Fair Game (20 page)

Two Knives pointed at the door to the study. ‘In there,’ he said, and he took the Asian through. The study had been furnished by the Indian businessman who’d owned the house before Crazy Boy in the same garish style as the rest of the house. There was a huge gilt desk with ornate legs like Grecian pillars and behind it the window was covered by thick red velvet drapes hanging from a gold pole that had a gilt lion’s head at either end. On one wall was a large LED television and facing it a six-foot-square painting of the Taj Mahal at sunset.

‘Nice,’ said the Asian, looking around.

‘You like this crap?’ asked Two Knives.

‘I mean the computer,’ said the Asian, nodding at the Sony computer on the desk. ‘Latest model. It’s only been out a few months.’

‘Yeah, my boss changes his computer every few months.’

‘Yeah? Why’s that?’

‘He just does,’ said Two Knives. He pointed at the black box on a side table next to a Hewlett-Packard printer. ‘That’s the internet thing.’

‘The router,’ said the Asian. ‘It’s called a router.’

‘I don’t give a fuck what’s it called, I just want it fixed.’

The Asian smiled so condescendingly that Two Knives was tempted to punch him in the face. ‘We don’t fix them these days. They’re sealed units made in China so if they break we just change the whole thing.’ He picked up the router and examined the back. ‘Did you try switching it off for ten seconds and then switching it on again?’

‘We did that.’

‘And rebooting your computer?’

‘We did everything.’

‘It’s Plan C, then.’

‘Plan C?’ repeated Two Knives.

The Asian grinned and opened the cardboard box. ‘I give you a new one,’ he said. He unplugged the old router and put it in the box, then attached the power cable and the phone line to the new unit and switched it on. He nodded at the computer on the desk. ‘Mind if I reboot it?’

‘Let me talk to the boss,’ said Two Knives. He went to the door. ‘He wants to use the computer, is that OK?’

‘No it’s not fucking OK!’ shouted Crazy Boy. ‘How the fuck could that be OK?’ He paused the game and grabbed a handful of khat leaves before joining Two Knives and the Asian in the study. He pointed at the computer. ‘What do you want?’

‘Just to check that it’s working,’ said the Asian. ‘Reboot and then check that the existing password still works. If it doesn’t we’ll have to reset it.’ He gestured at Two Knives. ‘Your friend here didn’t want me to touch it.’

‘Yeah, he’s right,’ said Crazy Boy, sitting at the desk. ‘There’s personal stuff on it.’

‘I hear you,’ said the Asian. ‘I wouldn’t want anyone looking at my internet history either.’

Crazy Boy switched off the computer and then switched it back on.

‘You should think about getting a Mac,’ said the Asian. ‘Faster boot-up, zero viruses, none of that “not responding” crap.’

Crazy Boy ignored him and waited for Windows to start working, then launched Internet Explorer. He visited a few pages and then nodded. ‘It’s working,’ he said.

‘We aim to please,’ the Asian said. ‘So you’re Mr Khalid?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Crazy Boy scowled.

The Asian smiled amiably as he held out his clipboard. ‘I need your signature.’

Crazy Boy scrawled his signature and went back to his computer. Two Knives took the Asian back into the hall and opened the front door.

‘What about my tip?’ asked the Asian.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ said Two Knives, and slammed the door in his face. He went back to the study, where Crazy Boy was still sitting at the desk. ‘I hate Indians,’ said Two Knives.

‘Yeah, you and me both,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘But he did the job. I need to talk to my uncle tonight. Things are starting to move.’

Robbie Fox prodded the burning logs with the brass poker and stood back as a shower of sparks rushed up the chimney. He waited until the logs had calmed down before giving them a final prod and putting the poker back on its stand. He sat down in his easy chair and picked up his glass of Laphroaig. ‘How’s your drink there, Lisa?’ he asked, nodding at the glass in O’Hara’s hand.

‘I’m fine, Uncle Robbie,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’ They were sitting in Fox’s farmhouse on the outskirts of Newry. Fox’s two spaniels were sitting by the door, their ears pricking up every time they heard a word that sounded like ‘walk’. She looked around the large room with its fireplace big enough to walk into, its oak dining table that could sit ten people with ease, and the massive wood-burning stove where Robbie Fox’s wife used to produce the best stews and casseroles that O’Hara had ever eaten. She’d died five years earlier after a long battle with cancer, but O’Hara still expected her to walk in at any moment, rubbing her hands on her apron before giving her a big, floury hug. She smiled over at her uncle. ‘You’re never going to leave here, are you, Uncle Robbie?’

‘They’ll have to carry me out in a box, love,’ he said, swirling the whisky around his glass.

The farmhouse had once been the centre of five hundred acres of farmland, but after his wife had died Robbie had signed it over to his sons, Padraig and Sean, and left them to the farming. But the two men had disappeared and were believed to have been murdered and buried somewhere on the land that Fox had given them. Despite extensive searches the bodies had never been found, but Robbie Fox was sure that he knew who had killed them, an SAS major who was now himself dead and buried. Major Alan Gannon had been killed by a car bomb outside his London home and it was Robbie’s niece, the pretty red-haired woman sitting in front of him, who had arranged it.

‘So how did it go in the States?’ asked Fox.

‘The guy who introduced Tanner was an ATF agent working undercover. The ATF guy doesn’t know who Tanner works for. Of course, Tanner isn’t his real name. He was deep undercover. MI5 or PSNI or maybe SAS.’ O’Hara took a still photograph taken from a CCTV camera and gave it to him. ‘Recognise him?’

Fox shook his head.

‘I got this from one of the Irish pubs in New York. It’ll give us something to go on because Nicholas Brett was a dead end.’

‘Literally, I hear,’ said Fox.

O’Hara looked surprised. ‘What big ears you have.’

‘Aye, and I keep them to the ground,’ he said. ‘You did a good job there, Lisa.’

‘I had a good team with me,’ she said. She took back the photograph. ‘What do I do now, Robbie? He killed Connolly and Hughes. He blew our operation wide open. Because of him Maguire and the rest are behind bars. But he’s gone to ground, and he’ll be well protected.’

‘What do you think you should do?’

O’Hara sighed. ‘They need to be taught a lesson,’ she said. ‘They need to know that if they use spies then there’s a price to be paid.’

Fox nodded. ‘I don’t think that the Army Council will see it any other way,’ he said.

‘But he’s gone, Robbie. It’s like he was never there. His flat’s empty, his car registration number no longer exists, his phone number has just disappeared. Every trace of him has gone.’ She held up the photograph. ‘Except for this.’

Fox nodded. ‘He’ll be out of the country by now, for sure. There’s no chance that he was working for the Yanks?’

‘Almost certainly not. Brett was ATF and he was looking at several groups there. But Tanner or whoever he was used the New York connection as a way of getting into the cell in Belfast. The Americans wouldn’t have any interest in Northern Ireland, not in that way. It was the Brits, Robbie. The Brits or the Belfast cops.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not sure where to go next.’

‘You need someone on the inside,’ he said. ‘Inside the PSNI or MI5.’

‘Do you have someone, Robbie?’

Fox chuckled. ‘That would be need-to-know, Lisa,’ he said.

‘I’ve heard that we have, that’s why I’m asking. Sleepers, in so deep that no one will ever find them, burrowing away to be used at some point in the future.’

‘Now that would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?’ said Fox, his eyes twinkling.

‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? It makes sense. The cops have been bending over backwards to hire Catholics and MI5 has been recruiting like crazy at Loughside.’

‘Lisa, if we did have sleepers like that, I wouldn’t be told about them. I wouldn’t want to be told, either. A secret like that could be a dangerous thing.’

‘But there must be someone on the Council who would know, right?’ She held up the photograph. ‘If there was someone with access to the MI5 and PSNI databases, they could get us a name. Couldn’t they?’

Fox shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Can you ask, Robbie? Can you raise it with the Council?’

Fox took the photograph from her and stared at it. He nodded slowly. ‘Aye, let’s give it a go,’ he said.

Amar Singh parked his van in the car park next to the McDonald’s outlet and called Charlotte Button on her mobile. ‘It’s all done,’ he said. ‘Everything he does on any computer connected to the router will be copied to our database. You can access it at the URL I gave you from anywhere in the world in real time, and you’ll be automatically emailed a report every six hours with a list of all the sites he has visited and copies of all emails that he sends and receives.’

‘And the Skype?’

‘If you’re online when he’s Skyping you can watch it real-time, otherwise you can watch and hear any transmissions at your leisure. They’ll be stored for ever, or at least until you delete them.’

‘Excellent, Amar. Thanks.’

‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that anything we get from the router won’t be admissible in court because we didn’t have a warrant,’ said Singh.

‘Not a problem, Amar. We just need the intel.’

Singh ended the call and got out of the car. His daughters were big fans of Chicken McNuggets and ever since she’d fallen pregnant his wife had developed a craving for McFlurries. He smiled to himself, knowing that he was going to win some serious Brownie points when he got home.

The cabin door opened and Katie moaned. She rolled on to her back and opened her legs, knowing that there was no point in struggling. If she lay where she was with her eyes closed, then she was raped and it was usually over quickly. If she fought, then they’d beat her and she would still be raped and it would take longer. They seemed to enjoy it more when she put up a fight so now she just let them do what they wanted.

The cabin was small, barely eight feet long and six feet wide, with a porthole less than a foot across which had been opened to allow in some fresh air. Katie lay on a single bunk and across from her was a built-in cupboard and a small sink. They had run a chain from her ankle to the hinge of the porthole and given her just enough play on the chain to reach the sink. She drank water from the tap when she was thirsty and washed herself as best she could, though they hadn’t given her a towel and she was still wearing the T-shirt and shorts that she’d had on when they took her off the yacht.

She was on a fishing boat, no more than sixty feet long, with four small cabins at the bow and a large hold for the catch at the stern. The skiffs had moored next to the boat and she’d had a quick glimpse of half a dozen Somali men and a pile of nets and then she’d been dragged to the cabin and shackled. Katie tried to remember how long ago that had been. Two days? Three? She couldn’t remember. They’d fed her, she remembered that much. They’d fed her several times, soggy rice on a plastic plate, usually with a piece of rancid meat and once with a fish that was more bone than flesh, and once they’d given her a bunch of green bananas.

‘You are British?’ said a voice. It was the first time she’d been spoken to in her own language since the pirates had boarded the yacht. She opened her eyes. The man standing in the doorway was holding her passport. He was tall, with skin so dark that it glistened like wet coal. His hair hung down to his shoulders in greasy dreadlocks. Around his neck was a white shark’s tooth hanging from a leather necklace. It was the man from the skiff that had brought her to the fishing boat.

‘British?’ he asked. He jabbed a finger at the passport. ‘You British?’

‘You speak English?’ said Katie.

The man grinned, revealing a row of blackened teeth. ‘London?’ he said. ‘You know London?’

Katie nodded. ‘Yes, I know London.’

The man tapped his chest. ‘My cousin live in London. Son of the brother of my father. Rich man.’

Katie nodded tearfully. ‘OK,’ she said.

The man waved the passport in front of her face. ‘One day I go to London,’ he said. ‘Have passport, same you.’

‘What?’ said Katie, squinting at the man. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I go stay London,’ he said. ‘Anyone can live in London. Anyone can have passport.’

Katie suddenly realised what he meant. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked. She pointed at herself. ‘I am Katie.’

‘Roobie,’ he said.

‘That’s great, Roobie,’ she said. ‘Look, I can help you.’ She nodded encouragingly. ‘My father knows the prime minister. Understand? The prime minister. The big boss of England. He can get passport for you.’ She smiled and nodded. ‘OK? You understand? I can help you get a passport.’

Roobie sneered at her. ‘I not need help from you. Need money.’ He took out a key and used it to unlock the padlock that fixed the chain to the porthole. ‘Come with me,’ he said, yanking the chain and heading for the corridor. There were two more pirates there, holding machetes. They were both teenagers and they had both raped her the previous day. They grinned at her and one of them made an obscene gesture.

They bundled her along the corridor and pushed open the door to another cabin. Joy was sitting cross-legged on her bunk. ‘Katie!’ she gasped. She stood up and they hugged. She too had been chained to her porthole. She was wearing a T-shirt and had a towel wrapped around her waist. She sobbed as she hugged Katie and then Katie started to cry.

‘Sit!’ shouted Roobie. He thrust Katie’s passport at her and took Joy’s passport from his back pocket. ‘Hold these,’ he said.

The two women sat together on the bunk, wiping away their tears. Another pirate appeared at the door. It was the man in the vest, the first man to rape her. He was holding a small Sony video camera. He leered at Katie and licked his lips suggestively but stopped when Roobie flashed him a warning look.

‘We make movie,’ said Roobie. ‘Make movie put on internet so we get money.’