tall, stone wall bore the number 47 and below it the name Eamhain Mhacha.
‘Eamhain Mhacha,’ Eddy murmured to himself. Memories from schoolbook readings came back to him. Home of King Conor mac Nessa and his Red Branch knights, he remembered. Defenders of Ulster. That’s interesting, Mr Keegan. An Ulster defender by inclination. Unless that name was left on that old gate by previous owners. After all, Eamhain Mhacha itself isn’t far from here. Now … do I wait here or go to …?
The unlocked passenger-side door opened, and a man in a navy donkey jacket slid into the front seat and closed the door. He swivelled round and placed a black leather case on the back seat. ‘What’s your name, driver?’
‘Ross, sir. Eddy Ross.’
‘Working for Jimmy now. Where were you before you started working for Jimmy?’
‘London.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Driving a lorry for a firm of builders.’
‘Lucky for you that Jimmy needed a driver after Callaghan was killed like that.’
‘Cavanagh, sir,’ Eddy said. ‘Dermot Cavanagh. He was a buddy of mine. I came home for his funeral, and Jimmy asked me to stay.’
‘Cavanagh, that’s right. Where did I get Callaghan from?’
‘Can’t imagine, sir.’ Crafty bugger, Eddy thought.
‘Where did you work in London?’ Keegan asked. ‘I know that city well.’
‘I lived on Nansen Road, Wandsworth,’ Eddy replied. ‘I worked all over. A lot of time out at Sutton.’
‘I know Nansen Road actually. Not far from Lavender Hill. And I’ve worked in Sutton myself.’ Tony Keegan turned in the seat and looked ahead. ‘OK, drive on, Eddy Ross. There’s a T-junction about a mile and a half up the road. Turn right there. I’ll give you directions as you need them.’
‘Can I ask where we’re heading, sir?’ Eddy allowed the car to pick up as much speed as the winding road and the early morning darkness allowed.
‘You shouldn’t,’ Keegan said. ‘But eventually you’ll come out onto the main Newry-Armagh road.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Eddy carefully played the role of the respectful taxi driver, though addressing a killer like Keegan by the title of ‘sir’ stuck in his gullet like a fishbone, and he had to force it out.
Tony Keegan was of average height and build, about thirty years old, with tight, wavy red hair, a tanned, square face, and dark Mongoloid eyes. Like the car he had chosen to be driven in, he was unlikely to attract much attention. Except for those eyes.
‘Here comes the T-junction,’ he said. ‘Turn right.’
They were travelling on a wider, straighter country road, allowing higher speed. In the headlights of the car, high hedges of hawthorn and whins, occasional trees, stone gate-piers and iron gates appeared like ghosts out of the misty morning darkness and disappeared behind them.
‘How’s Bernadette?’ Keegan asked.
‘Don’t know. Jimmy expected her to go into hospital last night. I haven’t heard from him since I left the garage.’
‘This is their sixth,’ Keegan said.
‘Fifth,’ Eddy corrected him again.
‘Fifth. That’s right.’
The two in the car lapsed into silence, broken only by curt directions from Tony Keegan.
Then Eddy asked, ‘Don’t you drive yourself, sir?’
‘I can,’ Keegan replied. ‘But I prefer not to.’
Not much of a talker, are you? Eddy thought. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not what?’ Keegan was looking out the side window.
‘Why do you prefer not to drive?’
‘For the same reason as I prefer not to answer tiresome questions. I keep my business to myself.’ He pointed ahead. ‘Slow down. See that lane up ahead? On the left?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Turn in there.’
‘We haven’t reached the Armagh road yet,’ Eddy pointed out.
‘I think I know where I’m going,’ Keegan said. ‘This is it. The Armagh road’s up ahead.’
Eddy swung the car onto a rutted track, sunk deep below grassy, bramble-grown banks, topped by a dry-stone wall. The headlights glared on the whitewashed walls of an old, slate-roofed cottage. A green Hillman was parked in the yard, close to the dry-stone wall and the bramble hedge.
‘Stop here,’ Keegan ordered. ‘A friend and I are going to renovate this old place.’
I bet you are, Eddy thought sarcastically.
The door of the farmhouse opened, and a man appeared from inside.
‘That’s him’
The friend raised two hands across his forehead to shield his eyes from the dazzle of the Cortina’s headlights. Eddy had time to notice that the third finger of the left hand was just a stump, the fourth finger missing completely.
Eddy stopped the Cortina in front of the cottage.
The man came to the rear of the car, opened the door, and lifted out Keegan’s leather case. ‘Where’s Jimmy?’
‘With Bernadette,’ Keegan replied. ‘Bringing another screaming O’Rourke into the world.’
‘As if there weren’t enough of them already.’ The man slammed the rear door shut.
‘This is where I get out,’ Keegan said to Eddy. ‘That road back there takes you out onto the Armagh-Newry road eventually. Can you find your way back here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Keegan got out of the car, but before closing the door he said, ‘Go home and wait for a telephone call. Don’t go out.’
‘What about my job at O’Rourke’s, sir?’
‘Forget it today,’ Keegan said. ‘Ireland has need of you.’
Eddy turned the car, drove back to the road and headed for Newry, his mind in a spin of speculation. He parked the Cortina in front of the run-down house on Canal Street where he had rented a small flat, and let himself in. He climbed the stairs quietly, then paused on the landing.
Light slid out from under the door of his rooms.
I didn’t leave the light on, he reminded himself.
He took keys from his pocket, but the door was unlocked. When he opened it and stepped inside, a big, burly, round-shouldered man with fair, short-cropped hair lowered the newspaper he was reading in the armchair by the window.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Eddy asked angrily. ‘And what are you doing in my flat?’
‘I was reading your Irish Times,’ the man said, folding the newspaper and laying it on the side table. ‘It’s yesterday’s news. No mention of Niall McCafferty though.’
‘And who’s Niall McCafferty?’ Eddy asked.
‘You don’t know him?’ the man asked with surprise. ‘One of our more colourful local characters. He died the day before yesterday. Not important enough for the Irish Times though.’
‘I’ve been in London for five or six years,’ Eddy said, closing the door. ‘I’ve been out of touch with local characters.’ He pocketed his keys. ‘You haven’t answered my questions.’
‘I answered one of them.’ The intruder indicated the newspaper.
‘Not to my satisfaction.’
‘Oh, it’s satisfaction you’re after, is it?’ The man spoke with a surprisingly soft voice for one so big and barrel-chested, a sinister, Peter Lorre-kind of voice, but with a slightly southern Irish accent.
‘If you don’t mind.’
The man pulled his considerable weight out of the armchair and approached Eddy, holding out a hand as big as a shovel. ‘My name’s Eamon Doherty, but everyone calls me Cooley.’
‘Why Cooley?’ Eddy asked, shaking the proffered hand.
‘I come from the Cooley Mountains you can see across the water over there. Just up the hill from Omeath.’
‘I see,’ said Eddy. ‘I’m Eddy Ross. I’m working for Jimmy O’Rourke.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Cooley said.
Eddy recognised the name of Eamon Doherty. He was known to be the District Commander of the IRA in South Armagh
‘So what are you doing in my flat so early in the morning, Cooley? I don’t think you came to read a day-old newspaper.’
‘No, that was a bonus I hadn’t anticipated.’ Cooley sat down again. ‘I came to make your acquaintance.’
‘That’s very neighbourly of you,’ Eddy said. ‘But why would you want to make my acquaintance?’
‘You’ve half a bottle of Paddy in the cupboard there,’ Cooley said, pointing. ‘Why don’t you pour us a big glass each? With water.’
‘Bit early in the day, isn’t it?’ Eddy said. ‘Barely light yet. You’re an early riser.’
‘It’s never too early nor too late for a glass of Paddy,’ Cooley said. ‘As for being early, I’m on my way to work.’
‘So you’ve been making yourself at home, I see.’ Eddy opened the cupboard, took out the bottle of whiskey and two mismatched glasses, filled the glasses three-quarters full, added water and handed one to Cooley.
‘This used to be my home.’ Cooley accepted the glass.
‘And you still have the key, then.’
‘No. Emir Curran is my sister. We’re cousins of Jimmy O’Rourke.’ Cooley gulped down a mouthful of whiskey. ‘She let me in.’
Emir Curran was Eddy’s landlady. She lived downstairs, her short, thin stick of a body barely filling half of a large, faded armchair by the window. There she sat most of the day, knitting and keeping an eye on the street and on who came in or went from her house.
‘But when I lived here, Eddy,’ Cooley went on, ‘I had books, pictures, cheap old souvenirs, all kinds of personal clobber stashed all over the place. Untidy ... You know what I mean?’ He drank again, eyeing Eddy over the glass. He had cold, brown, bog-water eyes. ‘I have to admit, that I couldn’t help noticing, now, that there’s not a thing here that says, “Eddy Ross lives here.” Not a single, insignificant item. Toilet articles and a change of clothes. And that’s about it.’
‘There’s the Irish Times.’
‘It mightn’t be yours,’ Cooley said.
Eddy wondered what Eamon Doherty was really doing, or had been doing, in his flat. He couldn’t accept the ‘making-your-acquaintance’ line that the big man from the Cooley Mountains had tossed him.
Cooley drank again. Half of his whiskey was almost gone. ‘I’m still curious about the absence of Eddy Ross from .. You know what I mean?’
‘I’ve just come back from London,’ Eddy said. ‘I started working with Jimmy right away. I haven’t had time to collect alot of stuff. Especially stuff I don’t need.’
‘The proverbial rolling stone.’
‘Something like that.’
‘The rolling stone won’t pick up moss, if there’s no moss where it’s been rolling.’ Cooley looked at Eddy as if he’d said something profound. ‘But it can’t help picking up stems of grass, say. Or just stains of grass. Or little bits of dirt. You know what I mean?’ He placed an emphasis on the word dirt that alerted Eddy. ‘But you? Nothing.’ Cooley paused again, drank again, then said, ‘I’m here because I feel obliged to check you out, Mr Ross.’
‘Eddy’s fine.’
‘Does that mean you’re feeling good, or it’s all right to call you Eddy?’
‘You can call me Eddy. What makes you feel obliged to check me out? And why should I be “checked out” in the first place?’
Cooley smiled, and Eddy didn’t like the smile. A sinister Peter Lorre smile to match the voice. Eddy knew that this was no social visit.
Cooley took another gulp from his glass. ‘It’s for my sister Emir. She’s a widow woman who lives … You know what I mean? She lets these upstairs rooms to people like yourself, and these days you can’t be too careful about who moves in here. I’m sure you’d understand that, Eddy.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ Eddy replied, but he recognised that the IRA District Commander might have other reasons for checking him out. ‘What happened to her husband?’
‘Died in the early days of the Troubles,’ Cooley replied. ‘August 1969. He went to Belfast, to the Falls Road, to visit his sick brother. He was caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between the British army and the Provisional IRA. Bullet in the head. Like it was aimed at him.’
‘No children?’
‘Five. Three boys and two girls. But they’ve all gone from… You know what I mean? Leeds, Liverpool, Toronto, Cleveland. One daughter never married. Died of breast cancer a few years ago.’
‘Sad story.’ Eddy reached for the bottle of whiskey and refilled Cooley’s glass.
‘Thank you, Eddy. You’re a most gracious and giving host.’ Cooley made himself more comfortable in the armchair. ‘You’ve been out of this area for a while yourself, Eddy. How did you land this job with Jimmy O’Rourke?’
‘Hasn’t Jimmy told you? Or Emir? She knows.’ Eddy knew that Cooley wanted to hear it from him.
‘I haven’t talked to Jimmy or Emir about how you come to .. You know what I mean.’
Lying bugger, Eddy thought. ‘I’m an old friend of Dermot Cavanagh’s …’
‘Tragic story, that.’
‘We were at school together in Tullyvarragh.’
‘St Ronan’s.’
‘The very one. My parents moved to Belfast, and I went to Lisburn Tech. But I kept in touch with Dermot. Came down here for summer holidays and such like. He stayed with us in Belfast several times.’
‘And you came home for his funeral.’
‘Yes. And Jimmy asked me if I’d like to take over his job.’
‘You weren’t working in London?’
‘Laid off a few weeks ago. Irishmen aren’t all that popular in London at the moment.’
‘I can understand why.’ Cooley drew a packet of Players from his pocket, opened it, flicked a couple of cigarettes out and offered one to Eddy.
Eddy accepted the cigarette, found his lighter in his pocket and lit both cigarettes.
Cooley inhaled deeply. ‘I have to admit, Eddy,’ he said, allowing the cigarette smoke to escape through his large, broad, boxer’s nose, ‘we’ve been having some new trouble here since you’ve been away. Have you heard about this new bunch of crackpot hooligans calling itself the Red Branch.’ His voice gave sound to the disgust that his face reflected.
Now we’re coming to it, Eddy told himself. Be careful. ‘You don’t have to be in this area—or even in this country—to hear about the Red Branch. They’ve captured headlines around the world, I should imagine. They created something of a sensation when they assassinated the American Senator Michael Keane, didn’t they?’
‘An act of asinine, political stupidity,’ was Cooley’s comment. ‘What did they …? You know what I mean?’
‘Notoriety,’ Eddy said. ‘And their manifesto widely published and discussed.’
‘Manifesto, shit.’ Cooley spat out the words. ‘Independence for Northern Ireland. The League of the North. What a load of horse manure.’ He took a drink as if to wash the name from his mouth.
‘At first everyone thought that Bomber X and the IRA were responsible, didn’t they?’ Eddy said.
‘Bomber X.’ The name drew the same disgust from Cooley as the Red Branch had. ‘You really believe there is a Bomber X?’
‘The name is turning up everywhere these days. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel once did.’
Cooley gulped down more whiskey. ‘Journalistic claptrap,’ he said. ‘All they’ve done is give the man a swelled … You know what I mean?’
‘So there is a man who claims the name. Do you know him? Do you know who he is?’
‘Of course not. No one does. Except maybe those in the more ethereal heights …You know what I mean?’
Liar, Eddy thought.
‘I have to admit, Eddy, I know a few people who have actually reached those ethereal heights,’ Cooley said. ‘Around here that’s not hard. They are now saying that the so-called Bomber X is about to join the Red Branch. Or maybe he has already.’ Cooley watched Eddy to see how this sank in.
By ‘they’, Eddy knew that Cooley meant IRA intelligence.
‘Those people believe that the so-called Bomber X did in fact kill Senator Keane. On behalf of, or at the behest of, the Red Branch.’
‘A remote-controlled bomb blew up his car, didn’t it?’
‘A typical Bomber X piece of work. So it was blamed on the IRA until the Red Branch claimed responsibility and got their manifesto plastered all over newspapers around the world.’ Cooley drank, eying Eddy again over the rim of the glass. ‘Bomber X, if we want to stick to the ridiculous name, is considered by those people I know to have become something of a loose cannon, Eddy. Doing his own thing. Causing trouble for .... You know what I mean? What do you think of that?’
‘I don’t think anything about it,’ Eddy said. ‘Bomber X. The IRA. The Red Branch. They have nothing to do with me. I don’t want to get involved.’ He almost added, You know what I mean, but stopped himself. ‘I’ve just come home and I got a job with Jimmy O’Rourke. I do my job; I ask no questions; I keep myself to myself; I pick up my pay on Friday night. That’s me. Checked out.’
‘So you say, Eddy.’ Cooley raised his glass, then, on second thought, lowered it again. ‘I remember reading a story when I was a wee scallywag at school.’ He smiled again. Something about that smile made Eddy feel uncomfortable. ‘The story—mind you, I can’t recall all the details—the story concerned a king, I think, who had big ears like a donkey’s or some such affliction, and every poor, unfortunate barber who came to cut the king’s hair and saw those huge ears was never seen … You see what I mean? Killed, everyone believed.’ He paused, allowing Eddy time to absorb the significance of his story. ‘Mull that one over, Eddy Ross.’
Cooley drained his glass and stood up. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ he said. ‘I’ll be seeing you.’
He left unceremoniously.
Eddy closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it, going over in his mind everything the IRA District Commander had said. The king’s big ears. There’s a warning there. Does Cooley suspect …? No. No reason to. Unless O’Rourke has talked. Jesus! If he has, I’m in deep shit. Why else would a man like Doherty come to see me? Pretending to check me out because of his sister. Eddy picked up his glass of Paddy and drank. And the Red Branch. Bomber X, alias Tony Keegan, joining the Red Branch. That’s a good one.
He had to admit that blowing up the American Senator Michael Keane’s limousine bore all the marks of the killer the media loved to call Bomber X, an expert in remote-controlled bombing. But the Red Branch claimed responsibility for that. The manifesto of a new terrorist group, its name stolen from Irish folklore, took everyone by surprise. Their goal was independence for Northern Ireland. A republic for all free Northern Irish men and women. The League of the North.
‘The Catholic, the Protestant, the Jew, the Presbyterian,’ Eddy sang softly to himself the line from an old song.
The name of this new group was well chosen. The Red Branch were the traditional heroes of the Ulaid, the ancient people of Ulster, of whom the mighty Cúchulainn, the single-handed defender of Ulster against the armies of Connaught, was said to be the greatest.
When the newly resurrected, twentieth-century Red Branch shot Colum Grady, second in command to Declan Garrity, the Provisional IRA’s Belfast commander, they were brazenly declaring war on the Provos. When they shot Gregory Seabrooke, a British backbench MP on a fact-finding tour of Northern Ireland, they were boldly declaring war on the British government. Both assassinations were the work of a sharp-shooter. Bomber X got no publicity from those. The Red Branch did.
Eddy, recalling the stories of the Red Branch and the exploits of Cúchulainn from his school days, gave Cooley time to leave the premises. Then walked out into the early winter sunshine to a public phone box that hadn’t yet been vandalised. He dialled a number that gave him a safe line through directly to Trevor Philpott.
‘Hunter here, sir.’
‘Hunter! How are you?’
‘Fine, sir. I’ve made contact, sir.’
‘Contact?’ Philpott fell silent for a moment. ‘Oh yes. Of course. Damned good work, old man. Jolly good show. You know where he lives.’
‘I have the address of his sister’s house. He stays there off and on. I think he moves around a lot.’
‘A man in his profession would have to, I dare say, Hunter. I’ll expect a report by courier this evening. Everything you know about him.’
‘You’ll have it, sir,’ Eddy promised. ‘Though there’s not a lot at present.’
‘Anything at all, Hunter.’
‘The reason why I’m calling, sir, is that I drove our friend to a destination near the village of Derrygall this morning. Any potential targets for an IRA bomber around that area today?’
‘Two foot patrols out of Drumadd Barracks in Armagh. That’s all the information I have received for today. I can find out for sure, of course.’
‘I would suggest, sir, that you postpone or cancel or reroute any troop movements or the travels of any VIPs anywhere in south Armagh today. Country in that Newry-Armagh area especially.’
‘Safe precaution, I should say. Thank you, Hunter. I shall get onto it right away.’
‘Excuse me, sir, but what do you have on this new group, the one that calls itself the Red Branch?’
‘Next to zilch, Hunter. Nothing to do with the IRA, of course. Sworn enemies, in actual fact. Northern Irish nationalists first and foremost. If you can imagine such a thing.’
‘We came close to it before, sir,’ Eddy said. ‘1912 and so on.’
‘Yes, of course, old man,’ Philpott said. ‘So what has stimulated this interest in the Red Branch?’
‘IRA intelligence reports that our friend may be jumping ship and joining them.’
‘They are a clique of assassins, Hunter. The Red Branch, I mean. They shoot people they don’t like. Or blow them up.’
‘The IRA think our friend was responsible for that, sir. The blowing up bit. Senator Keane, for example. The IRA weren’t at all happy about that. Senator Keane was one of their most reliable and generous supporters in the States.’
‘Yes, I know, Hunter. So the IRA think Keegan killed the senator. I must say that some around here thought the same thing. The assassination had all the hallmarks of a Keegan operation. Keep on this, Hunter. It could be a major development. Do you have any information on Keegan’s future activities?’
‘Yes, sir. O’Rourke is driving him to Belfast on Tuesday evening. Saint Valentine’s Day.’
‘Planning another Saint Valentine’s Day massacre perhaps.’ Philpott could always be relied upon to state the obvious. ‘What’s his target in Belfast?’
‘I don’t know yet, sir, but I would suggest putting out a general alert. And set up as many roadblocks as you can between Newry and Belfast from six o’clock on. Be on the lookout for a new black Renault, license plate BBZ714. If I pick up any more hints as to what his target might be, I’ll get in touch with you right away.’
‘Hold on a sec, Hunter. That license plate number. BBZ714, you said?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Black Renault.’ Philpott was obviously writing down this information. ‘What about a photograph, Hunter?’
‘Photograph, sir?’
‘Yes, Hunter. A photograph.’
‘Of Keegan?’
‘Yes. Who else? We have no idea of what this bugger looks like.’
‘Not much chance of a photo, I’m afraid, sir. O’Rourke has never seen one. Doesn’t think there is one. He’s promised to try to take one surreptitiously, but I doubt if he’ll get an opportunity. And I am even less likely to get an opportunity. Keegan’s too cagey.’
‘Buggeration, Hunter. We need a photograph. We have to close in on this scoundrel.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Eddy, looking out through the thick glass panes of the phone box, saw Emir Curran, in her tweed coat and felt hat, a wicker shopping basket on her arm, cross the street about fifty yards away. He turned his back towards her. ‘One more thing, sir. It seems that Keegan’s bound for Italy and/or Libya in the near future. Something about training, according to O’Rourke.’
‘Teaching terrorists how to handle radio-controlled bombs no doubt. The sand-dunes of the Libyan desert conceal many a training camp, Hunter. Care of you-know-who, of course. See what else you can find out.’
‘I will, sir. Now I’d better go. I wasn’t supposed to leave the house until Keegan phones me to come and pick him up again.’
‘Take care, Hunter.’
‘Yes, sir. I will.’
When Eddy returned to the farmhouse late that afternoon, Keegan was surly and morose. He threw his bag into the back seat of the car and followed it, sinking into the upholstery with a sigh. Eddy knew not to question the dispirited mood. Obviously a wasted day; the expected target had failed to appear.
‘Home again, sir?’ was all Eddy asked.
‘Newry.’ Keegan pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Do you know the Jonesborough Hotel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’ll do.’
Eddy drove Keegan into Newry in glum silence except for Keegan’s mumbling something about a patrol that should have moved today. ‘Army intelligence is improving.’
‘What’s that, sir?’ Eddy asked innocently.
‘Never mind. Just drive. I have to get to the bottom of this.’