He looked down at his friend’s desk and saw Brenda smiling up at him from the silver photograph frame in the polythene bag. Large bashful eyes and flyaway blonde hair, just like the nine-year old son who stood beside her and Jock. It was their daughter, just seven, who had her dead father’s dark hair and determined facial features.
If Appleyard was feeling the pain of his friend’s loss so much, then God only knew what anguish Brenda must be suffering. His boss had broken the news. As Senior Explosives Officer, it had fallen to Al Pritchard to telephone her shortly after the incident. With more deliberate hoaxes that night he didn’t even have time to pay a visit. Instead he had to endure the stunned silence at the other end of the line and then her sudden outburst of hysterical disbelief. Slowly, very slowly, she began to calm until she finally murmured: ‘We always knew it could happen, I suppose. But we never really talked about it.’
That evening Appleyard had driven down to the Murrays’ house near Dorking. He found Brenda alone, the children sobbing quietly in their bedrooms, as she waited for her parents to make the long journey down from their home in Perth.
He held her hand and they had sat talking and remembering together until almost midnight, drawing strength from each other’s presence. The two glasses of brandy were left virtually untouched.
Appleyard was shaken from his thoughts by the sudden trilling of the telephone. It was Al Pritchard. ‘Would you come over to my office, Les. I’ve got the Chief Super coming down to talk about that business at Seven Dials.’
That business? What a euphemism for a monumental cock-up. ‘On my way.’
In truth he welcomed the opportunity to leave the confines of his office. As he couldn’t drag his mind away from Jock, then it wouldn’t hurt to go over the previous day’s events yet again. It might even help as a sort of therapy. At least it would stop him smoking for a while; Pritchard was a fervant born again nonsmoker who at one time had consumed three packs a day.
Appleyard shut the door on his memories and walked along the corridor to his chiefs office. As Civil Service rather than police employees, members of the Explosives Section were granted furniture and furnishings according to status. Therefore Pritchard enjoyed the benefits of a large room, well-appointed with a leather swivel chair, teak desk and sideboard with the obligatory coffee table and sofa.
It was on this sofa that he found Pritchard seated when he entered. Sitting next to him was another Expo, a Yorkshireman called ‘Midge’ Midgely. At barely over five feet in his socks, Midgely was a typically no-nonsense Bradford man with a dust-dry sense of humour. His to-the-point wit would be delivered with a deadpan expression on his florid face, the colour of which always reminded Appleyard of uncooked gammon.
Both men looked up from the newspapers they were reading.
‘Fancy a coffee?’ Pritchard offered. The cheerful tone hit a false note; Appleyard’s chief, stocky and prematurely balding with dark appraising eyes, was never the most jocular of souls. Normally his manner was sullen and forbidding, an image that appeared to have been cultivated with some deliberation. Nevertheless Appleyard appreciated his chief making the effort to lift his spirits.
‘Have you read last night’s Standard?’ Pritchard asked conversationally as he handed over the mug.
‘I wasn’t exactly in the mood to read the papers, Al.’
Pritchard gave one of his vinegary smiles. ‘ ‘Course not, Les. But it’s a good piece.’
‘Written by some American reporter,’ Midge added. ‘Seems like she and her daughter got caught between Seven Dials and the bomb that killed Jock. Saw the whole thing.’
‘I know. I was there, remember?’ Appleyard replied. In fact he’d been watching it all through his binoculars from the relative safety of the Section’s Range-Rovers. Waiting for Jock’s message while Seven Dials was in flames all around him. ‘But I didn’t know she was a reporter. Just our luck.’ He had a military man’s instinctive distrust of the media.
Midge shrugged. ‘It’s a fitting epitaph for old Jock. Reckons if he hadn’t stopped to reassure her and her daughter he wouldn’t have run out of time. Says what a hero he was. Reckon old Jock would have liked that.’
Something snapped in Appleyard’s head. ‘How the fuck would you know what Jock would like? I tell you what Jock would like. He’d like to have gone home to Brenda and the kids last night. He’d like to be sitting with us here now, longing to get the meeting over so he could have a smoke…’
‘Steady, Les,’ Pritchard chided.
Appleyard made himself stop. Determinedly he relaxed his shoulders and forced a sheepish smile. ‘Sorry, Midge, that was out of order.’
There was a knock on the door and Pritchard looked up. ‘Come.’
It was Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Maitland. A man in his mid-forties, he was the deputy head of SOI3 AntiTerrorist Branch. There was something reassuringly solid about him. The stout frame and plain dark suit inspired confidence in the same way that the genial face suggested that he was a man to trust.
‘Is this a private row, or can anyone join in?’ he asked. Bright blue eyes enlivened a complexion that obviously didn’t see enough daylight.
Pritchard beckoned him in. ‘We’re just letting off some steam, Jim. It’s a few years since we’ve lost one of our own.’
‘Terrible business,’ Maitland agreed, acknowledging Apple yard and Midgely. ‘My commiserations to all of you, it can’t be an easy time. Specially as it seems we could be at the start of a new bombing campaign. Yesterday may have been the first time the AID AN codeword was given, but we’ve reason to believe the same active service unit has been behind the other recent attacks.’ He accepted the coffee that Midgely handed him. ‘And I can tell you the ripples have been felt all the way up to Number Ten. The PM is fully aware of the havoc this AID AN group has caused in the Province over the past months. Our masters are already getting nervous. You’ve seen the papers. Front page on the Standard last night and all over the nationals this morning. In fact, the Commander and I have got an appointment with the Home Secretary himself this afternoon. We’re looking forward to it like a proverbial hole in the head.’
‘I can imagine,’ Pritchard sympathised.
Maitland settled himself on the arm of the sofa. ‘Seven dead and two dozen injured is not good news for the government, especially when most of the casualties were police and emergency service workers. Apart from a very real sense of horror, politicians start to get twitchy about their own survival. Start demanding instant results, however unrealistic’
‘Can you give them any?’ Pritchard asked.
‘Hardly, that’s why I’m here. I’ve got your reports, but I want to get the situation clear in my own mind. Now I understand that after you neutralised the first bomb in Tower Street someone here got the idea it might be a come-on. That there could be other devices we hadn’t been told about. All too right as it turned out.’
Pritchard nodded. ‘That happened back here. As soon as we received a copy of the warning PIRA sent to the Standard, AP and Reuters, we were suspicious. As you know most real warnings come via the Samaritans so they can’t be traced. Most papers and newsagencies automatically record the caller’s number. Then we ran the codeword through the computer.’ He spelt it out. ‘It’s never been used over here before, but it’s turned up a number of times recently in Northern Ireland. A combination of particularly tricky devices and situations. Well-thought out by some scrote with a very cunning and nasty mind. Caused a number of deaths, troops and RUC as well as civilians.’