Then he turned over the other cutting and the hot breath of the much more recent past burst into his face. It was folded four ways, a quarter-page from the Independent, judging from the typeface, a version of the story he hadn’t seen at the time.
top ira commander shot in farmhouse mystery the headline announced. The bodies of Joe O’Hanlon, a senior figure in the IRA command structure and two of his lieutenants, Patsy Steel and Sean Rooney, were discovered at a remote farmhouse in South Armagh yesterday after soldiers responded to reports of shooting. Weapons were recovered from the scene which was cordoned off for several hours while the soldiers checked for booby-traps. An army spokesman said no details were available of the shooting but it is understood that they believe it may have been the result of a factional squabble within the IRA’s command structure.’
Wineglass. That gut-wrenching, terrifying foul-up of an operation. The operation that simultaneously limited his rise and made his name in MI5, pegged him forever as a hard man, ready to break rules and heads. Wineglass.
It had followed him everywhere so far but it had no right to be here, tucked away in this old man’s store of memories, implying all kinds of terrifying things. Not just implying, he corrected himself, proving rather – proving that Sir Michael Parry, far from being a forbidden name from thirty years ago, knew exactly what his lost son had lately been doing for a living.
Chapter Eleven
It took a tremendous effort to go downstairs in the morning and be natural. A photo from his schooldays was one thing, he was quite sure he was unrecognizable now: the newspaper cutting was quite another. He’d woken up to the full impact of that, getting him while he was unprepared, flooding him with anxiety that this genial old man knew so much more about his remote son than he ought to have done. And here he was, in the middle of it, having to go down and be Johnny Kennedy, a name he now kicked himself for choosing, far too close.
And yet there had been no sign of any suspicion in Sir Michael’s face.
While he was shaving a car drew up outside and when he walked into the kitchen he saw Heather sitting at the long table where Sir Michael was pouring coffee. She was passing him an envelope. Yesterday’s documents, he thought, our usual friend… that was what she’d said, our usual friend would be looking after it. Sir Michael took it, nodded and put it on the dresser.
Johnny put the pink file down on the table. ‘Good morning,’ he said to both of them.
Heather gave him a quick smile. She looked tired
‘Good morning,’ said Sir Michael, ‘I do hope you slept well.’ He poured a third mug of coffee, pushed it towards him and looked at the folder. ‘You read it?’
‘Yes, I did. It makes you think.’
‘John here said he might be able to help you find this doctor person of yours,’ he explained to Heather.
She gave him a questioning look. ‘That would be clever of you. We’ve drawn a complete blank.’
‘I’m not promising,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have a bit of time on my hands this week and I enjoy a challenge.’
Five hours later he was doing his best to gloss over the whole thing to Ivor Sibley, who was looking at his report with the rapid notes he’d made of the text and headings of the Rage document. On the way back down the Ml, he’d gone through a range of emotion. He’d met his father and survived the experience. The man had not reached into his mind and rearranged it. North, south, east and west were still in the same place. Looked at in a certain way, he wasn’t really betraying them, Heather and Sir Michael. Their interests all lay in the same direction. Surely none of them wanted Ramsgill Stray to be able to eavesdrop against Britain’s interests. It was just that he was obliged by circumstances to operate covertly. ‘Operate covertly’ sounded so much better than ‘betray’.
He could make up any slight imbalance in the sum of actions by helping find the doctor and, strictly professionally speaking, it might prove helpful to stay in touch.
For all that he wanted more time to sort out the chaos in his head before putting his superior completely in the picture so he was hoping Ivor would be satisfied with his generalities about the precise circumstances of his finding the documents. He wasn’t. When he seemed to be paying you only half his attention, that was when you most had to watch out for him.
‘Good stuff, Johnny,’ he said, looking up from the report and glancing over his shoulder at the cricket on the monitors behind him, ‘sounds like you stumbled over the mother-lode. I haven’t quite understood exactly where this came from. You were staying in someone’s house last night, you say? Are you screwing one of these peace women? That would be carrying duty a little far. We’d have to pay you overtime for that, I expect.’ He laughed at his own joke. Johnny was silent.
‘No, go on,’ he said, trying to keep a straight face, ‘just tell me the rest. Who exactly had these papers? I’m sure Sir Greville is going to ask us.’
God forbid, thought Johnny. He’s the very last person I would want to know about it, or at least the second to last.
He shrugged. ‘A man who’s helping them out. I stayed at his house last night.’
‘What man was that?’
‘He’s called Parry.’
‘Just Parry? Barry Parry, Harry Parry, Gary Parry maybe?’
‘Sir Michael Parry.’
Sibley shot a startled look at him, breathed in and gave a snort of exasperation.
‘And you didn’t think it was worth mentioning until now that you’ve been rifling the drawers of the best-known former diplomat in Britain? Or that he, of all people, just happened to have these extremely sensitive papers on him? For God’s sake, Johnny, that’s quite a major point to leave out.’
‘Ivor, this is rather difficult for me.’ It sounded lame. ‘I’d better explain something you probably don’t realize.’
‘Fire away.’
So Johnny told him as little as he could get away with of the story of his parentage, of how he hadn’t been allowed to meet, see, listen to or even read about his father since he was a baby, of how Lady Viola regarded Sir Michael Parry as evil incarnate. Sibley’s gaze was fixed on him in fascination throughout.
Johnny came to the end and looked at him. ‘You’re seeing Sir Greville?’ he asked.
‘Yes, this evening.’
‘Ivor, I don’t think there’s really any point in bringing Parry into this. He doesn’t even know I’m his son.’
‘I think I have to tell them.’
‘I warn you, Ivor, my mother will not behave logically. She’ll fly off the handle. It will just make things harder.’
‘Johnny, you’re a little old to be frightened of your mother.’ Sibley made a face. ‘On the other hand, I know what you mean. I’m ten years older than you are and she bloody terrifies me. Anyway,’ he said, ‘leave that to me. You’ve done OK. It doesn’t sound like there’s any need for you to go back up there again. Take the rest of the day off. I’ll have something else for you in the morning.’
Johnny didn’t go home. There was too much unfinished business in Yorkshire to begin to think about closing that chapter. He went back to an almost deserted office downstairs and logged on to the computer.
The first bit was easy. Dr Caroline Beevor had the sort of record with the DSS you would expect. Addresses, everything. It was all there until five weeks ago, then it seemed she had just upped and gone. There was no record of her working anywhere else in the UK since then. The DVLC computer in Swansea revealed that she’d sold her car at the same time. It gave him a name and address for the car’s new owner and he soon had a phone number to match. That was a start.