He was four years past retirement age, and though he’d been delighted to be called back by the service, he was feeling all of his sixty-four years. Still, he told himself, mustn’t grumble; far better to be sitting here than pretending to be enjoying some Golden Age of retirement with Moira, his wife of forty-one years, with his days spent walking the dog in Tulse Hill.
There was a shortage of trained surveillance officers, they’d explained – with the terrorist threat increasing every day, A4 simply didn’t have enough good men to go round. Or women, Arthur told himself, since Maureen Hayes, who was sitting in a car not sixty yards away, could be sensitive about that sort of thing.
He knew they didn’t want him for mobile surveillance; he was too old for that game now. He’d thought he’d just be helping out part-time in London, providing back up when Thames House found itself short of people to man the observation posts. But it had turned out to be more than that – here he was in Northern Ireland of all places, working full-time too until the powers that be could find enough permanent bodies for posting here.
Jerry Rayman was another old lag brought in to help, which suited Arthur as they had worked together in A4 for years. Jerry read a lot and had a quirky sense of humour that helped pass the time. And who knew how long it would last? Enjoy it while you may my son, he told himself, thinking again with relief of those dog walks he was missing.
The two men sat in a room on the second floor of a Victorian brick office building in the middle of Belfast. It had been refurbished and newly leased to a software group that had not yet moved in – and were therefore happy to rent out a single office at the front for the temporary use of a company (Dodd’s Ultra Logistics) that had offered two months’ rent up front.
Directly opposite, across the street, was another, much more modern office building, all glass and steel. Its first floor was let to Fraternal Holdings, the object of Arthur Haverford and Jerry Rayman’s scrutiny. This was only the third day of surveillance from this temporary observation post, and so far it had been quiet. Quiet? thought Arthur. More like stone dead. From this vantage point they had a good view of the parking lot, which had four spaces; until this morning not one of these spaces had been occupied. Maybe now it would pick up, thought Arthur, as through his headphones he heard Maureen Hayes announce, ‘The Audi’s parking now. In the managing director’s space.’
Below on the street, sitting for the last half hour in a Peugeot 405 directly across from the parking lot, Maureen Hayes was apparently reading a book, as if waiting for someone. She lifted the paperback slightly as she turned a page, which allowed her to point the slim camera inside in the direction of the Audi, where a man in a leather jacket was getting out of the driving seat. Someone in the back was also getting out – a thin, greying man dressed in a suit and tie. Must be the MD, she thought, as the shutter automatically clicked open and shut repeatedly while the men walked towards the entrance to the building. ‘Two in,’ announced Maureen to the microphone in her lap.
The reception area of the company was at the front of the building opposite, behind the huge plate glass window, and from his chair set back behind a partially drawn blind, Arthur had a clear view of it. He put down his tea and took up the binoculars, focusing on the reception desk. Twenty seconds later the lift must have opened (he could not quite see it), as the same two men entered the reception area. Neither stopped at the desk, but simply walked on, disappearing into the back of the building.
Arthur spoke into his microphone. ‘The targets have entered Fraternal’s offices.’
After this brief excitement, nothing happened for another hour. Inactivity was a watcher’s enemy, but Arthur and Jerry were old hands, and knew how to make the time pass – usually by recounting stories that, though told many times before, had managed not to go stale – without ever losing focus on the parking lot and building across the street.
Suddenly Jerry started speaking into the microphone of his headset. ‘We have another car pulling into the car park.’ He read out the registration numbers for a blue Astra. An older man got out and walked into the building. He wore a parka and faded khaki trousers, and again Maureen raised her paperback.
A minute later Arthur, watching through his binoculars, saw the man wave at the receptionist and walk past her into the offices. Arthur reported that as soon as the man had passed her, the girl at the desk picked up the phone and spoke urgently into it.
On a hunch he kept the binoculars trained on the reception area, and sure enough, just a few moments later the older man reappeared. A heavy-set man was with him, whom Arthur recognised as the driver of the black Audi. He had a hand on the shoulder of the older man – it wasn’t clear if he was consoling him, or strong-arming him out of the office, and then they disappeared in the direction of the lift.
Arthur swung the glasses down to the side entrance of the building. When the older man emerged he was talking to himself, looking agitated and angry. He got into his car and started the ignition right away, then accelerated with a squeal of tyres out of the car park.
‘Something’s got his back up,’ said Arthur to Jerry.
They heard in their headphones Maureen’s announcement from her car down in the street that the subject had left. Then to Arthur’s surprise, only half a minute later she broke in again:
‘Subject’s pulled over down the street. He’s parked and he’s sitting in the car. He’s got a bird’s-eye view of the exit to the car park. Shall I recce?’ she asked. This would involve her walking past the parked Astra, and surreptitiously photographing its occupant to get a close-up shot.
‘Negative,’ said Reggie Purvis back in the Ops room. ‘Sit tight.’
Five minutes later another car arrived and parked. Its driver emerged, a stocky, square-shouldered man with a round bullet head and dark hair cut short. He was nattily dressed in a blazer, cream silk roll-necked shirt and wool trousers, and this slight flamboyance and the black leather purse he carried in one hand made Arthur wonder if he was gay. Though there was also a faint echo of the military in his upright bearing.
Jerry called out the numbers of his registration, and sixty seconds later Arthur confirmed that the man had stopped at Fraternal Holdings reception, then been sent through.
‘What do you make of him then?’ asked Jerry Rayman.
‘Fancy dresser. Got to be gay,’ said Arthur.
‘I think he’s foreign.’
‘Yeah. That’s it, probably a Frog.’
‘Do you think the old boy in the Astra was waiting for him?’
‘Could be.’
‘Whatever he was doing inside,’ Jerry declared, ‘he didn’t look happy when he came out.’
Forty minutes later the ‘old boy’ was still there when the foreign-looking visitor came out of the building. He drove away, heading west, and Maureen reported the blue Astra starting up and following him.
‘Ah,’ said Arthur triumphantly, when he heard Maureen’s report. ‘So he was waiting for him.’
14
Dave was walking carefully to his desk in the agent-runners’ room, balancing a sheaf of surveillance photographs on top of a mug of coffee, when the phone on his desk began to ring. The flashing red light indicated that the call was coming in on one of his agent lines. In his haste to get to it before it stopped ringing, he banged into the corner of his desk and lurched forward, dropping the photographs all over the floor and spilling hot coffee on his hand. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed the handset and said, ‘7827.’