Lethal Intent

Eighteen

McIlhenney stared at the phone in his hand as if it was smiling at him. Finally he put it down, retrieved Andy Martin's private office number in Dundee from his index, and called it.

'How goes, big fella?' asked the Tayside deputy chief. 'Why's Special Branch calling me?'

'This isn't Special Branch,' he replied. 'This is DCC Skinner's vicar on Earth. He wants to see you and me together, on the quiet, as soon as you can make it.'

'What do you mean "on the quiet"?'

'I mean nobody else is to know about it. Somewhere off patch, he told me.'

'What's the mystery?'

'No idea. He's literally just back from Florida; one of the first things he did was to tell me to set up this meeting, but he didn't say why.'

'Just us?'

'Just you, me, and him: nobody else is to know about it. I tell you, Andy, he's got me worried. If he wants the two of us together like this it's not just for a pint: he's got something serious to tell us.'

'What's your guess?'

'I'm trying not to guess,' McIlhenney exclaimed, 'but he's fresh back from the States. Do you know what he's been doing there?'

'Trying to sort things out with Sarah, he told me. And she's been making loud noises about wanting him to quit.'

'Exactly. What if she's persuaded him?'

'Forced him to choose between the force and the kids, you mean? She's hardened a lot over the last couple of years, I'll admit, through her parents dying, then Bob's illness, and her own troubles. I could see her putting it that way. But whether he'd give in… that's another matter.'

'I'm not so sure: his four children are the only thing in this life he values above the job.'

'You know what you're saying there?' asked Martin. 'That he puts the job over Sarah.'

'He's proved that in the past,' McIlhenney reminded him. 'Besides…' he stopped himself short.

'What?'

'Nothing. Nothing at all. When can you manage?'

'Tomorrow, midday: let's meet in the Green Hotel, in Kinross. It's off your patch, if not mine, and about equidistant for all of us.'

'Deal. I can do that and the boss will change his diary if he has to.'

'Fine. I'll make the arrangements from here.' Martin paused. 'By the way, while you're on, have you seen your colleague Mackenzie lately? I've been expecting to hear from him about a wee bit of business we did together on Sunday.'

'You won't,' said McIlhenney. 'That's disappeared.'

'What? They were looking at attempted murder and Christ knows what else. The guy Cable bloody near spiked me.'

'And he's got the nose to prove it. Forget that one, Andy: we'll buy you a new jacket if it'll make you happy.'

'Put the old one back together: that'll make me happy. Anyway, you can tell me all about it tomorrow.'

'Maybe yes, maybe no. See you at the hotel.' He hung up and checked his watch, then pressed a button on his desk that changed the light outside his door from red to green.

Almost at once, Bandit Mackenzie stepped into the room. He glanced at his watch. 'Five minutes to three,' he said. 'Spot on. So, what am I here for? If it's to tell me that Special Branch wants to know every move that the Drugs Squad makes, forget it. I know I'm the new guy around here, but I'm in command of that unit and nowhere in my brief does it say that I report to you.'

McIlhenney smiled, affably. 'Nobody's saying it does, my friend, but you're part of a wider world, whether you like it or not, as you're about to find out. Come on.' He headed for the door.

'Where are we going?'

'To meet the Dark Side.'

He led Mackenzie out of the Special Branch suite, along a corridor and up a flight of stairs that led to the Command Corridor. As they passed the deputy chief's room, they saw that the red light was on. Jack McGurk was in his own small office: its door was open, and they could both read the nervousness in his expression.

McIlhenney stopped and leaned against the frame. 'Everything in place?' he asked.

The sergeant nodded. 'The conference room's ready. The technical people went in half an hour ago and swept it, and the Venetian blinds are closed just as you asked.'

'Who's there ahead of us?'

'Just the ACC. The chief's in Mr Skinner's room.'

'And the visitors?'

'I don't…' As he spoke his phone rang. He snatched it up. 'McGurk.' A pause. 'Okay, I'll collect them.' A sigh. 'I told you, Benny, they don't sign in.' The sigh turned into a growl. 'Fuck the health and safety regs: do what you're told.'

'That's the attitude.' Mackenzie chuckled as the DCC's towering assistant swept past him, the top of his head almost bumping against the door lintel.

'We'd better get in there,' said McIlhenney. 'Mr Haggerty'll be feeling neglected.'

'Are you going to tell me what this is about, Neil?' Bandit asked, as they reached the conference room door.

The big man reached for the door handle. 'I only know the part of the story involving Cable and Bell. I don't know why, I don't know what, I just know who. We're having a visit from the people whose toes you stood on.'

'Am I on the carpet?'

'No.' He stopped. 'David,' he said, 'a word of advice. Don't say anything glib in there; don't say anything at all, until you're asked. Act serious, however hard that might be for you.'

Mackenzie grinned. 'That's fine, but please don't call me David. I only get called that by my mother, or when I really am in the shit.'

They stepped into the conference room. Willie Haggerty had half risen from his seat at the conference table, but he sat down again. 'Ah, it's you two,' he grunted. 'I thought it was the serious people.' He pointed at a trolley against the wall. 'Help yourself to coffee if you want it: there'll be nae waitresses in here. Come to think of it, now that Bob's back, I don't know what I'm doing here.'

McIlhenney shrugged his shoulders. 'Duck out now, if you want, sir. I've seen the fax they sent to the chief; it didn't ask for you by name, just for relevant chief officers and Special Branch.'

'What am I doing here, then?' Mackenzie asked.

'They asked for you later, Bandit.'

'You mean after…'

'After your fun and frolics on Sunday: you've figured it out at last'

'So who are they? The Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency?'

'Of course not. If you'd screwed up one of their operations, they'd have dropped in on you in person and kicked your arse.'

'The Americans?'

'We don't let them operate here.'

'So who the…'

The door of the conference room opened, and Bob Skinner walked in, looking not at all like a man who had just come from a daylong journey. He was followed by two men and a woman; one of the men had a heavy plaster across his nose, and his eyes were blackened and puffy. McIlhenney heard Bandit Mackenzie's soft 'Ah' beside him. He glanced at him, but saw that he was gazing intently at the newcomer.

'Good afternoon, gentlemen,' said the DCC, briskly, moving towards a seat on the same side of the table as his colleagues. 'The chief's decided not to sit in on this meeting,' he glanced at Haggerty, 'but, Willie, you should stay.' He directed the visitors to chairs facing his team, then took his own. 'Anybody want coffee?' he asked. The three newcomers all shook their heads. 'Fine,' he said. 'I've had my caffeine quota too, so let's get to it. Introductions: on our side, left to right, Assistant Chief Constable Willie Haggerty, Detective Chief Inspector Neil McIlhenney, Special Branch, and DCI David Mackenzie, head of our Drugs Squad.'

'Thank you,' said the woman, seated on his left. She was middle-aged, grey-suited and reminded McIlhenney of his wife's consultant obstetrician, as she looked across at him. 'On our side,' she began, 'I'm Amanda Dennis; my colleagues are Rudolph Sewell, and, with the facial decoration, Sean Green.'

'We've already met,' said Mackenzie, icily, drawing a warning look from Skinner.

'So I believe,' Dennis replied. 'That's prompted our visit, in fact. We are members of the Security Service, also known as MI5. That makes us colleagues, and so I want to get this briefing off on the right foot. I'll begin by offering you gentlemen the same apology that I've just made to Chief Constable Proud. It was, on reflection, wrong of us to mount an operation on your territory without advising you of the fact. Let me try to explain to you how and why this happened.'

'That should be good,' Mackenzie murmured.

The DCC glared at him. 'Bandit,' he said, softly, but with menace, 'if you interrupt once more, I'll have you measured for a uniform.' He turned to Dennis. 'Sorry, Amanda: please carry on.'

'Thank you.' She leaned forward, clasping her hands together on the table. 'I'll begin by explaining what exactly MI5 does. I apologise again if I'm telling you things you already know, but in our experience even senior police officers can have gaps in their knowledge. We are an agency charged with responsibility for protecting national security. We're not the only one, of course: we work closely with the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, with the Government Communications Headquarters, and with the Defence Intelligence Staff, among others. Our specific roles are to gather and assess secret intelligence about threats, to advise government of them as they arise, to work with other agencies to combat them and, when necessary, to act directly against them.' She looked around the table at Haggerty, McIlhenney and Mackenzie. 'Understood?' All three nodded, unsmiling.

'Good,' she continued. 'We don't operate outside the law, whatever people may think. We're governed by statute and codes of practice, but we can do things that more public agencies can't,' she smiled, wryly, 'or at least shouldn't. We intercept all forms of communications, we plant bugs, we keep subjects under round-the-clock surveillance; most of the time we're watchers and listeners. Our active involvement depends on the threat.' She leaned back in her chair once again, sweeping aside a few strands of silver hair that had fallen across her forehead.

'Okay. What's our business? Traditionally, we've been spy-catchers: that's why we were set up. However, over the years we've become spies ourselves, in what is colourfully described as the war against terror. At first our brief was almost exclusively Irish, but modern international terrorism has changed all that. It now makes up one third of our total workload and that proportion is rising. But aside from counter-espionage, counter-terrorism and, these days, counter-proliferation, there are two other areas which, taken together, make up about ten per cent of our workload. They are emerging threats, in which my colleague Rudy, who is the assistant director general of the Security Service, is sector head, and serious crime, for which I have lead responsibility. In my area of operation, I must stress to you that we are tasked by other agencies: it's not our role to initiate or to act independently, and we'll only accept an assignment if it is the collective view of everyone involved that we can make a difference to the investigation.'

She paused. 'That's the background; now let's get to the specifics.' She looked beyond Skinner. 'Rudy, would you like to take over?'

Rudolph Sewell nodded and drew his chair closer to the table. For all that he outranked her, he was several years younger than Amanda Dennis; but he was dressed in the same Whitehall civil servant mode. His suit was dark blue, and he wore a white shirt with a crested tie that suggested a public-school background. His hair was conservatively cut and he seemed to have no distinguishing features; then he looked up, and his round, rimless spectacles made his eyes grow huge and froglike, attracting instant attention.

'My section,' he began, 'operates in a variety of ways, across a very broad remit. We rely particularly on the co-operation of intelligence agencies from other countries, or, as in this case, groupings. Some weeks ago, the director general received a warning from NATO intelligence officers that a group of four Albanians had left their own country and were moving through Europe, heading for Britain. These were people with known criminal backgrounds, but in Albania that doesn't exactly mark them out. You'll be aware that it was the last totalitarian communist state in Europe, and that for decades it operated a policy of total isolation, from everyone except the Chinese, who, in fact, didn't care for them at all, and since they were strategically useless found them more of an embarrassment than anything else.' He allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. 'Imagine, if you will, Osama bin Laden being revealed as an Arsenal supporter: he'd be greeted at Highbury with the same warmth that Beijing showed to Tirana.' Sewell paused, as if inviting laughter, but none came.

'The old Albanian regime,' he continued, 'was so brutal and repressive that there was no semblance of an opposition voice; not a political one, at any rate. So, when it imploded, in the aftermath anarchy ruled, criminality became the norm, and the place became a magnet for all sorts of dangerous activity. The people we were warned about are right in the thick of it. They ran protection rackets, controlled prostitution, regulated the drugs trade and supplied all sorts of illegal armaments to all sorts of people, including a significant number of those against whom the war on terror is being fought.'

'Sounds like a nice wee empire,' Skinner mused aloud. 'Why did they leave it all?'

'That's what our NATO source didn't know for sure, and it's what we've been tasked to find out.'

'So what do you know?'

'We know that they left the Albanian port of Durres, crossed the Adriatic and landed in Brindisi, on the heel of Italy. From there they travelled by road to Genoa, crossed into France by hiring a helicopter, and disappeared.'

'Completely?'

'For a while, until their scent was picked up in Rotterdam: they stopped there for long enough to pull off a bank robbery in Amsterdam.'

'Risky. Why would they do that?'

'We think they needed currency; at home they deal in US dollars, and we suspect that they didn't want to flash too many of them about. Significantly, while they took euros, they also took all the sterling that the bank held.'

'A pointer, I'll grant you.'

'Eventually, after some damned good detective work based on witness descriptions, the Dutch police traced them to an address, a great barn of a place in the Oosteinde of the city. They had been living there, under their own names, for over a month, but they had gone by the time the place was raided. Their hosts were Kosovar refugees, ethnic Albanians. They were arrested and interrogated, and of course they pleaded innocence, claiming that they had only been putting up fellow asylum-seekers, and that they had no idea where they had gone. However, further enquiries revealed that one of them had a sister who lived with a Dutch trucker. Under threat of the loss of his licence, he admitted that he had smuggled them across the North Sea on his lorry, sailing out of Zeebrugge to Rosyth, in Fife.'

'What was he carrying, apart from the Albanians?' asked Haggerty.

'Flowers. He's a regular traveller on that route, well known to the Customs people. They took a look at his truck, but not close enough, apparently. However…' Sewell paused, his great frog eyes sweeping round the table. '… he was also carrying four large rucksacks, which from his description were much bigger than anything an asylum-seeker would be likely to have. These were offloaded by the Albanians when they reached their destination in Edinburgh.'

'Oh, shit,' said Skinner, quietly.

'You guess what I'm going to tell you,' the MI5 operative exclaimed. 'Further interrogation of the Kosovars in Rotterdam revealed that, after the second robbery, the Albanians had a meeting in their hide-out with a man whose description matches that of a well-known Dutch arms-dealer. The dealer can't be traced, or hasn't been yet, but we would like very much to know what they were talking about.'

'You don't know for sure?'

'No, but when my Dutch opposite numbers raided his warehouse they found that while his inventory and his stock tallied some of the recorded buyers of items did not. For example, the police chief in Amsterdam did not buy silencers with the carbines he ordered, and he only received half the number of firearms that were shown on the order. Also, the small African nation which was shown to have purchased eighteen American anti-tank missiles for its defence force in fact only received fourteen.'

Skinner shook his head. 'I really do not like the sound of that,' he muttered.

'Neither did the Home Secretary; hence the pressure of his finger on the panic button.'

'Merry Christmas, Scotland. Where did the Dutch trucker drop his passengers and their load?'

'At a car park in a shopping mall to the east of the city.'

'Not in daylight, surely.'

'No. He made some deliveries during the day, with them hidden in the truck, then dropped them off at two in the morning. They were met by a fifth man, driving a Transit van.'

'When did this happen?'

'Just under four weeks ago.'

The big deputy chief constable gazed at Sewell for several long seconds. 'And you didn't think to tell us?' he asked quietly.

'We were ordered not to,' Amanda Dennis replied. 'When our sources gave us this information, we took it to the Home Secretary.'

'The English Home Secretary,' Skinner reminded her, acidly.

'I didn't take you for a rabid nationalist, Bob,' she retorted.

'I'm not, but we do have a devolved government here, although sometimes I wonder whether you people have noticed.'

'Be that as it may,' Sewell intervened, 'we were dealing with a perceived threat to the national security of the UK as whole, and when that happens the Home Secretary is the person we consult. He consulted the Defence Secretary, then gave us direct orders to carry out a covert operation to trace and detain these men, by whatever means we thought necessary. He stressed the word "covert", and said that no other agencies were to be advised or involved, unless it was absolutely necessary.'

'Given all that, how did Jingle Bell and your man here become involved?'

'Amanda and I decided between us that Mr Bell was the necessary means.'

'He's one of my assets,' said Dennis. 'Or he's an agent of ours, if you prefer that term. He has been since the National Crime Squad caught him in Birmingham on the wrong side of a drugs operation in which we were also involved. Bob, it's our experience of these Albanian gangsters that they're incapable of behaving quietly. Wherever they go, they display an irresistible urge to muscle in on the local action. The problem is that, thanks to you and your colleagues, there isn't much local action in Edinburgh. So the DG decided that my section should create some, in the hope of flushing them out. We set Bell up to create a small drugs operation in your friend's club and in other sites around the city that he considered vulnerable. Sean, who is a member of my section, was his handling officer. The mistake the assistant DG and I made, for which we do apologise, was in interpreting the Home Secretary's order too strictly. We should have told you, or DCI McIlhenney, what was going on.'

Skinner stared at her. 'You're telling us that two of your guys were pushing hard drugs on our patch?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'Does your statutory remit cover that sort of activity?'

'That's grey, but it's another reason for our not involving you… to avoid compromising you, so to speak.' She sighed. 'The whole thing was a misjudgement. Again, all I can do is apologise.'

The DCC frowned. 'Apology accepted, as long as there's no blame attached to my people for doing their job properly.'

'None at all; in fact we compliment them on it.'

'Speak for yourself, Mandy,' Sean Green muttered, fingering the plaster on his nose, and breaking the tension with a grin. 'I'm sorry about the blade, by the way. At first I thought your guy might have been an Albanian, but I could tell by the look of him that he wasn't, so I didn't try to stick him, honest. If I had been trying…'

Skinner's eyes fell on him like two blocks of ice. 'You wouldn't be here today, boy,' he said, slowly, in a voice not much above a whisper. He turned back to Dennis. 'They're out of the picture now, you know that. Too many people in the club saw him being filled in and Jingle being lifted.'

'Absolutely. I accept that we can't put them back in. That's why we're here.'

'Cap in bloody hand, eh.'

She nodded, and smiled, wryly. 'I have to accept that description.'

Bandit Mackenzie raised a hand. 'Permission to speak, sir?' he asked.

The DCC chuckled. 'Aye, go on then, as long as it's constructive.'

'It's a question really, sir, for Sean. After you and Bell were done, when we had you in the interview room, why the hell did you keep stringing us along? You must have known that it would all end up at a meeting like this and that I'd find out about you in the end. So why didn't you just switch off the tape and spill it?'

Green looked at him, through his puffy eyes. 'If it had been just you and me, I probably would have, but your sergeant was there. All due respect, but Mandy would have crucified me if I'd talked in front of her.'

'On a barbed-wire cross,' his section head confirmed.

'So,' Skinner exclaimed, 'with your team out of the picture, what are you asking of us?'

'That you take over from them: find the Albanians, determine what it is they're up to, and remove them as a threat.'

'By any means necessary?'

Dennis looked at him, but said nothing. In the silence, Rudolph Sewell leaned forward. 'It may be,' he murmured smoothly, 'that once you have secured them you would prefer to hand them over to us.'

'And it may not,' the big policeman retorted. 'I've just lost a terrorist gang, identified and arrested by my people, to the Americans; that's not going to happen again. Let's cross that one when we reach it, though. Meantime, how much scope do we have?'

'You operate under the same legislation and codes of practice that we do,' Dennis replied.

'What about electronic surveillance? We'll need legal authority for wiretaps.'

'You have it: you'll be our agents in this operation and the Home Secretary has given us blanket authorisation already.'

'How wide is the loop? Has the Home Secretary changed his mind and advised our First Minister, or his own opposite number in Scotland, our Justice Minister?'

'No, and I'm told by my director general that he doesn't plan to.'

Skinner stared across the table, 'I've got to have discretion to do that if I think it's necessary, without reference to you.'

Sewell drew in a deep breath. 'Oh, I don't know about that,' he retorted. 'We're the principals in this operation; I don't think we can delegate to that extent.'

'You weren't listening to me,' the DCC told him. 'I said that I must have that discretion. I'm not negotiating here. You may be his number two, but I know your director general; I have done for longer than you've been in post, and maybe even in the service. I make one phone call, I will get what I need and you will be overruled. Let me tell you, within these walls,' he glanced at his fellow police officers, 'why I must have the ability to widen the loop if I need to. Our First Minister has decided that he's going to take overall control of the police service into his own tight wee grasp. He's persuaded his coalition partners that it's in the public interest to give him the effective power to promote or dismiss every senior copper in Scotland, and the bill to enable that will be published very soon. Already we're coming under closer scrutiny than ever before. Mr Murtagh has appointed a former colleague of ours to be his eyes and ears, and he's making his presence felt. I don't want him blundering in on this operation by accident'

'Would you like us to persuade the Home Office to advise Mr Murtagh and Ms de Marco?' asked Dennis.

'No. Leave it to me to tell them, if I judge it to be necessary.'

She looked at Sewell, who nodded. 'Okay, Bob,' she conceded, 'that's agreed. Do you want anything else?'

'Yes. I want you on the ground here.'

She smiled again. 'So does Rudy, but thank you for inviting me.'

'And I want the ability to call in special forces the moment that we identify an imminent threat'

'No promises, but we'll do our best.'

Skinner rose to his feet. He looked at his three colleagues. 'Willie, Neil, Bandit, you're the lead team on this operation, reporting to Mrs Dennis and me. If you need additional personnel, use only your most trusted people, and tell them as much as they need to know, but no more. Amanda, will you be in a position to give us everything you have on these men at nine tomorrow morning?'

'Yes,' she replied.

'Excellent; we meet in this room.' He headed for the door. 'Now, if you don't mind, I'm getting out of this murky place and going home to my kids.'