In London, it had been harder to indulge his passions. All the same, returning to his Gower Street cubbyhole, Martin was pleased to discover that his sterling work in the field had been rewarded with a Certificate of Commendation and a discretionary?75 performance bonus. Having demonstrated an ability to use his initiative, he had been taken off desk duties and handed an important agency asset to manage. With the benefit of hindsight, that had clearly been a step too far, too fast. Not only had the slippery Irish git played him for a fool, he had disappeared off the face of the planet. An afternoon spent touring Durkan’s usual haunts in Kilburn, Cricklewood and now Camden Town had drawn a complete blank. He was back to square one.
Gazing out of the window, the young man thought through everything that he knew about Gerald James Eugene Pacelli Durkan. Born on 22 May 1953, in the Creggan, a Catholic estate in Derry, Durkan joined the Official Irish Republican Army in January 1970, switching his allegiance to the breakaway Provisional IRA after the Bloody Sunday shootings two years later. Durkan was soon marked out as a rising star among terrorists in Northern Ireland’s second-largest city. Suspected of taking part in the kidnapping of a local businessman, he was arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary for possession of ammunition and bomb-making equipment in 1974. After a two-year stretch in Long Kesh, Durkan moved to London, flitting around the large Irish community as a fundraiser and community organiser for the Provisionals. In 1978, he was arrested in a car driving erratically down the Old Kent Road. Inside, police found 150lb of explosives and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Durkan’s accomplice, a hooligan called Martin Sarto, fatally shot one of the arresting officers in the face before being riddled with bullets and left to bleed to death in the gutter outside Chung’s Fish Bar. Facing an extended prison sentence, Durkan was visited in Wandsworth Prison by agents of both Special Branch and MI5, touting job offers that would see him released in exchange for turning informant. Choosing the latter — largely on the grounds that they paid more — he was released, returning to his bedsit in Nelson Avenue and the delights of Hilda Blair’s home cooking.
Martin Palmer was Durkan’s fourth handler in less than six years. For the last three months, they had met up every few weeks in different pubs for a drink and a chat. Over a large glass of Powers whiskey, Durkan would offer up tidbits of gossip and the odd name, in exchange for a thin roll of?1 notes, bound with thick, red elastic bands of the type used by postmen. Nodding furiously, Palmer would take down copious notes. After every meeting, he would dutifully write up his report, passing the information up the line to his superiors, unaware of it having any particular value.
Now Gerry had gone AWOL and all hell had broken loose. Palmer felt around for the last of the crisps from the packet and shoved them into his mouth. One thing you didn’t bloody tell me about, he thought, chewing unhappily, was the Brighton bomb. If Sorensen was right and Durkan was the bomber, it looked like he’d taken them all for complete fools. MI5’s name would be mud and Special Branch would take over the lead in the fight against terror. All he could do was to find the little bugger and hope that Sorensen had a plan to retrieve the situation. But where to look? Finishing his drink, Palmer got to his feet. There was only one place to start.
*
Hilda Blair smiled indulgently at the podgy young man perched on her sofa as he shovelled a third chocolate digestive into his mouth.
‘I hope I’m not going to put you off your evening meal,’ she said.
‘Oh, no,’ Palmer replied, spraying crumbs across the carpet as he did so. ‘There’s no danger of that. I have a very healthy appetite. I always finish whatever my mother puts in front of me.’
‘That’s good,’ Hilda beamed. ‘She must be very pleased to have a fine young man like you about the house.’
You would have thought so, wouldn’t you? ‘Yes.’ Eyeing his host, he watched the gentle rise and fall of her blouse and was rewarded with a distinct twitch in his groin. She was a good-looking woman, maybe a bit young for his taste, but appealing nonetheless.
Hilda glanced at the small forest of photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘We never had any children.’
‘Mm.’
Dragging herself away from such ancient history, Hilda gestured towards the small teapot that she had placed on the sideboard. ‘More tea?’
‘I’m fine.’ Draining the final drops from his cup, Martin Palmer got to his feet. ‘That was lovely, thank you.’ He put the cup and saucer down next to the pot and stretched. ‘But I really have to focus on the matter in hand.’ He gave the old lady a searching look. ‘You really don’t know where I might find Mr Durkan?’
‘No.’ Hilda shook her head. ‘Like I told your colleagues earlier on, I haven’t seen him for a week or so.’
‘Colleagues?’
‘The policemen who were here earlier,’ she explained, noticing the confusion that crept across his face. ‘They searched his room upstairs.’
Bloody Special Branch! Palmer’s heart sank.
‘I told them that he was probably staying with his girlfriend but they didn’t seem that interested in her.’ She gave him a puzzled look. ‘Didn’t even ask me her name.’
Palmer made a face. ‘Better let me have it. The address too, if you’ve got it.’
‘Let me go and get a pen and a bit of paper.’ As Hilda shuffled out of the room, Palmer felt a frisson of excitement ripple through his body, he was coming to realise that she was definitely his type.
A few minutes later, she returned, handing over a sheet of lilac notepaper. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Name and address.’
‘Thank you.’ Palmer stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket without looking at it.
‘It’s unusual for Gerald to be away this long,’ Hilda fretted, ‘I hope he hasn’t got himself into too much trouble.’
‘I think it’s just someone getting the wrong end of the stick,’ Palmer said reassuringly. ‘I’ve known Gerald a long time and he’s a decent bloke.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, somewhat less than convinced after the day’s events.
Placing a hand between the old woman’s shoulderblades, the young man gently directed her towards the hallway, conscious of the growing erection in his trousers as he breathed in her scent. ‘Let’s go and take another quick look upstairs. The sooner I can find him, the sooner we can sort this out and everything can get back to normal.’
Sitting behind the steering wheel of his Ford Cortina MK4, Sergeant Mike Vardy finished an extensive excavation of his left nostril and casually wiped his index finger on his jeans. Trying to ignore his colleague’s gross behaviour, Constable David Wickes lifted his camera from his lap and trained the Nikon telephoto zoom lens on the front door of 179 Nelson Avenue.
‘How long have we been sitting here now?’ Vardy wondered grumpily, reaching for the door handle. ‘I need a slash.’
‘Where are you gonna go? There’s nowhere round here.’
‘Let me worry about that,’ Vardy replied, pushing the door open.
‘Hold on,’ said Wickes as he started snapping away. ‘That fat bloke is coming out again.’
Slipping back into his seat, Vardy looked at his watch. ‘What’s Billy Bunter been up to, I wonder? He’s been in there for more than an hour.’
‘Maybe he’s an associate of Durkan,’ Wickes mused.
Associate. Vardy hated it when Wickes used language he’d picked up from American cop shows. They were British, for God’s sake. And this certainly wasn’t Starsky amp; Hutch, even if he did detect a bit of a passing resemblance to David Soul when he looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Why would he spend so much time inside if he was looking for Durkan? He must know the old woman — family, most likely.’
‘He’s sticking something in his pocket.’