Codename Omega

by Hilary Green

  Stone smiled briefly. ‘She would!’

  ‘She said afterwards that she wished she hadn’t,’ Nick added. ‘It’s from Macbeth'

  ‘So?’

  ‘Most actors regard Macbeth as unlucky. It’s a superstition. Some of them won’t even say the name. They refer to it as “the Scottish Play”.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about actors’ superstitions!’ Stone said irritably. ‘The point is, what do we do now about Leo?’

  ‘Carry on as before, I suppose,’ Nick said. ‘She said to tell you that she would stick to the same system of signals.’

  ‘If Reilly doesn’t buy her story she won’t get a chance to make any signals,’ Stone growled bitterly.

  There was a silence. Then Nick said quietly,

  ‘Don’t think I didn’t try to persuade her to give up. But you know Leo…’

  Stone smiled ruefully. ‘Barbed wire and gossamer…?’

  ‘As before,’ Nick agreed. ‘Well, not quite as before…’

  Stone drew a deep breath. ‘Well, you’d better drop me off somewhere I can get a bus back to Daltry Road.’

  Nick nodded and started the engine. ‘Tell you what. I’d give a day’s pay to see Reilly’s face when she walks in.’

  Chapter Seven

  As it happened, the first person to see the two women was Patrick Connor – and it took him a few seconds to recognize them. The equipment in the back of Nick’s van had included another complete change of clothes and a further selection of wigs; so the two smart city girls strolling down Daltry Road as if on their way home from a Sunday afternoon outing looked very different from the mud-stained creatures whom Nick had picked up – and also from the jeaned and booted hikers the police had seen in the quarry.

  Leo had learned from Nick that Reilly and Liam Connor had got back safely to Birmingham and that the police appeared to have completely lost their trail, but she could not tell Margaret that without arousing her suspicions as to the source of her information; so they had to go through the motions of walking past the house a couple of times, hoping to see some evidence that their friends were still in residence. Reilly’s elderly Maxi was nowhere to be seen but, as Leo pointed out, he would have ditched that at the first opportunity.

  As they passed the house for the second time Patrick came round the corner of the street. Leo accosted him with,

  ‘Good-evening, Patrick, and how’s the family?’

  For a few seconds he stared at the two of them as if they were strangers whom he felt he should know but could not place. Then his eyes widened.

  ‘Dear God, it’s you two!’

  Leo smiled at him. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see us?’

  He glanced up and down the street. ‘Are you sure you’re not being followed?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Leo told him.

  ‘Did Kevin and Liam make it?’ Margaret asked urgently.

  ‘Sure, sure. They got back last night after dark. Kevin has a bullet wound in the arm – one of the swine sneaked round behind him – and Liam had to take him to casualty to get it dressed; but he had the sense to take him to Wrexham so they’ll not trace him here.’ Once again he glanced around him. ‘Come on in the house, will you. We can’t stand talking here.’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask!’ murmured Leo.

  Patrick unlocked the front door and ushered them into the hall. As he closed the door behind them he called,

  ‘Kevin, Liam, come here now and see who I’ve found on the doorstep!’

  The two men came out of the back kitchen. Reilly had his arm in a sling. Liam’s face when he recognized them was a mask of blank incomprehension, but the expressions chased themselves across Reilly’s like someone flicking through the pages of a picture book. He settled at length on a look of wary congratulation.

  ‘You made it, then.’

  ‘You might look a bit happier about it!’ Margaret exclaimed.

  ‘I expect it’s a bit of a shock,’ Leo said gently. ‘After all, you weren’t expecting us back, were you?’

  Reilly shot her a sideways look. ‘I was not. I couldn’t see any way you could break out of that place with the police all round you. How did you do it?’

  Patrick moved past them to the kitchen door.

  ‘Come on through. You’ll be wanting a cup of tea, and something to eat, I expect.’

  ‘Great!’ Margaret exclaimed, following him. ‘I’m famished!’

  So, while Patrick cooked sausages and eggs on the greasy gas cooker, they sat over mugs of tea and Margaret told the story of their escape. When she came to Nick’s part in it Reilly grunted.

  ‘That fellow again! I don’t like the way he keeps cropping up.’

  ‘At least he does “crop up” when he’s needed,’ Leo said crisply. ‘We’d have had no chance if we’d had to rely on you.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Liam cried. ‘Kevin was wounded, I had to get him to hospital. Anyway, if we’d stayed any longer the police would have had all of us.’

  ‘Oh quite,’ Leo agreed innocently. ‘I just meant that it’s lucky I have my own people to call on.’

  ‘And what I’m saying is,’ Reilly continued, ‘that these people of yours seem to know too much and get away with too much.’

  ‘What are you suggesting by that remark?’ Leo asked, her eyes fixed on him.

  ‘I want to know who shopped us to the police. They didn’t turn up there by accident.’

  ‘Yes,’ Leo said softly. ‘That’s what I want to know, too.’

  In the silence her eyes went round the faces of the three men. Then Liam said,

  ‘You’re not trying to say it was one of us? You don’t think we’d betray our own people!’

  Leo looked at him. ‘You don’t imagine it was me, do you? I’m wanted for murder, remember. If it ever comes to trial I haven’t got a hope in hell. There’s nothing ahead of me but twenty years inside if the police catch up with me.’

  ‘Then you are suggesting it was one of us,’ Reilly said harshly.

  ‘Just a minute!’ Patrick put in. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking, I must be the prime suspect. I’m the only one who wasn’t around at the time.’

  ‘Well?’ Leo said quietly.

  He returned her gaze. ‘I can’t prove it wasn’t me – but you can’t prove it was. So where do we go from here?’

  Once again there was a silence. They were all aware of having reached a position of stalemate. It was Reilly who spoke eventually.

  ‘You’re all forgetting, we weren’t the only ones who knew about the job. The orders came from up the line. There must be three or four people in the chain of command who knew. It’s there we should be looking for our traitor.’

  ‘But why?’ Liam asked. ‘Why would they do it?’

  Reilly gave him a bitter look. ‘You know how many of our people are inside because of the “supergrass” trials – and you know what sort of inducements were offered to those men to betray their comrades. And you ask me why!’

  ‘So,’ said Patrick. ‘That’s where we look. How do we start?’

  ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ Reilly told him. ‘First we have to decide what’s going to happen to these two.’

  ‘Happen to us?’ Margaret said sharply.

  ‘You must see you can’t stay here,’ Reilly said. ‘There’s half the police forces in the country looking for you. You’re a liability rather than a help now.’

  Margaret looked at Leo. Somewhat to her surprise Leo said quietly,

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  Reilly leaned forward, his manner almost cajoling.

  ‘There’s a friend of ours coming over from Ireland in a day or two. There will be someone with him who’ll have transport. He’ll get you back to Ireland and you’ll be taken care of there. There’s plenty you can be doing, and you’ll be safe into the bargain.’

  Leo looked from him to the other two.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Sure you do,’ Reilly told her. �
�You have a choice between us – and the police.’

  Leo nodded, smiling faintly. ‘Very well. When do we go, and how?’

  ‘There’s no need for you to worry about that. When the time comes you’ll be taken to the place and told what to do. For the next day or two stay out of sight, that’s all.’

  They ate the food Patrick had prepared and watched the television news, which showed shots of police still searching holiday cottages in the vicinity of the quarry. Then Leo declared that she was ready for bed and would like a hot bath. Margaret followed her upstairs but, not being much addicted to soap and water, settled for a quick wash and went to their room. Leo ran the bath and undressed, but instead of getting in she leaned over and sloshed her hand around in the water a few times to simulate the right noises. Then she drew her dressing-gown around her, took a tooth-glass and a nail-file from the shelf and knelt down in the corner of the room. A moment or two of careful levering with the file raised one edge of the linoleum and she peeled it back to reveal the floorboards beneath. Then, stretching herself almost flat on the floor she placed the glass on the boards and pressed her ear to it. The bathroom was immediately above the kitchen and she could hear the murmur of the men’s voices but to start with there was too much noise from the water pipes for her to make out the words. At length, however, the noise died away and her ear became attuned to the voices. Reilly was saying,

  ‘…sooner we get them away the better. We don’t want to take any risks after the Horseman gets here.’

  ‘When’s he arriving?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘His flight gets into Speke at 10.15 on Saturday. They’ll drive down to the sale and we’ll meet them there. After the business is over the girls can go back in the box…’

  From the bedroom Margaret called,

  ‘Beth, are you going to be all night in that bath? You know I can’t sleep with the light on.’ Leo rose swiftly and gave the bath water a stir.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she called back. ‘Put the light out if you want. I can go to bed in the dark.’

  She replaced the lino carefully. It was old and had cracked where she had turned it back. She hoped that no one would notice. Then she stepped reluctantly into the lukewarm water and washed herself quickly, thinking as she did so how good it would be to relax in a hot tub.

  Leo spent most of the following day lying on her bed. Reilly had made it very clear that neither of them was to go outside, but she had persuaded him to buy her a copy of the Daily Telegraph and passed most of the time doing the crossword puzzle and occasionally reading some of its more right-wing articles aloud to Margaret, with suitably scathing comments. By afternoon the combination of the totally incomprehensible clues, to her, and the repeated click-click of Leo’s biro as she thumbed the spring which retracted the nib had irritated Margaret so much that she exclaimed,

  ‘For God’s sake, will you put the beastly thing away! I don’t know why you wanted it in the first place.’

  ‘Because it’s the only crossword I can do,’ Leo said equably. ‘Anyway, I’ve finished now.’

  The rain of the day before had given way to a sultry, overcast sky, with the promise of thunder and the small bedroom had become almost unbearably stuffy. Leo rose and picked up the amber scarf from the dressing-table and began to mop her face and neck with it.

  ‘Let’s have some air in here!’ she exclaimed and flung open the window.

  Margaret sat up abruptly. ‘Beth, will you come away from there! You don’t know who might be watching.’

  Leo laughed at her teasingly. ‘There’s no one out there but the neighbours, and they’re used to the sight of us by now.’ She fanned herself with the paper. ‘God, it’s hot!’

  In the window of the house opposite Don Stevens jerked to attention and said,

  ‘There she is!’

  Stone swung his legs off the bed and joined him swiftly.

  ‘That’s it!’ he said exultantly. ‘She’s got a message for us.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Don asked.

  ‘Wait until dark,’ Stone told him. ‘Amber scarf – meaning no immediate danger. When they’re all asleep I’ll go and have a nose round.’

  Leo turned back to Margaret with a shrug and moved away from the window.

  ‘Oh, all right, if it’s worrying you. Come on, let’s go downstairs.’

  In the kitchen Leo looked around her with distaste.

  ‘This place is a tip!’ she declared. ‘Come on. I need something to occupy me.’

  With one of her sudden changes of mood she flung herself into tidying up and by the time she had finished not only was the dustbin in the back yard full, but beside it stood a cardboard box full of old newspapers, including the Telegraph on which she had expended so much thought.

  *

  Stone waited until after midnight, when all the lights in the front of the house opposite had been off for more than an hour. Then he pulled on a dark jersey and pushed his feet into a pair of trainers and slipped quietly out into the street. At the end of each terrace of houses there was a passage which led back to a narrow alley running between the back yards of this street and those of the next. Stone strolled casually to the entrance of the passage nearest to the house where Leo was, paused for a moment and then disappeared into it. In the alley he counted the backs of the houses until he was behind the right one and stood still in the almost total darkness between the high walls. There was no sound from any of the houses around. Not even a dog had barked. After a moment, he reached up and gripped the top of the wall and pulled himself up until he could see over it. The back of the house, like the front, was in darkness. He scrabbled with his toes against the brickwork and hoisted himself onto the top of the wall and then dropped soundlessly to the ground on the far side.

  Here, once again, he remained motionless until he was sure that no one was stirring and his eyes, well accustomed now to the faint light of reflected street lamps from the overcast sky, had made out the shapes of what had once been a tool-shed, a dilapidated bike and a path leading to the back door of the house. He picked his way silently towards it but almost fell over the black dustbin in the shadows. He crouched against the wall, clutching the lid, and thanked God for plastic bins. When his pulse had steadied again he felt carefully around the bin and smiled to himself as he found the cardboard box. Only then did he risk using the tiny penlight torch which he had brought with him, just long enough to identify Leo’s handwriting on the crossword page of the paper he wanted. With the paper tucked safely into the waistband of his trousers he retraced his steps, swung himself over the wall in one smooth movement and dropped into the alley. Within ten minutes of leaving he was back again in his own room.

  It took him, with Don’s help, a good deal longer than that to piece together the message which Leo had traced out by making a tiny pinhole under certain words or letters in the paper. The biro was a special Triple S issue which had been placed in the pocket of the jeans provided for her when she ‘escaped’ from Risley; and the clicking which had so irritated Margaret had been the operation of the mechanism which flicked out a tiny needle.

  When it was finally complete Stone looked at it with some disappointment. He had hoped that it would signal the end of his long vigil and Leo’s readiness to relinquish the role she was playing. It seemed to promise neither. He read it aloud to Don.

  ‘Expect arrival code-name The Horseman, Speke, Saturday, 15th, 10.15 hrs.’

  *

  Bright and early on Saturday morning Nick, accompanied by Viv Vivian, found himself once again heading up the M6. On arrival at Speke he left Viv in the car to keep an eye on people arriving and departing and presented himself at the main information desk. For once, he was able to use his official ID which rapidly got him through to air traffic control where he learned that the only flight due in at 10.15 was a cargo ferry from Dublin. A brief study of the cargo manifest gave him the clue he was looking for. One of the items was a horse, being brought over by an Irish breeder for sale in
England.

  A few words with a friendly official procured him the use of an empty room in a building which overlooked the cargo bay where the aircraft would be unloaded. The flight came in on time and Nick hunched himself against the window, a pair of field-glasses in his hand and a small camera ready on the sill beside him, as the loading ramp was lowered. It was not long before the horse-box rolled slowly down the ramp. Nick swore to himself as he struggled to make out the faces of the two men in the front of it, but for once he was in luck. The movement had apparently upset the animal inside, because the box stopped and one man got down and went round to the rear and let down the tail-board. Nick let out a sharp exclamation of triumph as he saw him and grabbed for the camera. By the time the horse had been pacified and the tail-board secured again he had as many pictures as he needed of both men.

  Leaving them to complete the necessary formalities he hurried back to the car and handed the camera to Viv.

  ‘I need to get these processed for identification and passed to Pascoe as soon as possible. I can’t put a name to it, but one of the faces is very familiar. You can get a flight from here back to either Heathrow or Gatwick – and while you’re waiting for it, get all the information you can about the owner of the horse that came in on the 10.15 cargo ferry from Dublin. How often does he ship horses over, where do they go, who comes with them – anything that might be useful. I’ll keep track of our friends and report back.’

  When Viv had gone Nick called Triple S HQ on the scrambler and told them what he had seen. He had just finished when the horsebox drove slowly out of the airport gates and headed for the M62.

  *

  After Leo’s return to Daltry Road, Stone decided he ought to have his own car. He had an uneasy feeling that when something happened it could be with very little warning and having his own transport gave him a slightly greater sense of security. He collected the car on the day after Leo had left her message. It was a Ford Escort, several years old, which, to the casual observer, had seen better days. If anyone seeing it parked outside Stone’s lodgings had happened to look under the bonnet or in the boot they would have been astonished to discover a high-performance engine, tuned to maximum efficiency, and a package of electronic gadgetry including a radio scrambler phone and tracking equipment.