Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  Morton shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s possible he lived here,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who the tenant was before we took it on. You could check with the rental agency. Pearson’s—they’re just the other side of the Broadway on Fulham Palace Road.’

  ‘Thank you. I will.’ Swann looked at him again. ‘There were two people involved in the bombing, Mr Morton.’

  ‘So I heard. One parking the car—one driving away.’

  Swann nodded. ‘This is just routine, but I’d like to see some ID. You see we don’t have a description of the other driver.’

  ‘I understand perfectly.’ Morton got up and took his wallet out of his pocket. ‘What would you like—driving licence? Hang on, I’m not sure where I’ve put it. I can get my passport if you want.’

  Swann waited while he went upstairs and fetched it. He noticed the book Morton was reading, lying open on the coffee table. Geronimo the Apache, some kind of biography. Morton returned and handed him a red European Community British passport. ‘There you are,’ he said.

  Swann took the passport. ‘Where are you from, Mr Morton?’

  ‘Originally? Portsmouth. My father was in the Navy. He met my mother in Africa.’

  ‘They still live down there—Portsmouth, I mean?’

  ‘No.’ Morton looked at the floor. ‘They’re both long dead, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Swann looked at the passport again and noticed it had only been issued six months previously. ‘Recent,’ he said and held it out to him.

  Morton nodded. ‘The last one expired.’

  ‘Have you got something with a previous address?’

  Morton looked at him closely. ‘Is that really necessary, Sergeant?’

  ‘In this instance, yes.’ Swann smiled at him. ‘The hirer of the car said he lived here. I need to check everything, Mr Morton. I’m sure you understand.’

  Morton went back upstairs and this time returned with his driving licence. ‘You’ve done me a favour actually,’ he said, ‘forced me to find it. Knowing my luck, I’d get stopped and not have it with me. Not only that—I need to change the address.’

  Swann looked at the licence. ‘Fleet,’ he said. ‘That where you lived before?’

  ‘For a while.’

  ‘D’you mind if I ask where you were about four o’clock on Wednesday morning?’

  ‘Not at all. I was here asleep.’ Morton smiled at him.

  ‘Can anybody verify that?’

  ‘No. I live alone.’

  ‘OK.’ Swann stood up. ‘Thank you for your time. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Morton showed him to the door. ‘Good hunting,’ he said as Swann walked down the steps.

  4

  AFTER THE INTERVIEW WITH Morton, Swann went round to the letting agents in Fulham Palace Road. The manager told him the house fetched seven hundred pounds a week in rent, and gave him a photocopy of the lease agreement. Swann questioned him about Edward Davies, but was told that nobody by that name had ever lived there. He related all this to Colson, Clements and the others at the afternoon briefing upstairs.

  ‘Coincidence then,’ Clements said.

  ‘It happens, Guv, doesn’t it. Addresses are picked at random.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  Clements was watching him. Superintendent Colson was watching him. Swann brushed a palm across the thigh of his trousers and sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There’s something about Morton that bugs me. He’s a little bit too sure of himself.’

  Clements stood up. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We know the driving licence is fake. Given that, we’ve probably found the car. George?’

  ‘Waiting for DRA’s evaluation,’ Webb told him.

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘Probably, yes.’

  ‘Right.’ Clements glanced at Colson. ‘In the meantime, we start looking for a skinhead with a swastika tattooed on his wrist.’

  They had dinner in the West End; Swann, Webb and Caroline. Swann had much on his mind.

  ‘How can you have the children?’ Caroline asked him. ‘You’re never there.’

  He looked at her, laying down his fork and picking up his wine glass. ‘I don’t know. But you imagine how they must be feeling right now, Jo’s not even ten yet and Charley’s only six. They think that their mummy wants to be with her boyfriend, but she can’t because of them.’

  Caroline leaned across the table and covered the fist he had made with a palm. ‘Oh, Jack. It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘I know it’s not. But that’s what they’re going to think.’ He sat back. ‘I’ll have to figure it out, somehow.’

  ‘You’ll have to get a nanny.’

  ‘I can’t afford a nanny, Caroline.’

  Caroline cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Jack, that’s an Armani suit you’re wearing.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’ He drummed his fingers on the table top. ‘I suppose I won’t be paying child support.’

  Webb was silent, toying with his food and watching them both. He was hardly listening, other things on his mind. The veroboard from the Soho car bomb disturbed him, its origin: even from the small fragment he had recovered, he could tell that the dual circuitry had been put together by a professional. The TPU that it came from was undoubtedly more sophisticated than the Provisionals’ Mk 15.

  Caroline was speaking. ‘Listen, Jack,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you try and find out about those student au pairs who come over?’

  Swann frowned at her. ‘Pia’s going to love that.’

  ‘If it bothers her that much, tell her to look after them.’

  Swann grinned at Webb. ‘Pia, the surrogate mother. Can’t quite see it, can you?’

  Caroline shrugged. ‘Her problem then, isn’t it.’ Again she laid her hand over Swann’s. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘They’re advertised in The Lady magazine. They come over to study English. You don’t pay them, only board and lodging. They look after your children in return. If you contact the agencies and explain your situation, I’m sure someone’ll help you.’

  Coffee came and the conversation inevitably turned to work. Morton bothered Swann. He could not say why: his story had checked out and in no way did he fit the description of the man who had hired the second car. They didn’t have a description of the first man, however. All at once he looked up and stared at Webb. ‘PIRA,’ he said.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘No. He said, PIRA.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘James Morton, the body at Queen’s House Mews.’ Swann crushed out his cigarette and gestured with a palm. ‘Who says PIRA?’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘Listen to me. You talk to the public, anyone not in the know—and they call it the IRA. Even on news bulletins, it’s the IRA claimed responsibility or whatever. Morton referred to them as PIRA.’

  The following morning, the results came in from Jane Mason at the Defence Research Agency. They had swabbed the hire car and come up with indisputable explosive traces. She spoke to George Webb on the phone as he sat in the exhibits office. Webb put the phone down and walked the length of the corridor, past the morale-boosting stuff on the wall that the Branch had gathered over twenty years of fighting terrorism: photographs, bomb scenes, SO19 taking out armed suspects. Swann was at his desk, talking on the phone. DI Clements was looking through the initial reports on the blown-up car from Soho.

  ‘Guv’nor.’ Webb walked across the floor towards him and Clements looked up. ‘Jane Mason just on the phone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘RDX in the hire car.’

  ‘From Semtex?’

  ‘Jane thinks so, yeah.’ Webb touched the edges of his moustache. ‘There’s something else I wanted to show you.’

  Clements followed him back to the exhibits office where he took a sheaf of papers from his drawer. Earlier that morning, he had printed them off from the computer records stored in the Bomb Data Centre, which took information from terror
ist incidents all round the world. Under the terms of the Trevi Committee Protocol, international police forces and counter-terrorist officers shared information. Webb took a diagram he had discovered in the files and laid it on the desk. He pointed to the circuit board and the wiring. ‘Red and green,’ he said. ‘This is a dual integrated circuit used in a timing and power unit from an abortive ETA incident in 1987. Barcelona Airport.’ He laid the piece of circuit board from the car bomb alongside it. ‘Not the same, but the pattern of the wires is similar.’

  Clements chewed his thumbnail. ‘ETA?’

  ‘Possibly. Who knows. ETA and PIRA share information.’ Webb shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe they’re trying to fool us. Maybe it is PIRA and they’re adopting a new tack. They know how many they’ve lost to us in recent years. Maybe they’re going to share operatives for a while. Irishmen in the Basque country and Basques over here.’

  Clements leafed through the papers. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’

  The day after he was visited by Jack Swann, James Morton, the dark-skinned man in number 4 Queen’s House Mews, bought a car. He got the train to Peterborough and went to an auction of ex-company cars. There he inspected a number of vehicles all being sold off cheaply and bought a Ford Mondeo. He paid for it in cash, drove back to London and parked outside his house. Then he scoured the Yellow Pages for long-term underground storage.

  Swann went back to the letting agents on Fulham Palace Road and spoke at length with the manager, a Greek called Monoyos. The house in Queen’s House Mews was owned by an Arab, who spent most of his time out of the country. It was one of many such houses, dotted here and there around London. Most of the larger premises in the non-exclusive areas had been converted into flats, but this particular businessman had discovered a market for the large Victorian property. He also owned the one along the same street which was for sale. Swann had noted it and his next port of call was the estate agents who were selling it.

  He rechecked the rental history of number 4 and found nothing that aroused his suspicions. Then he got the bank details of Medicourt Communications, the US-based company that Morton claimed he worked for, and found they had an account at Lloyds on Hammersmith Broadway. He copied all the documents and then asked Monoyos about prior tenants. He discovered that as Morton had said, he had only been in the house for two months. Prior to that it was empty for a month, with a twelve-month let before that. He questioned Monoyos further about the Medicourt letting. ‘Who actually rented the house?’ he said. ‘It’s just got the company name on the documents.’

  Monoyos nodded. ‘A woman viewed it first.’

  ‘Woman?’ Swann looked sharply at him. ‘Who was she?’

  Monoyos scratched his head. ‘What was her name? I’ve got it here somewhere.’ He rummaged in a drawer and came up with a pad of paper, the used pages folded over rather than torn off. He flicked back over them and then tapped a page with his fingernail.

  ‘Joanne Taylor,’ he said. ‘That’s the woman. Joanne Taylor.’

  ‘Any address?’

  Monoyos shook his head. ‘She did everything through the bank.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, she told me that the company had no office base in the UK, so she would call me. She rang from a cellphone, I think.’ He paused then. ‘It’s not unusual.’

  Swann nodded. ‘What about signing the lease?’

  ‘It was delivered to Lloyds Bank round the corner. It came back to me signed, with the deposit electronically transferred and confirmation of funds for the remainder of the lease.’

  Swann thanked him then and left. On the pavement he remembered something and went back inside. ‘One more thing, Mr Monoyos,’ he said. ‘Prior to Medicourt taking the tenancy, did you show anyone else around?’

  Monoyos looked back at his diary. ‘One man,’ he said. ‘O’Brien, I think his name was.’

  Swann leant forward. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Blond hair, I think, quite well dressed. Nice man. He spoke with an Irish accent.’

  Swann crossed the road and went into Remmington & Son, the agents selling the other property. He spoke to a negotiator called Julie Baker who had shown most of the prospective buyers around. She got out her diary and flicked back over the past three months, the length of time the house had been on the market.

  ‘It needs quite a lot of refurbishing,’ she said. ‘The owner has a number of such places and I think he’s getting bored. He’s not prepared to drop the price, though, and considering what needs doing, he’ll have a job to sell.’

  ‘More money than sense, then,’ Swann said.

  ‘Very probably, yes.’

  She looked through the viewings and wrote a list of them all for him. When she was finished, he took it from her and scanned the names. No Joanne Taylor among them and no O’Brien. There was another name that interested him, however. ‘This Mr McIlroy,’ he said. ‘Irish?’

  ‘Irish name maybe, but his accent was English. South London, I’d say.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Quite tall. Blond hair, longish. Blue eyes, I think.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Swann said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  He went to the bank on the Broadway, showed his ID and waited for the business manager who looked after Medicourt Communications. He had to wait a few minutes, flicking through the Financial Times on the small table between the twin settees in the waiting area. A man in his mid-twenties, slightly overweight, with a mass of slicked-back hair and a goatee beard, came out from the small office behind the business banker’s desk.

  ‘Andy Roberts,’ he said.

  ‘DS Swann.’ They shook hands. ‘Can we talk somewhere privately?’

  Roberts led him back into the office and they sat down. ‘Medicourt Communications,’ Swann said. ‘What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘Not a lot. They only use this account to pay the rent on the house they lease round the corner.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where does the money come from?’

  ‘From another account. It’s electronically transferred every couple of months.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Ireland.’

  Swann looked at him. ‘Your bank?’

  ‘No. Allied Irish in Belfast. Apparently the company has connections over there.’

  Swann chewed his lip for a moment. ‘When the lease was signed, the letting agents told me they sent it here.’

  Roberts nodded. ‘Yes, they did. It was collected, I think.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you. It would’ve been left with the messenger.’

  ‘Does the name Joanne Taylor mean anything to you?’

  Roberts shook his head.

  ‘Who opened the account?’

  ‘Let me see.’ The manager flicked through his records. ‘It was done by proxy via the Allied Irish account in Belfast. They gave us their reference. There’s no borrowing facility, so it wasn’t a problem.’

  ‘So you’ve never actually met anyone from the company, then.’

  Roberts shook his head.

  ‘And the lease?’

  ‘Returned to us here, I think.’ Again Roberts looked at his notes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was. We forwarded it to the agents, with a letter declaring enough funds in the account to pay the rent for six months.’

  ‘Which is eighteen thousand two hundred pounds.’

  Roberts’ eyebrows shot up. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Swann said. ‘It is.’

  He drove back to the Yard, parked underground and pressed the lift call button. He bumped into Webb as he came out on the fifteenth floor. He was standing in the open doorway of the Special Branch cell talking to Christine Harris. Swann went down to the squad room where a couple of his colleagues were gathered. There was a note on his desk to phone Pia at work. A smile spread across his face and he realized then just how much he missed her. Stripping off his
jacket, he dialled her direct line.

  ‘Pia, it’s me.’

  ‘Jack. How are you?’

  Her voice melted him, the hint of European in her accent, when she spoke his name it was almost ‘Jacques’, but not quite. He bent his face to the desk, free hand over his ear. ‘I’m fine. You got back early, then.’

  She sighed. ‘Yes. The meeting wasn’t exactly productive. Are you still very busy?’

  ‘Working on the Soho bomb, yes.’

  ‘Are you getting anywhere?’

  Swann sat up straighter. ‘We’re making a few inroads.’

  ‘I missed you, Jack. When can I see you?’

  Swann drew circles on a pad of paper. God, he loved this woman. Webb told him he loved them all, but he really loved this one. ‘Just as soon as you want. What about tonight?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Seven, eight, maybe.’

  ‘Shall I cook?’

  ‘I could pick something up.’

  ‘Thai.’

  ‘OK. I’ll bring it over to your place.’

  Swann put the phone down and went to get himself some coffee. He stood with it in the corner of the squad room overlooking Big Ben. He had been seeing Pia for about six months now. He and Webb and a few of the other guys had been raucous at a leaving do one night in Waxy O’Conors. One of the lads had taken promotion back to uniform to look after the security section at Heathrow. He was due on a refresher course with SO19 at 7 o’clock the following morning. At midnight, they were planning which nightclub they could drag him to.

  Pia had been there with a group of her friends from the bank. They were celebrating somebody’s birthday party and all ended up going to the club together. There had been something about the way she looked at him. Big oval eyes, so elegant and small-boned; short black hair and leggings that hugged her flesh like a second skin.

  ‘Jack.’

  He started and looked over his shoulder. Webb stood at his desk, pushing a pencil end through his notes. Swann tossed the empty coffee cup into the bin and went over to him.

  ‘Clements has called the meeting.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah. Couple of things have shown up and we need to see who’s doing what.’