Confessional - Jack Higgins

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of Kilgannon some ten miles from Londonderry. Patrick Leary had delivered the post in the area for fifteen years now and his Royal Mail van was a familiar sight.

      His routine was always the same. He reported for work at headquarters in Londonderry at five-thirty promptly, picked up the mail for the first delivery of the day, already sorted by the night staff, filled up his petrol tank at the transport pumps then set off for Kilgannon. And always at half past six he would pull into the track in the trees beside Kilgannon Bridge to read the morning paper, eat his breakfast sandwiches and have a cup of coffee from his thermos flask. It was a routine which, unfortunately for Leary, had not gone unnoticed.

      Cuchulain watched him for ten minutes, waiting patiently for Leary to finish his sandwiches. Then the man got out, as he always did, and walked a little way into the wood. There was a slight sound behind him of a twig cracking under a foot. As he turned in alarm, Cuchulain slipped out of the trees.

      He presented a formidable figure and Leary was immediately terrified. Cuchulain wore a dark anorak and a black balaclava helmet which left only his eyes, nose and mouth exposed. He carried a PPK semi-automatic pistol in his left hand with a Carswell silencer screwed to the end of the barrel.

      ‘Do as you’re told and you’ll live,’ Cuchulain said. His voice was soft with a Southern Irish accent.

      ‘Anything,’ Leary croaked. ‘I’ve got a family – please.’

      ‘Take off your cap and the raincoat and lay them down.’ Leary did as he was told and Cuchulain held out his right hand so that Leary saw the large white capsule nestling in the centre of the glove. ‘Now, swallow that like a good boy.’

      ‘Would you poison me?’ Leary was sweating now.

      ‘You’ll be out for approximately four hours, that’s all,’ Cuchulain reassured him. ‘Better that way.’ He raised the gun. ‘Better than this.’

      Leary took the capsule, hand shaking, and swallowed it down. His legs seemed to turn to rubber, there was an air of unreality to everything, then a hand was on his shoulder pushing him down. The grass was cool against his face, then there was only the darkness.

      Dr Hans Wolfgang Baum was a remarkable man. Born in Berlin in 1950, the son of a prominent industrialist, on his father’s death in 1970 he had inherited a fortune equivalent to ten million dollars and wide business interests. Many people in his position would have been content to live a life of pleasure, which Baum did, with the important distinction that he derived his pleasure from work.

      He had a doctorate in engineering science from the University of Berlin, a law degree from the London School of Economics, and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard. And he had put them all to good use, expanding and developing his various factories in West Germany, France and the United States, so that his personal fortune was now estimated to be in excess of one hundred million dollars.

      And yet the project closest to his heart was the develop ment of the plant to manufacture tractors and general agricultural machinery outside Londonderry near Kilgannon. Baum Industries could have gone elsewhere, indeed the members of the board of management had wanted to. Unfortunately for them and the demands of sound business sense, Baum was a truly good man, a rare commodity in this world, and a committed Christian. A member of the German Lutheran Church, he had done everything possible to make the factory a genuine partnership between Catholic and Protestant. He and his wife were totally committed to the local community, his three children attended local schools.

      It was an open secret that he had met the Provisional IRA, some said the legendary Martin McGuiness himself. Whether true or not, the PIRA had left the Kilgannon factory alone to prosper, as it had done, and to provide work for more than a thousand Protestants and Catholics previously unemployed.

      Baum liked to keep in shape. Each morning, he awakened at exactly the same time, six o’clock, slid out of bed without disturbing his wife, and pulled on track suit and running shoes. Eileen Docherty, the young maid, was already up and making tea in the kitchen although still in her dressing gown.

      ‘Breakfast at seven, Eileen,’ he called. ‘My usual. Must get an early start this morning. I’ve a meeting in Derry at eight-thirty with the Works Committee.’

      He let himself out of the kitchen door, ran across the parkland, vaulted a low fence and turned into the woods. He ran rather than jogged at a fast, almost professional pace, following a series of paths, his mind full of the day’s planned events.

      By six forty-five he had completed his schedule, turned out of the trees and hammered along the grass verge of the main road towards the house. As usual, he met Pat Leary’s mail van coming along the road towards him. It pulled in and waited and he could see Leary through the windscreen in uniform cap and coat sorting a bundle of mail.

      Baum leaned down to the open window. ‘What have you got for me this morning, Patrick?’

      The face was the face of a stranger, dark, calm eyes, strong bones, nothing to fear there at all, and yet it was Death come to claim him.

      ‘I’m truly sorry,’ Cuchulain said. ‘You’re a good man,’ and the Walther in his left hand extended to touch Baum between the eyes. It coughed once, the German was hurled back to fall on the verge, blood and brains scattering across the grass.

      Cuchulain drove away instantly, was back in the track by the bridge where he had left Leary within five minutes. He tore off the cap and coat, dropped them beside the unconscious postman and ran through the trees, clambering over a wooden fence a few minutes later beside a narrow farm track, heavily overgrown with grass. A motorcycle waited there, an old 350cc BSA, stripped down as if for hill climbing with special ribbed tyres. It was a machine much used by hill farmers on both sides of the border to herd sheep. He pulled on a battered old crash helmet with a scratched visor, climbed on and kick-started expertly. The engine roared into life and he rode away, passing only one vehicle, the local milk cart just outside the village.

      Back there on the main road it started to rain and it was still falling on the upturned face of Hans Wolfgang Baum thirty minutes later when the local milk cart pulled up beside him. And at that precise moment, fifteen miles away, Cuchulain turned the BSA along a farm track south of Clady and rode across the border into the safety of the Irish Republic.

      Ten minutes later, he stopped beside a phone box, dialled the number of the Belfast Telegraph, asked for the news desk and claimed responsibility for the shooting of Hans Wolfgang Baum on behalf of the Provisional IRA.

      ‘So,’ Ferguson said. ‘The motorcyclist the driver of that milk cart saw would seem to be our man.’

      ‘No description, of course,’ Fox told him. ‘He was wearing a crash helmet.’

      ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Ferguson said. ‘Baum was well liked by everyone and the local Catholic community was totally behind him. He fought his own board every inch of the way to locate that factory in Kilgannon. They’ll probably pull out now, which leaves over a thousand unemployed and Catholics and Protestants at each others’ throats again.’

      ‘But isn’t that exactly what the Provisionals want, sir?’

      ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, Harry. Not this time. This was a dirty one. The callous murder of a thoroughly good man, well respected by the Catholic community. It can do the Provisionals nothing but harm with their own people. That’s what I don’t understand. It was such a stupid thing to do.’ He tapped the file on Baum which Fox had brought in. ‘Baum met Martin McGuiness in secret and McGuiness assured him of the Provisionals’ good will, and whatever else you may think of him, McGuiness is a clever man. Too damned clever, actually, but that isn’t the point.’ He shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t add up.’

      The red phone bleeped. He picked it up. ‘Ferguson here.’ He listened for a moment. ‘Very well, Minister.’ He put the phone down and stood up. ‘The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Harry. Wants me right away. Get on to Lisburn again. Army Intelligence – anything you can think of. Find out all you can.’

      He

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