‘I wasn’t expecting a Porsche,’ he ventured as they raced along the country road towards the A3.
She smiled. ‘I guess I’m what’s known as a fast woman. But come back next week and it’ll be a Number 9 bus.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My divorce settlement. He gets the car — unless I prang it.’ Another half-laugh, half-giggle. ‘That’s a thought, it might almost be worth it. Just to see the look on his face.’
‘Not while I’m on board, thank you.’
‘I would have thought you thrived on danger.’
‘Sorry to disappoint. I’m a natural coward, which is how I’ve survived in this game. I like the odds heavily stacked in my favour.’
Again she laughed and he found himself watching her with an amused half-smile on his face. He felt remarkably relaxed and good-humoured in her company. Yet he hardly knew her. He recalled then what she had said at the church. How she and her daughter had almost fallen victim to the Seven Dials bomb. The thought made him both angry and genuinely relieved that she’d escaped injury.
He said: ‘I think Brenda was very pleased you came. It was a lot of trouble to go to and a very nice gesture.’ That made Casey feel awkward. She had been directed to go and had welcomed the opportunity to show her gratitude to the man who had died, but it had not been the other way round. ‘It was nothing,’ she replied more curtly than she had intended.
‘Do you work in London?’
Oh, God, here it comes. She winced inwardly as she imagined his reaction to the revelation that she was a journalist. ‘Yep,’ she said, adding quickly, ‘in publishing.’
He nodded. ‘Is that books or magazines?’
‘Look, Tom, would you mind getting that road atlas from the glove box, I don’t want to get us lost…’
She successfully deflected his line of questioning and for the next ten minutes they concentrated on finding their way to the A3 carriageway which swept towards the suburban sprawl of south London.
By that time she had decided that attack was the best form of defence and began asking a welter of questions about his work and his private life. He was, she learned, the same age as herself, thirty-six. In fact he was one month younger and a different star sign; he was Capricorn while she was Sagittarius.
‘I might be older,’ she said as they thundered along the Kingston bypass, ‘but I bet you weigh more.’
Things military were an almost total mystery to her, but she learned that Harrison was the son of a Hampshire doctor and had excelled at mathematics and chemistry at school before going on to Sussex University. After graduating and with a job lined up with the ICI chemical giant, he had been persuaded by a friend to take a six-month working holiday with a safari adventure company in Kenya run by the boy’s uncle. It had been exciting and fun, living most of the time in the bush, close to African wildlife and meeting people from many different walks of life. After that, the prospect of life as a laboratory technician lost its appeal. On the very last safari, he met Philippa Maddox and her father. Harrison recounted that, strange as it seemed now, the then retiring brigadier had inspired him with his anecdotes of army life. On his return to England, Harrison had abandoned his future life as a chemist in favour of a commission in the army. Given his qualifications, the Royal Army Ordnance Corps appeared to be the perfect choice. Plenty of opportunities to travel while inspecting ammunition-storage depots wherever Britain still retained a base. And none of the risks run by the poor bloody infantry in dangerous places like Northern Ireland.
Casey was as surprised as he had been at the time to learn that he was directed to take a psychometric test to assess his suitability for bomb-disposal work. Not unexpectedly, it appeared that there were few, if any, volunteers for the work.
From the School of Ordnance he had proceeded to the ATO or Ammunition Technical Officer course, comprising six months at the all-services Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, followed by six months at the Army School of Ammunition near Kineton in Warwickshire, which culminated with the Intermediate IEDD course. IEDD sounded deceptively innocuous. Improvised Explosive Device Disposal. The terrorist bomb.
During his first two-year posting as a section commander he met Jock Murray and Les Appleyard who were to become his closest friends. He had known Al Pritchard too, but the man had never really been one of their circle. Harrison had gone on in 1983 to serve with them on his first four-month tour in Northern Ireland as an ‘operator’. More jargon — hardly a befitting term for what the general public called the bomb-disposal man, the quiet hero of hundreds of television news and press reports from the savage terrorist war in Ulster.
Casey was curious. ‘And are there any special qualities needed to become — what is it, SATO?’
He laughed, catching her mood. ‘They say to qualify you must have a wife, two point five children, drive a Volvo estate and have a dog.’
‘But you’ve just got Archie and drive a Cavalier.’
‘Ah, but until last year I had a dog. A failed bomb dog.’
‘Failed?’
‘He was a great sniffer-out of explosives. Problem was he was a retriever. Rather an unfortunate trait for a bomb dog really. He was dishonourably discharged after bringing back a live device to Top Cat himself.’
They were now crawling through the Wandsworth traffic south of the Thames. Casey had switched on the radio and the local news was warning of considerable holdups on the western approaches to the city due to bomb alerts.
Harrison noticed the car phone. ‘Okay if I make a call?’
‘Why not, my ex will be paying the bill.’
He took a notebook from his jacket pocket. ‘You’re a hard woman, Casey.’
She giggled. ‘You’d better believe it, bomb man.’
After dialling he got a feeble line through to the Explosives Section in Lambeth Road? A terse Yorkshire voice answered.
‘Midge, it’s Tom here, I’ve just hit London. I wondered what gives?’
There was a grunt at the other end. ‘We do. We’re giving like knicker elastic at full stretch. We’re coping, but just. Even got one Expo being helicoptered in from his camping holiday in Wales.’ He took a deep breath. ‘At least nothing’s gone off yet.’
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do?’
‘Thanks, but I don’t think…’ There was a hesitation. ‘Well, there is something. The chief will probably shoot me for it, but
I’ve got to hold the fort here. There’s a suspect letter bomb been delivered to some visiting American senator at his hotel in London. It’s low priority, but I can’t see us getting around to it for hours. Ought not to leave it, though. Would you mind?’
‘ ‘Course not.’
‘It’s been received by Senator Abe Powers the Third. Got to be a Yank with a name like that really. He’s at Dukes Hotel in St James’s Place. Expensive, but discreet, if you know it?’
He didn’t, but Casey did. She didn’t mention her reason for being there had been to interview a visiting Booker author. ‘Did you say Abe Powers?’ she asked.
‘D’you know him?’
‘He ran into me at the airport last Christmas — literally. A staunch Democratic who’s a leading light in the Irish lobby. In bed with the Kennedy clan — but then who isn’t nowadays? When the President was first inaugurated there was a lot of speculation that Abe Powers would be sent to Belfast to bang heads together and sort out the troubles. But then your Prime Minister had a meeting with the President and I guess real politics took over and the idea was quietly shelved.’