Provo. Gordon Stevens

business.

      That morning Marie Reardon had told her the news about the baby, made her promise to keep it a secret until Marie had told her husband.

      The Reardons had lived next door for the past nine years. During that time Moira Sheehan had grown close to them, had effectively become the grandmother to their children. Had shared both their dreams and their fears. Had sat with Marie one winter night when Tommy was working outside Belfast and the Transit had broken down, the night he had not returned home till midnight and they had feared the worst.

      Now she watched as the Sierra drove out of Beechwood Street and turned left at the end. It was too soon for Tommy to be going out, she thought, there had barely been time for him to have his tea. And there had been something wrong. With the way the first man had gone in to the house, the way the others followed as soon as he stepped inside, the way Tommy had left with one of them.

      Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she already knew. Perhaps, in the deepest recesses of her soul, she knew what was going to happen to Tommy Reardon. She went to the kitchen, made herself a cup of tea, then resumed her position at the curtains and waited for Marie to come out with the children, waited to talk with them as she did every evening.

      The bomb warning was exactly on time, giving a recognized codeword and location, and allowing thirty minutes for the area to be cleared. The next genuine warning came fifty-five minutes later. Between the two there had been a constant stream of hoax calls via newspaper offices and radio and television stations, plus the normal emergency calls received every hour of every day.

      It was sheer, bloody unadulterated luck, Halloran would reflect later, that he had offered to work overtime that evening, that for the first time in his life he was in the right place at the right time. That, above all, it was he who happened to be standing next to the constable when the call came in and was almost discarded in the cold and calculated chaos between the reports of bomb warnings from the journalists and switchboards receiving them.

      ‘What is it?’

      Halloran had been in the RUC for eighteen years, twelve of them as a sergeant, and – according to those close to him – would have made inspector, probably higher, if he had not voiced his opposition to certain aspects of Northern Ireland policing in the eighties quite so forcefully.

      ‘Woman reports something funny with her next-door neighbours. No reply but she knows they’re at home.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Telly’s on, she can hear it, and the curtains are drawn.’ A burglary or a domestic, his shrug and the tone of his voice suggested, something CID could deal with in the morning.

      ‘What else?’

      ‘The kids aren’t playing in the street as normal.’

      ‘Who’s at home?’ It was instinct.

      ‘The wife and kids. The husband left with someone else twenty minutes ago.’

      Something the other man had missed, Halloran began to think, something the other man’s lack of years had not picked up.

      ‘Give me the name and number. I’ll speak to her.’

      The Transit had dropped Tommy from work as usual, Moira Sheehan told him. Half an hour later he had left with the other man. Marie hadn’t brought the children out to play as she normally did. When she had knocked on the front door there was no reply and the back door was locked.

      ‘But you’re certain they’re in?’

      ‘Like I said, I can hear the television.’

      ‘And the curtains are drawn?’ The evening was still light – no need to draw the curtains.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘What about at the back?’

      ‘No, but the kitchen’s empty.’

      Halloran knew when not to ask a question.

      ‘Funny though. The dinner’s still on the table.’

      ‘You said Tommy left with another man. Did he come home with Tommy?’

      ‘No, he and the others came just after.’

      The alarm bells began to ring.

      ‘How many others?’

      ‘Three of them altogether. Then there were the men in the car.’

      Three in, one out with Tommy. Two still inside with Tommy’s wife and children. ‘What’s Tommy do for a living?’

      There was a commotion around him, another series of bomb calls being reported.

      ‘He drives a digger.’

      ‘Who for?’

      ‘Ellis and Knight.’

      Oh, Christ. Halloran knew what was happening. Oh Jesus bloody Christ.

      The building site was deserted, the gate secured by a padlock. Rorke snapped through the chain with a set of bolt-cutters, pulled back the gate, and the Sierra drove through and parked behind the huts and Portacabins. Two minutes later a Transit, sprayed the same colour as those used by Ellis and Knight, drove in, a Cavalier close behind it.

      There were three men in the Sierra, Reardon counted automatically, plus two in the Transit and four in the Cavalier, all armed with pistols or submachine guns.

      ‘Keys?’

      Behind them a gunman closed the gates and hung the padlock and chain in place.

      ‘In the agent’s office.’

      Access was easy: a crowbar against the door, the lock holding but the wood around it splintering, then giving way. The office was neat and organized, a filing cabinet in one corner and a desk against the far wall, the site plans and charts stacked neatly on it. Beside the cabinet was a line of hooks with keys hanging from them.

      ‘Which one?’ Rorke was always behind him.

      If he did what they said, Reardon thought, then at least Marie and the kids might live. His stomach churned with fear and he fought to stop his hands shaking. He took the keys and stepped outside. The digger was parked forty yards away, in the open. Rorke followed him across the site. Instinctively Reardon bent down to examine the underside of the vehicle for bombs.

      ‘I don’t think we need bother about that tonight, Tommy.’

      He unlocked the cab, started the motor, and drove the digger to the side of the Transit.

      ‘How’s the fuel tank?’ Rorke’s attention to detail was as meticulous as McKendrick’s planning.

      ‘Half-full.’

      ‘Check it,’ Rorke ordered.

      The back doors of the Transit were open. Two of the gunmen placed a plank against the rim of the floor, rolled out a forty-gallon drum, two hundred pounds of Semtex packed inside, then manhandled it into the bucket at the front of the digger. It was almost dusk.

      ‘Time to go, Tommy boy.’ Rorke pulled a canvas sheet over the barrel. ‘The Crum and no stopping. Remember Marie and the kids.’ He saw the look on Reardon’s face. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to jump dear.’ No point telling him the truth, no point telling Reardon that the IRA man in the first of the two escort vehicles would detonate the explosives the moment the digger rammed the gate.

      The surveillance helicopter hovered in the sky and the army patrols swung into Beechwood Street and the terraces on either side, the Green Jackets piling out and knocking on the doors, beginning the census checks – the patrols leapfrogging house to house, the RUC policemen accompanying them.

      ‘Dermot Wilson is registered here.’ It was the second lieutenant’s first Northern Ireland tour. ‘Is he in? Where is he? What’s he doing tonight?’

      The woman slammed the door in his face.

      ‘Michael