Maitland said: ‘The briefing starts in five minutes.’
McGirl’s deadline of midnight came. And went.
London had agreed, the negotiators told him, had a helicopter on standby. But Dublin was dragging its feet. Unexpected that. The politicians there were wringing their hands with the moral dilemma.
Another half-an-hour, McGirl agreed.
He paced the outer floor beyond the offices like a caged tiger. Kicking at debris, winding himself up.
Clodagh leaned against the wall and watched him in silence, arms folded across her chest. Muldoon stood at one of the windows at the far end of the room, the sniper rifle with its nightsight poised, eyes relentlessly scanning the bald patch of concrete.
He looked back inside towards McGirl, the man’s stalking figure lost in the elongated shadows where the moonlight glistened on the broken glass on the floor like crystals of blue ice. Liam Doran, covering the side of the building, was distracted too.
‘Keep still, Patrick, for God’s sake, can’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re making me nervous, so you are.’
McGirl scowled at him, walked menacingly towards him.
Doran turned his head away at the other man’s approach, looked out towards the river. He’d always expected he’d die violently one day, had never guessed it might be quite like this. Not on the eve of peace. Ironic that. He said hoarsely: ‘Why haven’t the police lit up the place like a picture palace?’
“The Brits like operating in the dark. Like slugs and rats.’ McGirl turned away sharply, walked purposefully towards Clodagh. ‘They’re playing silly sods with us, you know that?’
‘I know that, Pat. What did you expect? It’s negotiating procedure.’
She noticed he was agitated, perspiring. Not prepared to meet thy doom? She felt like asking but didn’t.
He came to a decision. ‘Then it’s time to let the shites know we mean business. Call their bluff.’
‘We can sit it out.’
He looked her hard in the face. ‘Why? Don’t believe our friend in there, do you? It’ll all end the same way, sooner or later, if we don’t keep the pressure up.’
‘I call the tune, Pat. It’s what was agreed.’
‘No, Clodie, that was your father, not you. I’m giving the orders 1 now.’
‘Not the wee boy.’
‘No, not the boy.’ McGirl jeered. ‘It’s time for your man to pay thcprice.’
‘Price,’ she repeated, remembering Trenchard’s words. ‘Christ, were you listening a”t the door?’
He regarded her with contempt for a moment, not bothering to reply. Then he turned to the door of the improvised cell.
‘Not in front of the boy, Pat!’
McGirl was inside. There was the sound of a punch being thrown and Archie screaming. Then Trenchard was being half pulled, half dragged out of the doorway, one knee scraping over the glass on the floor as he tried to gain his feet, still doubled over with the pain of McGirl’s blow.
‘For God’s sake,’ Trenchard cried, his voice strident with panic, ‘don’t be stupid. I’m worth nothing to you dead. Alive I’m your insurance!’
‘You’re right about one thing,’ McGirl sneered, bringing his knee up into the face of the kneeling man, ‘you’re worth nothing. You said it.’
Tears began to fall down Trenchard’s cheeks, his bound hands visibly trembling as he brought them up in a gesture of prayer and appealed to Clodagh. ‘Tell him, Clodie! Tell him I’m worth more to you alive! Tell him!!’
McGirl stepped behind the bowed body with his automatic, saw the spreading puddle. ‘Our hero’s just pissed himself.’
Clodagh said: ‘He won’t listen to me, Don.’ And she averted her face and shut her eyes, seeing only the handsome young student on the university campus. Smiling at her, sharing his jokes with her. All the while betraying her. And their child.
The single solid shot reverberated back and forth along the upper storey of the building, the noise lingering, slowly dying as Don Trenchard pitched face forward into the debris on the floor.
McGirl kicked contemptuously at the body. ‘The man had no dignity.’
Clodagh turned her face back to the scene; Muldoon and Doran looked, too, their outlines faint beside the windows.
‘Give me a hand,’ McGirl ordered. ‘Leo, open a window at the front. Liam, give me a hand with the shite’s corpse, lift it up to the sill. Careful!’ he warned, crouching beside Doran as they reached up to tip the body over. ‘Don’t give them a target.’
Trenchard’s body was hooked over the frame at the waist, the balance pivoting until McGirl gave one last push at the foot above his head. The shoe came away in his hand and the body disappeared. There was a mere split second’s silence until they heard the thud as it hit the ground.
As if he thought it had been some last deliberate act of defiance by the dead man, McGirl threw the shoe contemptuously into the middle of the floor. He looked across to Clodagh: ‘Now we’ll see if they don’t believe we mean business. Are all the explosives armed?’
She nodded, numb, aware that events had spiralled out of her control.
McGirl pushed his way into the office that served as their quarters. He picked up the slab of Semtex to which the small plywood ignition unit with its tail of aerial wire had been taped. He returned with it to the improvised cell and slid open the bolts.
Archie sat with his back against the radiator, upright and staring, his face a waxy white mask. ‘Was that a shot?’
‘Yes, that was a shot,’ McGirl retorted, mimicking the boy’s polite formality. ‘And you’ll be next, you little shite, if you don’t behave.’ He held up the bomb. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Explosive, right,’ McGirl said, as he placed the contraption to one side before unlocking Archie’s handcuffs. He then pulled over a straight-backed chair from the corner.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Shut up and sit. Arms by your side.’
Archie obeyed as McGirl began to unravel the parcel tape. He proceeded to bind the boy firmly to the chair back, unrolling the stuff tight around the small chest time and time again until he was satisfied it was secure.
‘This charge is radio-controlled,’ he said, taping the device beneath the chair. ‘I’ve got the control switch. If anything happens, if the police or soldiers break in here, you do exactly what I say or you become so much instant mincemeat. Understand me?’
Archie’s eyes were wide as he tried not to breathe. ‘Excuse me, sir.’
McGirl stopped by the door. ‘Yes?’
‘I think you’re a right bastard.’
22
‘Trenchard is dead,’ Maitland said. Just minutes earlier the TO7 team had heard the conversation and the shot through the sensitive radio-relay microphone secreted in the landline telephone.
Since last light the old brewery building had been flooded in invisible infrared light, allowing the surveillance teams to watch the scene through IR viewers. The falling body had been witnessed.
‘Then I’m empowered by the Home Secretary to hand over to you, Major,’ the Chief Constable said and leaned over the desk in Zulu Control to scrawl his elaborate signature on the form.
Major Miles Foxly, previously of the Coldstream Guards and now Commander of the Counter Terrorist Team, 22 Special Air Service Regiment, accepted the order. He turned to Colonel ‘Tall LloydWilliams. ‘If your chaps are set, sir, then I think we’re ready for the off.’
The colonel nodded. ‘Just one thing. Don’t mention this business about his son and the bomb to Harrison. The poor bugger’s got enough on his plate. That aspect will be down to your boys, Major. There’s not a damn thing he can do about it anyway.’