“Why?” And why, come to that, was Andrew so well-informed about the case, in spite of that ‘not a lot’ disclaimer?
“No motive, sir.”
“Since when did the INLA need a motive?”
“No connection, then. General Maxwell never served in Ulster—he wasn’t remotely Irish . . . and he was ten years into his retirement—
more than ten years . . . before this lot of Irish ‘troubles’, anyway.
The nearest thing he had to an Irish connection was his servant, Kelly, and he hardly qualifies as Irish within the meaning of the word, any more than Maxwell himself does—did.”
“Kelly?” Butler could recall no mention of any Kelly, either in the newspapers or in the intelligence circular. But as a name Kelly was dummy1
Irish of the Irish.
“Gunner Kelly.” Andrew emphasised the rank. “Irish for the first seventeen years of his life, until he joined up at Larkhill in 1938, like his father before him—father went through the ‘14-’18—DCM
at Loos, bar at Ypres . . . son went through the ‘39-’45—Dunkirk, Tunisia, Italy—Maxwell’s regiment . . . Peace-time soldiering afterwards, then drove a taxi up north somewhere. . . . Came back to the General about four years ago—totally devoted to him. . . .
What they say is, if he’d known the General’s name was on a bomb, he’d have scratched it out and put his own in its place, most likely.”
Butler thought for a moment. “Could he have been the target, then
—a lackey of the bloody British?”
“A 60-year-old lackey?” Andrew echoed the idea scornfully.
“Since when has the INLA been choosy?” It was too feeble though
—even for the INLA. Much too thin.
“If they’re going to start blowing up all the Kellys, then they’ll need a nuclear bomb, not a pound of jelly under the seat . . .sir.”
Andrew paused. “But they did check him out. Because it’s true he could have gone up with the General—in fact, if the General hadn’t sent him off on some errand, he would have gone up. . . . He was going to drive, but the old boy wanted a parcel of books collected—all above board and kosher, in front of witnesses. . . .
But that isn’t the point, you see.”
“So what is the point?” For Kelly to be a non-starter there had to be a point, of course: that was implicit in Del Andrew’s scorn.
dummy1
“They weren’t expecting this bomb, sir—neither the Provos nor the INLA—that’s the fact of it, the word is ... It caught them both with their trousers down—right down by their ankles.”
“How so?” ‘Not a lot’ was indeed turning out to be quite a lot. So now he also needed to know why Andrew had done so much more than read the circular on General Maxwell’s assassination.
“Well, sir ... after the Hyde Park bombing there was a lot of recrimination—killing Brits was one thing, but killing horses was another—that was bad medicine on the other side of the Atlantic . . . like, in the cowboy films you can have the Indians bite the dust, and the cowboys, and the horse-soldiers . . . but you can’t have the horses with their guts blown out, or trying to stand up on three legs—that’s the unacceptable face of terrorism . . . And if there’s one thing the Irish themselves are soft on, it’s horses—they can put their shirt on them, and lose it, but they can’t blow six-inch nails into them and then stroll away whistling about Donegal and Connemara, like nothing has happened. ... So we got more mileage out of those pictures of dead horses, and Sefton in his stable, than we did from Airey Neave and Earl Mountbatten being killed, you see.”
“Yes.” That was another plus for Chief Inspector Andrew: he saw life as it was, not as it ought to be, with a hot heart but a cool head.
“Yes. So they weren’t planning anything for the rest of this summer. And after the heat had gone off, when things had settled down a bit, they started to reorganise quietly—both the Provos and the INLA . . . But then, out of the blue, General Maxwell’s bomb goes up in the middle of Bournemouth, and all hell breaks loose dummy1
again when they weren’t battened down—as they would have been if they’d planned it, sir.”
Butler waited, although he already knew what the point was now, from the recent circulars which had passed across his desk as a matter of routine.
“So as a result the Squad picked up three of them who were out in the open—the Provo bagman who was delivering funds in London, and the girl who was setting up that new safe house . . . and the INLA hit-man—a real bad bastard we’ve been after for a long time, that the West Germans wanted too.” Andrew paused. “Which our contacts in Dublin and Belfast both confirm—that the boyos there would like to get their hands on whoever did for the General quite as much as we would, and probably even more.”
That made sense . . . even if the sense it made was the mad and bad illogical sense of terrorism the world over, thought Butler bleakly.
But now was the moment for a straight question.
“So how did you come into this, Andrew?”
This time it was a longer pause. “Ah ... I heard a whisper, sir—that it maybe wasn’t an Irish job at all ... But the bomb was a pro job, like I said.” Pause. “And there was that paper of Wing-Commander Roskill’s on bombs, not long ago ... So I thought this one might end up on our plate— on your plate, sir . . .” Modesty disarmed Chief Inspector Andrew “. . . and I dropped in on the squad anyway, to talk about old times . . . just in case.”
Intelligent anticipation: another plus for the man. “Could you go down there again?” Pause.
dummy1
“No, sir. If I go down there again . . . they’re much too fly for that: they’ll know it won’t be just curiosity this time—especially as they’re looking for someone to take it off their hands. They’ve already tried to unload it on the Dorset locals.”
“With what result?” If Audley hadn’t been involved, Butler might have smiled: the experience was not unknown to him of having intractable problems left at his official door like unwanted babies, lusty and demanding.
“The Chief down there—the Chief Constable—he wouldn’t have it. And quite right, too!” Andrew grunted sympathetically. “He said there was no one on his patch who could set a bomb like that—
and if there had been they’d never have set it under the old General. He was the last person anyone would want to blow up. So it had to be political.”
“And you go along with that, do you?”
“I don’t go along with anything . . . sir,” replied Andrew cautiously. “I don’t know enough about it—this was just what I picked up over a few beers. But they certainly didn’t have any local prospects down there with any sort of motive, never mind the know-how, apparently.”
“You mean he had no known enemies down there?”
“That’s right. In fact... no known enemies anywhere, would be more accurate. He was a decent old stick—‘much-loved local figure’, as they say . . . only this time that was the exact truth: they couldn’t find anyone who didn’t have a good word for him. What the local vicar said, was that he disproved the parable about the dummy1
rich man having difficulty getting into heaven: he’d get through the eye of the needle with plenty of room on both sides.”
“He was rich?”
“Rolling in it. Landed money, too—the sort that’s gone through the roof the last few years.”
“Next-of-kin?” He knew part of the answer to that already. But there might be more.
“Just one grand-daughter—who adored him. And most of his wealth was already in trust for her anyway, apart from that.
Nobody stands to gain from his death, if that’s what you’re after.