it was an imitation, the foreign accept slipped a little with the pronunciation of the name.
“Gilly O’Shaughnessy,“the police girl repeated.
“That’s right. He’s holding her at Laragh.”
“Spell that, please.”
Again the accent slipped as the man spelled the name.
“And where is that, sir?”
“County Wicklow, Ireland.”
“Thank you,
sir. What is your name, please?” There was the clack of a broken connection and the hum of the dialling tone. The girl shrugged, and scribbled the message on the pad before her, glancing at her wristwatch simultaneously.
“Seven minutes to tea time,” she said. “Roll on death, battle with the angels.” She tore the sheet off the pad and passed it over her shoulder to the burly, curly-headed sergeant who sat behind her.
“I’ll buy you a sticky bun, “he promised.
“I’m on a diet, “she sighed.
“That’s daft, you look a treat-” The sergeant broke off.
Gil ly O’Shaughnessy. Why do I know that name?” The older sergeant looked up sharply.
“Gilly O’Shaughnessy?” he demanded. “Let me see that.” And he snatched the sheet, scanning it swiftly, his lips moving as he read the message. Then he looked up again.
“You know the name because you’ve seen it on the wanted posters,
and heard it on the telly. Gilly O’Shaughnessy, strew the man, he’s the one who bombed the Red Lion at Leicester, and shot the Chief Constable in Belfast.” The curly-headed policeman whistled softly. “This looks like a hot one. A real hot one-” But his colleague was already barging into the inner office without the formality of knocking.
Richards had the connection to the Dublin police within seven minutes.
“Impress upon them that there must be no attempt-” Peter fretted,
while they waited, and Richards cut him short.
“All right, General. Leave this to me. I understand what has to be done—2 At that moment the Dublin connection was made, and Richards was transferred quickly to a Deputy, Commissioner. He spoke quietly and earnestly for nearly ten minutes before he replaced the receiver.
“They will use the local constabulary, not to waste time in sending a man down from Dublin. I have their promise that no approach will be made if a suspect is located.” Peter nodded his thanks.
“Laragh,” he said. “I have never heard of it. It cannot have a population of more than a few hundred.”
“I’ve sent for a map,” Richards told him, and when it came they studied it together.
“It’s on the slopes of the Wicklow hills ten miles from the coast-” And that was about all there was to learn from the large-scale map.
“We’ll just have to wait for the Dublin police to call back-“
“No,” Peter shook his head. “I want you to call them again, and ask them to contact the surveyor-general. He must have trig maps of the village, aerial photographs, street layouts. Ask them to get them down with a driver to Enniskerry Airfield-“
“Should we do that now? What if this turns out to be another false alarm.”
“We’ll have wasted a gallon of petrol and the driver’s time-” Peter was no longer able to sit still, he jumped out of the chair and began to pace restlessly about the office; it was too small for him suddenly, he felt as though he were on the point of suffocation. “I don’t think it is, however. I
have the smell of it. The smell of the beast.”
Richards looked startled and Peter deprecated the exaggerated phrase with a dismissive gesture. “A manner of speech” he explained,
and then stopped as a thought struck him. “The helicopters will have to refuel, they haven’t got the range to make it in one hop, and they are so bloody slow!” He paused and reached a decision, then leaned across Richards’s desk to pick up the telephone and dialled Colin
Noble’s private number at Thor.
“(2bun.” He spoke curtly with the tension that gripped him like a mailed fist. “We’ve just had a contact. It’s still unconfirmed, but it looks the best yet.”
“Where?” Colin broke in eagerly.
“Ireland.”
“That’s to hell and gone.”
“Right, what’s the flight time for the whirlybirds to reach Enniskerry?”
“Stand by.” Peter heard him talking to somebody else probably one of the RAF. pilots. He came back within the minute.
“They will have to refuel en route—2 eyes?” Peter demanded impatiently “Four and a half hours,“Colin told him.
“It’s twenty past ten now almost three o’clock before they reach
Enniskerry. With this weather it will be dark before five.” Peter thought furiously; if they sent the Thor team all the way to Ireland on a false trail and while they were there the correct contact was made in Scotland, or Holland, or’It’s got the smell. It’s got to be right,”
he told himself, and took a deep breath. He could not order Colin
Noble to go to Bravo. Peter was no longer commander of Thor.
“Colin,” he said. “I think this is it. I have the deep-down gut feel for it. Will you trust me and go to Bravo now? If we wait even another half hour we’ll not get Melissa-Jane out before nightfall if she is there.”
its There was a long silence, broken only by Colin Noble’s light quick breath.
“Hell, it can only cost me my job,” he said easily at last.
okay, Pete baby, it’s Bravo, we’ll be airborne in five minutes.
We’ll pick you up from the helipad in fifteen minutes; be ready.” The cloud was breaking up, but the wind was still bitter and spiteful, and up on the exposed helipad it cut cruelly through Peter’s trench coat,
blazer and roll-neck jersey. They looked out across the churned surface of the River Thames, eyes watering in the wind, for the first glimpse of the helicopters.
“what if we have a confirmation before you reach Enniskerry?”
“You can reach us on the RAF. frequencies, through Biggin Hill,” Peter told him.
“I hope I don’t have bad news for you.” Richards was holding his bowler hat in place with one hand, the skirts of his jacket slapping around his skinny rump and his face blotchy with the cold.
The two ungainly craft came clattering in, low over the rooftops,
hanging on the whirling silver coins of their rotors.
At a hundred feet Peter could plainly recognize the broad shape of
Colin Noble in the open doorway of the fuselage, just forward of the brilliant RAF. rounders, and the down draught of the rotors boiled the air about them. “Good hunting.” Richards raised his voice to a shout. “I wish I
was coming with you.” Peter ran forward lightly, and jumped before the helicopter gear touched the concrete pad. Colin caught him by the upper arm and helped to swing him aboard without removing the cheroot from his wide mouth.
“Welcome aboard, buddy. Now let’s get this circus on the road. “And he hitched the big .45 pistol on his hip.
“She’s not eating.” The doctor came through from the inner room and scraped the plate into the rubbish bin below the sink. “I’m worried about her. Very worried.” Gilly O’Shaughnessy grunted but did not look up from his own plate. He broke a crust off the slice of bread and very carefully wiped up the last of the tomato ketchup. He popped the bread into his mouth and followed it with a gulp of steaming tea, and while he chewed it all together, he leaned back on the kitchen chair and watched the other man.
The doctor was on the verge of cracking up. He would probably not last out the week before his nerve went completely; Gilly O’Shaughnessy had seen better men go to pieces under less strain.
He realized then that his own nerves were wearing away.
It was more than just the rain and the waiting that was working on him. He had been the fox for all of his life,
