The Bombmaker (34 page)

'I'll be sure to tell him that,' said McCracken with a cold smile.

'You know what I mean, Lydia,' said O'Keefe. 'What do we really know about Egan, or what his agenda is?'

'He's a pro, and he pays. That's all we need to know.'

'Aye, that's as maybe. But watch your back, eh?'

'Maybe you could watch it for me, Don. And I'll watch yours.'

O'Keefe smirked. 'If it's all the same to you, I'll take care of my own back,' he said.

One of the tumble-driers reached the end of its cycle and O'Keefe went over to it. 'I'll get Andrea,' said McCracken.

'With Quinn out of the way, she's going to have to pull her ringer out.'

Andy clicked the end tumbler of the combination lock and pushed the button. The lock clicked open. Eight-six-four. She stared at the lock, not quite believing that she'd done it. She swallowed and looked up at the door. She'd been in the office for almost ten minutes and wasn't sure how long she could stay without the Wrestler wondering what she was doing.

She set the second combination dial to zero-zero-zero and began working her way through the combinations. After several futile attempts, she had a sudden thought. She had a briefcase of her own, though she rarely used it. The combination was Katie's birthday. Nine-one-seven. The seventeenth of September.

Andy had set both locks to the same number. She wondered if Green-eyes had done the same. She set the second dial to eight-six-four, said a silent prayer, and pushed the button with her thumb. It clicked open. Her heart pounded. Would the mobile phone be inside? And if it was, who would she call?

Just as she was about to open the briefcase, she heard footsteps outside. High heels, crunching softly along the carpet tiles.

Andy fumbled with the catches and snapped them shut. She slipped the briefcase under the table and stood up, wiping her sweaty palms on the legs of her jeans. The door was flung open.

It was Green-eyes. 'What the hell's going on?' she asked angrily.

'What do you mean?' replied Andy, trying to sound as innocent as possible. She forced herself not to look down.

'I mean I want you out there working, not in here skiving.'

Andy picked up the chicken salad roll and waved it in front of Green-eyes. 'I've got to eat, haven't I?'

Green-eyes jerked her thumb at the door. 'You can eat out there.'

Andy stayed where she was. She looked at the video recorder, and then back at the woman. 'I've had a thought,'

she said. 'About the timer.'

'That's another thing. That bomb went off early. Five seconds early. How could that happen?'

Andy pulled at her lower lip. 'The chip, I guess.' She went over to the video recorder and tapped the front where a digital clock was glowing blue. 'I was thinking, the timer in this might be a better bet. The electronics are easier to deal with. It'll be easier to set, too.'

'Have you used one before?'

'Sure.'

Green-eyes nodded thoughtfully. 'Okay. Whatever.'

'Andy unplugged the video recorder from the mains supply and then disconnected it from the television. Green-eyes held the door open for her as she carried it out.

Green-eyes looked around the room, shrugged, and followed her down the corridor.

282

Martin looked up as Denham walked in. There were dark patches under his eyes and his hair was greasy and unkempt.

He'd rolled his shirtsleeves up and loosened his collar. 'Any news?' he asked.

Denham shook his head. He looked at Carter and Fanning.

They looked as tired as Martin. 'Why don't you get a bite to eat,

or catch some sleep? I'll stay until you get back.'

'One of us has to be here all the time,' said Fanning.

'So toss for it,' said Denham. He smiled sympathetically at Martin. 'You should try to sleep, too.'

Denham sat down opposite him. 'The bomb in Milton Keynes. It was the van. The van we were looking for. The SOCO boys found part of the registration plate.'

Martin ran his hands through his hair. 'God. What if it was Andy?'

'I don't think it was,' said Denham.

A look of hope flashed across Martin's face. 'Why? Why do you think that?'

'She was too professional to make a mistake,' said Denham.

'She was very methodical. Cold as ice. It couldn't have gone off accidentally.'

'Maybe they wanted to kill her. Maybe they blew her up?'

Carter left: the room. Denham lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. 'If they wanted to kill her, they wouldn't use a bomb, and they wouldn't do it in Milton Keynes. We're pretty 283 sure that it was a deliberate explosion. A test, maybe. Or a way of getting rid of the van and any other evidence.'

'But there was a body.'

'It could have been anyone, Martin. They wouldn't have gone to all this trouble just for a small bomb in Milton Keynes.

Whatever they're up to it has to be much bigger than that.'

Denham saw Martin staring at the packet of cigarettes and he offered him one. 'I don't smoke,' said Martin.

'Good for you,' said Denham.

'I gave up. Fifteen years ago.'

'I wish I had the willpower,' said Denham.

Martin continued to stare at the packet. 'Fuck it,' he said,

reaching for a cigarette. Denham lit it for him. Martin inhaled and coughed, then took another drag. 'Fifteen years,' he said quietly. 'You married, Liam?'

Denham nodded. 'Almost thirty years. Thirty years next year.'

'What's the anniversary? Platinum? Sapphire?'

'Something like that.' Denham grinned and tapped ash into an ashtray. 'Bound to be expensive.'

'Children?'

Denham's jaw tightened. 'A daughter.' He took another long drag on his cigarette, held the smoke deep in his lungs for several seconds, then exhaled between clenched teeth. 'She died.'

'I'm sorry.'

Denham shrugged. 'It was a long time ago. Leukaemia.'

'Oh, God. I'm really sorry.'

'Yeah, she was twelve. She'd been sick for two years -- in and out of the bloody hospital we were. Chemotherapy. Radiation.

Seems like most of the memories I have of her she was wearing a baseball cap.' He blew smoke at the floor.

'Children shouldn't die before their parents,' said Martin quietly. 'That's not how it should be.'

Denham nodded, staring at the floor. Fanning stood up uneasily and went over to the window. Denham looked up and locked eyes with Martin.

'If anything happens to Katie . . .' Martin said.

'We'll find her,' Denham assured him.

Martin's eyes were as hard and unyielding as plate glass as he stared at Denham. 'You have to find them both, Liam. You have to get them both back. I'll die without them. If they die, I'll die too.'

Denham reached over and gripped Martin's wrist. 'It won't come to that,' he said.

Martin pulled his arm away, embarrassed by the contact. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he just shook his head and put a hand up to his face, massaging the bridge of his nose and blinking away tears.

Carter reappeared with a tray containing two plates of salad and two bottles of water. Denham gestured at the food with his cigarette. 'Not on a diet are we, Barbara?'

She smiled without warmth and put the tray on a coffee table close to the sofa. Denham stood up. 'I'll take this outside,' he said, nodding at the cigarette. Martin looked at the burning cigarette in his own hand, took a final drag and then stabbed it into the ashtray. Carter's smile was fractionally warmer. She sat on the sofa and began to peck at her salad with a fork.

Denham flashed an encouraging smile at Martin, but he was staring at the carpet. Denham took the lift down to the ground floor and walked out of Thames House, putting on his tweed hat and pulling it down hard as he headed towards the river. He turned up the collar of his jacket against the cold wind that was whipping in from the east. Out of habit he checked over his shoulder several times, but he wasn't being followed. He walked past several call-boxes and chose one down a side street, pulling out a handful of change and dropping two one-pound coins into the slot before dialling the number in Dublin. He smiled with satisfaction as the number rang out. Denham took pride in his memory, which was as close to photographic as it was possible to get, especially where names and numbers where concerned. It had been more than a decade since he'd phoned Eamonn Hogan, yet he'd instantly been able to retrieve the number from wherever it was in his brain that it had been filed away. He smiled as he remembered how his wife had always teased him because his recall of names and numbers was virtually infallible but he could never remember where he'd left his car keys or the television remote control.

Hogan didn't answer the phone himself, but an efficient secretary with a clipped Cork accent took Denham's name,

asked him to hold, and then put him through almost immediately.

'Liam, you old rascal, how's retirement?' asked Hogan.

'Not as quiet as I'd hoped,' said Denham. 'Still Chief Inspector, then?'

'Aye. Too many black marks on my record to climb the slippery pole,' said Hogan. 'But I know where enough bodies are buried for them not to get rid of me. We've reached a nice wee impasse, so I'll give it five more years and then I'll be able to spend all my time on the golf course. What about you? Still fishing?'

'When I can. Look, Eamonn, I just wanted a word in your ear. Can you talk?'

'Sure.'

'George McEvoy. Remember him?'

'Unfortunately, yes. Right nasty bastard. Did the dirty for the IRA's Civil Administration Team, right?'

'That's him. Can you do me a favour -- see if he's on your patch at all?'

'Why would you think he'd be in Dublin, Liam?'

Denham wasn't sure how much he could tell Hogan. They'd worked together on several occasions when Denham had been serving with Special Branch in Belfast, but they weren't friends,

they had no real history together.

'It's difficult to explain, Eamonn, without me dropping myself in it. And you, too.'

Hogan chuckled. 'I don't think there's much you could say that would blacken my reputation any more than it already is,'

he said. 'Where are you? Belfast?'

'London.' *

'So what's with the query about McEvoy? Doing a little private detective work on the side, are we? Sweetening the pension?'

'I doubt that I'm going to get paid for this,' said Denham. He fed another pound coin into the slot, and followed it with two fifty-pence pieces. 'The thing is, I think McEvoy might be involved in something in your neck of the woods.'

There was a pause lasting several seconds. 'This wouldn't be about the Katie Hayes girl, would it?'

Denham cursed silently.

'Well, Liam? Would it?'

'I can see why you're a detective, Eamonn. Putting two and two together and getting five.'

'It's not that big a leap of intuition,' said Hogan. 'Two of my boys were pulled off a case a day or two back. Little girl went missing with her mother. They pulled in the father and sweated him overnight but couldn't pin anything on them. They were coming to the view that it was a domestic and the wife had gone off. They let him go with a view to keeping an eye on him.

Then he vanished. My boys had made a few enquiries with his bank and his accountant and it seems he'd been liquidating all his investments. Before they could take it any further, I got a call from the Taoiseach's office. I was told to lay off the Hayes case.

No explanation, no please or thank you, just that the matter was being pursued at a higher level. So, was I right? Do two and two make five? Or is it six? Or is your call from London a total coincidence?'

Denham smiled despite himself. Hogan was a cunning old sod. 'You know I can't tell you, Eamonn. But you're following orders, aren't you?'

'Oh, yes, I'm being a good boy. Wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardise my pension.'

Denham slotted in a few more coins.

'I'd like to tell you more, but I honestly can't. Maybe when it's over we can chat about it over a few glasses of malt,

but at the moment things are too frantic. But I would be grateful if you'd keep an eye out for McEvoy. Or any of his associates.'

'And if he does turn up?'

'Then I'd appreciate an unofficial call.' He gave Hogan the number of the mobile phone that Patsy had given him. 'That's a mobile and it's not secure,' he warned.

'They never are these days,' said Hogan. 'Okay, I'll put him on our watch list. I'll think of some excuse.'

'Anyone else appeared in Dublin you wouldn't expect?'

'Not that I know of, but now you've raised it I'll put out some feelers. Now you be careful, Liam. You're getting too old for cloak and dagger.'

Denham snorted back a laugh and hung up. As he left the call-box, he lit another cigarette. It was the last in his packet and the packet had been the second of the day. His wife wouldn't be best pleased if she found it. He put his hands in his pockets and went off in search of a newsagent.

Katie sat at the table, flicking through one of the comic books that the Nice Man had brought her. She had no idea what time it was or what day it was, but she was hungry, so she guessed it was almost lunch-time. She looked around the room. She had to find a way out. She had to escape. But how? There was only one way out of the basement and that was up the stairs and through the door. The last time she'd tried to run away she'd headed for the kitchen and that had been a mistake because the Ugly Man was there. She should have run the other way, to the front door.

If she could get to the front door, then she could run away and shout for help. Someone would hear her. A policeman, maybe.

She looked up at the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. If she tried to hide, they'd see her right away. They always switched the light on when they came down the stairs, no matter which of them it was. She needed to be able to hide in the dark and then run up the stairs before they saw her. She rolled up the comic and swished it through the air. If she could hit the light bulb, it would go out. But she was only little, she couldn't reach. She didn't think even her dad would be able to reach it.

She climbed on to the table and swung the comic at the bulb,

but it was still too high. She frowned up at it. If she did break the bulb, it would be dark. There were no windows in the basement.

She tutted, annoyed at herself for always thinking negatively.

She had to get out, she had to get back to her mummy and dad, and if that meant being in the dark for an hour or so, it was a small price to pay.

She knelt down on the table and picked up the wooden chair she'd been sitting on. She hauled it up on to the table, set it down in the middle, and climbed up on it. It wobbled a bit, but not much. She swung the rolled-up comic and hit the bulb. It swung craziry back and forth, but it didn't go out. Katie waited until it had stopped swinging before lashing out again. This time the light winked out, though the glass didn't break.

She stood on the chair in darkness, suddenly afraid. She knelt down, almost lost her balance, and then clambered to the floor.

It felt colder, as if the light had been keeping the basement warm, but she knew that was only her imagination. She groped around until she found her Garfield toy, then crawled to the bottom of the stairs, where she curled herself up into a tight ball and waited.

Andy looked up from the wires that she was soldering and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. She blew on the silvery lumps of still-hot solder, then tugged gently at the wire to check that it was firmly fixed to the digital timer's circuit board. She had to force herself to concentrate on what she was doing. Her mind kept wandering to the briefcase and to what would happen if Green-eyes discovered it.

The Wrestler was stacking the last of the black bags in the centre of the main office area. There was up to thirty pounds of the fertiliser/aluminium mixture in each bag, a total of one hundred and thirty bags in all.

Green-eyes watched as Andy added a drop more solder to the join, then blew on it again. 'This sort of timer's reliable, is it?'

she asked.

Andy nodded. 'The big advantage is that it can be set up weeks in advance. The IRA used it to bring down the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Remember, when they almost got Thatcher?'

'I remember. But we won't be needing weeks.'

'How long?' asked Andy.

'Let's get it set up first, then we'll worry about the time.'

Green-eyes straightened up and looked at her watch. It was the third occasion she'd looked at her watch in the past ten minutes, and Andy had the feeling that she was waiting for somebody.

Andy soldered one of the wires leading from the digital timer to a nine-volt battery. She'd already soldered another wire to the battery terminal, and she'd connected that temporarily to a bulb holder into which was screwed a small bulb. Three other wires also ran from the timer to three other bulb-holders, which were also connected to batteries. Andy was using red wires from the timer to the batteries, blue wires from the batteries to the bulb holders, and brown wires from the bulb-holders back to the timer. She fiddled with the timer and all four bulbs lit up.

'Excellent,' said Green-eyes.

'Do you want me to show you how to set the timer?' asked Andy.

'No need,' said Green-eyes. 'You'll be setting it, not me.'