Иэн Рэнкин - Watchman

‘No,’ he hissed. ‘For Christ’s sake, Miles!’

‘Well, Miles?’ Partridge’s was the smug voice of every schoolboy smarter than Miles and every tutor who had rebuked him, and every moralistic preacher and politician. It was the voice, too, of a universal evil, a hypocrisy that had taken over the world, the sweet-smelling breath of chaos. It always won, it always won.

‘It always will,’ he whispered from his tainted mouth, where bile and fear had suddenly become tangy beneath his tongue.

‘Well, Miles?’

He couldn’t see Sheila too clearly, she was muffled up against the chill, but that was definitely her coat. People were walking up the platform now, boarding the train that still waited there, ready to take them to their momentous destinations. Yes, that was the green coat he had bought for her on a whim...

And that she had never liked.

A guard was standing nearby now, checking his watch. He too looked along the platform, saw that no one was hurrying for the train, then blew his whistle.

That coat, she had hated it. Hadn’t she said something to him? What was it? Yes, hadn’t she said that she was throwing it out for jumble? Jesus Christ, yes, and she had thrown it out, he had watched her doing it. She could never have worn it here today, unless... Unless...

‘That’s not Sheila!’ he shouted above the new roar of the engine.

‘What?’

‘That’s not my wife. I know it’s not!’

‘Son of a bitch,’ said Collins, reaching into his coat. Miles made no attempt to stop him; rather, as had been half formulated but never really discussed between them, he opened one of the train’s slowly moving doors and heaved himself in.

Partridge found his mouth opening in a silent O as he saw the gun appear in the Irishman’s hand, but then there was too much noise all around him and a hissing of pressure in his ears as he fumbled at his own coat, wherein was hidden, too deep, too late, his own pistol.

And then he screamed as the bullet leaped within him, burrowing its way like a beetle into the warm, dark interior. Collins, his teeth bared, turned to look at the train, but there was no sign of Miles Flint’s head from any of the carriage doors. He hadn’t even bothered to watch.

Past the guard, who was running in a stiff panic back down the platform, Collins could see the other man let go of the woman’s arm and begin toward him, before thinking better of it. But by that time Collins had made up his mind. He moved past Partridge, who was frozen against a dripping pillar, and homed in on the other one. He’d have as many of them as he could. Now that Flint had left him, what else could he do? The train had been the only means of escape. He was at the end of a blind alley, and the only way out of it was to move back into the heart of the station, back toward the terror of the crowd, the shouts of the guard. He passed the woman in the green coat. She had tripped and fallen, revealing short fair hair beneath her hat. Miles might have recognized her as Felicity, but Collins did not even glance down at her.

Phillips was climbing some stairs, loud metal stairs leading to a walkway. He looked scared to death and tired out, his legs moving with fatal slowness. Collins knelt and took aim, while people dived to the floor or knelt behind their cases.

‘Will, no!’

The shot went wild, about a meter high of the target, but it froze Phillips. Collins took aim again.

‘Will!’

It was Janine, running toward him, having shaken herself free of Jim Stevens. Stevens was holding a camera by its strap. He had been taking photographs of the whole thing! Collins gritted his teeth and brought the pistol in an arc until he had Stevens dead in the sight.

But Janine swerved into his path, blocking out the reporter.

‘Get out of the way!’ he yelled. But she had stopped and didn’t seem able to move.

But Phillips was moving, damn him. He had found the top of the stairs and was above Collins now, careering along the walkway toward street level. Collins rose to his feet and followed, ignoring the cries from behind him. He took the steps two at a time, feeling able almost to fly, and heard the sirens below him, entering the concourse, filling the air with new panic. So quickly? Perhaps they had been alerted by that snake Monmouth. Well, he’d get him too, one of these days. So help him. But first this one.

On the street, though, there was no sign of Phillips, no sign at all. He hid his gun beneath the folds of his coat, Miles Flint’s old coat, and looked up and down the street. A car swerved toward him and screeched to a halt at the curbside. The passenger door was pushed open from within.

‘Get in!’

He had his gun out again, the gun Miles Flint had given back to him that morning. His hands shook almost uncontrollably as he tried to aim it at this new stranger in his life.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘My name is Gray, Mr. Collins, and right now I may conceivably be the only person in the world who wants you kept alive and well. Get in. I can always use a man like you.’

The approaching howls of more police cars made up Will Collins’s mind. There could never be any escape for him. Not now, not ever.

He stepped into the car.

Miles Flint sat on the terrace and sipped a glass of the local wine. He looked out across two untended fields toward a forest where wild boar were said to live. It was early spring, and already the sun was doing what sun is supposed to do, warming him as he opened the newspaper. He had to drive into Castillon-la- Bataille for the English papers, which arrived three days late and at exorbitant prices, but he didn’t mind in the least. The townspeople knew that he had bought the dilapidated farmhouse near Les Salles, and they thought him eccentric but friendly. In fact, he fully intended to renovate the house and the two small fields that had now become his. Everything in good time. Meanwhile, he opened his newspaper with a keen and knowing smile on his face, eager for the latest part of James Stevens’s exposé of spy shenanigans in England and Ulster, exclusive photos and all. It was fairly obvious that much of Stevens’s material had been subjected to this and that D-Notice, but there was still enough there to make a sizable four-part ‘investigation’ into corruption and the misuse of power. Harry Sizewell would be standing trial soon, and there were others, too, Miles knew, who would be nervous about every phone call and every knock at the door for a very long time to come.

He did not even know if he himself was safe. This part of the Dordogne was isolated enough, but one could never be wholly safe, not in his world. All one could do was enjoy the present, and he was certainly doing that. He sloshed more wine around his mouth, then swallowed luxuriously. Perhaps he could plant some vines in those fields...

‘Miles?’

‘I’m on the terrace.’

Sheila, looking tanned and fit, came around from the side of the house. Her hands were cupped, and she was walking quietly, as though afraid of waking a child.

‘What is it?’ he asked, and she opened her hands to show him. ‘It’s a little beetle,’ he said, impressed.

‘Yes, I just found it in the vegetable garden. Any idea what kind it is?’

‘I haven’t the faintest.’ Sheila transferred the tiny, brightly colored creature to his own open palm. ‘But I can find out. I’ll just go to the study and check.’ And with that he was off, back into the farmhouse, weaving between unopened packing cases, beneath the gaping rafters of the first floor, until he reached his study, which was in fact the bathroom. He kept a few books there beside the toilet. Placing the beetle on the rim of the bath, he settled himself down and opened a page.