by Bill Ward
He was pleased to find the road had been gritted and the journey was only a minute or two over the normal ten. His knee was feeling much better and he could drive without hindrance. It wasn’t the décor of the cafe that prompted him to pass several others on route to reach his destination. The walls were painted a gaudy gold colour and covered with prints of famous French Impressionists. No one would ever be able to say it was tastefully decorated. In fact, Tom imagined the style would not look out of place in a Paris brothel, though his experience of such places was strictly limited to his imagination.
He initially sat at the first vacant table but then found a strange feeling compelling him to instead choose a table at the back, where he could observe everyone entering the premises. He knew he was being foolish and couldn’t quantify his concern but felt better once he’d moved. So is this what it’s to be like for the rest of my life, he thought; scared of normal everyday situations for no good reason.
Tom spotted mostly familiar faces as he surveyed the various tables at which people were gathered. They were a predominantly male group, which suggested that like Tom they lived alone. One or two met his gaze and nodded a greeting. A mixture of nationalities and cultures brought together by great coffee and freshly baked pastries.
The café was run by a Lebanese family who had fled their country many years ago. Rafiq the father baked; Zaina the mother ran the service counter and two children served the tables. They all worked very long hours but they always had a warm smile of greeting. Tom was used to hearing conversations in several languages and this morning was no different. Despite the bad weather or maybe even because of it, he knew that come the middle of the day seats would be at a premium. The clientele were not generally early risers. Once seated however they would linger for hours over their dark coffee, food and conversation. Tom loved the animated vibe of the place and had been returning regularly for longer than he could remember.
He had picked up a newspaper as he entered and having ordered a latte and a full English breakfast turned his attention to the headlines; MELANIE ADAMS IN FOILED KIDNAP ATTEMPT. He’d expected to find the story on the front page and in that respect wasn’t disappointed but the large photo of Melanie, he felt entitled to think of her now in first name terms, still came as something of a shock. He read the article with some amusement as it described how an unnamed passerby had intervened and bravely risking his life, had tackled the gunmen.
He glanced around to see several others engrossed in the story. Weird, he thought, that they are all reading about me but don’t know I’m sitting next to them. A quote from Melanie had indeed been unequivocal in claiming he had saved her life and she would eternally be grateful to him. He was a bit surprised to see she had already spoken to the press. The last he’d seen of her she was fighting back tears sitting in the back of the police car. He’d then been driven back to the police station to make his statement and he’d seen no sign of Melanie Adams, so assumed she had been allowed to go back to her hotel.
As he turned the pages there wasn’t much information about the two attackers, although a source close to the police was credited with admitting they were known to the authorities. The paper had no doubt that the motive was kidnapping, rather than terrorism, given that she was one of the richest women in Hollywood. There was lots of background information about her life and career, which to Tom highlighted how uneventful his own life had been by comparison. He had read the article for the third time and was about to turn to the racing pages, when it hit him that quite possibly the previous evening would turn out to be the luckiest evening of his life.
He contemplated how fate worked. If it hadn’t been Colin’s turn to pay this year and if he hadn’t chosen a restaurant in Knightsbridge then Tom would never have been in the right place at the right time. This story would be major news for some considerable time and the one thing he knew for certain, was that the papers would be willing to pay handsomely, for the privilege of printing his version of events. Blimey there might even be appearances on television and a book. Okay, slow down, he said to himself. He needed some advice and Cliff Maxwell was the man who everyone always seemed to use in these situations. Tom hurriedly finished his breakfast feeling much better about life. This might just be a memorable Christmas after all.
Geoffrey Miller had been Head of SO15, the Counter Terrorism branch of the Met, for three years. He had worked in Special Branch for many years and when it was merged in 2006 with the Met’s Anti-Terrorist Branch to form SO15, he had continued to prove his worth until eventually being promoted to run the new organisation.
He considered himself a proper old fashioned policeman. He had joined the force straight from school. He didn’t have a degree and not been on any fast tracked career path. He didn’t wear flashy expensive suits but then he thought that those who did often put style over substance. He would be the first to admit he didn’t dress stylishly. He never had done. He liked to wear simple off the peg blue suits purchased at high street chains. He kept his grey hair cut short, preferring to visit his local barber once a month rather than any expensive hair salon. Being of average height and build, he knew he looked very ordinary to anyone who met him and sometimes he had been able to use that to his advantage.
He was thrifty by nature and the glasses he wore for reading were purchased from various supermarkets, rather than expensive opticians. But when he had a criminal in his sights, he was terrier like in his dogged determination to pursue him until he brought him to justice. His career had flourished as a result of his undeniable successes and he had climbed steadily through the ranks. He could be blunt and wasn’t afraid to tell it how he saw it, which meant he wasn’t universally popular but he didn’t mind. He was at the forefront of tackling terrorism and upsetting the occasional person was the least of his worries.
He was a methodical man with an eye for detail. He had little time for politicians and their desire for instant answers. You could get instant coffee and most other things nowadays but not police work. It was painstaking attention to detail that produced results and it usually took time and lots of manpower, everything politicians loathed. Do more with less he was repeatedly being told. The problem was that no one had bothered to tell the terrorists there was a financial crisis. His budget had been slashed but at the same time the threat from terrorism both abroad and internally was increasing.
He tried to remain phlegmatic. He was in his fifties and not too long until he could retire with a decent pension and take a lucrative job consulting in the private sector. He was already being wooed by a couple of large companies. Both had taken him out for a very expensive dinner in elegant surroundings, which were meant to impress and succeeded. He knew a couple of ex coppers working at one of the companies and they were both doing well and spoke highly of their new life. Apart from a shiny new office with a secretary, it had been explained to him he would be able to work half the time for more than twice the money. He didn’t need a degree to work out that was a good deal. So soon he would hand over the reins to some unlucky bugger who would inherit a world Miller barely recognized any longer.
Mary, his wife, deserved to know he would be home at the same time each day from work and they could plan an evening at the theatre, without the worry he would suddenly be called to some urgent matter. He had messed her around for the twenty five years they were married but she had rarely complained and brought up two children almost single handed at times. Victoria and Cassandra were now both at University and it would soon be time to take the round the world cruise, he had been promising Mary for many years. She was desperate to see all the great historical sites of the world from the pyramids of Egypt to the Great Wall of China. They had seen most things in Europe but the rest of the world was still unchartered territory.
He considered Mary to be the intellectual half of their relationship. She read proper literature as he liked to call it and watched documentaries on a wide variety of subjects, while he mostly preferred a crime drama or gangster film.
Despite their differences or maybe because of them, they had enjoyed a good marriage and he was well aware he had leaned very heavily on her support over the years.
Perhaps, closer to home, retirement would also allow him to get to see the end of some of those gangster movies he so liked watching but which were so frequently interrupted before the end by an urgent phone call. His favourite was The Godfather but anything with De Niro or Jimmy Cagney, was also high on his watch list. In his time he had made more than a few criminals an offer they couldn’t refuse! He would have liked to be an old fashioned policeman fighting gangsters alongside Eliot Ness in the thirties in America. A much less complicated world where there were good guys and bad guys. Today the lines between good and bad were far more blurred.
In all honesty though, he didn’t have too many regrets about the direction his life had taken. He recognized most successful careers were built on sacrifices in other areas of your life and that was true not just within the police force. At times he had struggled to maintain the balance between work and the rest of his life but it had also brought its rewards. He had been able to wake up each day looking forward to the day ahead. There had been no boredom from repetition. Every day was different. Sure there was stress and he was challenged sometimes to his limits but that was because he cared about what he did. And at the end of each day he knew he had really made a difference.
He recognized he lived a privileged life. Through his job he had often been exposed to the darker side of life. Many people were struggling just to exist, often through no fault of their own but because of where they were born or who had brought them into the world. He was one of the lucky ones. He had a nice house in a beautiful part of Surrey. He had a great family and the knowledge his pension would be significantly better than most people had to get by on, in their retirement. The knowledge of how fortunate he was drove him even harder in his work.
Miller had been notified of the bungled kidnap attempt as soon as fingerprint checks identified Maguire and Murphy as known IRA terrorists. They both had long arrest records and even longer lists of probable crimes, which had never been proved. Miller felt almost nostalgic as he read the dossiers from Belfast. It had been quite a while since Irish terrorism had been a part of his daily life. They had been difficult times but friendships had been formed in adversity, which were still as strong all these years later.
His views on Ireland had changed a little over the years as he learned more about the problems and role England had played in their history. Mary had pointed him to a history book written by an Oxford professor, which explained the potato famine of 1845 and how the landed English gentry had been largely responsible for the death of a million men, women and children, and caused another million to have to flee the country. It was the Catholic farmers who had suffered most.
When Miller was younger everything seemed black and white. The terrorists that formed the IRA were just vile murderers to be hunted down. As he grew older, he realized most things in life were actually a shade of grey. Since he had left Ireland and understood more of the history, he didn’t have any greater sympathy for the IRA but understood better how they had come about and flourished in their community. There can be no greater motivator for evil than a huge sense of injustice.
He had ventured back a couple of years ago to visit Cork, something he couldn’t have dreamed of doing a few years earlier. He’d even kissed the Blarney Stone at Mary’s insistence, as she felt he needed to gain a bit more of the gift of the gab. Where the legend originated that kissing the stone endows the kisser with the gift of the gab is uncertain. Many of the stories recount how the stone was taken to Scotland and in 1314 Robert the Bruce presented it to Cormac McCarthy who built Blarney Castle, to thank him for his support.
Miller hadn’t realized what it would entail when he agreed to visit Blarney Castle. He’d climbed to the top of the castle and then had to lean over backwards on the parapet’s edge to reach the stone, while holding on to two iron rails. He had felt a bit foolish but millions of others had gone before him and Mary was insistent.
He understood she was hinting that too often he kept his thoughts to himself and could seem quite introverted in company. It wasn’t really the case. He just preferred only to speak when he had something worth saying. He found all too many people prattled on for ages, without ever saying anything worth hearing. He wasn’t convinced kissing the stone had made any difference but it was a good story to share over dinner.
Miller had known many fanatics over the years. They had always come in many guises, from animal rights to anti-nuclear protesters and the IRA but nowadays they were all secondary to the overwhelming threat posed by Al Qaida. Whatever the terrible danger presented by former terrorist threats, at least you knew they weren’t willing to walk into a crowded public place and blow themselves up for their cause. Even the vilest IRA terrorist had wanted to awake to read and gloat over newspaper reports the next day.
It had also been far easier to infiltrate IRA cells or develop a network of informants. Al Qaida took conviction to a whole new level. Their religious fanaticism made them difficult to penetrate. So did the reality that it was virtually impossible for anyone white, which was still the predominant colour of those fighting terror. With their wealthy Middle Eastern backers, they also had the finances to globally attack America and its supporters including of course the UK. Miller had known most of the IRAs leading figures. Known where they lived and worked. Though they seemed terrible dark days at the time, he had learned that everything was relative.
Miller was, to say the least, surprised that prominent IRA members had been carrying out such a crime on the mainland. Since the latest ceasefire the IRA had become the new Mafia, involving themselves in every crime imaginable. Everything from Bank robberies to extortion were commonplace and today they seemed more interested in filling their coffers with the profits of dealing in drugs, rather than changing the political landscape. He expected to find them being run by an Al Capone or even a Don Corleone clone in the not too distant future but so far they had shown no desire to transport their crime wave to this side of the sea.
Miller read the IRA statement saying that they were not involved but admitting the two men had once been members, who had been banished for failing to follow orders and abide by the Good Friday Agreement. Miller remembered 1997 and the agreement by both sides to disarm as if it was only yesterday. They had gone out drinking to celebrate something they had worked many years for and he thought would signal an easier life but that hope had been short lived, as the following year the Real IRA had carried out the Omagh bombing, killing twenty nine people.
He was inclined to believe the IRA statement, as targeting Melanie Adams would attract a great deal of unwanted focus on their criminal activities and further alienate their American supporters. Too much public violence and bloodshed would undoubtedly adversely affect the business of making money. If, as he suspected, the statement was true, then he had to smile at the thought of the leadership running around desperately trying to cover their arses and apportion blame to each other. It might at least temporarily divert them from their normal life of crime.
He adjusted his glasses and also read the press release from Sinn Fein, the republican political party, which condemned the attack on Melanie Adams. Miller had to smile at how times had changed. Sinn Fein was the new definition of political correctness. They had one or two senior figures who Miller knew better from their days as IRA activists.
Miller considered the worrying possibility that Murphy and Maguire had joined one of the splinter groups such as the Real IRA or Continuity IRA. Over the last year, Belfast had seen the first sectarian murders for many a year and a general escalation in violence. One huge bomb had been found before it could be detonated and there was a real concern amongst the intelligence community that the breakaway IRA dissidents were trying to drag the country back into terrible times.
There was always the constant threat of the troubles spreading across
the sea and the Real IRA had recently been making a lot of noise about wanting to blow up London’s bankers but so far it had remained just a threat. However, to Miller’s way of thinking, this had more the hallmarks of a crime based on greed, rather than a carefully planned terrorist action. Melanie Adams was no banker and would make no sense as their first target on the mainland. That probably meant it wasn’t the Real IRA or any similar group and as it was almost inconceivable the IRA themselves were transporting their crime wave to the streets of London, it was probable Maguire and Murphy, had indeed become greedy renegades and were acting alone. Anyway, that would be the gist of his initial report to the impatient Home Secretary on Monday.
What really interested Miller was the opportunity to interrogate Eamon Murphy. His father was a life-long IRA enforcer and a nasty piece of work, who had crossed Miller’s path more than once. It had never been possible to pin anything concrete of a serious nature on him and the couple of times he had been arrested, the only witnesses had suddenly developed a terrible loss of memory. He had been put away for bits and pieces but Miller knew he had done far worse and escaped justice by intimidating the witnesses. Even if a particular individual was strong minded enough to want to testify no matter what, they usually had wives, children, family that would be threatened and the witness would know they weren’t idle threats. A visit from Murphy’s associates would normally be sufficient. Murphy was a man to be feared. The successful prosecutions were where there was a crime witnessed by members of the police or CCTV evidence.
