The Armada Legacy

Chapter Sixteen

The pub was dark and drab inside, and almost empty apart from a few drinkers hunched over pints of Guinness around a table at the back. Dirty light filtered in through the windows. The place smelled of stale beer. Stale tobacco smoke too, and there were flecks of cigarette ash on the floorboards – evidently nobody had been too bothered to clean up after last night’s after-hours lock-in, when small matters like abiding by the non-smoking regulations became even less important. That was fine by Ben. He sat at the bar and mechanically lit a Gauloise.

The barman, a burly guy of about thirty, paused in the middle of polishing a pint glass, and fixed him with a belligerent eye. ‘Can’t smoke in here, friend.’

‘Right,’ Ben said, and took another drag. ‘How about a whiskey? Double.’

‘Ice?’

‘As it comes.’

When the barman slapped the glass on the scarred surface, Ben grabbed it and swallowed the liquor down in one stinging gulp. The alcohol hit his system fast, making him realise how little he’d eaten in the last couple of days. He ordered another, and a bag of crisps to go with it.

‘Haven’t seen you in here before,’ the barman said, not any friendlier, and not just because of the cigarette. In a place like The Spinning Jenny, Ben’s English accent marked him out as the enemy whatever he might spend at the bar. A guy like him walking into a staunchly Republican pub was like a black man walking into a Ku Klux Klan meet. That was why he’d purposely left his bag in the car. Toting such a very obviously ex-military piece of kit with him would have been no less of a red rag to a bull than wearing a beret with the SAS winged dagger on it. Not that Ben was overly concerned about provocation. But he had to get inside the door before he could state his business.

He flicked away the stub of the Gauloise. ‘I’m looking for a man called Doyle. Fergus Doyle.’

The barman frowned. The low murmur of conversation from the table at the back suddenly dwindled into silence and a couple of faces turned around to stare coldly.

‘What did you say?’ the barman asked.

‘Fergus Doyle,’ Ben repeated. ‘I’m looking for him. Thought this establishment of yours would be a good place to start.’

‘And why might that be?’ the barman said tersely.

‘Let’s not play games,’ Ben said.

‘What would you want with Fergus Doyle?’

‘I’d like to have a conversation with him,’ Ben said.

‘A conversation about what?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Nobody by the name of Fergus Doyle drinks here.’

‘Then why did you ask me what I wanted him for?’

The barman motioned towards Ben’s glass. ‘I’d say you’d be best to finish that up and go and look elsewhere for your friend.’

‘I didn’t say he was a friend,’ Ben said. ‘And I’ll have another drink.’

The barman leaned closer across the bar. His gaze flickered past Ben’s shoulder towards the table at the far end of the room, then turned back on Ben with a meaningful look. ‘Listen,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’m only going to say this once. My advice to you is to leave before you open your mouth too wide.’

‘Why would that be?’

‘Because opening your mouth too wide can get you in a lot of trouble around here,’ the barman said. ‘If I was you, I wouldn’t hang around.’

‘I was just getting comfortable,’ Ben said.

‘That’s my advice. A clever man would take it and a foolish man would ignore it.’

Ben nudged his empty glass across the bar. ‘Same again.’

‘It’s your funeral.’ The barman refilled it from the optic and then withdrew to the other end of the bar.

The pub was very quiet now. The drinkers at the back slowly returned to their pints but were saying nothing. As Ben sipped his third whiskey and munched on a crisp he noticed one of them, a scrawny little guy with a greying crew cut, take out a phone and start keying in a text message, head bowed and thumbs twiddling. The conversation resumed around the table. The barman busied himself tidying up more glasses.

Ben was finishing his crisps when the guy who’d sent the text message got up from the table and left with a nod to his mates. Ben noticed the agitation in his step as he headed for the door. Someone else at the table glanced back towards the bar, caught Ben’s eye and quickly glanced away again.

It wasn’t too long before Ben heard a car pull up outside. Moments later the pub door swung open and the scrawny grey-haired guy came back in. He was accompanied by three other men, all of them much larger than he was and all wearing the same set scowl. The scrawny guy jerked his chin at the bar, as if to say ‘that’s him’.

‘We’ll take it from here,’ the middle one of the three men said. He was in his fifties, six-two and built like a grizzly, half lard and half muscle with the features of a bare-knuckle boxer who’d lost a few too many fights. ‘Scram,’ he said to the scrawny guy, jerking his thumb at the door.

The rest of the guys at the table spontaneously drained the dregs of their pints and beat a hasty retreat along with their companion. The barman disappeared into a little office, suddenly absorbed by some paperwork he had to attend to.

The three guys strode purposefully up to the bar and circled Ben. Arms folded. Faces hard. It looked as if he was making progress.

He studied them. There was always a leader, and the big bear with the beaten-up chops was clearly it. His shoes were polished and he was wearing a long black overcoat that didn’t do much to hide his bulk. The one on the left in the bike jacket was an orang-utan: cropped ginger hair, heavy brows and arms longer than his legs. Textbook henchman, just waiting for the word to launch into a violent onslaught. The one on the right was wearing a hoodie and had more the look of a hungry wolf, greased-back hair, darting eyes, acne-pitted hollow cheeks and a nervy twitch to his mouth.

‘Name’s Flanagan,’ the leader said, eyeing Ben with a steely expression. ‘Frank Flanagan. You might have heard of me.’

‘Yeah, you’re a comedian, or something,’ Ben said.

‘That’s very funny,’ Flanagan said, unsmiling. ‘We’ll all have a laugh in a minute.’ He dug a meaty fist in the pocket of his overcoat and took out a BlackBerry. ‘Now, I just received a message on here from my friend, saying there was a fella asking about Fergus Doyle.’ He pronounced the name with reverent emphasis, as though it belonged to some hallowed patron saint. ‘And he informs me that this fella in question is you.’ He pointed a stubby finger at Ben’s face.

Flanagan was one of those wise guys who thought he had the gift of the gab and could use it to intimidate. Ben wasn’t in the mood to waste time, but he was content to play along for now. ‘Top marks to your friend. That’s correct.’

‘I was afraid you might say that,’ Flanagan said. ‘For your sakes, that is. So why would a fella like you be in here asking for Mr Doyle?’

‘That’s between him and me,’ Ben said.

Flanagan’s crooked smile widened. ‘For the moment, I’m acting as his intermediary as you might say.’

Ben calmly returned his stare. ‘Well, then let’s just say that I think he has something I want, and I have something he might want. I take it you know him pretty well, do you?’

‘I know him, aye. But here’s the problem. I don’t know you.’

‘Fucking soldier boy,’ said the orang.

‘You got that wrong, ape face,’ Ben said.

‘What did you call me?’

‘I can’t be the first one to have noticed it,’ Ben said.

‘We know a fucking soldier boy when we see one,’ said the wolf, with a twitch. ‘You think we didn’t spend enough time watching you bastards when there was a machine gun pointing at every woman and child in Ulster?’

‘I’m just a guy who’s lost something,’ Ben said. ‘If Doyle can help me get it back, we can do business.’

‘What if Mr Doyle isn’t inclined to do business with the likes of you?’ Flanagan said.

‘Then Mr Doyle is going to have to think again.’

Flanagan recoiled in mock outrage. ‘That sounded like a threat to me.’ He turned to the orang, who was staring, seething, at Ben. ‘That sound like a threat to you, Sean?’

‘It did, Frank,’ Sean replied, not taking his eyes off Ben.

‘I’m very disappointed,’ Flanagan said. ‘I’d hoped we could resolve this more amicably, but I see now we’re going to have to do it the hard way.’

‘That’s a very regrettable choice,’ Ben said.

‘Not for us, it isn’t. Scalpel, Gary.’ Flanagan held out a beefy hand and the wolf instantly reached under his jacket and came out with a knife bayonet. He passed it to Flanagan, who drew it deliberately from its scabbard. Seven inches or so of blackened forged-steel blade, the kind of mass-produced military killing tool that could be procured dirt cheap and disposed of without a second thought when the job was done.

‘Now move yer arse,’ Flanagan growled, wagging the blade towards the rear exit.

‘Are we going somewhere?’ Ben said.

Gary gave another twitch and threw a nervy glance at his colleagues. ‘Should we not wait for the others, boys?’

‘What for?’ Flanagan asked coldly.

‘John has the gun.’

‘We don’t need a gun to take care of this piece of shite,’ Flanagan growled. He motioned to the other two and they grabbed Ben’s arms.

Ben let them. The bayonet looked sharp and its tip was just a few inches from his throat. They yanked him away from the bar and started marching him roughly towards the rear exit.