ments for us to board the Glasgow to London express. They’ll drop us at Dunhill. We’ll also have the oaf who had Cussane and lost him in the first place, Sergeant Brodie. At least he knows the local area.’
‘Fine,’ Devlin said. That takes care of everything from the sound of it. You’re armed, I hope?’
‘Yes. Am I permitted to know where we’re going?’ Trent asked.
Fox said, ‘A village called Larwick not far from this Dunhill place. There’s a farm outside which, according to our information, operates as a safe house for criminals on the run. We think our man could be there.’
‘But in that case, you should let me call in reinforcements.’
‘No,’ Devlin told him. ‘We understand the farm in question is in an isolated area. The movement of people in any kind of numbers, never mind men in uniform, would be bound to be spotted. If our man is there, he’d run for it again.’
‘So we’d catch him,’ Trent said.
Devlin glanced at Fox who nodded, and the Irishman turned back to Trent. ‘The night before last, three gunmen of the Provisional IRA tried to take him on the other side of the water. He saw them all off.’
‘Good God!’
‘Exactly. He’d see off a few of your chaps, too, before they got to him. Better to try it our way, Chief Inspector,’ Harry Fox said. ‘Believe me.’
From the crest of the hill above Glendhu, Cussane and Morag crouched in the wet bracken and looked down. The track had petered out, but in any case, it had seemed politic to Cussane to leave the jeep up there out of sight. There was nothing like an ace in the hole if anything went sour. Better the Mungos didn’t know about that.
‘It doesn’t look much,’ Morag said.
Which was an understatement, for the farm presented an unlovely picture. One barn without its roof, tiles missing from the roof of the main building. There were potholes in the yard
filled with water, a truck minus its wheels, a decaying tractor, red with rust.
The girl shivered suddenly. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling. I don’t like that place.’
He stood up, picked up his bag, and took the Stechkin from his pocket. ‘I’ve got this. There’s no need to worry. Trust me.’
‘Yes,’ she said and there was a kind of passion in her voice. ‘I do trust you.’
She took his arm and together they started down through the bracken towards the farm.
Hector Mungo had driven down to Larwick early that morning, mainly because he’d run out of cigarettes although come to think of it, they’d run out of almost everything. He purchased bacon, eggs, various canned foods, a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch and told the old lady who ran the general store, to put it on the bill, which she did because she was afraid of Mungo and his brother. Everyone was afraid of them. On his way out, Hector helped himself to a morning paper as an afterthought, got into the old van and drove away.
He was a hard-faced man of sixty-two, sullen and morose in an old flying jacket and tweed cap, a grey stubble covering his chin. He turned the van into the yard, pulled up and got out with the cardboard box filled with his purchases and ran for the door through the rain, kicking it open.
The kitchen he entered was indescribably filthy, the old stone sink piled high with dirty pots. His brother, Angus, sat at the table, head in hands, staring into space. He was younger than his brother, forty-five, with cropped hair and a coarse and brutal face that was rendered even more ugly by the old scar that bisected the right eye which had been left milky white.
‘I thought you’d never come.’ He reached in the box as his brother put it down and found the whisky, opening it and taking a long swallow. Then he found the cigarettes.
‘You idle bastard,’ Hector told him. ‘You might have put the fire on.’
Angus ignored him, simply took another pull at the bottle, lit a cigarette and opened the newspaper. Hector moved across to the sink and found a match to light the Calor gas stove beside it. He paused, looking out into the yard as Cussane and Morag appeared and approached the house.