“Why?” Crabbie asked suspiciously.
“I made some questionable calls in the course of an investigation yesterday. I did it with the best of intentions to save a young woman’s life.”
Crabbie sighed. “I’ll get us some tea and biscuits and when I’ve got them why don’t you tell us everything, Sean?”
When I was done with the explanation Lawson’s eyes were wide. Crabbie’s only display of emotion had been to fill, empty and re-fill his pipe.
“So what do you think?” I said.
“I’m happy that you’re still with us, Sean,” Crabbie said. “That was a close one.”
“It certainly was.”
“But you should have gone to Strand Road police station,” he said firmly.
“I concur, sir,” Lawson said. “They could have at least attempted to round up the cell that kidnapped you.”
“You know they would have demanded army back-up to go off on a manhunt in the forest and by the time the army had arrived the girl would have been dead and the rest of the cell probably would have escaped anyway,” I said.
“But it would have been the right thing to do,” Crabbie said.
I nodded. Crabbie was a policeman who would never manufacture evidence or take fruit from the jurisprudential poison tree or knowingly break the law. Crabbie had doomed-Edwardian-expeditions-to-the-Pole concepts of rectitude and discipline.
But he was also an old friend now and I could see the emotion behind his eyes. If he’d known Ken Kirkpatrick he would have done exactly the same thing. He would have saved the girl too.
“How much danger are you in now, do you think, Sean?” he asked, blowing pipe smoke towards the ceiling.
Lawson said nothing, his head still spinning from all of this.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Ken Kirkpatrick says there will be an internal inquiry following yesterday’s events. He says I’ll probably have a week or two until this person in the Army Council is able to act again. She’s only just come back, but I’m going to ask Beth to take Emma away and stay with her parents.”
“A sensible precaution for starters,” Crabbie said. “But maybe for your own good you should report what happened to Special Branch.”
“You know what they’d do to me. Disciplinary proceedings and then the sack. And then possibly criminal charges for aiding and abetting a terrorist suspect.”
“That’s probably true,” Crabbie said. “But if the IRA are gunning for you?”
“The IRA are gunning for all of us, all the time, and as a Catholic peeler I’ve had that bounty on my head for fifteen years.”
“Do you want to come and stay with me? Way out on the farm no one can get close without us hearing their car.”
“That’s the one advantage I have of living on Coronation Road. It would be the bold IRA team that comes down there trying to kill me deep in Loyalist turf.”
“Aye, although don’t forget Francis Deauville. Somebody got him. Somebody got him with medieval technology,” Crabbie said.
“First things first, I’ll get Beth and Emma to safety and then I’ll weigh up my options.”
“We need to figure out what this all means,” Lawson said.
“We bloody do,” I agreed. “And quick.”
“As I see it the honey trap was not a random crime of opportunity. It wasn’t designed to lift a policeman, it was designed to lift a specific policeman: you. And there’s only one reason why, really, because you were getting too close to Harry Selden.”
“Which means that Harry, despite being in a coma, was somehow involved in the murder of Francis Deauville,” Crabbie said.
“We’re sure he was definitely in the hospital?” Lawson asked.
“Yup, we are. Interviewed his doctors and his nurses. It was him and before you ask, no, he doesn’t have a twin brother, or any other brother for that matter,” I said.
“And on Harry Selden’s say-so the IRA Army Council ordered a hit on you? Is Selden really that important?” Crabbie asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand it. Ken Kirkpatrick says he’s only a minor player. He says he’s not even a particularly big cheese in Derry. And he’s certainly not on the IRA Army Council like ****** **********.”
“So what could this be about?” Crabbie asked.
“It’s something to do with Selden. And it’s something to do with this case we’re working on. And it’s something to do with Selden and Deauville working together in the B Specials all those years ago.”
“We better get moving then, Sean. This is urgent, I’ll get my coat,” Crabbie said.
I smiled at him. “Where do you think we’re going?
“I think we’re going to Belvoir Park Records Office where they keep the files on the B Specials and after that I think we’re all driving up to Derry to talk to Mr Selden.”
“What say you, Lawson?” I asked.
“You know my motto, sir: all for one and one for all.”
“My motto is: don’t trust whitey and whitey is everywhere in this fucking town. Let’s keep all this quiet for now.”
BMW. Radio 3. A2. M5. South Belfast.