The Chinaman (6 page)

‘Now?' said McCormick, licking his lips nervously.

‘No, Fisher said we wait until we're on Shooters Hill Road,' replied O'Reilly.

‘Let's go then.' McCormick put the car in gear and drove to the main junction and indicated before he turned. He pulled the car to the side some fifty yards down the road. O'Reilly nodded and opened the glove compartment and took out a small walkie-talkie. It was an Icom IC2 transceiver, a hand-held model. There was another in the camera bag, though it had been modified. The Bombmaker had attached a relay switch to the loudspeaker circuit which was connected to a second circuit, containing a 1.5 volt battery and a gunpowder detonator. The detonator was embedded in twenty-five pounds of Semtex explosive, around which was wrapped a cluster of three-inch nails. There was no timing device because the bomb would be detonated at a safe distance by the transceiver in O'Reilly's hand. And there were no booby traps because they weren't sure when he'd be able to put the bag down.

O'Reilly saw the avaricious look in McCormick's eye, the pleading of a dog begging for a bone. He handed it over. McCormick handled it reverently like a holy icon.

‘Are you sure?' he asked.

‘Go for it,' said O'Reilly.

McCormick switched the control switch to ‘send' and held the transceiver to his mouth. ‘Bang,' he said, and they saw the flash of light followed quickly by the thud of the explosion and felt the tremor through the car seats.

‘Come on, let's go,' said O'Reilly.

They were driving along the A102 heading for the Blackwall Tunnel by the time the first white-coated doctor reached the blood-soaked pitch.

Sir John Brownlow was getting irritable, so Ellen brewed him a fresh cup of coffee and placed it on the desk in front of him. He smiled his thanks and she could read his discomfort in his eyes. Ellen Howard had been the MP's personal assistant for almost three years and she'd reached the stage where she could pretty much judge what he was thinking by the look on his face. Today he was wearing his professional, caring mask but she could tell that he was far from happy. He hated the regular constituency surgeries where the punters queued up to present him with their problems and to ask him to put their lives in order. The ones at the local party office weren't so bad because they were mainly an opportunity of pressing the flesh with the party faithful, it was when he had to go out and about that he suffered. Ellen knew what the problem was, though she would never dare tell the MP to his face. It was that Sir John simply did not care about the man in the street, and he sympathised even less with their trials and tribulations. But he was all too well aware of how narrow his majority had been at the last election, and he had resigned himself to the fact that being seen helping his constituents with their problems was a vote-catcher. Holding the surgery in a local citizens advice centre eased some of the pain as it meant he could usually pass them on to someone else. Teflon Time, he called it. The trick was to make sure that nothing stuck and that the punters went away thinking that their MP had done his best and was worth supporting.

The middle-aged woman sitting opposite him in a thick tweed coat and a fake fur hat had bought her council house by mortgaging herself to the hilt. Her son had helped out with the payments until they'd had a row and he'd left home. Now the building society was threatening to evict her. If she sold the house would Sir John be able to get her into another council house? The MP smiled benignly and told her that there were people at the centre who would help her negotiate with the building society and have the payments frozen or reduced. He motioned at Ellen and introduced her to the woman and then stood up to shake her hand, patting her on the back as he ushered her to the door. Ellen took her down the corridor into another room and left her with one of the advisers there. Teflon Time strikes again, she thought. There were half a dozen people sitting on a line of chairs in the corridor outside the office commandeered by the MP. There was an old couple, a young man in jeans and a motorcycle jacket who looked like he might be troublesome, two housewives, and a Chinese man in a blue duffel coat. He was muttering something, reading from a small piece of paper in his hands and repeating something to himself over and over again. As she walked past him it sounded as if he said ‘elected representative'.

‘Next please,' she said, and the old man stood up and helped his wife to her feet. Sir John greeted them with his hand outstretched and a caring smile on his face.

Ellen sat behind her own desk, to the left of Sir John's and at right angles to it, and watched and learned. She had hopes of one day following him into the House of Commons. Her degree was in political science and she'd been chairman of her university's student union, but what she needed now was hard, political experience. Sir John Brownlow was providing that, even if it meant that she had to tolerate the occasional wandering hand on her buttocks or suggestive remark, but so far she'd been able to fend off his passes without offending him. Besides, he'd stopped being quite so chauvinistic once she'd become a good friend and confidante of his wife and taken his two teenage daughters to the cinema a few times. Ellen knew what she wanted, and how she wanted to get it, and what she didn't want was to get her ticket to the House by lying on her back with the Honourable Member between her legs.

He spent half an hour with the old couple, and then Ellen took them out and called for whoever was next. The Oriental man looked around, saw that everyone was looking at him, and got to his feet. ‘I think it is my turn,' he said quietly.

She asked his name and then he followed her into the office. Sir John was already in position to shake hands and Ellen saw his jaw tighten when he saw Nguyen, but only for a second. Then the teeth flashed and the eyes crinkled into the face that smiled down from the posters at election time. Sir John was nothing if not professional.

‘Mr Nguyen,' she said by way of introduction. The MP shook the man's hand firmly and he waited until Nguyen was seated before going back behind the desk.

‘How can I help you, Mr Nguyen?' he said, steepling his well-manicured hands under his square chin.

In a low, quiet voice, Nguyen told him what had happened to his wife and daughter, about the bomb, and the conversations he had had with the police and the Anti-Terrorist Branch. ‘My family died more than three months ago,' he said. ‘And still the men responsible have not been caught.'

Sir John nodded understandingly. ‘But what is it that you want me to do?'

‘I wrote to you many times, Sir John. Many times.'

The MP gave Ellen a sideways look and she nodded quickly. Yes, she remembered his letters now. Carefully handwritten, every word in capital letters. She had drafted sympathetic replies promising nothing and Sir John had signed them without reading them.

‘I asked you to help bring the men to justice,' Nguyen continued. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Bromley said that the capture of the men was a political matter.'

‘Detective Chief Inspector Bromley?'

‘He is a policeman who catches terrorists. But he told me that he could not force the men in the IRA to tell him who killed my family.'

‘That is probably true, I am afraid,' said Sir John. ‘There are many people who probably feel that the police and the army should have stronger powers, but we are, when all is said and done, a democracy. We cannot torture people or imprison them simply because they do not give us the information we seek.' He looked concerned, but to Ellen he sounded pompous and uncaring.

‘But could not the Government change the law so that such things could be done? So that the police could force others in the IRA to tell what they know?'

‘In theory yes, but it would not happen. I am afraid you must allow the police to do their job, Mr Nguyen. I am sure that they are doing their best.'

Nguyen smiled nervously. ‘What I would like, Sir John, is for you to change the law.'

Sir John snorted. ‘Come, come, Mr Nguyen. What makes you think I can do that?'

‘Because you are my . . .' The old man seemed to stumble on the words before finishing the sentence. ‘My elected representative.' He seemed to take pride in the fact that he had remembered the words. ‘You are my MP. I wish you to change the law so that the killers of my family can be brought to justice.'

‘You have a strange idea of the powers of an MP, Mr Nguyen. I cannot change laws just because you think justice has not been done.'

Nguyen hung his head and said something quietly.

‘I'm sorry?' said Sir John, leaning forward to listen.

Nguyen looked up. There were tears in his eyes and Ellen's heart went out to him.

‘What am I to do?' he asked the MP. ‘My family is dead. What am I to do?'

Sir John leant back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Ellen recognised his defensive position. There was nothing he or anyone else could do. The IRA was an insurmountable problem. Even if they were to catch the men behind the latest series of bombings, it would not stop, another active service unit would come to life. The killings would never stop, not until the British pulled out of Northern Ireland. And there was little likelihood of that happening.

‘How long have you been in this country, Mr Nguyen?' Sir John asked.

‘I have been a British citizen since 1982. Very long time.' He reached into his duffel coat pocket and took out a passport, the old type, dark-blue with the gold crest on the front. He held it out to the MP but he seemed reluctant to take it and kept his arms folded. Nguyen put it back in his pocket.

‘From Hong Kong?' Sir John asked. Ellen realised then why he was so defensive. He had been one of the most outspoken critics of the Government's offer of passports to the colony's middle classes.

‘Do you not have family back in Hong Kong? Can you not go back there?'

The old man looked surprised. ‘Hong Kong? Why I go back there?'

Sir John appeared equally confused. ‘That's where you came from,' he said. ‘Surely you still have family there?'

‘I not Hong Kong Chinese,' Nguyen explained. ‘I am Vietnamese. From Vietnam.'

Realisation dawned on the MP's face and he sighed audibly. He was, Ellen knew, even more vehemently against Vietnamese boat people being offered sanctuary in Britain. God, the number of times she'd listened to him address meetings on the difference between political and economic refugees and how Britain couldn't offer homes to everyone in the world who wanted a better standard of living.

‘North or south?' asked Sir John.

Nguyen smiled. ‘Today there is no north or south. Only Vietnam.'

‘When you escaped,' the MP pressed. ‘Where were you from then?'

Nguyen shrugged. ‘Both,' he said. ‘North and south.'

‘And why did you come to England?'

‘Because I could not live in Vietnam. Because the Communists persecuted me and my family. I helped the Americans in the war. When the Americans go they put me in prison. So we escaped. To Britain.'

‘Why Britain?'

‘Because here we can be free.'

The MP nodded. ‘But do you not see, Mr Nguyen? The reason that you can be free in this country and not your own is because we have laws for everybody here. Nobody is above the law. But equally nobody is denied its protection. That is what makes democracy work. That is why you wanted to come here in the first place, to be free. You cannot now ask for the laws to be changed, to take away the rights of others.'

‘Even if they have killed my family?'

‘You must allow the police to do their job. You must have faith in our system, Mr Nguyen.' He put his hands on the desk top and pushed himself up. Nguyen tilted his head up and for the first time it gave him a more confident, vaguely arrogant look. Then he stood up and he became once more the stooped old man, alone in the world. Sir John patted him on the back as he guided him through the doorway and into the corridor and then he slipped back into the office.

‘Christ, Ellen, these people. They come over here, we give them homes, we give them money, and still they want more. If they don't like this country the way it is, why don't they just get the hell out and go back to where they came from?'

‘He's still in shock, poor man,' said Ellen. ‘His whole family was wiped out. Think how he must feel.'

‘That was four months ago, Ellen. And there have been what, two or three bombs since then. And how many other victims? Yet you don't hear their relatives demanding that we pull in IRA members off the street and pull out their fingernails.'

‘He wasn't actually saying that, Sir John. He was . . .'

The MP snorted angrily. ‘Bullshit! That's exactly what he wanted. And can you imagine what the Press would do if they even thought we were considering something like that? They'd scream “Big Brother” and “Violation of Human Rights” and you know they would. Remember Gibraltar? They don't think about the people whose lives were saved when the SAS stopped the car bomb from being detonated. All they remember is the IRA being shot while they were on the ground. Remember the uproar over the
Belgrano
?'

Ellen didn't argue. She knew full well that there was no point in taking sides against her boss. She was there to learn from him, not to antagonise him. She smiled and brushed a loose strand of hair off her face. ‘I'll get the next one in for you,' she said sweetly while wondering how such a racist could ever get elected. There was so much she still had to learn, she realised.

Jon Simpson took the call from the uniformed security guard at reception. ‘There's a chap down here wants to speak to a reporter,' he said gruffly.