The Double Tap (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘You’re never serious, are you? About anything?’

  Cramer shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s better not to take things too seriously.’

  ‘No, it’s an act with you. You pretend not to care …’

  ‘But you can see through me, is that it?’ Cramer finished for her. ‘Don’t try to read too much into me, Su-ming. I’m a soldier, that’s all. I obey orders.’

  ‘So you were ordered to do this? You were ordered to take Mr Vander Mayer’s place?’

  Cramer’s mouth felt suddenly dry. There was a cup of green tea on the tray and he sipped it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t an order.’

  ‘Because you aren’t in the army any more. You’re not a soldier now, are you?’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Cramer. She’d obviously been asking about him. He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or worried.

  ‘So why, Mike Cramer? Why are you doing this?’ Her dark brown eyes bored into his. Cramer met her gaze levelly. For several seconds they stared into each other’s eyes. Cramer looked away first.

  ‘A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,’ he said lamely.

  Su-ming stood up. ‘Why are you like this?’ she asked quietly. ‘Why won’t you ever be serious? Life is not a joke. What you’re doing isn’t funny.’ Cramer didn’t say anything. ‘You’re empty,’ she said. ‘You’re a hollow man. Something inside you died a long time ago.’

  Cramer looked up at her. ‘Yeah? Is that a professional opinion?’

  She walked out of the bedroom, her arms swinging backwards and forwards, like a small child being sent to bed. Cramer put down his chopsticks. He wasn’t hungry any more.

  Lynch left the M4 at Bristol. Marie had fallen asleep and she was snoring softly, her chin against her chest. Lynch smiled as he looked across at her. She was a pretty girl and under other circumstances Lynch would have enjoyed spending time with her. The digital clock on the dashboard said it was just before two o’clock. ‘Marie?’ he said softly. There was no reaction so he switched on the radio and twisted the tuning dial until he found a news station. He kept the volume down low and he strained to hear the headlines. The Maida Vale shooting was the second item: four men, as yet unidentified, shot, three of them dead, a man reported running away from the scene. Lynch frowned as he wondered which of the IRA men had survived. He’d have put money on the fact that he’d killed all of them. Not that it mattered, it wasn’t as if the man would be helping the police with their enquiries. There was no description of the man the police were looking for, but Lynch knew that it wasn’t the police he’d have to worry about. The IRA wouldn’t need a description.

  There was no mention of Foley, though Lynch was certain that the police would have opened the boot and discovered the body by now. Lynch cursed his own stupidity for the thousandth time. He should never have left the car parked on the street, he should have wiped the car clean of prints, he should have taken the second gun with him. He wondered how he could have been so careless. Marie sniffed and moved in her seat, turning so that her right cheek lay against her headrest. Her lips were slightly parted and he caught a glimpse of perfect white teeth. Lynch reached over and switched off the radio.

  He drove into the city and made for a centrally located car park. Marie opened her eyes as he switched off the engine. ‘Are we there?’ she asked sleepily.

  ‘Bristol,’ answered Lynch.

  Marie sat up and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’ll drive the next bit if you like.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Lynch. He’d actually enjoyed the drive, it had given him time to think.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’

  ‘Provisions for me,’ he replied. ‘And a train ticket back to London for you.’

  Marie’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t look so surprised, love,’ said Lynch. ‘The deal was that you help me get out of London. I shouldn’t even have brought you this far.’

  ‘Dermott, I want to help. I want to stay with you.’

  Lynch opened the door. ‘We’ve been through this, Marie. It’s for the best.’ They walked together out of the car park and along Redcliffe Way, one of the main shopping streets. Marie slipped her arm through Lynch’s as if they were a courting couple. ‘And don’t think you can make me change my mind,’ said Lynch.

  Marie raised her eyebrows. ‘This is just cover,’ she laughed. ‘There’s no ulterior motive.’ She squeezed his arm tightly. Lynch nodded at a sign that indicated they were walking towards Temple Meads Station but Marie pretended not to notice. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

  ‘I could eat,’ replied Lynch, half-heartedly.

  ‘So let’s,’ she said, pulling him towards a café.

  ‘There’s something I want to buy first,’ said Lynch. He found a camping store in Redcliffe Way, its window filled with tents, portable stoves and climbing ropes. Inside was a rack of maps and Lynch went through them. Several were Ordnance Survey maps but others were commercial versions which utilised their own reference systems. He found several of Wales but only one which used lines of longitude and latitude. It was a large scale map of the country and he had considerable trouble unfolding it. He had memorised the reference numbers that the Irish air traffic controller had given him and he ran his finger across to where the two lines met. ‘Swansea?’ asked Marie, looking at where he was pointing.

  ‘Somewhere close by,’ he said. ‘I need a larger scale.’

  Marie nodded. ‘West Glamorgan, isn’t it?’ She went through the rack as Lynch refolded the map, laughing at his unwieldy attempts to put it back into its original form. Minutes later, Marie handed him a large scale map of West Glamorgan and took the map of Wales from him. She folded it with a few deft movements and slid it back into the rack.

  Lynch opened the map of West Glamorgan and checked whether it too had lines of longitude and latitude. It did. ‘Perfect,’ he said. He went over to a display case. An elderly man in brown overalls came across and Lynch asked to see a pair of high powered binoculars. He bought them, the map, and a compass and then left the shop with Marie.

  They went back to the café and after ordering himself a cheeseburger and coffee, and Marie a salad and Diet Coke, Lynch spread the map out over the table. Marie switched seats so that she was sitting next to him. ‘There’s Swansea,’ she said. ‘And there’s the airport to the west.’

  Lynch shook his head as he ran his finger down the map. ‘They didn’t land at the airport,’ he said. He tapped the map. ‘Here. This is where they went down.’

  Marie peered at the name Lynch was indicating, a small village close to the tip of a peninsula which stuck out fifteen miles into the Bristol Channel, separating Carmarthen Bay and Swansea Bay. ‘Llanrhidian,’ she read.

  ‘About half a mile to the north-east of it.’

  Marie sat back and brushed the hair from her eyes. ‘What makes you think he’s still there?’

  Lynch refolded the map. This time he managed to do it first time and he smiled to himself. ‘I don’t, but it’s the only clue I’ve got,’ he said. ‘If he was going on somewhere else, I think they’d have taken him straight to the airport.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going to the toilet,’ he said.

  In the bathroom, Lynch splashed cold water onto his face and stood for a while appraising his reflection in the mirror above the sink. The new hairstyle suited him, and the colour looked natural enough. He dried his face on the roller towel then went back into the café.

  Marie’s head was bent over a newspaper. Lynch frowned. She hadn’t had time to go and buy a paper. Then he saw copies of the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph by the cash register and realised that the café owners supplied them free for customers. Marie turned the front page and ran a hand through her hair as she read. Lynch had a pretty good idea what had grabbed her attention. He slid into the seat opposite her. She looked up sharply. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she snapped. Lynch was taken aback. Anger wasn
’t the reaction he’d expected – he’d assumed she’d feel scared. He smiled, trying to put her at ease. ‘Don’t fucking grin at me like a chimpanzee with a hard on,’ she hissed angrily.

  ‘What?’ he said, stunned.

  ‘Don’t give me what, you know exactly what I’m talking about.’ She closed the paper and tossed it at him. It was that morning’s Daily Mail. The story splashed across the front page had been written by the paper’s chief reporter and he clearly had better sources than the radio reporter Lynch had listened to in the car. The Mail story identified the four shooting victims as an IRA team and named the man who had survived as Declan McGee of Belfast. Lynch didn’t recognise the name, but that meant nothing. According to the Mail, the police were treating the incident as an internal IRA dispute. Yeah, thought Lynch, they were dead right there. The UFF and the UVF had issued separate statements saying that they weren’t involved in the killings and that they remained committed to the peace process.

  ‘So?’ said Marie, jarring his concentration. Lynch held his hand up to her lips as he continued to read, but she pushed it away. She sat back in her seat and folded her arms defensively across her chest.

  The reporter quoted an unnamed Security Service source as saying that the Maida Vale shootings were thought to be connected to the death of Pat O’Riordan in the Republic, which was now being treated as murder and not suicide. Lynch’s eyes widened. Pat O’Riordan, dead? The news hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. Any doubts that the IRA had signed his death warrant evaporated. He was a marked man.

  The reporter suggested that the killings were the result of a struggle for power in the top echelons of the IRA, with the hardliners being unhappy at the lack of progress on the political front. Lynch wondered who had fed the reporter that particular line. It could have been someone within the organisation, trying to steer the flak away from McCormack, or a Protestant source trying to discredit the IRA. Either way, Lynch knew that the deaths were nothing to do with any power struggle: the IRA was trying to distance itself from the deaths of the Americans, and O’Riordan and Lynch had been tagged as the fall guys. The story continued inside the paper but it was mostly background material on previous IRA activities on the mainland, along with a piece written by an Oxford don speculating on the effect the killings might have on the Irish political situation and the peace process. The piece came to no conclusion, which was hardly a surprise to Lynch. Most of what was written in the media about the organisation was speculation; uninformed at best, misinformation spread by the Security Services at worst. He closed the paper and rested his arms on it. Marie was waiting for him to speak. ‘I should have told you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s not good enough, Dermott.’

  A waitress carried over a tray and put Lynch’s cheeseburger down in front of him. Lynch nodded his thanks and poured milk into his coffee as the waitress passed Marie her salad. He waited until the waitress was out of hearing range before speaking. ‘I wasn’t sure that I could trust you,’ he said.

  ‘Well I’m damn sure I can’t trust you,’ she replied. She picked up a fork and prodded a slice of tomato. ‘How can they call this a salad? A tomato, three lettuce leaves that any self-respecting rabbit wouldn’t look at twice and half a dozen slices of week-old cucumber.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lynch.

  ‘Who do you think I am? Some tout who’d go running to the police at the first sign of trouble?’

  Lynch shrugged. He looked down at his cheeseburger but he’d lost his appetite. Pat O’Riordan, dead. He remembered how the big man had clasped him to his chest on the day they’d said goodbye. ‘Take care of yourself,’ O’Riordan had said. Lynch intended to do just that. He took a mouthful of coffee and swallowed it as he considered what to say to her. ‘I was going to tell you,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Eventually.’

  ‘That’s no answer.’ She put down her fork and leaned across the table. ‘I’m in this with you and I’ll do whatever it takes to help. I don’t expect you to compromise the organisation or to name names, but I don’t expect to be treated like I was the enemy or something.’ She nodded at the newspaper. ‘Four volunteers shot in Maida Vale just before you arrive on my doorstep. Coincidence? I think not. So what am I supposed to think, Dermott? Either you were with them and you managed to get away, or you killed them. You want to know what I think?’ Lynch nodded slowly. ‘I think if it was the UVF or the UDA or even the SAS after you then you’d have told me. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even have come to me for help, you’d have called up someone in the organisation. There’s plenty of safe houses in Kilburn where they’d take good care of you.’

  ‘Not such good care,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘A winning smile isn’t going to get you off the hook that easily,’ she said. ‘That’s something else that pisses me off. You lied your way into my bed, Dermott. It’ll be a long time before I forgive you for that.’

  ‘It wasn’t a lie, Marie. Okay, I admit that I didn’t tell you the whole truth, but I didn’t lie. I am going after Cramer, and the organisation isn’t happy about it.’

  ‘Semantics,’ she said dismissively. ‘You’re playing with words. Anyway, like I was saying, I don’t think that you were working with the men who were killed last night. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They tried to kill me. I was defending myself.’

  ‘And why would they want to kill you, Dermott? They can’t all have been jealous husbands.’

  Lynch pointed at the paper. ‘You read about the farmer who died? Pat O’Riordan?’ Marie nodded. ‘The IRA murdered him. It might even have been the same four guys who tried to kill me.’

  ‘That’s who. I asked why.’

  ‘Pat and I were involved in an operation in the border country. It went wrong, two tourists were killed. Americans. I’m not sure what happened then. We were told to get out, to lie low for a while, but it looks as if someone decided that a more permanent solution was called for.’

  ‘They’d do that?’

  ‘Of course. They don’t want anyone else to take care of their dirty laundry. They want to show that they can discipline their own. Plus, if the authorities had got hold of us, we might have talked. I’m not saying we would have, I’m saying that the Army Council would worry about the possibility. So rather than take the risk, they decided to have Pat and me killed.’

  Marie’s mouth fell open. She shook her head, then gulped half her Diet Coke. ‘This is unreal,’ she said as she put down her glass.

  ‘I wish it was,’ said Lynch. He picked up his cheeseburger and bit into it.

  ‘So they attacked you and you killed them?’

  Lynch swallowed and nodded. ‘I was on my way to the flat where I was staying. A van pulled up, a guy asked me if I was Dermott Lynch. They were all armed. If they hadn’t been planning to kill me there and then, it would only have been a matter of time. Somewhere nice and quiet, out in the country maybe. Perhaps they were planning to make it look like a suicide or an accident, but Marie, love, there was no way I was going to hang around to find out.’

  Marie began to prod her salad again, but she made no move to eat it. ‘So why didn’t you just make a run for it? Why didn’t you just take your car and drive? And why were the police looking at your car this morning?’

  Lynch put down his cheeseburger and wiped his hands on a paper napkin. He realised that there was no point in lying to her. The discovery of Foley’s body would be front page news in the following day’s papers, but that wasn’t why he had decided to tell her everything. She was right – he owed her his honesty. ‘There’s a body in the boot.’

  ‘What?’ She looked around, left and right, as if she feared that somebody would overhear, but the nearby tables were all empty and their waitress was busying herself at a hissing cappuccino machine.

  ‘There was another guy, the guy I was staying with.’

  ‘You killed him as well?’

 
‘It was an accident.’

  Marie’s eyes widened. ‘An accident? Jesus, Dermott, how the hell do you accidentally kill someone?’

  A thick scum was forming on the top of Lynch’s coffee and he used a fingernail to drag it to the side of his mug. ‘He tried to grab my gun. It went off. Honest to God, I had no intention of shooting him.’

  Marie used both hands to brush her hair behind her ears as she studied Lynch. ‘Do the police know it was you?’

  ‘My fingerprints were all over the car.’

  ‘So the police are going to be after you, as well as the IRA? And you’re still going after Cramer?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, love.’

  ‘You don’t exactly make it easy for yourself, do you?’

  ‘Marie, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.’ He smiled, though he was watching her carefully to assess her reaction. Helping him get back at the British soldier who’d been partly responsible for the death of her parents was one thing; helping a murderer on the run was quite another.

  The door to the café opened and Lynch looked over to see who was coming in. It was an elderly couple, both overweight and wrapped up in wool coats and matching tartan scarves. They fussed over each other as they sat down at a table by the window, then they both put on glasses so that they could read the menu.

  Marie pushed her plate away. ‘I can’t eat this,’ she said.

  Lynch looked down at his burger. Grease was congealing on the plate. ‘Yeah, I’ve had enough, too,’ he said.

  ‘We can get something else in Wales,’ said Marie. She looked at him as if daring him to argue.

  Lynch sipped his coffee. It was lukewarm. He watched her over the top of his mug. Any thoughts about arguing with Marie disappeared when he saw the intensity in her eyes. He knew that nothing he could say would dissuade her. Besides, now that she knew the trouble he was in and where he was heading, it made more sense to keep her close to him. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  Marie nodded, her eyes fixed on his. ‘Oh yes, Dermott, I’m quite sure. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’