A Darker Place

The Portland Hotel caused many people to look at him differently, as if there was something otherworldly about him, and there were those who felt uncomfortable in his presence, hurrying past him. One who did not was a new young cleaner who replaced an older woman who’d moved away. The girl’s name was Jean Murray and she was from a Protestant Orange background.

Roper’s room was on her list and she was resolutely cheerful from the moment she started and knew all his business within two days. Her mother had been killed in a bombing four years earlier, for which she blamed the fugging Fenians, as she called them. Her father was a member of the local Orange Lodge and had a plum job at the Port Authority. There was also a brother of twenty-one named Kenny in his final year at Queens University.

She extracted as much personal information from Roper as she could. As long as it wasn’t military, he didn’t mind. The truth was that to a certain extent he rather fancied her, which gave him pause for thought, because it meant the defensive wall he’d built around himself was weakening.

‘What’s it get yer, Captain, the hero bit? You’re a lonely man, that’s the truth of it, and you’ve stared death in the face for so long, it’s dried up any juice that’s in you.’

‘Well, thank you, Dr Freud,’ he said. ‘I mean, you would know.’

‘Why do you do it? It’s a known fact in this dump that you’re well fixed financially.’

‘Okay, look at it this way. When the Troubles started in sixty-nine, the bomb thing was in its infancy. Very crude, no big deal. Over the years, as the Provisional IRA has grown in power, bombs have become very sophisticated indeed. The public image of the IRA as a bunch of shaven-headed yobs off a building site is well off the mark. Plenty of solid middle-class professionals are in the movement. Schoolteachers, lawyers, accountants, a whole range of ordinary people.’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘That the bombmakers these days have got university degrees and they’re very clever and sophisticated. Consider the Portland bomb. I’m an expert and I’ve dealt with hundreds of bombs over the years, but that one took me nine hours, and shall I tell you something? He’ll be back, that bombmaker. He’ll come with something just a little bit different, just for me. He can’t afford to have me beat him. It’s as simple as that.’

She stared at him, pretty and rumpled in her blue uniform dress, leaning on her broom, no makeup on at all, and there was something in her eyes that could have been pity.

‘That’s terrible, what you say. Still, it can’t go on, things change.’

‘What do you mean things change?’

‘The whole system. My Kenny says the bombs won’t need people like you soon. He’s read about you in the papers. He knows I work for you.’

‘What does he mean things change?’

‘He’s taking his finals in his degree soon. Electronics. He makes gadgets. These days you have a hand control to work your television, open your garage doors, unlock your car, switch on security systems in your house. We’ve only got an ordinary terrace, but the gadgets he’s created in it are brilliant.’

‘Very interesting, but what’s this got to do with bombs?’

‘Well, it’s too technical for me, but he’s been working on a thing he calls a Howler. It looks like a standard television control, but it’s really different. He can turn off security systems, and I mean really important ones. He demonstrated on our local bank. He kept locking the doors as we walked past. They didn’t know whether they were coming or going. Does it to people’s cars as we go by, turns on store alarms, even big shops in town.’

‘Very interesting,’ Roper said. ‘Fascinating, but I still don’t see the relevance to bombs.’

‘Well, that’s what he’s really been working on. He said he can maybe adapt the Howler so that even a big sophisticated bomb like your Portland Hotel job could simply be switched off. That’s the only way I can describe it.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, I can’t stand around here chattering. I’ve got five other rooms to do.’

‘No, just a minute,’ Roper said. ‘Let me get this straight. Has Kenny really got anywhere with his invention?’

‘He’s working at it all the time at the moment. He was talking about bombs at the time because of that Paradise Street bomb the day before yesterday, the one in the car that killed the sergeant. He said the Howler could have switched it off at the touch of a button, that was what he was working towards.’

Roper was cold with excitement. ‘He said that, did he?’

She laughed. ‘I said could it work the other way, could what was switched off be switched on? He said a Howler has two faces. What could be switched off could be switched on again.’ She picked up her bucket. ‘Anyway, I’ll be away now. Work to do.’

‘Just one more thing. Could I meet Kenny?’

She had moved to the door and turned. ‘I don’t know about that. I mean, soldiers are targets at the best of times and you never know who’s who these days. Fenians everywhere.’

‘I wouldn’t be in uniform, Jean. I’d just like to meet him and discuss his work if he’d let me. It sounds very interesting. And he might find it rewarding to discuss his ideas with someone like me who has spent so much time at the coalface, so to speak.’

She looked serious. ‘You’ve got a point. I can’t speak for him, but I’ll give him a phone call, see what he has to say. I’ve got to get moving. I’ll let you know.’

She was away and Roper sat on the bed and thought about it. It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Most really sophisticated bombs had multiple electrical circuits of one kind or another, intertwining in complicated puzzles, feeding into each other, often in the most bizarre way. The theory behind this Howler device of Kenny’s was a kind of Holy Grail. After all, if the most complicated of security systems could be neutered at the touch of a button, it seemed logical that the right touch of genius could do the same thing to bomb circuits.

It was a thought that wouldn’t go away and he went down to the bar and ordered a large whiskey since he was off duty, took a newspaper to a corner table and sat there, pretending to read it, but thinking.

Major Sanderson, the commanding officer, glanced in. ‘I see you’ve got a night off, Giles. Lucky you. I’ve got a general staff meeting at the Grand Hotel. Your leave’s been approved, by the way. Starts Sunday. Two weeks, so make the most of it.’

He went, and for a moment there was no one else in the bar except the corporal behind the counter busying himself cleaning glasses. Jean Murray peered in at the door.

The corporal said, ‘You can’t come in here, you know that.’

‘It’s all right,’ Roper told him. ‘She wants me.’ He swallowed his whiskey, got up and joined her in the corridor. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘I’ve spoken to Kenny, and he says he’ll see you, but it’s got to be tonight, because he’s starting the practical side of his finals for his degree at Queen’s University tomorrow.’

‘That’s fine by me.’

‘I’m finished in an hour. I’ll meet you on the corner by Cohan’s Bar, and no uniform, like I said.’

‘No problem. Where are we going?’

‘Not far. Half a mile maybe. You know where the Union Canal is? He has a room he uses for his work in what used to be a flour mill. You’ll need a raincoat. It’s pouring out there.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Roper told her.

He returned to the bar, ordered another whiskey and sat in the corner, thinking about it. His boss was out of the way at his staff meeting, there was no point in discussing his intended adventure on the streets of Belfast after dark with anyone else. There were risks, but risk of any kind had been so much a part of his life for years now that it was second nature.

He would go armed, of course, his usual Browning Hi-Power, but a backup would be a sensible precaution, and he drank his whiskey and went along to the weapons store, where he found a Sergeant Clark on duty.

‘I’m going on the town tonight, out of uniform, special op. I’ll have the Hi-Power, but is there anything else you could suggest?’

Clark, who regarded Roper as a true hero, was happy to oblige. ‘Colt .25, Captain, with hollow-point cartridges. It’s hard to beat. There you go.’ He placed one on the counter and a box of ten cartridges.

‘So that will do it?’ Roper enquired.

‘With this.’ Clark produced an ankle holder in soft leather. ‘Nothing’s perfect, but in a body search, when somebody finds an item like a Browning, they tend to assume that’s it.’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘You just have to live in hope. Sign here, sir.’

He pushed a ledger across and offered a pen. Roper said, ‘I knew I could rely on you, Sergeant.’

‘Take care, sir.’

In his room, Roper changed into a pair of old comfortable trousers, not jeans, because it made the ankle holder more accessible. He carefully loaded the Colt with six of the hollow-points and checked that he could reach it easily. He wore the bulletproof vest, a dark polo-neck sweater and a navy blue slip-on raincoat he’d had for years. He didn’t wear a shoulder holster and simply put the Browning in his right-hand pocket. He peered out of the windows, old-fashioned street lights aglow now in the early evening darkness, rain hammering down, although when didn’t it in Belfast? He went through his narrow wardrobe, found an old tweed cap, pulled it on and went downstairs.

The guards on either side of the gate stayed in their sentry boxes. They knew him well. After all, everyone did. ‘A hell of a night for it, sir,’ one of them called cheerfully as he raised the bar. ‘Whatever it is.’

Roper smiled back just as cheerfully, pausing for a moment, looking out into that Belfast street that as far as he was concerned was like no other street in any city in the world.

‘All right,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Let’s get moving.’ He slipped out and turned towards Cohan’s.

Jean Murray stood in the entrance of the bar, sheltering from the rain. She had a large old-fashioned umbrella ready and seemed impatient. ‘So there you are. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.’

‘Will I do?’ Roper asked.

She looked him over. ‘I suppose so. But keep that gob of yours shut. You sound as if you’ve been to Eton or somewhere like that.’ She opened the umbrella. ‘Let’s get moving.’

He fell into step beside her as she walked rapidly. ‘A rotten night for it.’

‘Don’t rub it in. I’ve only had a sandwich all day and I’m starving.’

He kept up with her obediently, passing through one mean street after another, the river not far away. ‘A hard life, living in a place like this.’

‘Well, the British government in London never gave a damn about Belfast, that’s for sure. The forgotten city. Did you know the Luftwaffe blitzed it worse than Liverpool during the war?’

‘I suppose they were after Harland & Wolff and the shipyards. They built the Titanic here, didn’t they?’

‘Jesus and Mary, that’s history, mister,’ she said. ‘It’s what happens now that’s real and the future of this country.’

Jesus and Mary. Strange on the lips of a young Protestant girl, and he slipped a hand in his pocket and found the butt of the Browning, and then she laughed harshly. ‘What in the hell is getting into me, talking like a fugging Fenian? It must be the weather.’

They had moved into an area of decaying warehouses and a place where the Union Canal emptied into the river. There were narrow decaying Victorian buildings, like something out of Dickens, an old iron footbridge and a sign saying Conroy’s Flour Mill. An old-fashioned lamp was bracketed above the door, illuminating the area, and there was a light at the window above it.

‘Here we are,’ she said, and led the way up a narrow wooden stairway. The door at the top stood open, light shining down. ‘Kenny, we’re here,’ she called, paused for a moment so that Roper could see the table in the centre of a sizeable room, littered with a variety of technical equipment, tools and vices. She stepped forward, Roper following, his hand in his pocket on the butt of the Browning.

The door slammed behind him, the muzzle of a pistol was rammed against the side of Roper’s skull, and a hard Ulster voice said, ‘Easy, now, or I’ll blow your brains out. Hands high.’ Roper did exactly as he was told. He was patted, the Browning soon found. ‘A Hi-Power? You’ve got taste.’ He was pushed towards the table. ‘Over there and turn.’

Roper did and found himself facing a small wiry young man, hair almost shoulder length, a Beretta automatic in his left hand. He wore an old reefer jacket, dropped the Browning into his right pocket and grinned, making him look quite amicable.

‘The great man himself.’

‘And you’ll be Kenny Murray?’

‘As ever was.’

‘And there’s no Howler?’

Murray laughed. ‘Not here, bomb man, not here. It exists, though. I’m working to perfect it all the time.’

‘I’m impressed you’d bother,’ Roper said. ‘After all, your purpose is to make bombs explode.’

‘It is indeed, but the scientist in me can’t resist a challenge.’

Roper turned to Jean, who had taken a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and was lighting one. ‘Oh, Jean, you disappoint me, turning out to be a decent Catholic girl after all.’

‘And you thinking I was some Prod bitch. All the worse for you.’ There was anger there, but perhaps at herself.

‘So what’s the reason for all this? If you’d wanted to shoot me, you would have,’ he said to Kenny.

‘You’re absolutely right. I’d love to have taken care of that, but I’m under orders. There are those who would like to have words with you. Information’s the name of the game. Our bombmakers would appreciate the chance to squeeze you dry. So let’s get going. You first.’

‘If you say so.’

Roper opened the door and stood for a moment at the top of those dark stairs. He found the rail with his left hand and started down. There was only one thing to do and he’d only get one chance, so halfway down he slipped deliberately in the shadows, cursing and gripping the rail, reaching for the Colt in the ankle holder. In the ensuing scramble, he dropped it in his raincoat pocket.

‘Watch it, for Christ’s sake,’ Kenny ordered.

‘It’s not my fault. The place is a death trap.’ Roper hauled himself up and continued.

Kenny laughed. ‘Did you hear that, Jean?’ he said to his sister behind him. ‘The man’s a bloody comic.’

Roper went out, his right hand in his pocket, and started over the bridge. Halfway across, he paused and turned. ‘There’s just one thing you should know, you Fenian bastard.’

Kenny stood facing him, holding the Beretta against his right thigh. ‘And what would that be, bomb man?’ he asked amicably.

‘You made a mistake. You should have killed me when you had the chance.’

His hand swung up, he shot Kenny between the eyes twice, the hollow-point cartridges fragmenting the back of his skull. Kenny spun round and half fell across the iron rail of the bridge. Jean screamed, Roper leaned down, caught the body by one ankle and heaved it over into the fast-moving canal.

‘There you go,’ Roper said. ‘Are you satisfied now, Jean?’

She started to back away. ‘Ah, sweet Jesus and Mother Mary. What have I done?’

‘You’ll be asking yourself that till your dying day,’ Roper told her.

She seemed to suddenly pull herself together. ‘You’re not going to kill me?’ she whispered.

He didn’t say a word, turned and walked away across the bridge, and behind him she started to sob bitterly, the sound echoing across the waters of the canal that had swept her brother into the River Lagan and out to sea.

He walked all the way back through mean rain-washed streets, the sound of shooting in the distance, walking carefully on pavements scattered with broken glass, passing bombed-out buildings boarded up. All of a sudden, it had all caught up with him, too many long and weary years, too much killing, too much death.

He made it to Byron Street without getting stopped once, which was something of a surprise, and ended up back in the bar. It was empty, the corporal behind the counter fussing around, stacking bottles.

‘Just in time, sir, I’m closing in fifteen minutes. What can I get you?’

‘A large Scotch, that’ll do it.’

He sat in the corner, his raincoat open, thinking of the nice girl who’d sold him out and the man he’d killed, and it didn’t worry him like it should have. The corporal had the radio on, some late-night show, and someone was singing a Cole Porter number, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’, filled with heartbreaking and melancholic nostalgia, and Giles Roper knew that whatever happened, he was through with Belfast beyond any argument. First he had to return the Colt .25 to Sergeant Clark and report the loss of a Browning Hi-Power, but not now, not tonight. He needed sleep. He needed peace, and he said goodnight to the corporal and went to bed.

From his emergency kit he took a pill that knocked him out, slept deeply and came to life again at seven. He lay there for a while, thinking about things, and went and had a hot shower. He had a tea-maker in his room and made a cup and stood in his robe thinking of the events of the previous night, moving to the window and looking out.

The rain was worse than ever, absolutely pouring, and the women coming in for the day shift down below crowded through the entrance, many of them with umbrellas. He started to turn away and paused, to look down there again, for a brief moment convinced that he’d seen Jean Murray, but he was mistaken, had to be. The last place she’d show her face, Byron Street. On the other hand, it would be a long time before he forgot the sight of her standing under the lamp after he’d killed her brother.

He had the day shift starting at nine and was just about to get dressed in camouflage overalls when he had a phone call from the orderly room. ‘Message from Major Sanderson, sir. He wants you to join him as soon as possible at the Grand Hotel. General Marple flew in from London last night. Special ways-and-means conference.’

‘I’ll see to it.’

He groaned. Marple from London, which meant full uniform. He dressed quickly, taking it from the dry cleaning bag, grateful it hadn’t been worn. It looked rather good when he checked himself in the mirror, and the ribbons for Ireland and the Military Cross set things off nicely. He adjusted his cap, nodded to himself, took a military trench coat from the wardrobe and went out.

He had his own vehicle on allocation, a Ford pick-up painted khaki green. It was parked in the officers’ sector in the corner of the old schoolyard. Vehicles there were never locked in case of emergencies, and the gate sentries were deemed security enough. He opened the driver’s seat, tossed his trench coat into the rear, and got behind the wheel.

He reached the gate and slowed as the sentry stepped out, raising the bar. ‘You know Jean Murray, don’t you, Fletcher? I thought I saw her earlier.’

‘You did, Captain, but she wasn’t around for long and left again. In fact, I think that’s her over there in the church doorway.’

Roper was aware of a sudden chill, drove out slowly towards the other side of the road, and saw her standing there, soaked to the skin, hair plastered to her skull. She was like a corpse walking.

The moment she saw him, she started down the steps. He pulled up at the kerb and lowered his window. ‘What are you doing here, Jean?’

‘I wanted to give you a present.’ She produced a black plastic control unit about nine inches long. ‘The Howler, Captain. Kenny did finish it, but this isn’t your present. That’s under the passenger seat and, remember, the Howler has two faces. It can switch on as well as switch off.’

She laughed, and it was like no laugh Giles Roper had ever heard in his life, and as he scrabbled under the seat, pulling out the white plastic shopping bag he found there, the world became an infinity of white blinding light, no pain, not at that moment, simply enormous energy as the explosion took him into the eye of the storm.

So, Jean Murray died, killed instantly, just another bomber, a statistic of those terrible years, and the Howler, the Holy Grail, the ultimate answer to the bomb, died with her. Her final act of mad revenge started Giles Roper on a road that encompassed dozens of operations, a time of incredible pain and suffering, and yet it was also a journey of self-discovery and real achievement, as he became one of the most significant figures in the world of cyberspace.

He never disclosed what took place on that last night in Belfast. To the authorities, Jean Murray had just been another bomber, and over the years Roper had come to terms with her and was no longer disturbed by the memory. After all, what she and her brother had intended for him was kidnap, torture and murder. What they had given him unintentionally, was the wheelchair, and the new life that had brought him.

The George Cross had come afterwards, although it was a year and a half before he could face the Queen for her to pin it on. By then, his mother had died, and his wife, totally unable to cope, had moved on, pleaded for a quiet divorce, even with all her Catholic convictions, and finally married a much older man.

Roper was now an indispensable part of Ferguson’s security group, spending most of his time at the Holland Park safe house in front of his computer screens, frequently racked with pain which responded only to whisky and cigarettes, his comfort food, sleeping only in fits and starts and mainly in his wheelchair. Indomitable, as Dillon once said, himself alone, a force of nature.

LONDON

4

At 10.30 on the morning following his late-night conversation with Svetlana Kelly, Roper, accompanied by Monica, was delivered to the side entrance in the mews beside Chamber Court off Belsize Avenue. Roper was off-loaded, and a CCTV camera beside an ironbound gate in the high wall scanned them.

A voice, not Svetlana’s, said through the speaker, ‘Would that be Major Roper and Lady Starling?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Doyle told her.

‘I’m Katya Sorin, Svetlana’s companion. The gate will open now. Tell them to follow the path inside, and it will bring them round to the conservatory.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’ The gate buzzed and opened. Doyle said, ‘I’ll wait. I’ve got a couple of newspapers.’

Roper went through into a quiet, ordered world of rhododendron bushes, poplars and cypress trees, a weeping willow. Not much colour around, but it was, after all, February. The path was York stone, but expertly laid so that the going was smooth. They approached a fountain in granite stone, moved on to the large Victorian house, and there was the terrace of the conservatory. A glass door stood open and Katya Sorin waited.

Roper had looked her up. She was forty and unmarried, born in Brighton to a Russian immigrant who had married an English woman. A senior lecturer at the Slade, where she taught painting, she was a successful portrait painter and had even had the Queen Mother sit for her. She also had a considerable reputation in the theatre as a set designer.

She had cropped hair, a kind of Ingrid Bergman look, and wore khaki overalls. ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’ Her handshake was firm. ‘Just follow me.’

She led the way into a delightful conservatory which was a sort of miniature Kew, crammed with plants of every description. Internal folding doors were open, disclosing a large drawing room, fashioned in period Victorian splendour, but Svetlana Kelly sat in the centre of the conservatory in a high wicker chair, a curved wicker table before her, two wicker chairs on the other side of it, obviously waiting for them.

‘My dear Lady Starling, how nice to meet you. Katya and I looked you up on the internet. Brains and beauty, such a wonderful combination.’

Monica had been well prepared by Roper. In a way, she felt she knew them already.

‘And such good bone structure.’ Katya actually put a hand under Monica’s chin. ‘I must do a drawing at least.’