'Too holy: we're talking the other end of the spectrum here,' continued Holden. 'Closer to the gates of Hades than St Peter's; guess again.' Holden raised his eyebrows, pausing a moment to give the imminent revelation more drama. 'Danny McGuire.'

Frank's mood picked up a little. 'Danny McGuire: you sure?'

'Couldn't be more so,' replied DI Holden.

'Any witnesses willing to back that up?' asked Frank.

'Better than that, Chief,' replied John, grinning. 'We've had an E4A close-surveillance team running an op on McGuire from a few weeks before the list was stolen: more a stroke of luck on our part than forward planning, but it could prove to be very useful. If anyone's going to get busy round about now it'll be him. They've got snaps of him leaving the church.'

'Let's get a hold of those as soon as possible,' said Frank.

'Should be arriving back at HQ any minute,' replied DI Holden. 'A couple of the E4A team are heading over for a debrief. I told Sheena to send them straight up.'

Frank nodded. 'Good. We don't want to screw this up because we're not communicating within our own departments.'

The men had reached the dark-blue unmarked police car. Warren extended a thin telescopic pole with a mirror on the end and made a cursory check under the vehicle for explosives, then held the rear door open. Holden and Frank shuffled in, then Warren made his way round to the driver's door and climbed in as well.

'Turn the heater up full, David, would you, it's like a bloody fridge in here I've got a couple of hairy ice-cubes where my balls should be,' said Frank, shuddering as if he had to illustrate the point further. 'Danny McGuire, eh?' Frank kept it flat. 'And the two men were definitely meeting each other, they didn't just happen to be attending the same prayer group?'

'They were the only two in the church apart from the priest, Father Anthony,' said David Warren. 'We've already had a chat with him, but he's one of them, so he's not confirming anything one way or the other. Apparently he turned a shaky shade of green when he heard that McFarlane was dead,' continued DI Holden. 'Danny McGuire got a call from McFarlane the night before asking for the meet. E4A have a tap on his phone. They're transcribing the conversation.'

'I wonder what brought McFarlane back to Northern Ireland after all this time; I haven't heard of the little fucker for a good few years,' said Frank. 'In fact, I thought he was already dead.'

'Who knows,' replied Holden. 'The last intelligence we had on him, he was trying to kill the Prime Minister with a car bomb, then he vanished off the radar. But that was quite a while ago. I bet he's wishing he'd stayed put, eh?'

'A murder victim, executed like a tout, and a top hit man together in the same church just hours before his killing. It doesn't get much better than that,' said Holden.

'Why would McGuire want McFarlane dead?' asked Warren.

DI Holden leant forward. 'McFarlane is an informer. Not only that, but McFarlane was supposed to be the driver the night Danny McGuire's brother ended up getting blown to pieces.'

'I wasn't around when all that shit was going on,' said Warren, looking back at Holden in his rear-view mirror.

'Yeah. Sean McGuire drove straight into an ambush the SAS had set up,' replied Holden. 'Two hundred rounds fired at a car full of Semtex. Car, Semtex, Sean McGuire, kaboom! Shame, eh?' he added unsympathetically. 'But Lep McFarlane was supposed to be in the car as well. The SAS claimed they had nothing to do with it, but how many times have we heard that?'

Frank Thompson wasn't one for letting his enthusiasm show. He'd had plenty of near-misses over the years so knew not to get carried away. However, this scenario seemed to play out surprisingly well. 'Let's not get too excited just yet,' he said. 'It's not like Danny McGuire to be this sloppy. There's no way he would allow himself to be seen with a target just hours before he was going to shoot the bugger in the back of the head.'

Frank was beginning to warm up. 'Get a forensic team down to St Patrick's and give the place a thorough going-over.'

'Sheena sorted that this morning, Chief,' said DI Holden, interrupting. 'They should be there right now.'

'Great,' continued Frank. 'Get them to look over McFarlane's clothing specifically for traces of McGuire. I want as much concrete evidence as possible.'

'Why don't we have McGuire picked up right now, let a few of his comrades know we're questioning him . . . maybe let slip that he's being "very co-operative",' said DI Holden. 'Start tipping the bastard off balance.'

Frank gave Holden a look: it was a bad idea.

'Nobody in the IRA would believe for one minute that he was co-operating with us. And my inclination is to do the opposite: back off, wait to see what his next move is. If he knows we're watching he'll do nothing at all.'

'Might be too late, Chief,' said Holden. 'Al Ballantine was caught with his pants down in the church. McGuire confronted him: pulled a weapon on him.'

'Ballantine pulled a weapon on McGuire?' asked Frank.

'No, McGuire pulled a weapon on Al.'

'Jesus Christ,' exclaimed Frank. 'So McGuire knows for sure there's a team on him.'

Frank caught DS Warren and Holden exchanging a glance.

'If there's more you better tell me.'

'Four men entered McGuire's sister-in-law's house the other night in the early hours of last night and drove off with him in a van; E4A were parked across the street, they confirmed it was an SAS unit. I get the impression the four guys weren't dropping round for a cup of tea, that's for sure.'

'What the fuck are the SAS doing there? Who in God's name sanctioned that?'

'Cosmo Cullen's leading the E4A operation: he's ex-army,' replied Holden. 'He called in a favour to put the frighteners on McGuire.'

Frank banged his fist against the side of the car door in frustration. 'For fuck's sake! When we get back I want Cullen and Ballantine in my office as soon as possible. Those stupid bastards may well have blown our best chance yet of chopping McGuire off at the knees.'

DS Warren started to say, 'But if he killed McFarlane-?'

Frank interrupted him. 'And if he didn't, what then?'

'He threatened Ballantine with a gun.'

'Prove it,' replied Frank. 'One of your witnesses is already dead and the other is a goddamn priest who's a card-carrying member.' Frank cleared a small circle of condensation from the rear passenger window.

'Jesus Christ!'

He stared out at the fresh downpour of rain.

'Don't anyone say another word, okay. I need to think.'

Chapter 16.

The outskirts of Newry, early hours of Good Friday

Corporal Tony Lynch sat up in bed and pulled his 9 mm Beretta from the holster hanging on the bedpost next to his head: it was an instinctive reaction. He wasn't sure if the dull sounds he'd heard were part of his dream, or just the wind tugging at the gaps in the rotten window frames, making them rattle but something had woken him up.

His eyes took time to adjust to the smothering darkness. Even then he could only make out a thin slither of moonlight pushing between the drab curtains hanging above his bed. It was impossible to pick out any other detail in the small bedroom.

He sat quietly for a few moments filtering through the familiar creaks and groans of the derelict farm cottage, listening for any sound however small that didn't belong. Every house had its own way of talking: a language of cracking floorboards and creaking doors with which Tony liked to familiarise himself as quickly as possible whenever he arrived somewhere new.

The cottage sat at the end of a long dirt track close to the border with the South. If Tony and his team were compromised they could easily slip across to the relative safety of the Republic of Ireland. The cottage was also far enough away from the nearest village for the team's comings and goings they hoped to go unnoticed.

Tony listened intently for a few more minutes before concluding that tonight aside from the usual groans and moans the house had nothing new to say.

He pressed the 'glow' button on his Suunto wristwatch: another ten minutes before he'd have to get out of bed. It would be his turn to sleep in the van tonight, so he was happy to savour every last minute inside the warm comfort of his sleeping bag.

Rainwater poured noisily from the broken gutter outside the bedroom window into a large puddle that had formed on the saturated ground below.

He smiled to himself as he thought of Jacko sitting up all night in what they'd nicknamed 'the Drum'. It hadn't stopped raining since they'd arrived in Northern Ireland and the van they used as a lookout post reverberated noisily to the rain's incessant beat. It turned an ordinary picket into four hours of mind-numbing monotony.

The SAS team had been late back from last night's op and Jacko had tried bribing the others in the unit with the promise of 'free beer for the rest of their lives' if one of them would take his place on watch. Stevie and Spider had told him to piss off straight away. Tony considered it, briefly, but he was too knackered. Every member of the team was exhausted, so it was only fair that Jacko took his turn.

The team's tour of duty was nearly over; it had been long and intense. The ops themselves were stressful enough; mostly reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering with the occasional 'intervention' like the other night when they'd done a favour for one of Tony's old colleagues from his days in the regular army but all the sneaking around they had to do before and after was what really cranked up the pressure. Even the short walk across the mud-caked yard was beginning to piss them off: it was impossible to get to and from the cottage without getting rained on, or covered in mud. Every operation either started or ended with wet kit.

They arrived in the dark and left in the dark. If whoever owned the cottage was aware that there were four men living there, it wouldn't take long for that information to get back to the IRA.

The brief had warned them to treat everybody in the area as the enemy: 'Every farm truck's a rocket launcher, every parked car's a roadside bomb, every postman's a spy . . . If you see a dog sniffing round the van, shoot it in the fuckin head. If you don't it'll turn you in!'

Everything they did would be construed as suspicious, which is why they went to such lengths to cover their arses: one of them in the van parked near the end of the drive, one downstairs, both on watch. That way the other two could sleep upstairs: guaranteed some much-needed rest.

Days were mostly spent in the smaller of the two bedrooms with the curtains drawn: talking in whispers, planning for that evening's mission.

No radio.

No television.

No down-time.

It was a bit of a head fuck, and the tours could last anything up to six months, but thankfully this one was nearly over.

It was Tony's fifth visit to Northern Ireland in charge of these lads. They were tight.

Tony's wristwatch started to vibrate.

'Wakey wakey, rise and shine; shave, shit and shower' Tony whispered under his breath.

He swung his legs out of bed and slipped his feet into his damp twelve-button Doc Marten boots. Even though he'd slept fully clothed, Tony couldn't stop himself from shivering as the cold musty air hit his tired body.

Discovering the cottage still had a power supply had been a welcome bonus. They'd managed to rig up the boiler to provide them with hot water, but it was temperamental and took most of the day to heat enough for all four of them. If he was sharp he could get to the shower ahead of the others, use up all the hot water before they did. Jacko had managed to do it three days in a row the bastard but the others were starting to get pissed off with it now.

It was still worth a try. Tony grabbed a dry towel from his kit bag and made his way along the short corridor to the bathroom.

He leant over the bath and turned the lever on the mixer tap from 'Bath' to 'Shower'. The showerhead immediately spluttered into life, catching him on the top of the head with a flush of cold water. 'Bastard!' he exclaimed.

He held his hand under the spray and waited for the warm water to flow through, then reached down to pick his towel off the floor.

Tony froze.

The noises again!

A sudden rush and he was on: all trace of tiredness gone in an instant.

In that moment Tony knew that the sounds he'd heard earlier were not part of a dream; they were real. The unmistakable sound of muzzled gunfire, and it had come from somewhere inside the cottage.

Tony left the shower spitting and hissing hot water into the bathtub, and made his way quickly back to his bedroom. He snapped on his gun belt, checked that the Beretta was loaded, slotted a fresh magazine into his Heckler MP5 and took a defensive position by the door. When he was certain the corridor was clear he headed towards Spider's bedroom.

There was no longer any light spilling out of the kitchen on the ground floor. It had been switched off.

But by whom?

The upstairs hall was now in total darkness.

Tony slipped quietly into Spider's bedroom.

Over to his right, in the small single bed squashed against the wall, he could just make out the rumpled silhouette of Spider's slumbering body.

'Spider!'

In less than three steps he'd covered the distance between the door and the top end of the bed. 'Spider, wake up you fucker, we have a situation.'

Keeping his attention focused on the door, he reached down and gave Spider a shake.

'C'mon . . . wake up, we've got visitors.'

As he touched the duvet he pulled his hand away sharply.

'Shit!'

Tony rubbed his fingers together and cursed under his breath.

He pulled the curtain aside to let in more light and winced as he caught sight of the gaping hole in the side of Spider's head. The wound glistened in the dark and oozed blood from a gory well created by a single shot to the skull.

Tony picked up Spider's walkie-talkie from the floor beside his bed.

'Stevie, are you there? If you can't talk, give me a couple of clicks to let me know you're all right . . . Stevie?'

He flipped the small rubber-clad lever to a different channel and tried again.

'Jacko, you there pal . . . C'mon?'

Tony listened for a few seconds, then tried again.

'Jacko, for fucksake! You there?'