‘That’s better. Now, let’s not hang about. You know the identity of the AID AN active service unit, right?’
A shake of the head, a sobbing sniff of self-pity.
‘I just give the word, Killy, and it’ll be your second knee. Then your right hand.’ He paused to let the words sink in. ‘Our sources tell us that you know. And we are all aware that it is a very great secret. So think hard, think of your wife and wee boy, and of that comfortable hospital bed waiting for you at the Victoria.’
The following silence was probably only seconds, but to Casey the time yawned into an endless abyss. She found herself staring at the spreading pool of blood around his brightly polished shoe and the mesmeric drip of brown liquid that had flooded over the seat.
Tell them, she prayed silently, for God’s sake tell them what they want to know!
Tierney said hoarsely, wincing through his pain: ‘Have you got a cigarette?’
King Billy looked up at Spike, nodded. A pack was produced, one of the contents placed between the parched, bloodless lips and a match struck. The man inhaled deeply, lay back in the chair. Spike removed the cigarette from his mouth.
‘Dougan,’ Tierney murmured, smoke drifting up over his face. ‘Hughie Dougan is the bomb maker.’
King Billy looked at Spike, Spike looked at King Billy. ‘YOU LYING FUCKEN BASTARD! DOUGAN IS FUCKEN WELL DEAD.’ Spike was yelling in Tierney’s face, his mouth just inches from the other’s eyes.
Tierney looked up pleadingly, his cheeks sodden with tears. ‘Sweet Mother of Jesus, believe me. Hughie Dougan isn’t dead. It was a setup down in Sligo, a fake. Hughie Dougan makes the bombs and he’s been planning the campaign. Him and his daughter Clodagh.’
Spike stepped back. ‘You’d be having us look for a ghost, Killy?’
‘That’s the whole point.’ Exasperated. ‘No one looks for a dead man, that was the idea.’
King Billy didn’t look convinced. ‘Who else is on the unit?’
‘Pat McGirl.’
That figured. McGirl was one of PIRA’s seasoned front-liners, but with no recent convictions. ‘And?’ **
‘The others are from the south. No records. A girl called Moira Lock and two others, Leo Muldoon and Liam Doran. Another man called Houlihan.’ They were names that meant nothing to King Billy or his men. ‘You had an own goal,’ Spike said, ‘Who was killed?’
Tierney shook his head. ‘I don’t know, I just do the vetting.
They’re running this from the top and no one’s saying anything. Presumably it was Lock and Muldoon or Doran who got blown away, but I’m just guessing.’
‘And where are they operating from?’
‘God, you don’t think they tell me that? You’d have to ask the man himself, Donny Fitzpatrick.’
King Billy looked once again at Casey. ‘D’you hear that? We know who the bastards are at the top. And the Brits know too. But nothing ever happens. How d’you think that makes us feel?’
Spike prodded Tierney in the chest. ‘And what makes you think I believe you know nothing?’
Tierney met his gaze, his eyes glazed in pain and defiance. ‘Because you’ve broken my fucken knee and you’re about to break the other, you bastards!’
Spike stepped away and looked at King Billy for approval. The big man nodded.
Two men stepped forward, one grasping Tierney’s shoulders from behind, the other replacing the bin liner over his head. The struggle was token, the outcome a certainty.
King Billy was saying: ‘Killy Tierney, you have been tried and found guilty of being a member of an illegal organisation, of aiding and abetting murder here and on the mainland, and of treason against your country. You are hereby sentenced to death, and may God have mercy on your soul.’ He drew himself to his full height. ‘God save the Queen.’
Casey jumped at the sharp report of the pistol that had been held to the back of Tierney’s head. Only when he pitched forward did she see the weapon and the serpent’s coil of gunsmoke. No one moved to stop the body as it fell, blood bubbling from the torn black plastic bag over the debris on the floor.
Now she stared at the corpse in total disbelief.
‘Phone for an ambulance once we’re away from here,’ King Billy said. ‘We’ll issue a statement tomorrow.’
It was Spike who heard it first. The pulsing thud of the helicopter; it had come in upwind giving no warning of its arrival. Abruptly the entire building began to tremble in its downdraught, the Nitesun lamp dazzling as Spike rushed to the door and threw it open.
‘THIS IS THE POLICE! YOU ARE SURROUNDED!’ The bullhorn echoed like the voice of God.
Others joined Spike at the door. ‘Christ!’
One man raised his gun.
‘No!’ Spike warned.
But it was too late. The marksman’s round caught the man in the chest, propelling him back into the cafe as though pulled by elastic.
Casey shrieked in terror.
‘THROW YOUR WEAPONS DOWN! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!’
Spike turned back to King Billy. ‘The bloody twisters.’
The big man nodded grimly. ‘What do you expect? Now, you’d better go. They’re not known for their patience.’
The young man gave a half-smile. ‘No surrender, eh?’
‘No surrender.’
Spike dropped his weapon, raised his hands and walked slowly out onto the floodlit concrete of the old car park. He had barely glimpsed the lowering Puma helicopter, the groups of flak jacketed RUC officers and their vehicles, before he was rushed by the soldiers on either side of the door. Expertly he was tripped and spreadeagled, face down on the ground, hands checking for hidden weapons.
The rest were similarly treated until King Billy himself emerged. Perhaps because he was such a large man, or perhaps because they knew exactly who he was, the.SAS soldiers did not subject him to the same rough treatment. More circumspectly, they ran their hands over the mountain of flesh where he stood, virtually ignoring them, watching instead the approaching group of men in civilian clothes.
One of them broke into a run. ‘CASEY!’
‘Tom!’ Trenchard warned, his words wasted.
Casey Mullins appeared timidly at the door, her slim body swamped in the male clothes, but the cap removed and copper hair hanging so that no one would shoot her by mistake.
‘God, Tom!’ Her face broke into a smile of relief. ‘What are you doing here?’
He crushed her in his arms. ‘Thank Christ you’re safe.’
King Billy looked at her accusingly. ‘You?’
Over Harrison’s shoulder she shook her head.
Trenchard arrived with a senior Special Branch detective. ‘Hello, Billy, been up to your old tricks again?’
The Orangeman’s stare was glacial, his bulk unmoved. ‘Whose tricks, Mr Smith? Mine or yours? Where is Mr Jones?’
‘Mr Jones’ was the name John Nash had used, Trenchard remembered. ‘He’s in London.’
‘Then get him here.’
Trenchard watched as the Special Branch detective stepped tentatively into the cafe. ‘If we find what I think we’re going to find, you’re not going to be giving orders to anyone for the next twenty years.’
‘We’ve got the information you wanted. The identity of the AID AN bombers. Hughie Dougan was behind it all.’
A sneer crossed Trenchard’s face. ‘Dougan’s dead, Billy. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘His death was faked, Dougan has been behind it all the time.’
‘You can do better than that, Billy. I was there. I saw his body, saw his Celtic birds ring.’
King Billy looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know about that. But what I tell you is the truth, may God help me. It’s what Killy Tierney told me before he died.’
‘One of your kangaroo courts, was it? I wouldn’t put much store by that.’