The photograph of McCoy was rapidly reproduced, and despatched to all police stations in the Metropolitan area.
The photofit team began work on a compilation of the unknown Arab's features, using principally Doris Lang's written description, written by a trained hand, and also including the sketchier accounts of his appearance as given by the occupants of the commune. Teleprinter messages from the Royal Ulster Constabulary headquarters at Knock Road on the east side of Belfast carried more information on the Irishman. The decision was made to release the picture of McCoy at lunch-time for the Independent Television current affairs programme that would be on the air at that time, and for a BBC newsflash.
That was when Norah saw the picture.
Her father always insisted that the television should be on during the formal eating of the Sunday roast, because he liked the farmers' programmes. After the music had faded away and the end-title shot of a threshing machine had disappeared behind a hill the screen went to black before the appearance of the 'Newsflash' symbol. The three people round the table, Norah, her mother and her father, all stopped eating and turned their attention to the set, food still on their forks. The item lasted a minute or so, the first forty seconds taken up by pictures of the comings and goings in Englefield Road. A policewoman had been found in a commune. Dead, strangled.
'Bastards,' Norah's father muttered to himself. 'Bloody bastards.'
Police were anxious to trace a young Irishman. Name -
Ciaran McCoy. The picture came up then, and stayed on the screen for twenty seconds. Half this time had elapsed before Norah recognized the boy she had lain beside at the swimming pool, the boy she had kissed, and who had left her so abruptly last Thursday night. She could see it was a police photograph, a man just taken into custody, aggressive and caged. But it was still the same man, the lines of a mouth whether set in anger or friendship change little, only superficially.
'Little swine,' her father said. 'We should string them up. Only thing they understand.'
Norah had said nothing. She put her head down and close to the food lest her parents should see the tears that welled up in her eyes. She had bolted her food, made an excuse and run through the front door. She walked endlessly that afternoon, conscious of an overwhelming feeling of shame, of having been dirtied in some way.
When Jones came back from the police station he brought with him photostats and transcripts of the note-pad.
Duggan and Fairclough were waiting in his office.
Duggan said, 'He's blown it, hasn't he, our little boyo?
Lost his safe house, lost his base. His picture will be plastered everywhere by tonight, all over the television, and front pages of the papers tomorrow. And now he's running, concerned with his own survival. Not what you'd call an auspicious start for what he's after.'
'Meaning what?' said Jones.
'That it may well be over for him. His concentration now is how to stay free. Does a man in his position go walking through a police cordon, cordon forewarned, cordon with a description? Does he, hell! He stays out.
Packs it in.'
'That's one viewpoint.' Jones acknowledged the argument, but looked sceptical.
'The other view takes a different course,' Fairclough joined in. if we look at the Palestinian, or Arab, or whatever he is, we can come out with a different answer.
He's been through a crisis before, in France on Thursday, and he's still on the move. Look at it from his point of view. If he doesn't go on what does he go back to? They won't welcome him with open arms back in his camp.
He'd be a miserable failure. Fiasco. It's when the suicide mentality breaks through. The harder the going gets the more he will be prepared to risk his own life in order to succeed.'
'And the conclusion from that?' asked Jones.
'The conclusion from that is that the Arab is now extremely dangerous. Tiger in the long grass with half his guts shot out. He's a killer still, more so, only thing we can be certain of is that. But he's at a disadvantage, and that's positive, and consolation for us.'
'The picture of one of them, detailed description of the other. Available to every man round Sokarev. That stacks the odds a bit against our two friends.' Jones was able to smile, rare over the last two days. 'But if the Arab wants to go on what about McCoy?'
Again it was Fairclough, hunched forward in his seat, using his hands to emphasize the points he made. 'One of them has killed this morning, but they're both in it together. The critical factor is whether they fall apart, how much of a bond they've made. From what I've read of McCoy I think he'll stay in, right up to the end, providing he thinks there's a chance of living through it.'
Jones wondered how he could be so sure, and envied the younger man the certainty of his opinions. But it was not a time for sarcasm, or for academic discussion. So many of them had breezed through the department over the years, knowing all the answers, having an explanation for every half-truth situation. The ones that stayed on were the ones who recognized that there were no simple answers in the business. The problem was — and Jones could see that much — that this wasn't the operation the section heads were familiar with, inexperienced at tangling on the short-term affairs. They were pretty good when they had the space to spread themselves, to get through on the inside, to win time to build up the overall picture. But this was a sprint, and didn't really depend on men like himself.
Hadn't much to contribute. When there wasn't any time the whole thing came down to Jimmy's level. Who shoots best — us or them? That's why he'd brought Jimmy in on the effort. He liked the man in a distant way, was vaguely fond of him, but to be dependent on him, to recognize he had more to offer now than Jones himself, that left a taste in the mouth.
Jimmy took considerable care over his firearms.
For close protection work he favoured the PPK (Polizei Pistolen Kriminal) Walther. And this was the gun he drew from the armoury, set behind reinforced walls in the basement of Leconfield House just beyond the area used by the monitoring team. The PPK was a small weapon, manufactured with great skill by the workers of the Karl Walther factory at Ulm on the Danube in West Germany.
Its length was little more than six inches, its weight slightly over a pound. It was not new, manufactured in 1938, and had come into the department's collection after the war, but the armourer had maintained it with studied attention, knowing that this, among all the others, was the weapon that Jimmy asked for on his occasional visits to the underground room. On most occasions the gun had been returned unused, but a few times the armourer had noticed the magazine no longer contained its seven shells, and that the barrel needed cleaning.
The two men had talked about Jimmy's choice at the time that the newspapers were full of how the PPK being used by a Royal detective had jammed during a kidnap attempt, and how it had been withdrawn from use by the bodyguards. Neither the armourer nor the marksmen had been impressed by the reasons made public for the switch-over to the British-made Smith and Wesson, the traditional police weapon. Jimmy's loyalty was unmoved.
With the gun signed for, and two dozen rounds along with it, Jimmy drove north to the police firing range in an old building the far side of Euston Station. There were policemen there, members of a pistol shooting club, complete in denim overalls and earpads, firing at targets twenty-five metres across the floor from the painted white line that ran across one end of the range.
Jimmy showed his identification card to the instructor, and the policemen were called back to the shadows away from the shooting line. They watched as Jimmy loaded the magazine, then stood apparently relaxed facing them and away from the human-shaped target, gun pointing to the floor, loosely held against his trousers. The instructor let fall a box of matches. By the time it had bounced twice and come to rest Jimmy had twisted, body crouched, knees bent, two hands together outstretched and both on the butt of the pistol, and his first shot had hit the target.