The Angel Tapes (4 page)

“I'm ready.”

“
TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS IN USED ONE HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILLS; FOUR MILLION IN USED FIFTIES, AND ONE MILLION IN USED TENS
.”

There was another pause; then:

“Who do you think is going to pay this? I mean, who is it you're threatening? Us? The Americans?”

“
AMN'T I ONLY JUST AFTER TELLING YOU, DUFFY? I'VE NOTHING AGAINST THE BLOODY AMERICANS—OR THEIR PRESIDENT. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHO PAYS THE MONEY AS LONG AS IT'S PAID. BUT I'LL TELL YOU THIS MUCH FOR NOTHING: I'M DEADLY SERIOUS, AND I HOPE THIS MORNING'S DEMONSTRATION MADE THAT CRYSTAL CLEAR TO YOU. TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS, DUFFY—OR BOOM
.”

Silence.

The listeners were convinced that the recording had ended. But the silence from the tape stemmed from Duffy's appreciation of the enormity of the crime that was so casually intimated by the caller. The assistant commissioner's voice sounded weak, awed, when at last he was heard to respond.

“I understand. How long do we have?”

“
TODAY IS THE THIRD OF JULY. YIZ HAVE TILL NINE IN THE MORNING ON JULY THE FOURTEENTH. THAT SHOULD GIVE YIZ PLENTY OF TIME
.”

“Fair enough. And how do we pay the money?”

“
NEVER MIND ABOUT THAT FOR NOW. I'LL BE IN TOUCH. ANGEL OUT
.”

There was a click. Macken switched off the tape recorder. He turned his attention to the police psychologist and sociolinguist, Dr. Patricia Earley.

“Well?”

It had become very warm and humid in the office. Earley took off her glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief, an action that reminded Blade suddenly of his mother; how she'd looked in her early sixties, before the creeping horror of the dementia had taken hold. In all the years that Earley and he had worked together, he'd never noticed until today the resemblance between Katharine Macken and the psychologist. It was odd that he should suddenly see it now.

“Look, strictly speaking this isn't my field,” Earley said. “Is he correct about the mobile phone—that it can't be traced?”

“Near enough,” Blade said. “If we had the number he's using we might be able to bisect the signal and home in on that. But we'd never be able to pinpoint his location if he's moving around.”

Earley accepted this with a slow nod. “And the voice? How is he doing that?”

“It's some kind of distortion device. We've people working on it up in the Park, but so far nobody's been able to unscramble it—if that's the right word. You think we might get a voiceprint, is that it?”

“Well, it would be a start. At least it might tell us something about his background, his education, that sort of thing.”

Macken shook his head.

“It's too early to say yet, but I think I'd rule that out if I was you, Doctor. From what I gather, he's using a computer program that scrambles his voice. It's going to be bloody hard to crack that.”

“What the super means, Doctor,” said an earnest young man in a white shirt, “is that the bomber is using a digital-sound encryption program—probably one he's written himself—that interfaces with the telephone he's using. If my guess is right, there's an almost infinite number of variables written into the code. Let me put it this way: there are about six billion people in the world and each of them has their own voiceprint, as individual as a fingerprint. We think this encryption program gives even more choice than that. The chances of us being able to decrypt it back to the original voice profile are probably nil.”

“I think I liked Superintendent Macken's explanation better,” Dr. Earley said. “But I believe I understand. We can never find out how this character really sounds—not even where he comes from.”

“You think he could be a foreigner, Doctor?” Sweetman asked.

She shook her head. “I very much doubt it. The vocabulary and syntax are clearly Irish. Did you notice how he used the locution, ‘Amn't I after telling you'? Very Irish, that. Not to mention that colorful bit about the fiddler. No, I'd stake my reputation on his being Irish.”

Blade toyed with the controls of the small tape recorder.

“So what are we dealing with, Doctor?”

“Off the top of my head?”

“Off the top of your head.”

“I should say somebody with a very large chip on his shoulder; somebody who bears a grudge against society in general.” She paused. “And the Guards in particular.”

Blade was immediately alert.

“Why do you say that?”

“It was something about the tone of voice—not the sound, you understand, but his general attitude towards the commissioner and yourself. He seemed, well, downright contemptuous. I should say, at a guess, that we are dealing with a man who's already been in trouble with the authorities, has more than likely served a term in prison, and consequently bears a deep resentment at the penal system and the police. For a start, he knows you and the commissioner by name Superintendent. He even recognized your voice. Now,
that
fact alone should give us some clue. Furthermore, he feels—”

“We might have him on the books, then?” Nolan said.

Dr. Earley ignored the interruption as though nobody had spoken.

“He feels,” she went on, “that he's been gravely wronged, and is determined to take revenge. And,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “the fact that he doesn't hesitate to blow innocent people to smithereens makes him very dangerous indeed.”

“It makes sense,” Blade said. Thoughtful, he fiddled with the volume control on the cassette player. “Talk about covering your tracks! I said earlier on that this is the nearest I've ever come to the perfect crime. I still believe that. We know what the murder weapon was and there's no way we can trace where it came from or who built it—not after five years. And there are
more
shagging bombs. This bastard is the only one who knows where they are. So, short of digging up every square foot of every mile of every route from the airport to Leinster House, we haven't a snowman's chance in hell of finding them.”

“The perfect crime doesn't exist, Blade,” Earley said. “You know better than that.”

He was not convinced. “What about serial killers? A killing without a motive and without witnesses? Without a motive, we've nothing to go on. I'd call that the perfect crime.”

“Yes, well thank God we haven't got any in this country—at least not as far as I'm aware. But this twisted monster
has
a motive: money—and revenge as well, though we don't know that for certain. He also appears to have an enormously inflated ego, and that ego is standing in the way of an unsolvable crime.”

“I don't understand, Doctor,” Orla Sweetman said.

“I do,” Blade told her. “What Dr. Earley is saying is that as long as men are born with egos, there can never be a perfect crime. Look, if this bollocks was content with simply making his ransom demand, then he'd stand a damn good chance of getting away with it. But he isn't. His ego is getting in the way. He wants to show us how bloody clever he is. And that's how he's going to trip himself up. Sooner or later he'll let something slip—some personal detail that he'll think is too shagging trivial to be a clue. You mark my words: he'll do it. And we'll be on the lookout for it. That's how he'll hang himself in the end.”

“His ego, his pride,” Sweetman said. “Every dark angel's undoing.”

Macken smiled thinly. “You could put it that way, yes.”

*   *   *

They'd missed the one o'clock news on Channel One but managed to catch the 3
P.M
. bulletin. In Duffy's office.

The camera crew and newscaster had been denied access to the bomb site. There was only aerial footage. It was enough: O'Connell Street had not seen such devastation since the British had shelled it during the Easter Rising in 1916.

“A report just in has confirmed that a sixth victim of the explosion, Mrs. Martina Dempsey of Rosemount Terrace, Booterstown, died less than an hour ago in the Mater hospital of extensive head injuries.”

“Fuck,” Blade said. Duffy waved him to silence.

“—say that thirty-two of those injured in the blast have been detained at the Mater, nine in a critical condition. The Taoiseach has sent a message of sympathy to the bereaved, and a special mass will be offered this evening in the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin.

“It is not known for certain as yet what caused the blast but earlier, Assistant Commissioner Duffy of the Dublin Metropolitan Area had this to say.”

Duffy's features filled the screen as he spoke of regrettable accidents, tragic loss of life, and full-scale investigations. Sweetman thought it a good performance and said so. Duffy grunted.

“With me in the studio now is Paul Donnelly, a spokesman for Bord Gáis. Mr. Donnelly, how could a thing like this happen? And what's to prevent it from happening again?”

“I'm glad you asked me that, Vincent.…”

“Jesus,” Blade said, “how much are they paying this guy? And, more to the point,
who's
paying him? Us?”

“Don't you be worrying about that,” Duffy said. “You've enough on your plate as it is. But I
can
tell you this much: the gas company will be getting away with murder over the next few months.”

He shut his eyes and grimaced, put a hand over his mouth.

“Now what possessed me to go and say a thing like that?”

Macken showed tact. “I thought you were grand, sir. You almost had
me
believing it.”

“Thanks, Blade.”

He turned as somebody walked in through the open door. The seven people in the room stiffened as Detective Superintendent Nolan joined them; he was not liked.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Everything and nothing, Nolan,” Duffy said. He was about to continue when the local news story was abruptly replaced by an image of the president of the United States standing behind a panoply of microphones on the lawn of the White House. He spoke.

“Three days ago, a Bulgarian commercial flight
en route
to Paris was hijacked by four armed Libyans and forced to land at Heathrow Airport in London. The terrorists threatened to blow up the plane and its two hundred eighty passengers unless two of their associates were released from custody by the British authorities.”

“Sir, I wanted a word with you about—”

“Not now, Nolan, please!” Duffy was irritated. “I want to hear this. It's important.”

“Sorry. I'll come back later.” Nolan left.

“—to express our deep disappointment with the British government, and with the prime minister in particular, at the handling of the crisis. The United States has always—and I repeat always—maintained a firm policy with regard to terrorism. And that policy very clearly states that we will never give way to terrorist demands. This the British government has done, in contravention of a pact entered into by a former holder of this office and other Western administrations.”

Duffy was white. “It's the bloody
time
difference.”

“What, sir?”

“The time difference,” Duffy repeated. He lit a cigarette with a tremor in his fingers. He threw down his lighter and it fell to the floor. One of Blade's team retrieved it; Duffy barely saw the man.

“This is
yes
terday's news in the States, Blade, even though we're only getting it now. And they'll have got ours too late. Christ, what a mess! Unbelievable. Talk about timing!”

“I don't follow you, sir.”

“Ah, Blade, would you listen to me? Don't you see it? The man's just after putting his shagging head in a noose.”

It had gone quiet in the office. Somebody had turned down the sound on the television.

“He's just,” the assistant commissioner said, “accused the Brits of giving in to terrorism. They turned the two Libyans over yesterday. They shouldn't have—though, as God is my witness, I'd have done the same. But if Thatcher was still in power, she'd have had every available squad of the SAS swarming all over Heathrow. There'd a been an almighty bloodbath, so there would. But it's done now, and it can't be undone. So ask yourself, Blade: Where does that leave
us?
”

Duffy answered his own question.

“It leaves us with an American president who's just told the whole shagging world that the Brits are a crowd of wimps. Not only that, but they've gone back on a deal that Thatcher did with Reagan back in the '80s. That pair swore on their mothers' graves that neither country would ever give in to terrorist threats.”

Duffy crushed the cigarette in his ashtray and spread his palms wide.

“He's snookered himself, that's what I'm saying. Don't you get it? As far as the outside world is concerned, there hasn't been a bomb in O'Connell Street. But the White House knows there
has
been, so they can call off the state visit on any pretext and there's no harm done. But Blade, if the news leaks out that it was a bomb and that there might be more, then the president
has
to come to Dublin, no matter what; otherwise he'd never be able to hold his head up in Congress. Not after what he's said. He's left himself no choice in the matter. None.”

Four

Blade had always liked the look of the American embassy in Ballsbridge. Built in the '60s, it is only now, more than thirty years on, that it has begun to exhibit signs of age. But this aging is a physical deterioration: the embassy's circular design sets it apart from the staid and nondescript buildings that surround it, and even those erected within the present decade seem old-fashioned by comparison.