Confessional. Jack Higgins

I’m to ring Ferguson and tell him you’re in. He wants to talk to you himself.’

      ‘So the old bastard is still going strong? Ah, well, you know where to come?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’ll see you in an hour then. Kilrea Cottage, Kilrea. You can’t miss it. Next to the convent.’

      When Fox came out of the booth after phoning Ferguson, White was waiting for him. ‘Are we going out then, Captain?’

      ‘Yes,’ Fox said. ‘Kilrea Cottage, Kilrea. Next to a convent apparently. I’ll just get my coat.’

      White waited until he’d entered the lift, then ducked into the booth and dialled a number. The receiver at the other end was lifted instantly. He said, ‘We’re leaving for Kilrea now. Looks like he’s seeing Devlin tonight.’

      As they drove through the rain-swept streets, White said casually, ‘Just so we know where we stand, Captain, I was a lieutenant in the North Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional IRA the year you lost that hand.’

      ‘You must have been young.’

      ‘Born old, that’s me, thanks to the B Specials when I was a wee boy and the sodding RUC.’ He lit a cigarette with one hand. ‘You know Liam Devlin well, do you?’

      ‘Why do you ask?’ Fox demanded warily.

      ‘That’s who we’re going to see, isn’t it? Jesus, Captain, and who wouldn’t be knowing Liam Devlin’s address?’

      ‘Something of a legend to you, I suppose?’

      ‘A legend, is it? That man wrote the book. Mind you, he won’t have any truck with the movement these days. He’s what you might call a moralist. Can’t stand the bombing and that kind of stuff.’

      ‘And can you?’

      ‘We’re at war, aren’t we? You bombed the hell out

      of the Third Reich. We’ll bomb the hell out of you if that’s what it takes.’

      Logical but depressing, Fox thought, for where did it end? A charnelhouse with only corpses to walk on. He shivered, face bleak.

      ‘About Devlin,’ White said as they started to leave the city. ‘There’s a tale I heard about him once. Would you know if it’s true, I wonder?’

      ‘Ask me.’

      ‘The word is, he went to Spain in the thirties, served against Franco and was taken prisoner. Then the Germans got hold of him and used him as an agent here during the big war.’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘The way I heard it, after that, they sent him to England. Something to do with an attempt by German paratroopers to kidnap Churchill in nineteen forty-three. Is there any truth in that?’

      ‘Sounds straight out of a paperback novel to me,’ Fox said.

      White sighed and there was regret in his voice. ‘That’s what I thought. Still, one hell of a man for all that,’ and he sat back and concentrated on his driving.

      An understatement as a description of Liam Devlin, Fox thought, sitting there in the darkness: a brilliant student who had entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of sixteen and had taken a first class honours degree at nineteen, scholar, writer, poet and highly dangerous gunman for the IRA in the thirties, even when still a student.

      Most of what White had said was true. He had gone to Spain to fight for the anti-fascists, he had worked for the Abwehr in Ireland. As to the Churchill affair? A story whispered around often enough, but as to the truth of it? Well, it would be years before those classified files were opened.

      During the post-war period, Devlin had been a Professor at a Catholic seminary called All Souls just outside Boston. He’d been involved with the abortive IRA campaign of the late fifties and had returned to Ulster in 1969 as the present troubles had begun. One of the original architects of the Provisional IRA, he had become increasingly disillusioned by the bombing campaign and had withdrawn active support to the movement. Since 1976, he had held a position in the English Faculty at Trinity.

      Fox had not seen him since 1979 when he had been coerced, indeed, blackmailed, by Ferguson into giving his active assistance in the hunting down of Frank Barry, ex-IRA activist turned international terrorist for hire. There had been various reasons why Devlin had gone along with that business, mostly because he had believed Ferguson’s lies. So, how would he react now?

      They had entered a long village street. Fox pulled himself together with a start as White said, ‘Here we are – Kilrea, and there’s the convent and that’s Devlin’s cottage, set back from the road behind the wall.’

      He turned the car into a gravel driveway and cut the engine. ‘I’ll wait for you, Captain, shall I?’

      Fox got out and walked up a stone flagged path between rose bushes to the green painted porch. The cottage was pleasantly Victorian with most of the original woodwork and gable ends. A light glowed behind drawn curtains at a bow window. He pressed the bell-push. There were voices inside, footsteps and then the door opened and Liam Devlin stood looking out at him.

       4

      Devlin wore a dark blue flannel shirt open at the neck, grey slacks and a pair of highly expensive-looking Italian brogues in brown leather. He was a small man, no more than five foot five or six, and at sixty-four his dark, wavy hair showed only a light silvering. There was a faded scar on the right side of his forehead, an old bullet wound, the face pale, the eyes extraordinarily vivid blue. A slight ironic smile seemed permanently to lift the corner of his mouth – the look of a man who had found life a bad joke and had decided that the only thing to do was laugh about it.

      The smile was charming and totally sincere. ‘Good to see you, Harry.’ His arms went around Fox in a light embrace.

      ‘And you, Liam.’

      Devlin looked beyond him at the car and Billy White behind the wheel. ‘You’ve got someone with you?’

      ‘Just my driver.’

      Devlin moved past him, went along the path and leaned down to the window.

      ‘Mr Devlin,’ Billy said.

      Devlin turned without a word and came back to Fox. ‘Driver, is it, Harry? The only place that one will drive you to is straight to Hell.’

      ‘Have you heard from Ferguson?’

      ‘Yes, but leave it for the moment. Come along in.’

      The interior of the house was a time capsule of Victoriana: mahogany panelling and William Morris wallpaper in the hall with several night scenes by the Victorian painter, Atkinson Grimshaw, on the walls. Fox examined them with admiration as he took off his coat and gave it to Devlin. ‘Strange to see these here, Liam. Grimshaw was a very Yorkshire Englishman.’

      ‘Not his fault, Harry, and he painted like an angel.’

      ‘Worth a bob or two,’ Fox said, well aware that ten thousand pounds at auction was not at all out of the way for even quite a small Grimshaw.

      ‘Do you tell me?’ Devlin said lightly. He opened one half of a double mahogany door and led the way into the sitting room. Like the hall, it was period Victorian: green flock wallpaper stamped with gold, more Grimshaws on the walls, mahogany furniture and a fire burning brightly in a fireplace that looked as if it was a William Langley original.