The Killer (7 page)

He arrived at the door to his little antique shop and entered to the familiar musty smell of old furniture, paintings and clothing.
He flipped the sign, which hung on the glass door, from closed to open as he turned on the lights.
Walking to the back of his shop he went through to his office, turned the kettle on and prepared his tea.
This small room had a window from which he could see anyone entering his shop.

The tea sat steaming on his desk as he packed and lit his pipe.
Puffing away he sat and waited for today’s buyers.
His clients were mainly American tourists who delighted in “discovering” the small shop, which stood at the far end of a small alley and was practically hidden from view, just off Cope Street.
The Americans seemed to love the Temple Bar district of Dublin and couldn’t get enough “genuine antiques from the old country”, which they happily bought and shipped back to the States, seemingly by the ton.
Sipping his tea Anthony glanced up to his wall clock.
Though he always tried to avoid being alone at this particular time, today he had arrived early.
It was 8.35 and, as he stared at the clock’s face, a single teardrop began rolling slowly down his cheek and he was unable to prevent his thoughts taking him back to that awful morning, almost twenty years ago.

It was the second day of his honeymoon and he had woken to find he was alone in bed, his new bride already up and about somewhere.
‘Hello and a good morning to you, sweetheart,’ he sang aloud, but there was no answer.
Quickly dressing, he searched their rooms and found the bathroom door locked.
‘Oh,’ he remembered whispering.
As a newly married man he was now fully aware of a lady’s need for privacy in the morning.
‘Looks like I’ll be making breakfast today.’

He wasn’t sure how long he should wait, but as breakfast began to grow cold he was starting to worry.
He returned to the bathroom where his gentle knocking on the door quickly changed to frantic hammering.
Eventually he was forced to break open the door, and there he found her.
His beloved Katherine lay dead on the floor, a small pool of blood soaking her long, blonde hair.
The doctor later informed him that it seemed she had slipped whilst getting out of the bath.
Having banged her head on the tiled floor, she’d suffered a ‘traumatic head injury’.
This wasn’t uncommon and was, ‘just one of those things I’m afraid,’ he remembered the faceless doctor explaining.

Wiping away the tear he forced his gaze away from the clock and back to the desk.
‘Pull yourself together you old fool.
You have the shop, and you have your work,’ Anthony sighed as he removed a sheaf of documents from his safe.
The five envelopes he picked out looked identical.
The only differences were the handwritten amounts marked on each of them.
He selected the one with
£75 in the top right-hand corner and slid it inside the Irish Times newspaper.
He returned the others to the safe and locked it.
Glancing down at the underside of the desktop he removed the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun from its cradle, which was aimed directly at the seat opposite his own chair.
Changing the shells for fresh ones, he cocked both hammers and replaced the gun in the mounting.
His tea was clap cold and he checked the clock again. 11.50.
‘Where on earth does the time go?’ he mumbled as he took his favourite handgun, a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, from his drawer and, after checking its ammunition, pocketed the pistol.
An automatic gun remained in the drawer.
The extra bullets it held were useful at times, but Turner preferred to trust his safety to the good, old-fashioned mechanism of the .38.

Leaving the shop, he flipped the sign to read “closed”, then strolled slowly down the road.
He arrived at Ashton
Quay and took his usual place on the bench, lighting his pipe as he gazed silently over the river.
The view brought him a contentment he needed and relished.

‘Morning Mr. Turner,’ the man said, announcing his presence.

‘Good morning to you too young fellow,’ Anthony replied.
‘What do you have for me?’ he enquired, as he pushed the newspaper along the bench.

The young man shuffled closer as he whispered, ‘That shooting up in Belfast, you know the
Springfield and Falls Road one, it was the I.R.A. who shot the informer.’

Anthony held up his hand to stop him.
Staring at him he snapped, ‘McCartney, do you genuinely expect Her Majesty to pay you good money for supplying information that everyone in the province is fully aware of?
Good God old chap, what on earth are you thinking?’

‘No, no, not the bit about
that
shooting; it’s about the shooting that followed.
You know, when the soldiers were killed.
I know who the shooter was,’ he explained in an even quieter tone, before continuing, ‘and I know where he’s heading.’

McCartney told Anthony Turner every detail he knew about this latest atrocity.
When he’d finished he took the newspaper, along with the cash in the envelo
pe, and walked away, quickly lo
sing himself in the Dublin crowds.
As he watched the man disappear, Anthony re-lit his pipe and sat a few minutes longer.
Eventually he stood, smoothed his overcoat and sauntered off in the direction of his shop.
This new information was important; it needed reporting urgently, but he also knew that to be seen rushing along the streets of Dublin could get him noticed, possibly by the wrong people.
He was never, ever noticed.
He blended in.
Every day he did the same thing - sell antiques and walk slowly to and from the shop.
That was his life here in Dublin.
Though he hadn’t worn the uniform for almost twenty years (since the death of his wife he had preferred to work alone) his S.A.S
.
training still remained.
He
was
the quiet, slightly eccentric and infirm antique shop owner.
He was
not
the handler of paid informants.
To lose sight of this simple
f
act could, and in all probability would, result in the loss of his life.

The Trip from Hell

About halfway down to Cork Darren stopped, pulling the old van into the car park of a quaint little thatched pub.
There he had a tasty steak pie for lunch, and washed it down with a lovely pint of Murphy’s stout.
Back on the road again, and soon he was almost in Cork.
Following the directions he’d been given, he turned off to the left and was now heading out in the general direction of the quaint old seaside town of Kinsale.
Just before he reached it he saw some large white buildings on his right.
Then he spotted a sign announcing in giant blue letters, “A&R Transport and Haulage, daily service to England, Ireland and Europe”.
He pulled in and parked on the forecourt in front of the main building.
Leaving the keys in the van, he walked straight into the office and told the girl on reception, ‘Hello, my name’s Fitzpatrick, I’m here to see a Mr. Elliott.’

‘One moment please Mr. Fitzpatrick.
Take a chair, and I’ll see if he’s available,’ she told him in her lovely soft country accent, which sounded to him more like she was singing than talking.

He took a seat in the corner and waited.
Within five minutes the office door opened and a very fat, short, balding man came through.
He looked at Darren and said in an unmistakable southern English voice, ‘Good morning Mr. Fitzpatrick, how are you today?
I’m Philip, the owner.
Would you like to come through to the office?’
As they walked by he asked Tuila, the pretty secretary with the beautiful accent, to bring them in tea and biscuits.

They sat chatting about how terrible the troubles were, the long drive from the North, the weather, and the transport business, of which Darren knew absolutely nothing.
Moments later, the lovely Tuila knocked and entered carrying a tray, on which was a pot of steaming hot tea, plus a good selection of homemade biscuits.
She set the tray down, turned and smiled at him, then left.

The instant the door closed behind her Philip leaned over the desk, whispering to Darren that he had that very morning received orders to take him across to Northern Spain.
‘Oh, and don’t let the accent bother you too much,’ he explained.
‘Though I was raised in Surrey, England, I’m as Irish as you are.
My parents were originally from Waterford.
My dad moved us all over to the UK for work years ago, when I was still a baby.’
Hearing this, Darren gave an audible sigh of relief.
He suddenly felt safe again as he was back with his own kind - regardless of the accent.
‘You’ll stay with us tonight and be on my lad’s truck at 7am, bound for sunny Spain.
I think you’ll like it too.
Must be warmer than here, eh?’

Early the next morning, after taking a large fried breakfast, Darren stood and shivered as he waited in the cold, clammy morning air.
Looking up at the huge Seddon Atkinson articulated lorry he wondered where, exactly, he would be riding, as it was obviously already fully loaded with forty-five gallon oil drums.
Philip came walking towards him with another man whom he introduced as Steve, his eldest son.
The two men shook hands.

‘Steve will be driving you,’ Philip told him, ‘but, you surely can’t ride up front.
You’re much too hot for that.
Unfortunately you are going to have to travel in the hide.’

Darren watched in dismay as the father and son started to unscrew the end of one of the oil drums, which was on the bottom row halfway down the trailer.
As he looked inside, he discovered that three drums had been welded together especially for the job of concealing contraband.
Darren was well aware of this kind of hiding place, but he’d never imagined himself inside one.
It looked like a long pipe and the air holes drilled in the top, he assumed, were especially for him.

‘Jesus, I’ll be like a rat in a sewer,’ he said quietly.

Philip heard the comment and turned to face Darren.
‘Maybe so, but you’ll be out of the “sewer” in a couple of days.
Our boys in the H-blocks won’t be nearly so lucky.’

Darren nodded his head feeling deeply ashamed of himself.
After all, how could he possibly complain at a couple of days cooped up in there when his brothers were locked in Long Kesh and would be there for years and years to come?
He crept cautiously on hands and knees into the elongated oil drum and, at the far end, found an old worn sleeping bag that would serve as his bed, plus what looked like a bedpan.
Oh joy.
There was just enough headroom for him to sit in a hunched position and he put the two water containers Philip had given him at the opposite end of the drum, then his loaf of bread and lump of cheese next to his bed.
Philip leaned in and wished him good luck, then waved farewell as he and Steve picked up the drum top and slowly screwed it down tight.
Inside it went pitch black - he couldn’t see a thing.
He almost panicked in the first few minutes, but eventually managed to calm himself.

The huge diesel engine quickly turned over and fired into life.
He could feel every single one of the vibrations from the engine's slow revolutions as it sat smoothly ticking over.
Next he was aware of voices.
He recognised one as belonging to Philip, as he bade goodbye to his son.
Then the vibrations sped up and, accelerating away, they were off.

Darren assumed they would be going to the Cork ferry, and then on to Spain.
Though there was no event to break the monotony of the journey, to call it uneventful would have been a downright and dirty lie - a very dirty lie.
He was violently sick, constantly throwing up until his stomach cramped owing to the vomit inducing motion of a very rough ferry crossing.
One particularly turbulent wave threw his “toilet” in the air, and that was that.
He coughed and spluttered as his own waste engulfed him.
‘Dear God help me,’ he screamed into the darkness.

He thought it must be his second day sealed up tight inside the drums, but really it could’ve been anywhere from one to ten days.
He had lost all sense of time and couldn’t have said how long it had been if you’d offered him all the Guinness in Ireland.

Euskal Herria AKA
the Basque Country

The truck made two stops during the ferry ride from hell, but still he was not allowed out.
The third time it stopped he heard a tapping on the far end where the empty bedpan had come to rest.
He then faintly heard Steve’s voice as he whispered, ‘Won’t be long now.
Take it easy, you’ll be out soon.’