Hughie Dougan was back. Living the dream of eighteen lost years. To where he had never truly been before. At the top of his deadly profession, respected for what he always knew he was. The best. They’d written songs about him once, but they were forgotten now. When this was over, perhaps they’d be heard again, resounding in the bars and clubs of west Belfast.
Meanwhile Clodagh regarded Moira Lock with mild interest. She was considerably shorter and of a lighter build than Dougan’s daughter and several years younger. A lack of confidence showed in the way she carried herself with shoulders slightly hunched and in her nervous half-smile. Watching but not speaking.
The three bombs were identicaclass="underline" five-gallon oil drums, the bases of which had been cut away in order to fit the thirty pounds of ANS explosive and a TPU before being fixed back on with Isopon plastic filler to make completely sealed units. Only a dowel pin was accessible by unscrewing the small top cap together with an LED light. While this remained unlit he was safe to pull the pin which would irreversibly trigger the switch to start the timer. That itself could be overridden at any moment by one of the three antihandling devices which came into immediate effect: a passive short-wave radio signal detector which would cut into a priority ten-minute fuse; an X-ray-sensitive switch used in the manufacture of hospital body scanners and a sensitive vibration trembler adapted from a cheap Taiwanese luggage alarm.
Dougan’s combination was designed to thwart the use of a mechanical Wheelbarrow or a hands-on approach by the bombdisppsal experts. But for the last of the bombs that would be found that night, he planned an additional refinement. One he hadn’t used for ten long years. The pressure mat. Ironical that. It had been the forensic evidence from that defused pressure-mat booby trap in Ballymurphy that had led to his second conviction. This time it would catch one of the so-called bomb-disposal experts, he was sure of that. Leastways the bastards would have to eat their words, would look like fools in the national press after that stupid, boastful article…
Now the Renault van was carefully loaded with the drums, each freshly sprayed in gleaming black paint, giving no hint as to the deadly tricks that lurked within them.
Toolboxes, timber and assorted light fittings were also stowed, together with a hastily contrived signboard that read: Stebbings Emergency Repairs and Overnite Shopfitting and a genuine telephone number.
McGirl handed out blue overalls, the backs of which had been stencilled early that day by an innocent company of screen-printers in Kingston-on-Thames.
‘Too bloody short,’ Muldoon complained.
McGirl grinned malevolently. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not goin’ to a fucken fashion show.’
It broke the tension and the team members laughed nervously.
Muldoon swung up into the driver’s seat, Hughie Dougan next to him. Behind them the girls were climbing into a red Escort saloon, another duplicate of a genuine car. Automatic pistols were carried beneath the front seats.
‘Ready?’ McGirl asked.
The van driver took a deep breath and forced a smile. ‘Can’t wait.’
McGirl nodded to the farm manager who stood by the barn doors. The interior was plunged into darkness and the vehicle lights came on, engine noise and exhaust starting to fill the cavernous outbuilding. The doors swung wide, and the Renault’s headlamps carved a swathe across the muddy yard, picking up the glistening veil of drizzle.
And they were off, out into the night, on the road towards London.
They made fast time down the M40 and Western Avenue, the traffic fairly light at this time of night. Muldoon regularly checked his speed, keeping to sixty, not wanting to attract attention by travelling too slow or too fast. He also kept watch in his rearview mirror for the lights of the following Escort which would provide the necessary armed backup and their means of escape if anything went wrong. In the meantime he noticed three police patrol cars passing at different times in the opposite direction; it struck him as more than might normally be expected.
But if he were perturbed in any way, Muldoon gave no outward sign. He chatted and joked, Dougan assumed, to cover his nerves. ‘Must be some time since you’ve been on a job, Hughie?’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t want to say no. That he’d always been the bomb maker, never the bomber. Didn’t want to admit that his guts were churning like so much cold porridge. That he was scared, not of confrontation with the police or even death itself. It was the thought of another long stretch in prison that he couldn’t face; wouldn’t face.
‘Sure you’re all right if you brazen it out. Smile and be chirpy with the Brits. It works as well here as it does across the water. Cheerful, polite and no smart backchat.’ He removed one hand from the wheel and tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.
‘But then they don’t know what’s going on upstairs. Like the song says, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking. That way we get the last laugh. Sure we’re okay.’
Ten minutes later they were approaching the A40(M) flyover into Marylebone and his bravado evaporated. The nearside lane had been coned off. He glimpsed the POLICE SLOW sign and saw the patrol car with its blue flashing light and an officer with a yellow fluorescent jacket and storm torch waving traffic into the makeshift lay-by. A vehicle safety check.
Muldoon hit the brakes, checked that the Escort was close behind. They slowed to a crawl, both men feeling the increasing thud of their heartbeats, their mouths going dry. A Mercedes in front, a white Fiesta van in front of that, told to pull in. The Mercedes waved on. Now them, the officer flashing his torch in their cab, then along the side.
Then a wave of the torch, move on.
* Dougan felt the relief squeeze out of him as Muldoon crept past, his eyes flicking sideways at the line of trucks and vans that had pulled over.
Muldoon chuckled suddenly, the release of tension having an effect like laughing gas. ‘Did you see that, Hughie?’
‘What, the vehicles?’
‘Did you not notice anything?’
He shook his head.
‘Unmarked, all of them. Safety check, my arse. No cars, you notice. They’re only pulling in unmarked vehicles, don’t you know. Sure the bastards never learn.’
Stebbings Shopfitters, Dougan thought. It had been their salvation.
There was no further problem as they continued on, following the A40(M) as it metamorphosed into the Marylebone Road, then Pentonville and City as it took them across the north of London towards Shoreditch. The square mile of the City of London itself had been sealed off since the Bishopsgate bomb and security had been tightened even further in recent weeks, so now they gave the area a wide berth. Muldoon confidently took to the back streets, working towards their first target, the disused corner shop at the end of a row of dilapidated Victorian terrace houses off the East India Dock Road.
Muldoon jerked on the handbrake.
Dougan peered out at the faded fasciaboard above the shop. Patel & Son Grocers. Splattered with paint, daubed with fascist British National Party slogans and showing unmistakable signs of firebomb damage.
‘Remember,’ Leo Muldoon said, ‘if we’re challenged it’s all front and bravado. No one will be expecting any trouble in this area…’
‘I know that,’ Dougan snapped, ‘it was my idea!’ Then he quickly apologised. The truth was, he felt terrified.
Muldoon took it well, smiling as though he understood, before checking his watch. One o’clock. Time for all the drunks to have wandered home from the pubs, to have had their fish-and-chip suppers. The street rain-slicked and empty except for a mongrel dog rummaging in the dustbins. Just two window lights visible. Pensioners with insomnia, Dougan guessed, or out-of-work adolescents playing rock videos into the early hours.