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EARLY SEPTEMBER 1976
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SOME WEEKS LATER BILL Morris checked in to the Feathers Hotel in Liverpool and was given the key to Room 207. One flight of stairs took you to the first floor and room 207 was down the corridor. Bill thought, What a dump. He also thought, Why 207? It should be 107. This isn’t the States. Then he recalled the city’s history built on sea trade with America. Once the home port of many fine ships, the docks were now home to museums and cafes. Must have done it to keep the Yanks happy, I guess, Bill mused and smiled at the irony. He also thought about his Canadian connections and how his mother had crossed the Atlantic in a Cunard liner sailing from Liverpool to New York. She planned a new life in America but Bill had been raised mainly in Canada. Morris was not his birth family name. It was a Sicilian name. His mother’s maiden name was Di Maria. That was the name he was given at birth. He never knew his father.
A few days earlier Blue had left his stone cottage in rural mid-Wales after his goodbye to Rachael and his baby daughter Fannie. His daughter was the apple of his eye and often made him rue keeping Rachael in the dark about his true identity. It’s the price I have to pay, was his means of justification. Although unmarried, Blue and Rachael were a team. She cooked for him, cleaned for him, doted on him and asked no questions.
Blue, no one except Rachael knew his name and even that wasn’t his real name, was embedded in Wales originally by the Metropolitan Police SDS, Special Demonstrations Squad, and its predecessor the Special Operations Squad, targeting and infiltrating the Free Wales Army. Those individuals had fire-bombed many Welsh homes owned by English folks, usually as a second home away from London. They had links to the IRA and Basque terrorist groups and so were deemed worthy of infiltration by the Special Branch. The SDS was spawned by Special Branch. It was the dirty tricks department and did stuff Special Branch dare not do. The SDS was so secretive not even the Met Commissioner knew what it was up to. Its motto – ‘By Any Means Necessary.’
Rachael never told Blue what had happened in the Hungerford hotel room. There was no need. Blue just knew. He swore to get even one day, by any means necessary!
***
REGAN AND RED WERE often to be found in a Tregaron pub in mid-Wales. It was there Blue reacquainted himself with the two Operation Perfume undercover cops.
Blue, as ever larger than life, boomed, “Hey, rascals! What you drinking?”
“Seeing it’s you, a large Scotch. Oh, and a beer,” laughed Regan.
“Okay, what about you, Red?”
“Pint of beer will be fine,” Red smiled.
“Okay boys, you got it.”
A heavy drinking session followed with a few games of pool and a number of joints. Blue could hold both his liquor and weed. Later in the session they were joined by Yosser. Everyone knew him as Yosser. The day wore on. Yosser suggested a game of cards back at his place. All agreed and the small band of hippies walked to Yosser’s home, a small stone cottage decked out as some kind of Hindu shrine.
The cards were secondary to the booze, weed and laughter. The music lurked in the background but was never going to drown out the chat and laughter between these guys. Not one of them seemed to have a job. There was an implicit understanding they all wheeled and dealed in some product or another. No questions asked. This was mid-Wales where people came to escape the busy city, escape nosy neighbours and twitching curtains. This part of the United Kingdom promised the alternative lifestyle with a capital ‘A.’
The card school broke up. Blue decided to stay with Regan and Red for the night in their rented cottage about three hundred yards away from Yosser’s home. This was a cottage they rented as winter approached. Living in the van had become impractical. All three woke the next day with blinding headaches, the hangover from hell.
“Only one thing for it,” Regan croaked through dry lips and arid throat, “hair of the dog.”
“Fucking A,” agreed Blue and Red followed suit.
Several pints of Guinness were the order of the day for breakfast, no food – just Guinness. “Guinness is food,” cried Regan. “It was food for my father, his father and all my Paddy ancestors!”
Red frowned and said, “Begorrah, not the Irish bullshit again.”
All three had toked some weed before the pub “breakfast.” No doubt that contributed to all three howling with laughter at the last exchange between Red and Regan.
The thing was - from both perspectives, Blue on one side and Regan and Red on the other, a relationship had formed. All three felt comfortable in the company of each other. The next day Blue cashed in on this camaraderie when he asked Regan and Red to drive him to Liverpool to meet an old friend of his. The name of the friend was Bill.
There was a knock at the door of Room 207, the Feathers Hotel, Liverpool. Bill was half asleep but in a state of dress. By habit he reached under the pillow to feel for the handle of his gun. It was there and he slipped it into the ankle holster still strapped to his leg. He opened the door of Room 207 and saw Blue, Regan and Red in the doorway.
