No Comebacks

'Sure, I've planned it like a military operation,' said Murphy. 'It cannot fail.'

A more professional criminal might have told Murphy, who traded as a scrap metal merchant with a sideline in 'bent' cars, that he was a bit out of his league with such a caper, but Murphy had spent several thousand pounds of his own money setting it up and he was not to be discouraged. He kept watching the approaching ferry.

In the shed the mechanic tightened the last of the nuts around the new nose-piece, crawled out from under, stood up and stretched.

'Right,' he said, 'now, we'll put five pints of oil in and away you go.'

He unscrewed a small flange nut in the side of the differential casing while Clarke fetched a gallon can of oil and a funnel from the van. Outside, the St Patrick, with gentle care, slotted her nose into the mooring bay and the clamps went on. Her bow doors opened and the ramp came down.

Murphy held the glasses steady and stared at the dark hole in the bows of the 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 letters. Murphy exhaled 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'll 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 in his van, selected a flask of detergent liquid and headed for the washroom. The Tara Transportation juggernaut 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 juggernaut emerged on the landward side of the shed.

'He's through already,' he told Brendan. 'No complications. Do you see that?'

He passed the glasses to Brendan who wriggled to the top of the rise and stared down. Five hundred yards away the juggernaut was negotiating the bends leading away from the harbour to the road to Rosslare town.

'I do,' he said.

'Seven hundred and fifty cases of finest French brandy in there,' said Murphy. 'That's nine thousand bottles. 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 off 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 juggernaut 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.'