It was Monday morning and he was the only guest. Tonight, round teatime, the travellers and the others would be back in the front room. The place then was not quite his own as on Saturdays and Sundays. Lord and master of the household was how he felt over the weekend. Delusions of grandeur.
‘Will Josephine be in this afternoon?’ He sounded casual, matter-of-fact.
‘Should be, Mr McEvoy. Should be here in time to help me with the teas and a bit of tidying up that I haven’t got round to. She’s back on early shift this week. You wanted to see her?’
Shrewd old goat, thought Harry. Beautiful throwaway, real afterthought.
‘I’d said I’d lend her a book,’ he lied gracefully.
‘She’ll be here when you get back. I’ll need her today, and all. We’re full tonight. It’s the way it should be, but work all the same.’
‘And money, Mrs Duncan.’ It was as much familiarity as was permitted.
‘Your sandwiches are there on the sideboard.’ She wasn’t drawn. ‘Bovril as you like them, horrid stuff, and some coffee in the flask. I put a boiled egg in, too, and an apple.’
‘Very naughty, Mrs Duncan, you’ll make me into an elephant.’
She liked the banter and was still laughing with him as he walked into the hall and to the front door.
‘You’ve got enough clothes on, then? We don’t want you with a cold and that.’
‘Don’t you fuss, Mrs Duncan.’
The Prime Minister liked to start the day with his papers, a cup of tea and the first radio news bulletin. He amused himself by making that first news the commercial one, maintaining to all those who expressed surprise that he was not locked on to the BBC, that he was a capitalist, and as head of a capitalist government he should hear the capitalist-funded station. The radio acted as window dressing to his reading, the spoken version of canned music. He could not do without it, hated silence, but it took an almighty news story to distract his attention from the newspapers. Like all politicians he had a consummate appetite for newsprint, able to take in, extract, cross-reference or ignore the thousands of words that made up his daily diet. Included in the pile that rested on his lap in the middle of the bed were the Western Mail and the Scotsman. He would have liked the Belfast News Letter, but the printing times and transportation problems across the Irish Sea made it impossible, so he compromised by having the previous afternoon’s Telegraph sent over. He waded through the politics, diplomatic, economic, pausing fractionally longer on the gossip columns than he would have wanted others to know, and through sport where he delayed no longer than it took him to turn the pages. The pace was enormous, nothing read twice unless it had major impact.
The frown began deep between the overbearing bushiness of the eyebrows. The degree of concentration extended. The mixture written on his stubbly face was of puzzlement and anger.
The Times had put it on page two, and not given it much. Eight paragraphs.
He found the same story in the Guardian, a little longer, and above it the resident staff reporter’s name. The length of the copy had relatively little importance or significance to the Prime Minister. The content flabbergasted him. He read three, four times that a British agent had been identified by the Provisional IRA, and the population in the ghetto areas alerted so that they might be on their guard against him.
For Christ’s sake. Five weeks since Danby was killed. Outcry and outrage over, gone with the memorial service. Whole wretched business faded and, just as well, no leak that Danby himself had asked for his detective to be taken off. And now the prospect of it all back again, supercharged, and with what drifting out? Heaven only knows. With a surge he swept the bedclothes from him and leaned across the bed. He never had been able to make a telephone call lying on his side. He slung the dressing gown over his shoulders and sat on the edge of the single bed he had occupied since his wife died, feet dangling, and picked up the telephone.
‘Morning, Jennifer, first of the day.’ Always something friendly to the girls on the switchboard, worked wonders with them. ‘Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Quick as you can, there’s a good girl.’
He sat for two-and-a-half minutes, reading other papers but unable to turn his full attention to them till the telephone buzzed angrily in its console.
‘The Secretary of State, sir. Seems he’s in the air at the moment. Left Northolt about eight minutes ago. He’ll be down at Aldergrove in forty-one minutes. He’s early this morning because he’s going straight down to an industrial estate in Londonderry, opening something. There’s a helicopter waiting to lift him down there. That’s his immediate programme.’
‘Get him to phone me as soon as he reaches Aldergrove. Let them know I’d like it on a secure line.’
He considered calling the Ministry of Defence or Fairbairn in Lisburn, and then dismissed it. Protocol up the spout if he did. If they were to be dropped in a monumental balls-up then the Secretary of State should do some of the lifting, and take a bit of the weight. Time to play things straight down the middle, the Prime Minister reflected.
Across London Davidson was shaving. Wet. With a brush and new blade. He had read his papers again in the daylight. He knew, since he had not been woken from his sleep by the telephone, that in Belfast Billy Downs and the girl were still at large. He could not be certain at this stage to what level of danger Harry was exposed. When he ditched his logical appraisal the only conclusion was that the situation must be slightly worse than critical. He said that out loud; the aide was in the other half of the office and would not hear him. The words rolled off his tongue, giving him that almost sexual pleasure that excitement and tension carry in their wake. He stood there in his trousers, socks and vest, with the bowl of tepid water in front of him… all so much like the war. The Albania operation, Cyprus. But how to reconcile that when advanced base headquarters, ABHQ, they used to call it, was in Covent Garden, West One, Central London?
He patted his face, reddened by the sharpness of the blade and the cool water. Putting on his shirt, he dialled Lisburn military direct. When the WRAC operator came on the line he asked for Frost. The intelligence colonel was already in his office.
‘Morning, Colonel. I wanted to ring you to find the up-to-date situation. I fancy there’ll be various meetings in the morning. People will want to know. I take it there’s been no positive news or you would have called me.’
‘Right, Mr Davidson.’ Had to be the ‘Mister’, didn’t it? Doesn’t miss them. Not a chance of twisting it. ‘There is no news. We haven’t found the girl. We did Downs’s home, and the report an hour ago said he wasn’t there, but had been a few hours earlier. There’s an off-chance he’s in trouble. A man of his description attacked a policeman’s home late yesterday and botched it up. The policeman thinks he hit him with a single revolver shot as he was escaping. There are one or two blood spots on the escape trail, but we won’t get much from them for a bit till the follow-up report is in. It doesn’t seem enough to indicate a serious wound. As for your man, well, we’re taking out the Andersonstown scrap merchants in about forty minutes. I’ve nothing else.’
‘Are you putting it that there’s a good chance Downs was out on this shooting last night, or not?’
‘There are similarities, but it’s not a positive identification. Hair’s not the same as the picture, so the policeman’s wife says. She was a long time with him. Face is similar. The policeman himself is not able to be very helpful as he was moving most of the time and getting his gun out and being shot at. He didn’t get much of a look. We have the picture you sent us, it’s with the unit now that’s going to try to round your fellow up.’