No Comebacks

'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 vi

llage 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.

The two men jumped out and pulled a grip from the rear seat. They doffed their zip-fronted windbreakers and pulled two jackets from the grip. Both men already wore black shoes, socks and trousers. When the windbreakers were off they were wearing regulation police- style 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 black, adhesive-backed sheet plastic. Murphy unrolled 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 cross-section. The base of the triangle was fitted with strong magnets which held the block firmly to the roof of the car. The other two sides, facing forwards and backwards, also had the word GARDA printed on the glass panels.

There was no bulb inside to light it up, but who would notice that in daytime?

When the two men climbed back into the car and reversed out of the lane, they were to any casual observer a pair of highway patrolmen in every way. Brendan was driving now, with 'Sergeant' Murphy beside him. They found the juggernaut waiting at a traffic light in the town of Gorey.

There is a new section of dual carriageway north of Gorey, between that ancient market town and Arklow. Halfway along it, on the northbound lane, is a lay-by, and this was the spot Murphy had chosen for his ambush. The moment the column of traffic blocked behind the artic entered the dual carriageway section, the other car drivers joyfully sped past the lorry and Murphy had it all to himself. He wound down his window and said 'Now' to Brendan.

The Granada moved smoothly up beside the cab of the truck, and held station. Clarke looked down to see the police car beside him and a sergeant waving out of the passenger seat. He wound down his window.

'You're losing a rear tyre,' roared Murphy above the wind. 'Pull in to the lay-by.'

Clarke looked ahead, saw the big P on a notice by the roadside indicating a lay-by, nodded and began to slow. The police car moved ahead, swerved into the lay-by at the appointed spot and stopped. The juggernaut followed and drew up behind the Granada. Clarke climbed down.

'It's down here at the back,' said Murphy. 'Follow me.'

Clarke obediently followed him round the nose of his own truck and down its green and white length to the rear. He could see no flat tyre, but he hardly had a chance to look. The bushes parted and Brady and Keogh came bounding out in overalls and balaclavas. A gloved hand went over Clarke's mouth, a strong arm round his chest and another pair of arms round his legs. Like a sack he was swept off his feet and disappeared into the bushes.

Within a minute he had been divested of his company overalls with the Tara logo on the breast pocket, his wrists, mouth and eyes were sticky-taped and, shielded from the gaze of passing motorists by the bulk of his own lorry, he was bundled into the rear seat of the 'police' car. Here a gruff voice told him to lie on the floor and keep still. He did.

Two minutes later Keogh emerged from the bushes in the Tara overalls and joined Murphy by the door of the cab where the gang leader was examining the driving licence of the unfortunate Clarke.

'It's all in order,' Murphy said. 'Your name's Liam Clarke, and this load of documents must be in order. Did they not pass it all at Rosslare not two hours back?'

Keogh, who had been a truck driver before he served time as a guest of the Republic in Mountjoy, grunted and climbed into the truck. He surveyed the controls.

'No problem,' he said, and replaced the sheaf of papers above the sun visor.

'See you at the farm in an hour,' said Murphy.

He watched the hijacked juggernaut pull out of the lay-by and rejoin the northward stream on the Dublin road.

Murphy went back to the police car. Brady was in the back with his feet on the recumbent and blindfolded Clarke. He had lost his overalls and balaclava and was in a tweed jacket. Clarke might have seen Murphy's face, but only for a few seconds, and then with a police cap on top of it. He would not see the faces of the other three. That way, if he ever accused Murphy, the other three would give Murphy an unbreakable alibi.

Murphy glanced up and down the road. It was empty for the moment. He looked at Brendan and nodded. Both men tore the Garda signs from the doors, screwed them up and tossed them in the back. Another glance. A car sped by unheeding. Murphy yanked the illuminated sign off the roof and threw it to Brady. A further glance. Again, no traffic. Both uniform jackets came off and went to Brady in the back. The windbreakers went back on. When the Granada pulled out of the lay-by it was just another saloon car with three civilians visible in it.

They passed the juggernaut just north of Arklow. Murphy, driving again, gave a discreet toot of the horn. Keogh raised one hand as the Granada passed, thumb upward in the OK sign.

Murphy kept driving north as far as Kilmacanogue then pulled up the lane known as Rocky Valley towards Calary Bog. Not much happens up there, but he had located a deserted farm high on the moor which had the advantage of a great barn inside it, large enough to take the juggernaut unseen for a few hours. That was all that would be needed. The farm was reached by a muddy track and screened by a clump of conifers.

They arrived just before dusk, fifty minutes before the juggernaut and two hours before the rendezvous with the men from the North and their four vans.

Murphy reckoned he could be justifiably proud of the deal he had clinched. It would have been no easy task to dispose of those 9000 bottles of brandy in the South. They were bonded, each case and bottle numbered and sooner or later bound to be spotted. But up in Ulster, the war-torn North, it was different. The place was rife with shebeens, illegal drinking clubs that were unlicensed and outside the law anyway.

The shebeens were strictly segregated, Protestant and Catholic, with control of them firmly in the hands of the underworld, which itself had long been taken over by all those fine patriots they had up there. Murphy knew as well as any man that a fair proportion of the sectarian killings performed for the glory of Ireland had more to do with protection racketeering than patriotism.

So he had done his deal with one of the more powerful heroes, a main supplier to a whole string of shebeens into which the brandy could be filtered with no questions asked. The man, with his drivers, was due to meet him at the farm, unload the brandy into four vans, pay cash on the spot and have the stuff into the North by dawn through the maze of country lanes crossing the border between the lakes along the Fermanagh—Monaghan line.