LITMIR.BIZ

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looked her over quickly, the small, dark girl with the scar on the left cheek, and liked what he saw. ‘Couldn’t you find a better class of work than what this old sod has to offer?’ he demanded.

      Odd that she should feel slightly breathless faced with this forty-five-year-old man with the ridiculously long hair and the face that had seen rather too much of the worst of life.

      ‘There’s a recession on. You have to take what’s going these days,’ she said, her hand light in his.

      ‘Right. We’ve had the cabaret act so let’s get down to business,’ Ferguson said. Hernu went to the window, Ferguson and Mary took the sofa opposite Brosnan.

      ‘Max tells me he spoke to you last night after the murder of the Jobert brothers?’

      Anne-Marie came in with coffee on a tray. Brosnan said, ‘That’s right.’

      ‘He tells me you’ve refused to help us?’

      ‘That’s putting it a bit strongly. What I said was that I’d do anything I could except become actively involved myself and if you’ve come to attempt to change my mind, you’re wasting your time.’

      Anne-Marie poured coffee. Ferguson said, ‘You agree with him, Miss Audin?’

      ‘Martin slipped out of that life a long time ago, Brigadier,’ she said carefully. ‘I would not care to see him step back in for whatever reason.’

      ‘But surely you can see that a man like Dillon must be stopped?’

      ‘Then others must do the stopping. Why Martin, for God’s sake?’ She was distressed now and angry. ‘It’s your job, people like you. This sort of thing is how you make your living.’

      Max Hernu came across and picked up a cup of coffee. ‘But Professor Brosnan is in a special position as regards this business, you must see that, mademoiselle. He knew Dillon intimately, worked with him for years. He could be of great help to us.’

      ‘I don’t want to see him with a gun in his hand,’ she said, ‘and that’s what it would come to. Once his foot is on that road again, there can only be one end.’

      She was very distressed, turned and went through into the kitchen. Mary Tanner went after her and closed the door. Anne-Marie was leaning against the sink, arms folded as if holding herself in, agony on her face.

      ‘They don’t see, do they? They don’t understand what I mean.’

      ‘I do,’ Mary said simply. ‘I understand exactly what you mean,’ and as Anne-Marie started to sob quietly, went and put her arms around her.

      Brosnan opened the French windows and stood on the terrace by the scaffolding taking in lungsful of cold air. Ferguson joined him. ‘I’m sorry for the distress we’ve caused her.’

      ‘No you’re not, you only see the end in view. You always did.’

      ‘He’s a bad one, Martin.’

      ‘I know,’ Brosnan nodded. ‘A real can of worms the little bastard has opened this time. I must get a smoke.’

      He went inside. Hernu was sitting by the fire. Brosnan found a packet of cigarettes, hesitated, then opened the kitchen door. Anne-Marie and Mary were sitting opposite each other, holding hands across the table.

      Mary turned. ‘She’ll be fine. Just leave us for a while.’

      Brosnan went back to the terrace. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the balustrade. ‘She seems quite a lady, that aide of yours. That scar on her left cheek. Shrapnel. What’s her story?’

      ‘She was doing a tour of duty as a lieutenant with the Military Police in Londonderry. Some IRA chap was delivering a car bomb when the engine failed. He left it at the kerb and did a runner. Unfortunately it was outside an old folks’ home. Mary was driving past in a Land Rover when a civilian alerted her. She got in the car, released the brake and managed to freewheel down the hill on to some waste land. It exploded as she made a run for it.’

      ‘Good God!’

      ‘Yes, I’d agree on that occasion. When she came out of hospital she received a severe reprimand for breaking standing orders and the George Medal for the gallantry of her action. I took her on after that.’

      ‘A lot of still waters there.’ Brosnan sighed and tossed his cigarette out into space as Mary Tanner joined them.

      ‘She’s gone to lie down in the bedroom.’

      ‘All right,’ Brosnan said. ‘Let’s go back in.’ They went and sat down again and he lit another cigarette. ‘Let’s get this over with. What did you want to say?’

      Ferguson turned to Mary. ‘Your turn, my dear.’

      ‘I’ve been through the files, checked out everything the computer can tell us.’ She opened her brown handbag and took out a photo. ‘The only likeness of Dillon we can find. It’s from a group photo taken at RADA twenty years ago. We had an expert in the department blow it up.’

      There was a lack of definition, the texture grainy and the face was totally anonymous. Just another young boy.

      Brosnan gave it back. ‘Useless. I didn’t even recognise him myself.’

      ‘Oh, it’s him all right. The man on his right became quite successful on television. He’s dead now.’

      ‘Not through Dillon?’

      ‘Oh, no, stomach cancer, but he was approached by one of our people back in nineteen eighty-one and confirmed that it was Dillon standing next to him in the photo.’

      ‘The only likeness we have,’ Ferguson said. ‘And no bloody use at all.’

      ‘Did you know that he took a pilot’s licence and a commercial one at that?’ Mary said.

      ‘No, I never knew that,’ Brosnan said.

      ‘According to one of our informants, he did it in the Lebanon some years ago.’

      ‘Why were your people on his case in eighty-one?’ Brosnan asked.

      ‘Yes, well that’s interesting,’ she told him. ‘You told Colonel Hernu that he’d quarrelled with the IRA, had dropped out and joined the international terrorist circuit.’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘It seems they took him back in nineteen eighty-one. They were having trouble with their active service units in England. Too many arrests, that kind of thing. Through an informer in Ulster we heard that he was operating in London for a time. There were at least three or four incidents attributed to him. Two car bombs and the murder of a police informant in Ulster who’d been relocated with his family in Maida Vale.’

      ‘And we didn’t come within spitting distance of catching him,’ Ferguson said.

      ‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Brosnan told him. ‘Let me go over it again. He’s an actor of genius. He really can change before your eyes, just by use of body language. You’d have to see it to believe it. Imagine what he can do with make-up, hair colouring changes. He’s only five feet five, remember. I’ve seen him dress as a woman and fool soldiers on foot patrol in Belfast.’

      Mary Tanner was leaning forward intently. ‘Go on,’ she said softly.

      ‘You want to know another reason why you’ve never caught him? He works out a series of aliases. Changes hair colour, uses whatever tricks of make-up are necessary, then takes his photo. That’s what goes on his false passport or identity papers. He keeps a collection, then when he needs to move, makes himself into the man on the photo.’

      ‘Ingenious,’ Hernu said.

      ‘Exactly, so no hope of any help from television or newspaper publicity of the have-you-seen-this-man type. Wherever he goes, he slips under the surface. If he was working in London and needed anything at all, help, weapons, whatever,

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