A Fool for a Client (17 page)

The face was dominated by a pair of
eyes that seemed frightened to look at her, as if there was something all too forbidding in what they saw.
It was as if she was afraid to see what she had become.
It was a face that could never remain indifferent, even when it was ignored by others as they went about their daily business.
Neither the bitterness nor the hopeless yearning could mar the ivory complexion, the sky-blue eyes that blazed with the heat of an inner anger, the delicate curve of the proud lips in a pained frown that yet refused to acknowledge defeat.
No amount of suffering could camouflage the beauty of the woman... the girl... the woman.

She walked on a few steps and turned, barging the glass doors aside with the cool intensity of the cowboy hero entering a saloon in a classic western movie.

The drugstore offered a comprehensive array of products.
But she had no thought of browsing.
She was here to implement a plan.
She knew that she couldn
’
t just go into a shop and ask for poison, except perhaps rat poison.
If she
did
buy a pure poison product she would have to sign for it.
But there are other forms in which poison is sold besides the pure form.
Many household cleaning products contain poison.
If one knows what one is doing one can acquire poison without any difficulty.

Her hand wandered along the shelf until it came to rest on
a large spray can of insecticide for non-flying insects.
She checked the list of contents and only when she saw that it contained pyrethrum did she deposit three identical cans of it into her basket.

The cosmetics counter of a nearby Five and Ten supplied her with the sleazy-looking purple lipstick and eye shadow to go with the clothes that she had already bought.

For a while she thought that it might actually be fun, playing the role of the bimbo while she lured her enemy onto the rocks.
But to get in so close, to have to listen to his self-righteous platitudes, and to feign sexual interest, it was all too revolting.
Besides, how can one have fun when one is grieving?

At her last station on the track, a liquor store, she bought a bottle of tequila.

She wasted no time when she got the items home.
Using the rotavapour that she had borrowed from the laboratory, she set to work extracting the pyrethrum from the insecticide.

The moment of truth was drawing near.
The preparations were almost complete.
But the ritual dressing was only the first stage of the bull fight.
Still to come was the cape work, the banderillos and the
coup de grace.

“Passengers for flight BA103 please make there was to gate eleven!”

Airports always had a thrill for Declan, although he was accustomed to air travel since the start of his career.
Whenever he passed through one he knew that he was either entering or leaving a danger spot.
Sometimes both.
For airports were always under scrutiny by police and security forces.

But the
United States
was safer than most.
They were on the look out for Islamic terrorists, not Irish Republicans. They still regarded the Irish Republican movement as freedom fighters, in spite of the efforts the Levy bitch to discredit them.
They had maintained that view even in the face of the unfortunate events of the Murphy episode, clearly accepting that the child and the doctor were simply casualties of war and not victims of murder.
So Declan
’
s arrival here should not pose any security problems for himself or for the American authorities.
There were no warrants out for his arrest and he had not been declared
person non grata
.
As far as the authorities were concerned he didn
’
t exist at all.

Outside of Ireland and Britain he was not even known, and even within those countries he was not a public figure, just a name on a couple of lists of a handful of law enforcement agencies.
He had been arrested for throwing petrol bombs at the British Army, and was known to the Royal Ulster Constabulary for intimidation offen
c
es.
But he had not yet attained the stature of international terrorist.

He couldn
’
t be sure though.
He had taken advantage of the IRA
’
s revolutionary contacts network to train in
Libya
.
It was possible that the Israelis knew of him.
Their legendary Mossad was said to be so good they sometimes knew the names of a group of aeroplane hijackers within
hours
of the plane being seized, even if the organization hadn
’
t yet revealed its name.
When the American embassy in Teheran was seized by Khomeini
’
ite students, the Mossad gave a list of names of the student leaders to the CIA.
If the Israelis knew of Declan McNutt, they would certainly have told the Americans.

For this reason, Declan was not
travelling
under his own name.
The Americans may or may not have considered an INLA freedom fighter to be likely to enter their country, but he couldn
’
t be sure.
He knew that as a member of breakaway group he couldn
’
t count on the same sympathy as the IRA had in the
United States
.
He
looked around furtively as he stood in the queue at immigration control.

When his turn came at passport control, he handed over his red European Union passport, the document that somehow blurred the distinction between
Ireland
and
Britain
and threatened to make the dispute irrelevant.
The girl at the desk flipped it open with a practiced gesture and scanned in its machine-readable information wit
h her hand-held laser scanner.

She watched on the screen while the name and details appeared, checking perfunctorily for that warning check mark that would appear in the top right corner if he was listed in the “black book
,
”
that list of undesirables and people with outstanding arrest warrants long since transferred to a few minuscule dots on a platter or iron o
xide in a computer.

If he had been so listed, she would not have heard any noisy alarm.
Nor would she have pressed a secret foot pedal or challenged him herself.
Rather an alarm would automatically have gone off in the immigration control room and the controller would have called up the desk on his video monitor panel and dispatched half a dozen heavily armed men to
approach
the desk from all sides
to take the man into custody.

However no match for the name was found, no check mark appeared in the corner of the screen and no warning alarm sounded in the control room.
Instead the details simply went into the computer, recording the arrival of one more visitor to the
United States
via
New York
’
s
Kennedy
Airport
.

The girl handed him back his passport with a pleasant smile.

“Enjoy your stay in the
United States
, Dr O
’
Brian.”

“And what did you with this bottle that Doctor Stern gave you?”

He was a boy, no more then seventeen.
He had been working as an orderly at the hospital on the night that Murphy arrived.
But he wasn
’
t being paid for it.

“I took it to the toxicology lab and gave it Professor Ostrovsky.”

“And you gave it to Professor Ostrovsky personally?”

“Yes sir.”

“Just let me tear this guy apart,”
he whispered, leaning over to Justine.
Even without the courtroom experience of a Daniel Abrams, he could smell blood now, having checked out the witness
’
s background.
And he homed in with the killer instinct of a shark.

“Leave him alone,” she said firmly, realizing that Abrams was drawing near to the end of his direct examination.

“Are you crazy?
if we can break their chain of custody over the bottle we
’
ve broken their case.
Without the bottle they can
’
t prove a damn thing.”

This was spoken in a loud whisper.
Abrams
’
“second seat” heard it.
But not Abrams himself.
He was too busy rounding off his direct examination of the witness.

“Has he given you any reason to believe that he
’
s lying?” asked Justine.

Parker sighed.
At times this girl could be incredibly naive.

“No, but it
’
s possible that I can shake him.
I can destroy his credibility in the eyes of the jury.”

“But unless you can get him to recant, the prosecution will still have the chain of custody that they need to make the bottle admissible.
Anything you do to that poor kid will only affect questions of fact which would still have to go to the jury.
Aside from that you
’
ll be hurting the kid for no good reason.”

“We have to take the breaks that the case gives us.
And that
‘
poor kid
’
as you call him happens to be... well, you
’
ll soon find out.”

“Rick whatever else that boy may be he isn
’
t a liar, at least he isn
’
t lying in this case.
Whatever you do to hurt that boy, it won
’
t help me.
It
’
ll just add one more problem to the problems he
’
s already got.”

“You know what he is don
’
t you,” said Parker finally realizing.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I know what he is.
I know all about it: armed robbery; he was the lookout, and he lied at the trial.
They gave him three hundred hours community service.
But that
’
s all past history.
Now he
’
s serving out his sentence as a hospital orderly.
You want to ruin him for life?
At his trial, his identity was protected as a juvenile.
You want to splash his name all over the front pages?
Have people point him out in the street?
Make him feel as if people are talking about him behind his back?”

“Justine, I can
’
t force you to let me cross-examine him, but I can tell you one thing: if you don
’
t impeach his character and break their chain of custody then you may as well look forward to spending the next fifty years behind bars.”

“Does the defence have any questions?” asked the judge irritably.

A flush of crimson swept across Colt
’
s cheeks and sweat broke out all over his body as a swelling heat twisted his stomach and rose up through his chest, past his pounding heart to his dry throat.

“Rick it
’
s funny how you can be so ready to hurt some one you don
’
t even know when it suits your case and yet still play the great liberal humanitarian the rest of the time.”

Parker nodded slowly in reluctant admission of defeat.
Justine looked up at the judge.

“
No questions Your Honour.”

He felt bitter.
Bitter about the fickle press that ignored his cause because it was no longer politically
chic
.
Bitter about a world that tolerated imperialism when it was practiced by so-called “Western Democracies.”
Bitter about a P
ope who criticized Communism but objected to Liberation Theology which was aimed at the overthrow of Fascism.

We can
’
t count on anyone else, he told himself.
That
’
s how it
’
s always been.

Ourselves alone.

He downed the remainder of his pint in one huge gulp and ordered another.

With his back to the mirrored doors, he didn
’
t see the well-stacked girl in purple walk in.
But in the other mirror, the one behind the barman, he noticed the heads of lonely men turning to take note of the new arrival, alerting him to her presence.