Rain on the Dead by Jack Higgins

return to the drug scene, but times had changed, there were others in the gang now, and he wasn’t wanted. At that time, most of the good stuff was coming in from Holland, where al-Qaeda had organized the delivery system very successfully. Now Peter was going to ruin everything by trying to muscle in, so AQ decided he had to go.”
    “So that’s where Tully and Bell came in?” Dillon asked.
    “I’m afraid so, Sean,” Roper said. “Who owned the car had nothing to do with it. Peter was the target, al-Qaeda behind it.”
    “And the fact that his wife and fourteen-year-old daughter were with him didn’t bother those bastards in the slightest.” Dillon’s face was dark.
    Roper said, “What goes around, comes around, but we’ve got other fish to fry today. We’ll think of something special for Tully and Bell another time.”
    “You can count on that, I promise you. What were you going to say about Myra?”
    “She went to London years ago and married a cousin, Brendan, so she’s still a Tully. He was more Cockney than Irish, a gangster from childhood. He’s working his way through a fifteen-year sentence for a failed gold robbery at Stansted Airport two years ago. They’ve got him in Belmarsh.”
    “So what’s she up to?”
    “Running the crew while he’s away, from a dockside development about half a mile downriver from the Salters. Irish Wharf. What used to be an old pub called the Sash.She’s turned it into a nightclub.”
    “God save us, with a name like that, it can only be a Protestant pub.” Dillon laughed. “Just like Belfast. Are you sending a digest of all that up to Ferguson’s office?”
    “He isn’t there. He got a text at one o’clock to say the Prime Minister wanted a breakfast meeting at Downing Street, so he decided to clear off to Cavendish Place. I’ll send it to him there.”
    “And do the same for Sara and Billy. Some of the facts you’ve uncovered do make the situation at Drumgoole rather difficult. I’d like them to know exactly what they are getting into.”
    “That makes sense,” Roper said.
    “I’ll see you later.”
    —
    In the kitchen of the Orange Drum, Fergus Tully made toast and tea with a shot of whiskey in it and stood at the kitchen window in pajamas and a robe, looking out at a gray morning which threatened rain, not that such a prospect bothered him. He liked rain, always had, and his daughter had been the same, and the thought made him decide to phone her, and he took out his mobile and did just that.
    During her husband’s first year in prison, Myra Tully had taken the opportunity to completely refurbish the Sash,and that had included a bedroom for herself, very luxurious although a touch gaudy.
    She reached for her mobile and said, “It’s only six o’-bloody-clock. Who is this?”
    “Sorry, my love, have I disturbed you?”
    The Belfast accent alerted her at once. “What is it, Da? Is there a problem?”
    “Not at all. I’ve got a busy day ahead and I just wanted a word.”
    The man next to Myra was around forty, with a military mustache and a boxer’s face and a lot of muscle, an East End hard man of the finest vintage. “Stir yourself, Terry, and get me some coffee. It’s me da.”
    Terry Harker made no complaint, simply rolled out of bed and made for the door. She pulled a pillow behind her, reached for a cigarette, lit it and sat up. She was handsome rather than beautiful, with jet-black hair framing a fierce face.
    “Are you in trouble, Da?”
    “Not at all, my love, just bringing you up to speed.”
    At eight, she had lost her mother to pancreatic cancer, which had taken only three months to kill her. Fergus Tully, a monster to everyone else, was to her the perfect father and she was fiercely protective of him. There were no secrets between them, and they’d discussed his doings from an early age.
    “Something’s happening. What is it?”
    “Remember the job Frank and I did for al-Qaeda four years ago, where that Master fella rang