No Enemy but Time (10 page)

She locked up after her. She couldn't think ahead because she dared not. She knew where he was, and she knew that he would need a gun. If the worst came to the worst, she could fire it with both hands.

The car was ready when she got back to the cottage. She forced herself to smile at Billy, clutching the coat with its hidden weapon close to her side.

‘Oh, that's great,' she said.

‘It was a dirty old job,' he complained. ‘Drive it out and I'll put mine inside the shed there. Did ye lock the place up after ye?'

‘Yes. It's fine, don't worry.'

She opened the back door and dropped the coat and the gun on the back seat. She reversed the car out and swung it round to give Billy room to put his in its place. The car was his pride and joy. It looked scarred without its bright red number plates. He shut the shed doors, puffing a little, and leaned against them to catch his breath.

‘My bloody old lungs,' he grumbled. ‘Never been right since the bronchitis last winter. Have ye far to go?'

She shook her head. ‘Not too far. I've plenty of petrol. Thanks, Billy. And don't worry about me. I'll be back before dark.'

She let the clutch in and drove towards the road; she waved at him out of the window. He waved back at her and, as the car disappeared from sight, he screwed up his face in anguish and let out a groan of frustration and fear. Not far, she said, and then gave the lie by saying she'd plenty of petrol. Back before dark. Where was Arbuthnot hiding, that half the police in Ireland and the IRA couldn't find him, and Claire could? They'd always had secrets, those two. Walking together holding hands, not like brother and sister at all. Him watching over her, and her thinking he was God Almighty. She'd grown up into a beautiful fair girl, and every lad in the county had his eye on her, as Billy knew from all the women's gossip. But all Frank had to do was speak against them and that made an end. She could have married a fine young fella, he thought bitterly, with a grand house and a slice of West Meath to go with it, but Frank saw him off. At twenty she'd rather go riding or fishing with him than up to Dublin or down to a dance. So she was packed off to bloody England and came back with an Englishman. He spat in disgust and went into his cottage.

A mile down the road, Claire stopped the car. She got the revolver off the back seat and put it into the glove compartment with the cartridges. She didn't need the signposts on the way. She knew every mile of the back roads to Kells through Kilcock, Trim and Fordstown. How often they'd driven there in Frank's car, towing the double trailer behind them, excited by the prospect of a day's hunting with the Meath. He looked so well in hunting clothes. She was proud to be seen with him, and knew they made a picture when they rode up together.

For a moment her eyes blurred at the memories of happy days, days of innocence. Before Kevin Ryan came back from America and bought the Half House from the last improvident Hamilton, nephew of her mother's first husband who'd been killed at Tobruk. That was when everything changed. Until then Frank had been safe because they had each other, and the things that troubled him were half buried and might well have sunk past danger. But as if Eileen Arbuthnot cried for vengeance from the grave, her brother came back and laid claim to her son.

It was midday, and gloriously bright. Children were out playing in the schoolyards, shouting and enjoying the sunshine; shops were closed up for the dinner hour. Kells itself was shuttered till the afternoon. She drove past the great Celtic cross, so ancient that its age was only speculation, down the main street, past the gates of the Marquis of Headfort's magnificent estate, now sold to foreigners with money, made the final turn to Cloncarrig.

His voice on that last telephone call came back to her, made only a few days before he disappeared. She knew it so well, and though time and distance had separated them, it made her heart beat double.

‘Claire, I wanted you to know … they've murdered poor old Donny. Killed him in cold blood. I'm finished with them. I wanted you to know,' he said again. And she had answered, ‘Oh, thank God. Thank God! But can you do that – can you break off just like that?'

‘I can and I have,' he said.

‘Come over here,' she begged him. ‘You can't stay in Ireland if you've fallen out with them … please, darling Frank, come here to me.'

She heard the mocking laugh, but it was bitter.

‘I don't think Neil would be exactly overjoyed to see me. Don't you worry about me. I've friends who'll pull strings. Nobody will dare touch me. And anyway, if I need to hole up till things are fixed, we know where I can go. Remember old Reynard?' And then, dismissing himself, he asked if she were well and happy, and she lied and said she was. ‘God bless you then,' was his goodbye, before the line went clear.

Her marriage had ended the night when she told Neil Fraser she was going back to Ireland to look for her brother.

She drove the car slowly, looking for the turning she remembered off the road. It was still there, a gap where a gate should have been, leading on to a rutted farm track. A low drystone wall surrounded the place, but it was crumbling and all along the edge the nettles triumphed. She drove in and bumped along, skirting the worst pot-holes, heading for a clump of beech trees where the car would be hidden from the road. Broad green fields surrounded her, with distant woods bounding the horizon. She stopped, looked round and saw the emptiness of Ireland. Rooks cawed and swooped high in the trees. She took the revolver, the bullets and her coat to wrap them in, and began to walk towards the woods. Beyond the woods lay a valley and in the valley a lake, where the ruins of a fine Georgian house were reflected on a clear day. And beyond that, past a gentle rise, she would find her brother if he were still alive.

The helicopter took off from South Wales an hour after the Special Branch had spoken to Major Michael Harvey. It was an army chopper, but operated under a commercial flying company. Before noon it landed at the heliport and a car was waiting to speed its passenger to London.

He was not at all what Brownlow expected when they came face to face. He was a slight man, a little above average height, but by no means a prime physical specimen. He wore shabby corduroys and a jacket and looked thoroughly nondescript. He could have been anything except an army officer in the most sensitive intelligence branch, renowned for undercover operations in Northern Ireland.

‘You haven't wasted any time,' Brownlow said, as they shook hands.

‘You said it was urgent. I thought so too.' Harvey sat opposite to him and refused a cigarette. He was a very still sort of man.

‘It's a bloody mess,' Brownlow declared. ‘If Fraser hadn't mucked about when he got back and found she'd gone, we might have caught her before the boat sailed.'

‘I suppose he wanted to be sure,' Major Harvey suggested. ‘But it's a pity.'

‘You know them socially, I believe.'

‘Yes. I've stayed with them several times. Had some days shooting with him. They're a nice couple.'

‘How come he knows about you? I thought you people kept top security at all times.'

‘I was assigned to look after him for a while,' Harvey answered. ‘We got on very well. He was a high risk at one time. We became friendly.'

‘The wife too? How did she take to you, Major? I gather she's pretty pro-Irish.'

Michael Harvey said, ‘She didn't want them to shoot her husband; I didn't think she was particularly pro-anything. Besides, she grew up there. So did I, as a matter of fact.'

‘Did you?' Brownlow felt he'd been rebuked and it irritated him. An arrogant bugger, he decided. He sat up straight and became official. ‘The view is, she's gone over to look for her brother. He's a right bastard.' He dared the Major to defend
him
. ‘We've had a lot of conflicting information from over there. The story goes that he's fallen out with his friends in the Provos, and he's either on the run, or they murdered him and dumped the body. The nasty part is that, either way, it could be a ploy to get Mrs Fraser into the Republic, where they can pick her up.'

‘That seems the most likely. Would the brother connive at it? The whole disappearance could be a put-up job.'

Brownlow shook his head. ‘No way. She's his one soft spot, from what we know about him. I think he's at the bottom of a bog with a hole in his head and they're waiting to scoop her up at the right moment. As I explained to Fraser, we can't say a word to the Irish police because that bloody country's like an echo chamber. One word, and everyone gets to hear of it. The Provos have got contacts everywhere. So it's got to be handled from our end and with the utmost security. And discretion,' he added. ‘We want Mrs Fraser brought back home, but no shoot-outs. No repercussions.'

‘Is that the official instruction,' Harvey asked him, ‘or just a general directive?'

‘A general directive,' Brownlow admitted. ‘Nobody can tell you how to do your job.'

‘Doesn't stop them trying,' was the retort. He looked at his watch. ‘There's been no publicity. From what you said on the phone, she's kept a low profile too, which is lucky. Our one chance of sorting this out is to get to her before the Provos know for sure she's in Ireland. So I'll be on my way.' He stood up. ‘I'll be in touch. With any luck, I could be back this evening. If I'm not, things have gone wrong. But I'm optimistic. She's not a fool, and she knows what she's dealing with.' He shook hands and went out.

Brownlow pinched his lip between finger and thumb. He knows Claire Fraser a bloody sight better than he let on, he thought. That's why the husband picked him. He's not just a trigger man. Brownlow had been dealing with human vagaries for thirty years. The Major had closed ranks when he criticized Mrs Fraser, and by implication, Ireland. He shook his head. He would never understand them. And by ‘them' he meant the English who identified with a country and a people that had never accepted them. He wondered whether Major Harvey, ex-Green Jackets, Wellington and Sandhurst and Ulster undercover expert, would describe himself as Irish. He wouldn't be the least surprised.

The flight to Dublin took just on an hour. Michael Harvey read the newspapers while the stewardesses offered drinks and the passengers examined each other at the start of the flight. He put the papers away and leaned back, gazing out of the window at the bright banks of sunlit cloud as they reached thirty thousand feet. He thought of Claire Fraser, and the first time they had met, at Brandon Manor in the heart of the Cotswolds.

It was three years ago, when her husband was a new Cabinet Minister and there was a scare that he might be a target for the IRA. Informers named him and two other public figures. Michael Harvey was assigned to look after him inside the house. He could mix unobtrusively with their friends and cause no comment. The humbler guardians of politicians patrolled the grounds and watched the roads.

Just after Christmas, when the January weather was at its worst. Fraser was on his way down from London, suitably escorted. Harvey was staying there for the weekend.

‘Hallo.' Claire Fraser came to meet him. ‘Come in and have a drink.'

‘Thanks very much. Sorry to have to inflict myself on you again.'

She had a charming smile. ‘Don't be silly. We can sleep at night with you in the house. Gin and tonic?'

‘Whiskey and soda, if that's all right. It's whiskey weather today.'

She paused by the table with the bottles and glasses and looked at him. ‘That's a very Irish way of putting it,' she said.

‘So's the rain,' Michael Harvey countered. ‘Reminds me of Rademon on a Sunday. All the pubs shut and nothing to do but go to church. Do you know the North at all, Mrs Fraser?'

‘No, we never went up there. My father couldn't stand them. I hope I'm not being tactless.'

He smiled and took the glass she offered him. ‘Not in the least. My home was in Galway.'

‘Really? We had some cousins down there – the Grahams. Did you know them?'

‘My family did. I spent holidays at home, but went to school over here, and then into the Army. The place is sold now anyway.' He sipped the drink.

There was a big log fire, the inevitable Labrador stretched out in front of it, central heating keeping the atmosphere warm; nice expensive furniture and even more expensive country house pictures on the walls. Fraser was a rich man. A hospitable host, full of charm and not jumpy, in spite of the scare. He had done his best to make Harvey feel at home. Harvey was armed at all times, forever primed in case of unexpected noise or movement in the house. Fraser and his wife had shown up extremely well in the circumstances. A lot of people would have been uncomfortable or jittery, having a bodyguard at their elbow.

Claire was a very good-looking woman, Harvey considered, watching her pour a drink and sit down opposite to him. Good figure, smart clothes, very blonde. He was completely immune to women when he was on a job. After Belfast, he knew what women could do and smile at the same time. The most he conceded was that Claire Fraser was nice and didn't pester him with silly questions.

‘I haven't been home since Easter,' she said. He noticed the word. Home. Keep your eyes open, he'd been told. She has a brother who's highly suspect. ‘Neil hates going. And now, of course, we can't.'

‘No,' he agreed. ‘It wouldn't be very wise.'

‘I'm not going to ask you if you do,' Claire said, and smiled.

‘No,' he said again. ‘I'm glad about that.'

‘I talk to my mother on the phone,' she remarked. ‘But it's not the same thing. She's promised to come over here in the spring. It's lonely for her since my father died.'

‘Wouldn't she move over to England?' He wasn't really interested in the small talk, but the whiskey was soothing and he could relax till Fraser came in.