What Dies Inside Part 2

'We'll see,' the landlady harrumphed, disappearing into the hall. Carlyle jumped to his feet, only to feel Donaldson's hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down.

'You wait here,' the sergeant instructed, 'while we go upstairs.'

'But what should I be doing?' Carlyle asked, irked at being left to feel like a spare part.

'If a grubby Irish gobs.h.i.te walks through the front door,' Cahill sn.i.g.g.e.red, gesturing towards the street, 'make sure you nick the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!'

As he listened to the two officers bundle up the stairs, Carlyle reached forward to retrieve the remains of his biscuit. As he did so, he caught sight of something under the sofa. Pitching forward onto his knees, he stuck out an arm and grabbed hold of a badly printed A5 flyer advertising something called 'Rodeo Night' at a pub called the McDermott Arms. Carlyle thought about it for a moment, but the name of the pub didn't ring any bells; he was fairly sure that it wasn't local. Under a drawing of a cowboy on a bucking bronco was the promise of lager for 75p a pint and spirits at doubles for a pound. Flipping it over, he saw that someone had scrawled the words Becky 7pm in blue biro. From upstairs came the sound of doors banging, followed by m.u.f.fled voices and laughter. Standing up, Carlyle carefully folded the flyer into quarters and shoved it into his trouser pocket. Just as he sat back down, Mrs Blair reappeared.

'I don't know what they think they'll find up there,' she tutted. 'Gerald is always so clean and tidy. He's one of the nicest guests I've ever had.'

Carlyle smiled but said nothing. He idly wondered how much Mrs Blair charged for a week's rent. It looked like she would soon be in the market for a new lodger. Surely even he could afford a room on Nelson Avenue?

'I expect they'll just create a lot of mess,' she continued, staring unhappily towards the ceiling, 'and then I'll have to clear it all up.'

'Sorry.'

'Never mind.' Stepping in front of Carlyle, she reached down and deftly scooped up his cup and saucer. 'Would you like another cup of tea?'

6.

Outside, the horns got louder as the traffic backed up along the Camden Road. Inside, the McDermott Arms was empty apart from a couple of long-haired youths in the back, drinking pints of lager and playing snooker. Sitting at a table near the door, perched upright on his stool, Martin Palmer sipped daintily at his gin and tonic while fishing the occasional crisp out of the packet of salt 'n' vinegar. The young spook wasn't a big imbiber and certainly not at this early hour but it had been a trying day and he needed one, or maybe even two, stiff drinks to help him try and think straight.

Palmer thought back to this morning's meeting with his boss and shuddered. Commander Sorensen had made it clear that this was a career-defining moment. He had been given until the end of the day to find Gerry Durkan or face the consequences. 'The consequences' meant being sent back to a.n.a.lyst duties, alongside the chinless wonders Ryder, Flyte and Marchmain. Nibbling unhappily on a crisp, Palmer seethed at the complete unfairness of it all. After a stellar start to his time in the service, it looked like his career was going into reverse. Demotion beckoned he could see himself rejoining the ranks of the graduate drones who did nothing all day but sit and read boring letters intercepted from Irish navvies, trying to glean hidden messages about upcoming terror attacks. He took another sip of his drink. It was so totally unfair! Hadn't he proved himself in the field? In the grim fields of Yorkshire, no less, during the mineworkers strike? There, right in the middle of what was effectively an armed insurrection against the elected government of the day, he had been directly responsible for taking out a leading activist, as well as dealing with various troublesome Communist agitators.

Yorkshire. What a dump! On the plus side, it had allowed him to escape from his mother for a while, and develop a few peccadilloes of his own at the same time. The recollection of some of his more outrageous behaviour sent a gentle shiver of excitement through his loins.

In London, it had been harder to indulge his pa.s.sions. 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 a.s.set 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 gla.s.s 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, pa.s.sing the information up the line to his superiors, unaware of it having any particular value.

Now Gerry had gone AWOL and all h.e.l.l 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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 appet.i.te. 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.'

b.l.o.o.d.y 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 rea.s.suringly. '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 a.s.sociate of Durkan,' Wickes mused.

a.s.sociate. Vardy hated it when Wickes used language he'd picked up from American cop shows. They were British, for G.o.d's sake. And this certainly wasn't Starsky & Hutch, even if he did detect a bit of a pa.s.sing 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.'

'Mm.' Vardy was more interested in where he was going to relieve himself. The two policemen watched the man stop at the front gate, before turning right and walking down the road, away from the Cortina.

'We'd better go and tell Cahill,' said Wickes, taking a few last shots of the man's back, before tossing the camera on the back seat.

'OK.' Slamming the door closed, Vardy turned the key in the ignition and the Cortina's engine roared into life. Pulling away from the kerb, he stomped on the accelerator. 'Let's get going before I b.l.o.o.d.y p.i.s.s myself.'

7.

Trying desperately to keep his gaze on Sat.u.r.day Superstore, Carlyle used his peripheral vision to track Samantha Hudson as she walked languidly through the living room. Watching the voluptuous young woman pad across the carpet wearing nothing but a black bra and a pair of lacy white briefs, he reflected, not for the first time, on just how unfair life could be. Reaching the bedroom, Sam placed her hand on the doorframe and leaned forward, giving Carlyle an excellent view of her perfectly symmetrical backside as she stuck her head round the open door.

'Dom,' she trilled, sounding every inch the pampered Sloane refugee that she was, 'fancy a coffee?' From the bedroom came an indecipherable grunt. Turning, the girl retraced her steps towards the kitchen, giving Carlyle a cheeky smile as she sashayed past in slow motion. 'He'll be out in a minute . . . probably.'

Feeling himself blush violently, Carlyle raised his gaze as far as her navel. 'OK.' With great force of will, he gritted his teeth and returned his attention to the TV. Somehow, though, even the ever-perky Sarah Greene didn't seem so alluring on this particular morning.

After listening to Sam banging around in the kitchen for a few minutes, Carlyle was wondering if he should leave. He didn't like playing gooseberry at the best of times, and this brutal demonstration of the difference between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' was causing him an almost physical pain. He was just about to get up from the cream sofa when Dom, wearing not a st.i.tch of clothing, finally wandered into the living room, scratching his head and yawning widely. 'Late night?' Carlyle asked, his voice dripping with jealousy.

'Not particularly,' grinned Dom, as he looked towards the kitchen. 'It's more to do with the company I keep.' Stepping over to the armchair in the corner, he picked up a pair of jeans and a grubby looking green and white Frank Zappa T-shirt. 'Where are my trainers?' he asked, pulling on the jeans. Carlyle pointed to the pair of blue Adidas Originals peeking out from under the chair.

'Ta.'

'No problem.' Carlyle felt like crying.

'C'mon,' Dom grunted, pulling the T-shirt over his head and slipping on the shoes, 'let's go out and get some breakfast.'

Carlyle took a bite of his egg roll and washed it down with a mouthful of lukewarm Nescafe. The Roadrunner cafe on Goldhawk Road had long been a favourite haunt; the food was c.r.a.ppy and the service appalling, but it was cheap and had a seedy, down at heel air that appealed to him. At this time on a Sat.u.r.day morning, it was almost full, so they had to share a table with a couple of young women busy fortifying themselves for an a.s.sault on the department stores of the West End.

'So,' Carlyle said, wiping ketchup from his chin with a napkin, 'you and Sam, is it serious?'

'Serious?' Dom pulled a packet of Emba.s.sy Regal from his pocket and stuck one in his mouth.

'Well, you know, you've been going out together for, what, almost six months now?'

'"Going out"?' Ignoring the disapproving glance of one of the women at a nearby table, a pretty blonde wearing a denim jacket over a cheesecloth blouse, Dom laughed as he lit up his smoke. After taking a long drag, he turned away from the table and exhaled. 'Listen to you,' he continued, lowering his voice. 'We don't "go out", we get high and we f.u.c.k.'

No need to be so b.l.o.o.d.y smug about it, Carlyle thought sourly.

'Sam's a nice girl,' Dom explained, waving his cigarette airily over the table. 'We hook up now and again, have a bit of fun, but that's it.'

A bit of fun? Carlyle felt his head spin with frustration as he watched the smoke from Dom's cigarette rise lazily towards the ceiling. In his extremely limited experience, relationships with women were impossibly complex. It annoyed him intensely that Dom could make it seem so simple. Then again, it was like that with most things Carlyle seeing complexity everywhere, while his mate just ploughed on regardless.

'Anyway,' Dom asked, 'what about you? How's the love-life?' Sitting back in his chair, he winked at the blonde, who smiled despite herself.

'What love-life?' Carlyle replied, with rather too much feeling.

Taking another drag on his cig, Dom gave him a consoling pat on the arm. 'Come on, Johnny boy, you've got to get out there.' He gestured towards the pa.s.sing traffic. 'There's a big, bad world out there, just waiting for you to jump into it.'

'Mm.' Carlyle slurped the last of his coffee. Deep down he knew that he simply wasn't the kind of bloke who jumped into things big, bad, or otherwise much as he might want to.

'If it's just a question of getting your rocks off,' Dom said, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette in a tin ashtray, 'I know a couple of girls . . .' He shot the blonde a frankly lecherous look that sent her scuttling from the table, with her mate in tow. 'More than a couple, in fact.'

'No, no,' Carlyle said hastily as he watched the girls pay their bill at the counter and disappear through the door without so much as a backward glance. The last thing he wanted was for Dom to line him up with a hooker. Apart from anything else, he couldn't afford one.

'Whatever takes your fancy.'

'No,' Carlyle repeated.

'Up to you,' Dom shrugged.

'Anyway, there's a woman at the station . . .' Desperate not to seem like a total loser, Carlyle gave Dom a quick bit of background on Sandra Wollard, omitting to mention the kids, the divorces and the fact she was well on the way to forty.

Dom listened patiently. 'Ah well, good luck with that,' he said when Carlyle had finished. 'I'm not sure I would get involved with another copper, but that's up to you. How is work at the moment, anyway?'

'Nothing particularly exciting.'

'That's exactly why I left,' Dom said, tapping the cigarette packet with his index finger. 'Who would have thought the whole thing was just so totally f.u.c.king boring?'

Carlyle grinned. 'I thought you left because they were gonna kick you out.'

'Hardly.'

'How many coppers tried to shop you over Syerston in the end?' A few months earlier, in the summer, the pair of them had been billeted in an RAF base in Nottinghamshire while on picket-line duty during the mineworkers' strike. For Constable Dominic Silver, presented with a captive market, it had been an opportunity to develop his growing side-line selling drugs. There had been plenty of brother officers happy to partake of his wares. A fair few, however, had not been prepared to turn a blind eye to what was going on. Barely two months after returning to London, Dom had left the force.

'One or two,' Dom admitted. 'w.a.n.kers. They should have minded their own f.u.c.king business.'

'So,' Carlyle persisted, 'did you jump, or were you pushed?'

'I jumped.'

Carlyle raised an eyebrow.

'No, really.' Taking the packet of Emba.s.sy from the table, Dom shoved it back in his pocket, fishing out a couple of pound notes in the process. 'There were some murmurings before I left, but no one got round to starting any disciplinary proceedings or anything like that. My discharge was perfectly honourable.'

'Glad to hear it.' Carlyle sn.i.g.g.e.red.