No Enemy but Time (3 page)

‘That's the root of all evil in this country,' she said. ‘The decent people staying quiet because they don't want trouble. Letting the killers get away with it. But my brother wouldn't. If he saw something wrong he said so. He'd speak out for a poor helpless old man like Donny, just as he did for Ireland.'

‘Aye,' Billy Gorman said. ‘And much good it's done him. Now I'll make us a bite to eat. I've put that car of yours in me shed. I'll drive you to the airport and you catch a plane home, like a sensible girl.'

‘I am home,' Claire said simply. ‘And I'm not going anywhere till I find Frank. Don't worry, Billy, I won't stay more than a few hours and by that time I'll know one way or the other. You won't get into trouble, I promise you.' She got up and came to him; she leant down and kissed him. He went pink to the edge of his cap. ‘Let's have the bite to eat, shall we,' she suggested. ‘I'm starving with hunger.'

‘Billy,' she said after they'd eaten, ‘I'll need to borrow your car.'

‘Why so?' he asked.

‘Because I can't run round in a car with English number plates,' she explained. ‘You've told me about Joe Burns. That's the first thing anyone would look at round here.'

‘The first thing they'd look at,' Billy countered, ‘is a woman drivin' my auld rattlebones of a car! Have ye no sense at all? And where would ye be goin' then?'

‘I can't tell you,' Claire said. ‘You mustn't know, Billy. It's better not. I'll take the English car and be done with it.'

He slapped his fist on his knee in exasperation. She had him and he knew it. But then, even as a child she'd usually persuade him to let her do this or that against his better judgement. He mumbled and sighed. ‘I'll change the number plates from my car to the other one,' he said. ‘How long will ye be gone?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I should be back before it's dark.' She saw the worried misery in his face and added gently, ‘Don't worry; I'll be perfectly all right. Will you change the plates, then?'

‘I will, so,' he sighed again. ‘The sooner ye're gone, the sooner ye'll be back … then I'll run ye up to Dublin and get ye on the plane,' he said hopefully. ‘Ye'll promise me that.'

‘I can't promise anything,' Claire answered. ‘But I will be careful.' She followed him to the door; he got some tools out of the shed and squatted down to unscrew the number plates from his old Renault. He became absorbed in the task, grumbling at the stiffness of the holding screws. The task was a blessed diversion; he couldn't stop her going, he could only concentrate on turning the bloody old things till they loosened. If God was good to them she'd find no hide nor hair of Frank Arbuthnot.

Claire said, ‘Will it take long? I'd like to go up to the house. Give me the keys, will you, Billy? Just throw them over.'

‘Here ye are.' He tossed the bunch to her. She caught them neatly. Frank had taught her how to catch. And how to shoot the rooks nesting high up in the trees with a rifle. Vermin, he called them, when she protested at killing a sitting bird. They slaughtered all the other fledglings and grabbed the space for themselves. Just like the English in Ireland.

‘I'll be back in a little while,' Claire said. Billy cursed under his breath as his hand slipped. He didn't look up.

‘Mind yerself,' he muttered.

‘I will.' She closed the door and waited for a moment, then turned and went into the little bedroom. Neat and clean, evidence that Billy's woman was good about the house. High up on a ledge above a window, she found what she knew Billy Gorman would never give her: the keys to the gun room at Riverstown. She slipped the bunch into her pocket and went out of the door. He was hunched over the car. She turned and set off down the path leading to the river and the house.

The Minister's secretary buzzed him on the intercom. He had arrived late, which was unlike him, and seemed tense and irritable. Very untypical, she thought.

‘Mr Brownlow is here, sir.'

‘Thanks, Jean; show him in, please. And hold any calls till I buzz, will you.'

Mr Brownlow came in, took off his gloves and met the Minister for Trade and Industry, the Rt. Hon. Neil Fraser, as he moved out from behind his desk. It was a well-known face, he thought, a smooth, production-line politician with all the right connections and ingredients for success. Except that Ministers don't normally look as if they hadn't slept all night.

‘Good morning, sir,' he said as they shook hands. ‘No news of your wife, I take it?'

Fraser said, ‘None, I'm afraid. Nothing your end? Please sit down.'

Brownlow didn't look like a policeman. He looked like a senior civil servant. He said, ‘We've traced the taxi, and the garage where she hired a car. And she bought a ticket on the night ferry from Liverpool. So there's no doubt she's gone over.'

Neil Fraser leaned back in his chair. ‘I never imagined she'd do such a thing.'

‘But you suspected she might have gone to Ireland, didn't you? It was such a pity you didn't contact us immediately you got back and found her gone. We might have got her at the ferry.'

He wasn't going to let the Minister off the hook. In his view Fraser had delayed because he didn't want to face the truth. And that delay meant Mrs Fraser had arrived in the Republic of Ireland, when prompt action could have prevented the whole mess. And a fine mess it might turn out to be. ‘She could have gone to friends, or just driven up to London,' Fraser defended himself. ‘I could hardly start a major scare until I'd made certain, could I?'

‘No, I take your point. But we'd rather have a major scare that turned out to be a false alarm than the real thing and a late start, sir.'

Fraser said wearily, ‘Have you been on to Dublin?'

‘No, sir. There's some things to be cleared up first. I'd like to ask you some questions. They may be a bit personal. I hope you don't mind.' In case the Minister thought of pulling rank, Brownlow added, ‘Your wife's in very great danger; I'm sure you realize that. Getting her out of Ireland is all that matters. We've got to have all the facts.'

‘I know that,' Neil Fraser answered. ‘I'm going to order some coffee. Would you like some, Superintendent?'

‘Thanks very much. And it's Brownlow, sir. We don't use our rank.'

‘No, of course you don't. I'm not functioning very well today, I'm afraid.'

Brownlow managed a brief smile. ‘That's understandable. Do you mind if I smoke?'

Fraser shook his head. Brownlow was right. He had delayed. Hoping against all hope that Claire hadn't snapped the last link between them and gone to look for that bastard … Knowing in his heart, while he telephoned the night porter at their London flat, and went the round of their friends, that she had made her choice. Did this hard-nosed Special Branch officer expect him to discuss that … How much of what happened before she left must he disclose?

As if Brownlow could read his mind, he broke in quietly. ‘It's her life at stake,' he said. ‘If they get their hands on her, they'll kill her. Don't make any mistake about that.'

Neil Fraser leaned forward slowly, and for a moment covered his face with his hands. Brownlow waited till he had composed himself.

‘Ask anything you feel is necessary,' he said, and Brownlow knew he'd get the truth.

‘Was there any kind of crisis that brought this to a head? Did you quarrel?'

Neil nodded. ‘Yes, we did. We had a serious row two nights ago. I went up to London early that morning and it wasn't made up. That's why I came back on Tuesday night; normally I stay in London during the week – my wife usually spends a couple of days at the flat with me.'

‘Lucky you went home,' Brownlow remarked. ‘What was the row about?' He had noted the bitter edge to Fraser's voice. A lot of pent-up emotion there, he thought. Not the first row, by any means …

‘Ireland. And her half-brother.'

‘What were your wife's views on the situation over there then? Was she a sympathizer?'

‘With the IRA? Good God, no! My wife's family are the sort of people they attack first. No, Claire's not political in the least. She doesn't give a damn about politics – never has.'

Not much of a recommendation for a politician's wife, Brownlow observed. Fraser was being tipped as a future Prime Minister. He prompted, ‘Is she worried about her brother?'

Neil Fraser said flatly, ‘She's devoted to him. It didn't matter what he did, she wouldn't hear a word against him.'

‘And is that why she's gone to Ireland?'

‘Yes,' Neil Fraser replied. ‘That's what we argued about. I tried to convince her there was nothing she could do. I'm afraid I lost my temper and said if he'd fallen foul of the IRA it bloody well served him right for supporting them.'

‘She took this badly?'

‘Pretty badly. I shouldn't have put it so strongly, but I never thought she'd actually go … I pointed out how dangerous it would be, and – well, how damaging to me in my position if my wife went to Ireland at a time like this.'

‘Quite so,' Brownlow agreed. ‘Having him for a brother-in-law must have been embarrassing at times.'

‘That's exactly what I told her,' the Minister said. ‘The press have been decent about it for years; even the Opposition hasn't suggested that his attitudes affected my credibility or my wife's. But going there could …' he paused, and then said angrily, ‘it could ruin me.'

Brownlow waited for a moment, made an extra note. ‘You rang her home in Ireland and there was no reply?'

Fraser nodded. ‘That's all I could do, without alerting everyone in the neighbourhood. I tried at regular intervals throughout the night and first thing this morning. There's no one there. Have you been through to Dublin?' he repeated.

‘No, and I'm not going to,' Brownlow answered. ‘Their people are very good and we have a close cooperation with them. Much closer than the general public knows. But we can't take a chance this time, sir. One careless word could set those bastards on your wife. We can't ask the Irish SB people for help, we'll have to sort it out ourselves.'

‘How can you?' Fraser asked. ‘What can you possibly do?'

‘Send in an expert,' Brownlow said. ‘A specialist, used to working over there. Undercover. Find your wife and bring her out.'

‘You mean the SAS?'

‘I think we'll leave the details out of it, sir.'

The Minister surprised him by getting up. He seemed suddenly positive. ‘If that's what you propose, I've got the man,' he said. ‘He's a personal friend, and my wife likes him. He knows us both very well. I'll give you the name.' He wrote it down and handed Brownlow the slip of paper. ‘I also know,' he went on, ‘that he's in England at the moment. I don't want to tell you your job, Brownlow, but if anyone can persuade my wife to come home, and be a good man in case of trouble, it's him. I'd like you to contact him at once.'

Brownlow read the name and the rank, folded the slip and put it in his wallet. If anything went wrong, he could blame it on the Minister's interference. And there was no denying the man's qualifications, if he belonged to
that
branch. He got up. ‘I'll get on to it right away. Say nothing to anyone about your wife; tell your staff she's with friends, anything convincing. Act absolutely normally, and with a bit of luck she'll be home before you know it.'

They shook hands again.

‘Thank you for coming.' Neil Fraser opened the door to the outer office himself.

Brownlow went down in the lift, found his car in the side street and got in. He told the driver to take him back to his office.

‘If that's the kind of bloody fool that runs this country,' he muttered to himself, ‘Gawd help us.' Frigging around instead of facing up to where the bloody wife had gone and putting a stop to it at once. His career would be ruined. Much good that'd do her, if what his department suspected was true. Not that he'd tell Fraser. Frank Arbuthnot had been an IRA paymaster for years. Suddenly he goes missing. Very publicly missing. Hadn't it occurred to that burke of a husband that the whole thing could be a put-up job to get his wife over to Ireland?

What a coup for the bastards, if they kidnapped or murdered the wife of a Cabinet Minister. He didn't need Fraser to tell him about the brother and sister. The Special Branch knew everything about Claire Fraser because it was their job to dig around the politicians and their families, especially with an Irish connection like hers. Close as bloody Siamese twins they were. Of course she'd go home, if anything went wrong with him. And wouldn't it be neat for his IRA friends to bait the trap for Fraser's wife with her own brother. Whether he agreed to it or not? From what Brownlow knew about Frank Arbuthnot and his half-sister, he wouldn't be a tethered goat from choice.

He went into the building, up in the lift to the fifth floor, and called a conference among his senior colleagues. An hour later he put in a call to Major Michael Harvey in an army barracks in a secluded part of South Wales.

The path from Billy's cottage wound down towards the river bank. The early rain had left little puddles in the dips along the way. When she and Frank were children, they used to skip the puddles, or sometimes land in the middle, spattering themselves, with shouts of glee. The air was fresh and sweet, the river swept along on its way, swelled by the backwash that made a tiny waterfall further along. Her father had complained to the Water Board every year for the last fifteeen of his life that their damned backwashing was washing away his river bank. Nobody took any notice, but official letters were always polite.

The shady ground under the coppice of trees was a blue and white carpet of anemones – what trouble Claire had with that word when she was little, at times it still defeated her. Later the daffodils would muster, blazing like an army of yellow heads the length of the bank and right up to the steps leading to the old house. So many happy memories met her with every step she took. A childhood full of games and innocent adventures, the changing retinue of family dogs, ponies to ride and hunt, with Frank taking the leading rein. Her parents were always up at the front. Only her brother was willing to go home early, towing a child and a fat pony. School was not taken very seriously. She went to the nearest Protestant school, which was over at Kilcock, and learned to read and write with the daughters of their friends.