Forty-eight hours later, O’Connell drove onto the industrial wasteland that McLean had described; his transport was a borrowed Astra, borrowed from Sophie Clarke, who was only too willing to lend the vehicle to further whatever element of an anti-establishment agenda that she believed that O’Connell might be pursuing.
He waited for some ten minutes before another car entered the area. This one stopped a few yards away from him and McLean got out. He wasn’t alone. A second man climbed out of the vehicle, and whilst McLean, perhaps fifty years old, five feet six or so and perhaps twelve stone and giving the impression of being less than fit, his companion was different. Six feet two or three tall, he had the look of a bodybuilder about him, and was clearly there to ensure that McLean came to no harm during the transaction.
It was something that O’Connell had anticipated and prepared for. The fact that McLean had selected a deserted location, a location totally devoid of witnesses was even more to O’Connell’s advantage than it was to McLean’s. It was a mistake, a mistake that McLean would soon regret.
O’Connell advanced on the two men, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. McLean wasted no time.
“Got the money?”
“Yes,” O’Connell reached with his right hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew a bulky brown paper envelope. He extended his arm, offering the package to McLean, but the smaller man indicated, with a nod of his head, that it should be handed to his companion. O’Connell too another pace forward, proffering the package to the big man, who made to take it. As he did so, O’Connell’s left hand, which had disappeared from view as the attention of both the other men focussed on the package, suddenly appeared from behind his back, holding a long bladed knife which he plunged into the big man’s body, just below the sternum and angled sharply upwards, perforating the left lung and reaching towards the heart. The man’s knees folded beneath him and he pitched forward; O’Connell stepped back, letting the man’s weight and motion drag the knife blade from the massive wound. For a moment McLean was rooted to the spot in shock, then he started to move, but he moved too late as O’Connell closed on him and delivered a second fatal blow to a second victim.
Ignoring the bigger man for the moment, O’Connell quickly searched McLean’s body, relieving the corpse of a well filled wallet and an oilcloth package which proved to contain the promised Browning pistol. He then turned to his other victim, whose wallet revealed him to be one John Gregg. John Gregg also had a wallet, a wallet containing a bit over one hundred pounds, but he also had two further items of interest – a roll of banknotes and a pistol. Perhaps in keeping with the size of the man, the gun was also large – a big Smith and Wesson forty-four Magnum ‘Must have seen himself as Clint Eastwood’ O’Connell mused to himself. Momentarily, O’Connell wondered if the gun merchant would have played fair with him had he really had a thousand pounds to hand over, but the thought was academic. O’Connell possessed nothing like a thousand pounds, he had an over-riding need for a weapon, so the end result was inevitable. Tossing his finds into his borrowed car, he dragged the two bodies into McLean’s car. He momentarily considered keeping Gregg’s big revolver as well as the Browning, but quickly dismissed the idea – it was too big to be carried around easily and had no spare ammunition other than the six rounds already loaded into it, so he threw it into the car on top of its late owner. He then tossed a small package in with the two men, opened the windows but shut the doors of the car, and retrieved a can of petrol from the Astra’s boot, petrol which he splashed liberally into the interior of McLean’s vehicle. He then got into his own motor and drove off.
Ten minutes later the small package burst into violent flames as the timer ran down, and ignited the petrol soaked car interior and the clothes of the dead men.
In the meantime, O’Connell had stopped in a side street and examined his finds. McLean’s wallet proved to contain over nine hundred pound, mostly in fifty pound notes, whilst the Browning pistol looked to be in good working order, complete with a cardboard box containing twenty-five round of ammunition. The roll of money that he had taken from Gregg was a pleasant surprise – just on three thousand pounds in fifty pound notes, and he assumed that the money was probably McLean’s but that he had relied on Gregg to keep it safe whilst dealings with unscrupulous men were conducted. He checked his watch; it was still not quite half past ten, so he drove away from the docks area and was soon on the M74 headed for Carlisle. He wondered how long it would take Sophie Clarke to realise that he was not coming back, and neither was her Astra. He felt a momentary twinge of sadness about the girl, she’d been a pleasant enough companion and good fun in bed, but she really should have stayed in Esher, not ventured into the wider world where nasty things happened to silly little girls – however, if having a lover walk away and take her car with him was the biggest disappointment that she ever suffered in life, she wouldn’t be doing too badly.
Four and a half hours later, having scrupulously observed every speed limit on the way, he drove into the outskirts of Manchester. Sophie would presumably at some stage overcome her reluctance at dealing with ‘authority’ and report the Astra stolen, but he reckoned that he had at least a couple of days grace before that happened. It was then that a thought struck him – time to test the power of love. He phoned Sophie’s mobile.
“Hello, Liam, is that you?”
“Yes, love – look, listen, I haven’t much time. You know I went out to meet a man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought that he was a comrade from the old days – but he was an undercover cop. I belted him and made a run for it, and I’m out of Glasgow entirely at the moment. Thing is –if I’m on foot they’re going to catch me for sure. Can I borrow the Astra for a few days, please?”
“Yes, of course you can – just take care of yourself and come back safe, please!”
“I will, love – you’re a star – and I promise you that this is all for the cause.”
He rang off, greatly pleased with himself. Now there was no chance of the Astra being reported as stolen, so he had clean wheels. Never, he thought to himself, underestimate the gullibility of the young in love.
It was now nearly two months since Murphy had been arrested and O’Connell felt that whilst the police still wanted him in connection with the attempted bombing, the initial frenetic activity must surely, by now, have been scaled down a bit. In that assumption he was almost one hundred percent correct; only Detective Superintendent Alison still harboured the belief that O’Connell would, at some stage, return to Manchester. He felt that way because he believed that O’Connell would never rest until he had avenged the deaths of his two brothers at the hands of one time Detective Sergeant Larry Lamb.
I was beginning to wonder if I might, at least for the time being, be safe from Liam O’Connell’s attention, but despite that I was still exercising extreme caution wherever that was possible. I knew only too well that if O’Connell did decide to attempt another ambush, all the advantages lay with him. I was permanently risking prison by not only having the pistol that Richard Lane had acquired for me, but by also carrying it with me whenever I left the house. Whilst walking it was tucked into the waistband of my trousers, snuggling into the small of my back. Whilst driving it lay on the passenger seat beside me, hidden from casual view by nothing more sophisticated than a light jacket lying on top of it. They were the best precautions of which I was able, but likely to be woefully inadequate if O’Connell did make a move against me.
It was early in the evening, but it had been a dull, dreary day and darkness was already closing in when my phone rang. I lifted the receiver and put it to my ear, wondering who might be calling – I received few phone calls.
“Lamb”
“Mr. Lamb, it’s Richard Lane.”
Surprised at the identity of my caller, I wondered why he was contacting me; we had neither spoken nor seen each other since he had obtained the Beretta for me.
“Nice to hear from you again, Mr. Lane.”
“I’m afraid that I am not the bearer of good tidings, Mr. Lamb. I have received news of Liam O’Connell.”
My heart sank; this was the last thing that I had wanted to hear. Lane continued.
“My contacts tell me that he has been seen in Glasgow recently, where he has been associating with a Mark Harris, a man whom I suppose might best be described as a small time crook of all trades. I asked my contact if he would be kind enough to keep an eye on O’Connell, but he called me earlier today to say that the man hasn’t been seen anywhere for the last two days. There is also something further to add. Two days ago there was a somewhat singular crime on a piece of wasteland in the Glasgow docks area. A car was found burnt out with two bodies in it. The bodies were identified as those of Sean McLean and John Gregg. McLean was known locally as an armourer to the various gags; Gregg was his bodyguard, a much needed person in the circles in which McLean moved. The bodies were very badly burned and cause of death was difficult to determine, but it seems that both were dead before the flames consumed them and that they had almost certainly been stabbed to death. The really interesting thing, however, is the way in which the car was set light to – there were the remnants of a timer actuated small explosion to set off the petrol with which everything had been doused – in other words, a bomb maker was involved.”
My blood ran cold. I could see only one explanation; O’Connell had been in Glasgow and had killed two men, men who could have provided him with a firearm of some sort. The time lag since he had escaped from Manchester was significant – it was long enough for him to assume that the initial energy devoted to searching for him must have been reduced, even if the search was theoretically still ongoing.
“Have you told anyone else about all this?”
“No, I need to protect my sources, but obviously you may feel the need to alert your friend, Detective Superintendent Alison. O’Connell was seen by somebody who used to know him leaving the English Lounge last night. As he would have been recognised he couldn’t risk following O’Connell to see where he went – the man is after all, a known killer.”
What he had said just about confirmed my suspicions that Lane had contacts in the police, and from the sound of it, not just in Manchester, but at the very least in Police Scotland as well. I wondered uneasily just how far his contacts and his influence might stretch. As long as I had been in the force there had always been suspicions that Lane had a finger in many pies, not all of them savoury, but his usefulness as a source of information had led to him being not looked at too closely, not least by myself. I wondered what to tell Jim Alison.
