Need time. If I have time.
Get Beth and Emma out of the house and think.
Think, think, think.
Drive and think.
Crabbie was sitting next to me in the front seat going through his notes. He didn’t like what he was reading there.
“What’s the matter, mate?”
“I just don’t see a way through this. We’re in an information void. Whatever Harry Selden and Francis Deauville were up to in the B Specials will forever be a secret because Selden won’t tell us and Deauville’s dead.”
“Do you think Deauville told his wife and that’s why she’s disappeared?” Lawson asked.
“That’s what the killer thought, anyway. Even if she didn’t know. The poor wee lass was silenced because she might have known,” Crabbie said.
I was fed up with the same old roads, so at Claudy I cut over onto the Longland Road to go into the city via Strabane and the A5. It was on that lonely stretch of nothingness through the bleak treeless foothills of the Sperrins that I noticed a car on our tail.
“We’re being followed,” I said.
Crabbie looked in the mirror. The car was a black Ford Escort XR3i. We both knew what that meant. “Aye I see it,” he said.
“Oh my God! Is it the IRA? Are they going to get us?” Lawson said, alarmed.
I patted the Beemer’s steering wheel. “I’d like to see them try to get us. But no, it isn’t the IRA, son, it’s the bloody Special Branch.”
“It’s policemen? Maybe it’s just the traffic police.”
“No, it isn’t traffic. They’re in plain clothes. Now why are they following me do you think, Crabbie?”
“I wouldn’t like to speculate,” Crabbie said.
“Me neither. Look at them. They think they’re being terribly discreet. Is there a seat belt back there, Lawson?”
“Yeah.”
“Put it on. I’m going to lose the bastards in Strabane.”
“Sean, is that wise?” Crabbie asked.
“If any of us were wise we would have chosen a different profession. Now be a good ’un and click my seat belt for me, will ya?”
Crabbie clicked in my seat belt and did his own belt too.
“What are you going to do, Sean?” he asked.
“I’m just going to lose them. We don’t need meddling from those boys.”
“If you say so. How will you do it?”
“Just before Strabane proper there’s a wee road through a housing development, I think it’s called the Wood-something Road – there’s a hill that obscures the view and at the end of that there’s a sharp turn onto the A5 going into Derry. If you know what you’re doing you can lose them on the Wood-something Road, scream onto the A5 and be halfway into Derry before they know what’s hit them.”
“If you’re going to do that slow down now. Get them accustomed to a lower speed in top gear,” he suggested.
“Good idea, mate, I’ll cruise along in third.”
“What are youse doing? You’re running from Special Branch? That can’t be a good idea,” Lawson said.
I downshifted to third gear and reduced my speed to 40 mph. The Ford Escort reduced its speed and dropped way back to avoid being seen.
We came to a small hill just after the village of Artigarvan. We were a mile and a half from the A5 turn. This was the moment. On the reverse slope of the hill I’d gun it.
I crested the hill and as soon as the Ford disappeared in the rear-view mirror I pushed down hard on the accelerator pedal. The BMW screamed up towards 60 mph. I hit fourth gear and now we were doing 70. The outskirts of Strabane went past in a blur and the A5 turn came faster than I was expecting.
A Tayto Crisps lorry was coming towards the junction. I could either hard-brake, stop and let it pass or try to beat it. If we stopped the goons would catch us.
“A lorry!” Lawson screamed.
“Damn it,” I yelled and gunned the engine and drove through into the junction in a horrible fishtail of screaming tyres and honking horns. I accelerated hard away from the crisps lorry, waved a friendly apology to the driver, switched to fifth gear and in thirty seconds we were going north east at 100 mph.
The Ford Escort was nowhere to be seen.
“All right back there?” I asked Lawson.
He tried to reply but couldn’t quite manage it. McCrabban showed no visible change of emotion.
I parked the BMW outside Harry Selden’s house but when I rang the doorbell his mother, who appeared to be in rude good health, said that he was at a council meeting. We found him at his office in the Guildhall and a pleasant young secretary told us we could wait and that he would be along presently.
Harry Selden was not pleased to see us when he eventually showed up.
“Inspector Duffy and I see you’ve brought a couple of bodyguards with you,” he said mirthlessly. He was wearing a blue checked seersucker jacket and checked trousers over a shirt that seemed too tight on him. His tie was black like his fucking heart. Definitely no Oliver Hardy vibe today but perhaps there was a hint of northern working-man’s-club comic. I asked if we could talk in his office.