just as quick, but I wouldn't have learnt as much. It was a long time since I'd been there, and a chat with a cabbie's the best way of getting up to speed.
That was the excuse I gave myself. In truth, I wanted to squeeze myself a bit more thinking time. I needed to be in control of the situation and keep on my toes. Bullshit baffles brains, but the Yes Man was spinning too much of it my way. He must take me for a complete dickhead if he thought a few rubber stamps on a folder were going to make me think it now had a yellow card.
The only known points of contact for Dom that remained were the station, his wife and his stepson. I'd told the Yes Man to have surveillance put on Dom's mobile and his wife's, all landlines and the house computer. No flies on him. He already had that in hand with his Irish counterparts.
OK, so there was no signature page on the inside flap and never would be. That didn't matter. I was going to use the Yes Man and all his resources to help me find Dom. But after that it would be me who found out what he knew – and dealt with it, if necessary.
Siobhan had been Dom's last point of contact. He had called her from the COB before he'd permanently closed down. I should have gone straight there, but his file hadn't revealed that much about him, let alone her. It wasn't known if she worked, spent her days in the gym or just shopping. What was the point of getting there early and hanging around for hours on the street corner? It made more sense to go where I was going.
The driver of the cab that rolled towards me had to have been seventy if he was a day. There were creases in his face that even a steam press wouldn't get out.
'O'Connell Street, mate.' I jumped into the back with all my worldly goods still in my Bergen. The Yes Man had sorted me with a UK bank account, and I now had ten thousand euros in cash in my pocket. I'd drawn it all out because that gave me control of it. He wouldn't be able to track my movements whenever I made a withdrawal. I hadn't got changed. My clothes could have done with a bit of attention from that steam press as well.
'Been to Dublin before, have you, sir?'
We nosed out into a queue.
'Many times, but not for maybe twenty years. Stag parties, rugby matches . . . You know the sort of thing.'
'A bit of that still goes on. But you'll see a lot of changes. A rags-to-riches story, Dublin is. I wish I was young enough to enjoy it.'
I'd had enough fun mixing with the stag and hen parties and rugby supporters, but that had had nothing to do with getting drunk enough to vomit over a policeman. We used the weekends to our advantage when I was in the Regiment. We used to come down here from the north on a Friday night to lift people Special Branch wanted to have a private one-to-one with.
The last time, it had been just like this: grey, wet and miserable. But instead of driving the couple of hours down we'd flown to London and out again on a Friday night Five Nations special. The pubs heaved with Brits in rugby shirts, so we'd blended in nicely in the ones we'd bought duty-free at Heathrow. Our target was a Provisional IRA war-council member, who'd thought he was safe conducting PIRA's drug-trafficking activities in the South.
Connor McNaughten spent most of his time in Dublin, only venturing up to Belfast or Londonderry to kneecap someone or collect another suitcase full of profits from the Provos' drug rackets. Towards the end of the war, once most of the PIRA ASUs (active service units) had been wiped out, it had felt as if most of our operations were against drug barons rather than terrorists.
We lifted him in the early hours of Saturday morning when he was out on the piss. We dragged him into the boot of a car that had been driven down by one of the other lads, and took him north, straight to Castlereagh police station. The big stone fortress was the Abu Ghraib of Northern Ireland. No fucker, no matter how hard they were, wanted to be interrogated there by Special Branch. Go