by Val McDermid
And she was gone. Allie stared at the empty glass and wondered what that last exchange had really all been about.
30
They hadn’t even left the pub car park in Stranraer when Malloch cut to the chase. ‘So what did you tell him?’ he demanded when Bell reached Robinson’s crucial question.
‘The truth. That Paul’s gran bought him five Premium Bonds when he was born, and one of them came up last month. And Paul’s more than happy to spend a grand on the struggle.’
Malloch gave a delighted laugh. ‘What did he say to that?’
‘“Sure, isn’t it the Irish that are supposed to have the luck?”’ Bell’s impression of an Irish accent was excruciating, but neither of them cared. ‘Then he burst out laughing and said it was very fucking ironic that a state lottery should fund the overthrow of its own power. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but I guess he’s right. I mean, a state lottery? That’s exactly what the Premium Bonds are.’
‘So are we on?’ Malloch’s left knee was bouncing up and down, his fingers drumming on the dashboard.
‘I don’t know. It’s too soon to say. Terry’s just one member of the cell, so he’s got to pass it up to the next in command, and he’ll pass it to a brigade commander. He said it might probably go all the way up to the Army Council.’
‘How long’s that going to take? It’s not like we’ve got forever. It’s only a matter of weeks till the referendum. We need to shake the place to its foundations before then, Ding-dong.’
Bell started the engine and manoeuvred his way through the piles of frozen slush to the road. ‘I don’t know,’ he said mutinously. ‘There’s nothing I can do to make it happen faster. I told Terry it was urgent.’
Malloch’s laughter had a curdled quality to it. ‘Who knew the revolution was just as fucking bureaucratic as the government we’ve already got? I tell you, it’ll be a different story in an independent Scotland.’
The Clock Café at the bottom of Maryhill Road was a generic Formica, plywood and vinyl interior with a thin coating of grease on every surface, including the framed photos of past Partick Thistle teams. Danny deliberately arrived a few minutes early for the Sunday morning rendezvous. He wanted to look eager, but not suspiciously so. Ding-dong Bell had beaten him to it, and was already halfway through a bacon roll. ‘I woke up starving,’ he admitted. ‘All that excitement yesterday, I must’ve worked up an appetite.’
Before Danny could ask for details, Roddy Farquhar and Deke Malloch arrived together. They were, he thought, the least likely bunch of conspirators he could have imagined. Business was postponed while all four ordered a full Scottish breakfast, ‘None of your tomatoes, for God’s sake, we’re no’ jessies,’ and mugs of tea.
‘The suspense is killing me,’ Danny said as the waitress shuffled off. ‘How did it go?’
They all leaned forward, heads close together, and sat rapt while Bell retold his tale. When he reached the end of what he’d already revealed to Malloch in the car, his partner in crime exultantly exclaimed, ‘How great is that? Now we’ve just got to wait and keep our fingers crossed.’
Bell shook his head, a faint smile twitching the corners of his mouth. ‘You’re behind the times, Deke. Stop the presses, there’s more news.’
‘More news than last night? How?’
It was a question Danny wanted answered too. ‘Did your pal phone you?’
Bell scoffed. ‘Don’t be daft. They’re way too sharp for that. They know the Special Branch and the RUC are all over them. They don’t take chances. No, I got a note through my door. Somebody must have delivered it during the night, it was just sitting on my doormat when I got up.’
‘How did they get a note to you?’ Farquhar asked. It was, thought Danny, the least interesting thing he could have asked.
‘They’ll have active units over here,’ Malloch said loftily, as if the IRA’s organisational structure were an open book to him. ‘They’ll have systems in place for passing messages. But what did the message say? Are we on, or what?’
Bell scrabbled in the pocket of his leather biker’s jacket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. He was about to remove its contents when the waitress arrived and plonked four thick white pottery mugs on the table. ‘Four teas, boys,’ she said, her tone funereal.
They helped themselves, waiting till she was out of earshot again. ‘C’mon, Ding-dong, don’t keep us waiting,’ Malloch muttered.
Bell unfolded the paper and waved it at them. Black capital letters on cheap lined writing paper. Before Danny could make out the words, Bell read them out. ‘“Phone this number from a phone box. Sunday morning at ten.”’
‘That’s it?’ Farquhar, incredulous.
‘And did you?’ Danny, to the point.
‘I did.’ Bell, smug.
‘And what happened?’ Malloch, loud enough to turn heads.
‘Keep it down.’ Danny, urgent.
‘I got a message. “Outside the Butcher’s Dog at half past nine tomorrow. You and the lucky boy and his winnings. You’ll be met.”’ Again, Bell’s atrocious approximation of a Belfast accent.
‘What does that mean, then?’ Farquhar, again with the least interesting question.
Malloch let out a sharp noise of exasperation. ‘It means we’re in business. The fucking IRA want to do business with us, Roddy, you bell-end.’
Now the waitress was back with two loaded plates. She deposited them in front of Danny and Farquhar with what looked like the first smile of the day, judging by the effort it took. The other two plates followed immediately. Danny couldn’t remember ever seeing a more heavily loaded breakfast feast – a link sausage, a square of Lorne sausage, three rashers of Ayrshire middle, two tattie scones, a slice each of black pudding, haggis and fruit dumpling, a spoonful of baked beans, two perfectly fried eggs and two pieces of buttered toast. It made the office canteen’s offering seem scant, and nobody had ever said that in Danny’s hearing. ‘I think this might kill me,’ he said.
‘Quick, take it off him,’ Malloch said. ‘We need you tomorrow night. With a pocketful of readies, my man.’
Dear God, it was really happening, Danny thought. He was getting away with it. That moment of horrified recognition in the Spaghetti Factory had come to nothing. They’d genuinely taken him at face value. Allie was going to be over the moon about this. Two cracking exposés in a matter of weeks – they were the kings of the hill. Stories like this opened doors. He’d put money on him and Allie being in Fleet Street before the dust of the devolution referendum had settled.
He looked round the table and grinned. ‘No bother. I’ll sort the money out first thing in the morning. You can count on me.’
Malloch clapped him on the back. ‘You’ll be the first hero of the New Republic.’
Bell laughed. ‘Aye, you’ll look good on the stamps and the money.’
Farquhar appraised him, head cocked. ‘Right enough, you’ve got the profile for it.’
Danny dipped a corner of his tattie scone into an egg yolk and bit it off. ‘I’m not counting my chickens, boys. We’ve got a long way to go yet. This is just the first step.’
‘Mibbes,’ Bell said, suddenly serious. ‘But it’s one helluva first step.’ He raised his mug. ‘Here’s to shaking off the shackles. Here’s to the New Republic.’
31
Sunday morning barely dawned. A low grim sky hung over Glasgow, matching Allie’s mood. Even the energy of Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces wasn’t enough to lift her spirits. The cheerfulness of Rona Dunsyre that had rubbed off on her the day before had worn thin with the contemplation of what she and Danny had embarked on. There was no word from him before she had to leave for work, and she tried not to make that grounds for anxiety.
She failed, of course. As she knew she would. Sunday backshift was never going to take her mind off what was going on. Anything of interest in the overnigh
ts had already been dealt out to the day shift; the backshift reporter’s principal task was to mind the shop while everybody who wasn’t out on a story went to the Press Club to play snooker. They’d roll back at some point between three and four, grumbling about having to do some work. Meanwhile, Allie sat at the newsdesk, answering occasional phone calls, swapping gossip with Fatima McGeechan, and working her way through a stack of local weeklies in the usually vain hope of finding a story worth pursuing.
When the rest of the team straggled back, Fatima told her to do the weather story. So Allie headed back to her own desk and started the round of calls. Police, coastguard, local Met Office and the AA. The usual Highland roads were closed, there were warnings of freezing fog and black ice, and the main road between Montrose and Arbroath was closed because of a collision between a jack-knifed lorry and a bread van. No injuries, just a diversion via Friockheim. She dropped off her copy and headed down to the canteen, hoping Danny would be there. Ideally in one piece.
He was in the same corner where they’d met for their first curry, looking no more relaxed than he had that night. He showed no signs of the buzz she’d felt from her involvement with stories that felt substantial. But then, she hadn’t blown a hole below the waterline of the key relationships in her life. She picked up a can of Irn Bru and joined him. He greeted her with a wan smile. ‘Well, I’m still alive. Cover still intact,’ he began.
‘How was it?’ She ripped off the ring-pull and took a swig, loving the sensation of sugar and caffeine and a bite of ginger hitting her.
‘A weird mix. It’s exhilarating to penetrate a group like this without rousing any suspicions. Fuck, I’d be suspicious of me, turning up out of the blue like a fairy godmother. But on the other hand, it’s terrifying that a bunch of eejits can get so far down the road to mayhem so easily. It’s like none of it is real to them. They’re like a bunch of wee boys playing cowboys and Indians.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘They wind each other up, like it’s a dare to see who’ll bottle out first.’
‘So what actually happened? Did Bell meet up with his IRA contact?’
Danny gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Aye, he did. His pal Terry Robinson turns out to be as well-connected as Bell promised. He said he’d be in touch.’ He outlined what he’d heard in the Clock Café earlier and Allie felt her jaw drop as he explained the plans for a meeting.
‘Jesus, Danny,’ she breathed. ‘So what are you going to do?’
He chewed the corner of his thumb. ‘I’ve got to go through with it, don’t I? Otherwise we’ve got no story and they’ve got a direct line into a source of explosives. And they’re mad enough to find the money somewhere else.’ Another dry laugh. ‘Nice respectable lads like them? They’ll probably get a bank loan.’
‘We can’t hand over the cash, just like that! We’re funding terrorism.’ Allie shook her head in dismay. ‘I said you should never have offered the money.’
‘Well, it’s done now.’
A long moment of awkward silence. Allie’s mind was racing, trying to find a way forward that would work. ‘A grand, yes? That’s what we’re talking about?’ Danny nodded. ‘Well, that’s simple enough. Your bank won’t hand over a thousand pounds in cash without a couple of days’ notice. Why don’t you turn up with a couple of hundred? Explain that was all you could get without letting them know in advance, but you’ll have the balance to hand over when they hand over the explosives?’
Danny frowned. ‘What if they think we’re pissing them around?’
‘They might put the fear of God into you, but they’re not going to hurt you. Not with the prospect of another eight hundred quid to come.’ Allie tried to sound more confident than she felt. ‘Plus it gives us a chance to get our ducks in a row for the story. We need to do complete backgrounders on your wee pals. Addresses, employers, family, education, friends. And that means it’s time to talk to Angus.’
Danny groaned. ‘He’s going to go mental.’
‘He’ll not go mental for long. He’ll see what a brilliant story it is. We need him onside, Danny. And not simply because we need a full team digging into your new Republican Army. We need to protect ourselves. Right now, when it’s you and me two-handed in the thick of this, it’d be very bloody easy to paint us as part of the conspiracy. Even to make it look like we’ve incited the whole thing just to get a story. But once we get the newsdesk on board, we cover our own backs. We go back to being the crusading journalists.’
Danny picked at the rim of his Styrofoam cup of lentil soup, scattering tiny white spheres over the table like dandruff. ‘Except we did sort of kickstart it. Before I put the money in the mix, they were just a bunch of bams talking each other up. I made it so they couldn’t back down.’
Exasperated, Allie said, ‘Gonnae no’ with the Catholic guilt. These guys were primed for trouble. Deke Malloch, in a public meeting, talking about the attention-grabbing tactics of the IRA. Gary Bell, jumping straight in with the offer of his IRA Active Service Unit contact. All we did was speed them along a road they were already driving down. That doesn’t make it our fault. What we’re doing is making sure they don’t get to their destination. We need to talk to Angus. He’s not just our boss, he’s our insurance policy. Look at the way he got the Razor on board to cover our backs on your story.’
Danny looked ready to burst into tears. ‘I understand what you’re saying. It’s the right thing. But not yet, Allie. Please, not yet.’
‘Why not? We’ve come this far, we know what the story is. “A ruthless gang of radical insurgents hell-bent on bringing terrorism to the Scottish referendum were closed down last night thanks to the Clarion.”’
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘No question, you’re the lassie with the magic words. But here’s the thing. We bring Angus on board now and tomorrow night will turn into a three-ring circus. We’ll have snappers galore staking out the street outside the pub and all they’ll end up with is blurry over-exposed shots nobody could ever pick out of a line-up. The glory boys will be all over it, trying to steal our story out from under our noses, dying for car chases and high drama. If anybody gets me into bother with the IRA, it’ll be my own side with their grandstanding.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘You think? You saw how quick Peter McGovern was to snatch top billing on my story. They’ll all be at it. You’re still new at this. The guys are nice to you because you’re a lassie and they don’t see you as any kind of threat. You do them a favour, with the miracle babies and the women’s stories. You’ve no idea how cut-throat those bastards are. Let me get through tomorrow night and then we’ll confess to Angus.’
Allie bought a few moments by lighting up. She sighed out a long plume of smoke and stared unseeing across the canteen. ‘I can’t be there for you at half past nine tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘I’m still on the backshift. I’m not lowsed till ten. And you know there’s no chance of an early cut when the night shift are still in the pub. You’ll be out there on your own, Danny. And I’m not comfortable with that.’
‘I’ll be fine, Allie. I’m the boy with the money, remember? The goose that lays the golden eggs. I’ll be wrapped in cotton wool. If anybody’s going to get a smack, it’ll be Gary Bell, for making promises he couldn’t keep.’
Allie scoffed. ‘Is that supposed to fill me with confidence? Because it disnae.’
‘Give me tomorrow night. Then we’ll tell Angus everything.’
‘Then he can let the dogs out to dig through the mountains of uncollected rubbish in Deke and Ding-Dong and Roddy’s back courts and find all their skeletons.’ Allie’s grin was more rueful than enthusiastic. She almost missed the glimmer of anxiety that crossed Danny’s face. ‘It’s not what I’d choose, but you know the way things work better than I do.’ She dipped her hand into her bag and came out with her miniature tape recorder. She pushed it across the table to him.
‘I’m right, trust
me.’ This time, his smile reached his eyes, reminding her of how attractive he was when he relaxed. He picked up the recorder and tucked it into his inside pocket.
Allie stood up, knocking back the last mouthful of her drink. ‘I need to get back upstairs.’ She turned to go, then caught herself. ‘By the way, any word from Auntie Senga?’
The brightness stayed in his eyes. ‘She rang me earlier. She passed on the message and Joseph told her he’d already been in touch with the police. He said he’d told them the truth. That he was nothing more than the delivery boy, that he had no idea what he was carrying, that he’s just a lowly clerk. A lowly clerk that drives a six-grand sports car.’ She wasn’t deaf to the irony in his voice. ‘He’s settled on his line, with the family as well as the cops. He’s the victim, I’m the traitor. And it looks like he’s conned the polis as well, since they let him go home after they interviewed him. Like I told you, he’s good at the injured innocent routine.’
‘And they’ve got bigger fish to fry. Why bother with an expensive trial for a bit player like him?’
Danny shrugged. ‘I suppose I should be glad. I don’t want my mum and dad to go through that. But if everybody thinks he’s the victim, where does that leave me? Even Auntie Senga thinks I need to keep my distance.’
‘That’ll pass, Danny. Like you said, when they see the good work you’re doing, they’ll understand that the last thing you wanted to do was hurt your family.’
He turned away. ‘So we need to make this story work. Thanks for cutting me some slack. I promise. After tomorrow, we’ll go to Angus. No more crawling out on a limb.’
32
Bell and Danny emerged from the pub at half past nine on the dot, as arranged. They weren’t sorry to leave; the Butcher’s Dog was a dingy dive for serious drinkers with nowhere else to be. They walked down deserted streets from the heart of the Calton district towards the wide sweep of Glasgow Green.
