Following the instructions he had been given to be discreet, Detective Inspector Thomas Barry decided to approach his destination on foot, going out through the main gate of Scotland Yard and turning left up the Victoria Embankment. Across the bustling strip of road was Victoria Pier, while ahead of him were the Embankment Gardens and beyond that the sooty, utilitarian hulk of the Hungerford Railway Bridge.
It was overcast, not surprising for April in London, and there was a nip in the air, but Barry was happy for any air at all after spending most of the day in the stuffy confines of the red and gray brick pile behind him, surrounded by a thousand men in cramped offices wearing wool suits or uniforms who sat smoking endless cigarettes and reeking pipes.
The policeman allowed himself a quick smile. If the glimmers and dips out there waited long enough, Jacks like him would wind up dying of asphyxiation. His throat was dry as dust, there was a distant but distinct little rattle in his chest and his eyes were burning. Notwithstanding all of that he reached into the pocket of his overcoat, pulled out an almost empty tin of Players and lit his twentieth cigarette of the day, letting the first inhalation clutch at his lungs for a rich moment before releasing the smoke into the chilly atmosphere.
It was dusk and most of the automobiles moving along the roadway had their headlamps on. Across the Thames he could see the twinkling lights of Southwark. As a cab rattled by with a window down Barry briefly heard the sound of a woman’s high-pitched laughter. Hardly the sights and sounds of a great city on the verge of going to war, but then again, even the prime minister was still denying it would come to that.
That afternoon he’d lunched at Overton’s with two friends, Bob Fabian and Morris Black, both colleagues at C.I.D. Over the fish course he’d tried to bring up the possibility that Herr Hitler had designs on more than Czechoslovakia and the port of Memel in Lithuania, his most recent acquisition, but neither man had seemed very interested in the subject.
In Morris’s case it was at least understandable. The poor bugger had lost his wife, Fay, to cancer only a few months before and was still in mourning, but he’d expected more from Bob. Detective Inspector Fabian, however, seemed far more concerned with the fact that his cousin, a footman at Cliveden, Lady Astor’s country house, was making more in gratuities from her famous and infamous guests than Bob was making in salary. Nobody, it seemed, was concerned with impending doom unless it was at their doorstep.
Keeping to his roundabout course Barry turned away from the Embankment at Horse Guards Avenue and made his way toward Whitehall. His summons to the meeting at hand had only come on his return from lunch and had been delivered in a sealed envelope by none other than P. C. Childers, secretary to Ronald Martin Howe, assistant commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Department, or C Division, of Scotland Yard and the man who, ultimately, was Barry’s boss.
The note, written in Howe’s own tight, neat hand, was, like Howe himself, brief and to the point. Using utmost discretion Detective Inspector Barry was to present himself at the Horse Guards entrance to Treasury at precisely 6:00 P.M. that evening, where he would be met by Mr. Charles Calthrop, a clerk of that office, who would escort him to his final destination.
Mr. Calthrop would be wearing a dark suit, a red tie and spectacles and would be standing at the reception desk to the right of the doors. Detective Inspector Barry would identify himself to Mr. Calthrop by showing his warrant card. All very cloak and dagger, which led Barry to believe that the summons probably had something to do with the Irish situation. God only knew what that had to do with Treasury, unless the boyos had planted one of their ill-made bombs there, which in the light of recent events seemed unlikely. The Republicans had taken credit for almost a dozen incidents in Birmingham and London the past week, all the explosions taking place in public toilets.
The IRA had been active in London and elsewhere in England since January, and even though there’d been a number of arrests there was no sign that the activity was slacking off. Normally the Sinn Feiners were handled by Special Branch, but Barry, Morris Black, Fabian and a dozen detective inspectors had been pressed into service as well since the attacks had become so widespread. Barry had been particularly useful since he still had enough of the Shandon in his voice to ask questions where others couldn’t.
Thomas Patrick Barry had been born January 19, 1899, in the gloomy gray confines of Mercy Hospital, Cork City, Ireland, at three minutes past midnight. The following day he had been moved to the foundlings ward and his mother, Mary Margaret Barry, was escorted by a priest and two nuns across the old wrought-iron footbridge spanning the River Lee to the Magdalene Laundry in Sunday’s Well. Mary Margaret had been eighteen at the time of his birth, a chambermaid at the old Victoria Hotel on St. Patrick Street. She never disclosed the name of the man who had impregnated her, even after being severely beaten by her own father, a malter for the nearby Murphy’s Brewery.
Raised by monks at the Capuchin Orphanage in Cork, young Thomas Barry received a good enough education, but ran away at fifteen and joined the British army by lying about his age. He fought in the infantry and managed to survive four years of war unscathed from the First Battle of the Marne to the Second Battle of the Somme, and finally, Amiens. He’d gone into the war as a private and demobbed out in London in January 1919 as a sergeant. With nothing to look forward to in Cork or anywhere else in Ireland except strife and poverty, the twenty-year-old successfully wrote the British Civil Service entrance examinations, applied at Peel House, and was accepted as a candidate for the London Metropolitan Police Force.
After eight weeks at Eagle Hut, the training school in the Strand, named for the YMCA soldier’s center that had previously occupied the building, Thomas Patrick Barry, late of Cork and the Great War, was made a probationary constable. Slightly less than two years after that, he was promoted to detective sergeant. Then he followed the regular line of promotion for the next twelve years and eventually the assignment to the elite Flying Squad at about the same time as Morris Black and Bob Fabian. In 1929, on forced leave after rupturing a ligament in his hip during a chase, Barry went back to Ireland for the first time in almost fifteen years, taking the packet steamer from Fishguard to Rosslare, and from there down to Cork City by train.
Enlisting the aid of the local Garda office he was told that the commercial laundries operated by the Magdalene Order all over the Republic were little more than prisons for young women deemed to have sinned, and since they had never been arrested or charged within the court system, the inmates had no recourse in law. The women had been given into the hands of the Church by their priest or parent, and only the Church had the power to release them. Since the women worked fifteen hours a day for the most meager room and board and were paid no wages, releasing them was hardly cost-effective and rarely occurred.
Barry was advised that a direct confrontation with the mother superior or the local bishop would be inflammatory and unproductive, but discreet inquiries were made on his behalf and he eventually learned that his mother had died of pleurisy and pneumonia after being held prisoner in the laundry above Sunday’s Well for almost seventeen years. Barry was directed to the graveyard where the women who died at the Magdalene Laundry were buried and found that the graves were all nameless, marked only by whitewashed wooden crosses. He left Ireland that same day and never returned. Nor had he set foot in a Catholic church again.
Barry passed under the looming shadow of the black-spired pile of Whitehall Court and continued on past the bulk of the War Office to Whitehall itself, pausing to let a pair of No. 18 omnibuses growl by in opposite directions before he crossed the wide thoroughfare and turned west again. Finally, after having made a meandering three-quarters circle that he hoped was discreet enough to meet with Assistant Commissioner Howe’s approval, Barry went up a short flight of steps and entered the Treasury Building. According to his wristwatch and the booming chimes of Big Ben only a few blocks away it was spot-on six.
As promised, Calthrop, a tall, slim man with thinning hair, spectacles and a red tie was standing beside the reception desk. After Barry introduced himself and showed his warrant card, he was given a brief, tight smile in return. Calthrop then led the detective inspector down a maze of interconnecting stairs and narrow corridors, most of which seemed to lead in a roughly southwesterly direction. The tall windows were all shuttered, and after two or three minutes Barry was thoroughly disoriented.
Eventually they reached a narrow, unmarked oak door guarded by a young uniformed police constable. The PC had the bored, slightly pained expression of a man enduring a punishment detail. Calthrop stood away. “Someone will see to you on the other side,” he said. Calthrop nodded to the constable, who reached over and opened the door for Barry.
The detective went through, almost tripping as he stumbled down a short flight of steps, then stepped through an open doorway into a long, narrow room beyond. He suddenly realized where he was. He’d seen this exact spot in a photo in the Picture Post the week before. Just as it had been in the pictures, at the far end of the room in a niche above a small coal fireplace there was a pale marble bust of Wellington, and to the right of the fireplace was a row of pegs in the wall hung with hats and coats. It was madness. This was the antechamber to the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister of England.
Immediately to Barry’s left there was a broad stairway and on his right were a number of darkly varnished oak doors. He looked over his shoulder, positive that Calthrop had somehow led him astray, and he had already begun to turn back toward the steps he’d come down when the door on his right opened and a man a little younger than himself stepped out into the hallway.
The man was dressed formally in a black suit, white shirt and celluloid collar that made him look very much like a shorter, clean-shaven version of Prime Minister Chamberlain himself. He wore a signet ring with a carved armorial crest and a regimental tie. The handkerchief in his breast pocket showed three points and appeared to have been starched and ironed.
“Alec Douglas-Home,” he said, pronouncing the last as Hume in the Scottish fashion. “I expect you’re the policeman.” The voice was pleasant, layered with Eton and Oxford and just imperious enough to raise Barry’s hackles. He added a little too much lilt to his response, watching for the man’s reaction.
“Right enough, sir. Detective Inspector Thomas Patrick Barry, at your service.”
“Ah,” Douglas-Home responded, a little coolness creeping into his voice, “like the tea.”
Barry smiled. “No, sir. Like the architect who designed the Parliament Buildings. A great-uncle, I believe.” It wasn’t true, of course, but that didn’t matter.
“Um,” said Douglas-Home. “I’m PPS to Mr. Chamberlain. He couldn’t attend the meeting so he asked me to be his proxy.”
Barry had no intention of asking what a PPS was, assuming that it meant either Principal Private or Principal Parliamentary Secretary. Instead of saying anything he just nodded.
“The others are waiting,” Douglas-Home went on. He turned, walked down the corridor a little way, then opened another door, standing aside to let the Scotland Yard man precede him. Barry found himself in a small vestibule with a surprisingly tatty little piece of blue and green Axminster on the floor. Through a tall window directly in front of him he could see across the garden and a low stone wall as dusk settled on Horse Guards Parade. On his right there was another plain, dark door, on his left a set of double doors, painted white.
Chamberlain’s man walked past him, knocked lightly on the left of the double doors, then opened it and stood aside again. Barry took a single deep breath and let it out, wishing there’d been time for another cigarette. He walked past Douglas-Home and entered the Cabinet Room, once again recognizable from the story in the Picture Post.
It was at least thirty or forty feet long, high-ceilinged, the immense green-felt-covered table that ran the room’s length lit by three electric candelabra. The walls were cream colored and bare except for a single small portrait hanging above the fireplace. There was a plain wooden case clock ticking away on the white marble mantelpiece below the painting. The carpet on the floor was the same pattern and color as the Axminster in the vestibule. Two tall windows faced north, another two west, and all four were hidden behind heavy green drapes that matched the color of the table covering. All in all it was surprisingly drab.
There were four men seated at the far end of the table. To Barry’s left he could see prim, thin-lipped Ronald Howe, deputy assistant commissioner for C.I.D., and beside him was Sir Norman Kendal, the gaunt, austere head of Special Branch and one notch in rank above Howe. Across from the two Scotland Yard men was a tall, balding figure wearing round, steel-rimmed spectacles and the uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Engineers. At the end of the table, seated in the only chair with arms, was the home secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare. In front of each place at the table was a green blotting pad, a leather folder, an inkstand and a cut glass ashtray. Both Hoare and the man in the army uniform were smoking cigarettes and Kendal was smoking a pipe.
Douglas-Home closed the door to the Cabinet Room, walked the length of the table and sat down to the right of the uniformed man. Barry remained standing at the far end of the table, waiting. Finally Howe spoke, his voice mildly irritated.
“Sit down, Inspector.”
“Yes, sir,” said Barry. He pulled out the chair at the end of the table and seated himself. He could feel the tin of cigarettes against the top of his thigh but he wasn’t about to light one up here unless he was invited. He folded his hands over the leather-covered folder on the table in front of him and waited while Douglas-Home made the introductions, discovering that the man in uniform was an intelligence officer named Joseph Holland.
“Do you have any idea at all why you’ve been asked to come here?” Hoare asked from the opposite end of the table.
“None whatsoever, sir.”
“Theories?”
“No, sir.”
“We have a situation,” said the home secretary. He took a long pull on his cigarette, then let the smoke dribble slowly from his nostrils.
“Yes, sir?”
“Indeed,” Hoare murmured. “A grave situation.” He turned his head slightly and nodded toward Holland.
The balding man pulled his spectacles up onto his nose and flipped open the leather folder in front of him.
“We have received information about a plot to assassinate Their Majesties on their upcoming tour of Canada and the United States. We have reason to believe that the Irish Republican Army is involved.” Holland paused and looked across the table to Kendal and Howe. Barry saw Kendal’s head move fractionally as he nodded. Holland turned and looked down the table. “Presumably you know who Sean Russell is.”
“The IRA chief of staff,” Barry answered quietly. “And not well liked.”
“Quite so,” said Holland. “Odd sort of fellow. Early forties. Big, red-haired, drinks too loudly and talks too much. Two years ago he was thrown out of the movement for embezzling money for an automobile. Red sport coupé, actually. Last year he was elected chief of staff.” Barry saw the bald man’s lips twitch in a fractional smile. “They really are a strange lot.”
“What evidence is there that Russell is involved?” Barry asked.
“Lieutenant Colonel Holland is not at liberty to divulge that information,” said Hoare. “Suffice it to say that such evidence does exist.” The home secretary paused. “Regardless of that, Inspector Barry, what are your feelings about such a plot and this Russell man’s involvement?”
“I don’t think I know enough to express an opinion on the subject,” Barry answered, carefully trying to be diplomatic. Express the wrong opinion and he could easily be back patrolling the East End as a constable. He still had no idea why he had been summoned to a meeting at this level—certainly not because his opinions were of any particular value to the home secretary or the mysterious Lieutenant Colonel Holland.
“Don’t be coy, man!” Howe snapped. “Hazard a guess.”
Barry tried to arrange his thoughts. He finally sat forward in the chair. “I don’t believe it. Not Russell’s involvement anyway.”
“Why?” Hoare asked.
“Because it doesn’t make any sense, sir. Russell is fighting for full Irish independence, North and South together. If the IRA was involved in such an assassination Russell would get his unification by way of an English invasion and martial law being declared.” Barry looked directly at the home secretary. “I don’t think Prime Minister Chamberlain would have any other choice.” The policeman shook his head. “As I said, there’s no logic to it.”
“But the plot exists,” reiterated Holland. “There’s no doubt about it.” He lifted his shoulders. “And no doubt that Sean Russell is somehow involved. He sailed for New York from Le Havre this afternoon on a German ship, the Stavangerfjord. It has been suggested he’s gone to raise funds, and we have some information regarding his connection with a well-known American film star.” He blinked. “Another Irishman, as a matter of fact. A Mr. Flynn.”
“From what you’ve been saying, there is presumably some reason to think that the assassination is to take place either in Canada or the United States.”
Holland nodded. “The United States.”
“Curious,” said Barry. “Much easier to kill them here I should think. His Majesty likes to shoot and the queen spends a great deal of time in the country.”
“We’re assuming a political reason for the location,” said Holland. Barry nodded. He glanced quickly in Hoare’s direction. The home secretary was well known for his strong position supporting appeasement. The death of the king and queen on American soil would cause a rift between England and the United States that would take decades to heal. “This is an extremely important diplomatic mission, among other things. We all know how difficult His Majesty finds being in the public eye, let alone speaking in public, yet he is doing it, and doing it at a very difficult time.”
“I assume appropriate security measures have been taken,” said Barry.
Kendal, the head of Special Branch, made a small snorting sound, presumably annoyed by what he considered to be the detective’s effrontery. “You assume correctly, Inspector. We’ve already dispatched a team of men to go over every foot of rail the royal train will cover in both Canada and the United States. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are rounding up any potential troublemakers and we’re getting the same level of cooperation from the FBI. Their Majesties will be accompanied by Cameron and Perkins, the royal bodyguards, and there will be at least a dozen of my men aboard the train who will accompany the king and queen everywhere. Local police and highway patrol officers will further protect Their Majesties in the United States, and they will also be provided special agents from the State Department’s Office of Security.”
“More than enough protection, I should think,” commented the home secretary. “And of the best sort by the sounds of it.”
Barry said nothing, but he could almost hear Brother Emmett as the tonsured bastard stripped the First Place rugby ribbons from the low walls of his little cubicle in the orphanage: “Pride goeth before a fall, boyo. You’d be wise to remember that, wise indeed.” This done a day after the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. Barry had been thirteen years old.
“Cui bono,” he said, dredging up some hard-earned Capuchin Latin. “Who does it benefit?”
Hoare’s small mouth pinched even more. “I beg your pardon?”
“In a crime, look to see who profits. Find the motive, find your man. The best way to protect against a threat is to discover its source and remove it.”
“Rather what I’ve been saying about all of this,” said Holland gratefully. “If such an assassination attempt were successful, who would profit?” He tapped his cigarette nervously on the edge of the glass ashtray in front of him, looking around the table. No one spoke. “The Nazis,” he said finally. “Germany.”
“One nation assassinating the sovereign of another?” said Hoare. “It’s preposterous! Not done!”
Holland wasn’t fazed by the outburst. “It’s the most logical answer to the inspector’s question, I’m afraid. The murder of the king and queen in America would have a devastating effect. It would drive a wedge between our two countries that would last an age, let alone the duration of a European war.” He paused, glancing down at the open folder in front of him. “The German government couldn’t directly orchestrate such a thing, but they could use someone like Russell to do it for them, and we already know the Nazis have actively supported the IRA for years.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Kills several birds with one stone, actually—dividing and conquering in the first instance and leaving the throne vacant in the second.”
“I’m not quite certain what you’re suggesting,” said Douglas-Home.
Holland answered, a note of unease appearing in his voice. “There is some evidence of a recent meeting between Mr. Flynn and the king’s brother at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. There were also two high-ranking members of the Nazi Party present.”
“By the king’s brother I assume you mean the Duke of Windsor?” Douglas-Home asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Holland said. “The duke may no longer be in formal line of succession, but then neither is the Princess Elizabeth old enough to assume the throne. A regent would have to be appointed until the princess reached her majority.” Holland paused again, then reached out and took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. “I doubt there could be a more popular choice among the people than the Duke of Windsor for the appointment.” He put the water glass down on the table. “In effect, he would be king again and the duchess would be his morgantic queen.”
“Ridiculous!” said Hoare. “Utter madness!”
“Perhaps so, sir,” said Douglas-Home smoothly. “But I’m quite sure the prime minister would just as soon we erred on the side of caution in this matter.”
“Um,” said Hoare, “perhaps.”
“I’ve reviewed the material myself,” Douglas-Home continued. He glanced at Holland. “It is clearly substantive.”
“What do you suggest then?” Hoare asked.
Douglas-Home smiled across the table at Kendal. “I think we can assume that Special Branch has done as much as possible to ensure the safety of Their Majesties, but there would be no harm in having a discreet, independent inquiry into the matter.”
“What would this inquiry of yours entail?” Hoare asked.
“It has already been discussed,” said Kendal. “All we need is your final approval.” He tilted his head toward Howe. “Deputy Assistant Commissioner Howe has offered to second Inspector Barry to Special Branch and our mutual friends at St. Anne’s Gate have agreed to let us use Lieutenant Colonel Holland for the time being. The inspector reports to Holland. Holland reports to me.”
At the far end of the table Thomas Barry was beginning to realize that he had absolutely no say in his own fate. He remembered the Capuchins at the monastery-orphanage in Cork doing exactly the same thing, talking about him as though he wasn’t in the room, discussing various options for his future, most of them religious, none of them even vaguely considering the idea of personal fulfillment or pleasure of any sort at all. It wasn’t much later that he’d run off to join the army. There’d be no running away from this, however.
Douglas-Home leaned forward and looked down the table, bringing Barry out of his brief fugue. “What’s the matter, Barry? You don’t seem terribly interested in these proceedings. I thought it was every Irishman’s dream to go to America.”
Barry looked down the table at the pompous little ass of a man. He smiled. “Now that’s an engaging theory, Mr. Douglas,” he said, letting his voice fall into a music-hall lilt, purposely cropping the priggish man’s name. “The only trouble with it, though, is the fact that I’m not every Irishman.” Chamberlain’s parliamentary secretary reddened visibly, and even Hoare was amused. Douglas-Home snapped his leather folder shut.
“I think our business here is at an end,” he said crisply, and that was that.
Following the meeting, at the lieutenant colonel’s invitation, Barry dined with Holland at his club, the Army and Navy on Pall Mall. It being Sunday, the small dining room at the rear of the club was almost deserted. Barry had the fish while Holland worked his way quickly through a trio of lamb chops, all of it served by a stooped and grizzled waiter with a limp and the disdainful look of a man who had almost certainly once been a sergeant. Neither man spoke very much during the meal except to exchange biographies, although while reciting his, Barry realized his companion probably knew it chapter and verse already.
Holland’s own story had the flat, bland ring of truth, although given his association with the Secret Intelligence Service it could just as easily have been totally false. According to the balding lieutenant colonel he had been educated at the Royal Military Academy, commissioned in the Royal Engineers and attached to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer in 1916. He served in the Balkans. He was mentioned in Dispatches, given the Distinguished Flying Cross, and demobbed as a brevet major.
According to Holland he’d spent most of his time since then wandering from one boring Whitehall appointment to the next, although he did make a vague reference to having been in Dublin for a brief period during the Troubles. He also mentioned that a chest wound during an operation in Sofia had left him with chronic lung problems, which he assumed would keep him out of any front-line posting should war come. All in all his little set-piece biography made him sound like a benign military bureaucrat with a mildly interesting past. A future club bore in the making.
Dinner over, Holland led the detective down a narrow corridor to the large, oak-paneled Coffee Room overlooking Pall Mall, directing him to a small table and a vacant pair of comfortable-looking red leather armchairs beside one of the tall, arched windows. Like the Dining Room, the Coffee Room was almost empty and the only sounds were the occasional snapping of a newspaper being folded back and the hiss of a coal fire burning in the grate at the far end of the room. They ordered coffee and brandy, and when it came, Holland offered Barry one of his Craven A’s and lit it with a plain gold Dunhill lighter.
“I’m still not sure what the purpose of that meeting was,” said Barry. “Howe or Kendal could have briefed me privately at the Yard.”
“Fog,” said Holland, smiling broadly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Fog,” repeated Holland. “My own terminology. Stands for Fear of God. You were meant to be suitably impressed by being allowed into the Cabinet Room. Impressed and cowed. It’s a game they play, the Eton-Oxford set, people like Douglas-Home.” Holland paused and puffed on his cigarette. “Know anything about his background?”
“Nothing,” said Barry.
“Hereditary Scottish lord. Home of the something or other. Eton, third-rate degree in history from Oxford. Never worked a day in his life. Played cricket and shot grouse until he decided he wanted to go into politics. Hasn’t looked back. They’ll give him a knighthood eventually, just for sticking it out, and if he sticks it out even longer he’ll probably be prime minister himself one day. A political dilettante who likes to play at power. Exactly what we don’t need in this next war.”
Barry smiled. “I gather you don’t like him.”
“Not him so much,” Holland answered, warming to the subject. “His type. We gave Kendal the information on Russell and Kendal passed it on to Chamberlain’s Scotty dog. Home doesn’t believe there’s any plot and neither does Hoare. They think it’s going to be a gentleman’s war and gentlemen don’t go about shooting kings and queens.” Holland shook his head. “Well Herr Hitler’s no bloody gentleman, believe me.”
“If they don’t believe there’s any real assassination plot, what am I supposed to be investigating?”
“We’re a sop, you and I,” Holland explained. “They have to make some sort of response to the information simply because we sent the information their way. Our so-called independent investigation is what they’ve decided on. If, by some terrible chance, something does go wrong, then you and I will be the scapegoats.” He smiled bleakly. “It’s the kind of contrivance our cricket-playing friend thrives on. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t, just so long as none of the damning damns him.”
“What do you think about the plot?” Barry asked. He stubbed out his cigarette and took a sip of coffee. “Do you take it seriously?”
“Historically most assassinations are senseless, the acts of lunatics or zealots.”
“Like Russell.”
“I think you know better than that, Inspector. Russell’s neither zealot nor madman. He swaggers about O’Connell Street in a bright red MG to match his hair, looking for young ladies to impress. He’s six feet two inches tall and as far as the records show he’s never shot at anyone in his life. He’s a drinker, a talker, a fund-raiser. Hardly my first choice for an assassin.”
“Sometimes the Irish can fool you.” Barry smiled.
Holland smiled back. “Oh, I’m aware of that, Inspector. Have no doubt on that score. Which is precisely why I think you’re just the right man for this job.”
Barry laughed. “As a sop?”
“As a detective, and a good one too if your record is any indication.” He paused and shook another cigarette from the packet on the table between them. “I could be wrong, of course, but I trust my intuitions about things like this. Whatever Sean Russell’s involvement, there’s rarely smoke without fire, and these days most fires have names like Fritz and Ernst and Heinrich, the de Valeras and McGarritys aside.”
“We’ve got a dozen IRA men under lock and key in the Scrubs but they’ll not likely have much to tell you about Russell, or tell me, for that matter.”
Holland laughed and lit his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair, smiling. “No, we won’t find answers at Wormwood Scrubs.”
“Where then?” Barry asked.
“Dublin, for a start,” Holland answered.