What Dies Inside (3 page)

‘Mr Cahill has arrived.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Hilda Blair nodded as she headed for the door. ‘I’ll go and let him in.’

Before Carlyle had a chance to ask who Mr Cahill was, the front door was opened and Mrs Blair had returned with a tall, middle-aged man in tow. Easily north of six feet, he was dressed in jeans, a pair of scuffed Dr Martens and a battered black leather jacket. Tired and haggard, he looked like a man who hadn’t seen much sleep recently.

‘Jamie,’ Cahill grinned. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Fine,’ Donaldson said genially. ‘Busy morning?’

‘Damn right.’ Ignoring Carlyle, Cahill turned to Mrs Blair. ‘Your boy Gerry has been up to his old tricks again.’

The old woman looked at each of her guests in turn. ‘All that I can say, Inspector,’ she said finally, ‘is that I have always found
Gerald
to be a very polite and personable young man. And a very satisfactory tenant.’

A crooked grin passed across Cahill’s face. ‘So why did he try to blow up Maggie Thatcher, then?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ the landlady huffed.

Carlyle glanced again at Donaldson, but the sergeant’s expression was still giving nothing away.

‘No one’s saying you do, Hilda,’ Cahill said calmly. ‘But it looks like he’s really dropped himself in it, this time.’

This time?
Finishing his tea, Carlyle took another bite of his biscuit before placing his cup and saucer carefully on the carpet.

‘If Special Branch is so sure about that,’ the woman replied, a defiant smirk on her lined face, ‘why haven’t you picked him up yet? I heard on the radio this morning that there had been more than thirty arrests, so far, all over the country.’

‘We will,’ Cahill said wearily. ‘I don’t suppose you know where he is?’

‘I’m not his keeper,’ she snapped.

‘When did you last see him?’ Donaldson asked.

The woman made a show of thinking about it for a moment. ‘It would be about a week ago. I thought he was staying with his girlfriend.’

Carlyle fumbled for his notebook. ‘Who’s his girlfriend?’

Shooting Donaldson a quizzical look, Cahill held up a hand. ‘Don’t worry about that, son,’ he said, smiling at Carlyle. ‘We’ll come back to it later. Time is of the essence at the moment.’ He turned his attention back to their host. ‘Has anyone else been asking about Gerry?’

Hilda had a ponder then shook her head.

‘And presumably he didn’t say anything about what he was up to?’

‘I don’t pry,’ she told Cahill smartly. ‘I’m not one of your informers.’

Donaldson snickered. Carlyle stared at his feet, careful not to kick over his cup.

‘Ah well,’ Cahill said philosophically, ‘I suppose we’d better go upstairs and take a look at his room.’

‘Do you have a warrant?’ Hilda demanded.

‘Come on now. Why are you giving me such a hard time?’

‘It was a perfectly reasonable question.’ She drew herself up.

‘And this is a matter of national security,’ Cahill retorted. ‘I could have had a dozen armed officers kick the door in and ransack the place. Instead, it’s just a cup of tea and a quiet chat.’

‘But no warrant,’ the woman said obstinately.

‘Hilda,’ Cahill gestured towards Carlyle, ‘do you really want this young constable to take you down to the station, so that you can sit in the cells for the rest of the day? Maybe even longer?’

Glaring at each of them in turn, the landlady headed back towards the door. ‘Fine. Come with me, but please, no mess.’

‘You know me, Hilda,’ Cahill said, pushing a thin strand of sandy hair from his face. ‘Always super tidy.’

‘We’ll see,’ the landlady harrumphed, disappearing into the hall. Carlyle jumped to his feet, only to feel Donaldson’s hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down.

‘You wait here,’ the sergeant instructed, ‘while we go upstairs.’

‘But what should I be doing?’ Carlyle asked, irked at being left to feel like a spare part.

‘If a grubby Irish gobshite walks through the front door,’ Cahill sniggered, gesturing towards the street, ‘make sure you nick the bastard!’

As he listened to the two officers bundle up the stairs, Carlyle reached forward to retrieve the remains of his biscuit. As he did so, he caught sight of something under the sofa. Pitching forward onto his knees, he stuck out an arm and grabbed hold of a badly printed A5 flyer advertising something called ‘Rodeo Night’ at a pub called the McDermott Arms. Carlyle thought about it for a moment, but the name of the pub didn’t ring any bells; he was fairly sure that it wasn’t local. Under a drawing of a cowboy on a bucking bronco was the promise of lager for 75p a pint and spirits at doubles for a pound. Flipping it over, he saw that someone had scrawled the words
Becky 7pm
in blue biro. From upstairs came the sound of doors banging, followed by muffled voices and laughter. Standing up, Carlyle carefully folded the flyer into quarters and shoved it into his trouser pocket. Just as he sat back down, Mrs Blair reappeared.

‘I don’t know what they think they’ll find up there,’ she tutted. ‘Gerald is always so clean and tidy. He’s one of the nicest guests I’ve ever had.’

Carlyle smiled but said nothing. He idly wondered how much Mrs Blair charged for a week’s rent. It looked like she would soon be in the market for a new lodger. Surely even he could afford a room on Nelson Avenue?

‘I expect they’ll just create a lot of mess,’ she continued, staring unhappily towards the ceiling, ‘and then I’ll have to clear it all up.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Never mind.’ Stepping in front of Carlyle, she reached down and deftly scooped up his cup and saucer. ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’

Outside, the horns got louder as the traffic backed up along the Camden Road. Inside, the McDermott Arms was empty apart from a couple of long-haired youths in the back, drinking pints of lager and playing snooker. Sitting at a table near the door, perched upright on his stool, Martin Palmer sipped daintily at his gin and tonic while fishing the occasional crisp out of the packet of salt ’n’ vinegar. The young spook wasn’t a big imbiber – and certainly not at this early hour – but it had been a trying day and he needed one, or maybe even two, stiff drinks to help him try and think straight.

Palmer thought back to this morning’s meeting with his boss and shuddered. Commander Sorensen had made it clear that this was a career-defining moment. He had been given until the end of the day to find Gerry Durkan or face the consequences. ‘The consequences’ meant being sent back to analyst duties, alongside the chinless wonders Ryder, Flyte and Marchmain. Nibbling unhappily on a crisp, Palmer seethed at the complete unfairness of it all. After a stellar start to his time in the service, it looked like his career was going into reverse. Demotion beckoned – he could see himself rejoining the ranks of the graduate drones who did nothing all day but sit and read boring letters intercepted from Irish navvies, trying to glean hidden messages about upcoming terror attacks. He took another sip of his drink.
It was so totally unfair! Hadn’t he proved himself in the field? In the grim fields of Yorkshire, no less, during the mineworkers strike?
There, right in the middle of what was effectively an armed insurrection against the elected government of the day, he had been directly responsible for taking out a leading activist, as well as dealing with various troublesome Communist agitators.

Yorkshire. What a dump! On the plus side, it had allowed him to escape from his mother for a while, and develop a few peccadilloes of his own at the same time. The recollection of some of his more outrageous behaviour sent a gentle shiver of excitement through his loins.

In London, it had been harder to indulge his passions. All the same, returning to his Gower Street cubbyhole, Martin was pleased to discover that his sterling work in the field had been rewarded with a Certificate of Commendation and a discretionary £75 performance bonus. Having demonstrated an ability to use his initiative, he had been taken off desk duties and handed an important agency asset to manage. With the benefit of hindsight, that had clearly been a step too far, too fast. Not only had the slippery Irish git played him for a fool, he had disappeared off the face of the planet. An afternoon spent touring Durkan’s usual haunts in Kilburn, Cricklewood and now Camden Town had drawn a complete blank. He was back to square one.

Gazing out of the window, the young man thought through everything that he knew about Gerald James Eugene Pacelli Durkan. Born on 22 May 1953, in the Creggan, a Catholic estate in Derry, Durkan joined the Official Irish Republican Army in January 1970, switching his allegiance to the breakaway Provisional IRA after the Bloody Sunday shootings two years later. Durkan was soon marked out as a rising star among terrorists in Northern Ireland’s second-largest city. Suspected of taking part in the kidnapping of a local businessman, he was arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary for possession of ammunition and bomb-making equipment in 1974. After a two-year stretch in Long Kesh, Durkan moved to London, flitting around the large Irish community as a fundraiser and community organiser for the Provisionals. In 1978, he was arrested in a car driving erratically down the Old Kent Road. Inside, police found 150lb of explosives and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Durkan’s accomplice, a hooligan called Martin Sarto, fatally shot one of the arresting officers in the face before being riddled with bullets and left to bleed to death in the gutter outside Chung’s Fish Bar. Facing an extended prison sentence, Durkan was visited in Wandsworth Prison by agents of both Special Branch and MI5, touting job offers that would see him released in exchange for turning informant. Choosing the latter – largely on the grounds that they paid more – he was released, returning to his bedsit in Nelson Avenue and the delights of Hilda Blair’s home cooking.

Martin Palmer was Durkan’s fourth handler in less than six years. For the last three months, they had met up every few weeks in different pubs for a drink and a chat. Over a large glass of Powers whiskey, Durkan would offer up tidbits of gossip and the odd name, in exchange for a thin roll of £1 notes, bound with thick, red elastic bands of the type used by postmen. Nodding furiously, Palmer would take down copious notes. After every meeting, he would dutifully write up his report, passing the information up the line to his superiors, unaware of it having any particular value.

Now Gerry had gone AWOL and all hell had broken loose. Palmer felt around for the last of the crisps from the packet and shoved them into his mouth.
One thing you didn’t bloody tell me about,
he thought, chewing unhappily,
was the Brighton bomb.
If Sorensen was right and Durkan
was
the bomber, it looked like he’d taken them all for complete fools. MI5’s name would be mud and Special Branch would take over the lead in the fight against terror. All he could do was to find the little bugger and hope that Sorensen had a plan to retrieve the situation. But where to look? Finishing his drink, Palmer got to his feet. There was only one place to start.

*

Hilda Blair smiled indulgently at the podgy young man perched on her sofa as he shovelled a third chocolate digestive into his mouth.

‘I hope I’m not going to put you off your evening meal,’ she said.

‘Oh, no,’ Palmer replied, spraying crumbs across the carpet as he did so. ‘There’s no danger of that. I have a very healthy appetite. I always finish whatever my mother puts in front of me.’

‘That’s good,’ Hilda beamed. ‘She must be very pleased to have a fine young man like you about the house.’

You would have thought so, wouldn’t you?
‘Yes.’ Eyeing his host, he watched the gentle rise and fall of her blouse and was rewarded with a distinct twitch in his groin. She was a good-looking woman, maybe a bit young for his taste, but appealing nonetheless.

Hilda glanced at the small forest of photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘We never had any children.’

‘Mm.’

Dragging herself away from such ancient history, Hilda gestured towards the small teapot that she had placed on the sideboard. ‘More tea?’

‘I’m fine.’ Draining the final drops from his cup, Martin Palmer got to his feet. ‘That was lovely, thank you.’ He put the cup and saucer down next to the pot and stretched. ‘But I really have to focus on the matter in hand.’ He gave the old lady a searching look. ‘You really don’t know where I might find Mr Durkan?’

‘No.’ Hilda shook her head. ‘Like I told your colleagues earlier on, I haven’t seen him for a week or so.’

‘Colleagues?’

‘The policemen who were here earlier,’ she explained, noticing the confusion that crept across his face. ‘They searched his room upstairs.’

Bloody Special Branch!
Palmer’s heart sank.

‘I told them that he was probably staying with his girlfriend but they didn’t seem that interested in her.’ She gave him a puzzled look. ‘Didn’t even ask me her name.’

Palmer made a face. ‘Better let me have it. The address too, if you’ve got it.’

‘Let me go and get a pen and a bit of paper.’ As Hilda shuffled out of the room, Palmer felt a frisson of excitement ripple through his body, he was coming to realise that she was definitely his type.

A few minutes later, she returned, handing over a sheet of lilac notepaper. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Name and address.’

‘Thank you.’ Palmer stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket without looking at it.

‘It’s unusual for Gerald to be away this long,’ Hilda fretted, ‘I hope he hasn’t got himself into too much trouble.’

‘I think it’s just someone getting the wrong end of the stick,’ Palmer said reassuringly. ‘I’ve known Gerald a long time and he’s a decent bloke.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, somewhat less than convinced after the day’s events.

Placing a hand between the old woman’s shoulderblades, the young man gently directed her towards the hallway, conscious of the growing erection in his trousers as he breathed in her scent. ‘Let’s go and take another quick look upstairs. The sooner I can find him, the sooner we can sort this out and everything can get back to normal.’

Sitting behind the steering wheel of his Ford Cortina MK4, Sergeant Mike Vardy finished an extensive excavation of his left nostril and casually wiped his index finger on his jeans. Trying to ignore his colleague’s gross behaviour, Constable David Wickes lifted his camera from his lap and trained the Nikon telephoto zoom lens on the front door of 179 Nelson Avenue.