Present Danger

4

The call came out of the blue and Dave didn’t recognise the name.

‘Phil Robinson,’ the man on the end of the phone repeated, with an English-sounding voice. ‘I’m a warden with the National Trust. I was in contact with the RUC Special Branch in the past. I was told to ring you.’

Dave Armstrong had been in Northern Ireland for a couple of months. He was part of the team that was gradually filling up the smart new MI5 offices in Palace Barracks, the army HQ a few miles north of Belfast city centre. With power-sharing in Northern Ireland taking its first staggering steps, the new Police Service of Northern Ireland that had replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary had handed over intelligence work in the province to MI5.

With that transfer of power went all the records of the large stable of agents – the human sources that had fed the RUC with information from inside the Republican and the Loyalist armed groups during the Troubles. It was information far too sensitive to retain in a police service that might find itself answering to government ministers or members of a police board who were once themselves part of the armed groups. The last thing the new police service wanted was a spate of revenge killings or score settling.

So Dave and a couple of colleagues in the agent-running section of the MI5 team had the job of sorting through the list of sources they’d inherited, closing down the many who were of no future use and getting to know the few who might continue to be of value. For although the so-called ‘peace process’ was well established and the security threat in Northern Ireland had changed, it hadn’t gone away. The Provisional IRA might have disbanded its armed groups and decommissioned its weapons but there were still those among its former ranks – and Loyalists on the other side of the divide – who did not support the peace process. For them the war was not over, which meant Dave and his colleagues were monitoring several renegade groups determined to do all they could to keep the war very much alive.

Phil Robinson. The name now rang a bell. It had stuck out of the list of old sources because of the National Trust link. It had seemed an unlikely connection, but Dave knew that National Trust properties had been the target of IRA attacks in the past. In 1973 two young IRA volunteers had blown themselves up in the Castle Ward estate with a bomb they were trying to plant. After that, the security forces had paid more attention to the Trust’s properties in Northern Ireland, and Robinson had been one of the people who’d been recruited to advise them.

‘How can I help?’ asked Dave now.

‘Something’s come up. I wonder if we could meet.’

‘Of course,’ said Dave, thankful to have something active to do. He was finding the routine job of reviewing old files and standing down old cases tedious. Maybe this would turn out to be nothing, but Robinson sounded sensible. So Dave said, ‘How about this afternoon?’

They had arranged to meet in the middle of the city. Dave took one of the operational cars from the garage and drove, working his way through the traffic into the heart of Belfast, busy even in mid-afternoon. When he’d first arrived, it had been a pleasant surprise to find the middle of the city lively, vibrant, humming with activity. The images Dave had grown up with – soldiers with automatic weapons, barricades and barbed wire, the apprehensive looks on people’s faces – had been replaced by teeming shops, pedestrian areas (from which cars were now banned for reasons that had nothing to do with security), and a buoyant nightlife. It was hard to believe that not so long ago the city had been to all intents and purposes a war zone. And although Dave’s job gave him a healthy scepticism about the new-found peace, the citizens of Belfast seemed too intent on enjoying ‘normal life’ to let things be derailed by a few murderous malcontents.

He was living in one of the flats the service leased in the suburb of Holywood, just outside Palace Barracks. It was an area of the town that had been comfortably safe in the Troubles but now, for someone living on their own like Dave, it was rather dull and lonely. He had a girlfriend in London, Lucy. They’d been together for two years, which for him was a long time. But it was difficult keeping it going when they were so far apart. He was too busy to hop over to England every weekend and there wasn’t much point in Lucy coming to see him if he had to work. But he was serious about her and that meant he wasn’t looking to meet girls in the bars of Belfast’s lively nightlife – he didn’t join his younger colleagues when they went out partying.

But he’d just heard some news that had lifted his spirits. Michael Binding, the head of the MI5 office in Northern Ireland, had told them all that morning that Liz Carlyle was coming out to head the agent-running section. Dave knew that Binding didn’t have much time for Liz, or she for him. But Dave had both affection and respect for her, though he wondered, now that she was going to be his boss, if their relationship would change. Not that they had been very close for the last couple of years. Liz had been transferred from counter terrorism, and it was only a fluke that they had recently worked together – in Scotland, at Gleneagles, on a plot to ruin a vital peace conference. It had been good working with her again; she was formidable without being aware of it, straightforward, clear, decisive.

That wasn’t all, of course. For a time, five or six years ago, they had been not only good work colleagues but close friends as well. They might even have been more than that, but some mutual hesitation had held them back. More ‘mutual’ for her than me, Dave thought sadly, because he’d realised ever since that a part of him regretted that they hadn’t got together. Well, that was out of the question, now. For one thing he was with Lucy and for another, you didn’t get a second chance with someone like Liz. Anyway, he knew that her heartstrings were tied somewhere else – to Charles Wetherby. When Joanne had died two months ago, Dave’s first thought had been that Liz and Charles would be together. So why on earth was Liz coming to Belfast?

Whatever the reason, he was delighted. And only partly because he was looking forward to seeing her dealing with Michael Binding.

Phil Robinson was a tall man with greying hair. He spoke without a hint of Ulster brogue in his voice, and with his tweed jacket and checked Viyella shirt looked completely English, a bit like a retired civil servant who’d spent the morning helping his wife tend the roses. He seemed out of place in Northern Ireland, thought Dave, and as if in answer to the thought, Robinson told him that he had come over to Northern Ireland from England for the National Trust on a temporary posting thirty years before – and stayed.

‘I fell in love with the place despite myself,’ he said with a small grin. ‘Then I met my wife, and fell in love with her as well. Only please don’t tell her it was in that order.’

They were sitting in a coffee shop in St George’s Gardens, around the corner from the Europa Hotel, which after years of being the most bombed hotel in Europe now seemed to be flourishing. When Dave had walked past it, a long line of Japanese businessmen had been queuing outside for cabs, while foreign guests of every conceivable race and nationality – Indians, Arabs, Orientals – went in and out of the big revolving doors. Only the doorman, standing erect behind a rostrum just outside the entrance, had looked pale enough to be Irish.

Robinson explained that he now worked only part-time for the National Trust.

‘Consulting?’ asked Dave politely, since that was how everyone seemed to describe any work they did after retiring.

Phil Robinson gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Hardly. I help with the migrant bird counts up in Antrim, and stand in when too many wardens go on holiday at the same time. But my grandest job is south of here in County Down. Near Newcastle.’

‘Doing what?’ asked Dave politely.

‘My wife and I look after the holiday cottages on the Drigillon Estate – I was joking about the grand bit. They’re let for a week or two at a time, or sometimes for short breaks of two or three nights. There are three of them on the estate – so it’s a fair amount of work, particularly in the summer when they are occupied all the time.’

‘So why did you want to see me?’

‘I’ll tell you what it is. One of the cottages – it’s not really a cottage; it’s a house, the old gatehouse to the estate – has a gate in front of it which is usually closed. It works electronically. If you have a remote control device it opens automatically and then closes behind you. Some local members of the National Trust who like to walk on the estate have remotes to open the gate and anyone staying in the cottages is given one. In the last six months or so, several people who’ve been staying at the gatehouse have complained that people were opening the gate at odd hours in the night – it makes rather a crash as it closes – and driving cars up past the house into the estate. Of course, our renters often complain about something or other – one even moaned about the quality of the soap – so I didn’t take much notice at first. But when several tenants said the same thing – cars, coming by at three in the morning – I felt I had to take some notice.’

Dave nodded, but inwardly wondered why this necessitated a call to MI5. Surely the local police should have been the first port of call.

Robinson seemed to sense his scepticism. ‘I know, it may be nothing at all,’ he said modestly.

‘But something tells you it’s not?’ Dave asked gently. There was no point writing off the man’s story yet.

Robinson nodded, and said, ‘Yes. My wife and I stayed in the gatehouse for a couple of nights, between lets. Val thought I was mad, but it seemed the best way to find out if anything was going on. And sure enough, one night the gate was opening and shutting and there were cars driving by at four o’clock in the morning. Then after breakfast, two of them came back down the track. I was out walking our terrier.’

Dave nodded. ‘Are there any other houses on the estate where they might be going?’

‘Just the old farmhouse. But that’s not owned by the Trust. Whoever does own it had a lot of work done to it a year or so ago. There were builders’ lorries going up and down the track then. But not in the middle of the night. I wondered at first whether this was young people having a rave or taking drugs, but I’ve seen no sign of damage on the estate or rubbish – empty bottles or syringes or that sort of stuff.’

Robinson continued, ‘That’s not all. You see, when the two cars came down the track after breakfast, I was just by the gate. They slowed down to wait for the gate to open, and I recognised one of the men in the cars. At least I think I did – I didn’t get a very good a look at him. But I’m pretty sure it was Terry Malone, an old IRA hand. I doubt you’ve heard of him, but he used to be well known over here. He was fairly high up in the Provisionals, and he had a brother, Seamus Malone, who went with the other side when the IRA split in the seventies – he was Official IRA. When Seamus was murdered in Dublin, the crack was that his own brother – that’s Terry – fingered him for the killers. Who knows? But I’m almost certain it was Terry Malone I saw in the car.’

While Robinson finished his coffee, Dave thought about this, then asked, ‘What are you suggesting? Do you think there might be some renegade IRA outfit in this farmhouse?’

Robinson shrugged. ‘All this coming and going could mean anything. An awful lot of former Provisionals are finding life pretty difficult – all the organisation’s money goes on Sinn Fein election pamphlets these days, instead of Armalites. These guys are up to all sorts of stuff to try to raise money to keep the war going.’

‘Is the gatehouse occupied at the moment?’

‘Yes it is, until the middle of next week. But then we have a week when it’s empty. We always keep a week in January for spring cleaning, but that will only take us a couple of days. I could let you have a key for the end of the week if you wanted to see for yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ said Dave. ‘I think that could be very useful.’