three men said it all, and Billy checked the.25 Colt in his waistband at the rear. No point in delaying things. These bastards obviously wanted to have him, so they might as well get on with it.
He called Kathleen over and gave her a twenty-pound note. “Jesus, that’s too much.”
“It’s been a sincere sensation,” he said, and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Suddenly, she smiled. “My God, I don’t know who you are, but I think you will.”
Billy reached over, kissed her on the cheek, went out of the pub and turned into the alley at the side. The three young men from the next table erupted after him, and Billy turned to meet the rush, not afraid, he never was. Years on the street had taken care of that.
“Now then, lads, what’s the problem?”
One of them grabbed him by the tie. “You’ve been asking after a good friend of ours, Liam Bell, you English bastard.”
“Now, that’s not nice,” Billy said. “And me as Irish as all of you.” Which was perfectly untrue.
One of them said, “You don’t even have an Irish accent.”
“I didn’t know you needed one.”
The man pulled his tie, the other two moved in, Billy pulled the Colt.25 from the back of his waistband and fired between their legs at the cobbles. He kept a hand on the one who clutched his tie and wiped the Colt across his mouth. The others jumped back.
“I’ll only say this once, otherwise you can have it in the knee. Where’s Bell?”
The youth was quaking. “He was recruiting for a job in Drumore up in County Louth last I heard.”
Billy released him. “There you go. It wasn’t too hard, was it?”
He replaced the Colt and one of the other two took a swing at him. There was a minor melee, and Flynn and big Donald came running round the corner. A few pokes from Donald’s stick were enough. They went off, dejected, one with a handkerchief to a bloody face.
Flynn stuck a cigarette in his mouth. “You don’t take prisoners, do you?”
“I could never see the point.”
“Neither could I. Let me know what the outcome is. I’m fascinated.”
“That’s a promise,” Billy said. “You can rely on it. Regards from Dillon.”
He got in his car and drove back to the airport.
Dillon showered and changed, wondering how Billy would make out in Dublin, then drove round to Holland Park. He found Roper in the computer room with Ferguson. “Any word on Billy?” he asked.
“Not yet. You’re expecting a lot, Dillon, but then you always did.”
“I just expect people to come up to expectations. Coming up with the goods is another way of looking at it, which Scotland Yard seems to be rather spectacularly failing to do in Hannah’s case.” He turned to Roper. “Any news at all from the Murder Squad?”
“It’s early days, Sean. You’re expecting too much.”
“It’s one of their own we’re talking about,” Dillon said.
“Leave it alone,” Ferguson said. “This is a job for uniform and Special Branch and certainly not for us. You don’t interfere.”
“Sounds definite enough,” Dillon said. “I’ll give it my consideration.” And he went out.
Levin had been on his tail since leaving Dillon’s cottage in Stable Mews, which could have been difficult with someone of Dillon’s experience, but there was London traffic to help. Not that he was exactly inexperienced himself, and he stayed well back and followed.
Dillon went to Mary Killane’s place. He really was worried that the Murder Squad didn’t appear to be making much progress. Where she had lived, Kilburn, was the most Irish area of London. There were pubs there that would make you think you were back in the old country. Republican, Protestant, take your pick.
Dillon was an expert on all of them, had lived there as a boy newly come from Belfast with his father, so if you were a nice Catholic girl who was going out for a drink, you’d never go to a Prod pub, only a Catholic one. Mary Killane didn’t have a car, so you were talking about walking unless she’d a fella who picked her up at the flat. In any case, within a reasonable walking distance to here, there were a few Catholic pubs.
Most were clean enough. He showed her photo and got nowhere. There were others that had IRA connections, especially from before the Peace Process, there being little action in London these days. One such was the Green Tinker, the landlord one Mickey Docherty. A huge IRA supporter in the old days, he’d been picked up twice although nothing had ever been proven.
Dillon found him just before noon, when the bar was empty except for two old men in cloth caps drinking ale at a corner table and playing dominoes. Docherty was reading the
“My God, it’s you, Sean.”
“As ever was. Get me a large Bushmills.”
Docherty did as he was told, and when he turned, Dillon had a computer photo of Mary on the bar. He took his whiskey and drank it. Docherty’s face said it all.
“I can see by your face you know her.”
“What’s she done?”
“Got herself killed.”
Docherty crossed himself. “Mother of God.”
“Don’t start getting pious with me. Who did she come in with?”
“And how would I be knowing that?”
“Because there’s an IRA connection and a possible Liam Bell connection, so tell me what you know. If you don’t, I’ll be back tonight to haunt you. I’ll cripple you, both knees. This is important to me.”
“All right, Sean, I hear you.” He turned, poured a whiskey, hands shaking. “Nice girl. A nurse. She was a sleeper.”
“How do you know?”
“I took letters from Dublin for her and the fella.”
“Which fella?”
“Well, he was a sleeper, too. Dermot Fitzgerald.”
“What did it say in the letters?”
“How would I know?”
“Because you steamed the envelopes open.”
Docherty was panicking. “I only did it a couple of times. They were just notes, no signature. Things like phone a certain number at such and such a time. Fitzgerald was a handsome rogue. A real scholar. Doing an MA at London University.”
“A scholar and a gentleman thinking it was romantic to be in the IRA?”
“There was word about him.”
“What kind of word?”
“That he’d killed three or four times.”
There was silence. “Do you have his address?”
“Only round the corner, but he’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Ibiza. He told me a couple of days ago. Said he’d made a bit of money and was going over there for a while. Likes to dive.”
Dillon thought about it, then took another computer photo out, Levin’s this time. “Anyone you know?”
Docherty shook his head. “Definitely not.”
Dillon put the photos away. “I hope I don’t have to come back.”
Igor Levin, following Dillon to the Green Tinker, had glanced through a window, seen him approach the bar to talk to Docherty. He moved on and discovered a door to a separate saloon bar. He moved in. There was no one there, but there was an access door into the other bar, and when he put his earpiece in, he could hear what passed between them from the moment Docherty recognized Mary Killane and was told she had been killed.
