Author Topic: Bomber part four of a novella  (Read 472 times)

Michael Rolls

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 72679
Bomber part four of a novella
« on: Sep 22, 2019, 05:47:00 AM »
 
Chapter Three
O’Connell had not been run over by a bus. The morning after Alison’s telephone call to Lamb, O’Connell woke early, a little after seven o’clock, and as he got up there was a sleepy protest from the girl next to him in the bed.
“Christ, Liam, what time do you call this? Come back to bed.”
“Sorry, love –got to go – meeting a man for breakfast.”
‘The man’ was a former associate of Liam and his brothers back in their time in Belfast, but who had now lived in the UK mainland for over twelve years. Donal Murphy was now fifty years old, a short but stockily built man, his once plentiful red hair now thin and grey. His face was lined and weather-beaten from his days roaming he borders between Ulster and the Republic, out in all weathers as he brought ‘The Struggle’ home to the British Army and those allied to them. Murphy had blood on his hands – a lot of blood – but he had never been caught, never had to know the inside of a prison. In his time he had made enemies, even within his erstwhile IRA colleagues because of his total and utter refusal to accept any compromise in the aims of the Cause. To him, the Good Friday Agreement was a disgrace, a surrender, and he would have no part of it. As far as Donal Murphy was concerned the fight went on, but he was only too aware that some one time IRA leaders wanted him neutralised whilst they sought to achieve a united Ireland by cosying up to the politicians. O’Connell had tracked him down, very cautiously, well aware that Murphy was both paranoid and dangerous. This would be their first meeting; far from having breakfast together, the meeting was on a deserted site on the bank of the River Irwell. Once a large warehouse with an equally large yard area in front of it, the warehouse had burnt down ten years before and never been rebuilt. As a location for a meeting between two men who were wary of each other it was ideal. O’Connell, as instructed, arrived at precisely eight thirty and waited, in his car, at the western side of the site. A few minutes later a second car entered the site from the east and stopped fifty yards away. Again as instructed, O’Connell got out of his car and walked slowly towards the newcomer. Despite the nip in the morning air, O’Connell was dressed in cotton jeans and a thin T-shirt and he advanced with his arms held out wide.
The driver’s door of the other vehicle was opened and Donal Murphy got out of the driver’s seat but remained behind the door, using it as a shield between himself and O’Connell.
O’Connell got to within fifteen feet of Murphy before the older man spoke.
“That’s far enough, Liam. We can talk from here – now, you wanted to meet me and you’ve been asking around trying to find me. Who told you I was around here – and what do you want?”
O’Connell still had his arms outstretched.
“Donal, me arms are killin’ me – can I put them down, please?”
“OK – but slowly.” As he spoke Murphy brought his right hand into view – it held a pistol.
“Thanks, Donal, that’s better. I asked a lot of people if they had ever heard of you and most said no – but I know some of those who said no were lying to me – and they must have let you know that I was asking around – and they would have checked who I am before passing on the message. Now, it’s no secret that some of the boys back home would be happier if you were to go away – however that happened. It’s also no secret that I’m just out of prison. Now, I know you to be a careful man, Donal – and so am I. If the positions were reversed, I’d be worried that someone out after just fifteen years for two murders might just have done some sort of deal to get out a bit early, a deal leading to somebody like you – but is it likely? The only people I could have done a deal with are the Brits – and they’re not looking for you – not hard, anyway. You’ve always been too smart to let them have any sort of a lead onto you. The only people really after you are some of the men we used to see as comrades – men now sucking up to the politicians back in Stormont. Am I right?”
Murphy looked long and hard at the younger man, then slowly slipped the pistol back into his pocket and, crossing the distance between them, grabbed him in a bear hug.
“Jeez, and it’s good to see you again, Liam, that it is!”
“You too, Donal, you too. Donal, I want your help.”
Murphy released O’Connell and stepped back.
“What sort of help, Liam – is it for the Cause?”
“For me it is, Donal, for sure – but you may see it different. I want a gun, Donal – something serious like a MAC-10 or an UZI.”
At the mention of the sub-machine guns Murphy’s eye widened.
“That is serious, Liam, sure and it is – what do you want it for?”
“I said that I see it as for the Cause, Donal, and so I do. I want to finish what I [censored] up fifteen years ago!”
“You mean that copper?”
“Yes – he killed me bros, and I missed out on killing him – and I want to put it right.”
“Well, I reckon that I can help you – although getting something like those isn’t easy, not for a respectable Irishman living quiet and minding his own business. It would be easier to get something from one of the drug gangs around here, [censored] knows, there’s enough of them.”
“They’re not Irish, Donal – I don’t know them, they don’t know me – they might well take money from me – if I had money, that is – and blow my head off anyway.”
Murphy frowned.
“I can see what you mean, old son – look, let’s get somewhere a bit warmer and talk.”
“OK – where?”
“A coffee shop – follow me in your car.”
Fifteen minutes later, after having driven in convoy across most of Manchester, the two men were seated at opposite sides of a small table in a booth in a quiet coffee shop, enjoying coffee and doughnuts. Finishing his food, Murphy pushed the plate away, wiped his lips on the paper napkin, and gave a sigh of satisfaction.
“Ah, that’s better. Now Liam, do I take it that you have no money?”
“Well, I’ve got about five hundred – but that’s it, and even that is a bit lucky. Kenneth was always the bright one of the family and he arranged bank accounts for us in Dublin as well as Belfast. I never did know how he actually arranged it, but before I got caught I used that account, and after I got out of prison I checked on it – and despite the time lapse, I could still use it. It’s in Euros, of course, so I had to change money into sterling, and I lost a bit on doing that, but now I’ve got what was left in cash – as I say, just on five hundred.”
“Well, that’s nothing like enough for what you want – a couple of grand if we’re lucky, probably a good bit more – but don’t worry. I think that I can see a way in which we can help each other over this. Christ, it’s good to see you, Liam – I only wish your brothers could be here with us as well.”
“So do I, Donal, so do I.”
“Well, what do you say that we do something really big in their memory?”
O’Connell blinked slowly.
“Well, I’d drink to that – but not in coffee.”
He reached into the pocket of the heavy jacket that he had donned upon returning to his car and pulled out a quarter bottle of John Jamieson Irish whiskey. He reached over and poured a generous measure into Murphy’s empty coffee cup, then did the same with his own. He raised his cup in salutation.
“Here’s to something big, Donal!”
Murphy raised his own cup and the two men clinked then together.
“To something big!”
Murphy put the now empty cup back down on the table.
“Liam, there’s something that you need to know about me.”
“Now what would that be after being?”
“Liam, I’m dying.”
O’Connell looked at the other man in shock.
“Dying? Sure and we’re all dying one day at a time, Donal – but, dying? Christ man, but you’re what, fifty? What is it?”
“Yes, I’m fifty, but I’m not going to see fifty-one. I’ve got cancer, Liam – diagnosed a couple of months ago and they reckon I’ll be lucky to see another six months out.”
He paused, and O’Connell was only too aware of unshed tears in the other man’s eyes.
“Jeez, Donal, but that’s awful.”
Murphy nodded slowly, then paused.
“Liam, do you have any more of the Jamieson?”
Without speaking, O’Connell pulled out the bottle again and emptied it into Murphy’s cup. The older man took a small sip and put the cup down again.
“Liam, all my life I’ve fought for the Cause – and so did my da before me, and so did his da, and his. Me great grand-da was at the Dublin Post Office in nineteen sixteen in the Easter Rising. The Brits caught him and hanged him – he was only twenty-nine. All my family have fought for a united Ireland – and I had hoped to see it. Well, now I never will. I know that all the politicians have said that if the folk in the Six Counties ever decide by a majority that they want to combine with the rest of Ireland then it will happen, but when, Liam, when? And can we trust [censored]’ politicians to keep their word? I don’t want to see Ireland still cut in two when I am dead and gone and not have done every last thing that I could to get the Old Country united.”  
O’Connell was only too aware of his friend’s agony and, given his own family history could readily empathise with him.
“So what do you want to do, Donal?”
“I want to go out with a bang – literally. Now, I know that back in the day you were just a lad – but you were a bomb maker, right?”
O’Connell nodded his head slowly, beginning to see where this might be leading.
“Yes, that’s right – I learned from the best.”
“Liam, I want you to make me some bombs – do that and I’ll fund a sub-machine gun for you.”
“How big? What’s your target?”
“Back in nineteen ninety-six, when your bros were killed, when the centre of Manchester came to know that Ireland had had enough of British rule, it didn’t go as well as it might. That police car catching you, Kenneth and Fergus – what were the odds against that? Just sheer bloody bad luck.”
O’Connell nodded.
“That’s right – and it wasn’t just any police car – it was an armed response car. If they’d just been ordinary coppers we’d have taken them out and still been able to set off the bomb. As it was….”
He shook his head in sad remembrance of the day.
“So, what’s the target, Donal?”
“Corporation Street again, but with a bit of a difference. What you and your brothers tried to do was the way we should have gone at the time – cut down as many bloody Brits as possible, not just wreck some shops and office buildings. What I have in mind is a bomb more or less where the nineteen ninety-six one was – but nothing like as big, nothing at all. Instead, my idea is a bomb that when it goes off it scares people into running, running away from the site of the explosion – and that then one or two more bombs hit them as they are running. Could you do that for me?”
O’Connell needed to think only for a moment or two.
“Yes, that could be done, Donal.”
“What would you need?”
“Well, I don’t suppose you’ve got a source of Semtex, have you?”
Murphy shook his head in negation.
“Then we have two choices. Either we steal some dynamite from a legitimate source – and that’s much harder to do now than back in the day, or we make our own explosives.”
“I don’t know anywhere with a legal stock of dynamite – there’s some used for quarrying not all that far away, but the amount they use isn’t all that great and they don’t store it at the site, just bring it there from somewhere else when it is needed.”
“That doesn’t sound too promising, so it’s back to making our own. For that we need fertiliser, and quite a bit of it. We need a fertiliser based on potassium nitrate – not all of them are – and that sort of fertiliser is regulated pretty carefully when it’s being made and when it’s first sold – but once it’s been delivered to individual farms – who knows how careful the farmers may be with it? It’s the old ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ sort of thing.”
“Looks well worth looking into then, Liam. I know a few lads who would be willing to pop out into the countryside to see what they can find.”
“Are you sure that they can be trusted, Donal – I don’t want to find meself back inside again. I like it on the outside too much to want to go back at all.”
“Don’t worry about that – I’ll make sure that they only know about me, not about you – after all, what have I got to worry about? Six months from now and I’ll be past caring anyway. How much fertiliser do we need?”
“Well, for three bombs – and the first one doesn’t need to be anything grand, it’s just there to get the buggers running, so one fifty-six pound bag will do for that one. The other two – they’re the real thing – I’d want four bags for each, five or even six would be better, but we can get by with four.”
“Right, Liam, I’ll see what I can come up with – by the bye – where are you living? Is it somewhere you could make the bombs?”
“Jeez, no – I’m shacked up with a lass from Derry – her family came over here in the seventies and although she never says, I reckon her da was for the Cause – he died a while back and she moved into her own place, a wee flat behind Albert Square. No chance of making the bombs there – no, we’ll need somewhere like a lock-up garage or the like.”
“No worry – I’ll see to that. Now, the size of the two big bombs – they’ll need vans really, won’t they?”
“Transits or the like would be ideal, but any small van would do.”
“How long would you need to actually make the bombs?”
“Once I’ve got the fertiliser, three to four days is all, ‘cos I’ll get the other stuff together before hand – or better still perhaps you can help out there as well, Donal. I don’t reckon the police are looking very hard for me, but I did break my licence conditions by leaving the approved place.”
“So what do you need?”
“Well, for the big bombs, they need a container each – an empty forty-five gallon metal oil drum or the like would be best. Then for the shrapnel – quite apart from the bits of the van that will be flying around – say twenty pounds or so of big steel nuts – twelve millimetres would be fine- for each of the big bombs. For the little bomb – a smaller container, doesn’t really matter what it is – no shrapnel, just the bang and a few bits of the car or whatever that it is in will be enough to start a real panic.”
“OK, leave the shopping list to me. I’ll be in touch end of next week to let you know how it’s all going – I’ve got your mobile number, so wait to hear from me. Oh, and how are you fixed for transport – you came in a motor, it’s not hot is it?”
O’Connell shook his head.
“No way. No, the lass I mentioned – a sort of cousin or something has a used car lot – he’s let me borrow one of his stock.”
“Oh, and what else is on the shopping list?”
“I need sulphur and charcoal – what I’m making is just old-fashioned gunpowder. For the big bombs about thirty pound of sulphur each and twenty pounds of charcoal. Sulphur shouldn’t be too hard to come by – gets used a lot by vets, used in some weed killers. And with all the barbeque supplies  the charcoal should be easy as well – probably even easier – just buy it from a hardware shop. Oh, and pro-rata on the sulphur and charcoal for the little bomb.”
Thank you for the days, the days you gave me.
The older I get, the better I was!