(2013) Collateral Damage by Colin Smith

can.'
    'Look. I've told you. He was a manfriend. Yes, OK? We cohabited
sometimes, we slept together, we even made love. OK? We
liked to smoke dope together. I know that's an offence, but I'll admit it. I USE
DOPE. The stuff you found was for my own personal consumption. I'm not a pusher.
I don't go down the local comprehensive and hawk it around the playground.'
    They had been questioning her for five hours now, off and on,
and she was getting tired. Since she had played a leading role in the Pure Earth
Republican People's Party's campaign against the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary
Provisions) Act 1974, the beginning of the police state they had called it, she
was dismally aware that she could be held for questioning for forty eight hours. Another forty-three to go. After that, under Part Three
of the same Act, they could keep her for another five days if the Home Secretary
was minded to sign a Detention Order. He wouldn't, of course. He was a friend of
Daddy's.
    'I'm not saying you are a pusher,' said Fitchett, almost kindly.
    'I'm not all that interested.' He tapped the pistol. 'What about
this?'
    'How many times do I have to tell you? I never knew about the
bloody gun. I've never seen it before. If I'd have known I'd have thrown him out.
You tell me his name was Colour or something and he was a terrorist. As far as I'm
concerned his name was - is -   Erich Galland and up until now I was always
under the impression that he had something to do with the travel business and lived
in Paris.'
    'Where in Paris?'
    'I don't know. Hotels.' The policeman
sighed.
    Ruth thought she was doing bloody well. Let them have their pound
of flesh on the dope and deny the gun. What a bastard Hans was leaving it there
without telling her, but forget about that now. Just concentrate
on denying the gun. Soon they would have to let her see a solicitor and then everything
would be all right. Or nearly all right. There was still Father to face. Christ!
He was going to be livid. The publicity would kill him. And her party would almost
certainly ask her to resign from the central committee. They might even expel her.
She didn't know whose anger she feared most. Theirs or her parents. Forget about that too. Stick to the dope. Nobody got anything more than a small
fine for a couple of ounces of hash nowadays.
      It was almost midnight.
They had come armed and with a search warrant at 6.30 that evening, just as she
had finished washing her hair under the shower. It had taken them that long to get
around to processing the film from the morning collection and even then if a Detective-Sergeant
from the Branch, whose mind happened to be on Koller and his associates, had not
chanced to wander into the photographic department it might have taken a couple
of days for someone to spot the identity of the fair-haired man staring up at the
camera. The terrorist had been right. She was not under very close surveillance.
It was simply that they had a batch of newly issued video cameras to play with.
It had only been installed twenty-four hours before. Had they had it sooner they
would have seen Koller entering the flat and been able to nab him.
    Ruth had answered the door in a white towelling dressinggown,
her wet hair tied into a towel, to find no one there. As she took a tentative step
beyond the threshold she was grabbed by one of the two detectives standing either
side of it. At the same time the other police, in the lead a uniformed dog-handler
and his German Shepherd , charged into the flat. Two of
them had drawn their revolvers and one of them, a nervous young man, but deadly
on the range, came very close to putting a shot through the kitchen door, which
slammed shut in the draught. At the tail of this posse came a policewoman who told
Ruth to sit down in one of the kitchen chairs and stood there with her hand on her
shoulder, almost as if she was comforting her, while the flat was searched. The
dog sniffed around and then yawned and pissed over the