Page 80 of Hang on St. Christopher

If I took it out, they’d realize that it was missing, and they might try a more invasive way of getting me. Whoevertheywere. If they weren’t after me personally (and if they were, why not just shoot me?), presumably they wanted to know about the current case I was working on. And a bug in the phone could perhaps lead them on a merry dance of disinformation.

I went into the living room and put on the radio loud to cover the sound of the Polaroid camera as I took a photograph of the bug. I put the camera down and carefully put the bug back into the phone and screwed the plastic mouthpiece back on.

I’d show the pic to Jill Dumont from RUC Special Branch Research, and maybe she’d be able to identify the device and let me know which agency or terrorist organization thought that I was worthwhile bugging.

It was odd. I’d been out of the spook game for almost a year. I had no intel, no secrets that my superiors didn’t know. These days, I was a simple part-time policeman with an entirely uninteresting life. I wasn’t even CID anymore.

Until this week, that was.

Until Mr. Townes.

Mr. Locke.

Yeah, talk to Jill Dumont.

I walked out to the BMW, looked underneath it for bombs, and got inside. I drove up to Belfast and out to Holywood, where the RUC Special Branch Advanced Intel Branch was headquartered. AIB for short, although all the wags called it the Allied Irish Bank.

I drove carefully and slowly, looking for tails, looking for Norton motorbikes, but there was nothing. Nick Drake was on the radio, but I couldn’t even appreciate it I was so worked up.

I showed my ID at the AIB gate and got ushered through several layers of security before getting to Jill Dumont’s office. I asked to see Jill, and a secretary told me to wait outside.

I looked at my watch. It was 5:05, and if this were an ordinary RUC department, everyone would have fucked off home by now. But these were Special Branch intel types, and they were used to burning the midnight oil.

Jill and I had come up together in the same class as Dan Harkness, but she and Dan had made the proper prostrations and kowtowed to all the right people, and now she was a chief superintendent in charge of intelligence and strategy. In a couple of years, they’d make her assistant chief constable, and assistant chief constables in the RUC were exactly the sort of people who got made chief constables of the smaller police forces over the water. Knighthood, 200K a year, home in Surrey, pension.

Nice.

Wait a minute: is that what you wanted, Duffy?

No, an easy life in Scotland and my 25K a year pension would do me fine. Wouldhaveto do me.

Her office was fantastic. Big L-shaped one overlooking the water, and outside it she had a secretary to do her typing. On the desk was a photograph of her and some skinny eejit in a suit, and three blond-haired children.

We shook hands. She’d kept herself trim, and her hair was still a vibrant golden blond cut short and styled into a wave. She was wearing her dark-green chief-super uniform with the pip and crown on both shoulders. Although she didn’t want me to see it, I could see the edge of what was clearly a personnel file under some papers in front of her.Mypersonnel file, which would make for some complicated reading. The disciplinary stuff, the lack of big arrests, but also Brighton in ’84, the Harland and Wolff missiles in ’85, and turning that fucker John Strong to work for us...

“Thank you for seeing me. I know you’re very busy these days,” I said.

“It’s been a long time, Sean.”

“You’ve done well for yourself,” I said, looking about me again.

“Hard labor,” she said perhaps a little bit defensively.

“I know that.”

“You’re looking...”

“Like I fell off a motorbike?”

“So what can I do for you today?” she asked.

“It’s about that case I’m working on.”

“The joyriders?”

“The IRA assassin.”

“I hope you’re not going to ask for confidential information, Sean.”