The Fire (8 page)

I stood and looked at the love of my life, held the button in my hand, kissed her one last time and prayed God would forgive me.

Lauren North's Story:

Rick and I flew to Glasgow for the funeral. I'd spoke to Des every day since Anne had passed. I could tell from his voice that he'd taken the whole thing badly, but when I saw him waiting in the arrivals hall, I was shocked by his appearance. He looked like he'd aged ten years.

Des didn't want to be part of the funeral cortège so we drove straight to the chapel. He again elected to be as far away from the close relatives as possible and stood with us at the back throughout the service. Finally, we joined the end of the small procession from the church to the graveside and saw Anne buried.

There were no tears. I got the impression there had been more than enough already.

Giving the wake a wide berth we sat in the small bar of our city hotel, sipping scotch and saying little.

On the seventh round things loosened up.

"She would've been glad to see you, Rick," said Des, waving the waiter over to order number eight.

Rick was feeling the pace, but was doggedly avoiding his usual posh water.

"Bollocks!" he said, just a little too loudly for the liking of some of the other residents. "She fuckin' hated me...blamed me for you always being away from home."

Des managed a smile. "Aye, I suppose yer right there, pal, she wasnae keen like."

I raised my glass, "I think we should toast Anne. After all, anyone who didn't like Rick Fuller is okay by me."

Rick raised an eyebrow.

"Is that your Bond impression?" I joked. "You could have passed for a young Roger Moore if you hadn't been shot in the face."

That really caused a commotion amongst our fellow drinkers.

Rick touched his scar absently. I don't think he was ever really conscious of it. Despite his good looks and love of fine things, he wasn't vain. He tapped each of our raised glasses in turn.

"To Anne," he said.

The atmosphere lightened as the whisky flowed, but just before nine o'clock, Rick stood, waved at us both and staggered through the bar on his way to bed.

"Pissed," slurred Des.

"Me too," I managed.

Reaching over the table, I took his hand.

He looked so sad.

"You're a good man, Des."

"Am I?"

"Yes, of course...I know these things."

"Some wouldn't agree with you, believe me..."

"Well you are! You dropped everything to be with Anne in the end. I mean there's not many guys who would do that for their ex-wives."

"Suppose," he mumbled.

I had to ask. "Were you with Anne when she died, Des?"

He nodded. "Aye, I was....she...she went peacefully in the end."

I tried to smile, but I could feel my tears and I so didn't want to cry in front of him. He'd had enough of that.

I bit my lip and forced down the last of my drink.

Des rooted around in his jacket. He removed a photograph and laid it on the table. Anne was staring straight at me. God knows when it was taken. She'd be what...fifteen maybe? Tiny, with a great figure, tight black jeans and a rock chick style leather jacket; hair streaked blonde with a heavy fringe and feathered sides.

"Where was that taken?" I asked.

"Outside our school gates in Glasgow...1974. Fine lookin' wasn't she, eh?"

"She looks like Suzy Quattro," I said.

Rick Fuller's Story:

If the events up at Hillside were dogging Des, it didn't show. To be honest, it was what I'd expected of him. He was one of the hardest men I'd ever known.

If there was a back story, and I suspected there was, he'd tell me when he was ready.

He had thrown himself into the business like a man possessed. So much so, I'd hardly seen him. We'd been grafting nonstop, putting in the air miles, visiting clients and companies in the Middle East and Europe, and Lauren had started the recruitment and training of our staff.

Initially, she'd found the resistance to a female trainer by the ex-squaddies annoying, but she'd soon split the wheat from the chaff, and we were well on our way to making a profit.

Pleasingly, whoever had been keeping tabs on our movements appeared to have given up the ghost. Part of me was actually starting to enjoy life again. I still had some bad dreams, but even they had started to fade along with my other obsessions.

That said, my love of expensive cars and clothes had not left me, and I was unable to resist buying a new Aston Martin DB9.

It was a beautiful car, in onyx black metallic. The Obsidian black leather interior with red stitching was stunning. I'd insisted on the sports pack and the Linn Hi-Fi with a six CD changer. The 5.9 litre V12 made just the kind of noise a car should, even at low speed.

A job had come into the office which meant I had to visit London to see a 'celebrity agent'. He needed a bodyguard for one of his clients who had received some death threats via a social media site.

So, determined to try out my new toy rather than take the train, I drove. The car was a beast.

The guy's office was in the West End and I left the Aston with the front brake callipers glowing red by the Tube station, and rode the final few miles crushed against half the third world.

His building was just off Broadwick Street. I hit the intercom and was instantly buzzed inside. The office was surprisingly frugal and I found myself standing in a room with just a desk and two chairs.

Seconds later a door opened and a man walked in who was as much a celebrity agent as I was a choirboy.

He was young, mid to late twenties, fair, over six feet tall, with a lithe physique that had 'triathlon' stamped on it. Impeccably dressed in an Armani navy suit, he finished it off with a crisp white buttoned-down collared shirt and Hugo Boss crimson tie. He carried a black leather briefcase that looked like it cost more than Lauren's ten day stay in Helsinki.

He sat without hesitation and gestured for me to do the same. I elected to stand for a moment.

"Please sit, Mr Fuller. I don't bite," he said.

His accent had 'Eton old boy' running through it, but there was something else mixed in there that pricked my senses.

"Who the fuck are you?" I said flatly, feeling my hackles rise.

The suit smiled. His teeth had been whitened; the latest American import to the UK. They looked unnatural against his sun-bed tanned skin. His grey eyes were alive with mischief and showed no fear considering the company he was keeping.

"Yes, I suppose I should introduce myself, Richard. Manners maketh the man and all."

"That they do," I spat.

"I'm Clarke, Joseph Clarke. I'm your new boy from the Ministry, so to speak."

"I don't have a 'boy'," I said.

Clarke ignored the rebuff and opened his briefcase as he spoke.

"I realise I have you here on false pretences, Richard, but needs must and all that. We can't just go about our business in public, now can we? Poor Cartwright, your previous chap, has been reassigned; it would appear he no longer has the stomach for the work, so the powers that be have decided to assign your little team to me."

I pulled the other chair away from the desk and leaned on it, close enough to invade his personal space.

"We don't work for the Firm any more, 'old chap'; so you can close your case and I'll trot on."

Clarke wagged a finger and tutted softly.

"Mr Fuller, don't be so naive as to think that employment, or unemployment, is so clearly defined in our business. My colleagues have informed me of your excellent credentials and record so far; Ms. North did a sterling job over the water September last, and it is felt that it would be a shame to waste such valuable resources as yours, especially as this matter is of such grave concern to the country."

The spook dropped a file onto the table. It was thinner than the O'Donnell file, but had the same wrapping and 'Top Secret' label.

I did my best to ignore it.

"You don't appear to be listening, sunshine. I'm retired and so are my team. If this job is of such importance to the country, get your own guys to sort it."

Clarke placed his hand on the file, revealing a perfect manicure.

"Richard; you and I both know that some tasks cannot be undertaken by our own people...this... is one of those tasks. We realise that you are in the middle of creating your own little business venture up north, and we commend your efforts. We can help you with that endeavour. On the other hand, should you persist with this line of conversation the powers that be, may consider you and your team a threat to our ...national security."

I was having none of it.

"You're forgetting the hard drives. Remember that messy little business in Gibraltar? If anything happens to us, they go public."

Clarke closed his case and stood. He waved a dismissive hand. "Yesterday's news, old chap. However, the CCTV footage of a pretty thing that looks remarkably like Ms Lauren North getting into O'Donnell's Bentley on Linen Hall Street, prior to blowing off the top of his head...is most definitely not."

I wanted to smash the pompous arsehole's face in. We had suspected that the Firm had removed the footage; well now we knew.

Clarke tapped the file again. "It's all in here, Richard; now be a good chap, take it along with you and don't mess it up."

Des Cogan's Story:

It had taken me a wee while to get my shit together after the business with Anne.

Whatever you think of me, or what your opinion is on the subject, quite honestly, doesn't mean a great deal. I did what I knew was right. I only hope someone would do the same for me.

I can plead my own case at the Pearly Gates.

I suppose we should have known better than to think we were free from the Firm. They were a slimy bunch of wee bastards at the best of times. Although we had never taken a retainer, the way some guys did who worked as 'deniable assets', it seemed we were still on their books, like it or lump it.

From the file that Rick produced six days ago, we knew that MI6 had been tracking a New IRA ASU (Active Service Unit) for months.

When the PIRA was formed, back in 1969, its role was predominantly the protection of the Irish Catholic community. Its members felt that the old IRA had failed in this task after two hundred Catholic homes were destroyed by a mixture of Loyalists and police in a mass riot, latterly called the Battle of the Bogside.

At first the Provos ran their organisation on a basic military hierarchy.

That said, from 1973 they started to move away from large conventional military units. The old battalion structure was dropped and smaller companies were formed and used for the policing of Catholic areas, intelligence gathering, hiding weapons and dishing out any punishments that were considered essential.

If you lost yer fuckin' kneecaps in the early seventies, it was probably due to these fuckers.

That said, the bulk of actual attacks on the British were the responsibility of a second type of unit, the ASU. These units were smaller, tight-knit cells, usually consisting of five to eight members. They were able to travel in secret, plant devices on the British mainland, and be back having a pint on the Bog Side before you could say, 'mine's a Guinness'.

By the late 1980s it was estimated that the PIRA had roughly three hundred members in ASUs and about another four hundred and fifty serving in supporting roles.

The Provisionals were well funded. They managed this by cash from the Republic, courting Middle Eastern leaders, and massive donations from US citizens who considered themselves... Irish...go fuckin' figure that one.

Even this was not enough to feed the PIRA machine with explosives, weapons and ammunition. So despite the move toward a political settlement, by the late 1980s a seedy underworld of drugs and prostitution added to the coffers.

The New IRA was a totally different animal. The new threat to peace and stability in Ireland was amateurish in comparison to its big brother. That said, it was genuine, and was not going to go away. This latter-day version of the Irish Republican Army was a very poor relation to the well organised fighting units that had formed the PIRA. They had been proper soldiers, brave and ruthless. I could vouch for that personally.

But these boys and girls...well they were different beasts.

Despite the New IRA seeming to be made up of a rag-tag team of half-crazed ultras, the Firm needed a NIRA ASU eliminating, and the new menace was deemed serious enough to be dealt with swiftly and covertly...by us.

Our ASU was a team of three. Smaller than usual, but I figured that could be down to the fact that the NIRA had less resources and cash.

The lone female member was known as Kristy McDonald. She was a thirty-five-year-old, tall, buxom girl from the west side of Belfast, who cut her criminal teeth working as a street dealer to feed her cocaine habit. She eventually realised the value of selling the drug for profit, as opposed to sticking it up her own nose. As a result, our Kristy managed to climb the drug dealer ranks and was promoted to wholesaler, moving ounces around rather than gram bags. She was a ferocious supporter of the Republican movement. Her father and brothers had been PIRA members.

Kristy was a real sweetie, and had been detained at Her Majesty's pleasure for taking part in the knee capping of a seventeen-year-old boy. He'd failed to pay his coke tab. She served eighteen months.

On her release, she became a member of the New IRA. The rest, as they say, is history.

Drugs, violence and hard line politics seem to go so well together, don't you think? The drugs keep the scumbags happy, violence creates an atmosphere of terror in the working class communities where the perpetrators hide themselves, and the politics; well, if you live on the Falls Road and a certain ballot paper drops on your doormat, pal, there is only one place you'll be puttin' yer cross, if y'know what am sayin'. 

Kristy was a handsome girl, with the darkest of tempers.

Male one was Ewan Mark Findley, thirty-nine. The first thing you would notice about this boy was his flame-red crew cut. The next was his top lip. How in this day and age, a surgeon could cock up a cleft pallet operation so badly was beyond belief. He looked like a ginger Elvis impersonator.

He also looked like he ate a cow for breakfast every day. His belly was the size of a small dictatorship.

As a paradox, Ewan's file was the thinnest our handler had provided. Apart from being fined two hundred Euros in 2003 for flashing his cock outside a high school, the Firm knew nothing about him.

He was just a big daft-looking fat lad with a liking for schoolgirls.

In fact, he would have been of little interest, had he not been the right hand man to terrorist number three, James Doug McGinnis. 

McGinnis was an animal, and just thirty-one; a big bull of a man, with a boxer's nose and a love of the sovereign ring.

He was sent to a young offenders' institution at sixteen, for the rape of a fourteen–year-old travelling gipsy girl at a funfair. He broke into her caravan, raped and buggered her, before biting off both her nipples.

He served just four years of his nine year sentence and was released at twenty. He lasted less than a year before he was back inside. He'd got a job working for a Belfast money lender, as a debt collector. Unfortunately he took his role far too seriously, cutting off a man's fingers with a pair of gardening snips.

He was released from Portlaoise prison two days before his twenty-fourth birthday.

'Dougie', as he preferred, would have continued on his one man fuck-up of a life, had he too not found solace in the New IRA.

Now you see the connection here?

The three had arrived in England, just as we had left Belfast, via two airlines and a ferry. When I first saw the ten by eight black and white shot, showing the full team in a coffee shop just off Oxford Road, my teeth had started to itch.

Even more interesting, was that the file contained a bank statement showing someone with a Swiss bank account had transferred two hundred grand into wee Dougie's account.

It would seem that the latest edition of the Irish Republican Army had found itself a sugar daddy.

Now where did that come from?

The information was that the team were in the UK to obtain a large quantity of cocaine from persons unknown. They were to pay for the marching powder with a mixture of the two hundred K in Dougie's bank, and a big lump of plastic explosive they had stockpiled from back in the day. The PE was allegedly old and unreliable. Either way, this was not to happen.

Oh, and the happy clappers were to go on a long holiday, courtesy of yours truly.

Our new handler had tricked Rick into the meeting. By all accounts, he was a very nasty little Rupert type called Clarke.

Rick was unusually tight-lipped about the guy.

In our line of work, when the call comes, you never know who you will meet. The speech deliverer changes with each job. It depends on the target. We'd met everyone from the Defence Secretary down to this numpty with a name badge so far. The hope was, this was the last.

I was annoyed that no one had been watching Rick's back for the meet. Even a chat on a park bench in Peckham can be dangerous when dealing with spies; you never took chances with the Firm.

Still it was no good crying over spilt milk.

The job paid two hundred and fifty thousand, split the usual three ways; and after all, we had little choice in the matter.

With our track record, we were easily deniable by any agency.

Rick, a disgraced special forces NCO.

Lauren, a nurse who'd helped him escape from police custody, and my dear self.

A cracking wee team, eh?

There was an added wee bonus of another seventy-five thousand should we find the coke provider and recover the PE. If the drug dealers disappeared along with the Irish crew, there was a final seventy-five thousand in the pot.

Not bad money, eh?

Today was Boxing Day. The job was supposed to have been simple enough. The file gave us the address of a safe house the crew were holed up in, a terraced job close to Old Trafford.

The plan was to get a few good face shots of the targets, maybe a vehicle registration, and go fer a Christmas pint. No problem at all, eh, pal?

I was two gardens down from the target premises' front door, freezing my bollocks off whilst Rick had a spot of lunch in a nice warm café round the corner. No change there then?

Nonetheless, I was nicely tucked in. The house I was hiding outside was empty and I'd used two wheelie bins and some old tarpaulin to cover myself from prying eyes.

Within an hour of me setting up, the targets had arrived in an old Renault people carrier. I got some sharp shots of Kristy, who was showing an amazing amount of cleavage for the air temperature, Fat Boy Findley and Dougie McGinnis, as they carried a mountain of McDonalds into the house. Minutes later, a black BMW X5 pulled up and three surly looking African guys jumped out, complete with a massive long-coated German Shepherd.

I took a few quick snaps. They were definitely Somalian. I recognised their features from back when Rick and I had served in Africa. I also knew how fuckin' ruthless the Somalian boys were.

They stood on the doorstep for a couple of minutes talking to someone who I couldn't see, but presumed to be one of the three Irish. I considered that I was invisible to anyone on the street, but I was wrong.

The dog.

How many times jobs have been compromised by the bloody things is just not worth talking about.

Fido was straining on his lead, ears erect and pointing his little wet nose in my direction.

The biggest of the African boys suddenly turned and pointed toward my position.

The crew were dressed in street clothes; hoodies, lots of bling, big guns, and even bigger baseball caps; no point in labouring the issue, I was fucked.

The big lad let the dog go.

My only hope was to play the vagrant. I pushed my camera and my mobile under one of the bins, tucked my knees under my chin and feigned sleep.

The dog was having none of it. He bounded straight to me and sank his teeth into my right leg, mid-calf. The pain was fuckin' shocking and I couldn't stop myself from crying out.

The big African stood over me. He let me scream for a bit, before he called off the mutt.

His two pals then dragged me along the street, leaving my camera and phone in situ.

I reckoned that was a result.

The instant they got me inside, I was dragged down a stairwell to an empty basement. The boys did lots of swearing and slapped me about a bit, but nothing serious.

Then I met Dougie.

Two of the Somali boys held me down and my Irish friend instantly went about removing my two upper incisors with what looked like wire strippers. It seemed he hadn't moved on from his days in Belfast, chopping off fingers and dishing out pain.

I screamed like a girl and babbled on about being homeless.

He hadn't even asked a question, he was just making his point.

In my days in the Regiment I would do the same. Don't fuck about making threats, take off a finger or an ear, show you are serious and then ask the question.

"You are MI5, aren't yer, boy?" barked the Irish. It didn't sound like a query, more like a statement.

"Who? What?" I burbled through the blood and snot.

One of the Somali street gang, who was obviously in charge of his little team, hovered around with a big smile on his face. He was big fucker, with the most bling and a very impressive IWI Jericho Mega Gun on a sling around his neck. The fact that he was almost definitely a Muslim yet opted for an Israeli-made gun around his neck was ironic. Well, it would have been if I'd still been in possession of my teeth and not surrounded by nutters.

He didn't speak, just watched the proceedings with mild amusement. The boy didn't look like a terrorist. He looked like a gangster.

His dog sat obediently by his side and whimpered.

The basement door opened and Ewan Findley waddled in. He handed Dougie my camera and phone. Now I was really fucked.

I was instantly treated to more wire stripper treatment. My bottom lip was sliced open as McGinnis wrenched at more teeth. The pain was horrendous.