Unholy Ground imm-2

by John Brady

  Minogue's eyes remained out of focus. Corrigan wondered if it was the effects of that odd food he had eaten.

  "Well, I bollocks things up, Pat. As a matter of routine. I have, I can and I probably will again."

  "That's a different class of a game you're talking about now," Corrigan said evenly. "Don't come the heavy with me."

  "What are we fighting over, yourself and myself?" Minogue said languidly. "Someone at the embassy knows something about Combs. Ball seems to have had some contact with our Combs. I want to know what they knew about Combs' murder. Not to mention me helping my friends in the Branch with this assassination last night…"

  Corrigan leaned forward again.

  "Look. I can't get at them. I told you that Ball was probably some kind of intelligence officer-"

  "It's 'probably' now? But one small favour at least," Minogue said studying Corrigan's frown. "Nothing out of this world now," he added.

  The frown drove a deeper crease between Corrigan's eyebrows.

  "Will you arrange a tail on someone for me?"

  Corrigan rocked back in his chair. He shook his head. He pushed back the chair, still not looking at Minogue's face.

  "Matt, sometimes when I hear people saying that you're a bit cracked, I wonder to myself if maybe they're not right?'

  Corrigan made a minor ceremony of standing and buttoning his jacket. Minogue stayed seated, looking up Dawson Street.

  "I might have to do it myself then, Pat. I don't think any of Jimmy Kilmartin's lads is up to doing the job properly. And I'll tell you what. If Moore is who or what I think he is, then we'll need an expert. I'd ask you for a phone tap, but I know that your blood pressure would pay the bill in the end."

  Corrigan nodded once, decisively.

  "Just do it for twenty-four hours."

  Corrigan stood with the pained expression still wrinkling his forehead. He stroked his chin. Minogue propelled himself up from the chair. He eased the skepticism on Corrigan's face with a squeeze of Corrigan's upper arm.

  "Something will give way, Pat. Don't be fretting."

  "There's always the pension, isn't there?" said a resigned Corrigan. "Listen. You'll get one full day out of me. I can put a two-man team out when your Moore gets back to his hotel. More than that, bejases, and I'll have to go to the top with it. With your scalp tied to my belt, for fear they'll be wanting one."

  Kenyon was half-way into a salmon sandwich when Bowers swivelled from the monitor.

  "Memo for you, sir. A Code Three. Do you want a hard copy or just screen-read?"

  Kenyon swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. He had never warmed to the use of terminals for internal mail, especially for any messages higher than a Code One. Despite assurances and performance evaluations of the system proving that the network was secure, despite the best efforts of simulated hostile "breakers," Kenyon retained his dislike of having something which reminded him of a television in his office. Reluctantly, he walked to the terminal and keyed in his code to retrieve the message.

  "Print it, yes," he said to Bowers and returned to his chair. The jagged tearing sound of the printer lasted less than a minute.

  "Second telephone inquiry on a flagged name with the LMP, sir. They've had an alert on the name since Monday, authorized by you."

  "Yes, I know. Go on," Kenyon said.

  "To Inspector Newman, by name, from police in Dublin re Arthur Combs… Wanted more detailed bio on that party. For attention of one Sergeant Minogue, sir. The copper you wanted to know about, that's him-"

  Kenyon felt his heart race. The police in Dublin had twigged to something? He pressed fingers into his eyes, rubbed, then held them against his eyelids.

  "That's it, sir."

  Kenyon needed to clear his throat. He gently placed the remains of the sandwich on his desk. It could mean that the Irish police were just becoming frustrated and hoped that a detail missing from their previous picture of Combs might help. Yes: if they had found any bombshell left by Combs, why hadn't a real storm erupted? Had their police handed it over to their Foreign ministry and were they sitting on it, at a loss to evaluate it? The ex-head of MI5, a former minister… the embassy staff running intelligence ops? No, the Irish would never sit on this; they'd have looked for corroboration straightaway, gone for the jugular.

  Kenyon shivered with an intuition that he was overlooking something. Was the inquiry a feint, to see what the Met would say? Kenyon's brain rejected that: the Combs character would hold up, that's why it had been picked. Newman could send a three-hundred page life story if he wanted; dental records, too. The documentation would be seamless.

  But, for a few seconds, the doubt swept back, greater. He had a fleeting sense that something was moving by him, out of reach, a sluggishly moving tableau of events, inexorable, indifferent to his efforts to direct their course. Kenyon shook himself out of the drift of thoughts. He had been at work on this nearly fourteen hours. Was he losing his grasp of the events?

  He picked up the print-out, folded it thoughtfully and left for Robertson's office.

  "Has Moore drawn anything from the coppers over there?" Robertson asked.

  "I'll be asking him that when he makes his call."

  Kenyon checked his watch.

  "About another twenty minutes. I just have the sense that things might unravel there rather suddenly. Part of me says the Irish haven't twigged to anything, but then I keep coming back to the killing this morning. Ball. Damn, we don't have a way of knowing what's going on there yet. That's what has me on edge."

  "Anything from GCHQ on messages to their embassy in London about Combs?"

  "SIGINT have heard nothing so far and they have all the codes. But their embassy here knows that their lines back to Dublin are not secure. I just have this vision of an Irish civil servant stepping off the plane at Heathrow with a diplomatic bag under his arm, full of what Combs was doing for us in Ireland. Yes, going to their embassy to plan how best to use it against us… Christ, when I think of Murray, I almost think we deserve to have this cock-up thrown at us-"

  Kenyon fingered where he felt the light pulse, the root of a headache in his forehead.

  "James, listen," Robertson interrupted. "I know we're asked to hold our nose on this and that it troubled you from the very start. It could be a tight situation, I know."

  Kenyon began pushing back his cuticles. He managed to disregard the tone of reprimand. He looked to his watch again.

  "I don't want Moore at risk," Kenyon said. "He hasn't enough experience really. I want to pull him out. It's too damned volatile and we don't have reliable information about anything."

  Robertson remained silent while he let his glance linger on Kenyon's rising colour.

  "So you're ready to advise activating an approach at diplomatic levels then, James? Get the Irish onside before something gives way that we can't control?"

  "Yes," Kenyon answered. He felt tired, deflated. "At least then I wouldn't have to worry about Murray in Dublin botching our show and endangering our people."

  "Don't take it so hard, James. Our timing is not too far out of kilter. We have the Irish government slavering with reassurances about security for our embassy staff. After this assassination, I mean. You'll see to notifying Moore then?"

  "I'll pass along anything he has," Kenyon replied.

  He felt suddenly disengaged from the whole business. Even the physical surroundings seemed to recede. He was in a building in London, getting ready to close the bag on an operation which hadn't produced. Nothing novel about that. He had fifteen minutes on his hands, without the slightest urge to do anything except sink further into the chair. It was a long time since he had had his knuckles rapped by Hugh Robertson. In a way which he couldn't quite understand, Kenyon felt pleased to have been angry and to have drawn Robertson's plangent response. He could watch the diplomats wince at having to curry favour with the Irish. This did not displease Kenyon as much as he would have expected. He tried to will his headache further away.

 
; CHAPTER 12

  The barman reached out over the clutter of bottles and glasses for Moore's money. The pub was full of smoke. The seats were long gone, occupied since early evening. Nearly everyone in the pub appeared to be drunk or at least well on the way to being drunk. Faces glowed with the heat and the beer. Raucous laughter, a shout, more laughter; eyes closed, laughing helplessly with mouth agape, teeth showing to the gums. Everybody was pissed, Moore decided.

  He sipped at the beer before swallowing. Too fizzy for bitter, but nice, malty beer. His eyes stung from the smoke. A woman brushed against him as she followed another to the Ladies. No one could hear the television and no one was watching it. Four barmen skipped, reached, smiled and poured pints of Guinness while a constant stream of shouted orders, hand signals and winks kept them busy. Moore looked at the door where he had entered. There was no sign of the man in jeans.

  He hadn't noticed until he was crossing the street from the hotel. Then there was the vague speculation, the itch which made him feel vulnerable. As though the street was broader, the traffic faster. Nothing at first. Moore set up his checks. Instead of going into the first pub, he broke into a stride. He headed for the canal bridge, which he had crossed this morning, and launched into a brisk walk down Leeson Street.

  He remembered that Leeson Street turned into a one-way street as it neared that park, St Stephen's Green. If there was a back-up in a car, he'd have a long block to lose them, too. The shops were closed. He couldn't take up a surveillance point off the street without attracting attention. The evening was warm. Moore slung his jacket over his shoulder. He had twenty minutes before calling Kenyon. The stream of headlights flowing along Leeson Street surprised him. He hadn't thought of Ireland as busy.

  There were two pubs opposite each other at the end of Leeson Street. Moore stopped by the traffic-lights and pressed the pedestrian button. He could not distinguish the man from the groups who were walking down the street toward him. He looked to the four corners of the intersection. Moore had passed no clear alleys or pedestrian ways. If he did have a tail, then the tail would know the streets, that Moore had no place else to go. If there was tandem surveillance on foot, it would be easy to keep him in sight anyway. Five minutes before calling Kenyon and he still needed to get change for the phone.

  A group gathered around him, waiting to cross the street. A half-dozen headed for one of the pubs. He fell in with them. All youths; Moore doubted if any of them were legal age. It didn't seem to matter. They were half-pissed already.

  Moore was three minutes late with the call. He wondered if Kenyon would hear him over the racket. He pushed further into the booth and plugged one ear with his thumb. There was a smell of sugary perfume off the receiver. He fingered the fifty-penny pieces onto the chute and dialled.

  The television news came on. A heavily made-up woman announced headlines. Moore watched an image of the Union Jack and the Irish tricolour spring onto the screen, followed by a clumsy graphic map of Ireland. A line marking the border pulsated in red and the word security appeared across the map. No one paid attention to the news. He pushed the receiver tighter against his ear. He swallowed more beer. The faces around him seemed foreign. He hadn't spotted anyone who set his antennae stirring yet. More people flowed into the pub. A barman nodded at the arrivals. How could they run a country with half the population out boozing every night? It was just his preconceptions about the Irish and the booze. He heard the telephone connections click through, a hissy pause, then the phone ringing in London.

  Moore felt calm. He doubted that it was the beer doing its work already. The noise of the mob seemed to rise and engulf him. He strained to hear the phone ring again. It could only be that copper. Minogue. The one with the dry humour and the bit of stage-Irish. Minogue would have put a tail on him. Had he misread Minogue? He looked around at the faces again. Like potatoes, he thought, but flush and moist, talking and laughing. Kenyon picked up the phone at the fourth ring.

  "Where are you?"

  "In a pub."

  "Can you hear me with that racket?"

  "Just about," Moore answered. He was amused at the displeasure in Kenyon's voice. When he looked about the crowded pub, he noticed the couple immediately. They were in their late twenties, he guessed, and they came into the pub sober. They looked too earnest about making conversation and looking about. She carried a sweater tied around her shoulders. Her hair was in a pony-tail. She could put the sweater on and shake out the pony-tail if she had to take up pursuit outside the pub, a new face. The man had longish hair, over his ears, no more than ten years out of date. His jeans looked too well tended.

  "Any moves from your side?" Kenyon repeated.

  "No sign yet. I had a supervised look through the house today."

  "We're going to make a pre-emptive approach to the Irish, probably tomorrow. The timing is not up to us. We just explain what's at stake and it's their party. I'd expect a backroom chat at the conference tomorrow. It gets going after lunch. You should wind up before then."

  The barman did not know the couple. Nor did any customers greet them. The woman drank a Coke while the man nursed a pint of Guinness. They looked overly absorbed in each other but not flighty enough for it to be the first date.

  "Did you hear me?" an irritated Kenyon asked.

  "You want me clear of the place by mid-day," Moore said. "And if I have made any progress before then?"

  Kenyon took a breath and held.

  "Same as the previous protocol. Refer any material you find before then to Mr Murray. He's running things for the moment."

  Moore heard the hostility in Kenyon's tone plain over the din of the pub. He wondered if he should bother to tell Kenyon that he was being tailed. Coppers both, the ones here, and amateurish, too. Moore watched as the man took another draught from his Guinness. Tipping it, he let his head back, his eyes almost closed. He glanced at Moore through the slit between his eyelids. Moore pretended not to notice.

  He felt sure now. But how many did they have on him?

  Moore hung up and looked at the television again. He tried to lip-read over the racket. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that the couple was staying put. They hadn't looked for a seat or found a wall to lean against, out of the way of the swell thronging up to the bar. That was his own face he was seeing in the mirror behind the bar. He was here in a pub in Dublin with things giving way under his feet and Kenyon's terse voice still in his memory. He was almost certainly under surveillance. Had they found something in Combs' house and were playing it out? Maybe Kenyon was already too late to pull the switch on this… But that Minogue with the eyebrows pushing up, some vague and private amusement, an appetite for mockery perhaps. It was that affable and devious Sergeant Minogue who had pinned the tail on him, Moore guessed. Taking the mickey out of the Brits, the favourite pastime here. Minogue playing a game. Moore's chest burned as he realised that Kenyon's instruction all but removed his chance of what could have been a double coup: if he had been able to recover any Combs' dossier, Moore'd be happier to pull it out from under Minogue's politely mocking nose.

  Minogue poured enough Jameson whiskey to colour the tumbler as far as the supporting pylons at the bottom of the Arc de Triomphe. He held the glass to eye level. The orange liquid covered the foreground nicely, easily topping the script " Souvenir de… " He had bought the tawdriest memento he could find at the Gare du Nord, just before Kathleen and he had taken the train back to Le Havre.

  He replaced the bottle under the sink and returned to the living-room. Kathleen had fallen asleep in the chair. The whiskey was smoky, sharper than Jameson should be. Maybe he needed to drink more of it, more often, so that it wouldn't have the whack which he was shuddering after now. Good drink for a spring day at the races. Horses, vapour breath snorting in billows, galloping.

  It had been more than twenty years since Minogue had run hard on the drink. He sipped at the tumbler and counted the years. Iseult was twenty-two and a half… It must be over a quarter centu
ry since he had heard Kathleen's scream and her body hit the floor upstairs. The child, Eamonn, dead above in the cot. Nothing left at all then. Days no different than nights, for months on end. He had been lucky to hold onto his job. It was years before he knew that what had nearly destroyed him was anger, not grief.

  Kathleen asleep looked a stranger to Minogue. He looked at the mute, blind television screen. Iseult wasn't home yet. He should wake Kathleen up and send her off to bed, lest Daithi come home half-jarred and cause a commotion. Minogue closed his eyes. Had Combs really missed so much by not having a family? He imagined Combs sitting on a rock drawing the patterns from the stones. Combs and Joyce supping whiskey in his kitchen, a tinker swapping horse yarns with an Englishman. Jimmy Kilmartin's face drifted in behind Minogue's eyelids. Jimmy, the man who was so anxious to be seen doing the right thing. How did a person get like that, so anxious to please? But Jimmy was shrewd, tough as nails by times, no fawning Polonius. Showing how responsible he was… to whom? For what?

  The phone rings erupted as pink flares into Minogue's eyelid world. It was his own phone. Kathleen stirred. The room was bright when he opened his eyes. Had he fallen asleep? A man with a genteel Limerick accent was looking for Sergeant Minogue.

  "Who would you be yourself?"

  "This is Sergeant Dwyer and I'm calling from Shankill Station. Would you be Sergeant Minogue?"

  "I would."

  "Well, I'm sorry now to be disturbing you. Very sorry, and it ten o'clock at night. I hope I'm doing the right thing now. I have your number from a colleague of yours. Detective Keating."

  "Go on."

  "I was put through to him after I called the Murder Squad. He thought you wouldn't mind being phoned at home under the circumstances. To make a long story short, I have a man here says he won't stir without seeing you. He knows your name and all. Not a word until he sees you."