So he had only one desire now: the burning urge, fuelled by anger, to get even with the people who had hurt him. To injure them as they’d injured him. That was what was driving him on.
He turned his attention back to the letter. Watch your back. He certainly would, as he always did. He picked up his mobile and thumbed the auto-dial.
After three rings a reedy, youthful voice answered. ‘Hello,’ it said shakily.
He knew Danny Ryan was terrified of him. Good – he was going to keep it that way. ‘Danny, listen carefully. I’ve got a job for you.’
‘Yes, Mr P,’ he said, like a junior mobster speaking to el capo.
‘Here’s what I want you to do,’ said Piggott with deceptive mildness. Then he added in a voice of steel, ‘And this time you’d better not screw it up.’
24
‘Where’s Liz?’
Judith turned from her cupboard clutching a pile of papers to find Dave standing beside her.
‘She’s not back from Paris yet,’ she said, dumping the papers on her desk and looking up at Dave. Judith had known Dave for years and they’d worked together often before they both came to Northern Ireland. His cheerful, breezy approach to life had buoyed her up through some difficult times at work and when her family life had fallen to pieces. But now she stared at him, shocked by his appearance. His round, boyish face looked thinner, drawn and tired. There was no sign of the ever-present smile.
‘Dave. Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he replied flatly, sitting down suddenly in her visitors’ chair.
‘Well, you don’t look it. What’s happened?’
He rubbed a hand over his face, brushing back his hair. ‘I expect you’ll hear on the grapevine, so I might as well tell you. I’ve broken up with Lucy.’
Lucy was a second lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps stationed outside London. Judith knew that she and Dave had been an item for two years or so and Dave had even hinted that they might get married.
‘It’s not been easy being apart, but I thought everything was essentially fine, but then last night I phoned her and she suddenly said that she wasn’t sure about us. She was thinking of leaving the army, she didn’t want to be hitched to my job, she needed time to think and she didn’t want to see me again until she knew her own mind.’ He looked at Judith glumly. ‘I think it’s the end for us. She’s probably met someone else and is trying to let me down lightly.’
‘Oh Dave. I’m so sorry. I thought you were both so happy.’
‘We were,’ said Dave. ‘But I think I’d better get used to the idea of life without her now. Anyway,’ he said, shaking his head and standing up suddenly. ‘I was looking for Liz to tell her that I’m seeing this bloke Milraud this afternoon.’
Judith’s eyes widened. ‘Where?’
‘At his shop.’ He looked at her. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Who’s watching your back?’
‘No one. It’s just a social call,’ he added. When she didn’t smile, he said, ‘It’s not a big deal, Judith. I’ve told him I’m a collector of antique derringers wanting to look at what he’s got. That’s all. He has no reason to suspect anything else.’
‘What on earth do you know about derringers?’
‘I’ve got all the guff on them from the internet. I reckon I can pass as a collector.’
‘Don’t you think you should check with Liz first?’
‘That’s why I was looking for her, but I’ll have to go ahead without her. Nothing’s going to happen – it’s a first meet. I’m just trying to get a handle on the guy and see if there’s anything in it for us.’
‘I think you should wait. Liz might have learned something useful about Milraud in Paris.’
‘Yeah, but he’s here now and he might not be for long. I don’t want to miss him.’
Judith hesitated, looking at Dave’s drawn face. She could see that he needed to be active to take his mind off his troubles, and active for Dave meant something that got the adrenalin flowing. But she felt uneasy. He was in the mood to take risks.
‘Shouldn’t you at least talk to Michael Binding?’
‘Binding’s virtually living at Stormont these days,’ he replied impatiently. ‘It’ll be okay, Judith. Stop worrying.’ And he walked off.
Later that day Dave drove into Belfast, parked in the car park at the Castlecourt shopping centre, then walked towards the University of Ulster. Milraud’s shop was halfway down a narrow side street full of coffee shops and clothes boutiques.
The shop was on a terrace of two-storey Georgian buildings of yellowing stone, once houses, now all shops. Miraud’s establishment was fronted by a long low window, in which a beautiful antique pistol was lying on a red velvet cushion, flanked by a pair of wooden-handled eighteenth-century derringers propped decoratively against each other. Looking through the window, Dave could see a large glass cabinet against a far wall, where more antique pistols hung from iron hooks.
Putting his hand on the highly polished brass handle, he took a deep breath and pushed. A bell rang, triggered by the opening of the door, and a woman looked up from behind a display counter at the far end of the shop. She smiled as she came out to meet him. This was obviously no ordinary shop and she no ordinary shop assistant. She was a slim middle-aged woman with beautifully cut grey hair, dressed in a plain black suit of some sort of rough silk, a thin gold necklace her only jewellery. Everything about the place murmured wealth and good taste.
Dave was glad he had dressed up a bit – no parka this morning, but a navy-blue blazer he had dusted off, a woollen v-necked jersey, an open-neck white shirt and sparklingly clean chinos. His shoes, a pair of black slip-ons, looked highly polished only because he so rarely wore them.
‘Can I help you?’ the elegant lady asked with a smile at once formal and genteel.
‘Good afternoon. I’m Simon Willis. I have an appointment with Mr Milraud.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Willis. Please follow me,’ the woman said, and led him through a door marked ‘Private’ into an office where a man sat at a small mahogany desk, leafing through a saleroom catalogue.
Milraud’s face beneath his short hair was Gallic, with dark questioning eyes, and olive-tinted skin. He wore a maroon turtleneck sweater under a grey plaid jacket. He could have been anything from a Foreign Legion officer to a lecturer in philosophy at the Sorbonne. When he rose to shake hands, though he was much shorter than Dave, his body was more muscular, and there was an icy element Dave sensed behind the facade.
‘Would you like coffee, Mr Willis?’ Milraud asked as they both sat down.
Dave shook his head. ‘Thanks, but I’m fine. It’s good of you to see me.’
Milraud shrugged, as if to say this was his business after all.
‘You said on the telephone that you have an interest in antique arms.’
‘Among other things,’ said Dave. He wanted to put down a marker that Milraud could pick up at any time.
‘What sort of arms are you looking for?’
‘Derringers, at least to begin with. Eighteenth and nineteenth century. Continental ones especially.’
‘Belfast is not perhaps the ideal place to look for French and German weapons,’ Milraud said with a mild inquiring tone.