Grateful?
He almost laughed.
The door of his room opened and a nurse entered.
‘Mr Doyle,’ she said. ‘How are we feeling?’
‘We’ve felt better,’ he answered.
‘I’m not surprised,’ she told him, crossing to his bed and feeling for his pulse, checking it against the watch fastened to her tunic.‘They had to put thirty stitches in you. And you lost a lot of blood. Half an inch to the left and that knife would have cut a major artery in your leg.’
She let go of his wrist and scribbled something on his chart.
‘When can I leave?’ he wanted to know.
‘When the doctor gives you the all-clear’ She took his temperature and wrote something else on the clipboard.
‘Your records indicate multiple injuries over the years,’ she said. ‘Any residual effects?’
He shook his head.
‘Do you get pain from any of these?’ she wanted to know, running appraising eyes over his scars.
‘Some stiffness every now and then but nothing to shout about,’ he told her.
‘That’s probably my age, not the scars.’
‘You’re in good shape,’ she smiled, pulling the sheet up around his chest.
Doyle met her gaze, watching as her cheeks reddened slightly.
‘I’ll be back with your lunch,’ she told him, heading for the door.
‘Stick a packet of fags on the side, will you?’
She paused.
‘You’ve a visitor. Shall I send him in?’
Doyle nodded.
He heard voices outside then a familiar figure strode into the room.
Chief Inspector Peter Robinson removed his cap and ran a hand across his bald pate.
‘What the hell happened, Doyle?’ he said angrily.
‘Nice to see you too. Pull up a chair. Or, better still, fuck off and leave me in peace. What do you mean, “what happened”? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Leary got away.’
‘Because you didn’t follow procedure.’
‘Because your men fucked up. You had snipers covering that flat, why didn’t one of the dozy twats shoot him when he came out?’
‘We didn’t have positive ID.’
‘Jesus Christ, some cunt comes rushing out into the street with a fucking shotgun in his hand and starts shooting at a police vehicle. I’d have thought that would have narrowed it down a bit!
Robinson drew in a deep breath and met Doyle’s furious gaze.
‘What about Finan?’ the counter terrorist wanted to know.
‘He died before we could get him to hospital. You killed one of our main leads.’
‘Shit happens,’ Doyle said flatly. ‘Any word on where Leary’s gone?’
‘Probably back into the Republic. We’ve more than likely lost him for good now.’
‘He’ll turn up. Trust me.’ Doyle ran a hand through his hair. ‘What did you find inside the flat?’
‘Fifteen pounds of Semtex. Detonators. Weapons and ammunition.’
‘What kind of weapons?’
‘Mainly handguns. There were half a dozen automatics and revolvers. Four AK47s and a couple of Ingram Mach 10s.’
‘Any other fingerprints apart from Finan and Leary?’
‘If there are we haven’t found them yet. It looks as if they were operating alone.’
Doyle nodded and silence descended on the room. It was finally broken by Robinson.
‘You’re lucky Leary didn’t kill you,’ the policeman offered.
‘Yeah, so people keep telling me. Well, I’m telling you now, next time I run into him, he won’t be so lucky. I’ll kill him: ‘You’ve got to find him first. You’re not going to do that lying in here are you?’
‘I’ll be out by tomorrow.’
‘Have the doctors told you that?’
‘I’ve decided.’
‘And then what?’
I’ll take care of Leary once and for all.’
DOWNING STREET, LONDON:
Cigarette smoke had gathered beneath the high ceiling of the room and it hung there like a man-made rain cloud. Every now and then the air-conditioning would send ripples through the grey curtain and it would shimmer like a spectre in a fading dream.
Only one of the men in the room was smoking.
Bernard Wolfe was forty-eight years old and he’d been on twenty a day since he was thirteen. The Irishman enjoyed a cigarette, and the feeble intrusions of political correctness were of no interest to him. Neither were the occasional, exaggerated coughs of the men who sat opposite him.
Neville Howe was a year his senior. A tall man with pinched features, he had unusually lustrous brown hair for someone approaching their half century.
There wasn’t so much as a trace of grey at his temples, leading some people to wonder if he was immune to the onset of age or knew a very capable barber.
Howe stared alternately at Wolfe and the papers spread before him on the large, polished oak table at which they sat. He had held the post of Secretary of
State for Northern Ireland for less than three months. This was his first meeting with anyone from Sinn Fein or any of the other parties embroiled in the mess that was Northern Ireland politics.
He wore a perfectly tailored charcoal-grey Armani suit, which he brushed constantly with one hand as if to remove some flecks of dust.
Beside him sat Sir Anthony Pressman. He was three years older than Howe, bespectacled, white-haired and had the kind of ruddy cheeks that suggested joviality. But if the Home Secretary was familiar with levity, then it was nothing more than a passing acquaintance. His heavily lined forehead was the legacy of six years in the job.
Pressman was no stranger to meetings such as these, whether the venue was London, Belfast or Dublin. Certainly since the Good Friday Agreement, he had been at more of these summits (as the press liked to call them) than he cared to remember.
Present at most of the meetings were Wolfe and his colleague Peter Hagen.
At forty-two Hagen was the youngest man in the room. He was also one of the youngest men ever to have been appointed to Sinn Fein’s ruling body. It was
rumoured that prior to this position, he had spent five years in an active IRA cell, operating everywhere from Londonderry to Birmingham. Amiable but occasionally short-tempered, he was as adept at the negotiating table as he had, allegedly, been with an Armalite.
Hagen reached for a jug of water and refilled his glass.
Bernard Wolfe was speaking.‘We feel that the action taken in Belfast was,’ Wolfe paused as if searching for the word, ‘excessive.’
‘Certainly excessive force was used,’ Hagen concurred, sipping his drink.
The incident was regrettable, I agree,’ Pressman offered. ‘But you must see it from our point of view. Finan and Leary were both considered dangerous.
Something proved during the incident, I hasten to add. Having said that, I agree that the measures taken against them were somewhat extreme.’
Wolfe blew a stream of smoke into the air. The fact is that neither Finan nor Leary were affiliated to our organisation,’ he observed.
‘Our concern is for the people of what we all want to regard as a united Ireland,’ said Hagen. ‘Innocent bystanders’ lives were put at risk. Catholic and Protestant. Put at risk by a member of your security forces.’
‘If the reaction of the security forces was extreme,’ Howe interjected, ‘it was because the situation they found themselves in was extreme.’
‘Steps had already been taken by our organisation to prevent any further activity by Finan and Leary,’ Wolfe continued. ‘We view the activities of the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA with as much disapproval as you, Mr Howe.’
The Secretary of State nodded sagely and smiled a practised smile. ‘We understand that, but the fact remains that neither Sinn Fein nor the military wing of your organisation has been able to control the activities of men like Finan and Leary. Also, most members of the Continuity and Real IRA are known to have been members of your organisation at one time.’