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St. Patrick. The first truck out was a dun brown, with French markings. The
second to emerge into the afternoon sunlight gleamed in white and emerald
green. On the side of her trailer the word TARA was written in large green
etters. Murphy exhaed slowly.
"There it is," he breathed, "that's our baby."
"Will we go now?" asked Brendan, who could see very little without binoculars
and was getting bored.
"No hurry," said Murphy. "We'l see her come out of the shed first."
The mechanic screwed the nut of the oil inlet tight and turned to Clarke.
"She's all yours," he said, "she's ready to go. As for me, I'm going to wash
up. I'll probably pass you on the
road to Dublin." .
He replaced the can of oil and the rest of his tools m ms van selected a
flask of detergent liquid and headed for the washroom. The Tara Transportation
uggernaut rumbled through the entrance from the quay into the shed. A customs
officer waved it to a bay next to its mate
and the driver climbed down.
"What the hell happened to you, Liam?" he asked.
Clarke explained to him. A customs officer approached to examine the new
man's papers.
"Am I OK to roll? asked Clarke.
"Away with you," said the officer. "You've been making the place untidy for
too long."
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Clarke pulled himself into his cab,
punched the engine into life and let in the clutch. With a wave at his company
colleague he moved into gear and the artic rolled out of the
shed into the sunlight.
Murphy adjusted his grip on the binoculars as the uggernaut emerged on the
landward side of the shed.
"Hes through already," he told Brendan. "No complications. Do you see that?"
He passed the glasses to Brendan who wrigged to the
top of the rise and stared down. Five hundred yards away the juggernaut was
negoating the bends leading away from the harbour to the road to Rosslare
town.
"I do," he said.
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"Seven hundred and fifty cases of finest French brandy in there, said Murphy.
"That's nine thousand botdes. It markets at over ten pounds a bottle retail
and I'll get four. What do you think of that?"
"It's a lot of drink," said Brendan wistfully.
"It's a lot of money, you fool," said Murphy. "Right, let's get going."
The two men wriggled o? the skyline and ran at a crouch to where their car
was parked on a sandy track below.
When they drove back to where the track joined the road from the docks to the
town they had only a few seconds to wait and driver Clarke thundered by them.
Murphy brought his black Ford Granada saloon, stolen two days earlier and now
wearing false plates, in behind the artic and began to trail it.
It made no stops; Clarke was trying to get home. When he rolled over the
bridge across the Slaney and headed north out of Wexford on the Dublin road
Murphy decided he could make his phone call.
He had noted the phone booth earlier and removed the diaphragm from the
earpiece to ensure that no one else would be using it when he came by. They
were not. But someone, infuriated by the useless implement? had torn the flex
from its base. Murphy swore and drove on. He found another booth beside a post
office just north of Enniscorthy. As he braked, the uggernaut ahead of him
roared out of sight.
The call he made was to another phone booth by the roadside north of Gorey
where the other two members of his gang waited.
"Where the hell have you been?" asked Brady. "I've been waiting here with
Keogh for over an hour."
"Don't worry," said Murphy. "He's on his way and he's on time. Just take up
your positions behind the bushes in the lay-by and wait till he pulls up and
jumps down."
He hung up and drove on. With his superior speed he caught up with the
juggernaut before the village of Ferns
and trailed the truck out onto the open road again. Before Camolin he turned
to Brendan.
Time to become guardians of law and order," he said and pulled off the road
again, this time into a narrow country road he had examined on his earlier
reconnaissance. It was deserted.
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The two men jumped out and pulled a grip from the rear seat. They doffed
their zip-fronted windbreakers and pulled two jackets rom the grip. Both men
already wore black shoes, socks and trousers. When the windbreakers were off
they were wearing regulation policestyle blue shirts and black ties. The
jackets they pulled on completed the deception. Murphy's bore the three
stripes of a sergeant, Brendan's was plain. Both carried the insignia of the
Garda, the Irish police force. Two peaked caps from the same grip went onto
their heads.
The last of the contents of the grip were two rolls of back, adhesive-backed
sheet plastic. Murphy unroled them, tore off the cloth backing and spread them
carefully with his hands, one onto each of the Granada's front doors. The
black plastic blended with the black paintwork. Each panel had the word GARDA
in white letters. When he stole his car Murphy had chosen a black Granada
deliberately because that was the most common police patrol car.
From the locked boot Brendan took the final accoutrement, a block two feet
long and triangular in crosssection. The base of the triangle was fitted with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]