Codename Omega Read online

  The Range Rover drew level with the box and Nick could see Reilly in the driver’s seat, an expression of wild determination on his thin face. He levelled his automatic and yelled,

  ‘Pack it in, Reilly! It’s all over.’

  For answer Reilly twisted the steering-wheel so that the van veered sharply towards the police car, forcing the driver to brake violently, almost throwing Nick out. As he regained his balance he took aim again, this time at the front off-side wheel, and saw the tyre explode. The horse-box swerved, tilted on the slope of the field and looked for a moment as if it was going to turn over. As it came to a standstill Reilly leaped out, a rifle in his hand, and ran round to take cover behind it. Nick’s driver skidded round the front of it and as he did so Reilly’s bullet shattered the window just behind him.

  ‘Get down!’ Nick shouted, as the car came to a halt, and they both piled out on the far side and took cover.

  Nick looked around him. Over the hill which hid them from the house a small convoy of vehicles was approaching, led by another police Range Rover. Nick guessed that Pascoe had picked up the radio traffic at his command post and was coming to investigate. Reilly saw them too and made a last bid to escape. Leaping to his feet he started running like a stag towards the wall which bounded the estate. Nick followed but the Irishman turned and fired a shot which ripped through the cloth of Nick’s trousers and left a long graze along his thigh. Nick swore and ran on, feeling the warm blood trickling down his leg; but as Reilly turned again for another shot there was a sudden deafening roar and the helicopter appeared over a band of trees and dropped to within a few feet of the ground right in his path. Reilly tried to swerve away to his right, but the chopper slid sideways and again intercepted him. Nick heard Stone’s voice over the loud hailer.

  ‘Give yourself up, Reilly. You’re surrounded. You haven’t got a prayer.’

  For a moment Reilly glared wildly around him, from the helicopter to Nick, now lying full length with his automatic braced in both hands and levelled at Reilly’s chest, and beyond him to the approaching convoy of cars. Then he dropped his gun and raised his hands.

  By the time Nick had handcuffed him and handed him over to his police driver for safe keeping the helicopter had set Stone down. Nick walked over to join him. Stone nodded at the rip in his trouser leg.

  ‘Another couple of inches and that could have been very unfortunate,’ he remarked dryly.

  ‘Any sign of the rest of them?’ Nick asked. Stone jerked his head towards the chopper. ‘Both the Connors are in there. They came out of the wood on the far side like a couple of rabbits. All I had to do was pick them up.’

  ‘What about Leo?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen her?’

  Nick shook his head.

  Stone said, ‘I saw her go into the trees. In fact, I thought I saw two horses in there, but I don’t know what happened to them. I haven’t seen Slattery or Donelly either.’

  Nick pointed back along the track to where a dark shape still lay on the grass.

  ‘Donelly’s over there.’

  They started to walk back towards the place and as they did so a riderless grey horse cantered out of the trees in the bed of the valley and headed off over the hill. The two men stared after it.

  ‘That’s her horse!’ Nick said.

  ‘Could be,’ Stone replied, ‘but I told you, I saw two horses in there – both white, and both the riders were wearing the same colours. My guess is one of them could be Slattery.’

  At that moment a second horse appeared at the top of the hill, paused for a second and then cantered towards them. They both strained their eyes to recognize the rider but under the peaked helmet it was impossible. Acting on the same instinct they both drew their guns. The rider halted a few yards off.

  ‘Hey!’ Leo shouted. ‘Do you mind? I’m on your side, remember?’

  Laughing with relief they ran towards her. She swung her leg across the saddle and dismounted, but as her feet touched the ground her knees buckled and she would have fallen if Stone had not caught hold of her.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously.

  She shook her head, half laughing. ‘It’s all right. My legs have gone to jelly, that’s all. I had no idea that this sort of ride was such hard work!’

  She hung onto him for a moment and then straightened up.

  ‘Have you seen Reilly and the others?’

  ‘Reilly and the Connors are in the bag,’ Stone told her. ‘Do you know what’s happened to Slattery?’

  She nodded towards the wood. ‘He’s back there – dead, I’m afraid. His horse threw him, and then this fellow here jumped on top of him. There was nothing I could do about it.’

  Stone gave her shoulders a comforting squeeze.

  ‘I wouldn’t let it worry you too much. According to our records he was probably involved in the Hyde Park bombing – so there’s a kind of poetic justice about it.’

  ‘What about Margaret?’ Leo asked.

  Stone and Nick exchanged looks. Nick said,

  ‘She’s over there. She was firing at us from the back of the horse-box. I had to take her out. I aimed for a disabling shot, but with both the vehicles bouncing about so much it was tricky.’

  They walked on towards the prone figure. Nick reached her first and was shocked to discover that her eyes were open and she was not only still alive but conscious, although she lay without moving as he approached. Her body was twisted at an awkward angle and he instinctively knelt to straighten it out.

  ‘Don’t touch her,’ Leo said tonelessly from behind him. ‘It looks as if her neck’s broken. If you try to move her you could kill her. Leave her to the ambulance men.’ Nick looked up at her, feeling suddenly sick. Leo went on, ‘It wasn’t your shot. Look, that hit her in the arm, as you intended. She must have fallen on her head coming out of the box.’

  Margaret had recognized the voice and her eyes had been searching for the source of it. Now they found Leo. Leo reached up and undid the chin-strap of her riding helmet, pulling it off to reveal her short hair stuck close to her scalp with sweat. She moved quietly to where the other girl could see her without difficulty.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so, Margaret,’ she said, replying to the unspoken question. ‘Reilly was quite right. You should never have trusted me. But then, you should never have shot that copper in Liverpool – or helped to organize those car bombs in Belfast that you boasted to me about.’

  The two women looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then Leo turned and walked away a short distance, to stand with her back to them and her head bowed. Once again Nick and Stone consulted each other’s eyes. In the end it was Nick who turned to where Fidelio, who had forgotten he was in a race, was quietly cropping the grass; leaving Stone to go over to Leo and put an arm around her shoulders.

  *

  That evening the three of them and Pascoe dined privately in Leo’s hotel suite. Leo, showered and rested but still with a look of porcelain fragility about her, reclined on a couch dressed in a white and gold silk caftan which belonged to her Leonora Carr wardrobe. Pascoe, half-way down a pre-prandial gin and tonic, was tying off the loose threads in their day’s work.

  ‘We checked out the horse-box. It belongs to Slattery, part of his legitimate business, like the one that was left behind at Beeston and it came over three days ago via Swansea with a horse which was sold, again quite legitimately, in the Bristol area. You were quite right, Leo, there is a secret compartment built into the bulkhead between the cabin and the horse-box itself, with just enough room for one person to lie down. We also found a hypodermic syringe and several ampoules of a powerful sedative.’

  ‘So they planned to bring the horse down, grab the rider, dope her and hide her in the secret compartment,’ Leo murmured. ‘But did they really think they’d get her out of the country?’

  ‘Not immediately, I think,’ Pascoe replied. ‘The van is booked to return to Cork tonight but I found it hard to believe that they would actually
take that risk. That was where the forensic boys came up with the goods. They found some feathers caught in the hinge of the tail-board which they were able to identify as turkey feathers. We ran a check on all turkey farmers in the area, and found one just six miles from Gatcombe. Analysis of the soil in the treads of the tyres agreed with the type of soil found around there, so we decided to check it out.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Leo said, ‘I thought you two had already investigated all the farms and places where Slattery might be lying low.’

  ‘We were looking at properties which had changed hands or been let within the last few months,’ Stone said. ‘This one hadn’t.’

  ‘The owner is – was – a respected member of the local community,’ Pascoe continued. ‘He had owned the farm for four years and was running a prosperous business. He was known as a keen horseman who regularly rode to hounds during the season. No one had any idea that he had the remotest connection with Ireland – until we looked into his background.’

  ‘A sleeper!’ Leo said.

  ‘Quite so,’ Pascoe agreed.

  ‘So that was where Slattery and Co. had been hiding,’ Leo said, ‘but do you mean they intended to take HRH back there?’

  ‘We’ve got proof that they did,’ Stone told her. ‘We practically had to take the place apart, brick by brick, to get it – but there’s no doubt. There’s a cellar under the farmhouse. They’d built a wall partitioning off one end – very cleverly done; at first sight you’d think it had been there since the house was built. The door was hidden behind some shelves full of old paint cans and such. Inside there was a little room with a bed and a bucket – basic but adequate. Anyone could have been kept shut away in there almost indefinitely and we’d never have known where to look without the evidence of the van.’

  ‘And the van would have been on its way back to Ireland,’ Leo said.

  ‘And if it had been stopped and searched – as it would have been under the circumstances – they would simply have been going about their legitimate business. They still had all the papers connected with the purchase of the horse from Fairbairn. No one would have spotted that it was a different animal; and they would have been taking it back to Ireland for their client exactly as they told Fairburn they intended to do.’

  ‘Suppose they’d been stopped leaving the grounds?’ Leo said. ‘They couldn’t have used that story then.’

  ‘No,’ Pascoe agreed, ‘in that case they would have been a competitor retiring early because of injury or a similar reason. We found all the necessary documentation for that in the van, too. Besides, that was where Slattery came in. His job was to complete the course so that no one realized that anything was wrong. As you saw, the horses were almost identical and the rider hard to recognize at a distance. It would have taken him at least another ten or fifteen minutes to reach the finish. By that time the horse-box would have been back at the farm – and the prisoner transferred to her specially built cell.’

  ‘And what was supposed to happen to Slattery? He couldn’t have hoped to escape.’

  Pascoe nodded. ‘That’s true. There would appear to be an element of kamikaze about Slattery’s mission. But not so much as you might think. One thing we have managed to learn from Liam Connor is the object of the exercise. They planned to demand the release of all IRA and INLA prisoners in jail in both England and Northern Ireland. The main idea was to get back all the top brass they lost owing to the “supergrass” trials, but presumably Slattery would have benefitted from the amnesty too.’

  There was a silence. At length Nick said,

  ‘You know, it could have worked.’

  Pascoe’s face was grave. ‘It came much too near to working for my peace of mind,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Leo … and you two…’

  Leo grinned suddenly. ‘It wouldn’t have worked, you know. Slattery didn’t have a chance of finishing the course on that animal. It may have looked a dead ringer, but in terms of actual performance it hadn’t got a hope. After all Slattery’s experience – fancy letting old Jake Fairbairn put one over on him like that!’

  They all laughed, the sudden laughter of relief after prolonged strain. Then Leo said,

  ‘Incidentally, has it occurred to anyone how curious it is that the horse should be called Fidelio?’

  They looked at her, puzzled.

  ‘No,’ Nick said, ‘why?’

  Pascoe chuckled abruptly. ‘Yes, of course! How odd!’

  Nick and Stone exchanged looks and shook their heads.

  ‘Oh, come on, Nick,’ Leo teased him, ‘Stone may be a musical illiterate, but you’re not. Think! Fidelio…’

  He frowned, concentrating. ‘Opera – by Beethoven.’

  ‘Good! And the name of the heroine?’

  ‘Oh, got you! Leonora!’

  ‘Who,’ concluded Pascoe, ‘in the course of the plot, disguises herself in order to get into the prison where her husband is incarcerated.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that,’ Nick said. ‘You’re right. It is a strange coincidence.’

  Stone cleared his throat, finished his Scotch and leaned back in his chair. The conversation, he felt, was getting onto altogether the wrong lines.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I reckon that ought to be worth a medal apiece, don’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Pascoe told him drily. ‘I understand she wants to know who the bloody fool was in the helicopter who frightened all the horses!’