The Fire Man (30 page)

The van was certainly unobtrusive. Apart from a small mongrel dog that had paused to anoint its tyres, it had attracted no attention. O'Meara Street was a dead end; it went nowhere, never had. Double yellow lines had prevented Tranquil from parking the beast directly opposite the entrance to Le Copa, but he had managed to get it into a space that provided an oblique but excellent view.

In fact, the van was the only parked vehicle on the short street, although the occasional car did pass in order to access the converted apartments at the end of the road. Technically, it was illegally parked, at least until 6pm, but O'Meara Street's greatest, possibly only, virtue was its sheer anonymity. It was sufficiently far from the bustle of Commercial Road to deter any overzealous parking attendant from making the effort to venture into its shabby charms, or so McRae sincerely hoped.

They had arrived early enough, they had calculated, to make certain that they captured the arrival of the gentlemen of Le Copa.

The downside of arriving at 4.30pm was that there was potentially an enormous amount of time before anything interesting occurred. Once Tranquil had left the van to begin his own lonely vigil around the back of the factory, McRae had made himself as comfortable as possible in the van's interior. Within only ten minutes, he had found his concentration waning.
How
, he wondered,
did someone like Tranquil keep up surveillance for hours or even days?
His mind constantly wandered as he kept one eye glued to the small aperture.

At around 5.15pm, he was startled into action as he finally observed some movement in the glass-fronted lobby of Le Copa's reception. He seized the Pentax 35mm camera, already pre-aligned by Tranquil, and slotted it onto the bracket, then peered anxiously through the viewfinder. He was just in time to see a small dark-haired woman in a yellow raincoat talking to a young Asian girl in a purple hijab as they opened the door. Once outside, the woman bent to operate a lock in the base of the frame as the girl hovered by her side. He pressed the shutter, although he recognised that the women were of no interest to him. As the women walked away towards Commercial Road chatting, McRae checked the picture on the camera's display. It was surprisingly good, certainly decent enough to distinguish the features easily. But, he reasoned, that was in good daylight; how would he fair later in the evening with the other camera?

Tranquil had also provided an infrared, low-light camera, which he swore was capable of remarkable results. McRae found it hard to believe that the images would be so brilliant. Still, they could do no more.

He leaned back in his surprisingly comfortable garden chair and pulled out his faithful notebook. After noting the departure of the women and the exact time, 5.14pm, he swung the camera out of the way and returned to his “Peeping Tom” posture. The fact that the women had locked the place suggested it was now deserted. Presumably, he reckoned, the next activity would be the first arrivals at the Arsonist's Ball.

He lit a cigarette, strictly against orders, and texted Tranquil to advise him of the developments, adding:
Hope you're not getting too bored in that alley?
He was not amused to receive a reply a moment later saying:
What alley? I'm in the pub, mate. Cheers!

* * *

A few seconds after sending his text message, Tranquil, wearing a set of blue overalls, left the Squatter's Rights and made his way onto Commercial Road before doubling back into the alleyway at the rear. It was wide enough to allow deliveries by trucks, but other than the gateways on either side, there was no obvious cover. Towards the end was a small contractor's skip, clearly associated with some construction work, but that was the lot: cobbles, litter, dog mess and high walls.

He picked his way carefully down the alley, ensuring that he avoided the dog shit, until he was adjacent to the small personnel door leading into Le Copa's yard. There was a sizeable crack between the frame and the brickwork, and he squinted carefully through it. He could see half of the rear wall of the warehouse and two stacks of used pallets. He tried the door cautiously but it was locked. Looking over his shoulder, he checked he was not visible from the street or any of the surrounding properties. The scrawny tabby cat that lazily regarded him from its perch atop a nearby wall didn't count, so he pulled the set of picks from his pocket.

Tranquil had never been any good at lock picking. He had a success rate of less than 10%, he reckoned, and even that pathetic percentage had invariably been achieved with simple Yale rim latches or cheap Chinese two-lever deadlocks.

After ten frustrating minutes – scratching, probing, poking, twiddling and silently cursing – he recognised that the Chubb five-lever mortise was beyond his slender ability. He sighed and turned his attention to the sliding gate. It was timber framed but coated with alloy sheeting. The gate had a pad-bolt secured by a heavy-duty chain and an open-shackle padlock. Again, it was obviously a decent quality padlock, but he had made his mind up: he wasn't going to mess about.

Tranquil made his way back to the van and, after checking for an absence of passers-by, yanked open the rear door, startling McRae, as he scrambled inside.

‘What's going on?' asked McRae, rubbing his eyes.

‘Nothing, but I need something,' he replied tersely, before rooting around in a canvas bag.

Removing a short pair of bolt croppers from the bag, he held his finger to his lips as a warning to McRae and clambered back out of the van, closing the door on his way.

Back at the gate, he waited a moment, leant against the wall and did his damnedest to look like an “innocent” drunk relieving himself. An elderly woman with a tartan-covered shopper on wheels made her way laboriously across the access to the alley. The crone eyed him with a toxic combination of distaste and suspicion.

Once he was sure that the coast was clear, he whipped the bolt croppers out of his pocket, extended the arms for greater leverage and snapped the hardened steel shackle easily. He removed the padlock and hurried back to the van. Without a word to McRae, he opened the door a crack, slung both the padlock and the croppers inside, before dashing back to the alley. Time was of the essence.

He cautiously slid the gate open, just sufficiently to allow him to squeeze his slim frame through the gap and then pulled the gate closed behind him. He stood perfectly still for a moment, before moving quickly to the two stacks of timber pallets. They would provide the perfect vantage point from which to keep an eye on the place. Better still, there was one stray pallet behind the stacks. He tilted it on end; it provided a rudimentary seat. McRae wouldn't be the only man sitting down on the job after all.

From his new position, Tranquil had a restricted view. He couldn't see the right-hand side of the loading bay doors, but the three steel-framed rear windows were visible and, best of all, he could see directly into the stock storage area. Not that there was much to see; just rails and racks stuffed with garments. With any luck, he would be able to see O'Connell and his merry men, but only if they did as he expected and came to inspect the stuff.

* * *

O'Connell was the first to show. It was 7.03pm according to McRae's watch, when the now familiar figure hove into view. The appearance electrified him; he had been in a reverie and had been very close to sleep, but just one fleeting glimpse of the evening sun glancing off the Irishman's bald crown had him swinging the camera into action. He didn't wait for the man to get closer or even worry about angles; he just pressed the shutter continuously as the powerful figure plodded past the pub and towards the factory.

The Irishman was wearing a suede jacket and a pale blue shirt above a pair of jeans. He was carrying a small brown leather shoulder bag, which looked strangely effeminate for such a masculine figure. As he approached Le Copa, McRae's blood chilled as he saw the man staring hard at the van. Viewed through the lens, it was as if the man's eyes were penetrating his very soul. McRae froze, his breathing suspended, as O'Connell stopped no more than twenty or thirty feet away and gazed again intently at the van. After seconds, which felt like eternity, he eventually turned to his left and strode towards the entrance of Le Copa
's
offices.

As O'Connell fished his keys out of his pocket and bent to release the lock, McRae kept his finger on the shutter. While the heavy door closed behind him, McRae took his last pictures before quickly texting his colleague:
Tuck now in building – watch it!

There are some instincts that are very hard to explain. Why, for example, should one battered old van just not look quite right?

Michael O'Connell had that kind of instinct and, while the shabby Peugeot van had certainly looked innocuous enough, he had seen enough Special Branch operations in Belfast to have a second sense where such matters were concerned. He wasn't always right and it was probably nothing – just “last-minute nerves” – but vehicles almost never parked in that street. It was unusual. He decided that he might as well ask old Spike McGaughan to check it out, just in case. He pulled out his mobile and called the man. There was no answer, so he left a short message asking the man to give him a call.

He had at least an hour before the others were due to turn up, so he decided to check on all the arrangements and make sure he had covered every angle. The first port of call was the warehouse. He left his overnight bag at the top of the stairs, switched on the lights and sauntered down the steps. He had decided to use exactly the same set-up as the boy had intended before McRae's irritating interference.

He set up the painter's stepladder next to a pillar and assembled all the materials, exactly as the boy had done. He opened a 5-litre can of primer and perched it on the platform at the top of the ladder, next to the propane blow-lamp, shaking the cylinder to make sure it contained sufficient gas. He adjusted the hanging rails, again just as the boy had. It was, he found, absorbing – almost an artistic act; perhaps it wasn't surprising that the boy had been so keen.

He stood back and admired the arrangement. It was, he was sure, near enough identical to the way the boy had set things up. It was too early, though, to soak the painting rags in white spirit. It could wait until he was ready; for now, he decided to open the central roof-light to make sure of a good “draw” in case he forgot later. He also released the stay and fastener of one of the rear casement windows, just a tad, to help create the “flue effect” his boy was always so keen on.

For a moment, he regretted not bringing the boy down from Liverpool; there was no doubt he really had become a bit of a genius at this lark, but the wall business had shaken him up a bit.

In the first-floor directors' room, he checked the bottles in the cupboard. One full bottle of Bushmills and one with a decent drop left in the bottom. It hadn't been touched since his last visit.

He unscrewed the open bottle and reached into his leather bag. He pulled out the small flask he had painstakingly prepared in his hotel bedroom. It was a simple concoction. He had followed his pal's instructions to the letter. A handful of ground-up ‘original' Flunitrazepam tablets had been mixed with a few drops of water to form a colourless, odourless and, best of all, tasteless liquid. He could have got hold of the current type in England, but for safety reasons the manufacturers had started to add a dye that would have made the solution visible. It had taken a little longer to get a colourless equivalent from the States. Still, it had been worth the wait.

He decanted the liquid carefully into the open bottle and then shook the bottle for a moment. He watched the amber liquid in the whiskey bottle settle for a minute and was satisfied. It looked fine.

Finally, he brought the bottle to his lips and tilted it so that his tongue came into contact with the whiskey for the briefest of moments. He explored the taste and was reasonably satisfied. There was something ever so slightly different, but if he, an experienced Irish whiskey drinker couldn't detect anything, he was satisfied that no one else would.

According to his expert, the so-called “date-rape” drug, which was usually known as Rohypnol, would take full effect in fifteen to twenty minutes and could last for up to twelve hours. He had been warned that the effects could vary, so to be on the safe side, he had doubled the dose. He was intent on leaving nothing to chance.

After carefully replacing the bottles in the cupboard, O'Connell leaned back in his office chair and did something very rare: he smiled. The thin smirk did little to improve his appearance. It was strangely sinister and almost grotesque – like lipstick on a cow.

For the umpteenth time, he mentally reviewed the intended course of action. He believed he had covered all the bases. Of course, Plan A, as he thought of it, did depend on the man accepting the drink, but he'd never known him to refuse. If he had to revert to something else, it wasn't the end of the world.

Glancing idly out of the window, he noticed that the van was still in place. Maybe it was because nobody ever parked there, but it was getting to him. He didn't like it. He took out his phone and pressed the redial number. This time, McGaughan did answer; clearly, from the hubbub in the background, he was in a pub somewhere. The man took down the license number and promised to get back to O'Connell within a couple of hours.

‘Could do with it quicker than that, Spike,' he said.

‘I'll see what I can do,' was the economical reply.

With business taken care of, O'Connell allowed his mind to drift. It was 7.55pm; the others should arrive shortly. With any luck, he would be out of the place by 9pm. As he ruminated, his hand strayed absentmindedly to the two small booklets in his jacket pocket. He would need both of them, but he realised it wouldn't be smart to produce the wrong one at the wrong time. He slipped the blue booklet quickly into the side pocket of his overnight bag. The bag contained little else apart from the remains of the Mickey-Finn in its flask, tickets and a wash bag. O'Connell always travelled light. He wouldn't need anything else for the rapid journey he had in mind.