The Bombmaker (23 page)

'She manufactured explosive devices for the Provisional Irish Republican Army.'

'No,' said Martin flatly. 'You're not talking about my wife.'

'It was before she was your wife,' said Denham. 'When she was in her early twenties. Before she met you.'

'You're telling me that my wife is a terrorist?'

'Oh no,' said Denham quickly. 'Oh no, that's not the situation at all.'

'But you said she was an IRA bombmaker?'

'She was recruited by the IRA during her final year of university.'

'At Trinity?'

Denham shook his head. 'Queen's University. Belfast. She got a first in electrical engineering.'

Martin laughed out loud. 'Andy can't change a plug,' he said.

Denham took a packet of cigarettes and a silver lighter from the pocket of his raincoat. 'She was recruited by her boyfriend at the time, and was trained by one of their most experienced bombmakers. He was killed a year after she graduated.'

'The boyfriend?'

Denham smiled thinly. 'The bombmaker. Her mentor. She took his place. But by that time, she was working for us.'

Denham put a cigarette between his lips but Patsy pointed at a sign on the wall. NO SMOKING. Denham groaned and put the cigarette back into the packet.

'Hang on a minute,' interrupted Martin. 'First you tell me she's an IRA terrorist, now you're saying she works for Special Branch?'

'Worked,' said Patsy. 'Past tense. This is all past tense, Mr Hayes.'

'She'd never really been political,' continued Denham. 'I think she got talked into it by the boyfriend.' Patsy flashed Denham a warning look and he smiled at Martin. 'Ex-boyfriend,'

he said. 'They were only together for six months or so.

He probably only got close to recruit her.'

Patsy was smiling at Martin again, as if trying to let him know that Andy's love for him wasn't in dispute.

'We'd had her under surveillance, almost from the moment she was recruited, but she got wind of it. Smart girl, she was.

Took the wind out of our sails by approaching us. We persuaded her to stay with them. Did a hell of a job, for nigh on three years.

Until the accident.'

'Accident?'

Denham scratched at a small wine-coloured birthmark on his neck. 'She'd let us know where her bombs were going to be used, and what sort they were. Our bomb disposal boys always had the edge. They knew which ones were booby-trapped, and how. Some we'd let explode, providing there was no risk of loss of life. We'd release stories to the media that soldiers had been killed, or that a bomb disposal officer had died. Others we'd pretend to stumble on. Get the army to send a patrol through the area, maybe have a guy out walking his dog pretend to find it. There were a million and one ways to make it look as if the IRA had just been unlucky.'

There was a peal of laughter from the uniformed policemen at the neighbouring table, and Denham waited for the noise to die down before continuing.

'Your wife saved many, many lives, Mr Hayes. She deserved a medal. She played a most dangerous game -- not a day went by when her own life wasn't on the line.' He paused, tapping his fingers on the packet of cigarettes. 'What happened was a terrible, terrible accident. A small bomb, a few pounds of Semtex. Set to go off with a timer. It had been placed on the Belfast-to-Dublin rail line, under a bridge. There were two booby traps -- a mercury tilt switch, and a photoelectric cell.

Nothing major - the bomb disposal boys were dealing with half a dozen similar bombs every week. Your wife had tipped us off that the bomb was being set, but she didn't know where on the line it was going to be placed. We were waiting for the coded call.'

Patsy sipped her tea, her eyes never leaving Martin's face, as if she were assessing his reactions to what Denham was telling him.

'The call came, but before we could react to it, a group of schoolchildren found the bomb.'

'Jesus Christ,' whispered Martin as he realised where the story was heading.

Denham nodded. He moved his face closer to Martin's and kept his voice barely above a whisper. 'Four boys died. One crippled for life. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. It was just one of those things.'

'Jesus Christ,' said Martin again. He slumped back in his seat.

'Drink your tea,' said Patsy.

Martin lifted his mug to his lips, barely conscious of what he was doing or where he was. The Andy he knew, the woman he'd married, the woman he'd shared a bed with for almost a decade, had nothing in common with the woman that Denham was talking about. An IF^A bombmaker? A Special Branch informer?

'She walked away,' said Denham. 'Told her IPvA bosses that she'd built her last bomb. Told us the same. They tried to talk her out of it, and so did we. But she was adamant.'

Martin remembered how Andy had always hated to see reports of bombings on television. How she'd sat with tears streaming down her face on the day that the bomb went off in Omagh in Northern Ireland, killing twenty-eight people. He'd sat on the sofa next to her, holding her but powerless to stop her tears. At the time he thought he understood why she was so upset. Everyone in Ireland was shocked to the core by the horror of the bombing, but now he knew that there was another reason for Andy's grief. She'd had to live with the deaths of four innocents on her conscience, and knowing what a loving,

caring, sensitive person she was, he realised that the strain must have been unbearable.

'She moved to Dublin. Started a new life.'

Martin shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. 'They let her? They let her walk away from the IRA?'

'They understood why she wanted to leave. She was a woman, and children had died. What else could they do, Mr Hayes? They're not animals, despite what you might read in the papers. What choice did they have?'

'So they never found out that she was working for you?'

Denham toyed with his cigarette lighter. He looked across at the 'NO SMOKING' sign as if checking that it was still there.

'No. She cut all ties with us.'

'And Trevor? Who was Trevor?'

'Trevor was her code-name.'

There was another burst of laughter from the neighbouring table, then the uniformed policemen stood up and filed out of the canteen.

'This is unbelievable,' said Martin.

'I'm afraid it's all too real,' said Patsy.

Martin held his mug in both hands and stared at the remains of his tea. The milk had curdled slightly and oily white bubbles floated on the surface. 'That's what this has all been about, isn't it? Her bomb-making skills?'

Patsy reached out and gently touched Martin's wrist. 'That's why we're here, Mr Hayes. The fact that your daughter's kidnappers wanted her to fly to London suggests that . . .'

'. . . they want her to build them a bomb. Here.'

Patsy nodded. 'Exactly.'

'Can she do it?'

'Oh yes,' said Denham. 'She can. There's absolutely no doubt about that.'

Andy wiped the perspiration from the back of her neck with a cloth. Her shirt was damp with sweat and stray locks of her hair were matted to her face. Green-eyes was at the table next to her,

scraping hot fertiliser into a Tupperware container. 'Nearly done,' she said.

'A couple of hours, I reckon,' said Andy. She nodded towards the offices. 'Okay if I get a sandwich? I'm starving.'

'Can't you wait? Best to get this stage finished, then we'll take a break.'

Andy tried to hide her disappointment. She wanted another go at the briefcase locks. 'I could do with a coffee. I'm flagging.'

Green-eyes sealed the lid on the container and straightened up. She looked across at the Runner and the Wrestler, who were both bent over their woks. Despite the air-conditioning being full on, the air was full of alcohol fumes and the stench of the fertiliser. 'I guess the boys can hold the fort,' she said. 'Okay, let's take a break.'

Andy forced a smile. 'I'll get one for you.'

Green-eyes looked suspiciously at Andy. 'Are you up to something, Andrea?'

Andy shrugged carelessly. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'You're not deliberately dragging your feet, are you? Trying to slow us down?'

'I just want a coffee, that's all. If it's too much trouble, forget it.'

Green-eyes looked at Andy for a few seconds, her lips pressed tightly together. It was an eerie feeling, being scrutinised by someone in a ski mask, and Andy forced herself to smile as naturally as possible. Eventually Green-eyes nodded.

'Come on.'

Andy followed her down the corridor and into the office.

Green-eyes poured two mugs of coffee and they sat down at the long table. Green-eyes clicked sweetener into her mug. 'You always drink your coffee without sugar?' she asked Andy.

'Since I was at university,' said Andy.

'Worried about your weight?'

Andy sipped her coffee. 'Not really. I gave up salt, too. And cigarettes.'

'Some sort of penance?'

'Maybe. I don't know.' She put her mug down. 'Why are you doing this?'

Green-eyes didn't answer. She stirred her coffee and stared at the ripples on its surface.

'People are going to die if this thing goes off. A lot of people.'

'You're a fine one to talk,' said Green-eyes. 'I could ask you the same question. You made bombs for the Provos.'

'But not like this.'

'Your bombs killed people, Andrea. Is it the numbers that worry you? Is killing a hundred worse than killing four?'

'That was an accident. The children were in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

'There were others, though, Andrea. Soldiers. Bomb disposal guys. Police. What you did hasn't stopped you from living a normal life. So why are you concerned about this bomb?'

'You're going to kill innocent people, that's why. The war's over. It's finished.'

Green-eyes sneered at Andy and tossed the teaspoon on to the table-top. 'Did the Brits murder any of your family, Andrea?

How many funerals have you been to, eh?'

Andy said nothing. The woman's eyes were burning with hatred, and flecks of spittle peppered across the table.

'Well, how many?'

'None,' said Andy quietly.

'Well, I have. I buried my brother and two cousins. The SAS murdered my brother and British paratroopers shot my cousins.

My family's been drenched in blood, and you think I should just forgive and forget because the weaklings at the top want to sit in an Irish Parliament?'

'Revenge?' said Andy. 'Is that what this is about? Revenge?'

'You think there's something wrong with revenge? You think politics is a better motive? That it's okay to kill for power but not okay to kill because they murdered my brother? I don't give a fuck about a united Ireland. I don't give a fuck whether or not Protestants and Catholics live together in peace and harmony.

I want revenge, pure and simple.'

'For God's sake, you're going to kill hundreds of people,

hundreds of innocent people. Jesus Christ, woman, that's not going to bring your brother back.'

'I don't want him back. I want the people here to know what it's like to suffer. Anyway, I don't know why you're so concerned. You've made bombs before. You've killed people.

I'm just doing what you should have done ten years ago.'

Andy shook her head. 'That was different.' Part of her wanted to tell Green-eyes that she'd never been a terrorist,

that all the time she'd been part of the active service unit she'd also been a Special Branch informer. But she had no way of knowing how Green-eyes would react to the news. She was in enough danger already.

'Different? Why? Because what we're doing now is on a bigger scale?'

'Because at least then there was a political dimension. It was a means to an end. The war's over. Can't you see that?'

Green-eyes stood up. 'Come on. We've got work to do.'

Andy gestured at her mug. 'I haven't finished.'

Green-eyes picked up the mug and poured the contents on to the floor. 'Yes you have.'

Martin stared down at the table, his mind in turmoil. None of what he'd been told made any sense to him. It had been hard enough to cope with the kidnapping of his daughter and the disappearance of his wife, but being told that his wife was an IRA bombmaker turned Special Branch informant was more than he could cope with.

'Mr Hayes?' It was the woman. Patsy. Her first name. That was all he knew about her.

'You're going to have to give me time to get my head around this,' he said.

'We don't have time, Mr Hayes. We have to act now. And we need your cooperation.'

Martin frowned. 'Cooperation?'

Patsy had a notebook in front of her, and she was holding a slim gold pen. It looked expensive. Everything about the woman seemed expensive. 'Who the hell are you?' Martin asked her. 'You're no policewoman.'

'No, you're right. I'm not. All you need to know at the moment is that Chief Inspector Denham and I are the only hope you've got of seeing your daughter and wife again. Now, who else knows what's happened to your family?'

Martin glared at the woman, then slowly nodded. She was right. It wasn't her he was angry at, it was the situation he was in,

and it wasn't a situation of her making. 'The Gardai. In Dublin.

Inspector James FitzGerald. And a sergeant. Power, his name was, I think.'

Patsy wrote the names down in her notebook.

'Two uniformed gardai called at the house. They're the ones who took me to the Garda station.'

'Do you know their names?'

Martin shook his head. 'The secretary at Katie's school got in touch with them..Mrs O'Mara, her name is. She's disappeared.

That's what the police say, anyway.'

'Disappeared?'

'They said she hadn't turned up for work and there was no sign of her at her house. That's why they came to see me in the first place. She'd telephoned me to see why Katie wasn't at school, and I guess she'd spoken to the headmistress.'

Patsy looked across at Denham and raised an eyebrow.

Denham nodded. Martin had the feeling that each knew what the other was thinking.

Patsy looked back at Martin. 'Anyone else?'