The Chinaman (28 page)

Hennessy thought about it for just a few seconds and then agreed. He told Morrison to wait while he rummaged through his desk and dug out an old address book. Morrison could feel himself about to come and reached down with his free hand to stroke Mary's hair and to gently push her away. She slid him out of her mouth and moved over him, licking her lips like a satisfied cat, her eyes flashing. He knew what she was going to do and he shook his head and tried to roll away but she pushed him down and continued to move over his body until her thighs were either side of his hips. She seemed to be revelling in his discomfort, knowing that he couldn't resist too much while he was on the phone, and knowing too that deep down he didn't want to resist, that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She held him with one hand and positioned herself above him, rubbing him against herself, allowing him inside but only an inch or so and then easing herself away, teasing him and watching his face all the while. Hennessy came back on the line.

‘He still does some deer tracking, mainly for Japanese tourists, but he also runs a survival school for executives, based near Thurso,' he said.

‘Thurso?' replied Morrison and as he spoke Mary pushed herself down so that he was completely inside her. He gasped involuntarily. She moved slowly up and down, grinding her pelvis against him, her eyes half closed, her mouth open and panting.

‘It's in the far north of Scotland, about as far north as you can go before you hit the sea.' He gave Morrison the address and a telephone number. Morrison told him he had to get a pen and paper. Mary stopped moving and, with him still inside her, leant over to the bedside table and gave him a black ballpoint pen and a sheet of hotel notepaper. He asked Hennessy to repeat the details and he wrote them down, thankful that Mary had at last stopped moving. He felt as if his groin was about to explode.

‘And Sean, don't push him, OK? If he doesn't want to do it, forget it.'

‘OK, Liam,' said Morrison. Mary squeezed him with her internal muscles and began to ride him again, throwing her head back and gripping him tightly with her thighs.

‘How did the meeting with Bromley go?' asked Hennessy.

‘Fine,' answered Morrison, closing his eyes and concentrating on his breathing and trying with all his might not to come. ‘But when he gets the codeword he'll call you direct. He insisted.'

‘That's OK.'

‘Everything ready at your end?'

‘Yes. I've given out the words. All we can do now is to wait for the next bomb. See you soon, Sean.'

‘Will do, Liam. Take care.' He threw the phone to one side and reached up to caress Mary's breasts. She took one of his hands and placed two of his fingers in her mouth, sucking and licking them as she rode him.

‘You, Mary Hennessy, are a bitch. A teasing, dangerous, gorgeous bitch.' She laughed throatily and rode him all the harder.

Afterwards, she lay curled up with her back against him, her skin moist with a thin film of sweat. Morrison licked her back, enjoying the salty taste of her.

‘That's nice,' she whispered.

‘I wish you'd come to New York with me,' he said.

She sighed, and pushed herself back against him. ‘Don't start, Sean,' she chided. ‘Just enjoy the time we have together. You already have more of me than anyone else in the world.'

‘Except your husband.'

‘You wouldn't want to swap places with him, believe me.'

Morrison knew that they were going over old ground, replaying the same arguments they'd had before he left for the United States, but he couldn't help himself. It was like picking the scab of an old wound.

‘How did Liam sound?' she asked, changing the subject.

‘Worried. Very worried.'

‘About The Chinaman?'

‘Yeah, and the London bombings. I'm not sure which worries him the most.'

‘Do you think he'll be able to find out who has been setting off the bombs?' She reached behind herself and began stroking his thighs with the back of her hand.

‘It's the only chance we've got,' he said.

‘That's what Liam says, too. But do you really think his plan will work?'

‘If there is another bomb, and if the bombers give the codeword when they claim responsibility, it'll lead us straight to whoever's behind it. With a bit of luck, it'll work.'

‘I hope so,' she sighed.

Her hand became more insistent but he pulled himself away from her. ‘I'm going to have to go,' he said.

‘Where?'

‘Scotland. To talk to a man who might be able to track down The Chinaman for us. What will you do?'

‘I'm to stay in London until Liam says it's safe to go back. So if you're not here I'll just have to amuse myself.'

Morrison went to the bathroom where he shaved and showered and when he came out Mary had dressed and was brushing her hair. She stood up on tiptoe and kissed him full on the mouth. ‘It's good to have you back,' she said. ‘Don't stay away so long next time.' She turned and picked up her trench coat and blew him a kiss before closing the door behind her.

Morrison shook his head, trying to clear her from his mind. Two years, and it seemed as if he had never been away. If anything he wanted her more now than before. He forced himself to concentrate on the job at hand. He wondered why the normally confident Hennessy was so touchy on the subject of Geraghty and if it really had been the painful death of his wife that had led to his exile in Scotland. He looked at his watch. Two o'clock. He hadn't a clue how to get to Thurso, or how long it would take, but he knew he had to speak to Geraghty in person, it would be too easy for him to decline on the phone. He rang down to reception and told them he'd be checking out and also asked if they'd find out the quickest way to get to Thurso.

‘Is that in Cornwall?' the girl had asked. She said she'd phone back once she'd checked with a travel agent and Morrison began to pack his suitcase. He'd just about finished when the girl rang to say that he could go by train but that he wouldn't get there until the following day. The best way would be to fly up to Inverness and go the rest of the way by train or hire a car and drive. Morrison said he'd fly and asked her to arrange for a car to take him to the airport and have it put on the bill.

Woody was, as usual, short of cash, so he took the Tube to Clapham.

An unsmiling middle-aged Oriental woman was serving behind the counter of the Double Happiness Take-Away, and when it was Woody's turn he asked her for sweet and sour pork and chips. ‘Is the owner here?' asked Woody.

‘Huh?' she said, her mouth dropping open.

‘The owner. Can I see the owner?'

‘In kitchen,' she said.

‘Yes . . . right . . . OK . . . could you ask him to come out? Tell him it's Ian Wood, from the newspaper.'

‘Ian Wood. Newspaper,' she repeated. She stuck her head through the serving hatch and shouted. There was an equally raucous reply and she turned to Woody again.

‘He busy,' she said.

‘I know, he's cooking my food,' said Woody. ‘Look, he knows me.'

‘He say he not know you,' she said emphatically and folded her arms across her chest.

Woody waited until his order arrived and she plonked the carrier bag on the counter in front of him. He paid for it and then asked to see the owner again. She glared at him before yelling through the hatch once more. This time a bald, Oriental giant came out carrying a huge carving knife. He stood next to the woman and barked: ‘I here. What you want?'

Woody looked at the couple, confused. ‘I'm sorry, you're not the man I wanted to see. I wanted Mr Nguyen.' He had assumed that The Chinaman owned the restaurant because of all the cash he had, but perhaps he was an employee. ‘Does Mr Nguyen work here?' Woody asked.

‘No,' said the man.

‘Do you know where he is?'

‘No.'

Woody was taken aback. He took his notebook from his pocket and looked at the telephone number that Nguyen had given him. He picked up one of the printed menus off the counter and compared the telephone number there. They were the same. He held the notebook out to the man. ‘Look, I spoke to Mr Nguyen at this number. Here.'

The man didn't look at the notebook. ‘I own Double Happiness now,' he said.

‘So Mr Nguyen was the previous owner?'

‘He own Double Happiness before. He sell to me.'

At last Woody understood. ‘But you don't know where he went?'

The man shook his head.

‘He was very upset about what happened to his family,' said Woody. ‘Do you know if that was why he left?'

‘No.'

‘No you don't know why, or no that's not why he left?'

‘No,' the man repeated. ‘I busy, you go now.' He made to go back to the kitchen.

‘Do you have a photograph of him?' Woody asked.

The man's eyes screwed up. ‘What do you mean?'

Woody drew a square in the air with his hands. ‘Photograph. A picture. Click, click!' He mimed using a camera.

The man nodded enthusiastically. ‘Ah! Picture!' he said.

‘You have?' Woody asked eagerly.

‘No,' he answered, shaking his head.

Woody saw the doorway that led off from behind the counter. ‘He lived upstairs?' he asked, and pointed.

‘My house now,' said the man emphatically.

‘Can I look?' Woody asked.

‘No.'

‘I'll pay,' said Woody, reaching across to lift up the counter.

The man raised the knife and it glinted under the shop's fluorescent lighting. ‘This my house now. My restaurant. My house. You go now.'

Woody held up his hands, admitting defeat. He left the shop, thought about eating the sweet and sour pork but decided against it and dropped it into a rubbish bin before walking back to the Tube.

Hennessy sat at the kitchen table with Jackie sprawled at his feet and a pile of typewritten sheets in front of him. Except for the dog he was alone. Jim Kavanagh was in the next room, while Willie O'Hara had gone upstairs for a few hours' sleep after volunteering to be on guard duty overnight.

The papers Hennessy was studying were the lists of the munitions supplies that had been secreted in mainland Britain. There were sixteen lists in all. Most had arrived at his office before they'd left Belfast and he'd requested that the few remaining lists be delivered to the farm. Of the sixteen, five had been raided with about thirty-five pounds of Semtex in all unaccounted for. Detonators had been taken, and some ammunition, but no guns or rifles were missing. What worried Hennessy was that there appeared to be no common thread linking the arms dumps that had been tampered with, either geographically or in terms of people who knew about them. Hennessy was starting to think that perhaps more than one person was involved, or that security among the high-ranking IRA officials wasn't as secure as it should have been. And there was the added complication that whoever was behind the bombings could have lied when compiling the list of the contents of his own caches. He slammed the table in frustration and Jackie jerked awake, ears back. To have gone to all that trouble for nothing, cursed Hennessy. Jackie got to her feet and put her head in his lap, whining for attention, and he stroked her flanks.

Kavanagh popped his head around the door. ‘There's somebody coming,' he said.

Hennessy gathered the papers together and put them into one of the drawers of the Welsh dresser. ‘It looks like Hugh McGrath. It's his car, anyway.'

Hennessy went with Kavanagh through the hall to the front door. Two of the guards had already stopped the blue Volvo some fifty yards or so from the house. There were four men in it, including the driver. Hennessy used his hand to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun and recognised the grey, slicked-back hair and angular features of Hugh McGrath, wearing the tinted glasses that gave him what Mary always mockingly referred to as his Clint Eastwood look. McGrath owned a farm to the south-west, several hundred acres but little in the way of crops or livestock. Instead he earned a small fortune taking advantage of the price differentials between the North and South. That's how McGrath would have explained it. Hennessy called it by its true name – smuggling.

Price anomalies between the two parts of the divided Ireland meant that McGrath could always make a turn somewhere, be it on wheat, pigs, milk or petrol, or by smuggling things like contraceptives to the south or antibiotics to the north.

Hennessy had always been unhappy at McGrath's smuggling operations but he was a powerful man within the organisation and had many supporters. His role as liaison officer with the Libyans was also vital to the IRA, and he was one of the few men from the organisation who had actually met with Gaddafi. McGrath knew his value and capitalised on it.

The Volvo pulled up in front of the farmhouse and McGrath unwound his angular frame from the back seat. He was a good head taller than Hennessy, even with his slight stoop. He held out his hand and his grip was strong and confident.

‘Liam,' he said. ‘How are you this fine afternoon?'

‘Fine,' said Hennessy. ‘Come on in.' McGrath's driver and his two bodyguards stayed in the car as Hennessy led him into the lounge. Hennessy waved him towards the floral-patterned sofa in front of the unlit fireplace.

‘Drink?' he asked, and McGrath asked for a whiskey. Hennessy half filled two crystal tumblers before settling down into a leather wing-tipped chair opposite the sofa. Jackie butted the door open with her head and lay down at Hennessy's feet after first sniffing at McGrath's legs and accepting a pat on the back.