The Tick Tock Man

13

Casey tore through the deserted London streets, slipping expertly through the gears in fluid heel-toe changes at the approach to each bend, bringing on the power at the apex, straightening out the Mini Cooper with a roar from the exhaust.

‘Where the hell did you learn to drive like that?’

‘My first husband drove dragsters as a hobby. He taught me to drive, then divorced me.’ She grinned. ‘He was lucky to get out of the marriage in one piece.’

‘I can believe it.’

With Harrison navigating, they reached the corner shop in Poplar just five minutes after the Section convoy. Local police were clearing the area, attempting to hold back angry and anxious locals who were wandering around in nightdresses and pyjamas and pushing up against the cordon tapes.

Harrison pushed through the crowd, flashed his pass at the bewildered young constable.

Al Pritchard was standing by one of the Range-Rovers and saw him coming. He didn’t mince his words. ‘You know what this is, Tom? This is PIRA cocking a snook at your bloody bravado that we’ve got ‘em licked.’

Harrison smiled gently. ‘Then we’re agreed on something, Al. Poplar means nothing to them. It’s a blatant come-on.’

‘And phoned in person to your journalist lady friend.’ He almost spat the words, ignoring Casey’s presence. ‘Well, that’s it and we’ve barely ten minutes.’

‘Is the area cleared?’

Pritchard’s eyes, red-rimmed, were like chips of frost. ‘Is it fuck?’

‘What’s been found?’

‘They sent in a local constable. Thank Christ the lad had some imagination — read your friend’s articles, I imagine, found a bloody great oil drum. Front door’d been jemmied. He went in…’

‘Jesus,’ Harrison breathed. ‘If AID AN says don’t go close, he means it.’

The local police inspector was standing listening to their conversation. Despite the pompous tilt of his jaw and the steely glint in his eyes, Harrison recognised instantly that he was a man out of his depth. ‘Look, you people, I’ve still got officers clearing the area. There’s an old people’s home not a hundred metres away, over there, so what are you recommending?’

Pritchard said: ‘Nothing’s guaranteed, sir, but we’ve a squad from Northern Ireland here, the best. We’re pushing the end of the time limit anyway. If they go in with a controlled explosion…’ He glanced at Harrison.

The SATO nodded. They had nothing to lose, they were between a rock and a hard place and they knew it. A few minutes either way would make no difference.

‘Go ahead,’ the police chief decided.

Pritchard turned to Harrison, the invisible smile unmistakable. ‘Over to you, Tom.’

Harrison called across to Captain Heathcote who stood beside the Wheelbarrow, Corporal Clarke next to him, big, eager and with his large red face perspiring brightly. ‘Go!’

‘WAIT!’ Pritchard shouted suddenly.

All heads turned.

‘Can you run her on cable?’ the Sexpo asked.

Heathcote nodded. ‘Sir?’

Pritchard was clearly tired, leaning against the side of the Rover, thinking back. ‘This is AID AN.’

Harrison nodded, indicating to his captain to rerig the robot. ‘So?’

‘Before your time, Tom. I’m reminded of the late lamented Hughie Dougan, back in — when? — the early seventies. He fixed some crude device from a radio-controlled model aircraft… The bomb was triggered by radio waves.’

‘We’ve no ECM here…’ Harrison began.

Pritchard regarded him closely, for once almost as a friend. ‘Indulge an old man’s whim, Tom.’

‘It’s being done, Al.’

Clarke had worked at lightning speed and already the robot was making its way down the street.

Harrison and Pritchard joined Heathcote at the back of the Tactica as he watched the monitor. The view from the Wheelbarrow’s front camera swung round to show the corner shop, the picture jerking as the tracks negotiated the kerbstone, the telescopic arm probing at the front door. It swung open at a touch.

‘How close did the constable go?’ Harrison asked the local police chief.

‘Just peered into the back room, thank God, then beat a hasty retreat.’

‘Did he actually step into the room?’

‘He says not, but then he was a bit unnerved afterwards.’

The barrow’s spotlight played over the debris within the shop until Clarke located the back door. Again the picture began to shake as the corporal tentatively edged the robot forward, its steel arm punching open the door.

They all glimpsed it: the squat, shiny black drum.

Then the picture trembled as the door crashed back against the wall and the screen went blank.

The sound was simultaneous, a low deep-gutted roar that shook the damp night air. They felt it through the soles of their shoes and the trembling of their hearts, vibrating like trampolines on stretched tendons. Falling glass made small sharp detonations as it shattered, followed by the heavier sound of roof slates crashing to the pavement.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Pritchard said and began running forward, Harrison and Heathcote hard on his heels.

Turning the corner, they came skidding to a halt, the scene before them reminiscent of the wartime German blitz. The shop doors and windows had been blown across the street and one wall had collapsed. Fire now engulfed the entire corner, flames leaping from the banisters and doorframes and rubbish that had accumulated on the derelict shop floor. A geyser of water fountained from a fractured main causing the fire to crackle and fizz, sending eerie elongated shadows dancing down the walls of the narrow street, flickering light glittering on the carpet of broken glass. Only the base of the Wheelbarrow remained recognisable. The top hamper of the robot had been ejected skyward from the shop and had ploughed through the roof of a house opposite. Later it was found in the kitchen, having collapsed two ceilings during its fall from orbit.

‘What do you think it was?’ Heathcote asked.

Harrison’s eyes narrowed as the flames devoured fresh material and increased in intensity. ‘My guess is some type of trembler, but…’

Pritchard completed the sentence. ‘I doubt we’ll ever know. The bastards.’

The police chief had joined them, the fires from the street reflected in his eyes, his face devoid of colour. ‘Why? Why here, for God’s sake?’

‘Who knows,’ Pritchard murmured.

The policeman forced his attention away from the mesmeric scene. ‘There were still some old people in that home. Only a few minor cuts, but some are badly traumatised. Can I continue to evacuate?’

Pritchard said: ‘There could be a secondary. This bomber’s known for it.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘It’s your decision, but they’re probably safer where they are. I’d get your men to search the entire block and surrounding streets first, if I were you.’

They turned at the sound of Les Appleyard running towards them. ‘Al, it’s Midge on the radio. Looks like there’s another one.’

‘I just knew it. Where?’

‘Over the river. Deptford. Shall I task another of Tom’s teams?’

Pritchard turned to Harrison. ‘I hope you’re satisfied, Tom? AIDAN’s now having great fun deliberately wasting our barrows on low-grade targets.’

Harrison could find no reply. Pritchard knew he was waging a propaganda war, but how could he tell the man the full extent of the plan, a dangerous gamble of which he disapproved but had been obliged to participate in.

‘The Provos could be drawing us out of the city,’ Heathcote observed. ‘Poplar, then Deptford. We’ll have nothing left if they’ve got a spectacular planned for Westminster or the West End.’

Harrison and Pritchard looked at each other for a long and acrimonious moment; neither could deny the captain from Belfast might very well be right.

The Sexpo made his decision. ‘Tell Midge we’re on our way. Keep Tom’s teams in reserve.’

Harrison touched Pritchard’s arm. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Al. We’ve still got our two Mk8s immediately to hand as well as your two.’

The other man turned, the anger clear in his face. ‘But for how long? You saw what just happened. We’ll handle Deptford my way.’

Harrison caught Les Appleyard’s eye, saw him give a shrug of resignation.

It was the last one.

Muldoon pulled in at the kerbside, his nerves still frayed after their close encounter at the police checkpoint.

Instinctively he didn’t like the location. It was too bright with street lights, too overlooked. But it was also too late to do anything about it.

Same procedure, the girls parked behind in the red Escort while he and Dougan planted the sign by the window, forced the door of the one-time fashion shop and wheeled the final bomb inside. Barely seven minutes in total.

Til finish off,’ Dougan said.

Muldoon nodded. This one was going to be different. A totally separate three-pound Semtex secondary charge wrapped in three inch galvanised nails held in place with strips of plastic parcel tape. Detonated by a pressure mat hidden somewhere under the flooring. If that was triggered it would no doubt also set off the oil-drum bomb. Blow up half the fucking street, Muldoon thought.

He left Dougan to it, pleased to be away. His nerves had suffered enough for one night. Twice now he had backed away from one of Hughie’s boxes of black tricks. Holding his breath, feeling the sweat coursing down his back, the damp seeping into his underpants. Terrified to breathe, terrified that he’d bang into something in the dark, create some inadvertent vibration that would be enough to set the bugger off. Or some local resident’s radio alarm would go off for the early shift and trigger the passive signal detector. Only the X-ray-sensitive switch held no fears. As for the rest of Hughie Dougan’s gadgets, hell, he wouldn’t want to be the poor bastard who had to defuse them.

He lit a cigarette, looked up and down the wet, deserted street, at the bright shop windows and the pools of light. Nothing and no one.

Clodagh beckoned from the driver’s window of the Escort. He sauntered back towards her.

The two women climbed out of the car, anxious to stretch their legs. Dougan’s daughter said: ‘It’s just been on the radio news ‘

‘Christ, radio!’

The woman laughed. ‘Wrong type of signal, Leo, don’t worry. Worry if you see some kid with a radio-controlled toy car.’

Muldoon felt foolish. ‘Sorry, what news?’

‘The Poplar bomb went off. No details yet.’

The Irishman grinned ‘That’ll make the bastards eat their words.’ He offered Moira Lock a cigarette.

As she looked up from the flame of his lighter, the expression froze on her face. She could see the distant white police car crawling beside the pavement, a routine night patrol checking the shops in the arcade.

‘Peelers,’ she breathed.

Muldoon glanced up. One beat officer out of the vehicle and going to a doorway. A dossier? A suspected breakin? Christ! ‘Moira, go get Hughie, quick.’ He turned to Clodagh. ‘Back in the car and get it started.’

As Moira disappeared inside the shop, Muldoon scrambled into the Renault.

‘Hughie! Quick!’

Dougan turned at the sound of the girl’s voice, the dowel peg he had pulled still in his hand. Suddenly he realised where she was in the darkness. ‘Don’t move!’ he yelled, flashing his torch.

‘What?’

The last thing he saw in the circle of light was the expression of puzzlement on the pretty pale face as her foot stepped onto the loose lino.

A huge bursting bubble of lacerating glass and brickwork exploded across the street in front of Clodagh’s eyes. She just saw the Renault van lifted bodily into the air, like some levitational conjuring trick and hurled across the street into the shop window opposite before the shock wave caught her own car. Her view through the windscreen was a swirling panorama of the devastation as the vehicle spun like a fairground dodgem, slewing across the road until it faced the opposite direction.

Miraculously the windscreen had not shattered. She stared blindly ahead, hands grasping the steering wheel, her dark world closing in, the words screaming in her skull. Da is dead! Da is dead!

Rubble was bouncing on the car roof as it landed, glass crashing all around. She glanced back, saw Muldoon lurching from the van that had been concertinaed sideways by the force. Blood poured from his head as he stumbled blindly across the pavement. Beyond him the two beat officers had recovered from their shock and were running towards the scene. Lights were coming on in the bedrooms overlooking the street, heads appearing at shattered windows, people in their nightwear emerging, bewildered and bloodied, into the debris-strewn road.

Clodagh jammed the gear lever into reverse and stamped on the accelerator. The engine howled and tyres squealed, glass crunching noisily as she pulled alongside Muldoon.

He fumbled for the handle of the passenger door, yanked it open and fell inside.

She changed into first, her foot hard down, and the car screeched into the night.

‘I don’t like it,’ Harrison said.

‘You don’t have to.’

Pritchard’s mind was clearly made up. He walked away towards the Section’s Range-Rover where Les Appleyard was waiting. After witnessing the Poplar incident the Expo was taking no chances and was kitted out in a full bombsuit and Nomex hood beneath his helmet.

Harrison crossed the street to the Mini Cooper where Casey Mullins was using his mobile, telling Hal Hoskins where to come to take the photographs.

She glanced up as he approached and he thought how efficient and professional she looked, yet how vulnerable. The drizzle had darkened her copper hair and flattened it against the sides of her head, the ends dripping onto the traditional reporter’s trench coat and running down to the jogging pants and white trainers. No make-up — there’d been no time — and that made her look wide-eyed and almost childlike.

‘What’s happening, Tom?’

‘Les is going in.’

‘ Al won’t use another Wheelbarrow?’ Her eyes were bright, but clouded with concern.

‘I can’t budge him. I can understand his point even if I don’t agree with it. This bomb looks identical, which could mean the same highly sensitive trembler. Les can make a more stealthy approach than the robot. And there’ll be no radio contact, just in case.’

‘What will Les do? Use a disrupter?’

He smiled, amused at how easily she’d absorbed the language and the techniques. ‘No, it’s a sealed steel drum. He’ll use a Flatsword — you know, the type I told you I used at the Europa recently. But Al wants a picture first.’

‘Picture?’

‘An X-ray, so we can get some idea what we’re up against. With our experience we can recognise most electronic gizmos, circuitry and so on.’

‘I see.’ She brushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. ‘And the evacuation?’ She meant the adjoining council estate.

‘There never is enough time. But I don’t think AIDAN’s intention here is to kill innocent civilians.’

‘Then what is the point, Tom? I don’t understand.’

‘It’s to kill an Expo or an ATO. To prove I was wrong about what I said.’

She stared hard, trying to see behind those impassive dark eyes. ‘In my last article, you mean?’

Harrison didn’t answer, couldn’t. How could he tell her she was an unwitting party to all this? Just another victim, just another small contributor to the jigsaw.

‘God, Tom, that’s terrible.’

Les Appleyard was on the move now, his helmet in place, waddling round the corner, carrying the blue plastic Inspector camera, and out of sight.

A portable camcorder and tripod had been erected at the roads crossroads which relayed Appleyard’s rapid progress to a monitor in Pritchard’s Range-Rover and Harrison moved across with Casey to watch.

Pritchard’s driver called from the front seat of the Rover. ‘Message from the Ops Room room, sir. It’s Midgely.’

The Sexpo turned away from the screen as Appleyard was seen entering the one-time Oxfam shop. ‘Yes?’

‘Says to tell you there’s been an explosion in Lambeth. He’s tasking in an Expo team. Reports from two local coppers saw people acting suspiciously just before and after.’

Pritchard’s impatience was on a hair-trigger. ‘Meaning?’

The driver’s smile positively beamed. ‘Looks like an own goal, sir. Possible two of the buggers have blown themselves up.’

Harrison was only half listening, his attention riveted to the monitor and the street scene, deserted and brightly lit like a clapboard film set. He’d seen Appleyard go in, was visualising every movement of the stealthy approach he would be making, anticipating each of Les’s thoughts, living each tentative footstep himself. Could imagine his friend stooping gently, carefully going onto one knee. Eyes transfixed by the solid black drum. Hating the thing like it was the very essence of evil. A living entity with a clockwork heartbeat and a black soul. Les watching for the slightest movement, careful not to make a loose floorboard tremble. Carefully placing the two taped-together Polaroid cassettes behind the device. Resting the X-ray camera on his knee, adjusting the focus.

Own goal! At last the driver’s words permeated Harrison’s brain. Registered. Sweet Jesus God! An own goal for AID AN.

Totally alone in the empty Oxfam shop in the deserted street, Les Appleyard pressed the button of his camera.

Inside the oil drum, the X-ray-sensitive microswitch clicked position and completed the circuit.

Leo Muldoon had made a remarkable recovery from the shock of being blasted across the street. ‘Slow down, Clodie, for God’s sake. We’ll be okay if you keep your nerve.’

She took a deep breath, lifted her right foot and tried to calm herself. Staring ahead as the wipers dragged aside the rain, she was scarcely aware which road she was on, blinded by the tears that welled in her eyes and ran freely down her cheeks. Occasional oncoming headlights rose out of the night dazzling and refracting brightly on the lacquered tarmac before screaming past in the opposite direction.

‘I’m sorry, Leo.’ Her voice was weak, fractured.

He looked at her, felt for her sorrow. He wanted to comfort her, this woman who had impressed him with her strength and dedication. But he couldn’t find the words. ‘Hold the faith, Clodie. I’m sure that’s what your da would have wanted.’

His words finally registered and she took her eyes from the road for a moment. He saw her smile; it was the first time that night. A gentle smile of appreciation for his words; somehow he didn’t think she ever smiled a lot. ‘How are the cuts?’

He’d soaked three handkerchiefs with the blood but at last he seemed to have staunched the flow. ‘Sure I’ll be fine.’

They had passed through Kingston-on-Thames, crossed the bridge and skirted Hampton Court Palace, now taking the Lower Sunbury Road towards Shepperton.

Muldoon consulted the map as they passed the water towers and reservoirs. ‘Slow here, take the next right.’

She checked behind as she turned without signalling. There was nothing else on the road.

Ahead the grey Nissan Sunny was where the other team members had left it, parked by the kerb, the key in the exhaust pipe. Clodagh pulled in behind it and switched off the engine. As they stepped out, the night was damp and chill, the only light from the moon which appeared fleetingly from behind the scudding rain cloud. Without exchanging a word, they stripped off their overalls and, taking new trainers from a plastic bag in the Escort’s boot, changed their shoes. Everything worn on the bombing raid ‘ was then locked in before Muldoon swiftly unscrewed the registration plate and replaced the original number of the stolen vehicle.

He tried to sound cheerful. ‘All done.’

She reached back inside and set the incendiary device timer for thirty minutes, then shut and locked the door.

They drove the Nissan Sunny straight on, rejoined the Staines road and continued for a mile before filtering onto the M3. At Junction 2 they took the M25 orbital northwards, then turned onto the M4 just after Heathrow Airport and headed west.

Back in Sunbury, on the quiet reservoir road, the Ford Escort exploded and burst into flames.

Within twenty minutes of the Deptford explosion, Les Appleyard was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital in I Lambeth where he underwent emergency surgery to remove his right leg. One testicle had been destroyed in the explosion and careful needlework was required to save the second; his remaining leg was horrendously pulped, but the surgeon believed there was a chance that it could be saved.

His buttocks too had beeri badly lacerated, but the bombsuit had taken much of the force, reducing the injuries to his pelvis and trunk. Both hands were burned, but not severely and the damage to his face looked worse than it was. Miraculously his eyes had escaped injury, but both eardrums were badly ruptured.

The following day, heavily sedated, he was transferred by ambulance to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot close to the family home in Guildford. Through the dreamlike veil of anaesthesia he was only vaguely aware of his arrival at the bleak brick Victorian building. The houseman’s welcoming words of encouragement were lost on him, but he felt the reassuring squeeze of his arm before he began the rattling trolley ride down the corridor. Counting the endless lights passing high above his head, wondering about the strange smell of disinfectant and cooking cabbages from the adjoining kitchens. He was too weak, too disorientated to realise that his leg had gone, the wound left open, the flaps of skin from the lost limb preserved to cover the raw stump.

Ward Six and the face of an angel, the prettiest porcelain face he had ever seen, framed against the wide triangular cap veil. The loveliest and most compassionate eyes. He did not register the grey shirtwaister and red epaulettes of the Queen Alexandra’s.

He told her how pretty she was, too, and wondered why she did not seem to hear.

But as Sister Di McGuire, a Dublin girl, looked down at her patient, all she saw were the cuts and the swellings, the glazed half-closed eyes and the almost imperceptible movement of the parched lips. She and the nurses knew who he was, what he did and what he had done. Tender, eager hands transferred him to the bed, their bodies strengthened by their anger and their pity, then watched while the registrar, an army major, made his examination and ordered the epidural. The sister nodded, turning quickly so that the surgeon would not see her tears as she thought of the terrible, awful waste of it all.

At lunch time Appleyard’s wife Doreen visited. She sat beside him, ashen-faced with shock and her eyes red from hours of remorseless weeping, and watched. Because of his injuries she could not even hold his hand; she had to be content with a desperate attempt at thought transference, willing him to open his eyes, willing him to recognise her. Even for one flickering second, for one half-smile. What she would have given for that. But he didn’t stir. Appleyard just drifted on through his sedated sea of dreams and the agony for Doreen was made worse because all she could see in her mind was her husband playing football with their two sons in the back garden earlier that summer. So fit and strong; always so strong. So unlike herself. She had always relied on his mental and physical strength, fed off it, she recognised that now. And here he was, more helpless than a baby.

‘There’s a possibility we can save his other leg,’ the consultant surgeon explained. Lieutenant Colonel Wallace was in his fifties, stout and florid-faced, that curious blend of military man and physician, combining compassion with a no-nonsense acceptance of the facts. ‘We’ll operate this afternoon.’

It was a long moment before she could find her voice. ‘Can you tell me — what you think, what are the chances?’

His smile gave her strength, despite his reply. ‘Not good, I’m afraid. But your husband is a brave man and a fighter.’

‘He’d hate to be in a wheelchair.’

Wallace nodded. ‘But he’ll be very pleased to be alive. Very pleased to see you and your children again.’

Those words were the comfort and hope she needed. And she took his advice to go home and to take strength from the support of family and friends who had gathered round. Yet all the time she had one eye on the clock, knowing that this was a critical period as Colonel Wallace attempted to screw an outer aluminium fixator into the bone of her husband’s remaining shattered leg.

After a sleepless night and endless cups of coffee, it was finally dawn and she waited with trepidation for the telephone call inviting her to visit.

At last it came. The operation had been initially successful although its viability was still in question. At least Appleyard was conscious and asking for her. Much encouraged, she took a taxi to the hospital, not trusting herself to drive.

Wallace had been right, her husband was clearly overjoyed to be alive. When she arrived, Sister McGuire was holding a cup of tea for him which he drank through a straw. He was pale and weak and spoke in a hoarse whisper, hardly able to hear yet making feeble jokes about nothing in particular. They talked about her and the children and the kindness of in-laws whom normally they barely tolerated — his condition wasn’t mentioned.

Fifteen minutes later Doreen thought it best to leave and allow him to rest, promising to return that evening.

As she stepped into the corridor she saw Tom Harrison and a woman she did not know; they were talking to Colonel Wallace.

Harrison recognised her. ‘Doreen, sweetheart — I’m so sorry.’

There was no warmth in her eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to see Les. It’s the first chance I’ve had to get away from London. How is he?’

‘How do you think he is?’ The anger, the accusation were unmistakable.

Harrison felt uncomfortable, unsure why she was so hostile. He put it down to shock. ‘If there’s anything I can do?’

‘I think you’ve done enough, don’t you? That nonsense in the newspapers, just goading those Irish bastards to try something.

Les thought it was a mistake. Well, he was right, wasn’t he? But it wasn’t you who paid the price — it was my Les.’ She appeared to notice Casey for the first time, but her attention remained focused on Harrison. ‘I heard that you and Pippa have split up.’

It could have been a sympathetic acknowledgment of the situation by a friend of both parties, yet Doreen’s tone was again one of accusation.

As she glanced sideways at Casey, the meaning was clear. If this woman, this stranger, was the reason, then Pippa had done the right thing.

There was an awkward silence between Harrison and Casey as Doreen left and Colonel Wallace went to see if Appleyard was strong enough for more visitors.

‘That was awful,’ Casey said at last. ‘I thought you were great friends with Les and Doreen.’

He swallowed hard. ‘We were, once.’

She could see that he was hurt. ‘Then why did she react like that? You didn’t plant the bomb. It was hardly your fault.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. One thing I’ve learned over the years — you see it all the time with victims and their relatives. They can’t hate faceless killers. How do you hate’someone you don’t know, let alone understand?’ It was as though he were trying to answer a private question of his own. ‘Perhaps I’m just an easier target for her.’

Wallace emerged from the doors of Ward Six, the sister by his side.

‘He’d like to see you, Major Harrison.’

‘Five minutes only, mind,’ Sister McGuire added.

Appleyard was propped up in bed at a slightly elevated angle, wired to the paraphernalia of the patient-controlled drip-feed of morphine, bottles and monitors. He looked exhausted and deathly pale, but he managed a smile.

‘How are you, you old reprobate?’ Harrison said.

His friend strained to hear the words. ‘I’ve lost a bit of weight since we last met, Tom. Most effective diet I’ve ever tried.’ The weak laugh didn’t quite ring true. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t you I wanted to see — Sister said you’d brought the lovely Casey with you.’

She laughed lightly and leaned across to kiss him on the cheek. ‘It’s good to see you cheerful, Les.’

‘That’s made me feel better. Almost got the old third leg going then. I could even start to like Americans.’ His effort at humour broke down into a racking cough. When it finally subsided, he said: ‘Tom, I’ve asked but no one here seems to know, and Doreen wouldn’t say, what happened in the end that night I copped it?’

Harrison said: ‘You don’t want to go into all that.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ He sounded a little breathless.

‘There was a third bomb, similar to — to the one you tackled.’

‘Yes?’ His voice was slightly slurred.

‘It went off while the terrorists were planting it. Killed two of them’

Appleyard’s eyelids fluttered. ‘Sweet Jesus, an own goal…’ He said the words slowly, almost as though he was savouring the taste of them. ‘So this — my accident — wasn’t completely pointless.’

God, Harrison thought, even Les blames me for this. Not like Doreen, not up front and full of anger, but underneath it all he holds me responsible.

‘Tom, there’s something wrong,’ Casey said.

Appleyard was mumbling. ‘Where’s the bloody barrow? What’s Al playing at? It’s going… to be a fucking…’ He was breathing hard now, his skin becoming grey and waxy with perspiration ‘…fucking great bang.’

Harrison was on his feet, moving towards the staff room. Sister McGuire met him halfway. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Les has had a relapse or something.’ They were striding together, shoes clattering on the polished floor. ‘He suddenly became disorientated, sweating…’

They stopped at the bedside. Sister McGuire took one look and said: ‘Blast-lung. NURSE!’

It was a common occurrence, Colonel Wallace explained afterwards. ‘Suddenly the oxygen and blood levels drop, often after twenty-four hours or so. His X-ray will show up cloudy.’

‘Is it serious?’ Casey asked.

‘It’s serious, but not usually life-threatening.’ Wallace poured them tea in the staff room. ‘I spent a year at the Royal Victoria in Belfast. There were a lot of bomb victims but we only lost one through blast-lung. Two or three days on a ventilator and he’ll be as right as ninepence.’

‘And his legs?’ Harrison asked.

Wallace sipped at his tea. ‘It might not seem like it to you — or to his wife — but he’s been lucky. We’ve managed to save a hand’s breadth of bone beneath the knee. That’s enough to fit a prosthesis. Even if we have to take off the other leg — the one we’re trying to save — there’s a good chance that too can be fitted out artificially.’

‘You mean he could walk again?’ Casey asked.

‘We’ll make damn sure he gives it his best shot. Little Sister McGuire is quite the most awsome bully I’ve ever met. With her help we’ll have him walking within the next ten days or so.’

Casey was astounded. ‘That’s incredible.’

‘It’s the best way,’ Wallace replied evenly. ‘Before muscle waste sets in and before the patient has too much time to feel sorry for himself.’

Harrison felt better for hearing the surgeon’s bullish attitude. ‘Les seems remarkably cheerful and confident.’

Wallace raised one eyebrow. ‘Don’t let that fool you, Major. Trauma amputees have no time for mental preparation, to think of the life that lies ahead of them. Les Appleyard is a tough nut, thinks and acts like a soldier. The more cheerful and jokey he is now, the deeper will be his depression when it finally sinks in. No more football, running or so many other things he probably liked to do. Post-traumatic stress disorder. He must grieve for himself sooner or later. It’s a necessary part of the healing process. Mind as well as body.’

Casey said: ‘How many bomb victims have you known, Colonel?’

He drained his tea. ‘Not many here at the Cambridge. But dozens over the years, especially in Ulster. Of course, you read about them at the time or see the television coverage and you think, my God, how awful. Then you never hear of them again.

You’re a journalist, Miss Mullins, you know what it’s like. Another day, another story. But not for those people. For them time stopped on that day the second that the bomb went off. Sometimes I think the dead are the lucky ones. When we medics use the term “seriously injured”, it isn’t a glib choice of words, it means exactly that. Few people know what a bomb can do. How it tears a limb off a torso like a child’s toy. Or what happens with shrapnel or flying glass. I’ve seen people’s faces quite literally sliced in half, cheeks removed down to the gums and teeth, a woman’s breast removed with the precision of a surgeon’s knife…’

Casey winced. ‘Please.’

It was raining outside and the tall windows were beginning to fog with condensation, the suffocating warmth of the hospital almost overwhelming. ‘All those victims are still out there somewhere. A teenage boy blinded, tapping with his stick. The once pretty girl with a disfigured face and no legs, wondering how her husband can still bear to make love to her. They’re all there still, struggling to get through what’s left of their lives. Forgotten by a world which cannot bear to witness their torment.’

It was still in the quiet of the staff room, stuffy and claustrophobic. He was talking about Gwen and the years of plastic surgery and skin grafting that lay ahead. Casey shifted uneasily, thinking of the Seven Dials bomb that had so nearly caught her and Candy. They had almost become the people Wallace was talking about. Hoarsely she said: ‘I think we really must leave.’

‘Of course.’ Wallace snapped out of his deep thought, and walked with them down the lofty corridor to the entrance. ‘I made a point of boning up on Irish history when I was in Belfast. Read a lot, wanted to understand something of what it was all about, what the Provos were fighting about. And, you know, I could see their historical grievances and what they claim is the justification of their cause.’ He stopped by the doors to shake hands. ‘Then I asked myself, does it really justify the killing, the maiming and the wanton destruction?’

Harrison said: ‘If I hadn’t reached the same conclusion, I’m not sure I could do my job.’

They walked back to Casey’s Mini Cooper without speaking. She was experiencing a wretched sense of hopelessness and sorrow and thought Harrison was feeling something similar. He rarely appeared angry but now, as she saw the grim set of his jaw, she sensed that he was raging inside.

As they climbed into the car he said: ‘I need a drink.’

She started the engine. ‘That makes two of us.’

He stared out of the rain-streaked windows, not seeing the pedestrians scurrying with their umbrellas tilted against the rain. ‘You know, it’s only just come home to me. Seeing Les like that, seeing what’s happened to him, what they’ve done to him. Knowing that no one can turn back the clock.’

‘You’ve known him for a long time.’

‘As long as I’d known Jock. We were inseparable once. In Ulster the IRA managed to pick off some ATOs — often deliberately, like that business the other night. But never the three of us. We led a charmed life. Until now. Jock dead and Les crippled. There’s only me left.’

‘What d’you mean?’

But he didn’t know what he meant. Anger was blinding him, the rage of it burning in his head. Seeing Les like that, seeing Doreen cut him dead in the hospital corridor, while somewhere, probably only miles from London, the bombers called AIDAN were sniggering at their victory, laughing at the press coverage of Appleyard being blown up and a Wheelbarrow destroyed. Licking their wounds at two of their own being blown up, but knowing there would be plenty of volunteers to replace them. Unemployed youngsters fed on the cruelty of Irish history, casting the blame for what they did on everyone but themselves. ‘Look what they’ve made us do. Look at us, do we not bleed, do we not weep?’ The battle that didn’t end in 1921 with partition and the Irish Free State, and never would until the Brits were out and the border torn down. The subject of a thousand rebel songs, then as now.

The own goal was what Trenchard said John Nash of MI5 wanted. Harrison had wanted it too and that was what they’d got. But it was a hollow victory. And, as Doreen had rightly pointed out, it had been he who had called the tune but Les who paid the price. And for what? The snub to PIRA had been overshadowed by their own loss, the political point hardly scored, and the public hardly reassured. And the Provos had two more martyrs to add to the glorious memory of Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers and the others who had gone before and since.

Casey pulled in at a drab roadside pub. Lunch time had passed; the place empty and dusty, with crisp crumbs on the worn carpet and the ashtrays overflowing. The barman absently served a pint of bitter and a half of lager, his attention on the horse race being shown on the television behind the bar.

‘I’ve been thinking/ Casey said as they sat down on the torn windowseat, ‘if I hadn’t run that article, maybe Les wouldn’t be like he is today.’

‘Don’t blame yourself.’ His response was automatic. ‘As you said yourself, I didn’t plant the bomb. And neither did you.’

She stared down at the fizzing liquid in her glass. ‘How can anyone do a thing like that?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘I’d like to. I’d like to know who could do such evil. To know what drives them.’

‘Don’t waste your time.’

She picked up the glass, sampled the contents and found she suddenly had no taste for it. ‘You’re still blaming yourself, though, Tom, aren’t you?’

He took the small briar from his pocket, stuffed the bowl with tobacco. ‘Perhaps.’

‘But you didn’t run the story, Tom, I did. It was my decision.’

He turned to face her, his brown eyes intense and fathomless, moist with unshed tears. ‘You were setup, Casey. DonTrenchard and I set you up on orders from MI5. You were on a roll with the bombing stories. They saw you were hungry for success. They even pulled in Sir George to give you a fright, to prime you up to cooperate.’

Casey didn’t understand. ‘I had no problem running the story. It was just your view of the situation and the public had a right to know.’

‘It went a little deeper than that. Having examined the devices AIDAN was using, it was decided that if they got any more complicated, there was a good chance that the terrorists would score an own goal.’

She was stunned, speechless for several long seconds. Slowly she said: ‘Am I following this correctly? You deliberately manipulated me so that those two bombers died?’

He nodded, clearly unhappy with his confession. ‘We couldn’t be certain it would work, but we knew the bomb maker was technically untidy. Despite the cleverness of the antihandling ideas, the workmanship was a bit shoddy, poor soldering and bad connections. We knew that the more complicated they made them, the greater the chance they’d finally set off a device by accident. As it was, that wasn’t exactly how it happened. It appears someone set off a separate booby trap. But nevertheless it was undoubtedly a direct or indirect result of that article.’

She stared at him. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this, Tom.’

He shrugged. ‘There is a precedent, according to Nash. A similar ploy was used in Northern Ireland during the early seventies — press reports that led the terrorists to overcomplicate their bombs with the same result.’

‘That same ploy resulted in Les getting blown up, is that right?’ she demanded.

‘It’s possible, but we might never know for sure. It was either an X-ray-sensitive switch or Les just ran out of time. It all depends what fragments the forensic boys can piece together.’ He stared down at his own beer, also untouched. ‘I guess it doesn’t help to say I’m sorry. That I wish I hadn’t gone along with it.’

‘It doesn’t help Les.’ Cold. ‘God, I’d heard you Brits could be devious…’

‘Sometimes you have to be when you’re dealing with devious bastards like AIDAN.’

‘And me, Tom? Was screwing me all part of your devious ploy? To prime me up, as you called it? Was that MI5’s idea or yours?’

Anger flashed in his eyes. ‘C’mon, Casey, it wasn’t like that and you know it. I wouldn’t be telling you this now if I didn’t care about you.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You bastard, Tom. You don’t care about me. You just care about your own guilty conscience. You’ve put blood on my hands — not just the blood of those terrorists but also Les’s blood. I don’t think I can forgive you for that.’