‘Oh sure, we get around. There are always lots of freebies to be had.’

‘And do you get political stuff to do?’

‘Sure. That’s one of the good things about working on a Sunday paper. They have small staffs so there isn’t too much specialisation. I mean, I have to do a lot of showbiz crap and weird stuff, but we get to help out with the big ones too.’

‘What are you working on at the moment?’ she asked.

Woody coughed.

‘Pardon?’ she asked.

Woody looked shamefaced. ‘Vampire cats,’ he said. Maggie collapsed into hysterics.

The man approaching the churchyard was short but powerfully built and even in the dark it was obvious he was not a man to get into a fight with, not by choice anyway. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, scuffed and cracked with age, and dark-brown corduroy trousers. He carried a small sack, tied at the end with a short length of rope, and in one of the pockets of his jacket there was a flashlight and half a dozen metal snares. He’d done a fair bit of poaching in his youth, but he wasn’t looking for rabbits, the snares were just cover in case he was discovered. In the back pocket of his trousers was a short-handled knife with a wicked blade which he was quite prepared to use if anyone saw through the poacher’s disguise.

Somewhere in the dark he heard a hedgehog snuffle then squeal and he stopped and listened but heard nothing other than the night sounds of the English countryside and an airliner rumbling high overhead, red and green lights flashing.

He swung easily over the wall and landed silently in freshly dug soil. He was standing within inches of a new grave, a gaping black rectangular hole that seemed bottomless. He breathed a sigh of relief, if he’d vaulted the wall just a couple of feet to the right he’d have pitched headlong into it and broken a leg, or worse. The luck of the Irish, he thought with a smile. He stepped off the mound of earth and used the sack to smooth away his footprints before moving on. He skirted around the church and headed for the five tombstones.

He knelt down and lifted the stone that covered the stockpile, pushing hard with his legs. He carefully leant it against the wall and then stood still, counting off sixty seconds in his head as he listened for anything out of the ordinary, because there was no way a poacher would be able to explain what he was doing lifting a gravestone, especially a gravestone that concealed IRA explosives. Still nothing, even the hedgehogs had fallen silent.

He dug into the earth with his hands and pulled out three polythene-covered packages, working quickly but carefully. If he was surprised to see half of the Semtex explosive missing, his face showed no sign of it. He rewrapped the parcels, replaced the soil and dropped the stone back over the hiding place. He brushed the dirt from his hands, checked that the surrounding area was clean and then walked down the gravel path and out of the churchyard.