‘Oh yes.’ Collins turned his gaze to the greasy windows and the asphalt gathering of elderly trucks and cars beyond. ‘Well, I’d seen some things, maybe too much for my age, but I’d seen nothing like that hunger strike. So I decided to see how it would feel to go hungry. I locked myself in my room for a couple of days, survived on nothing but sips of water and my own company. I near went crazy, but it set me to thinking that to starve yourself slowly to death you’d have to be clinging to something worth dying for. Do you see? Dying with a gun was one thing, quick, a hero’s way to go, but a lonely starvation, well, that needed something more.’ He paused to light two cigarettes, handing one to Miles. ‘There were two of them died that year on hunger strike, and each death made me feel worse. It was as if I was the one starving them.’
‘So you switched allegiances?’
‘It wasn’t as easy as that, so don’t think it was. I had to leave my family and friends behind, knowing I could never go home, knowing they’d be after my blood. And there was no telling what the other side would do to me anyway. I mean, would they believe me, or would they just shoot me dead? I was walking blindfolded into it.’
Miles thought that he could see now why Will Collins had been so gentle with him, so willing to believe: his existence, too, depended upon belief.
‘But they did believe you?’
‘I’m not sure. I work hard and well for the cause, but there’s still a suspicion there, always the thought that if I can turn once, I can turn again.’
Collins was staring out of the window again, toward where their car sat.
‘At any rate,’ said Miles, ‘you’re still alive.’
‘Alive and kicking, no thanks to your friends. You know what I can’t understand? Why plan such a big operation to net a very small fish?’
Why indeed. Miles had been thinking the very same thing.
‘And there’s something else bothering me.’
‘What’s that?’
Collins nodded toward the window.
‘What does it say on that van just behind our car?’
Miles looked. He had to screw up his eyes to find a focus, but the writing was clear enough: MURPHY’S MEAT & POULTRY.
‘Christ, they’ve found us,’ he hissed, turning back toward Will Collins, but Collins was out of his seat and heading jauntily toward the toilets, leaving Miles on his own. He panicked: follow Collins or head out of the door? He chose the door, and stood beside it for several seconds staring out at the van. There were two faces behind its windscreen, but he did not recognize them, and they seemed not to recognize him. At least, their eyes glanced toward him and away again, intent on the car, the car with Champ’s blood on it.
‘Let’s go.’ It was Collins, moving past him and out of the door. ‘Just follow me and try to look casual.’
They were crossing the asphalt, passing right in front of the van and behind the crumpled boot of their car. Miles thought that Collins was about to stop there, but he merely paused while Miles caught up, then put his arm around his shoulders.
‘—and then he says to me, Mickey, he says—’ Collins began loudly, going on to tell some garbled anecdote, all the while gently propelling Miles toward the far corner of the car park. He stopped beside a Land Rover. ‘Here we are now.’ And then, to Miles’s astonishment, he produced a key from his pocket and opened the driver’s door. ‘Get in,’ he whispered, walking around to the passenger side. Miles got in.
‘How the hell did you—’
‘An old boy having a pee back there. I just tapped him on the head and took his keys. Before that he’d been telling me about what a fine jeep he had. Thank Christ there was only this one parked here. Our lucky day, Miles, is it not? Thanks be to sweet mother Mary.’
Miles was grinning like a monkey as he turned the ignition and drove sedately back past the butcher’s van and out of the lot. Collins rested his feet on the dashboard again.
‘Just follow the signs for Drogheda,’ he said. ‘Now, what was it you were going to tell me?’
‘You mean apart from telling you you’re a genius?’
‘Well, that’ll do for a start. Would it have been anything to do with our friends who seem so keen to see us again?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘No subtlety, these people. That’s their problem.’
‘But they were right, weren’t they? I mean, you were supplying parts for bombs?’
‘Oh yes, but they could have cut our supplies at source. They must have known where the stuff was coming from. And they’d known about the factory for nearly a year to my knowledge.’
‘What have you been doing recently?’
The question smacked too much of interrogation, and Collins gave him a hard look.
‘Sorry,’ said Miles. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Let’s see...’ Collins checked his watch. ‘It’s half past three. Well, I suppose I can tell you now, since it was due to go off at quarter past.’
‘What was?’
‘Our biggest job yet, a nice big bomb due to explode at three-fifteen in Kew Gardens, just as the Home Secretary was planting a tree for some new trust or whatever.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Miles, and then it hit him, that was why they had needed a gardener! Harvest had borne its bitter fruit all right, but the final clue had eluded them. They needed to plant the bomb. They needed a groundskeeper. ‘I was part of that surveillance.’
‘What?’
‘Watching the cell in London, the cell responsible. We were called off a week ago. A woman and three men, one of the men a groundskeeper.’
‘Somebody slipped up, then,’ said Collins.
‘More death.’ Miles wiped at his forehead, then stared at his hand, seeing the dull stain of Champ’s blood still upon it. His back hurt and he felt a little dizzy. In fact he was tingling all over. The road was rising and falling, and his stomach heaved like a sea squall. ‘So much needless death,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, Mr. Flint,’ answered Collins. ‘As time goes on I find it harder to explain. To myself as well as to others.’ His voice had become very quiet. ‘To myself especially. I’ve seen it from both sides. And do you want to know something? They’re both the same.’
Miles nodded. He knew that now, too.
‘Can we stop for a breather?’ he asked, already slowing the Land Rover, signaling left, ready to explode into the fresh air.
‘They could be onto us at any moment,’ warned Collins.
‘Yes, I know, but we have to talk. There’s nothing else for it.’
Somehow, it was easier after that. They sat on a five-barred gate at the side of the road, facing in toward the fields, the Land Rover behind them on the verge, and the traffic roaring past beyond it.
Miles knew where to begin now, right at the beginning, smiling Cheshire cats and all. His initial fears, the disappearance of Phillips and the warning of Sinclair, and Billy’s warning, too. But he was surprised by the immediate interest of Collins, by the way he frowned, his face a mask of concentration.
And when he had finished, Collins jumped down from the gate into the field and began to walk away from him. He seemed, to Miles, to walk the length of the field, a good hundred yards. It was the farthest they had been apart since they had met. What was more, the car key had been left in the ignition. He could make his escape! He would not be caught; he could be away before Collins, running full pelt, was halfway back up the field.
But he didn’t; he sat there and watched Collins walking back toward him. His eyes were bright, and there was a wry smile on his lips, as if to say, I knew you would not go.
He heaved himself back onto the gate, which rattled ominously but held firm.