Secret Asset

34

When Liz arrived for work she went straight to her desk in the agent-runners room to check her mail. She found a message from Jimmy Fergus, asking her to ring him urgently. This reminded her that she needed to book her flight to Belfast the following week, but she rang Jimmy first. He sounded uncharacteristically subdued. “I’ve got some bad news,” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

“This man O’Phelan…”

“Yes?” There must be nothing on him in the database, she thought. A pity.

“He’s been murdered in his room at Queen’s.”

“You’re joking,” said Liz. “I was planning to see him again next week. What happened?”

“He was found last night, but the pathologist says he was killed in the morning. Somebody strangled him. Well, not quite—they garrotted him.”

“Garrotted?”

“I know. It’s straight out of The Godfather.”

“Any idea who or why?”

“Not yet. There are about a million different sets of prints to sort out, but I imagine they all belong to his students.”

Liz thought of the arrogant, slightly epicene figure she’d interviewed. “I can see him being unpopular with them, but killing him is going it a bit. Any other leads?”

“We’re looking into his personal life. He was unmarried, but so far nothing’s come up on the sexual front.”

“Why did it take so long to find him? Where were his students?”

“He’d cancelled all his supervisions, and his afternoon class. He told one of his students an old friend was coming to see him. We’re trying to locate this old friend.”

“Keep me posted please. We have an interest in this one.”

There was a long pause, and Liz could picture the big man at his desk, sitting with a mug of coffee, wondering what exactly MI5’s interest was. “Of course,” he said at last. “CID are in charge, but I know the lead officer.”

Liz put the phone down, her mind racing. Another death on her watch. Get a hold of yourself, she said half aloud, then saw Dave Armstrong at his nearby desk staring at her. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, but she knew she wasn’t. She stood up and walked down the corridor to the conference room she and Peggy were using. Peggy was out of the room, and Liz closed the door and sat down to think things through.

Was she somehow responsible for this one? She wondered if inadvertently she had made a slip, and put O’Phelan at risk. She had better tell Wetherby right away, she thought, just as the door opened and, as if on cue, Wetherby himself came in. “I thought you might be here,” he said with a thin smile, but then he saw her face. “What’s wrong, Liz?” He pulled back a chair and sat down at the conference table next to her.

“I’ve just spoken with Belfast Special Branch. Liam O’Phelan, that lecturer, has been murdered.”

Wetherby looked stunned. “Had you arranged to see him again?”

“No. I was going to ring him this morning.” Liz shook her head. It seemed unreal. She had to keep telling herself that she no longer needed to book a flight to Belfast.

“Did anyone know you’d been to see him?”

“Only Peggy and Jimmy Fergus—I had dinner with him the same night. I wanted to know if O’Phelan was in the Special Branch database over there. People here knew I was away, but I didn’t say where.” She paused and saw that Wetherby was looking reflective, as if he were a million miles away. She said, a little bitterly, “I feel as if I’m back to square one.”

“Not at all,” said Wetherby. He looked at her sternly but his tone was encouraging. “You know there was a link between O’Phelan and Keaney. And you were sure there was another connection between O’Phelan and someone on your list. So you’re just going to have to find that link some other way. There was never any guarantee O’Phelan was going to help you.”

“That’s true,” Liz acknowledged. But she would have much rather had the chance of questioning O’Phelan again. He had been slippery, but she felt confident she would have got more out of him second time round, especially now she knew about his ties to Sean Keaney.

“Can you see any connection between your visit and his death?”

Liz shook her head. “No. But there was something decidedly creepy about the man. I’m certain he knew I was from the Service. I didn’t like him at all—not that it matters any more. At first I thought he was a misogynist, though maybe he just hated the English.”

“Not unknown in the six counties,” said Wetherby wryly. “If he was a specialist in Irish affairs he may have been strongly nationalist. More to the point, his death could have absolutely nothing to do with your visit.”

She realised Charles was looking at her appraisingly. He said, “You had a bit of a knock last year. Then Marzipan, and now this.” He stood up, tugging at his tie thoughtfully. “You’re a strong person, Liz, and I’m not worried about you. Provided you don’t start worrying about yourself.”

“Okay,” she said quietly, taking his point. There was sometimes self-indulgence in feeling guilty, something which she had tried to avoid when thinking about Marzipan. With Liam O’Phelan it was certainly possible that if she had never gone to see him he would not have been murdered, but with that kind of reasoning, she might as well give up her job. Her real regret was that she hadn’t gone back to see him sooner. Too late to worry about that, she told herself.

“I need to talk to Michael Binding urgently. O’Phelan was his referee—that’s why I went to see him in the first place.”

“Michael’s got a few days’ holiday, Liz. Won’t be back until next week. Part of me is tempted to call him back—we could think of a pretext—but if there is something to worry about, that would set off all sorts of alarm bells prematurely.”

Liz was shaking her head. “No, it can wait, I think. For all my reservations about O’Phelan, I don’t think he was holding anything back about Michael Binding. He was contemptuous about him, to tell you the truth, and it didn’t seem in the least contrived. It was something else he wasn’t coming clean about.”

“Perhaps you should focus on O’Phelan’s time at Oxford.”

She nodded. “I’ll ask Peggy to have another look. I want to widen the net a bit with the families of the people on our list, and check for even the remotest Irish connection. We’ve got Dobson and his cousin in the Maze; I want to see if any of the others has something comparable.”