Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cait Deery was sitting quietly in the Lost and Found Room, turning a crumpled tissue over and over between her fingers. Across from her sat Sam and Gene. She refused to make eye contact with either of them.

‘Mrs Deery,’ said Sam, ‘you’re not under arrest.’

‘But that don’t mean you can go nowhere, though,’ put in Gene abruptly.

‘You and your husband have been under police surveillance,’ Sam continued. ‘We’ve been watching you. We know you receive arms and explosives from Republicans in Ireland and supply IRA units on the mainland. We also know that you’ve been supplying to the RHF — under duress.’

‘We knew you bastards were watching,’ Cait said, eyes narrowed, but still refusing to look up at them.

‘You knew?’

‘Why else do you think we kept leading you straight to them?’

Sam and Gene exchanged a look, and then Gene leant forward and said, ‘So, you knew we were trailing you last night?’

‘Of course.’

‘And that’s why you led us straight to the Red Hand’s hideout?’

‘You’re getting the picture.’

‘And what were you hoping to achieve?’ Gene went on. ‘A big police raid, the RHF hauled off in chains, your little princess freed and reunited with her gunrunning, IRA-supporting, murdering-shite parents, is that it?’

‘If it’s murdering shites you’re after you should have been in Derry last year — you’d’ve seen plenty of murderers there, dressed in British Army uniforms, firing British Army rifles at unarmed Irish civilians on a civil-rights march.’

‘Whoa, whoa!’ said Sam, trying to keep things calm. ‘We don’t want to start getting into a big discussion about Bloody Sunday.’

‘We’ve noticed that about you Brits,’ snapped Cait.

‘Mrs Deery, I’ve heard a lot of angry political talk over the last twenty-four hours,’ said Sam. ‘And, frankly, I’ve had my fill. I’m a copper. So is DCI Hunt here. Whatever you think about us, we’re here to uphold the law. All I’m concerned with here is the safety of your daughter, and putting the Red Hand Faction out of the picture. If you cooperate with us, we can get Mary back where she belongs — back home, with you and your husband.’

Cait shuffled uneasily. Gene noticed this.

‘And where is your husband?’ he asked.

‘Why? You want to give him a going-over in the cells for being a Paddy?’

‘I wouldn’t be averse to that particular pleasure as it happens, missus, but in this instance I’m asking because you seemed uncomfortable when my colleague mentioned him just now.’

‘I wasn’t uncomfortable.’

‘Pull the other one, luv, it pours out Guinness.’

‘I wasn’t uncomfortable.’

‘Then where is Michael Deery?’

‘I don’t have to tell you,’ Cait said. ‘And if you want to take that as some sort of admission of guilt, I can’t bloody stop you, can I?’

‘Now, why would I take that as an admission of guilt?’ said Gene. ‘Bit of an odd thing to say, don’t you reckon?’

‘Don’t play so bloody daft, you know what I mean,’ snapped Cait. ‘If Mickey ain’t here, then he must be running guns to the boys, ’coz that’s what us Paddies do.’

‘Well? Is he?’

Cait sneered at Gene, then turned to Sam. ‘We didn’t support the armed struggle, not really, not until last year. When you lot gunned down innocent, unarmed men in the streets — just because they was marching, for God’s sake — well, after that things changed. We couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. We knew that waving banners and making speeches weren’t going to shift one British soldier out of Northern Ireland — and we knew that if we didn’t start arming ourselves we was nothing but sitting ducks for you lot.’

‘You weren’t the only ones to feel that way,’ said Sam. ‘After Bloody Sunday, the IRA was flooded with volunteers. You think blowing up people in pubs is the answer?’

‘If that had been your daddy, or your brother, gunned down by Irish soldiers just for carrying a protest banner through the streets of Manchester, how would you have felt?’ Cait asked.

‘Well, like I said Mrs Deery, we’re not here to discuss all that,’ said Sam.

Gene suddenly piped up. ‘The way you filthy bastards justify yourselves never ceases to turn my stomach.’

‘Guv, please!’

Gene fixed his eyes intently on Cait, but he kept his mouth shut.

‘Mrs Deery,’ Sam said, keeping his voice calm and level. ‘The RHF has been blackmailing you. We understand that. But we’re still unclear as to who the RHF actually are. Can you tell us anything about them? Peter Verden and Carol Waye? What do you know about them?’

‘Posh eejits,’ shrugged Cait. ‘Heads full of dreams of a worker’s state or whatever. We don’t pay attention to the crap they spout.’

‘How big an organization is the RHF? How many members does it have?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is anyone else supplying them with arms, or is it just you and Michael?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about any plans they have, any future targets they want to hit?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know nothing about them. All I know is they snatched our Mary.’

‘Mrs Deery, do you have any idea at all where they might be based now?’

‘No.’

Gene breathed in noisily through his nostrils.

Cait looked at him and said, very deliberately, ‘I don’t have any idea.’

Gene sighed loudly and leant back in his chair, making it creak.

‘Why would I lie?’ Cait asked. ‘Why the hell would I lie?’

‘’Coz you hate our guts,’ suggested Gene.

‘My daughter’s life is at stake.’

‘It don’t change the way you feel about us, though.’

‘I don’t care who nails them bastards,’ Cait cried. ‘And I don’t care who brings my baby back home — just so long as she does come home.’ Cait turned from Gene to Sam and said, ‘If I knew where they were holding Mary, I wouldn’t have gone back to the industrial estate, would I? I’d have been out there, wherever she is being held.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ said Sam. ‘But why didn’t your husband come with you this time?’

‘We quarrelled.’

‘What about?’

Cait laughed bitterly and said, ‘Well, young ’un, we’ve been under a bit of strain recently, what with one thing and another.’

‘Answer my colleague’s question,’ intoned Gene.

‘So I am under arrest, am I?’ said Cait.

‘Not yet.’

Cait pulled a disgusted face at Gene and muttered, ’Teigh transa ort fein.’

Gene suddenly banged the table with both hands and rose swiftly to his feet.

‘I’m getting right narked with you, missus,’ he bellowed. ‘In fact, I’m starting to think you’re playing games with us lot. Silly bloody buggering games. I’m starting to think you knew damned well that your kiddy was nowhere near that industrial estate. I’m starting to think you turned up there to keep our attention diverted from where the real action’s happening.’

Cait looked hatefully at him, and then said to Sam, ‘Your big fella here needs his head looking at.’

‘The Red Hand Faction pinch your sprog,’ Gene boomed. ‘You try and buy her back by giving them what they want. You hand over stacks of IRA supplies. They renege on the deal and start demanding more. You realize they’ve got you by the short-’n’-curlies and are never going to give your kiddy back, leastways not in once piece. So you try and lead us to their compound to raid the place and save your daughter. That plan goes to crock. So you switch to Plan B.’

‘And what is “Plan B”?’ Cait asked mockingly.

‘Plan B is for you to divert police attention away from where they should be looking, so your fella Michael can get together a little posse of his IRA pals to sort this matter for themselves, without getting nicked by us in the process.’ Gene slammed his hands down on the table again, leant close to Cait and demanded, ‘Am I close, eh? Am I warm?’

‘Ta tu glan as do mheabhair,’ Cait said under her breath.

‘Knock it off with the bleedin’ Polish!’ Gene roared.

‘I said, you’re insane,’ Cait replied.

‘Then where’s your bloke right now?’ yelled Gene.

‘I don’t know,’ Cait yelled back.

‘That’s bollocks.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s bollocks!’

‘I! Don’t! Know!’

‘That’s! Boll! Ocks!’

Gene hammered his fist against the tabletop, then swept from the room. The door slammed behind him. Sam and Cait sat silently across from each other, until Sam at last said, very quietly, ‘Well? Was he right? Are you diverting our attention?’

‘I want to go home now,’ said Cait Deery, wiping her eyes with the tissue.

Sam caught up with Gene in a corridor.

‘I think you’re right about her, Guv,’ he said.

‘What’s she said in my absence?’

‘Nothing. That’s the point. If she and her husband had just had some domestic squabble there’s no reason for her not to tell us, not when their kid’s life is on the line. She was trying to cover for him — and not doing a very good job of it, either. I think you flustered her, Guv.’

‘That was the intention,’ said Gene.

‘If we’re right about this — if Michael Deery’s out there somewhere with an IRA unit looking for his daughter — we could arrest them and the Red Hand Faction, all in one go.’

‘I know, drippy drawers, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.’

‘Yes, Guv, and she knows that too. We won’t get a squeak out of her. She’s already siphoned off arms from the IRA to pay the RHF ransom — if she gets an IRA unit shopped as well, she and her old man’ll be for the chop.’

Gene prowled up and down the corridor, hands in his pockets, his mouth chewing silently as he thought.

‘The map you saw at the compound,’ he said suddenly. ‘Can you really not recall any details about it, Sam?’

‘Just that it was of the coastline,’ said Sam.

‘From where to where?’

‘From the mouth of the Mersey up to the Solway Firth.’

Gene pictured this in his mind’s eye: ‘Liverpool … Preston … Blackpool …’ He was imagining the coastline and working his way north. ‘Morecambe Bay … Barrow-in-Furness … That bit along Cumbria where ponces like you go on holiday …’ Then he drifted inland. ‘The Pennines … Bradford … Burnley, God help us … Leeds … Huddersfield … then Manchester, Manchester, home again Manchester …’ He stopped pacing and exhaled loudly. ‘It’s a big patch of land, Sam. Easy to vanish in. Assuming the RHF has decamped up there somewhere, and that Michael Deery and his IRA unit are after them, we’d be looking for two needles in a ruddy great haystack.’

‘Boathooks,’ said Sam suddenly.

‘You said it, Sammy-boy.’

‘No no, Guv, I mean: boathooks. There were boathooks. And fish knives.’

‘Translate, Tyler.’

‘In the workshop,’ Sam cried, pacing about now, inspired. ‘The place I was being held, Guv — the workshop you got me out of-’

‘Daringly, and in the nick of time.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. There were sailing things there. Bits from boats.’

‘So what you saying? Are they blackmailing Popeye an’ all?’

‘And they called Peter Verden “Captain”. Guv, they’re anarchists. No leaders. They didn’t mean “captain” as in military captain — he’s the captain of a boat!’

‘Well rub-a-dub-bloody-great-dub, Sammy. Why the hell am I listening to this?’

‘The map in the cabin showed the north-west,’ said Sam. ‘And there were marks and notations on it. They were on the sea, Gene — all the notes had been made on the area of the map that was the sea. Now, I thought they’d done that because it was clearer than writing on the land — it’s all just blue, right, not cluttered with place names and roads like on the land?’

‘I understand how maps work, Samuel.’

‘What if the RHF’s new headquarters wasn’t on the mainland at all? What if they had a boat, Guv? What if Peter Verden was the skipper of a boat? The captain! Think about it: they could move about more freely, they’d see anyone trying to raid them from a mile off, they could disappear up into Cumbria or round the Scottish islands or even over to the Isle of Man. Or Ireland itself.’

‘A floating base?’ said Gene, looking unimpressed. ‘You’ve been watching too much James Bond, Sam.’

‘If I’m right, Guv, it’d narrow the field down. Right now, Peter Verden and the RHF would be somewhere off that stretch of coastline, all conveniently packaged together on a boat. We could have ’em. What’s more, Michael Deery and his IRA team will be making straight for the coast, Guv. To get themselves a boat. And we could have them, too.’

Gene squinted at Sam, unconvinced. At that moment, Annie appeared, carrying a slim file of papers in her hands.

‘I’ve got what I can about Peter Verden, Guv,’ she said. ‘It’s not much. And there’s nothing at all in our records on Carol Waye. Shall I put it on your desk and see if I can have any better luck looking elsewhere?’

‘Boats,’ said Gene, addressing Annie, but keeping his eyes fixed on Sam. ‘Was there anything about boats?’

Annie paused, said, ‘Peter Verden’s boat, you mean?’

‘Does he have one?’

‘He got arrested back in …’ She flipped through the file. ‘August, ’67. Drugs bust. That’s how his name cropped up on our records, guv. He gave his address as the Capella. It’s his boat. Looks like he was a bit of a playboy. Family money. But he never showed up in court. Did a bunk.’

‘Captain Verden just sailed away …’ Gene mused.

‘Sailed away, Guv, yes,’ said Annie. ‘Is this useful information?’

But Gene didn’t answer. He turned on his heel and strode swiftly away, making for his office. Annie turned anxiously to Sam.

‘Did I say the wrong thing?’

Sam grinned at her. ‘You said all the right things. I could kiss you.’

‘Well, save it for some other “bird”, boss.’

She turned away, uninterested.

‘Annie, please listen to me.’

She kept walking. Sam had had enough of this cold-shoulder routine. He grabbed her, spun her round and planted a kiss on her mouth. She pushed him back. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.

‘Would you let me try that again?’ said Sam quietly. ‘It’s important.’

Annie said nothing. Sam leant forward and kissed her, gently. This time, she didn’t resist.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is by way of an apology. I wasn’t trying to be a hero last night. The whole thing was a ghastly cock-up. I really did fall off the fence and end up in that compound by mistake. I’d never have done it deliberately and I certainly wasn’t being macho. Don’t look at me like I’m Gene or Ray. I’m different.’

‘I know you are,’ said Annie, softening. ‘I heard about what happened to you when they caught you. What nearly happened to you — and it frightened me.’

‘It frightened you? Annie, I was sweating cobs.’

‘And dropping a few too, I imagine.’

‘Put it this way, the dry cleaning bill’s astronomical.’

They laughed. Gallows humour. It thawed the atmosphere between them. They each considered whether it was time for another kiss.

But the moment was broken by the bellowing voice of Gene Hunt resounding down the corridor. ‘Samuel! Get your swimming trunks packed and fetch your bucket and spade. Uncle Genie’s taking you for a trip to the seaside.’

Annie looked enquiringly at Sam.

‘Looks like me and the Guv are off on a jaunt,’ he said to her. ‘Verden’s taken to the high seas. I suggested the idea, and then you backed it up just now — and it looks like Gene’s convinced.’

‘So you’re off to track him down?’

‘Him and the IRA hit squad we think are after him. It’s going to be … challenging.’

‘Any room for a girl in this boys’ outing?’ Annie asked.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Sam. ‘No harm in asking. The guv can only say no.’

‘No!’ Gene barked.