The Bombmaker

by Stephen Leather

  'I haven't had time to charge it,' Martin lied. Patsy had told him to leave the mobile phone switched off so that the kidnappers couldn't use it. They'd used the home phone the first time and Patsy wanted them to use it again.

  'I was calling to leave a message. I thought you were still in England.' There was a second or two of silence as Martin's partner gathered his thoughts. 'What the hell's going on, Mart? Where are you?'

  Carter shook her head firmly.

  'I can't tell you, Mart. I'm sorry.'

  'You're still in England, yeah?'

  Another shake of the head from Carter.

  'I can't tell you that either, Padraig.'

  'But Katie and Andy are okay, yeah?'

  Martin sighed. He hated being evasive, and he hated lying, but Carter was standing over him, one hand up to her headset. 'It's complicated, Padraig.'

  'Mart, I had a visit from the Garda today. Two detectives. A guy called FitzGerald and his partner.'

  'Power?'

  'Yeah. Power, that was it. Right Laurel and Hardy, they were. They seemed mightily pissed off at something but I had trouble following what they wanted.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'It was the weirdest thing, Mart. I thought they were going to give me grief for driving you up to Belfast, but they didn't even mention it. I tell you, I was worried they were going to ask to look at my car because I've still not got the window replaced and there's glass all over the seat. They said that you were going to be away from the office for a while, and that I wasn't to worry. They said if anyone asked I was to say that you were at home, off sick. And they said I wasn't to try to get in touch with you.'

  'And I can see that you took their advice, Padraig.'

  Padraig chuckled. 'Yeah, fucking cops. What are you going to do, eh?'

  Martin laughed along with his partner.

  'Seriously, Mart. What's going on?'

  'I can't tell you, Padraig.'

  'They're the cops that hauled you into Pearse Street, aren't they?'

  'Yeah. But they've been warned off.'

  'Warned off? By who?'

  Carter shook her head fiercely and wagged her finger in front of Martin's face. He glared at her and put his hand over the mouthpiece. 'He's my best friend,' he said, a hard edge in his voice. 'I trust him more than anyone.'

  'You're risking your daughter's life, Mr Hayes.'

  'Don't you fucking patronise me,' Martin hissed. 'I've known Padraig for almost thirty years. I've known you for five minutes. I'm damn sure I know which of you I trust.'

  Carter's cheeks flushed and she straightened up. Fanning looked over at them, sipping his water. He flashed her a sympathetic look but she turned away, embarrassed that he'd heard Martin's outburst.

  Martin swivelled his chair around so that his back was to them. He took his hand away from the mouthpiece. 'Padraig, the gardai have been told to lay off. It's being handled in London now.'

  'That's where you are, yeah?'

  'That's right. Any calls to the house are being transferred here. But no one must know, right? If the kidnappers call, they've got to think I'm still in Dublin.'

  'Mum's the word, Mart.'

  'Anyone asks, do as the gardai said. Just say I'm at home sick and you don't know when I'll be back.'

  'Can I do anything to help?'

  'No, mate, but thanks for offering.'

  'If you need anything, I'm here, yeah?'

  Martin thanked his partner and hung up. Carter was standing at the window, looking out at the river. As Fanning went over to the tape recorder, Martin went and stood next to her. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

  Carter shrugged. 'It doesn't matter.'

  'I didn't mean to snap. It's been a shitty few days.'

  'I understand, Martin. But we are trying to help. We're on your side.'

  Martin nodded. He felt genuinely bad about lashing out at her. 'Padraig won't do anything to rock the boat,' he said. 'He loves Andy and Katie almost as much as I do.'

  She forced a smile. 'I'm sure he won't let you down.' She gestured at the spilt coffee. 'I'll get that cleaned up,' she said.

  – «»-«»-«»Lydia McCracken sat on the wooden bench and looked around the garden square. She was wearing a pale blue suit and was carrying a small handbag which she held in her lap. An old woman was feeding pigeons hunks of bread from a Hovis wrapper and muttering to them. Or to herself -McCracken was too far away to hear clearly. The old woman looked homeless, with a thick wool coat tied around the waist with a length of rope, and black Wellington boots with the tops turned over. She had greasy grey hair and blotchy skin, and she kept wiping her nose with the back of her hand. McCracken shuddered and looked away. Several dozen office workers were strolling around the square, getting a breath of fresh air before heading back to their VDUs and keyboards. Three men in their twenties walked by, laughing. Neat suits, polished shoes and starched shirts – only the ties offered any variety. Nothing to distinguish them from the hundreds of thousands of office workers who poured into the City every day. And nothing to distinguish them from the hundreds who'd die when the four-thousand-pound fertiliser bomb went off just a half a mile away from where she was sitting.

  McCracken had helped plant bombs before, though she'd never been involved in the building of one. She'd been assigned to the IRA's England Department, but always in a support role, establishing identities and safe houses, arranging transport and, on one occasion, making a coded call to the authorities. She'd always believed in what she was doing – that the only way to drive the British out of Ireland was by force – and she'd felt betrayed by the so-called peace process and the ceasefire that followed. Her younger brother had been killed in a gun battle with SAS troopers in the early eighties, and two cousins were shot by British paratroopers when they tried to drive through an army roadblock close to the border. She wanted revenge against the British for the suffering they'd brought to her country and to her family, and Egan had offered her a way to get that revenge. He'd offered her a lot of money, but that wasn't why she jumped at the chance of working with him. A bomb in the City would derail the peace process, of that she had no doubt. There'd be a backlash, politically and militarily, and it would make the whole world sit up and take notice. But more than that, it would be retribution. Retribution for her dead brother and murdered cousins, and for the hundreds of other Catholics maimed and murdered over the years. The IRA hierarchy might have been able to put that all behind them, but McCracken couldn't and wouldn't.

  'Nice day,' said a man in a dark blue pin-stripe suit as he sat down on the bench a few feet from her. He placed a black briefcase on the ground midway between them. It was Egan. He was holding a Marks and Spencer carrier bag and he handed it to her. 'Sandwich?'

  McCracken peered inside the bag. It contained two baguettes.

  'Thank you.'

  'How's everything going?'

  'On schedule. Quinn's being a pain in the arse, though. Keeps pestering Andrea. Got a hard-on for her like a baseball bat, he has.'

  'Can you handle it?'

  'Sure. But he's not reliable. I know what you said about him being useful in a crisis, but he makes her nervous, and at this stage in the operation that's the last thing we need.'

  Egan nodded thoughtfully. 'I'll sort it,' he said. He nodded down at the briefcase. 'Take good care of that, huh?'

  McCracken smiled tightly. 'I know what I'm doing.'

  'I know you do.' Egan stood up and adjusted his tie. 'That's why I hired you for this. Trial run tomorrow, okay?'

  'That's the plan.'

  'Bring Quinn, will you?'

  McCracken picked up the briefcase and put it carefully on her lap. 'I think that's best. I wouldn't want to leave him alone with Andrea.'

  Egan walked away. McCracken watched him go. He moved out of the garden square, quickly blending with the other suits and disappearing around the corner. McCracken stood up and walked in the opposite direction. She moved the briefcase as little as possible, all too conscious
of the fact that it contained enough Semtex explosive to blow a crater fifty feet wide. She'd transported high explosive before, but that didn't mean she wasn't scared. She'd known too many IRA volunteers who'd been killed in premature explosions.

  She thought about the man she knew as Egan as she walked back to Cathay Tower. It was almost certainly not his real name – he was far too professional to reveal his identity to her, because the bottom line was that she was a hired hand. The planning, the details, the money, they all came from Egan. So had the rest of the team. They had all been recruited by him: Quinn and O'Keefe in London, McEvoy and Canning in Dublin, and probably others that she didn't know about. She knew nothing about his background, but he seemed to know everything about her. She hadn't known the others, either, and Egan had said that was an advantage because it would be that much harder for them to betray each other if anything went wrong. It was the philosophy followed by the IRA, dividing its members into small cells which were kept isolated from each other. When Egan had told McCracken that one of the men she was working with was a Protestant, and a member of the UDA, she had protested, but Egan had explained that she'd have to put her tribal loyalties behind her, that what they were doing was far more important than religion or politics. He'd convinced her, and with hindsight she knew that he was right. O'Keefe was in it for the money, as was Quinn. McCracken despised them for that, though she'd never show them her true feelings. All that mattered was that the bomb went off and that people died.

  – «»-«»-«»The Wrestler looked over Andy's shoulder at the electronic equipment spread out on the table. 'Where did you learn about electronics?' he asked.

  Andy shrugged but didn't say anything. She using a magnifying glass to examine the inside of a small digital alarm clock.

  'Cat got your tongue?' asked the Wrestler.

  Andy looked up from the magnifying glass. 'You wouldn't want me to make a mistake with this, would you?' she said. 'If I connect the wrong wires, we could all find ourselves splattered over the building opposite.'

  The Runner was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, drinking a can of Coke. 'Stuck-up bitch,' he muttered.

  The Wrestler reached over and picked up a soldering iron and held it close to his face, sniffing the end.

  'That's hot,' said Andy.

  'I know it's hot.' He put it back on the table. As he reached across her the sleeve of his overalls rode up and Andy caught a quick glimpse of a tattoo. It was the English flag. The cross of St George, a red cross on a white background. She pretended not to notice and concentrated on the chip at the back of the clock. Green-eyes had gone out a couple of hours earlier. She'd told Andy to check the timers and wiring, though there'd still been no mention of detonators.

  Andy checked the alarm. She'd set it to go off in two minutes' time. A blue wire ran from the chip to the negative terminal of a nine-volt battery. A red wire linked the chip to one terminal of a white plastic bulb-holder into which was screwed a small flashlight bulb. A third wire, also red, connected the second terminal of the bulb-holder to the positive terminal of the battery. She could feel the Wrestler watching her over her shoulder, but she forced herself to ignore him. She pressed the switch to activate the alarm. The bulb glowed brightly. Andy cursed and sat back in her chair.

  'What's wrong?' asked the Wrestler.

  'Oh, nothing,' said Andy. 'It's just that if that had been connected to the device, we'd all be in a million pieces right now.'

  The Wrestler peered at the circuit that Andy had put together.

  'The light's in place of the detonator,' said Andy. 'It shows if the circuit's live.'

  'And it is,' said the Wrestler. 'So what's the problem?' He scratched his stomach and moved his head closer to the bulb, frowning beneath his ski mask.

  Andy pointed at the digital read-out on the clock face. 'The problem is it's set to go off in two minutes. I must have connected the wrong chip output.' She pulled the wires out of the clock and picked up the magnifying glass again. Everything looked okay. She put the clock face down on the table and began running the prods of a circuit tester across the chip, trying to find out where she'd gone wrong.

  – «»-«»-«»The Hercules landed at an airport outside Wick, in the far north-west corner of Scotland. There was only one man waiting for Denham this time, standing by a battered old Volvo. He was in his fifties with a high forehead and windblown black hair, and he was wearing a sheepskin jacket with the collar turned up against a bitter wind that was blowing in from the North Sea. 'Welcome to Wick!' he shouted above the noise of the Hercules, and he shook Denham's hand firmly. 'Harry McKechnie. Sorry about the transport. The office car's in for a service so I've got to use my own wheels.'

  Denham climbed into the front passenger seat. He took out his cigarettes as McKechnie drove away from the airfield. 'You don't mind if I smoke, do you?' he asked.

  'Not if you'll light one for me too,' said McKechnie. Denham lit two cigarettes and gave one to McKechnie. McKechnie inhaled gratefully, then turned up the heater. 'Nights are getting bloody cold up here,' he said. There was no trace of a Scottish accent, despite his name.

  It was a twenty-five-mile drive to Thurso, and McKechnie spent much of his time complaining about his posting north of the border. He was from Southampton originally, and had joined the Security Service straight from Oxford. He told Denham that he thought his bosses were hoping he'd take early retirement. 'Face doesn't fit,' he said. 'New regime. Bloody kids these days. Half of them don't even drink.' He held up his lit cigarette. 'And they'd rather you farted than lit up one of these.'

  Denham grinned and settled back in his seat.

  'Okay, to the matter in hand,' said McKechnie. 'Michael Geraghty, Micky to his friends, lives about four miles west of Thurso. Place called Garryowen Farm. He runs executive training courses, Outward Bound for the middle-aged. Takes them rock climbing, canoeing, gives them team-building exercises, that sort of thing.'

  'Keeping his nose clean?'

  'By all accounts, yes.'

  'And he never did time, is that right?'

  'Nothing could ever be proved.'

  'Bastard.'

  'Yeah. His daughter helps him run it. Kerry. She's thirty-two.'

  'Any IRA involvement?'

  'Periphery, so far as we know.'

  Denham shrugged his shoulders. He was tired and could have done with a few hours' sleep, but there was no time. He closed his eyes.

  'Sir?' McKechnie's voice jarred him awake.

  'Huh?'

  McKechnie grinned across at him. 'Your cigarette, sir.'

  Denham looked at his right hand. The cigarette had almost burned down to his fingers and he realised that he must have fallen asleep. 'Wasn't snoring, was I?' he asked. McKechnie shook his head but didn't say anything. Denham stubbed his cigarette butt into an ashtray that was already filled to overflowing.

  The drive to Thurso took the best part of half an hour, then McKechnie turned off the A882 and headed east. After another ten minutes he turned on to a single-track road and slowed the Volvo down to a walking pace. 'That's it, up ahead,' he said. Denham was impressed by McKechnie. He appeared casual, dishevelled even, but he was well briefed on Geraghty, and though there was a map open on the back seat he hadn't had to look at it.

  The headlights illuminated Garryowen Farm, a two-storey grey stone building with a steeply sloping slate roof. There were no lights on. McKechnie stopped the car and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. 'Shit,' he said.

  'Let's have a look around the back,' said Denham.

  McKechnie drove slowly past the farmhouse. Behind it was a large stone barn which had been converted into flats with individual entrances, and a short row of cottages. They were all in darkness.

  The two men climbed out of the Volvo and walked towards the rear of the farmhouse. McKechnie had left the headlights on, and they cast giant shadows as they approached a black-painted wooden door. Denham knocked on it several times. McKechnie stood back to check if a lig
ht went on upstairs, but he shook his head. Next to the door was a large sash window. Denham put his hand against the glass and peered inside. It was the kitchen, and there were no signs of life. No dirty dishes in the sink, nothing on the draining board, and a potted plant on the windowsill was wilting and clearly hadn't been watered for days.

  McKechnie bent down and examined the lock on the kitchen door. 'Mortice,' he said.

  'Part of your training, I thought,' said Denham, walking up behind him.

  'It is,' said McKechnie, straightening up. He looked around the garden. 'But mortice locks are buggers without the right equipment.'

  'And you haven't…'

  'Afraid not. I wasn't planning on any breaking and entering.'

  Denham looked up at the top floor of the building. 'I didn't see any alarm at the front, did you?'

  'No point, this far away from the neighbours. And the nearest cops must be in Thurso.' He went over to a tool-shed and examined the padlock on its door. 'This is more like it,' he said. He knelt down, took a small leather wallet from the pocket of his sheepskin jacket and worked on the lock with two small strips of metal. He had it open within thirty seconds and pulled open the door. He went inside and reappeared with a large spade. He grinned at Denham as he went over to the sash window and inserted the end of the blade into the gap between the window and the frame. He pushed down on the handle of the spade with all his weight and the window lock splintered.

  'You learnt that with Five?' asked Denham wryly.

  'Misspent youth,' said McKechnie, leaning the spade against the wall and pushing the window open. 'Boarding school mainly.' He put a foot against the spade handle and heaved himself into the kitchen, head first. Denham was just about to follow when McKechnie called out that the key was on the inside of the door. A few seconds later the kitchen light flickered on, the door opened and McKechnie waved Denham inside. They went through to a wood-panelled hallway. There was an untidy pile of mail in front of the letterbox.

  'You check the bedrooms,' said Denham. He pushed open a door as McKechnie went upstairs and flicked on the light. It was a study – floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined one wall; the others were wood-panelled with several framed prints of hunting dogs. The furniture was sturdy and worn, comfortable leather chairs with sagging cushions and a large desk with a brass reading lamp. Denham sat down at the desk and pulled open the top drawer. It was filled with papers and Denham took them out. He flicked through them. The most recent was three months ago, a letter from a bank to Geraghty, asking him to telephone the manager about his overdraft. There were several bank statements, three different banks in all, and they were all in the red. Several thousand pounds in the red.