by Gulvin, Jeff
He met Webb back on the fifteenth floor and they both went up to the briefing that Colson was giving. Webb spoke first and told them what he and Briggs had discovered at Reading Prison, concerning Boese’s possible link with Brynn Morgan’s sister. ‘She lives in Hawick,’ he explained. ‘That’s a long train ride to Reading, costing seventy-five pounds return, plus the bus from Hawick to Galashiels to catch it. Morgan paid for her first visit, so either she was stuck for cash or he really wanted to see her. According to her visitor-suitability record, she’s on income support, living in rented accommodation with a ten-year-old son. There’s a part-time job in the Spar shop, but nothing else. I don’t suppose she’s what anyone would call flush.’
‘Seventy-five quid?’ McCulloch put in.
‘Right.’ Webb counted off on his fingers. ‘Morgan pays for the October visit, but then she shows up in November, December, January and the 4th February.’
‘The day before Boese’s trial,’ Swann said. ‘Do we know if she went home?’
‘Not yet. No.’
Colson looked at Webb, resting his chin on a fist, arm crooked about his waist. ‘OK, George. I’d like you and Campbell to take a trip up to the Borders and have a look at her, see what you can come up with. If it looks worth while, we’ll consider putting a team on her.’ He paused and turned to Swann. ‘Jack?’
Swann looked at his notes. ‘Our dead biker,’ he said, ‘he could ride most definitely. The solo who chased him verified that. If it hadn’t been for that Mazda, he would have got away.’ He paused. ‘He could also handle weapons. We don’t know where he was in that attack, but he was part of the team.’ He broke off and looked across at Webb. ‘How many do we reckon?’
‘A lot. Witnesses say there was firing from both bus stops, either side of the road. The amount of shell casings found and the angle of trajectory indicate more than two, maybe two each side. There’s twenty rounds in the Vikhr clip, and the word on the street was continuous fire. Suppression. That would mean one man loading while the other fires, and vice versa. Four then, on foot. Then there’s the skip lorry, two in that. Getaway car for Boese. One more, maybe. Then the other two SEG vehicles: the Range Rover was hit with an RGN grenade and the lead Rover with phosphorus. It takes at least two more people to do that.’ He paused for a second and studied the Annacappa chart on the wall, the events they had so far, the evidence recovered, timings, bodies, witness sightings. ‘We know that four different motorbikes were parked in the alleyway behind the shops. That alleyway can be accessed from the door on the street marked 105A. My guess is the lead car and the Range Rover were hit by four bodies on two more bikes. The driver to get you up there fast and the pillion to lob in the ordnance.’ He made an openhanded gesture. ‘That means eleven or twelve of them, a lot on bikes. All of them knew what they were doing.’
Swann nodded and looked at each of their faces. The door opened and the commander walked in with a superintendent from Special Branch. Swann pasted four enlarged photographs on the wall and stood back, one hand in his trouser pocket. Our dead biker,’ he said. ‘Distinctive beard.’ He tapped the man’s face, then went on to explain about the blood group tattooed on his ankle and elbow. ‘A soldier would do that,’ he finished.
As if in affirmation, McCulloch rolled up his right sleeve, revealing a thickly muscled forearm coated in blond hair. He tapped the blue ink at his elbow. ‘Six years in the Green Jackets,’ he said.
For a while, everyone was silent. ‘Soldiers,’ Colson mused. ‘That would make sense considering how they handled their weapons. Not many people know about suppression fire.’ He was looking at Christine Harris now. ‘The weapons were all Russian, Chrissie. And we haven’t come across their type very often before.’
‘Hardly at all.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Some of them we don’t even have pictures of.’
Colson chewed his lip and glanced at the commander. ‘Russian weapons, motorcycles and a dead, unidentified soldier.’
‘We can ID him now,’ Swann said. He looked at McCulloch. ‘The army will have a record of his fingerprints. Right?’
‘They certainly will.’
‘Excellent.’ Colson clapped his hands together. ‘There’s another thing that the teams have thrown up in their searches. Two motorbikes were parked close to the Fox pub early on the morning of the attack, along with a small van of some type. The make or index number isn’t known. The Fox is in Hanwell village, close to the canal. The bikes were the scrambler type. Later that morning, an old woman was almost knocked into the canal by two bikes that were racing along the towpath. Apparently, it happens quite often.’ He paused then and turned to the map on the wall, tracing the line of the canal. ‘The towpath’ll get you most of the way to the M4. On a motorbike, it’d take no time at all.’ He tapped the map. ‘What a great way to escape.’
Webb studied the map. ‘They may’ve dumped the bikes.’
‘I know.’ Colson looked back at him. ‘I’ve organized the underwater search unit to look for them in the canal.’ He turned to Harris once more. ‘What about the weapons, Chrissie. They’re from Eastern Europe. Our Polish friends, perhaps?’
‘It could be connected, but there’s no evidence to suggest it other than the coincidences we’ve already discussed.’ She glanced across the table to where Julian Moore was watching her. ‘We’ve lost our informant.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Got scared and went home to Poland.’ Again, she looked at Moore. ‘Nothing we could do about it, I’m afraid.’
‘She’s better off away, anyway,’ Moore put in. ‘There’s no doubt the information was duff. It was the first time, but it scared her badly. Vaczka’s a bad boy to cross. She couldn’t believe the charity mission. As far as she knew, he’d never done anything that somebody didn’t pay him for.’
‘Charity clothes to Polish missions,’ Webb said. ‘Not his style then, eh?’
‘No.’
‘We know from Box 850 that he has had, maybe still does have, serious links with Abu Nidal. Nidal lived in Poland, remember, between 1981 and 1984. He sells weapons from there.’
‘ANO-supplied weapons?’ Golson said.
‘Possibly.’
Colson stood up again. ‘We’ll look at Brynn Morgan’s sister,’ he said. ‘And do some work on this dead soldier. As far as the Poles are concerned, there’s not a lot we can do right now.’
Tal-Salem watched Newsnight in his hotel room at Hyde Park. He rolled a skinny joint, wetted the gummed edge of the paper and twisted up the ends. The presenter was debating with Benjamin Dubin, sitting in a studio somewhere in Scotland. Tal-Salem lifted the remote control unit and increased the volume a fraction. He lay back then, arm crooked behind his head, and watched out of half-closed eyes.
‘In your opinion, Dr Dubin, what’s he likely to do?’ the programme presenter asked him. Dubin pressed one finger to his earpiece, as if he could not hear very well.
‘That’s difficult to say,’ he replied. ‘Last time we saw Storm Crow, it was the worst chemical attack in the history of peacetime, other than what we know went on in Iraq, of course.’
‘You’re referring to the Kurds.’
‘Yes, the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.’ Dubin gestured with an open palm. ‘The break-out was obviously planned in minute detail. My guess is Boese’s now somewhere very safe, amongst friends, possibly in Lebanon; or maybe the Yemen. Libya could be an option.’ Again, he put a finger to the earpiece. ‘He might, of course, do nothing. He’s spent years cultivating secrecy. Now all that has changed. He might disappear again completely. Who knows? But he might come back for revenge.’
‘Revenge?’
‘He’s been identified, hasn’t he. Caught. Incarcerated. The Jackal, if you remember, waged a terrible vengeance on France in the 1980s, just because they put his girlfriend in prison.’
Tal-Salem flicked off the set and blew a thin stream of smoke at the ceiling. ‘Revenge,’ he muttered. ‘Now that would be interesting.’
The Irishman sat in the White
Lion student bar in Washington D.C. He drank a pint of Guinness and watched the same interview, which had been broadcast by CNN to the States. Around him, the students talked, none of them much interested, although the bartender studied the screen, as he dried glasses on a cloth that hung to his chest from his shoulder.
‘Now that is one nasty sonofabitch,’ he said.
Down the length of the bar, somebody lit a cigarette and the Irishman wrinkled his nose as the smoke drifted into his face. He looked round, but the female smoker was so deep in conversation with what looked like an errant boyfriend, he could not catch her eye.
‘They say he’s an American.’ The bartender seemed intent on holding a conversation with someone. ‘That fella on the TV just now. They say he’s from over here.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Oh, yeah. Can’t remember where exactly, but somewhere Stateside, for sure. They say he delivers crows’ feathers to his intended targets.’
‘Do they now?’
‘Oh, yeah. Serious sonofabitch.’
The Irishman moved from the bar to a table and looked out into the February rain. Ismael Boese out; and Benjamin Dubin talking on British television. He rubbed a thumbnail along the underside of his lip and stared at the condensation gathering on the inside of the window. The hubbub behind him subsided, as he concentrated slowly and allowed his mind to think. The word from Britain was that the police had stopped a motorcyclist, a good motorcyclist at that. He had died in hospital, which was interesting, if a little unfortunate.
Strange thoughts crisscrossed the quiet places of his mind, thoughts he had not entertained in years. But they were there now—unfamiliar, but there. He moved in his seat, jeans sticking to the plastic chair for a moment, and sipped the dark beer from his glass. Outside, the rain rattled in a fresh wave as the wind blew across Pennsylvania Avenue from 19th Street. Cars backed up at the lights and he saw the blacked-out windows of a secret service vehicle head down past Lafayette Square and the White House. Dubin had mentioned revenge. Dubin was very knowledgeable. He scratched slowly at the sweat gathered on the palm of his hand.
George Webb had never been to Hawick before, a dour market town in the Borders of Scotland. Once upon a time, farmers from all over the north of England, as well as Scotland, had travelled to the livestock market at the eastern reaches of the town, which nestled between two hills, with the River Teviot running between them. Now that market was a Safeway superstore and the livestock went somewhere else. Years before that, border clansmen, like the Armstrongs, had mustered as many as three thousand horsemen to terrorize the English as far south as Carlisle, stealing cattle, killing and raping as they went. By the time James V was the seventeen-year-old King of Scotland, Henry VIII was demanding action against the brother of the incumbent master of Maingerton, the ancient Armstrong seat near Newcastleton. James, however, was powerless. Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie commanded both sides of the border from his tower on the banks of the Esk. It was not until 1530, when James summoned him to a bogus truce, that the power of the clan was broken. Johnny and fifty of his men were hanged from the trees at Carlenrigg. Webb and McCulloch booked into the Station Hotel in the high street, posing as mobile telephone engineers, and did a brief reconnaissance of the town. Morgan’s sister, Catherine, lived at the eastern end. Bourtree Terrace was a narrow street which led up from the high street, where it separated for Galashiels and Jedburgh respectively, beyond the statue of the weary bronze horseman. At the southwestern end of town, they found the park and playing fields, and Hawick Rugby Club, and closer in, the high school. The river cut right through the middle of the town and under the bridge, where the rapids were fast and yellowed, frothing water gushed over rocks and grey slabs and the odd shopping trolley. Many of the shops were closed, bars were dotted here and there, and, at night, the Lothian and Borders police patrolled in strength.
Catherine Morgan lived in an old flat, number 6, which was on the right-hand side of Bourtree Terrace as it rose up the hill. To the left was a small warehouse for antique furniture and an open piece of ground for private parking. Beyond that, a house and then a car repair workshop which, according to the local in the baker’s at the bottom of the hill, had once been Rettie’s Taxis. The three converted flats were in the last grey block on the right, before the road bent at ninety degrees, rising to a small cottage and a large residence right at the top of the hill. Garages and workshops lay stacked together down the left-hand side, as far as the car workshop. It was not an easy place to recce covertly, so Webb and McCulloch drove up, parked by the side of the road and looked at the bogus plans they carried, laid out on the roof of their car. Then Webb took a brief walk down past the flats and checked the external door. It was open and he climbed six worn stone steps and found number 6 on the first landing. The steps wound on in a cold spiral to two more flats further up. He rang the bell of number 6, standing with his breath coming in clouds of steam in the refrigerated atmosphere of the landing. Nobody answered. He rang again and still nobody came. Then he bent and peered through the letterbox. He could see nothing—a heavy velvet curtain covered the back of the door. Carefully, he inspected the keyholes, two of them, one a Chubb lock, the other for a bar key of some kind.
Back in the car, he looked at McCulloch from the corner of his eye. ‘There’s nobody there,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell if she’s away for a while or just out, because I can’t see any post on the floor.’
They turned the car and trundled slowly down the terrace, turning left into the town once more. They drove out on to the A7 and south again. Five miles further on, they phoned back to the Yard and spoke to Harris in the Special Branch cell. Webb told her what they had found.
‘I’ve got a request going in for production orders under Schedule 7,’ Harris told them. ‘As soon as I get them, I’ll let you know what her bank account looks like.’
Back in town, they went into the Spar where they knew Catherine worked. It was literally round the corner from her house, the first shop beyond the pink-painted bar by the baker’s. Webb asked the salesgirl if Catherine was working today.
‘No, she’s away just now.’ She was small and thin and young, freckles smattering her face.
‘Any idea when she’ll be back? I’ve got a parcel to deliver for her.’
‘Och, she’ll no’ be back for a while yet, another week at least. Gone away for a holiday wi’ her bairn.’
‘Has she?’
‘Aye. Listen, if ye want to, ye could drop yon parcel off wi’ us. Or better still, put it in wi’ the bins.’
‘Bins?’
‘Aye. Yon door, down one from hers. That’s what folk do if she’s out.’
‘Thank you,’ Webb said. ‘Thank you very much.’
12
THEY SAT IN THE bar and drank single malt whisky: Webb told McCulloch it was to guard against the cold later. ‘Sure it is,’ McCulloch muttered as he knocked back a third and chased it with a pint of 80 Shilling. ‘Here’s to the cold.’ They had conducted a brief recce and found that the dustbins were located in a small concrete shed that bordered the broken cobbles of the pavement. Three of them, one for each flat, along with three disused coal cellars. They were clearly marked and Catherine Morgan’s bin was full.
‘Away for two weeks,’ Webb said. ‘Be interesting to see the state of her bank account. They can’t pay much for part-time in that shop.’
McCulloch glanced at him in the mirror. ‘You want to get a locksmith up here?’ he said.
Webb swilled whisky round the inside of his mouth. ‘Let’s see what’s in the bins first, Macca. Then we can decide.’
They went back after midnight, when the last bar had closed and the activity of the local police had dulled to the odd Land-Rover patrol. McCulloch drove up Bourtree Terrace, dropped Webb off and turned the car round. Webb slipped into the shed and flicked on his pencil-light torch. He checked each bin for the number, crudely painted in blue emulsion, then he took the two well-tied plastic liners from Cat
herine Morgan’s dustbin. McCulloch flipped open the boot on the hire car and he dropped them inside. They drove through the town and crossed the bridge over the river, then headed down past the high school before turning into the park. Here, they had excellent all-round visibility and would be able to spot anyone approaching from some distance away. Webb took the first bin bag from the boot and slipped on a pair of rubber gloves. He sat in the back seat while McCulloch sat in the front, holding open a second plastic sack, the same type as the ones from the dustbin. Piece by piece, Webb shifted the rubbish from one bag to the next. He found the usual sorts of stuff: old tins, milk cartons and plastic bottles, scrapings of food, which stank out the inside of the car. In the front, McCulloch wrinkled his nose in the torch light.
‘Hertz are going to wonder what the fuck we’ve been doing,’ he said.
‘Old police fetish. Rubbish-lined plastic.’ Webb sifted through the remaining contents then screwed up the bag and placed it in the one that McCulloch was holding. McCulloch tied the top and Webb fetched the second one.
They went through the same process, Webb’s expert eye looking for something that would tell him what she had been doing—letters or notes maybe, something scribbled on the back of an envelope, food packets out of the ordinary, something that perhaps she ought not to be able to afford. He sifted and sifted and the bag in McCulloch’s hands became heavier. Then Webb pulled out a rolled-up holiday brochure of farmhouses in France. He looked through the torch light at McCulloch, then laid the brochure on the seat beside him. He dug deeper and came up with some sort of timetable. Turning it over in his hands, he shone the pencil-light torch again. ‘Ferries, Macca,’ he said. ‘Car ferries from Portsmouth.’
Swann went to the offices of the National Criminal Intelligence Service at Spring Gardens, for a meeting with Sergeant Williams—prematurely grey, and from the Vale of Glamorgan. They knew each other from skiing trips they ran for disabled RUC officers, who had been maimed or paralysed by gunfire or bombs in Northern Ireland. Williams was ex-SO19, having done a five-year stint with the armed response vehicles before joining NCIS. Swann had not seen him for over a year.
