The Tick Tock Man

12

The deployment of three teams from 321 EOD Squadron, Northern Ireland, to London with backup from 11 EOD was sanctioned by the COBRA meeting the day following Harrison’s meeting with the Home Secretary.

By the time the signal was received by Colonel ‘Tall Lloyd Williams and forwarded by the secure Brinton fibre-optic telephone line to Girdwood Park Barracks in the Ardoyne, off the Crumlin Road, Captain Peter Heathcote had already been on standby for twenty-four hours in anticipation of the move.

Four gleaming new khaki Tactica trucks, built by Glover Webb of Southampton, waited outside the reinforced blockhouse which housed the ops room. Three Mk8 Wheelbarrow robots were carried, complete with the latest remote colour TV equipment and all the other bomb-disposing gadgetry that had been developed over the years. The fourth truck carried a powerful Attack Barrow version of the robot, dedicated to destroying vehicle bombs in short order and capable of being rigged with a PAWPAW warhead for use against vans or a RAID — Rapid Access and Instant Destruction — designed to counter car bombs. An additional standard Bedford truck would transport the crews and their personal belongings, including civilian clothes, on the journey to London.

Corporal Clarke delivered the message to Heathcote. He was grinning widely, looking for all the world like a naughty, podgy schoolboy at the end of term. The capital beckoned. Booze, good food and beautiful women. ‘CATO confirms, sir. London awaits the timely arrival of the 5th Cavalry.’

They left at last light to avoid attracting the attention of Provo eyes which were always watching. As the gates in the high-security fence swung open, the small convoy sped through into the wet night.

Heathcote peered out of the window from beside the driver in the lead Tactica. Across the street from Girdwood Park was one of the most incongruous sights in Belfast, one that never ceased to fascinate and amuse him. On a patch of derelict land stood a small lone, single-storey building, closely surrounded by razor pointed security railings and with a huge satellite receiving dish dominating its flat roof. For all the world it looked like a nuclear command bunker, yet Heathcote knew it was just the local Catholic betting shop.

He wondered what would happen between now and his return from London. Somehow he doubted it would be quite the picnic Clarke and the others assumed it would be. He’d read the reports. London was in the grip of terror; it was a capital under siege. And if he and his Belfast cats were wanted there, then it was for good reason.

They boarded the Liverpool ferry for the night crossing and made Vauxhall Barracks near Oxford by noon the following day. That afternoon the Tacticas were sprayed white, allowing the paint to dry overnight. The next morning Metropolitan Police livery stripes were added by the mechanics before the convoy continued its journey to Lambeth Road in the heart of London.

Their welcome at the Section was muted. Al Pritchard treated the twelve new arrivals almost as though they didn’t exist. Although he went through the motions of welcoming them, he did so without warmth and even without one of his sardonic smiles. It was all done with the minimum of required etiquette, nothing more. In the corridors he would pass by the army personnel without acknowledgment, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance.

‘I feel like the bleedin’ Invisible Man,’ Corporal Clarke complained.

The Sexpo quickly and irreverently became known as Sexpot, Pilchard and then, bitterly, Prickhead.

Perhaps following their chiefs example, many of the other Expos treated the army personnel with stiff courtesy or indifference, despite the fact that all had at one time served with 321 EOD.

Noticeably different in attitude were Les Appleyard and Midge Midgely. Having worked most closely with Harrison since his arrival, they had volunteered to share their offices with the men from Belfast. That in itself created chaos because the newcomers not only worked but also lived and slept in the confined space, erecting collapsible camp beds in every available corner.

Harrison apologised to Heathcote for the cramped conditions. ‘I’d have us billeted at one of the London barracks, Peter, but if I did that we’d never get tasked. Al would just go out on call and conveniently forget to give us the location. He calls the shots here, remember, and it’s his decision whether or not to send us out. But if we’re camped all over his headquarters, he can hardly ignore us. The only time he’ll be able to let the office cleaners in is if he sends us out.’

Yet, despite everyone’s growing fears that Al Pritchard would never let them see action, they were deployed just two days later.

A white van — the description and registration plates of which exactly matched a legitimately owned vehicle in Milton Keynes was abandoned in Oxford Street, its hazard lights left pulsing as the driver mounted the pillion seat of a motorcycle which roared away north up Duke Street. Within minutes an AID AN warning had been telephoned to the Samaritans. Eight hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate fertiliser and a mere thirty-minute timer.

To Harrison’s surprise, Al Pritchard had thrown open the door to the overcrowded office. ‘We’re tasked to Oxford Street, Tom,’ he announced. ‘Time for your lads to show what they’re made of.’

Was that a smile on his face? As always it was difficult to be certain, but there appeared to be a certain glint in his eye.

Peter Heathcote and Corporal Clarke scrambled for the Tactica which carried the Attack Barrow, hurtling out of the compound doors in the wake of the Section’s Range-Rovers. With siren caterwauling from the escorting police car as it carved its way through the commuter traffic, the two men were rigging the PAWPAW warhead to the big barrow.

The work was completed just moments before the vehicle came to a halt in a side street opposite the massive D.H. Evans department store. Before them lay a stretch of eerily deserted street, the pedestrians having been hastily pushed back behind the cordons. Yet many shoppers and office workers were still being evacuated through back exits to the surrounding streets; others with no alternative means of escape were crouched in rear rooms away from windows. Both police and public had learned quickly over the past few weeks, government-issued safety advice on what to do in bomb emergencies having been widely published in the national press. Now everyone was beginning to understand the power of explosives and what they could do; a bomb was not something to gawp at from an upper floor unless you wanted to be blinded or maimed by flying shards of glass.

Harrison arrived with Al Pritchard. By the time they’d scrambled from the Range-Rovers, the aerial had already been slotted into its position atop the Tactica and the Attack Barrow was already rumbling down its ramp, operated with relish by Corporal Clarke and his hand-held remote-control box.

Parked beside the pavement a hundred metres ahead was the white van, paintwork gleaming like a showroom model, hazards blinking steadily.

‘It’s your decision, Al,’ Harrison said.

The hoods came down over Pritchard’s eyes, reminding Harrison of a predatory hawk as he surveyed the scene, weighed up the odds. What had the warning said? Eight hundred pounds of high explosive; it had been quite specific about that. And here was the bomb, parked in a canyon of tall, glass-fronted stores holding millions of pounds’ worth of merchandise. Any injuries would be unpredictable, the cost would not. And they were within five minutes of the warning deadline. Way outside the safe limit.

Pritchard swallowed. ‘Tell your team to go for it. And I just hope they’re as good as you say they are.’

Harrison turned and nodded to Heathcote and Clarke who stood poised, the Attack Barrow whirring earnestly as though eager to be going. The captain responded with a thumbs-up sign and the robot jerked into action, moving into the centre of Oxford Street and executing a neat left-hand turn.

Pritchard and Harrison backed to the corner, shielded by the wall to watch the vehicle trundle on its way, alone in the vast concrete chasm of the shopping centre, stalking its mechanical prey. Meanwhile the hazards blinked on unerringly, the harmless-looking van suddenly taking on an air of clinical menace. It was a bizarre sight, a remote and deadly battle between two machines.

Behind them Heathcote and Clarke studied the television monitors as the van filled the screen. The two men exchanged whispered words, as they had done a hundred times before in Belfast, watching the robot close in for the kill.

Harrison willed them on, glanced at his watch. Fifteen seconds to go. If the given warning time was correct. If the timer was accurate. If, if, if…

Decisively, Clarke swung the Attack Barrow round on its rubber tracks to face the side of the van square-on. He released the drive buttons and the robot lurched forward, the distant clang quite audible as the huge circular cutting charge was extended on the telescopic arm, jamming hard against the van’s steel flank.

On command from Heathcote, Clarke thumbed the plastic tit of the first firing circuit on the control box.

The cutting charge blew, tearing a ragged hole in the vehicle’s side. Clarke released the drive buttons and the robot pushed forward, its telescopic arm punching in through the gap with a cluster of six-ounce Candle charges.

The corporal hit the second tit. Harrison held his breath.

The pavement shook from the throaty roar and rumble as the barrow delivered its lethal sting. The van skewed sideways, the low-pressure blast blowing the bomb’s circuitry and burning out the explosive in a fierce tongue of flame that set the vehicle ablaze. Greasy black smoke spiralled skyward into the bright summer sky.

A few plate-glass windows nearby had shattered, but that was all. Heathcote looked at Harrison and grinned broadly. Even Pritchard almost smiled.

After the hidden device in the Haymarket bomb, no one was going near this baby. It was allowed to burn out fully before it was finally inspected and cleared away.

Perhaps, Harrison thought, the tide had begun to turn against AID AN.

Declan O’Dowd was a freelance novelty salesman.

The job didn’t pay well and his wife, whom he only saw at weekends at their family home in Luton, was forever chasing up shopkeepers who hadn’t settled their bills for three months or more. But O’Dowd was his own boss and his work could take him wherever he pleased; there wasn’t a town or city that didn’t have a shop with a dispenser for practical jokes. Rubber spiders, sponge sugar lumps, itching powder and plastic dog dos. That was his stockin-trade. And ideal cover for one of the Provisional’ mainland flying-column experts in R and R. Research and recce.

He hadn’t been surprised when the envelope arrived at his home. It contained a newspaper clipping. The meaning was self-explanatory. A possible future target and an address somewhere in Pimlico.

It took him just over an hour to locate from the blurred press picture of the front door. The estate agent’s For Sale sign made things easier.

There were several tatty tourist hotels in the street and, unusually for the time of year, all had vacancies. He chose one with a room which looked onto the street, with a clear view of the house that was for sale.

A call to the estate agent established that the owners were looking for a quick sale. The property was currently unoccupied and viewing was strictly by arrangement only; the agent would be delighted to show him round.

O’Dowd went out in the middle of the day, taking his case of samples to many little back-street shops in the West End and the southern suburbs. But in the mornings and late afternoons he sat at the window of his room with a pair of binoculars.

For two days he saw no one leave or arrive at the house. The target, he feared, had flown for good.

Then on the third day, a Friday afternoon, a BMW pulled up outside. A small, pretty woman climbed out. Smartly dressed and very self-assured, he thought. She looked to be in a hurry.

This might be his only chance. He ran downstairs and collected his estate car which was parked on a nearby meter. By the time he’d driven back the two blocks to his hotel, the woman was leaving with two suitcases.

With a smirk of satisfaction on his face, O’Dowd settled down to follow her car. He always enjoyed that sort of challenge.

It was to be a long drive to Wokingham.

He parked across the road from the gates of Hurlingham Boarding School. A banner had been strung along the adjoining railings: SUMMER FETE AND SPORTS DAY. Twenty minutes later Pippa Harrison’s car re-emerged, this time with a boy of about ten in the front passenger seat.

O’Dowd selected first, signalled and pulled out to follow the BMW back to London.

Patrick McGirl had charged one of the mainland support teams with finding suitable locations of the type specified by Hughie Dougan. He had been quite precise. Three empty or derelict shops with easy access in different parts of the city, but away from the centre which would be swarming with alert cops. No evidence of dossers, junkies or glue-sniffers.

Several suitable sites had been found, stealthily broken into and Polaroid photographs taken.’ They settled on one corner shop in a Victorian estate due for demolition off the East India Dock Road near the Isle of Dogs. Another in Deptford and one more in the back streets of Lambeth.

On the day in question, McGirl received the first evidence that the effect of the campaign was starting to bite. Just a small picture caption story in the Daily Mail. It showed a deserted stretch of Oxford Street outside the D.H. Evans store. In the background was an Attack Barrow and a Tactica truck, painted white. The fact wasn’t mentioned, but McGirl knew that both types of equipment had only ever been deployed in Northern Ireland.

The Renault van was a duplicate of one owned by a genuine firm of shopfitters in Shooters Hill; the bombers’ vehicle had been hot-wired and stolen to order by the support team, then scrupulously valeted and stored in a lock-up garage. That afternoon it had been collected by one of the AID AN team and driven to the farm at Henley-on-Thames. In the secure barn, false number plates were fitted as well as cheap vinyl livery graphics. At ten o’clock in the evening McGirl drove to the rented house, parking in the integral garage for ten minutes before leaving again. Only this time Hughie Dougan and his daughter were crouched on the floor under a blanket in the rear.

On his arrival at the fortified farm, he found the AID AN team ready and waiting. This night two of the four would be accompanying Dougan and Clodagh on their mission. Moira Lock, the farmer’s daughter from Fermanagh, and Leo Muldoon from Derry’s Bogside district; neither had a record.

‘Meet AIDAN,’ McGirl said to them. ‘You just need to know him as Hughie — and this is Clodagh.’

Leo was lanky, long thin wrists showing at the cuffs of his leather jacket, his ungainly movements creating the false impression that he wasn’t fully in control of his limbs. His skin-tight jeans just served to emphasise his height as he lurched towards Dougan and extended his bony hand. ‘You’ll be doing a fine job, Hughie. It’s an honour to meet you.’ Beneath the wind-blown mop of black hair his face was pimply and adolescent, his long teeth seeming too big for the cheerful mouth.

Dougan’s cheeks coloured with pride. McGirl had never been more than dour and matter-of-fact; even FitzPatrick had seemed aloof and sceptical about his capabilities.

Yet here was a front-line soldier, a young buck with nerves of steel and matchless courage who had been risking his neck almost nightly, running the gauntlet of the police on the streets of besieged London to place his bombs. Leo Muldoon’s words and his smile appeared genuine, the look of awe and respect in his eyes was unmistakable.

Hughie Dougan was back. Living the dream of eighteen lost years. To where he had never truly been before. At the top of his deadly profession, respected for what he always knew he was. The best. They’d written songs about him once, but they were forgotten now. When this was over, perhaps they’d be heard again, resounding in the bars and clubs of west Belfast.

Meanwhile Clodagh regarded Moira Lock with mild interest. She was considerably shorter and of a lighter build than Dougan’s daughter and several years younger. A lack of confidence showed in the way she carried herself with shoulders slightly hunched and in her nervous half-smile. Watching but not speaking.

The three bombs were identical: five-gallon oil drums, the bases of which had been cut away in order to fit the thirty pounds of ANS explosive and a TPU before being fixed back on with Isopon plastic filler to make completely sealed units. Only a dowel pin was accessible by unscrewing the small top cap together with an LED light. While this remained unlit he was safe to pull the pin which would irreversibly trigger the switch to start the timer. That itself could be overridden at any moment by one of the three antihandling devices which came into immediate effect: a passive short-wave radio signal detector which would cut into a priority ten-minute fuse; an X-ray-sensitive switch used in the manufacture of hospital body scanners and a sensitive vibration trembler adapted from a cheap Taiwanese luggage alarm.

Dougan’s combination was designed to thwart the use of a mechanical Wheelbarrow or a hands-on approach by the bombdisppsal experts. But for the last of the bombs that would be found that night, he planned an additional refinement. One he hadn’t used for ten long years. The pressure mat. Ironical that. It had been the forensic evidence from that defused pressure-mat booby trap in Ballymurphy that had led to his second conviction. This time it would catch one of the so-called bomb-disposal experts, he was sure of that. Leastways the bastards would have to eat their words, would look like fools in the national press after that stupid, boastful article…

Now the Renault van was carefully loaded with the drums, each freshly sprayed in gleaming black paint, giving no hint as to the deadly tricks that lurked within them.

Toolboxes, timber and assorted light fittings were also stowed, together with a hastily contrived signboard that read: Stebbings Emergency Repairs and Overnite Shopfitting and a genuine telephone number.

McGirl handed out blue overalls, the backs of which had been stencilled early that day by an innocent company of screen-printers in Kingston-on-Thames.

‘Too bloody short,’ Muldoon complained.

McGirl grinned malevolently. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not goin’ to a fucken fashion show.’

It broke the tension and the team members laughed nervously.

Muldoon swung up into the driver’s seat, Hughie Dougan next to him. Behind them the girls were climbing into a red Escort saloon, another duplicate of a genuine car. Automatic pistols were carried beneath the front seats.

‘Ready?’ McGirl asked.

The van driver took a deep breath and forced a smile. ‘Can’t wait.’

McGirl nodded to the farm manager who stood by the barn doors. The interior was plunged into darkness and the vehicle lights came on, engine noise and exhaust starting to fill the cavernous outbuilding. The doors swung wide, and the Renault’s headlamps carved a swathe across the muddy yard, picking up the glistening veil of drizzle.

And they were off, out into the night, on the road towards London.

They made fast time down the M40 and Western Avenue, the traffic fairly light at this time of night. Muldoon regularly checked his speed, keeping to sixty, not wanting to attract attention by travelling too slow or too fast. He also kept watch in his rearview mirror for the lights of the following Escort which would provide the necessary armed backup and their means of escape if anything went wrong. In the meantime he noticed three police patrol cars passing at different times in the opposite direction; it struck him as more than might normally be expected.

But if he were perturbed in any way, Muldoon gave no outward sign. He chatted and joked, Dougan assumed, to cover his nerves. ‘Must be some time since you’ve been on a job, Hughie?’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t want to say no. That he’d always been the bomb maker, never the bomber. Didn’t want to admit that his guts were churning like so much cold porridge. That he was scared, not of confrontation with the police or even death itself. It was the thought of another long stretch in prison that he couldn’t face; wouldn’t face.

‘Sure you’re all right if you brazen it out. Smile and be chirpy with the Brits. It works as well here as it does across the water. Cheerful, polite and no smart backchat.’ He removed one hand from the wheel and tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.

‘But then they don’t know what’s going on upstairs. Like the song says, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking. That way we get the last laugh. Sure we’re okay.’

Ten minutes later they were approaching the A40(M) flyover into Marylebone and his bravado evaporated. The nearside lane had been coned off. He glimpsed the POLICE SLOW sign and saw the patrol car with its blue flashing light and an officer with a yellow fluorescent jacket and storm torch waving traffic into the makeshift lay-by. A vehicle safety check.

Muldoon hit the brakes, checked that the Escort was close behind. They slowed to a crawl, both men feeling the increasing thud of their heartbeats, their mouths going dry. A Mercedes in front, a white Fiesta van in front of that, told to pull in. The Mercedes waved on. Now them, the officer flashing his torch in their cab, then along the side.

Then a wave of the torch, move on.

* Dougan felt the relief squeeze out of him as Muldoon crept past, his eyes flicking sideways at the line of trucks and vans that had pulled over.

Muldoon chuckled suddenly, the release of tension having an effect like laughing gas. ‘Did you see that, Hughie?’

‘What, the vehicles?’

‘Did you not notice anything?’

He shook his head.

‘Unmarked, all of them. Safety check, my arse. No cars, you notice. They’re only pulling in unmarked vehicles, don’t you know. Sure the bastards never learn.’

Stebbings Shopfitters, Dougan thought. It had been their salvation.

There was no further problem as they continued on, following the A40(M) as it metamorphosed into the Marylebone Road, then Pentonville and City as it took them across the north of London towards Shoreditch. The square mile of the City of London itself had been sealed off since the Bishopsgate bomb and security had been tightened even further in recent weeks, so now they gave the area a wide berth. Muldoon confidently took to the back streets, working towards their first target, the disused corner shop at the end of a row of dilapidated Victorian terrace houses off the East India Dock Road.

Muldoon jerked on the handbrake.

Dougan peered out at the faded fasciaboard above the shop. Patel & Son Grocers. Splattered with paint, daubed with fascist British National Party slogans and showing unmistakable signs of firebomb damage.

‘Remember,’ Leo Muldoon said, ‘if we’re challenged it’s all front and bravado. No one will be expecting any trouble in this area…’

‘I know that,’ Dougan snapped, ‘it was my idea!’ Then he quickly apologised. The truth was, he felt terrified.

Muldoon took it well, smiling as though he understood, before checking his watch. One o’clock. Time for all the drunks to have wandered home from the pubs, to have had their fish-and-chip suppers. The street rain-slicked and empty except for a mongrel dog rummaging in the dustbins. Just two window lights visible. Pensioners with insomnia, Dougan guessed, or out-of-work adolescents playing rock videos into the early hours.

Muldoon checked through his side window. The Escort was parked just round the corner, its lights doused.

‘Let’s go,’ he said hoarsely.

They climbed out and crossed the pavement to the door. As they did so Muldoon stepped unexpectedly in a dog turd and cursed silently.

‘C’mon,’ Dougan urged.

They used their bodies to shield the crowbar from view as Muldoon jammed the metal tip in the rotten wood by the lock, wrenching it open.

Somewhere a woman shouted, screamed. A man laughed, sounding drunk. An empty lager can clattered in the gutter, rolling in the light breeze. The expectant silence settled again.

They returned to the van, Muldoon taking out the sign and placing it beneath the boarded-up window. It was an elaborate precaution, seeming unnecessary-unless something really did go wrong. Then the two of them lowered the first drum onto the two-wheeled porter’s trolley and rolled it into the shop.

Depositing the load in the storeroom behind the smashed glass of the counter, Muldoon held a torch while Dougan unscrewed the top cap and inserted his forefinger in the loop attached to the dowel pin.

He looked across at Muldoon, seeing the sweat on his skin and the fear in his eyes. ‘When I pull this, Leo, the whole thing becomes live. The trembler’s on a hair-trigger — it needs only the slightest vibration. So don’t fall over anything on your way out.’

Suddenly Muldoon looked more gawky and awkward than ever. There was no humour in the grinning boyish face. ‘Sure I’ll be like a shadow, Hughie.’

They checked their watches. One fifteen exactly. The timer set to run for two hours twenty-five minutes.

Dougan nodded, eased out the dowel pin and delicately rescrewed the cap. Carefully Muldoon shone his torch beam so that they could both retrace*their footsteps to the shop.

‘Don’t slam the door,’ Dougan reminded.

His hand trembling slightly, Muldoon eased it closed. Suddenly both men realised that they’d hardly breathed for the last two minutes.

Then they were gone, driving away into the night, the girls still following closely in the Escort. The preplanned route took them back to the East India Dock Road, past the Isle of Dogs where they turned off for the Blackwall Tunnel which would take them under the Thames to Greenwich.

Clearing the far side of the river, Muldoon left the motorway at Shooters Hill Road, turning west to run parallel with the Thames and past the Marquis of Granby pub before driving into the Deptford back streets.

They drew up outside a parade of shops in a council estate, the Escort pulling in some fifty metres behind. This time the target was a shop that had obviously served as an outlet for Oxfam; now it was empty, its windows lime-washed white. Dougan and Muldoon followed an identical procedure to the first, returning to the Renault at precisely two o’clock.

Half-a-mile down the road they stopped beside a row of three telephone kiosks and Muldoon climbed out. As the support team’s reconnaissance report had forecast, only the Phonecard machine had not been vandalised. He dialled the X number and waited. After four rings it was answered.

McGirl identified himself. ‘Michael Collins.’

‘Griffith here,’ Muldoon replied. The names of two of the old IRA’s founders in 1920. ‘Two down and one to go. On schedule.’

When Muldoon hung up, McGirl replaced his own receiver at the call box in Watford, north London. He had memorised the number he was about to dial.

A disinterested male voice answered. ‘Associated Newspapers.’

McGirl said: ‘Casey Mullins — Standard.”

‘I’ll try it,’ the operator said. He sounded doubtful.

It rang several times. Then: ‘News desk.’ Male.

‘I want to speak to Casey Mullins,’ McGirl repeated.

‘Sorry, mate, this is news. Casey’s on features. Won’t be in till ten — or seven if she’s on zombie shift.’

Shit, shit, shit! McGirl cursed silently. He’d thought because the first editions hit the streets by eleven, they’d all work through the night. He should have checked with the support team, they’d have known. So stupid, to have assumed… Too late now.

‘Hello, are you still there?’

McGirl said: ‘It’s urgent. Have you got her home number?’

The man’s tone changed; maybe, McGirl thought, he’d picked up the trace of Irish in his accent, putting the deputy night editor on his guard. ‘Sorry, old son, we don’t give out home numbers of staff.’

‘I said this is urgent, a matter of life and death.’

There was a sigh that could have been irritation. ‘If it’s really that serious, I could try her number and get her to call you back. But it is after two.’

McGirl thought fast. He’d be taking a risk, a terrible risk. But then no one yet knew who he was or why he was phoning. He forced the anger from his voice, adopting a lighter tone and fighting to hide his accent. ‘I would be most grateful.’ He gave the number.

‘A call box?’

‘Afraid so.’ Then added quickly: ‘My car’s broken down in the middle of nowhere. I’ll wait, but please make it quick.’

‘Of course. Who shall I say is calling?’

McGirl smiled to himself. ‘Just say a friend of Tom Harrison.’

It took the deputy night editor five minutes to find Casey’s new number, the sudden strident ring of the bedside telephone jolting her awake.

Groggily she reached for the handset, mumbling her new number and getting it wrong, brushing the hair from her eyes as she listened, scarcely comprehending, to the voice at the other end.

‘God, Mac, I thought it was World War Three,’ she mumbled, fishing for the pen and pad she’d knocked from the table. ‘Call what number?’ She jotted it down. ‘Who’d you say it was?’

Casey frowned as she listened to the answer, now sitting up clutching the duvet to her naked chest. ‘That’s all right, Mac, you didn’t interrupt anything. I was only in bed with Richard Gere when you woke me.’ Slowly, thoughtfully, she hung up.

‘Who was it? What’s wrong?’

She turned to Harrison; he was leaning on one elbow, watching her closely. ‘It was Mac on the news desk. A friend of yours rang. Wants me to call him back at a public call box. Says it’s very urgent. Didn’t give a name.’

DonTrenchard. That was Harrison’s immediate thought. Only Trenchard was cavalier enough to phone at such an hour, only Trenchard knew where he could be found. ‘The bastard. I’ll call him in the morning.’

Casey was perplexed. ‘Not you, Tom. This caller wants me to ‘call, not you. Just said he was a friend.’

‘Only Don knows I might be here.’

‘Don doesn’t have an Irish accent.’ She had begun dialling.

‘What?’

She covered the mouthpiece. ‘Mac said he thought the caller was Irish.’

Suddenly Harrison was wide awake, uncertainty creeping like the fingers of a cold hand behind his neck.

The number stopped ringing as someone picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Casey Mullins?’ a voice asked. ‘Listen and listen good, there’ll be no second chance. This is AID AN. A bomb is due to go off in approximately fifty minutes in Poplar, East London.’ He gave the address, crisply and precisely, not hurrying. ‘And a friendly warning — don’t approach the device. Pass that on to your Tick Tock Man.’ He slammed down the telephone.

Casey’s mouth dropped open and closed again, speechless, staring at the receiver in her hand as though it were contaminated. Her eyes moved across to Harrison, trying to find the words.

He reached over, snatching it from her. There was nothing but the dead tone.

She cleared her throat, ‘He’s gone.’

‘Who?’ Harrison demanded.

Her mouth was dry, arid as a desert. ‘It was a bomb threat. Somewhere in Poplar.’

Harrison shook his head, trying to clear his mind. ‘This has to be someone’s idea of a joke.’

‘I don’t think so, Tom.’ He could see now that her face was pale with shock, the fear in her eyes all too real. ‘It was the AID AN codeword.’

That was it. No one but no one would make a joke about that, not even Trenchard. He took the note pad from her. ‘I’ll call the Section on my mobile. You ring AT Branch and give them that call-box number.’

‘What’s their direct line?’

‘I don’t know.’

Shit, she’d have to go through 999.

Harrison took the mobile from his jacket hanging on the chair and punched a single number. He recognised Midge Midgely’s noncommittal voice.

‘Listen, Midge, it’s Tom here. AIDAN’s just been on the blower. There’s a warning for Poplar.’

The Yorkshireman seemed to be waking from a dream. ‘Tom? You pulling my plonker? AID AN phoned you?’

‘It came through Casey on the Standard,’ he explained vaguely. ‘We’re down to about forty-five minutes.’

Midgely realised it was no wheeze — until Harrison read over the address. ‘Patel & Son, Tom? What the hell is this? A grocer’s shop in Poplar.’

Harrison felt the ice running through his veins. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what it is, Midge, it’s a come-on. Just make sure my boys get tasked in on the job.’

‘I see.’ He sounded dubious. ‘I’ll check it out with Al.’

‘No time,’ Harrison objected.

Midge sounded like he could be chuckling. ‘No trouble, he’s kipping in the duty office.’

Of course. Divorced, Pritchard had no home to go to. No doubt he.couldn’t sleep either.

Harrison said: ‘Okay, Midge, I’m going straight there. You can get me on the mobile.’ ‘

As he replaced the telephone in his jacket pocket, he turned to find that Casey had finished her call and was already out of bed, tugging up tracksuit trousers over her naked body. ‘Don’t even think it, Tom,’ she warned. ‘That call was to my paper, so it’s my story. We can travel together or else I race you across London.’

His scowl melted into a reluctant half-smile. ‘And I can guess who’d get there first.’

By the time they’d reached Casey’s parked Mini Cooper, the Section’s Range-Rovers were screaming out of Lambeth Road, the lumbering Tactica in hot pursuit.

Muldoon swung out of Coldharbour Lane and into Brixton Hill.

‘Time?’ he asked.

‘Two forty-five,’ Dougan replied smugly. The precise time McGirl was due to ring the Samaritans with the Deptford bomb warning. He could imagine the growing pandemonium in the Met’s Explosive Section. He was actually beginning to enjoy this.

‘Sod it!’ Muldoon hissed.

‘What is it?’

The other man didn’t answer. He didn’t have to; Dougan could see it himself up ahead in the dazzling reflection of shop window lights on the wet street, bouncing off the gleaming bodywork of parked cars. Amongst all this he’d missed the flashing blue light and the policeman in the yellow dayglo waistcoat waving them down.

‘What are you going to do?’ Dougan breathed, the knot of terror tightening like a balled fist in his abdomen.

‘Hope the girls don’t panic,’ Muldoon replied tersely, beginning to wind down the window. ‘Let me do the talking…’

The officer wore sergeant’s stripes; he was middle-aged, his face pinched against the drizzle. ‘Out late, sir?’

‘Out early,’ Muldoon countered cheerfully. Dougan noticed there was no trace of an Irish accent, the’t’ dropped to sound like a Londoner. ‘Brick through a shop window and the place vandalised.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, as if in explanation. The policeman shone his torch on the van’s flank. ‘Oh, I see, emergency shopfitters, eh? Bloody vandals around here — our loss, your gain.’

Muldoon chuckled; he seemed genuinely relaxed. ‘What’s going on, then?’

‘Just routine. Out-of-date road fund licences and hooky goods, you know.’

I know, Muldoon thought, so what’s that bastard doing in the flak jacket, hiding in the doorway shadows with a Heckler & Koch and a firearms-unit car parked farther up? The Escort had overtaken them, had pulled in just ahead of the police vehicle. If the shit hit the fan, Moira would know what to do. Take out the man in the doorway and splatter his backup as they sat in their car, tired and bored. They would run for the getaway car, Moira covering.

‘Where are you headed, sir?’

‘Not far. Off Streatham High Road.’ Muldoon could see another officer now, looking directly at the Renault as he spoke into a radio mike, flex extending from the open window. Checking the registration number against the computer. No fears there. An identical blue Renault was owned by the genuine Stebbings company. Easypeasy.

‘Licence, sir?’

‘Sure.’

No problem. Genuine licence that would check out. The Brits were so fucking trusting on their own turf.

‘My son used to work for Stebbings.’

Sudden paralysis caught in Muldoon’s spine, spreading up to his throat and jaw. He swallowed, hard. ‘Pardon?’

‘Has old Cyril retired yet?’

A shrug. ‘No idea, I’m new.’

‘I’d better look in the back.’

Shit! ‘Sure.’ Calm.

Opening his door, taking an age. Into the wet drizzle like the clammy hand of death. Slow-motion, all the time in the world, looking ahead at the Escort, knowing that Moira would be reaching for the gun. Bizarre and unreal, his heart pounding so hard and so deep it hurt his ears as the blood thudded through the veins in his temples.

The doors creaked open; the flashlight revealed the lengths of timber, the toolbox, the sign…

‘What’s in the drum?’

‘Varnish.’ Glib. So goddamn fucking cool.

The officer on the radio nodded at the sergeant.

‘Thanks for your cooperation, sir. Watch your speed now, it’s slippery tonight.’

YEEEAH!