was obviously a temptation for Catholics who needed work to pretend to be other than they were. Such women lived locally, and came and went through the heavily-fortified gates with identity cards, often so false they could be bought for a couple of pounds in any local bar.
Roper had been posted to Byron Street for nine months, and in that time had caused something of a stir with his Military Cross and good looks, but his gentlemanly behaviour towards the younger women, which was conspicuously absent in his fellows, had provoked a suggestion that, as the local girls put it, there had to be something wrong with him.
On the other hand, his incredible bravery was a fact, and so was the fact that in those nine months, some of his comrades had paid the final price and others had been terribly injured.
The Portland Hotel caused many people to look at him differently, as if there was something otherworldly about him, and there were those who felt uncomfortable in his presence, hurrying past him. One who did not was a new young cleaner who replaced an older woman who’d moved away. The girl’s name was Jean Murray and she was from a Protestant Orange background.
Roper’s room was on her list and she was resolutely cheerful from the moment she started and knew all his business within two days. Her mother had been killed in a bombing four years earlier, for which she blamed the fugging Fenians, as she called them. Her father was a member of the local Orange Lodge and had a plum job at the Port Authority. There was also a brother of twenty-one named Kenny in his final year at Queens University.
She extracted as much personal information from Roper as she could. As long as it wasn’t military, he didn’t mind. The truth was that to a certain extent he rather fancied her, which gave him pause for thought, because it meant the defensive wall he’d built around himself was weakening.
‘What’s it get yer, Captain, the hero bit? You’re a lonely man, that’s the truth of it, and you’ve stared death in the face for so long, it’s dried up any juice that’s in you.’
‘Well, thank you, Dr Freud,’ he said. ‘I mean, you would know.’
‘Why do you do it? It’s a known fact in this dump that you’re well fixed financially.’
‘Okay, look at it this way. When the Troubles started in sixty-nine, the bomb thing was in its infancy. Very crude, no big deal. Over the years, as the Provisional IRA has grown in power, bombs have become very sophisticated indeed. The public image of the IRA as a bunch of shaven-headed yobs off a building site is well off the mark. Plenty of solid middle-class professionals are in the movement. Schoolteachers, lawyers, accountants, a whole range of ordinary people.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘That the bombmakers these days have got university degrees and they’re very clever and sophisticated. Consider the Portland bomb. I’m an expert and I’ve dealt with hundreds of bombs over the years, but that one took me nine hours, and shall I tell you something? He’ll be back, that bombmaker. He’ll come with something just a little bit different, just for me. He can’t afford to have me beat him. It’s as simple as that.’
She stared at him, pretty and rumpled in her blue uniform dress, leaning on her broom, no makeup on at all, and there was something in her eyes that could have been pity.
‘That’s terrible, what you say. Still, it can’t go on, things change.’
‘What do you mean things change?’
‘The whole system. My Kenny says the bombs won’t need people like you soon. He’s read about you in the papers. He knows I work for you.’
‘What does he mean things change?’
‘He’s taking his finals in his degree soon. Electronics. He makes gadgets. These days you have a hand control to work your television, open your garage doors, unlock your car, switch on security systems in your house. We’ve only got an ordinary terrace, but the gadgets he’s created in it are brilliant.’
‘Very interesting, but what’s this got to do with bombs?’
‘Well, it’s too technical for me, but he’s been working on a thing he calls a Howler. It looks like a standard television control, but it’s really different. He can turn off security systems, and I mean really important ones. He demonstrated on our local bank. He kept locking the doors as we walked past. They didn’t know whether they were coming or going. Does it to people’s cars as we go by, turns on store alarms, even big shops in town.’
‘Very interesting,’ Roper said. ‘Fascinating, but I still don’t see the relevance to bombs.’
‘Well, that’s what he’s really been working on. He said he can maybe adapt the Howler so that even a big sophisticated bomb like your Portland Hotel job could simply be switched off. That’s the only way I can describe it.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, I can’t stand around here chattering. I’ve got five other rooms to do.’
‘No, just a minute,’ Roper said. ‘Let me get this straight. Has Kenny really got anywhere with his invention?’
‘He’s working at it all the time at the moment. He was talking about bombs at the time because of that Paradise Street bomb the day before yesterday, the one in the car that killed the sergeant. He said the Howler could have switched it off at the touch of a button, that was what he was working towards.’
Roper was cold with excitement. ‘He said that, did he?’
She laughed. ‘I said could it work the other way, could what was switched off be switched on? He said a Howler has two faces. What could be switched off could be switched on again.’ She picked up her bucket. ‘Anyway, I’ll be away now. Work to do.’
‘Just one more thing. Could I meet Kenny?’
She had moved to the door and turned. ‘I don’t know about that. I mean, soldiers are targets at the best of times and you never know who’s who these days. Fenians everywhere.’
‘I wouldn’t be in uniform, Jean. I’d just like to meet him and discuss his work if he’d let me. It sounds very interesting. And he might find it rewarding to discuss his ideas with someone like me who has spent so much time at the coalface, so to speak.’
She looked serious. ‘You’ve got a point. I can’t speak for him, but I’ll give him a phone call, see what he has to say. I’ve got to get moving. I’ll let you know.’
She was away and Roper sat on the bed and thought about it. It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Most really sophisticated bombs had multiple electrical circuits of one kind or another, intertwining in complicated puzzles, feeding into each other, often in the most bizarre way. The theory behind this Howler device of Kenny’s was a kind of Holy Grail. After all, if the most complicated of security systems could be neutered at the touch of a button, it seemed logical that the right touch of genius could do the same thing to bomb circuits.
It was a thought that wouldn’t go away and he went down to the bar and ordered a large whiskey since he was off duty, took a newspaper to a corner table and sat there, pretending to read it, but thinking.
Major Sanderson, the commanding officer, glanced in. ‘I see you’ve got a night off, Giles. Lucky you. I’ve got a general staff meeting at the Grand Hotel. Your leave’s been approved, by the way. Starts Sunday. Two weeks, so make the most of it.’
He went, and for a moment there
