Provo

Who was handling the informant? Was the handler Special Branch or MI5? Who was the informant who told them about Beechwood Street? Was he being run from Lisburn? What about the FRU, was he working for them? Where did the orders come from? Someone must have said something, someone from SB or MI5 or the FRU must have let a name slip.

It was late afternoon, going into evening. They tossed her in the corner again, left her with one guard. The pangs racked her body and she wanted to die. Do it, she told herself, now while there’s just one of them. But they could still be SAS, the thought held her back, it could still be part of the Hereford refresher. The bastards seeing how far they could push her before she cracked.

The interrogator returned and the questioning continued. Why were you in Beechwood Street? Who told you? What time did the orders come in? Who was the leak? Next time they pushed her in the corner, she told herself. But suppose they weren’t Provos, suppose they had fixed it for her to arrive late at The Fort. Suppose they were SAS. She couldn’t kill one if he was SAS, if he really was a Brit. The interrogator hit her again, the questions spinning through her head and confusing her. Kill them or don’t kill them, the other question was like a vortex in her mind. Who the hell are they, what are they? Up to her, she told herself, whether she could do it or not. If she got the chance again. Should have done it before. The interrogation ended and she was pushed into the corner, two guards remaining. No chance to do it now, she told herself.

So what is it? she asked herself. What was she afraid of, why had she delayed before?

She was back in the stake-out car, McKendrick at the driver’s window and Rorke in front, Brady’s trouser zip undone and the Browning in his waist holster. She couldn’t do it, she was thinking, was slowing down, telling herself she was stalling to give the SAS boys in Tommy Reardon’s house a chance. She was in the car after, on patrol in the days and weeks that followed, was lying awake at night or walking along the beach on the west coast. The knowledge was deep in her subconscious, unavailable to her; the security block she had imposed upon it protecting her.

Beechwood Street, she made herself admit; she shouldn’t have hesitated. Even now, even with the Provo guards ten yards from her, it was impossible to come to terms with. She had told herself she was delaying to give the men in the house a chance, but all the time she didn’t want to do it.

Didn’t want to do what, she asked herself.

She had to go down on Brady to get to the back-up gun, she knew the answer she had been giving herself. And ever since she had told herself that that was the thing she had been afraid to do.

But . . . she took herself on, pushed herself to the brink. But that had not been what she was afraid of. The sex wasn’t relevant, wasn’t even sex. It wasn’t even a penis. It was just a way of getting to the gun. All the time it wasn’t the sex that she had been afraid of, that she had known she couldn’t do. All the time what she had been afraid of was actually killing someone.

One of the guards had left, the other sitting eating the supper they had brought for him, sitting with his back to her. The rope round her wrists had worked loose and she slid her hands from it. Do it, she told herself, do it now. These men aren’t SAS, these men are Provisional IRA. If you don’t talk soon they’ll kill you. So kill them first.

There was no point. Even if she dealt with one gunman there were four, perhaps five more. Even if she got outside they would hunt her down. What you’re saying is an excuse, she told herself. Nobody likes killing, but sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s you or them. The gunman’s back was still towards her, the man seated on a bale and crouched over the plate. She picked up the pitchfork and rose, stepped towards him. No noise, not even a rustling of the straw. She was four feet from him. Three feet. Two. His back was still towards her. Him or her. Him not her. She began to bring the pitchfork down.

‘ENDEX.’

She heard the voice and froze. English. End exercise, the words pounded through her brain. The Provo gunmen stepped forward from the shadows; no balaclavas over their faces. Phillips turned round and looked at her.

Put her through it, Haslam had told him. String her out and see what happens. Take her down to hell and see if she comes back. Go down with her if you have to. Not for himself, not because it was Haslam who’d run the course in Germany where the talent-spotters had first picked her up, who’d drunk and talked with her and the others in the evenings, who’d taken her aside at the end and suggested that she might like to volunteer for Special Duties. But for her. Because at the end of the day she was worth it. And he couldn’t do it because she would recognize him; then she would realize and throw up her defences; then she wouldn’t admit what she needed to admit to herself. Then she would be lost for ever.

Unofficial of course, nothing to go on the record.

You . . . Nolan almost said to the man she had been about to kill . . . You were one of the men in the house on Beechwood Street.

Philipa Walker left the flat and took the Northern Line to the Newspaper Library at Colindale. Something about a photograph, she had been aware. At least one photograph, possibly two. Not something about PinMan, something about herself.

There were those who might have preferred to shrug off such a feeling, to let it slip away as if it had never existed. She herself did not subscribe to such a philosophy. If an item or detail existed she should face up to it even though she might not wish to. Control it, control herself, rather than allow things or events to control her.

The first photograph was in the diary column of the Mail – she remembered the type around it and the position on the page. The second, following the same logic, was in the Sunday Times.

She ordered the Mail for the years 1988 to 1990 – it was only possible to order three volumes at any one time – and settled down to wait in the microfiche section at the rear. The boxes of film were delivered to her ten minutes later. She inserted the ’88 cassette in the viewer and began her search. An hour and a half later she handed the boxes back and ordered the Mail for the three years beginning 1991. The photograph was in the Mail of April 1992. She recognized the page immediately – the headline and the layout triggering the subconscious layers of her memory. The picture spanned the middle two columns – the group at the restaurant table, the woman in the centre and the vague faces behind. When Walker had first seen it, it had been at the Press Association library and all the faces had been clearly defined. On microfiche, however, she could barely make out the faces of the two men behind the women. She noted the date of the newspaper, handed the cassettes back, and booked the Sunday Times beginning 1991.

The woman seemed asleep, the reading-room porter thought. He gave her the boxes of microfiche and was startled by the way she suddenly appeared to wake. Almost like an animal.

The story had been written before the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales. It was trailed on the front page of the main section of the newspaper and dealt with in full in the News Review. Its theme was the distinct sets of friends enjoyed by the couple and the way in which this represented a crossroads in their life together. Again, however, the faces in the photographs which accompanied the article were indistinct. She read through the piece once, then went to the pay phone on the landing outside the reading room, telephoned the Daily Mail and Sunday Times, and confirmed that back copies of the relevant dates of each were available. Then she collected her coat and bag, walked to the tube station, and caught the Northern Line to Chalk Farm.

That evening she dined with Patrick Saunders at the White Tower restaurant in Percy Street. The relationship was developing as she had anticipated, indeed planned. In the almost twisted manner of the hunt, she even enjoyed it, enjoyed his company but also enjoyed the razor edge which came with the knowledge of why she was seeing him. As long as he was the key, as long as his source into the royal family was the one she needed. As long as she herself could access that source without Saunders or the source knowing.

At eleven next morning she collected the back copy of the Mail, then went to a café two hundred yards away, ordered a cappuccino, and turned to the photograph on the diary page, ignoring the faces of the women at the table and concentrating on the taller of the two men standing behind them.

An hour later she collected the copy of the Sunday Times, returned to St Katharine’s Dock, and ordered a Bloody Mary in the Thames Bar of the Tower Hotel. In the main, the article said, the Di and Charles camps were not compatible; the Prince thought his wife’s friends too frivolous, and the Princess considered her husband’s circle too serious, even boring. Only one person was welcomed in both camps. Major R.E.F. Fairfax of the Grenadier Guards, known to the royal couple as Roddy. Originally it had been the Princess of Wales who had welcomed Fairfax into her inner circle, the newspaper said. Charles, however, also thought highly of him, partly because he was a military man and had seen service in Northern Ireland, and had personally invited him to the royal home at Highgrove.

Of course Fairfax was a military man. Walker looked again at the photographs in the two papers and the name in the Sunday Times, felt the ice spreading. Of course the bastard had seen service in Northern Ireland.

Haslam had left Belfast ten days before, spending two days at Hereford and a further two checking airport security at Heathrow. He spent the night in London, left at 5.30 and liaised with the other men who would take part in the exercise at seven. At eight the three took the ferry to the island, enjoyed an hour-long breakfast, then caught the 10.30 return ferry as instructed.

The watchers from Five were waiting. Men and women. Fat ones, thin ones. Some looking fit as hell and others as if they could barely make it to the bar to get another drink. Double-sided coats, different colours each side to confuse the targets, wigs, bags, all the works. Spot them a mile off if you were expecting them and knew what you were looking for. Never see them in a month of Sundays if you didn’t.

The latest graduates from the Firm’s school at The Fort, SAS men playing the suspects they would tail in the end-of-course close-surveillance exercise.

He stepped off the ferry and turned up Lime Street.

‘Charlie One Five. Green One.’ The first tail picked him up, the streets already coded. Dead letter drops and pickups, contact with another suspect – it was all in the day’s exercise.

Haslam reached the top of the street and turned left.

‘Charlie One Five. Green Four.’ The first tail dropped back.

‘Charlie One Six. Green Five.’ The second picked Haslam up from the other side of the road. Surveillance teams in front and behind. Vehicles on stand-by.

‘One Six. Green Three.’ The bus stop was seventy yards ahead and the tail thirty yards behind. Haslam glanced back and saw the bus; as it passed him he slowed and allowed it to stop at the stop, then sprinted for it as it pulled away.

‘Charlie One Two. Blue Two.’ The woman who had been waiting at the stop took the third seat in, downstairs, and watched as he went up the stairs to the top deck. ‘Blue Three.’ . . . Silver Street. ‘Blue Four.’ . . . Rodney Street. ‘Blue Five.’ She called the stops as the bus passed them. One car staying behind, the others moving ahead, dropping tails where the target might leave the bus.

This was their patch, Nolan thought; they’d practised on it and knew the streets backwards. Christ help them if the target decided to go AWOL, took the train to Bournemouth and got off at Southampton, left them spread like confetti over the south of England. She slid from the car and looked in the window of the tobacconist next to the bus stop.

‘Charlie One Three. Green Ten to Green Eleven.’ . . . The suspect on foot in Vesta Road going towards Queens Road.

‘Charlie Two One.’ The next tail in position. ‘Affirmative.’ The tail slid in behind Haslam.

Bramshaw Road then Pembury Street, the railway line across the top and the footbridge to Marshall Place – the area map was imprinted on her mind. Cul de sacs at Bolsover Street and Duncan Road.

Haslam turned into the newsagents and waited for the tail to follow him in. ‘Box of matches.’ He paid, then browsed along the magazine shelves as the tail asked for a packet of cigarettes. It was time to start playing games, time to give them a run for their money. He left the shop and turned first right. The street was seventy yards long, turnings to the right and left at the top.

‘Charlie Two Three. Green Eight.’

The tail was thirty yards behind and afraid to go too close. Haslam slowed and made the tail drop even further back, so that when he reached the corner the man was almost forty yards behind him. He turned the corner and ran. Thirty yards, left; another forty, right. Left again and over the railway footbridge. The tail rounded the corner. ‘Green Eight.’ He looked right, left. Didn’t know what to do or say.

Nolan heard, knew what the bastard had done. The pavement was lined with stalls. She pushed through them and slid into the back-up car. ‘Marshall Place, quick, he’s gone over the footbridge.’

The car accelerated, went through the lights on amber, and skidded across the level crossing at Fore Street as the barrier came down.

‘One Three. Blue Two towards Black Four.’ Haslam was fifty yards in front, walking away from them. The car pulled into a side street; she left it and followed him. ‘One Three. Black Ten.’ She turned right after him and realized. Bolsover Street, a cul-de-sac. He’s going to sideline me, the thought screamed through her head, the bastard’s going to eyeball me. Standard anti-surveillance if a target thought he was being shadowed – one of several. Turn, walk back past the shadow, stare him in the face. Let him know that you know. Put him out of the game.

Haslam turned and she saw his face for the first time. Understood.

Long time since Germany – he didn’t need to say it. Long time since the adventure training course and the talk about Special Duties.

You – she was still walking towards him. You were the second man in the house on Beechwood Street. You were the one who pulled the strings and got me off the desk assignment and into the Firm. You were the bastard who arranged the little session at Hereford. You waited till it was me behind you before you turned in here.

Haslam was twenty yards from her, on the outside of the pavement, eyes straight ahead. They were ten yards apart, five. Both staring straight ahead. Good girl, the instructor whispered to himself, don’t let him phase you. Just keep walking. Haslam was three yards from her, face set, Nolan still staring straight ahead.