“This is Major Gerald Allsopp, bomb disposal. He’s been bringing me up to date with what they’ve found searching through the debris, and he has something important to tell us.”
Allsopp walked around the desk and stood where he could see both Smitherman and me. He was around five-ten and, I guessed, probably early forties. He was healthily tanned and looked very fit. If it took nerves of steel to assemble and plant a bomb, this man had steel in every fibre of his body because he confronted and attempted to dismantle their evil work. He possessed in abundance what the hardened criminal or terrorist referred to as cojones. Any man prepared to put himself between a bomb and its potential impact earned my undying admiration and respect every day of the week.
“The bombs used in Regent’s Park and by the South Bank both have certain similarities,” he began. “We think each contained no more than eight to ten pounds of explosives, enough to do a lot of damage. Each bomb was composed of the usual ingredients: industrial chemicals, fertilisers and so on. They’re usually easily detectable, but it doesn’t help us because these are all things you can buy over the counter anywhere. We didn’t find anything on the first one, but the one earlier today, we found pieces amongst the debris which we think were part of a timing device. My guess is whoever was driving the car intended to park up somewhere, set the timer, then disappear. I’m delighted to say, however, the bugger scored an own goal instead.” He smiled broadly. “But the more worrying of the two was also that second one.”
He paused for a moment.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“We’ve discovered traces of Semtex,” he stated. “There was none detected in Regent’s Park, but there definitely was with this second bomb, which is why the explosion was so much more intense. That’s worrying, but it’s also helpful.”
He paused briefly, looking between Smitherman and me. “It’s helpful because I firmly believe these two bombs are the work of the IRA.”
“The IRA?” I was surprised. “I thought they’d stood down, given up the armed struggle and decommissioned their weapons. I know they’ve still got sympathisers and apologists all over London, but I didn’t realise they still had ASUs operating on the ground.”
ASUs were Active Service Units, usually small cells of no more than four persons, which operated clandestinely and independently of others. No one ASU ever knew what any of the others were doing. The IRA had adopted this internal structure because the security services had become very successful in penetrating the republican movement. It’d been estimated that, at one time, one in every four IRA men was an informer of some kind, running from offering small titbits of info, somebody seen talking to someone else, right up to the IRA’s worst nightmare: the paid informer. So the decision had been taken to break the active service teams up into small cells and send them into the field. This helped maintain secrecy, and thus operating effectiveness, because the security service couldn’t easily penetrate such small cells. And, for those charged with hunting them and bringing them to justice, this was problematic because it made detecting them so much harder. Even if police got lucky and one cell was penetrated, and its members brought in, they could tell us nothing about any other cell, because they genuinely didn’t know.
“I’m not speculating as to that,” Allsopp said. “We don’t have enough intel on the ground to make that assumption. All I’m saying is, the composition of both bombs, plus the definite presence of Semtex, leads me to think they’re the work of the IRA. I’ve studied how they put their IEDs and their car bombs together, and everything I’ve seen from what we’ve retrieved since yesterday morning convinces me these are IRA devices.”
The IRA. As if Red Heaven and Muearada weren’t enough, a rogue, dissident faction of the IRA decides to come out of hiding and restart its bombing campaign.
“You’re quite sure?” Smitherman asked.
“My every instinct and all my experience tells me these were IRA bombs,” Major Allsopp stated with certainty. “I’ve seen their bomb designs up close. I know how their top bomb makers used to put them together, and the pieces of the timer we found by the South Bank is consistent with those previously used by the IRA, plus also there’s the presence of Semtex. This was quite a sophisticated little device, and, had it exploded wherever it was that the bomber intended it to . . .” He paused and didn’t complete the sentence. There was no need. We all knew what he was saying. “No other group I’m aware of that’s operated in this country has ever used Semtex. They acquired a lot of it through Libya, and we never did find out how.”
The room was silent whilst Allsopp’s words were digested. I’d heard this story before and the unofficial word at the time was that rogue elements in the security service smoothed the way for the acquisition, but this was never substantiated with evidence, and it was never definitively ascertained who was involved.
“But, in one way, this is good,” Major Allsopp said firmly.
“Good?” Smitherman was aghast. “Bombs are never good, Major.”
“No, but what I mean is, situations like this keep us vigilant. You know how vulnerable a large, cosmopolitan city like London is in the face of terrorism? There’re no guarantee a city like this can ever be kept completely safe, so we need to be vigilant at all times and hope the intelligence required to stop these buggers from planting bombs is forthcoming. That’s where you people come in.” He nodded to both Smitherman and me.
He was right. All the security in the world is helpless in the face of one crazed bomber intent on destruction and the indiscriminate taking of life.
Smitherman looked thoughtful for several seconds. “Who else knows what you’ve just told me?”
“Only my superior officer. I’ve made my suspicions known to him in my report and he’ll inform whoever it is who has to be told, but it won’t become general knowledge just yet. We’ve not even made it known there was a casualty yet.”
“Good,” Smitherman said. “I’d like this kept quiet, you understand? I don’t want anyone else knowing about this until someone claims responsibility for the two bombs.”
“Fair enough.”
Allsopp gathered his papers, said his thanks and left the room. Smitherman sat quietly for a moment, staring out the window and lightly tapping his fingers on the table.
“The bloody IRA,” he sighed. He waited a few seconds. “Actually, I wasn’t being completely honest with the Major just now. I heard from Stimpson just before he got here.”
Stimpson was Colonel Peter Stimpson, MI5, a man I’d crossed swords with on a couple of memorable occasions. He was a pompous, arrogant bureaucrat, forever given to extolling his own omnipotence. He didn’t particularly like me, and I had no respect for him whatever, either as a senior MI5 officer or as a man. If Smitherman were anything like Stimpson, I’d happily go back to walking the beat.
“Stimpson informed me MI5’ve suspected for some time there’s been an IRA sleeper cell somewhere in the home counties, just lying low and waiting to be reactivated. It would appear that time may now have arrived.”
“How’d they know this?”
“When the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998, the paramilitaries on both sides agreed to lay down their arms and decommission them, put them beyond reach, and have this verified by the UN. The agreement was widely accepted on both sides, and what was euphemistically referred to as the Troubles came to an end. Since then, it’s been a process of what the politicians refer to as normalisation, settling disputes through new legal and constitutional arrangements. You know all this, don’t you?”
I did. I’d studied it at university in my Politics course.
“But, as you’re also probably aware, not everyone was in favour. Some of the hardliners on both sides were against it, especially on the republican side. They thought they’d been sold out by people like Adams and McGuinness, and wanted to keep the armed struggle going. Several of those people became bitterly disillusioned and either moved to America or over here to London. But they d
idn’t give up their desire to fight for a united Ireland, and they’re still dissident republicans at heart and prepared to take action. Several at the top of the security service seem to believe dissident IRA members still have access to at least a tonne of Semtex they’d secreted away, which escaped the decommissioning process. So, if there is an IRA sleeper unit, and it’s been reactivated, we could be getting a few more of these explosions here on the mainland.”
Smitherman paused for a moment.
“To be part of this sleeper cell, a few of them would have had to drop out of sight, change their names, live under new identities, which makes it harder to keep track of them. One name Stimpson mentioned to me was that of Mac McGreely.”
“Mac? That his real name?”
“Sort of. His name’s Cormac McGreely, suspected of being the mastermind behind several IRA bombings in the Belfast area. MI5 believes he was instrumental in the IRA getting its hands on the Semtex from Libya.”
“How were they able to do that without security being all over them?”
“Good question. The whisper from on high was they’d had inside help, someone inside MI5, but it could never be established if this was the case.”
“So, where’s this McGreely character now?”
“Supposedly dead. He moved to London in 2000 and, about a year later, his whole family, him, his wife, his young son, were said to have died in a road accident when their car collided with a caravan somewhere in Dorset.”
“Said to have died?” I queried.
He said nothing for a moment. I waited for the punchline.
“The thing is, nobody ever identified the bodies. The car and the caravan were caught up in a fireball because the caravan had a canister of butane gas on board, and the crash ignited it. There were five casualties in total, every one burned beyond all human recognition, or at least what could be found of the bodies.”
“And I’m guessing there’s been no sign of any of them either,” I ventured to suggest.
“That’s correct. But, because of the suspicious circumstances, Stimpson said the file on McGreely’s never been officially closed. And that’s just as well because, according to Major Allsopp, the bomb on the South Bank contains all the hallmarks of McGreely’s handiwork.”
I must have looked surprised.
“Every time a bomb’s defused and made safe,” Smitherman went on, “the structure and design is copied out and logged. Every part of the design, every component, every battery, every wire, every nut and bolt and so on is laid out and analysed to ascertain what makes it work. After a while, people like Major Allsopp get to know certain people’s handiwork so, when they see a particular make or set of wirings, or a particular design, they recognise the mark of a known bomb maker, which makes defusing that little bit easier. People like Allsopp, when they’re not defusing bombs, spend their time studying their make-up and design.” He paused for a couple of moments. “It’s not too dissimilar to graphology, you know, the study of handwriting, and it’s just like doing crosswords. I do the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword every day and, because I recognise the names of the compilers, after a while I get to know how their minds work, what kinds of clues they use, which makes solving them that much easier.”
I chewed over what I’d heard for a few seconds. “So MI5 thinks McGreely’s still out there?”
“Nobody knows. He’s not been seen for fifteen years, but, according to what Major Allsopp and MI5 have just said, it would appear the South Bank bomb’s his design.” Smitherman looked at something on his computer screen for a moment. “So, if MI5’s theory that McGreely isn’t dead is correct, our next job is to find this bastard. That’s now our number-one priority. You have anything pressing on at present?”
“No.” I shook my head. “After giving evidence yesterday I was supposed to be doing some cold casing over the weekend.”
“Not any more. If McGreely’s still alive and part of this sleeper cell, he’ll be planning other surprises for us, so it’s imperative we find him and stop him before he can do real harm.” He took a deep breath. “You’ve never seen the aftermath of a car bombing, have you?”
I said I hadn’t.
“I have, and you can’t describe what it looks and feels like. I was on duty near Harrods, the week before Christmas, 1983. All officers in the area got an urgent flash message, go to Harrods immediately and await further instructions. I was one of the first uniforms on the scene. There’d been a tip-off about a car bomb, and three police officers in Hans Crescent, alongside the shop, were blown up. I was helping to get shoppers away from the area before the counterterrorism people and emergency services arrived, and I could see the three dead police lying on the road, right alongside the wrecked car, with all kinds of debris everywhere.
“I was also on the scene at Bishopsgate in the early nineties. I was a DI by then and you’d not believe the damage. I think I’m right in saying only one person died that day, but the devastation was unimaginable.”
I could imagine. Whilst I was still in uniform, my partner and I had been the first police on the scene after an explosion inside a Soho bookie’s, which was later found to have been caused by a gas leak. I’d seen some very nasty injuries that day, including people with arms and legs blown off, and had been very relieved when the emergency services had arrived. The screams of innocent victims, and the smell of burning flesh and fear, are things you don’t ever forget.
It pained me to realise my once close friend, Michael Mendoccini, was now an integral player in an organisation which used car bombs to make its point. He didn’t plant bombs, but he was still involved. How could the guy I once knew and loved be part of anything like this?
I grinned. “You going to include these in your memoirs?” “Time to go to work, DS McGraw.”
*
There was a substantial file regarding the McGreely clan on the Special Branch database, the family album, as we irreverently referred to it. The picture on Cormac’s file was of a solemn, hard-looking man and probably taken in the late nineties. He had been considered to be a leading figure, a brigade commander, in the Belfast Provos throughout the late eighties and the 1990s, being too young to be part of the real Troubles a decade or so earlier. In being involved, he was merely following in his father’s footsteps.
Sean McGreely had been a fervent diehard republican. He was also the son of another diehard republican, Stoifan McGreely, and was one of the first IRA men known to have fired shots at British soldiers when they’d first entered Belfast in 1969, having never accepted their presence as peacekeepers. But Sean’d been killed in 1976 after he and another man had been caught in an ambush set by the UVF; he had been hit by several bullets fired from a passing car. His son Cormac, only eleven at the time, was sent to live with a family in England. He’d returned to Belfast in 1988 and began to build his legend in the republican movement. Informers attributed a number of car bombs to him, though his involvement could never be definitely proven.
But, early in 1996, on a bitterly cold winter’s night, the two men involved in the shooting of Cormac McGreely’s father had been found dead in a ditch. Both men had been severely tortured before being killed. They’d been beaten, their bodies covered with cigarette burns and deep cuts from knives, and they’d also been kneecapped in both legs, a traditional IRA punishment, before they’d been shot in the back of the neck.
How the murderer or murderers had discovered the identities of the two men had never been made known and, given the tribal nature of both communities in the province, it beggared belief anyone in the Unionist community had tipped the culprit off. Cormac McGreely had been in Northern Ireland at the time but was alibied up and never charged. Unionists had been outraged at the two deaths and one of the conspiracy theories of the time suggested collusion with the British army, but I suspected that was highly unlikely.
When the Good Friday agreement was finally brokered and signed in 1998, it signalled the end to the Troubles. Peace had been declared in the pr
ovince after more than thirty years of bloodshed and several hundred lives lost. But some leading republicans expressed their dismay at the ending of the armed struggle. Cormac McGreely was known to be one such person, and he’d relocated to London in 2000 with his wife, Sinead, and young son, John. He’d settled in Neasden and lived there until the following year when, if the files were correct, he and his family perished in a car crash.
I opened the section pertaining to his death. According to the files, a Citroën had been travelling north on the A37 in North Dorset and collided at high speed with a Dormobile campervan with a caravan attached, travelling in the opposite direction. How the accident occurred had never been clearly established. The road wasn’t slippery and, despite it being dusk and this section of the road unlit, driving conditions had been good. But, whatever the case, the sound from the explosion had been heard nearly two miles away, and the resulting conflagration had incinerated all persons involved, as well as lighting up the night-time sky.
Forensics had painstakingly pieced together those parts of bodies which had been found and established that five persons had been involved. The campervan had been identified as belonging to a Welsh couple, Rhys and Mary Cooper, who’d told neighbours in Pontypool before leaving that they were travelling to Weymouth to catch a ferry to France. The Citroën had been registered to a Cormac McGreely, of Neasden, North London. None of the bodies were able to be identified, such had been the intensity of the blaze. The senior police officer on the scene, DI Peter Marbutt, had said it was the worst accident he’d ever seen in Dorset, and he was just grateful there’d been no other vehicles on the road that time of night.
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