‘It’s out of order, love,’ Doyle said to her, looking disappointed. ‘I just tried it myself.’
The woman shrugged.
The phone rang and Doyle pushed past her into the box.
‘Here, wait a minute,’ she said angrily, banging on the door.
He snatched up the receiver.
‘Yeah,’ he snapped.
The woman was still banging on the door.
‘Doyle, listen,’ said Georgie. ‘I checked up on the car.’
The woman outside opened the door and stuck her head in.
‘I wanted to use this phone,’ she said irritably.
‘Look missus, just fuck off, will you?’ hissed Doyle and kicked the door shut.
‘Ignorant bastard,’ she shouted from outside.
‘What the hell’s going on there?’ Georgie wanted to know.
‘Never mind. Just tell me about the car,’ he said.
‘Like I said, they checked it out. It’s registered in the Republic. To a Mr David Callahan.’
Forty-Seven
BRITTANY, FRANCE:
‘So, Lausard knows about the window. So what?’
Catherine Roberts spat out the words angrily, looking at Channing who was sitting on the edge of the bed, head lowered.
‘He’s a reporter, isn’t he?’ Channing said. ‘The bloody story will be everywhere within a few days.’
‘He hasn’t been back to the church and nothing has appeared in the papers. Perhaps he didn’t think it was a good enough story,’ she said quietly.
His lighter was still in her handbag.
‘There’s no reason to think he’ll be back. Besides, all we can do is get on with our work. I think we’re worrying needlessly.’
‘You sound very sure of that,’ he said.
‘Look, Mark, the window isn’t your property,’ she told him. ‘Neither of us has any right to keep it to ourself. What were you going to do with it, anyway? Hide it? Take it home with you so only you could see it? If that’s what you wanted, why did you call me out here, too? You should have kept the information to yourself.’
‘I told you, I needed your help,’ sighed Channing wearily.
‘My only concern is that window,’ she said angrily. ‘The work on it is too important to stop now.’
Channing paced the floor for a moment, head bowed.
‘What we should be thinking about is how the window managed to become free of the stone,’ she said.
As she spoke she glanced across at her handbag, to where the lighter was hidden.
Lausard’s lighter.
Stuffed in the side pocket was her notebook, filled with observations from the previous night.
They were not to be shared with Channing.
She got to her feet.
‘Where are you going?’ Channing wanted to know.
‘To the Church.’
‘We could leave it for today. I think we both need a rest. I didn’t sleep much last night again ...’
She cut him short.
‘You stay if you want to, Mark. I’m going.’
‘It’s become an obsession with you,’ he said, flatly. ‘The window, what it means.’
She picked up her handbag and headed for the door.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said and walked out.
He heard her footsteps on the stairs. A moment later he saw her walk out of the front of the inn and cross to her car. She slid behind the wheel, started the engine and drove off.
Channing exhaled deeply and ran a hand through his hair, then he fumbled in his pocket for his car keys and also hurried from the inn.
He should be able to catch her before she reached the church.
Forty-Eight
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND:
The roar was deafening.
Doyle glanced towards the pitch in time to see a green-shirted player drive a shot only inches beyond the right-hand post.
The crowd around him seemed to swell for a second, as if each of them had been pumped full of air: As the ball skidded away for a goal kick they seemed to deflate again.
Windsor Park football ground was three-quarters full, the International fixture between Northern Ireland and England not having sufficient pulling power to fill the ground. Nonetheless, it had attracted the largest gate for two years. Both main stands and one end of the terracing were full to capacity. For safety reasons the far end of the ground from Doyle was less than half full. It contained most of the English supporters.
He moved with relative ease amongst those on the terraces, glancing at some of their faces, but mostly content to let his eyes rove over the heaving mass.
He knew the chances of picking out either Dolan or Maguire in a place this size, amongst over 20,000 people, were minuscule. But he had a feeling that they were here somewhere. He had told Georgie it was only a gut instinct; a hunch. Or any other cliché he could think of. But Dolan’s remark in the pub the previous day about the football match had set him thinking.
It was the first time the English national side had played at Windsor park for two years. There were obvious attractions to Maguire and his renegades. A large gathering of people, a proportion of them English.
Doyle had a nasty feeling of unease in the pit of his stomach.
It may just have been his imagination; the remark which Dolan had made may have been purely innocuous. Doyle doubted it.
‘There’s a game on Tuesday night at Windsor Park. It should be quite something.’
Doyle continued to move amongst the crowd, glancing at the pitch every so often.
A long ball had set the England strikers free and two of them were now bearing down on the Irish goal, defenders frantically scrambling back to get goal side of them.
‘Break his fucking leg,’ shouted an encouraging amateur coach close to Doyle.
Nice to see the spirit of sportsmanship hasn’t been affected by the recent mayhem, he thought, smiling.
The player with the ball chose to chip the goalkeeper and his shot flew towards the goal before striking the crossbar and bouncing back into play. An Irish defender nodded it into touch and the crowd relaxed again momentarily as players went forward for the impending corner.
Doyle moved on, eyes scanning the crowd.
‘Put it out the fucking ground.’
‘Cover the near post.’
Words of encouragement and advice were bellowed from the terraces and stands as the corner was swung in.
The Irish goalkeeper met it with a punch, clearing his area, relieving the pressure.
Doyle paused long enough to light a cigarette, slipping the packet back into his inside pocket. As he did so his hand brushed the shoulder holster and the butt of the CZ-75 automatic. He jammed the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and walked on, wondering if Georgie was having any luck on the other side of the ground.
She wasn’t.
She felt even more helpless than Doyle. She only had his description of Dolan to go on and she’d only seen photos of Maguire. The identities of the other renegades were unknown to both her and Doyle. She stopped close to a group of men who were standing watching the match and thought that, for all she knew, she could be watching the renegades now and not even be aware of it.
That was assuming they were even present.
She had gone along with Doyle’s hunch about an incident at the match purely and simply because hunches were all they had to go on at present. But she also trusted his instincts.
As she pulled her jacket tighter around her she felt the reassuring bulk of the Sterling .357.
Ever vigilant, she moved on.
Doyle was approaching the tall iron fence which segregated Irish supporters from English.
Despite the progress that had been made in halting sectarian violence in the province over the past few months the fence was a reminder that football violence was almost as insidious an illness and would require treatment of a similarly spectacular nature. He walked up to the fence, wondering if this w
as what a beast of prey felt like in a zoo. Doyle wandered up and down the length of the fence, glancing at the policemen who formed a further barrier behind the railings on the other side. They were all standing facing the crowd, unable to see the game. Unable to see the Irish winger cutting inside the English full-back.
The crowd roared its encouragement as he left the back for dead then drove in a curling cross which was met by an Irish forward.
The ball sped goalward, past the outstretched fingers of the English goalkeeper, finding the top left hand corner of the net.
The ground erupted as the ball crossed the line and Doyle turned to watch the celebrations on the pitch as the green-shirted players congratulated the scorer and the English players looked at one another incredulously before one of them retrieved the ball from the back of the net and booted it angrily upfield for the re-start.
Men all over the terraces were jumping up and down, hugging each other, hurling scarves into the air. The feeling of jubilation was almost palpable.
Doyle watched indifferently, draining what was left of his tea from the cup and dropping it onto the ground, crushing it underfoot as he looked around.
The small black bag at the foot of one floodlight stanchion almost escaped his attention.
There was no one standing near it, not within twenty feet.
He moved quickly towards it, pushing past a man and his young son who were still celebrating.
The bag was sealed with masking tape wrapped around it several times so tightly that the outline of the shape within the bag was clearly visible. It was rectangular.
Even through the black plastic, Doyle could see a tiny red light winking.
He dropped to one knee close to the package. It was about twelve inches long, perhaps half that in width. From his jacket pocket he withdrew a pocket knife.
The roar of the crowd grew in intensity as Ireland launched another attack, but as far as Doyle was concerned, he may as well have been the only man in that stadium. All that mattered to him was the package.
He took the tip of the knife and, with infinite care, cut the plastic bag, opening a rent about six inches long.
A couple of people nearby shot him cursory glances but their attention was soon dragged back to the game as the Irish won another corner, the ball booted unceremoniously behind by the English centre-half.
The roar began to swell.
Doyle used the tip of the knife to ease open the package, peeling back the black bag enough to see inside.
The winger swung the corner in and it was met by the defender on the near post, who headed it clumsily across his own penalty area. An Irish midfield player running in from the left caught the dropping ball full on the volley and the ball rocketed towards the goal before slamming against the angle of the post and crossbar and flying back into play.
Another massive shout from the crowd.
Doyle could see the device now, the two blinking lights, one red, one green.
He could even smell the familiar marzipan-like odour of the plastic explosive.
It looked like there were at least two pounds of it.
Enough to create havoc, strapped as it was to the floodlight stanchion. If the explosion ...
‘Jesus Christ,’ he murmured as, the realization hit him.
The floodlight stanchion.
If the bomb went off the blast would be enough to bring down the towering structure. Enough to bring down over fifty tons of steel and glass onto the crowd and probably a part of the pitch. There was no timer on the bomb. Doyle had seen this kind before. It was detonated by remote control.
As he got to his feet he might have smiled, satisfied that his hunch had been right.
The bomb could only be detonated by a remote within one hundred yards.
Somewhere in the crowd, somewhere in the stadium, were Maguire and his renegades. They had to be.
That much pleased Doyle.
It was the knowledge that they could detonate the bomb at any second which made him feel slightly less than happy.
Forty-Nine
How long had it been there?
How long before it went off?
These and other questions passed through Doyle’s mind as he hurried away from the bomb towards the iron railings and the cordon of police beyond it.
On the pitch the English team, searching for the equalizer, were mounting a sustained attack. Shots rained in, striking defenders or parried by the goalkeeper but the Irish couldn’t seem to clear their lines. Just outside the penalty area one of the English wingers cut inside, left two men for dead and, dropping his left shoulder, flipped the ball past two more defenders.
The crowd howled for him to be stopped as he bore down on the goal.
Doyle reached the fence and bellowed something at the nearest policeman.
The man didn’t even acknowledge his presence.
A desperate lunge from the Irish centre-half brought the England, winger crashing to the ground.
The referee pointed to the penalty spot.
‘Hey, you, listen to me,’ roared Doyle, his own entreaties completely lost in the shouts of the crowd as they vented their anger on the referee.
‘Listen,’ he bellowed again, realizing how useless it was. ‘Fuck,’ he said and ran to the bottom of the terrace, pushing past a number of people who had moved nearer to get a better view of the spot kick which was about to be taken.
Doyle leapt at the fence, climbing it quickly and skilfully, finally swinging himself over and landing with a thud on the outer rim of the pitch.
Two policemen hurried towards him.
The kicker ran forward to take the penalty.
Doyle saw the policeman getting closer; he stood and waited.
The English forward connected firmly with the ball and sent it high into the roof of the net.
The crowd responded with a chorus of cat-calls and shouts of derision.
The two policemen reached Doyle, one of them grabbing his arm.
‘Get off me, you arsehole,’ he said. ‘Listen ...’
‘Come on, sunshine. Out,’ snapped the first man, grabbing his arm again.
Doyle again shook loose, stepping back a couple of paces.
‘You can do this the hard way if you want,’ the second policeman said. ‘It makes no odds to us.’ He reached for his baton.
‘There’s a bomb in there,’ Doyle said, pointing at the enclosure from which he’d just clambered.
‘Yeah, and I’m fucking Frank Sinatra. Now come on you bastard,’ said the second man, the larger of the two, drawing his baton and raising it menacingly towards Doyle.
‘What the hell were you doing in there anyway?’ said the first policeman. ‘The area there,’ he motioned behind him, ‘is for English supporters. Now come on.’
‘Look, I won’t say it again,’ Doyle said. ‘There’s a bomb in that enclosure. Get the fucking people out now, as quick as you can.’
‘You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?’ said the second man, lunging at Doyle with the baton.
The Englishman side-stepped and, his hand went to the inside of his jacket.
He pulled the CZ free of its holster and pointed it at the two uniformed men.
‘Now listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to say this again.’ He saw other policemen approaching now, running. ‘There is a bomb secured to the floodlight in there. Check it out.’
One of the men reached for his radio.
‘Unit two, come in, over,’ he said, struggling to make himself heard over the sound of the crowd. ‘We require assistance in sector five, armed suspect ...’
Doyle snatched the radio from him.
‘Unit two,’ lie shouted into the set, one eye on the uniformed men. ‘Check out the floodlight stanchion in sector five. Suspected bomb found there. Do you read me?’
A hiss and a crackle of static on the set.
‘Suspected bomb, we’ll check it, over and out,’ said a metallic voice.
‘Now back off,�
�� said Doyle, the CZ still pointed at the policemen.
Three or four others had arrived now and were gathering around Doyle, trying to cut off his escape routes. Not that he had many to choose from, with his back to the perimeter fence and the pitch blocked off by at least three men.
‘Put the gun down,’ said the largest of the men, the baton still drawn.
‘Fuck you,’ said Doyle, the noise of the crowd ringing in his ears.
Some of those close to the fence could see he was carrying a gun and many had moved back, fearing the worst.
‘You’ll never get away,’ said another man. ‘Not unless you kill us all and you’re not going to do that.’
‘Don’t count on it, shithead,’ said the Englishman.
A radio crackled.
‘Unit two reporting.’
The words were scarcely audible over the noise of the crowd.
‘Unit two, come in, over,’ said a sergeant to Doyle’s right.
‘We’ve found it. There is a bomb here.’
‘Get those fucking people out of there now,’ shouted Doyle, angrily.
Stewards, alerted by the commotion, were already unlocking the gates in the fencing.
The police began filing through onto the terraces.
Doyle swallowed hard and looked towards the floodlight.
Would they be in time?
He wondered if Maguire was watching all this now, his finger poised over the button of the detonator.
Just waiting.
After all, he had plenty of time.
Doyle knew that for him and the people close to the bomb, time might have run out.
Fifty
She counted at least a dozen policemen on the touchline near the single figure and, as Georgie squinted across the length of the ground, she realized that it was Doyle.
Moments later she saw more police clambering over the barrier, moving around the side of the pitch towards the area of terracing where Doyle stood. He looked as if he was directing them, standing alongside a tall sergeant.
What the hell was going on?
Renegades Page 18
