Stella Rimington - At Risk

Out!” said Faraj urgently. “Put the bags under the tree and then help me with the car.”

With care, Jean arranged the rucksacks at the base of the willow. It had begun to rain again, the light was fading, and the place was deserted. In summer there might have been a few people around: an angler, perhaps, after a chub or a perch, or a couple of picnickers. Late on a wet December afternoon, though, there was little to draw the passerby down the rutted lane and through the stand of trees to this bleak intersection of the Lesser Ouse and the Methwold Fen Relief Drain.

Jean D’Aubigny knew the place, knew that the water was deep there and that visitors were few. Remembered in a rush of memory almost painful in its intensity what it was like to be sixteen years old, to smell the green, muddy aroma of the river and feel the dizzying rush of vodka and cigarettes on an empty stomach.

It had taken them a fair amount of time to find the place, and they had been further slowed by the need to take minor roads and farm tracks across country, but they were now a clear twenty-five miles south of the village from where they had stolen the MGB, and since the roadblock they had not encountered any police. They had heard a distant siren as they crossed the King’s Lynn road, and ten minutes later they had seen a helicopter far to the north of them whose camouflage identified it as military, but that was all. Given that they had to assume that the theft of the MGB had been swiftly reported, they were grateful.

Faraj wound down the MGB’s windows, and pulled back the vinyl top. The car stood beside the old bridge across the river. In front of it a flight of cracked concrete steps led down to a narrow towpath. From the far side of the river the narrower drainage channel led off northwards. The river was deep here, but slow, which was why, for all the place’s bleakness, it had always been so good for swimming. Not that you would want to swim in it now. The level was much higher than Jean remembered it, and the water was a dense, swirling coffee-brown. A scum of foliage, cigarette ends and fast-food containers circled at the foot of the steps.

Turning, she looked around her. Nothing. Then Faraj caught her wrist hard and she froze, backing away from the bridge. There was movement in the relief drain. Something was silently displacing the bullrushes and reeds. An animal? she wondered. A police dog? A police diver, even? Nothing was visible, just that slow, terrifying bending of the reeds.

They were well back from the bank now, crouching behind the car. Both were holding their weapons; both released their safety catches as a stray gust of wind caused rain to cascade from the wet branches overhanging the river.

The reeds in the relief drain parted, and the pointed grey-green nose of a kayak moved silently into view. Sitting inside it was an unmoving figure in hooded olive waterproofs. Jean’s first, paralysing assumption was that this was a Special Forces soldier, and when the figure slowly raised a pair of binoculars to its face this seemed to be confirmed.

But the figure was scanning the bankside vegetation, and completely ignoring the MGB standing by the bridge. There was another shower of raindrops from the trees, and a small, nondescript bird flew from under the bridge and alighted on the broken stem of a bullrush. Smoothly and unhurriedly the binoculars swivelled to focus on the bird, and now a smile was visible on the face of the hooded figure in the kayak. It was a young man, probably a teenager, and his lips seemed to be moving in soundless appreciation of the bird.

Her heart thumping with the sick, dragging ebb of tension, Jean thumbed on the Malyah’s safety and glanced sideways to see if Faraj had registered that the young man was not a threat. The bird must have caught her slight movement, because it swung quickly away from its perch and darted back beneath the bridge. The young man looked after it for a moment, lowered his binoculars, paddled himself forwards into the bridge pool, reversed his kayak, and disappeared the way he had come.

They watched his progress, or at least the movements of the reeds, until nothing could be seen. For ten agonisingly extended minutes they waited by the car in case he should return, but the fenland landscape out of which he had so unexpectedly appeared had reclaimed him.

“We’ve got to get rid of the car,” Jean said eventually. “Those were military helicopters we saw earlier, and it’ll show up through the trees on their thermal imaging cameras.”

Faraj nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Leaning into the car, he checked that it was in neutral and released the handbrake. They pushed from the rear. The old MGB was heavier than it looked, with a very low centre of gravity, and took several seconds to budge in the rain-slick mud. Then it nosed as if unwillingly to the top of the steps, lurched over the first of them, and with a loud grating noise stuck fast. “Axle’s caught,” muttered Faraj. “Bastard thing. We have to keep pushing.”

They pushed, their shoulders to the MGB’s chrome back-bumper, the cleated soles of their boots digging deep.

At first nothing happened, and then everything happened. The cement facing of the brickwork steps cracked, the rear of the MGB swung upwards, flipping Jean off balance so that Faraj had to grab her to prevent her skidding into the river, and the car commenced a slow-motion descent of the steps. At the bottom, with something close to stateliness, it somersaulted on to its roof with a crashing displacement of water and began to sink, coming to rest upside down with a single rear wheel exposed.

“Bastard thing,” repeated Faraj, releasing Jean and wiping river water from his face. Moving down the cracked wet steps he sat himself on the bottom one and, reaching out with his feet, braced them hard against the exposed nearside wheel. Straightening his legs, jamming his back against the steps, he pressed with all his strength. The car rocked a little, but otherwise refused to budge.

“Wait,” Jean ordered him. Pulling back her wet hair, she climbed down beside him, put an arm around him and grabbed a fistful of his jacket to brace herself. Hesitating for a moment, he did the same. She felt the heavy pressure of his arm against her. “On three,” she said. “Now!”

They pushed until they were trembling and the steps at Jean’s back were cutting agonisingly into her spine. At her shoulders, she could feel Faraj’s arm quivering with strain. Against her heel, the faint give of the tyre.

“Almost,” muttered Faraj, panting. “Once more, and this time don’t stop.”

She dragged new air into her lungs. Once again the cracked cement-covered brick drew agonising stripes across her back. Her body was shaking with the strain, her ears were roaring and her head was dizzy. “Don’t stop!” gasped Faraj. “Don’t stop!”

Slowly, almost thoughtfully, the inverted car moved from its obstruction, seemed to drift for a moment, and sank on the current into the deep water below the bridge. Gasping for breath, her chest heaving, Jean watched as the chrome of the bumpers faded, became invisible.

Slowly they climbed the steps again, and Faraj checked the biscuit tin containing the C4 charge.

“OK?”

Faraj shrugged. “It’s still there. And we’re still here.”

Jean took stock. She was cold, filthy, hungry and soaked to the skin, and had been so for several hours. On top of this the day’s terrors-the repeated jolt and ebb of adrenalin-had shocked her into an almost hallucinatory exhaustion. She sensed, as she had for some days now, an implacable pursuing figure. A figure that dragged at her like a shadow, that matched her pace for pace, whispering hell and confusion in her ear. Perhaps, she thought, it was her former self, trying to reclaim her soul. At that moment, and in that place, she would have believed anything.