Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

Green-eyes nodded at the envelope. Andy opened it and took out a dozen or so sheets of paper. They were photocopies of newspaper cuttings. Andy flicked through them. They were a mixture of Irish and English newspapers -tabloids and broadsheets. Andy scanned the headlines. BELFAST STORE DESTROYED. BOMB ON MAIN LINE, TRAINS DELAYED. BOMB DISPOSAL EXPERT KILLED. FIRE IN DEPARTMENT STORE, IRA BLAMED. TWO SOLDIERS DIE IN BOMB BLAST.

'Great reviews, huh?' said the lanky man. He chuckled and looked across at Green-eyes. Even through the ski mask he could see the warning look she threw at him and his laughter dried up. Green-eyes waited until he was silent and fidgeting with his gloves before turning back to Andy.

Andy stared at the photocopied cuttings. 'If you know everything, then you know why I can't do what you want.'

Green-eyes reached into her briefcase again and took out a piece of newspaper. She unfolded it. It was the front page of the Belfast Telegraph, ripped along one edge as if it had been torn in a hurry. There were four black-and-white photographs of small boys in school uniforms, smiling at the camera. Just heads and shoulders, the type that might have been stored in a school's files. The headline was brutal in its simplicity. IRA BOMB KILLS FOUR SCHOOLBOYS.

Andy turned her head away.

'Squeamish?' said Green-eyes. 'I wouldn't have thought of you as the squeamish type.' She put the page down in front of Andy. 'Read it, Andrea.'

Andy shook her head. 'I don't have to.' She knew every word, almost by heart, and the four young faces were burnt into her memory, seared there for all time. Four boys. Three aged ten, one just weeks away from his tenth birthday. His mother had already paid for the bicycle he was getting as his main present. Four boys killed, another one in intensive care who would later lose a leg and the sight of one eye. For weeks his life had hung in the balance, and Andy had followed his recovery in the paper and on the television. She'd never understood why she'd prayed so hard for the boy to live. Four dead. Five dead. There was no difference morally, not really. But Andy had seen the crying mother on television, condemning the IRA and anyone who helped them and appealing for information. Four dead. One maimed. Innocents. And Andy was to blame. She'd carry the guilt with her to the grave.

Green-eyes pushed the page towards her. 'We're not asking you to do something you haven't already done, Andrea.'

Andy closed her eyes and shook her head. 'That was a mistake. A terrible mistake.'

'Casualties of war, the IRA High Command called it. But they never apologised, did they? Even though they were all good Catholic children. Two of them were altar boys, weren't they?'

Andy put her hands over her face and slumped forward so that her elbows were resting on the table. 'Is that what this is, revenge for what happened ten years ago? Who are you?'

'It doesn't matter who we are. All that matters is that we have your daughter. That's all you need to think about. We have Katie. We have the power of life and death over her, Andrea. But the decision as to what happens next is totally in your hands. Do as we say and you'll soon have her back home. Refuse, and you'll never see her again. We're not holding a gun to your head, we're not going to torture you or hurt you, all…'

'You don't think this is hurting?' hissed Andy.

Green-eyes tapped the newspaper page. 'I can promise you something else, Andrea,' she said quietly. 'We won't be hurting children this time. There won't be any mistake, no innocents killed. A lot of thought, a lot of planning, has gone into this. We won't be leaving a holdall in a railway tunnel for children to find.'

Andy shook her head again. 'I can't.'

'Yes, you can,' said Green-eyes firmly. 'You can, and if you want Katie back, you will.' She took a small padded envelope from the briefcase and handed it to Andy.

Andy took it, frowning. It felt empty, but it had been sealed.

'Open it,' said Green-eyes.

Andy slid a nail under the flap and ripped it open. She pushed the sides together to open the mouth of the envelope and peered inside. 'Oh no,' she whispered. She tipped the envelope up and shook out the contents. Blond curls. A handful. Andy could tell from the length that they'd been cut close to the scalp. 'Not her hair,' she said. 'She's so proud of her hair.' She looked at Green-eyes, tears trickling down her cheeks. 'How could you do that to a little girl? How could you cut her hair?'

Green-eyes leaned forward slowly until her masked face was only inches away from Andy. 'It could have been an ear. Andrea. Or a finger. Think about that.' She stared at Andy for several seconds, then visibly relaxed. She motioned at her two companions, and they stepped forward and seized Andy by the arms. The hair and envelope tumbled from Andy's grasp.

'No!' she shouted. She pointed at the blond curls. Please,' she said.

Green-eyes walked around the table, scooped up the hair clippings and put them back in the envelope, which she then slotted into the back pocket of Andy's jeans before the two men hustled her away from the table. The men took her to the far corner of the factory where there was a cluster of offices, large white plasterboard cubes with cheap wooden doors that looked as if they'd been brought in as an afterthought. The men spun Andy around so that her back was to one of the plasterboard walls. Green-eyes appeared in front of her with a Polaroid camera in her gloved hands.

'Smile, Andrea,' she said.

Andy stared at her in disbelief. 'Smile?'

'For the camera.'

Andy forced a thin smile and blinked as the camera flashed and whirred. The two men hustled her away down a narrow corridor that ran between the two lines of offices.

– «»-«»-«»Egan used a Stanley knife to slit the black garbage bags along the sides, then he pulled them open into single sheets of plastic. It took five to line the boot of the Scorpio, and he used thick strips of waterproof tape to seal them together. He slit open another three bags and taped them together into a single sheet, then put it and the tape into the boot.

Back in the apartment he checked the action of his Browning, slotted in a clipful of cartridges and gave the silencer a thorough cleaning.

He had taken a risk planting the listening device in Martin Hayes's office. He'd gone in at night, having disabled the burglar alarm system, and it had taken a full six hours from start to finish. It had proved to be time well spent, though. If it hadn't been for the office device, he'd never have known about Mrs O'Mara's phone call.

Egan could tell from the recording that the school secretary wasn't the sort to be deterred by Hayes's clumsy explanation of his daughter's absence. He'd have to do something to silence the meddlesome woman. And quickly.

It had taken just one telephone call to the school's personnel office, pretending to be an official of the Revenue Commissioners wanting to check her employment details, and Egan had all the information he needed.

– «»-«»-«»Katie was sitting at the Formica-covered table when she heard the bolts slide back. She looked up apprehensively, wondering which of her captors it was. It was the man who'd been nice to her, the one who'd given her Garfield. He was carrying a tray.

'Are you hungry?' he asked as he carefully made his way down the stairs.

Katie wasn't, but she said that she was. He placed the tray on the table in front of her. It was scrambled eggs on a paper plate and a paper cup of milk. She smiled up at him. 'Thank you,' she said.

'I wasn't sure how you liked your eggs,' he said. 'I'm sorry if they're too runny.'

'They're fine,' said Katie. They weren't, they looked horrible, pale yellow and watery, but she wanted to be nice to him. If she was nice to him then maybe he'd be nice to her. She picked up the plastic fork and took a small bite of the eggs. 'Delicious,' she said.