Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

'And how was your wife going to get from the station to her aunt's house?'

'Taxi, I guess.'

'And why didn't she drive up to Belfast?'

Martin shrugged but didn't answer.

'Has she phoned? Your wife?'

Martin rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. It was unlikely in the extreme that Andy would have gone away and not telephoned him. But if he said yes, could they check? He was sure that the phone company could provide a list of numbers called from the house, but were they also able to tell who had phoned in? He had no choice, he had to lie. They wouldn't believe that his wife and daughter would have gone away for five nights and not phoned. 'Several times,' he said. 'In fact, she called last night.'

The younger garda took out a small green notebook and a pen. 'Could you give us the number, please, sir?'

'The number?'

'Your Aunt Bessie's telephone number?' said the older garda.

'She's not my aunt. She's Andy's aunt.'

'And the number?'

'I don't think she's on the phone.'

'But you said she phoned to ask your wife to go up and take care of her.'

'She must have used a phone box.'

'But you said she was ill. Needed looking after.'

Martin could feel himself being painted into a corner. The older garda didn't look particularly bright – he had a wide chin and a flattish nose and he spoke slowly, as if he had trouble putting his thoughts together, but it was clear that he wasn't missing anything.

'I'm not sure if it was her that phoned. Andy took the call. It could have been someone else, phoning for her.'

The older garda nodded thoughtfully. 'And when are you expecting your wife back?'

'I'm not sure.'

'She didn't say when she called last night?'

'No. No, she didn't. Look, what's this about? Has something happened?'

The older garda looked at Martin for several seconds before answering. 'We're not sure, Mr Hayes. In fact, it's all a bit of a mystery, really. You know a Mrs O'Mara?'

'She's a secretary at my daughter's school. She phoned yesterday, she wanted to know why Katie wasn't at school.'

'Well, now she's missing, too.'

'My daughter isn't missing,' said Martin, and the older garda held up his hand as if trying to calm him down. Martin found the gesture patronising in the extreme, but he bit his tongue.

'There's no need to get upset, Mr Hayes. You know what I mean. Mrs O'Mara had mentioned to the headmistress that she was concerned about your daughter. Now Mrs O'Mara hasn't turned up for work. We've been around to her house and she's not there.'

Martin put his hand up to his forehead, frowning. 'I don't get what you're saying. Mrs O'Mara isn't at home so you think something's happened to Katie? That makes no sense. No sense at all.'

'That's right,' said the garda. 'It's a mystery. And mysteries annoy the hell out of me. But nothing you've said so far has reassured me that your daughter is safe and sound.'

'What?' Martin didn't have to feign his reaction. 'That's fucking ridiculous!'

The younger garda stepped forward as if he was expecting Martin to attack his colleague. Martin realised he'd bunched his hands into fists and he forced himself to relax.

'Look, my wife and daughter are out of town, that's all. They'll be back any day now.'

The older garda nodded slowly. He reached into the inside pocket of his waterproof jacket and took out a business card. 'My name's O'Brien,' he said. 'Sergeant O'Brien. Next time your wife phones, would you get her to call me? Just so's we know that she's okay.'

Martin reached for the card, but the garda didn't let go of it. 'Sure. I will,' said Martin.

The two men stood for a few seconds, both holding the card.

'Don't forget now,' said O'Brien. He let the card slip through his fingers, then stepped back from the doorstep. The two gardai walked down the path, away from the house. The younger garda twisted his head and said something into his radio and there was a burst of static.

Martin closed the door and leaned against it, his heart pounding like a jackhammer.

– «»-«»-«»Egan frowned as he listened to the tape. The two gardai turning up was an unexpected development, and it meant he was going to have to revise his plans. Martin Hayes had handled it better than Egan had expected, but one of the gardai, the one who'd introduced himself as O'Brien, had been persistent in his questioning, especially about the train that Hayes claimed his wife had taken up to Belfast. By the end of the conversation he seemed to have accepted what Hayes had said, but Egan doubted that the gardai had been deceived. They'd go away and make further enquiries, but eventually they'd be back.

Egan was surprised that they'd made the connection between the O'Mara woman and the Hayes girl. Mrs O'Mara was safely buried in a wood some twenty miles south of Dublin – it was sheer bad luck that the secretary had expressed her concerns about Katie's absence to the school's headmistress.

He swivelled his chair around and hit the print button on his computer keyboard. The laser printer whirred and Egan picked up the letter and read it through carefully before signing it. He fed it into the fax machine on the desk and dialled the number of his bank in Zurich. The letter contained instructions to transfer one million dollars to another of his accounts, this one in the Cayman Islands. From there he'd move it to the Dutch Antilles. He'd only had the Zurich account for six months, and once his work for the men from Beijing was finished he'd close it. The fax machine swallowed the sheet of paper and Egan flicked the top off a bottle of Budweiser. He went over to the window and looked out over the city as the fax machine whirred behind him. The serviced apartment he was renting was little more than a hotel suite, and just as anonymous. Anonymity was something that Egan worked hard at. In public he never expressed emotion, never lost his temper. His passage through life was as smooth and unhindered as that of a razor slitting flesh. Any obstruction and he simply slid around it; any confrontation was to be avoided at all cost.

Egan had the ability to enter a room and leave without anyone remembering him. He had friends who took pride in being able to get the best table in restaurants or walk to the front of a nightclub queue, but Egan hated the idea that a maitre'd or a bouncer would know who he was. He dressed casually but conservatively, wore no jewellery other than a battered Rolex on a leather strap that had once belonged to a friend of his, a Navy SEAL who'd died in Kuwait, and drove the sort of cars favoured by sales reps. Ostentation was for film stars, musicians or high-profile businessmen who wanted to see their faces in the tabloids. Egan was a professional terrorist, and the only people he wanted to acknowledge him were the people who paid his wages.

He took a swig from the bottle of Budweiser. Behind him, the fax finished transmitting and ejected the letter. One million dollars. The equivalent of twelve years' salary in his last job. Egan had worked for the Defence Intelligence Agency in a black operations department that spent most of its time attempting to destabilise anti-American governments in South America. Blackmail, bribery, assassination – it had been the best possible training for his present career. Egan had left after five years, spent six months travelling the world establishing fake identities and opening a daisy-chain of bank accounts, then set up on his own. Freelance. It had been the best move he'd ever made. A militant Islamic group funded by Osama Bin Laden had paid him a total of three million dollars for his work with Muslim terrorists in Kenya and Tanzania, and he'd been paid half a million dollars for his past in a series of bomb attacks by white supremacists in America, including the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Three months as an adviser with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation had netted him two million dollars, and his work for the men from Beijing would earn him a further seven million, minus expenses.