‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing at all, sir. It’s a blind alley so far. No-one saying anything. Not a word.’
‘I told them in London that it’ll come at this end, the man they’re looking for. His equipment was too good for anyone based in London. He’ll be here. How many do we know who’re capable of it, capable of the discipline, of that sort of training?’
‘There are quite a few,’ said Rennie, ‘but none of them out. I could name half a dozen in Long Kesh who we would be looking for if they were free. But, taking them out of the game, I can’t see anyone. A bit ago, yes, but not now.’
‘I’m calling for a very big effort, maximum effort,’ the Chief Constable had walked away from the table and was talking half to himself, half out into the darkness beyond the shatterproof taped windows. ‘London have said in the past that they don’t get the co-operation they’re looking for when there’s a big one in England, and they come here for our help. I don’t want them saying that this time. God, it’s a damned nuisance. All the manpower, all the effort, everything that has to be dropped for a thing like this. But we have to have him.’
He looked for a long time into the black distance beyond the floodlit perimeter fence. Then swung on his heel. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and closed the door carefully behind him.
It’ll go on a bit now, thought Rennie, every night here for the next few weeks, typing away, and with little to show for it, unless we’re just lucky. Just lucky, and that doesn’t happen often.
But just before midnight came the first positive identification of the killer back in the city. The duty major in intelligence section at Lisburn military headquarters, leafing through the situation reports of the evening, read that a patrol of the Lifeguards had for fifteen minutes closed the Hillsborough to Banbridge road while they investigated a package at the side of the road. It was cleared after the bomb disposal expert arrived and found the bag contained a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch, duty free and bought at Schipol airport. He hurriedly phoned his chief at home, and the RUC control centre. But, nagging at him, was the question of how such an operation as the Danby killing could have been mounted, with no word coming out.
The man was asleep now, in the spare back bedroom of a small terraced house off the Ballymurphy Bull Ring. He’d come at 11.25 up from Whiterock where he had stayed since arriving in Belfast. Round him a safety system was building, with the arrangement that he’d sleep till 5.30, then move again up into New Barnsley. The Brigade staff in Belfast were anxious not to keep him long in one place, to hustle him round. Only the Brigade commander knew the value of the man the precautions were made for… No-one else was told, and in the house he was greeted with silence. He came in fast over the back fence, avoiding the kids’ bikes, ducked under the washing lines and made his way through the damp, filthy scullery into the back room. The family was gathered in semi-darkness with the television on loud — Channel 9. His escort whispered into the ear of the man of the house, and was gone, leaving him. The man was not from this part of the city, and was not known anyway.
His arrival and needs, after four years of warfare, were unremarkable. In the ‘Murph’ his name could be kept secret, not his reason for running — not after the Scotland Yard photokit had been flashed up on the screen during the late-night news. On orders from London the photo had been withheld until after the intelligence and Special Branch officers had attempted to identify the killer. With their failure the picture had been released.
The family gathered round the set to hear the announcer.
Scotland Yard have just issued a photokit picture of the man they wish to interview in connection with the murder of Mr Henry Danby, the Minister of Social Security, at his home in central London yesterday morning. The picture has been compiled from the descriptions of several eye-witnesses. Scotland Yard say the man is aged about thirty, has short hair, with a parting on the left side, a narrow face, with what a witness calls ‘pinched cheeks’. The man is of light build, and about five feet nine inches tall. When last seen he was wearing grey trousers and a dark brown jacket. He may also have a fawn-coloured macintosh with him. Anyone who can identify this man is asked to get in touch immediately with the police on the Confidential Line of Belfast 227756 or 226837.
High on the fireplace over the small fire grate was a carved and painted model of a Thompson machine-gun, a present to the family from their eldest son, Eamon, held for two years in Long Kesh. It was dated Christmas 1973. Below the gun the family registered no reaction to the picture shown on their screens.
In the small hours Theresa, Eamon’s sister, tiptoed her way round the scarred door of the back room. She eased her path over the floorboards, still loosened and noisy since the army came to look for her brother. In the darkness she saw the face of the man, out from under his blankets with his arms wrapped around his pillow, as a child holds a favourite doll. She was shivering in the thin nightdress, transparent and reaching barely below her hips. She had selected it two hours before to put on before waiting to be sure her people were asleep. Very gently at first, she shook the shoulder of the man, till he started half out of bed, gripped her wrist, and then in one movement pulled her down, but as a prisoner.
‘Who’s that?’ he said it hard, tautly, with fear in his voice.
‘It’s Theresa.’?There was silence, just the man’s breathing, and still he held her wrist, vice-like. With her free hand she moved back the bedclothes and moved her body alongside his. He was naked and cold; across the room she saw his clothes strewn over the chair by the window.
‘You can let go,’ she said and tried to move closer to him, but only to find him backing away till the edge of the single bed stopped his movement.
‘Why did you come?’
‘To see you.’
‘Why did you come?’ Again harsher, louder.
‘They showed your picture… on the telly… just now… on the late news.’
The hand released her wrist. The man flopped back on the pillow, tension draining out of him. Theresa pressed against his body, but found no response, no acknowledgement of her presence.
‘You had to know, for when they move you on. I had to tell you… we aren’t your enemies. You’re safe with us… there’s no danger.’
‘There are six men in the city who know I’m here — and you…’
A little more nervously she whispered back, ‘Don’t worry yourself, there’s no narks here, not in this street… not since the McCoy girl… they shot her.’ It was an afterthought — Roisin McCoy, soldier’s girl-friend, part-time informer, found shot dead under Divis mountain. Big outcry, no arrests.
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘I didn’t come to talk, and it’s freezing, half out of the bloody clothes.’
He pulled her down, close now against him, the nylon of her nightdress riding up over her hips and breasts. She pushed against him, screwing her nipples against the black hair of his chest.
‘Not much, are they?’ she murmured. ‘Couple of bloody bee stings.’
The man smiled, and the hand that had grasped her wrist to the point of half stopping the blood flow now stroked and rubbed urgently at the soft white inside of her thighs. She reached down and felt his stomach back away as she took hold of him, limp and lifeless, pliable in her hand. Slowly, then frantically, to match her own sensations she stroked and kneaded him, but without success.