anyway. All he has to do is to keep her talking.' He looked around for an ashtray and Patsy pushed a crystal dish towards him. He flicked ash into it, and waited for her to continue.
'Has he asked you what we're doing to find his daughter?'
'Not yet. No.'
'That's something.'
'What are you going to tell him when he does?'
'That we're doing everything we can.'
Denham blow smoke up towards the ceiling. There were elaborate plaster carvings of fruit around the central light fitting.
The only decoration in Denham's old office had been a smoke alarm missing a battery. 'And if he realises that we're not?'
'Liam, our first priority is to prevent them exploding whatever device it is that Andrea Hayes is building for them. If we make any attempt to locate the girl, they'll know we're on to them.'
'So we do nothing to find the girl?'
'There's nothing we can do, not without showing our hand.'
Denham took a long pull on his cigarette and looked at the ceiling again.
'We find them here first, then they'll tell us where the girl is,'
said Patsy. 'But the converse isn't true. In fact, I'd bet money that the kidnappers in Ireland don't know the full details of what's going on here.'
Denham nodded. She was right. But he didn't think that Martin Hayes would see it her way. 'And what exactly is it you want from me?' he asked. 'Why've I been brought in from the cold?'
'Hardly the cold, Liam. You've a very nice pension, from what I hear. Certainly more than I'll be getting when I retire.
The government has always been more than generous to its employees in the North.'
'I was sacked, Patsy.'
'You retired.'
Denham gave her a tight smile.
'You were the only one who dealt with Trevor. You're the only one who knows how she'll react.'
'I've not seen or spoken to her in ten years.'
'You're all we have. You and her husband. But even her husband doesn't know her the way you do.'
Denham tapped ash into the ashtray. 'People change.'
'Of course they do. But you were with her when she was under the most pressure. When her life was on the line. She knew what they'd do to her if they ever found out she was betraying them. And you were the only one she could confide in.' She paused for a while. The only sound in the room was the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece, a big polished oak monstrosity, around a tiled fireplace in which stood a vase of dried flowers. To the side of the fireplace was a large brass scuttle filled with chunks of wood. Denham could imagine the fire burning cheerfully on winter days. His own office, in a fortified concrete bunker in north Belfast, had had a single-bar electric fire that didn't even take the edge off the winter days. 'Liam, I have to know. Given the choice between the life of her daughter and the hundreds of lives that could be lost if a device went off in a mainland city -- what would she do?'
Denham shrugged. He took another long pull on his cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He exhaled slowly.
'You know why she walked away?'
'Because four children died.'
'Four died and one mutilated. It damn near destroyed her. It didn't matter to her how many lives she'd saved. She came close to killing herself. She had the tablets and everything.' He stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. 'She didn't turn up for a meeting we'd arranged so I broke all the rules and went looking for her. Found her sitting on her bed with the tablets out and a bottle of vodka.'
'I read the file. It wasn't her fault.'
'I knew that. I think she knew that, too. Deep down. But it was children, Patsy. That's what pushed her over the edge. So think what her own daughter means to her. She'll do anything.
Whatever it takes. She'd die for her.'
Patsy reached for the cross around her neck and stroked it as she studied Denham with unblinking eyes. 'But we're not talking about her giving up her life for her daughter's, are we? Would she kill others? Would she allow others to be killed?
If it meant saving her own daughter?'
Denham stared at one of the oil paintings. A cruel face. A pinched mouth. White cheeks with smears of rouge. Watery eyes. 'She's an intelligent girl, is Andrea. Smart as a whip. Got a first at Queen's, you know? Top of her year. By far. I never won an argument with her, not in all the time I ran her. You'd never know, not to look at her, because she was so damn pretty. The softest blond hair you ever saw. Blue eyes that you felt you could just dive into. And her figure. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the heads she turned.'
'And you a married man,' said Patsy, shaking her head and smiling. 'What's your point, Liam? That pretty girls aren't expected to be intelligent?'
'The point is, she's going to work out what we both know already. That if they are forcing her to build a bomb, they're not going to want her around after it goes off. They're going to want her dead. And if they're going to kill Andrea, they've really nothing to lose by killing the little girl, too.'
He looked at Patsy. She looked back at him, her face giving nothing away.
'She'll know that,' Denham continued. 'She'll know that if she doesn't do what they want, the girl will die. And she'll know that if she does do what they want, the girl will die.'
'Which leaves her where?'
'Looking for a third way.'
'Which is?'
Denham's mouth twisted as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. 'She's the one with the first, Patsy.'
'But she'll be building the bomb?'
'Definitely. Because so long as she's in the process of constructing it, they won't hurt the girl.'
'Which gives us how long?'
'Oh, come on now, Patsy. How long's a piece of string?'
'Assuming it's a big one. A spectacular?'
'A week. Give or take.'
'That's what I figured. So we've got a couple of days. Maybe three.'
Denham nodded. He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. His Hush Puppies had seen better days -- the suede was stained and the laces were fraying.
'There's something else I need you to do, Liam.'
Denham nodded slowly. 'I was wondering when you'd get around to it.'
'Somebody's going to have to ask him. And I think it'd be better coming from you.'
Denham lit another cigarette. At the height of the Troubles he'd smoked eighty a day, and he could feel the old cravings returning.
'There's a plane waiting. A bit rough-and-ready, I'm afraid.
And a car outside. I'll have transport arranged for you in Belfast.'
'You know where he is?'
Patsy smiled. 'Every minute of every day,' she said. 'I'm going to address the troops.'
She walked down the office to the briefing room. Twenty expectant faces looked up at her as she went over to where two whiteboards were mounted on the wall. The blinds were drawn and the overhead fluorescent lights were on. 'Right, let's get straight to it, shall we?' she said.
Just over half the operatives in the room were female, and almost all were under thirty, a reflection of the changing face of the Security Service. Young, enthusiastic, and not necessarily educated at Oxford or Cambridge. It was a change that Patsy approved of, and had herself benefited from. Most of them were sitting around a long light oak table, notepads in front of them.
Two of the younger men stood by the double doors, and they closed them as she stood in front of one of the whiteboards. There were four photographs stuck to it. Three of them were of Andrea Hayes, one was of Katie.
Patsy pointed at one of the photographs of Andrea, a head and shoulders shot that had been in an album retrieved from the Hayes house when the answering machine had been turned off.
'Andrea Hayes. Housewife, thirty-four years old.' She tapped the photograph next to it. Another head-and-shoulders shot,
this one a blow-up of a passport photograph taken twelve years earlier. 'In a previous life, Andrea Sheridan. Top IRA bomb maker and Special Branch informer. She is presently in the UK,
and active. Not by choice.' She tapped the photograph of Katie.
'Her daughter, Katie. Seven years old. Kidnapped from their home in Dublin.'
She tapped the first photograph of Andy. 'Someone wants her to build a bomb. Presumably a big one. At this stage, I don't really care why. Why we can work out later. As to when, we think the bomb's likely to be completed within the next few days. Assuming it's a massive fertiliser bomb, which was Andrea Sheridan's speciality, once the ingredients are mixed, their shelf life is limited. A week at most. So we're looking at a timeframe of between two days and ten. So, these are our priorities. We need to know who's building the bomb, and we need to know where the bomb is. As regards who, we have video of a vehicle leaving a carpark in Covent Garden.'
She moved across to the second whiteboard. There were six photographs stuck to it. One was a grainy black-and-white print that had been blown up from a still taken from the closed-circuit television video at the carpark in Covent Garden. She tapped it with her marker pen. 'This van has the name of a garden landscaping firm on the side, though you can't see it on the video. Andrea Sheridan is in the back. We've run a check on the registration number. The van is owned by a company in the Midlands. It's being checked out as we speak, but I don't recommend anyone holding their breath. This has been too well planned for it to be as easy as that.' She pointed to the portion of the photograph showing the van's windscreen. 'Two occupants. Male. They're sitting well back but we can just about make out the bottom of the passenger's face and three-quarters of the driver's. Our technical boys are working on the video now. We've also got all the tickets handed in that day and we're looking for the one that corresponds to their exit time. If we get it, we get the driver's prints.'
She folded her arms and moved away from the whiteboard.
'Whoever they are, the two men in the van aren't working alone. So what are the possibilities? We think it unlikely it's the IRA, or anyone else in the Republican movement. Let me rephrase that. We think it unlikely that they're acting for the Republican movement. If it was in any way official, there'd be no need for the kidnapping. In fact, there'd be no need for them to use Andrea Sheridan. Her expertise is a decade out of date.
What we believe is happening is that someone wants it to appear that there is an IRA involvement. Now, that leads to two lines of enquiry. First, someone within the IRA must have offered up Andrea Sheridan. Her role as a bombmaker was known to less than a dozen people. Only one man within RUC Special Branch knew what her position was. Chief Inspector Liam Denham. Ex-Chief Inspector. He's working with us on this.
Chief Inspector Denham is hoping to obtain a list of those members of the IRA who knew of Andrea Sheridan. We have some names already. She was recruited while still at university by one Denis Fisher. Fisher was killed in London in 1992.'
There were five photographs underneath the surveillance shot of the van. All head-and-shoulder pictures that had been blown up. Patsy waved at them. 'These are the five members of her active service unit during the time she was active.' She tapped the photographs one by one.
'James Nolan. The late James Nolan. Scored an own goal in Hammersmith in '93 and blew himself out of a third-floor bedsit in a couple of dozen pieces.'
Several of the agents laughed, but they stopped when she gave them a frosty look. 'Thomas Kennedy. Last heard of in Kilburn, north London. Michael and Gordon, he's yours.'
Michael Jenner and Gordon Harris, who were sitting at the far end of the table in almost identical dark blue suits, nodded in acknowledgment.
'Eugene Walsh. Managed to win the green card lottery a couple of years back and is now working for a diving company in the Florida Keys. Our Miami office is looking for him.'
The fourth face was the youngest of the group, still in his twenties. Patsy pointed at it. 'Shay Purcell. The ASU's runner.
He was barely eighteen when he was active. He's in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, midway through a Life sentence. Killed his girlfriend with a bread knife so he's not regarded as political and won't be getting early release. We'll be speaking to him there.'
She tapped the final picture. 'Brendan Tighe. Still in Belfast.
He turned informer about four years back. He's still in the IRA,
deep cover, and we know he's sound.'
She turned back to the whiteboard and with a blue marker pen wrote the word 'TREVOR' in capital letters.
'Her code-name within Special Branch was Trevor. As of now, that's how she's to be referred to. I don't want to hear the names Andrea Sheridan or Andrea Hayes referred to outside this room. Once we have the list, we'll be bringing them in, one and all.'
She put the cap back on her marker. 'So, who is behind this if it's not the IRA?' She held up her hand and raised her index finger. 'One. A Protestant group wanting to implicate the IRA in a terrorist outrage.' She counted offa second finger. 'Two. A terrorist group within the United Kingdom. Muslims. Right wing groups. Animal activists. You name it.' She held up a third finger. 'Three. A terrorist group from outside the United Kingdom. Iraq. Iran. Libya. You know the possibilities as well as I do.' Several of the agents nodded. Patsy held up a fourth ringer. 'Four. Some other group. Some other reason. If anyone here has any thoughts, I'd Like to hear them.'
No one in the room had any suggestions. Patsy hadn't expected any, not at such an early stage in the investigation.
'So, we trawl through all the intelligence we have, looking for possibilities. Anyone who isn't where they should be. Anyone recently arrived in this country who might be behind something Like this. Anyone who's suddenly gone underground. Speak to all your contacts. But tactfully. We don't want to make waves.'
One of the men by the door raised a hand. It was Tim Fanning, a relatively recent recruit from a City stockbroking firm where he'd worked as an analyst. 'Yes, Tim?'
'What about the Americans?'
'I'll be contacting the CIA officially for details of American terrorist activity,' said Patsy.