The Bombmaker (8 page)

Green-eyes sat down and picked up her pen again. 'Right,

are you ready to go on?' she asked.

Andy nodded. She methodically went through everything else they'd need while Green-eyes took notes. When she'd finished, Green-eyes put her pen down on her notepad and nodded at her. 'We'll get most of this stuff tomorrow morning,'

she said. 'We start work the day after that.'

Andy looked around the factory. 'Here?' she asked.

'No. We'll be moving somewhere else.'

'Can you tell me where?'

'Not right now, no. But you'll know soon enough. Let me show you the fertiliser.'

Green-eyes stood up and walked over to the tarpaulin- covered mound. She pulled the green sheet back. Dust billowed around her and she coughed.

Andy went over to the stack of bags and examined the labels.

She recognised the brand. It was an English firm, based just outside Oxford. Under the brand name were the words AMMONIUM NITRATE, and below that, in slightly smaller type, the word FERTILISER. To the right were three numbers,

separated by hyphens: 34--0-0.

'Okay?' asked Green-eyes.

'It'll do,' said Andy. She'd half hoped that they wouldn't have the correct type of fertiliser, but now' she realised that they knew exactly what they were doing. Some manufacturers coated their ammonium nitrate with calcium to stop it from absorbing water. But the calcium coating rendered the fertiliser useless as an explosive base. Other fertilisers were a mixture of chemicals, perhaps containing ammonium sulphate or urea.

Only pure ammonium nitrate would explode, and that was what Green-eyes was showing her. The numbers on the bag referred to the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potash. Only pure ammonium nitrate had the ratio 34-0-0.

There were other sacks, too, containing compost. Andy pointed at one of the compost bags. 'What are you planning to do with that? Compost isn't explosive.'

Green-eyes ignored her.

'Why are you doing this?' Andy asked.

'Why do you care? You've done it before.'

'That was a long time ago. A lifetime ago.'

'Like riding a bike,' said Green-eyes. 'As soon as you get back in the saddle, it'll be as if you never gave it up.' She motioned to the Runner, and he came over and took Andy by the arm,

leading her like a naughty child back to the office.

Mick Canning pushed the trolley down the aisle, scanning the rows of canned goods. He stopped by the soups section and took half a dozen cans of Heinz tomato soup off the shelves. He added a few cans of baked beans and spaghetti hoops to his trolley,

sticking to the Heinz brand. He knew that children applied the same brand awareness to their food as they did to their clothing.

Training shoes had to be Nike, Reebok or Adidas, beans had to be Heinz, fish ringers had to be Bird's Eye, cornflakes had to be Kellogg's. Anything else resulted in sneers and pushed-away plates. Canning's own children weren't much older than the Hayes girl -- his son was eight and his daughter nine. He hadn't seen either for almost three months; they were living in Larne with their mother. Canning and his wife had separated, and the last letter he'd received from her solicitor made it clear that she wanted a divorce. And the house. In exchange, she was offering him unlimited access to the children, though she was insisting that they live with her. Canning knew there was no point in arguing, either with her or her solicitor. He was resigned to becoming a part-time father, but figured that being a part-time father was better than being no father at all.

Canning paid in cash and took the carrier bags out to the carpark and loaded them into the boot of the Ford Mondeo. He turned on the radio and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. If everything went to plan, it would all be over within two weeks. The Hayes girl would be back with her parents,

Canning would have the rest of the hundred thousand pounds he'd been promised for the job, and he'd be able to get his soonto-be-ex-wife and her money-grabbing solicitor off his back.

Laura O'Mara jumped as the doorbell rang. The clock on the mantelpiece said it was a quarter past seven, and she wasn't expecting visitors. She put her knitting on the coffee table and turned down the volume of the television set, then peered through the laf e curtains. An expensive car, a black saloon, was parked in the road outside her house. She didn't know anyone with a black car. She went over to the door and slid the security chain home. Since her husband had died four years earlier, she'd always taken great care not to let strangers into the house. The newspapers were full of stories about old women being mugged for their life savings. Not that Laura O'Mara considered herself old. She was fifty-nine, and her own mother was still active and living alone, and she was in her mid-eighties. Nor did Laura O'Mara keep her life savings in her two-up, two-down cottage.

She was too smart an investor for that. Her savings were tucked away in tax-efficient bonds and unit trusts, and she even had several thousand pounds in a Guernsey bank account, safe from the prying eyes of the taxman. But she did have some valuable porcelain, and she knew that children these days would smash up a person's house for the thrill of it. She eased open the door,

keeping a reassuring hand on the lock.

A man in a suit smiled down at her, wire-framed spectacles perched on the end of his nose. 'Mrs O'Mara?'

She frowned. The illicit bank account sprang to mind, and she felt herself blush.

The man looked at a clipboard he was carrying, then smiled again. He had even white teeth, she noticed, not a filling in his mouth. Mrs O'Mara's own teeth betrayed a childhood of sweets and adult years filled with smoking and coffee-drinking. She self-consciously put her hand up to cover her mouth as she returned his smile.

'My name's Peter Cordingly,' he said. 'I'm with Dublin City social services.'

He had an Irish accent, but it wasn't local. It was as if he'd spent some time away from Ireland, smoothing out the peaks and troughs so that his accent was somehow vague and hard to pin down. A bit like the man himself, thought Mrs O'Mara. He 69 STEPHEN LEATHER was a pleasant enough chap, but not particularly good-looking,

with a bland, squarish face, and apart from, the glasses he didn't have any distinguishing features.

'I understand you've expressed concerns about one of the children at your school.' He looked at the clipboard again,

pushing the spectacles further up his nose with his index finger.

'Katie Hayes?'

'Oh, I only called her father. She was away without permission and . . .'

The man held up a hand to silence her and leaned forward conspiratorially. 'Mrs O'Mara, could I come in and have a word with you about this?' He looked left and right as if he feared being overheard. 'What I have to see is a wee bit ... confidential.'

'Oh my,' said Mrs O'Mara. She unhooked the security chain and pulled the door open, eager to hear what it was exactly that Mr Hayes had done, all thoughts about the dangers of strangers totally forgotten.

70

Andy woke up as the fluorescent lights flickered into life. She squinted over at the door to the office. The Wrestler stood there with a brown paper bag in one hand and a paper cup in the other. He put them down on the floor in the centre of the room.

'Breakfast,' he said. He'd taken off his shoulder holster.

Andy sat up and rubbed her eyes. 'Thank you,' she said.

'She wants you outside in fifteen minutes.'

'Okay.'

The Wrestler went out and closed the door behind him.

Andy climbed out of the sleeping bag that Green-eyes had given her the previous evening. There was no pillow -- she'd had to rest her head on a rolled-up pullover, and now she had a crick in her neck. She picked up the brown paper bag and opened it.

There was a croissant inside, and a bran muffin. She sat with her back against the wall and ate them both in between sips of hot coffee. She was surprised at how hungry she was, but then realised that she hadn't eaten for almost thirty-six hours.

When Green-eyes had given her the sleeping bag, she'd shown Andy where the bathroom was, at the end of the corridor farthest from the factory area. All it contained was a washbasin and toilet, but it was better than nothing, and Green-eyes had told her she could use it whenever she wanted. There was one stipulation. Andy had to shout that she wanted to leave the office, to give her captors time to put on their ski masks if they weren't already wearing them.

7i STEPHEN LEATHER Andy got her washbag out of her suitcase and banged on the office door. 'I want to go to the bathroom!' she shouted.

'Okay!' shouted Green-eyes, off in the distance. Andy opened the door and went along to the bathroom, had as good a wash as was possible in a sink, and brushed her teeth.

Green-eyes was waiting for her in the factory area, still wearing the blue overalls and ski mask. The Runner was loading the bags of ammonium nitrate into the back of the blue Transit van.

'Sleep well?' asked Green-eyes.

'Do you care?' said Andy.

'If it makes you feel any better, I slept on the floor too,' said Green-eyes. She nodded over at the far corner of the factory space. There were three rolled-up sleeping bags there, along with a couple of holdalls. The woman's pistol was on a small plastic table, along with the Wrestler's gun and holster.

'It doesn't,' said Andy.

'We'll be moving tomorrow anyway,' said Green-eyes.

'Where to?'

'You'll find out soon enough, Andrea.' Green-eyes pointed at the plastic chair on Andy's side of the table. 'Sit down.'

Andy did as she was told.

The Runner started loading the conifers into the back of the van, and then packed in the boxes of smaller plants.

'I want you to go through the list again,' Green-eyes said to Andy. 'Everything we'll need for a four-thousand-pound fertiliser bomb.'

'Don't you trust me?'

The green eyes stared at Andy through the holes in the ski mask.

Andy leaned forward. 'Or are you testing me, is that it? To check that I'm consistent?'

'Maybe I just want to make sure that you didn't forget anything,' said the woman. 'Deliberately or otherwise.'

'When can I see Katie?'

'You can't. She's still in Ireland.'

'Let me talk to her.'

'I can't do that.'

'I have to know that she's okay.'

'You have my word.'

Andy snorted. 'Why the hell should I believe anything you tell me?'

'If you ever want to see Katie again, you've no choice,' said the woman.

Andy glared at her. 'At least give me some sign that she's okay. A phone call. Anything.'

'A photograph in front of today's paper?' said Green-eyes,

her voice loaded with sarcasm.

'Look, what you're asking me to do is complicated. Really complicated. And I'm going to find it impossible to concentrate if I'm worrying whether or not my daughter is alive. Doesn't that make sense to you?'

Green-eyes tilted her head to one side as she looked at Andy.

'Maybe you're right at that,' she said. 'I'll see what I can do.

Now, let's go through the list.'

The Runner finished loading the Transit van. 'Oy, Don!' he yelled. Green-eyes stiffened. Andy pretended not to notice.

'Ammonium nitrate fertiliser,' she said. 'Ratio 34--0-0.'

The Wrestler came out of one of the offices and headed over to the metal door. He began to pull on the chain to open it and the Runner climbed into the driver's seat of the van.

'Aluminium powder. Pyro grade 400 mesh.' Andy fought to keep her voice steady. She brushed a stray lock of hair from her eyes and smiled at the woman in the ski mask. 'Sawdust. Soap powder. Diesel oil.'

The van engine kicked into life. Green-eyes began to write on her pad. Andy forced herself to breathe. Had she managed to convince Green-eyes that she hadn't heard the Runner's slip?

That she didn't know that the man built like a wrestler was called Don?

Andy kept talking. 'Three thousand two hundred pounds of fertiliser, six hundred pounds of aluminium powder.' Green eyes pounds of sawdust and thirty pounds of soap powder.'

Green-eyes continued to write as the Runner edged the van out 73 STEPHEN LEATHER of the factory. Andy stared at the pen as Green-eyes wrote. Did she know that Andy had heard the name? Was she pretending not to attach any significance to the slip so that Andy would think she was in the clear? Andy was trying to bluff Green-eyes;

maybe Green-eyes was attempting a double bluff. One thing Andy knew for sure -- if Green-eyes thought she'd caught the name, she was as good as dead. She continued to recite the list of components of the bomb, all the time staring at Green-eyes.

To her left, the metal door rattled down. She heard the Wrestler climb into the van and slam the door, then it drove away.

The woman looked up, her pen poised. Andy stared at her green eyes, wishing with all her heart that she could look inside the woman's mind and see for herself whether she was safe or whether her life had just been rendered forfeit by the mistake the Runner had made. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry, and when she swallowed she almost gagged.

O'Keefe stuffed his ski mask into the glove compartment. 'I should fucking blow your brains out here and now,' he said.

Quinn looked across at him, his mouth open in surprise.

'What?'

O'Keefe pointed a finger at Quinn's face, just inches from the man's nose. 'You're a fucking amateur. A fucking piece of shit amateur.'

'Don, what the hell's got up your arse?' Quinn sounded genuinely confused. He braked and brought the van to a halt at the roadside.

'You used my name, you ignorant, stupid shit.'

Quinn gripped the steering wheel with both hands. 'What the fuck are you talking about?'

O'Keefe jerked his thumb back at the industrial estate behind them. 'Back there. You called me Don.'

'I fucking did not.' *

'I'm not imagining it, Quinn. I'm not plucking this out of the fucking ether. I was in the bog, you were loading the van.

What did you shout?'

Quinn ran a hand through his thick red hair. 'I don't know.

But I know I wouldn't use your name. I'm not stupid.'

O'Keefe seized Quinn by the throat, his big, square hand gripping either side of the younger man's neck like a vice.

Quinn's eyes widened and his gloved hands clawed ineffectually at O'Keefe's iron-hard fingers. His lips moved silently, white spittle dribbling down his chin. O'Keefe's other hand grabbed Quinn's hair and he yanked the man's head back so that he was staring fearfully up at the roof of the van. 'Not stupid!' O'Keefe screamed. 'Not fucking stupid! I'll give you not fucking stupid!'

He tightened his grip on Quinn's throat, threatening to crush his windpipe. 'Now, think back, you little shit. Think back to what you said.'

Quinn's hands fastened around O'Keefe's wrist, but he was powerless against the bigger man's grip.

'Are you thinking?'

Quinn tried to nod but could barely move his head. O'Keefe let go of Quinn's throat and the younger man gasped for breath.

'I'm sorry. For fuck's sake, I'm sorry.'

O'Keefe let Quinn's hair slip through his fingers. 'It's coming back to you now, is it?'

Quinn nodded.

O'Keefe folded his arms and settled back in the passenger seat. 'You've got to be on your toes every second of every minute. You can't let your guard down once, because if you do it can be the death of you. This isn't a game. We get caught and they'll throw away the key.'

Quinn put the van into gear and pulled away from the kerb.

His hands were shaking on the steering wheel.

They drove to London, and cut across the city towards the financial district. Quinn brought the van to a halt and nodded at the line of half a dozen cars waiting to drive into the City of London. A uniformed policeman waved through the car at the front while his colleague went to speak to the driver of the second.

'Bloody joke, isn't it?' said Quinn. 'Ring of steel, my arse.

What the fuck do they expect to find, huh?'

'They're not the ones to worry about,' said O'Keefe. He jerked his chin to the side. 'It's the eye in the sky that does the damage.'

Quinn twisted around in his seat and looked in the direction that O'Keefe had indicated. High up on the office building was a wall-mounted camera pointing at the checkpoint. 'Video,

yeah?' he said.

'Not just a video,' said O'Keefe. 'The camera picks out the registration number and runs it through the police computer. It's all done automatically -- takes seven seconds to get a read-out on the vehicle. If it's stolen or used by anyone on the Special Branch watch list, there'd be more armed police around us than fleas on a dog.'

They edged towards the front of the queue of cars. O'Keefe reached under his seat and pulled out a metal clipboard. The uniformed policeman walked up to the window and O'Keefe wound down the window.

'Morning, sir,' said the policeman. 'Can you tell me where you're going?'

O'Keefe showed him the clipboard. There was an order form clipped to it with the landscape gardening company's letterhead on the top. 'Cathay Tower,' he said. 'We're doing a rooftop garden. Trees, bushes, the works.'

The policeman stepped back and waved them on, his eyes already on the next vehicle.

'Have a good one,' said O'Keefe as Quinn accelerated away.

It was the third time they'd been into the City in the van that week, and as anticipated there hadn't been any problems. It was registered and insured in the name of the landscaping company,

taxed and MoT'd and totally legitimate. Quinn's driving licence was clean, though the name and address weren't his.

The main entrance to Cathay Tower was in Queen Anne Street, close to Bank Tube station, but the entrance to the carpark was at the rear, down a narrow side street O'Keefe showed his pass to the elderly security guard. Like the van's paperwork, it was genuine. The office had been rented some three months earlier, and included in the lease were three parking spaces. They were on the second level of the subterranean carpark, and Quinn drove down and parked.

The service lift was some fifty feet away, so O'Keefe went over to press the button while Quinn opened the rear doors of the van and began unloading the sacks of fertiliser on to the trolley they'd brought with them. Each bag weighed fifty kilos, and Quinn could get six on the trolley. As he put the last one on,

the lift arrived and O'Keefe held the door open while Quinn trundled the trolley over.

They went up to the ninth floor. The lift doors opened on to a corridor which led to the main reception area where the passenger lifts were. A door led off the reception area to the lavatories; a corridor led to the main open-plan office area which ran the full length of the building. The entire floor was rented in the name of an overseas stockbroking firm, paid for through a Cayman Islands bank account.

O'Keefe walked into the main office area, which had previously been a dealing room for a major American bank,

and went inside. Quinn followed with the trolley. White vertical bunds covered the ceiling-to-floor windows. The Nat West Tower was almost directly opposite. It would be all too easy for one of the thousands of office workers to look in and see what they were doing. The blinds would have to remain closed all the time they were there.

There were already eighteen sacks of fertiliser piled up in one corner. The two men unloaded the trolley, adding the sacks to the pile. O'Keefe waved at a smoke detector in the middle of the ceiling. A red light bunked in the centre of the white plastic disc.

'You think she's watching?' asked Quinn.

'Wouldn't put it past her,' said O'Keefe.

Quinn nodded at the sacks of fertiliser. 'Weird, isn't it?' he said, wiping his hands on his overalls. 'Gardeners all over the country spread this over their lawns, and we're gonna blow a building to kingdom come with it.'

The two men walked over to the window.

'What's weird about that?' asked O'Keefe. 'Give us another cigarette, will you?'

'McCracken said we weren't to smoke here.'

'Fuck McCracken.' He gestured at the smoke detector.

'Anyway, this is a blind spot.'

'You sure?'

'I fitted the thing myself. I'm sure.'

Quinn shrugged and tossed the pack of Silk Cut over to O'Keefe.

O'Keefe took a cigarette, lit it, and tossed the pack back.

Quinn lit a cigarette for himself, and looked over at the sacks of fertiliser. 'I just meant it's weird that like this it's dead safe,

right? Regular fertiliser. But add other stuff to it and . . . you know . . . bang!'

'Bang?' O'Keefe pushed the blinds to one side and peered across at the Nat West Tower. Thousands of men and women going about their business. Worrying about careers, office politics, their home life. Worrying about a million things, but totally oblivious to the one thing that was going to change their lives for ever. A four-thousand-pound bomb only a few hundred metres away.

'Yeah, bang. Kaboom!'

O'Keefe let the bunds fall back into place and turned to look at Quinn. 'You think a four-thousand-pound bomb's going to go bang? Or ka-boom? You ever heard a bomb go off? A big one?'