Sabbathman (23 page)

Cousins told the customs official he needed more light on the display. Then he turned back to Allder.

Allder was looking at his notes. ‘Bloke in Birmingham,’ he muttered, ‘Eddie McCreadie. Anything to do with you?’

Cousins was watching the customs official adjusting one of the lights. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the name’s familiar.’

‘Used him recently at all?’

‘Why?’

Cousins was signalling to the customs official, gesturing for him to bring the lamp a little closer. Allder was on the point of losing his temper.

‘He’s dead,’ he said briefly, ‘that’s why.’

Cousins at last looked at Allder. So did Annie.

‘Dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘How come? What happened?’

‘Ran into the back of a parked truck. Last night. Pissed out of his brain.’

Cousins permitted himself a shake of the head. His eyes had gone back to the display.

‘What time?’ Annie said. ‘What time did this happen?’

‘I don’t know. Before midnight, certainly.’ Allder paused, looking at Annie. ‘Why?’

Annie glanced at Cousins, then shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

A small group of men and women had appeared at the far end of the freight shed. One of them had a video camera and a big silver tripod. Another carried a microphone on a long pole. The rest, according to the customs official, were local journalists, called in at an hour’s notice. After the press conference, they’d phone through their copy to the national papers.

Annie looked round for Cousins but he was already shaking hands with one of the journalists, a tall, dark-haired, rather saturnine young man in an expensive cashmere coat. Annie felt a pressure on her arm. It was Allder.

‘Were you here last night?’ he said gruffly. ‘Were you part of all this?’

‘No.’

‘Know anything about the background? Where the information came from?’

Annie thought about Fat Eddie for a moment. Then she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Anyone ever think to phone us at all? Or was it one of those private parties of yours? Invitation only?’

Annie looked down at him for the first time. She’d been watching Cousins, still deep in conversation with the man in the cashmere coat. She’d seen him before. She knew she had. Belfast again. Some other press conference. Some other post-mortem.

‘I’m sorry?’ she said.

Allder stared at her for a moment. He must have got up in a hurry because there were tiny nicks in his chin where the razor had slipped. He indicated the Semtex and the automatics. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me you weren’t expecting this lot.’

‘I’m afraid I–’

‘What’s the story again? Some kind of customs tip-off?’

‘Look, maybe you should–’

‘Don’t bother, love. It’s OK. I don’t suppose it’s down to you.’ He patted her arm and then fell silent, watching the approaching journalists. The TV crew began to set up their equipment. The rest were peering at the stuff on the floor. Cousins was still deep in conversation.

Annie nodded at the man in the cashmere coat. ‘Who’s that?’ she said. ‘I know I’ve seen him before.’

She glanced at Allder. Allder was frowning. A bad morning was clearly getting worse.

‘His name’s Devereaux,’ he said tersely. ‘He reports on security issues for
The Times
.’ He glanced at Annie. ‘Nice to see old mates together, eh?’

The press conference lasted less than half an hour. Allder stood in front of the tiny gathering, one hand in his pocket, and offered a brisk summary of the night’s events. It was, he said, a significant find, yet more evidence that the Provisional IRA were willing and able to export their violence to the mainland UK. The Irish government, and his counterparts in the Irish Garda, had been notified and he anticipated some kind of statement from Dublin. In conclusion, he issued the usual plea for the public to be vigilant. Anything out of the ordinary, anything suspicious, should be
reported at once. Only by enlisting the support of the ordinary man and woman in the street could the police hope to stay ahead in the battle against the terrorists.

At the end of his speech, Allder called for questions. A couple of local journalists asked for clarification about the source of the consignment. Allder spelled out the name of the Longford company – O’Keefe Discount – but added that it would be daft at this stage to jump to conclusions. The fact that Semtex had turned up in one of their boxes didn’t necessarily point the finger at the Longford firm. There could be a thousand other explanations. At this point, he simply didn’t know.

The journalist sat down, making a note on his pad, and Allder was about to bring proceedings to a close when the man from
The Times
raised a hand. He had a clipped, slightly disdainful manner and as soon as Annie heard his voice she remembered where she’d seen him before. Belfast, definitely. One of the ministerial briefings she’d been obliged to attend at Stormont.

‘Anything else,’ Devereaux was asking, ‘Apart from the items on display?’

Allder did his best to duck the question, mumbling something about logistical back-up.

‘What, exactly?’

‘Bits and pieces. Nothing much.’

‘But what? Can you not say?’

‘No,’ Allder shook his head, ‘apologies, but no.’

Devereaux nodded, accepting the rebuff, and made a note on the back of a folded copy of
The Times
. Then he looked up again, indicating the arms cache with a nod of his head.

‘Would you call this operation a success?’ he said.

‘Of course,’ Allder said carefully, ‘definitely.’

‘A tribute to good police work?’

‘A tribute to good intelligence.’

‘So how much of that intelligence would you attribute to other agencies?’

Allder looked briefly confused. ‘I’ve already mentioned the customs’ involvement,’ he said. ‘That’s where the information came from. That’s how we got to know.’

‘Of course,’ Devereaux was smiling now, ‘but what about other
parts of the home team? MI5 for instance? To what degree were they involved?’

Annie glanced across at Cousins. He was standing in the shadows to one side, his hands in his pockets. He was smiling too, amused by the way Devereaux had skewered the little policeman. It was the perfect question, leaving Allder nowhere to hide, and Annie realised why the two men had earlier spent so long in conversation.

Allder, meanwhile, was playing the national security card. ‘I’m afraid I can’t comment,’ he said coldly. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to answer that question, and I won’t. Except to say that the operational campaign against the terrorists is police-led. Always has been. Always will be.’

‘But intelligence is all-important, surely?’

‘Of course.’

‘Especially in a case like this.’

‘Yes.’ Allder did his best to smile. ‘And we have our sources, too.’

‘Too?’

‘As well as …’ He shrugged. ‘Other agencies.’

‘Like MI5?’

‘Yes.’ Allder nodded, impatient now. ‘Of course.’

There was a silence. The other journalists were bent over their shorthand pads, scribbling. The TV cameraman began to prowl amongst the goodies on display, filming them from close quarters, while Allder pocketed his notes and accompanied one of the customs officials out of the shed. The truck driver was in Special Branch custody elsewhere in the ferry port, and Annie wondered how long Allder would devote to him before making his own way back to London. Strictly speaking she should pay him a visit too, though Allder was now in charge of all inquiries.

Annie was still watching the journalists drifting away when someone stifled a polite cough beside her. Devereaux. The man from
The Times
.

‘Double top for Five, I’d say. You play darts at all?’

Annie shook her head. ‘Never.’

‘Pity. You’ve done well, you and Hugh. Though God knows what the Irish will say.’

‘You mean O’Keefe?’

‘Yes, but the Dublin Cabinet too. He knows most of them like brothers. In fact most of them owe him their jobs. That’s going to make life difficult. With Dessie smuggling arms.’ He beamed at the cameraman, still filming the little packets of Semtex. ‘Hugh and I are stopping for a spot of lunch on the way back. Care to join us?’

Annie travelled back to London in Cousins’ car, a brand new Volvo estate still smelling of the protective wax they injected at the factory. When she offered to share the driving, thinking he must be tired, he shook his head. Maybe after the pub, he said, depending on how much beer Devereaux forced down him.

They stopped for lunch at Carmarthen. It was market day and the pub was full of sheep farmers discussing the price of mutton. Devereaux found a table in the back lounge and insisted on buying the lunch. Cousins accompanied him to the bar, and watching the two men together, Annie realised that they must have known each other from way back. They had the same bone-dry sense of humour, communicating in half-sentences, the kind of code that only years of friendship can develop, and back at the table they both rocked with laughter when Devereaux recalled a mutual buddy who’d gone missing in the hills to the north. Apparently he’d been on some kind of Army survival test, and had finally reappeared three days overdue, but the point of the story was the abrupt change in the man’s eating habits. Ever since his adventure in the hills, he’d refused point blank to touch lamb.

‘Must have been a pretty one,’ Devereaux mused over the last of his shepherd’s pie, ‘probably broke his heart.’

A couple of hours later, back in the car, Annie brought Devereaux up again.

‘Was he one of your lot?’ she asked, watching the lumpy Somerset hills roll past.

‘My lot?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘SAS.’

‘You think I was SAS?’

‘I know you were. I saw the tie you were wearing at the Home Office.’ She glanced across at him. ‘Or was that disinformation?’

‘No,’ he grinned, ‘I wear it to intimidate the civil servants. It makes them nervous, keeps them in their proper place. They think we were the Wild Bunch. Poor fools.’

Annie smiled. ‘So what about your chum? Devereaux? Was he in the Regiment, too?’

‘Twenty-one. Not the real thing.’

‘Good as, though. Eh?’

Cousins looked amused, conceding the point with another grin. Twenty-one SAS was the territorial battalion, part-time soldiers who trained at weekends. They did most of their recruiting in the City and the twelve-month selection course was famous for its brutality. Annie had once had an affair with a young Lloyds broker who’d got as far as the final dozen. The experience had turned him into a monster, prone to outbursts of extreme violence, and she still had a scar at the bottom of her spine from the evening she’d announced the affair was over. She told Cousins about it now, not bothering to hide a tone of wistful regret when it got to the ugly bits.

‘I’m surprised,’ Cousins said when she’d finished. ‘The training’s about self-control. You’re supposed to be Mr Invisible at the end of it. The little mouse in the corner. The face that everyone forgets.’ He smiled. That’s why Devereaux never hacked it. He managed all the physical bits OK, tough guy and everything, but he hadn’t got the temperament for it. They couldn’t rope him down.’

‘Did they rope you down?’

‘They thought they did.’

‘So what does that make you? Compared to Devereaux?’

‘A better actor.’ Cousins grinned again. ‘No, Rupert’s an extrovert. He has ambitions. Scribbling for
The Times
is just a step, as far as he’s concerned. He’s after greater things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Parliament, for a start. He’s on the Central Office short list, believe it or not, the one they keep for by-elections. He tells
me he’s down for South-east Hampshire. He has to appear next week. In front of the local selection committee.’ He laughed. ‘He’ll walk it. Bound to. All his bullshit.’

‘South-east Hampshire was Carpenter’s constituency,’ Annie mused, ‘the MP who got shot.’

‘That’s right.’

Annie glanced across. ‘You think Devereaux might have done it? Subtle career move?’

Closer to London, Annie brought up Fat Eddie again. She’d been thinking about him all day. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. She asked Cousins whether he knew anything more about his death – what time the accident had happened, whether he was alone or not, how much he’d had to drink – but Cousins said he didn’t know. She told him again about the meeting they’d had, the way Eddie had dismissed any link between Bairstow’s murder and the Provisionals, but when she began to think aloud about the implications Cousins changed the subject. The key thing now, he said, was focus. They had to concentrate on essentials and in his view the contents of the Fishguard arms haul were vital leads. Not simply the Semtex and the small arms but the rest of the stuff. The map. The sniperscope. Where did they belong? How might they advance the Sabbathman investigation?

Annie listened to him, saying nothing, playing the trusty lieutenant, making a note of a name he suggested at the Ministry of Defence. The map they’d found at Fishguard was a single page torn from a tourist guide to Kent. It showed the town of Deal. Deal was the home of the Royal Marines School of Music. In the eighties, the Provos had blown the place up, killing eleven bandsmen. Maybe they were planning a return visit, Cousins suggested, courtesy of the mysterious Mr Sabbathman. Or maybe it was something completely unrelated. Either way, the contact at the MoD might be able to help.

Annie circled the name, asking again about the call Cousins had taken from the customs people, the tip that had sent him racing down to Fishguard.

‘How do you suggest I progress that?’ she asked. ‘Who else do you want me to talk to?’

Cousins didn’t say anything for a while. They were passing Heathrow now, and there was traffic everywhere. Finally, he said it was tricky.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s a shy bird, the guy I talked to. I’m not sure he’d welcome the attention.’

‘Whose attention?’

‘Yours.’ Cousins braked sharply, making space for an intruder from the left. ‘Ours.’

‘Why not?’

‘He operated in a sensitive area.’