I Remember You by Martin Edwards

him.’
    â€˜Not much to tell, really,’ said Finbar. He bit his lip and Harry could see he already regretted mentioning Cato. But Sladdin would not let it go now. You couldn’t claim acquaintance with Lucifer and then dismiss him as a bit of a nonentity.
    â€˜His family lived across the road from ours in Dublin,’ said Finbar unhappily. ‘He was maybe five years younger than me. We were never close.’
    â€˜But you were aware of his - connections?’
    â€˜From when he was a kid, he was committed to the armed struggle. His uncle had been shot in a tit-for-tat killing. All the Catos were bred to battle, but Pearse was special. No one messed him around.’ Finbar shook his head. ‘Everyone kowtowed to Pearse, me included. He had a mad streak. Nothing was surer than that one day he would wind up dead.’
    As indeed he had. His assassination had made headline news, Harry recalled: mown down in a bar a couple of summers ago by a gang of Kalashnikov-wielding paramilitaries who called themselves loyalists. They had fired as many bullets as were necessary to destroy the face seen on so many Wanted posters. In England, the tabloid press had celebrated the killing of the man they dubbed Europe’s most wanted terrorist; for Pearse Cato was notorious, an outcast from the Provos who had formed the Irish Freedom Fighters with a handful of others more concerned with murder for murder’s sake than with political progress. According to rumour, he had been responsible for upwards of a dozen murders on either side of the Irish Sea: a retired brigadier in Virginia Water; a backbench MP in Great Yarmouth; a judge in Magherafelt and a motley assortment of British soldiers and suspected Army informers.
    â€˜Might someone,’ suggested Sladdin, ‘think you were on better terms with Cato than you describe? Perhaps now they’re gunning for you.’
    Finbar gave an incredulous laugh. ‘I promise you, Inspector, my religion is the same as my politics. I’m a card-carrying member of the self-preservation society. Violence frightens me. It hurts people! Believe me, the closest I got to Pearse Cato was when I tattooed him.’
    Sladdin pursed his lips. ‘Tattooed him? With what?’
    â€˜A mailed fist flourishing the Irish Tricolour,’ said Finbar, a mite shame-faced. ‘It covered his chest. Not one of my more elegant creations, but Pearse liked body pictures, for his women as well as for himself. He didn’t know much about the finer aspects of tattooing but he knew what he liked.’
    â€˜So you were neighbours and had a fleeting business relationship, that’s all?’
    â€˜Not very businesslike,’ said Finbar. ‘The sod didn’t pay for any of the work he told me to do. And with Pearse, you didn’t ask. He hated putting his hand in his pocket, unless maybe it was to impress a girl. If he’d lived till fifty, he’d have died a millionaire.’
    â€˜I see.’ Sladdin returned to a topic he’d worried at earlier. ‘And are you quite sure no one could have known you were coming here with Miss - er, Wilkins?’
    â€˜I didn’t know myself until this lunchtime.’
    â€˜But you’d left the car parked outside the hotel earlier in the day,’ Sladdin pointed out, ‘so someone following you from home, say, might have had the opportunity to fix the bomb while you were in the city centre with Miss Wilkins.’
    â€˜I didn’t see anyone following me.’
    â€˜Were you expecting to be followed?’
    â€˜Well, no...’
    Work it out for yourself, then , Sladdin’s expression insinuated. Aloud, he said, ‘As I explained, we’ll need to speak to Miss Wilkins.’
    Harry knew why. The police needed to eliminate the possibility, however unlikely, that Finbar himself had activated the bomb by radio control.
    â€˜She’ll not be able to tell you anything else,’ said