He helped her off with her coat. “May I join you? I could do with a sandwich, too.”
She was obviously attracted. “Why not? Prawn on salad and tea.”
“Oh, we can do better than that.” He went to the bar, gave the waitress an order and came back with two glasses of champagne. “There you go.”
“I say, this is nice.” She was sparkling with pleasure.
“You deserve it. You’re in the death business. Not many people could do what you do.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She drank the champagne and ate her sandwiches and he bought her another glass and got to work. “The things you have to put up with in your work. I mean, look at what happened earlier.”
She was a little tipsy and very flushed. “Well, I must admit, it was very unusual.”
“You were there?”
“Well, I showed them all in to the professor, so I was standing by the door when he told them his findings.”
“Just a moment.” Levin got up, went to the bar and returned with two more. “What were you saying? It must have been awful.”
“Well, I shouldn’t really say anything,” but she leaned forward.
The whole story came out, naturally, and then she checked her watch and gasped, “Oh, I’m late already.” She jumped up and he helped her into her coat.
“I’ll walk you back.” It was still raining. He said, “A pity you’re on shift tonight. We could have had dinner.”
“Oh, my boyfriend wouldn’t like that.”
Levin managed to stop himself laughing out loud. He took her to the mortuary entrance through the rain.
“Take care,” he said, and walked away.
And then, as he went to the entrance and paused to look back, he noticed a black hearse. Something made him pause. Rabbi Julian Bernstein emerged. Behind him, pallbearers came out with a coffin.
He watched it being put into the hearse, and the rear door closed. As Rabbi Bernstein got into the front of the hearse behind the driver and the pallbearers got into another limousine, Levin cut back. There was the name and telephone number of the undertaker in gold leaf under the tailgate. He memorized it and walked on to the Embassy. Once in his office, he phoned Ashimov.
“Things have moved.”
“Tell me.”
Levin did. “I told you they’d been clumsy, your IRA chums. It won’t take a man like Dillon long to see which way things have gone. You’d better see that Fitzgerald keeps his head down in Ibiza. Do you want me to go out there and take care of him?”
“Don’t be stupid, Igor, I need these people. Stay there, check out the funeral and keep an eye out for Ferguson and company.”
“So you don’t want me to knock off Dillon for you?”
“Not now. Just obey orders, Igor.”
Levin sat back and thought about it, then rang the undertakers. “I’m hoping to send flowers as a token of respect for Miss Hannah Bernstein. I’m not sure whether the body will be there or at home.”
“Oh, here overnight.”
“And the funeral?”
“Ten o’clock in the morning at Golders Green.”
“So kind.”
He thought about things for a while, then decided to go for a drive, which took him to Wapping and Cable Wharf and the Dark Man. It was almost night, lights on the river, and he parked, one of many cars, so things were busy. He went and stood on the edge of the wharf and lit a cigarette. He’d always liked rivers, the smell of them, the boats, but now he felt curiously empty. It was Bernstein. He kept thinking of her photo, the look on her face. Dammit, her death was not really his affair, there was an inevitability to it. So why did he feel as he did? The Jewish link? But that was nonsense. It had always meant little to him, and death had been a way of life for years.
“Pull yourself together, Igor,” he murmured, and flicked his cigarette into the Thames. He took a small leather pouch from his pocket, extracted a minuscule earpiece, another device developed by the GRU, and pushed it into his right ear. The chip it contained enhanced sound considerably. Then he crossed the wharf and entered the Dark Man.
Ferguson, Dillon and the Salters were all there, including Roper in his wheelchair. They had the corner booth, but the bar itself was busy. Levin got a large vodka and helped himself to an
Billy Salter was talking. “What’s going on? This bird, this Mary Killane. What’s the connection?”
It was Roper who intervened. “An IRA connection from childhood. Her father was a Provo hard man. He died of cancer years ago in the Maze Prison. The mother took the girl to Dublin when she was very young.”
“You’ve checked out what happened to her thoroughly?”
“Charles, I could tell you the schools she went to, where she trained as a nurse. All that.”
“Have you checked whether she was a member of the IRA herself?”
“As well as I could, and she wasn’t.”
“Was she a member of any political groups, anything like that?”
“As far as I can tell, which is considerable, she’s not a member of any group connected to Sinn Fein, I can guarantee that.”
It was Dillon who cut in. “She wouldn’t be. Her worth would be her being in the Republic and uninvolved. Going by her age, she’d be a sleeper.”
“What in the hell is a bleeding ‘sleeper’?” Harry asked.
“The new wave, Harry. Nice, decent professional people who work in hospitals or offices or universities, a lot of them London Irish. Born here, English accents. A perfect cover – until they’re activated.”
“In a way, that applies to you, Sean,” Ferguson said. “Your father brought you here as a little boy. Your education was English.”
“True. You don’t need an Irish accent to be Irish. The IRA discovered that with me a long time ago, and these days, it’s even more important. If you think they’ve given up, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“So Mary Killane’s task was to give Hannah Bernstein an overdose,” Ferguson said. “But why?”
There was silence. Roper said, “As a Special Branch Officer, Hannah not only put members of the IRA away, she killed them.”
“So what are you saying?” Blake said. “Somebody in the hierarchy waits until she’s almost dying anyway before deciding to have her put down?”
“Like a dog.” Dillon’s voice was almost toneless, without feeling.
Billy went to the bar and ordered more drinks. They were still sitting in silence when he returned. “Revenge is the only thing that makes sense. Whoever it was wanted their own back. Because of the IRA connection, we’re assuming it’s the IRA. But could she have been doing it for somebody else?”
One of the waitresses brought the drinks. Dillon looked at his Bushmills and swallowed it down. “Whoa, Billy. A girl like her, her whole background smacks of decency. I bet she went to Mass twice a week. And she’s a nurse, she chose a caring profession. A girl like that wouldn’t kill a fly normally. She would need strong persuasion to do what she did. When I was a boy, the Jesuits at school right here in London taught me an important thing. ‘By the small things shall thou know them.’ ”
It was Billy, in many ways Dillon’s other self, who said, “And the small thing here is the fact that her father was an IRA activist.”
“Who died in a British prison,” Roper said.
“A girl like her would need to believe fervently,” Dillon said. “She’d have to believe it was the right thing to do. A girl who goes to Mass? So what would make her do such a thing? She would need to believe it was acceptable, if you like.”
