‘The name is Jones… you’ve a ticket waiting for me. The one o’clock to Amsterdam, BE 467.’
The girl behind the counter smiled, nodded, and began to beat out the instructions of the flight into her personal reservations computer. The flight was confirmed, and as she made the ticket out the terminal loudspeakers warned passengers of delays on all flights to Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast. No reason was given. But that’s where all the effort would be, they’d told him. They haven’t the manpower for the lot.
The man brought out the new British passport supplied for him by his unit quartermaster and walked through immigration control.
Chapter 2
Normally the Commissioner travelled alone, with only the elderly driver for company. That afternoon sitting in the front with the driver was an armed detective. The car turned into Downing Street through the crash barriers that had been put into position half an hour after the shooting was reported. The dark, shaded street was empty of Ministerial cars, and sightseers were banned for the day. By the door two constables had established their will on the group of photographers gathered to record all comings and goings, and shepherded them into a line stretching from the railings, over the pavement and out into the parking area. The Commissioner was met in the hall, warm with its red carpets and chandeliers, and escorted to the lift. As he passed the small room to the right of the door, he noted the four plain-clothes men sitting there. His order that the Prime Minister’s guard should be doubled had been carried out. Two floors later he was led into the Prime Minister’s study.
‘I just wanted to see if there was anything you wanted to say before we get involved in the main scene downstairs.’
‘All I can do now, sir, is say what we know, what we’re doing. Not much of the first, a lot of the second.’
‘There’ll be a fair amount of questioning about the security round the Minister…’
The Commissioner said nothing. It was an atmosphere he was not happy in; he reflected that in his three years as Commissioner and the country’s top policeman he’d never got into this marble tower before, never got beyond the first-floor reception salons. On the way to Whitehall he had primed himself not to allow the police to become the scapegoat, and after thirty-six years in the Force his inclination was to be back at Scotland Yard hovering on the fifth floor by the control room, irregular as it was, but at least doing something.
There was little contact, and both acknowledged it. The Prime Minister rose and motioned with his hand to the door. ‘Come on,’ he murmured, ‘let’s go and meet them. Frank Scott of the RUC and General Fairbairn are coming in from Belfast in an hour or so. We’ll hear them after you.’
The man was striding his way along the vast pier of Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, towards the central transit area. If his connections were working he had fifty-eight minutes till the Aer Lingus 727 took off for Dublin airport. He saw the special airport police with their short-barrelled, lightweight carbines patrolling the entrance to the pier where the El Al jumbo was loading, and had noticed the armoured personnel carriers on the aprons. All the precautions of the anti-hijack programme… but nothing to concern him. He went to the Aer Lingus desk, collected the ticket waiting for him, and drifted away to the duty-free lounge. They’d told him not to miss the duty-free lounge; the best in Europe, they’d said. Belgrave Square and the noise and the screaming were far away; for the first time in the day he felt a degree of calm.
In the first-floor Cabinet Room the Commissioner stood to deliver his briefing. He spoke slowly, picking his words with care, and aware that the Ministers were shocked, suspicious and even hostile to what he had to say. There was little comfort for them. On top of what they had seen on the television lunchtime news they were told that a new and better description was being circulated… for the first time the policeman had the full attention of his audience.
‘There was a slight jostling incident at Oxford Circus this morning. A man barged his way through, nearly knocking people over, and noticeably didn’t stop to apologize. Not the sort of thing that you’d expect people to remember, but two women independently saw the television interview from Belgrave Square this morning, and phoned the Yard — put the two together. It’s the same sort of man they’re talking about as we’d already heard of, but a better description. We’ll have a photokit by four o’clock—’
He was interrupted by the slight knock on the door, and the arrival of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief Constable, Frank Scott, and General Sir Jocelyn Fairbairn, GOC Northern Ireland. When they’d sat down, crowded in at the far end of the table, the Prime Minister began.
‘We all take it this is an IRA assassination. We don’t know for what motive, whether it is the first of several attempts or a one-off. I want the maximum effort to get the killer — and fast. I don’t want an investigation that runs a month, two months, six months. Every day that these thugs get away with it is a massive plus to them. How it was that Danby’s detective was withdrawn from him so soon after he’d left the Ulster job is a mystery to me. The Home Secretary will report to us tomorrow on that, and also on what else is being done to prevent a recurrence of such attacks.’
He stopped. The room was silent, disliking the schoolroom lecture. The Commissioner wondered for a moment whether to explain that Danby himself had decided to do without the armed guard, ridiculing the detective-sergeant’s efforts to watch him. He thought better of it and decided to let the Prime Minister hear it from his Home Secretary.
The Prime Minister gestured to the RUC man.
‘Well, sir… gentlemen,’ he started in the soft Scots burr of so many of the Ulstermen. He tugged at the jacket of his bottle-green uniform and moved his black-thorn cane fractionally across the table. ‘If he’s in Belfast we’ll get him. It may not be fast, but it’s a village there. We’ll hear, and we’ll get him. It would be very difficult for them to organize an operation of this scale and not involve so many people that we’ll grab one and he’ll bend. It’s a lot easier to make them talk these days. The hard men are locked up, the new generation talks. If he’s in Belfast we’ll get him.’
It was past five and dark outside when the Ministers, and the General and the Prime Minister again, had had their say. The Prime Minister had called a full meeting of all present for the day after tomorrow, and reiterated his demand for action and speed, when a private secretary slipped into the room, whispered in the Commissioner’s ear, and ushered him out. Those next to him had heard the word ‘urgent’ used.
When the Commissioner came back into the room two minutes later the Prime Minister saw his face and stopped in mid-sentence. The eyes of the eighteen politicians and the Ulster policeman and the General were on the Commissioner as he said:
‘We have had some rather bad news. Police officers at Heathrow have discovered a hired car in the terminal car park near No. 1 building. Under the driver’s seat was a Kalashnikov rifle. The car-park ticket would have given a passenger time to take flights to Vienna, Stockholm, Madrid, Rome and Amsterdam. The crew of the BEA flight to Amsterdam are already back at Heathrow, and we are sending a photokit down to the airport, it’s on its way, but one of the stewardesses thinks a man who fits our primary description, the rough one we had at first, was in the fifteenth row in a window seat. We are also in touch with Schipol police, and are wiring the picture, but from the BEA flight there was ample time to make a Dublin connection. The Aer Lingus, Amsterdam/Dublin flight landed in Dublin twenty-five minutes ago, and they are holding all passengers in the baggage reclaim hall.’