At length Fitzpatrick broke the silence. ‘We would have to start afresh. For all we know our active service units currently in England could already be compromised. They’ve been running successfully for some time, perhaps nearing the end of their natural life. Any new campaign cannot be allowed to fail. For that we will require the very highest security, a new controlling unit and a new team. The best planning brains and the best bomb makers, because they’ll have to be able to outthink and outwit the very top experts the Brits will set against them.’
‘We could do with some of the old hands from the seventies,’ Q said wistfully. ‘Those boys really knew a trick or two… What about Willie MacEoin, what’s he doing now?’
Kilian Tierney, whose Sweenies also had responsibility for keeping tabs on ex-cons, knew the answer to that. ‘Willie wouldn’t want to know. Sure he’s a broken man, just sits and weeps by his dying ma’s bedside all day.’
Q looked despondent. ‘It’s a pity they’ve buried Hughie Dougan, he’d have been your man. No one ever had a brain like him. Bright as sixpence. Completed The Times crossword every day in twenty minutes, a member of Mensa. What a mind!’
McGirl said testily: ‘He’d be senile by now, for Christsakes. This calls for new blood, new thinking.’
Fitzpatrick sniffed heavily; this was no time for discussing the dead. ‘There is still no substitute for experience, Pat, and that’s what the old boys had. Anyway, that’s by the by. We’ll have a think and talk around, discreet like. Next meeting in five days, venue to be advised. Each of you put together a list of names of people who would be best suited to do the job.’
The meeting broke up, each member picking up his briefcase that contained a stamp album before leaving for the cars.
Donny Fitzpatrick lingered, deep in thought, reaching up to open the curtains and allowing a shaft of smoky sunlight to penetrate the stale air. As he turned back into the room, he saw that Kilian Tierney had returned.
‘What is it, Killy?’
‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others.’
‘Well?’
‘I had a visit the other day from Clodie Dougan, Hughie’s oldest girl.’
‘So?’
‘Hughie isn’t dead.’
Rain dripped steadily from a cold and sodden sky. A crocodile of schoolchildren were the only other visitors to Belfast Zoo, lost in the dank mist that clung to the mountainside site.
Donny Fitzpatrick climbed the winding leafy path that led up from the entrance, the four-year-old boy clutching his hand. By the time they reached the rocky pool where the blind Californian seals swam, the man was out of breath. Nevertheless he felt compelled to light a cigarette, cupping cold pinched fingers against the hard drizzle. The boy hung over the railings, mesmerised by the circling mammals, puzzling why if they were blind they did not collide. He did not notice the woman approach.
‘Your boy?’
She stood a short distance away, a turquoise umbrella shielding her long black hair and trench coat from the rain. A good-looking woman, Fitzpatrick thought, with nice legs and dark steady eyes.
He moved towards her, away from the child. ‘I borrowed him for the day.’
‘You don’t have a son of your own then?’
He noticed the shaped arch of her eyebrows as she appraised him, approved of the fullness of her lips. ‘My own boy’s a wee bit older, serving seven in the Kesh.’
‘Perhaps he knows my father.’
‘Everyone knew Hughie Dougan.’ It sounded like a compliment, a recognition.
‘You turned him away when he came out. He didn’t like that.’
‘It’s policy. People get turned inside.’
‘Not my father. You must know that.’
‘Perhaps.’
She looked past him to the boy and the man saw the strange expression in those deep, dark eyes. A sadness perhaps and, just for a moment, vulnerability. ‘My father knew his time would come again. He’d made plans, just waiting for when he’d be needed. I told Killy Tierney that, told him to pass it on.’
Fitzpatrick put the cigarette stub to his lips and drew heavily, but the rain, running in rivulets down his face, dampened the paper. He tossed the remains over the rail into the seal pool. ‘Faking his own death, was that part of the plan?’
‘The RUC won’t hunt for a dead man.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Fitzpatrick stared up at the mist coiling around the mountainside. There was a distant barking sound from the gorilla compound. ‘Jimmy Coyle went missing at about the same time Hughie was supposed to have died. Is that how you did it?’
She averted her eyes. ‘It was easy enough. The explosion made a mess of the body, but I’d put Da’s rings on his fingers first. I was asked to do the identification.’
‘You killed Jimmy Coyle?’ He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
Clodagh’s eyes met his again, dark and fathomless. ‘He was so eager to get his leg over, it wasn’t difficult. A hammer, that’s all it took.’ There was an accusation in her expression. ‘I was only doing your job for you. Jimmy Coyle fingered Da nine years ago, everyone knew that. The dog should have been put down then.’
He didn’t like being told what he should or shouldn’t have done by a woman, least of all one he’d only just met. ‘That was speculation. I think you’ll find it was the evidence of the bomb-disposal and forensic-science boys that put your da away.’
‘Well, he’s not going away again, we’re all determined about that.’
‘Where is Hughie now?’
‘Only I know that. You reach him through me. Phone me at work, never at home.’
‘What about your sister?’
Her eyes narrowed. Was there a sneer on his face? Did he know that Caitlin was living with the part-time soldier in the Royal Irish Regiment, who was the father of the child she carried? ‘She knows nothing about all this.’
Fitzpatrick looked down at the grunting, bewhiskered torpedo flapping smoothly through the chill water. ‘One thing worries us.
Your father was good in his time, but he’s no longer a young man. Time has moved on, technology has changed.’
She leaned her back against the railing. ‘I studied hard at school and made sure of a place at the Poly. CDT. Craft, Design and Technology. It went into the whole manufacturing process of electronics, vac-forming, PC boards, the lot. I’m a highly paid electronics expert. In fact I expect I earn more than you. And none of it was an accidentj it was Da’s idea for keeping abreast of developments. We’ve both waited eighteen years for this. We’ll be working together.’
‘I’m impressed.’ He meant it.
‘But I’ll warn you of one thing. Any operations will be run our way, that’s a precondition. And you can’t expect my father to get involved unless it’s for a good reason, an important campaign.’
Fitzpatrick’s voice was low, earnest. ‘There’s never been a more important campaign.’ v
‘What do you want done?’
‘A short campaign here first. To be sure you’re up to it, to iron out any problems.’
‘And then?’
‘We want you to set London ablaze. We want the capital and the government brought to its knees.’
Five minutes later he watched the slender figure retreating down the pathway, disappearing into the mist and rain.
The man walked on towards the penguin pool, the little boy skipping at his side.