Stella Rimington - At Risk

Braking the Accord a short distance beyond the gate, he backed into the driveway. Halfway down the incline he braked again, and got out of the car to unlock the garage and remove the kayak from the roof-rack. It had been, in its way, a fantastic day. He’d never thought of himself as the lone operator type, but there was something about Norfolk in winter-the uncompromising solitude, the vast rain-charged skies-which accorded with his mood. On the Methwold Fen Relief Drain he’d seen a marsh harrier, a very rare bird indeed these days. He’d heard the call first-the shrill kwee, kwee damped by the wet wind. A moment later he’d seen the hawk itself, hanging almost casually on a wing before plummeting into the reeds and rising an instant later with a screaming moorhen between its talons. Nature red in tooth and claw. The sort of moment you remembered for ever.

A moment not at odds, in a weird sort of way, with the helicopters that, at intervals, he’d seen hovering and whispering in the northern distance. What had that been about? Some sort of exercise? One of the helicopters had come close enough for him to see its military markings.

Rolling up the garage door, he hauled the kayak inside and shoved it up into the rafters. Then, parking the car and closing the garage door behind him, he returned up the ramp and climbed the balustraded stone steps to the front door. If nothing else, his mother’s remarriage had certainly given the family a leg-up in the world, property-wise. Having pulled off his wet waterproofs and hung them to drip in the front hall, he found his mother in the kitchen, pausing from the preparation of a leg of lamb and the boiling of a kettle to open a jar of prune-based sludge for the baby’s dessert. Jessica herself, meanwhile, temporarily at peace with the world, was lying on her back on a rug on the floor, sucking her toes. With his mother and half-sister stood a uniformed police officer.

The officer was smiling, and Denzil recognised him as Jack Hobhouse. A solid middle-aged man holding a peaked cap bearing the insignia of the Norfolk Constabulary, he had been to the house several times before when Denzil had been at home-most recently to advise on a new alarm system.

“Denzil, love, Sergeant Hobhouse has been warning us about something. Apparently there are a couple of terrorist-type people on the loose. Not near here, but they’re armed, and they’ve apparently…” Reaching down in response to a sudden sharp cry from Jessica, she gathered up the child, arranged her over her left shoulder, and started patting her back.

“Apparently…?” prompted Denzil.

“They’ve killed a couple of people up on the north coast,” she said as Jessica, burping, released a milky posset down the back of her mother’s expensive black cardigan. “There was that whole thing about the man who was found shot in that car park.”

“Fakenham,” said Denzil, regarding his mother’s back with fastidious horror. “I saw something about it in the local paper. They’re looking for a British woman and a Pakistani man, aren’t they?”

“That’s what they think,” said Hobhouse. “Now as your mum said, there’s no reason to suppose they’re anywhere near here, but…”

He was interrupted by the ringing of the wall-mounted phone. Denzil made a move for it but his mother snatched it up, listened for a moment, and then replaced the receiver. At the same moment the baby started to cry.

“Traffic backed up for a mile because of roadblocks,” she announced despairingly over the baby’s wails. “Thinks he’s going to be at least an hour late back. And I’ve got his bloody parents arriving at any minute. Which reminds me, we’re going to need some wine and some more tonic water… My God, Denzil, is that them?”

“I’ll, er… I’ll leave these,” murmured Hobhouse, handing Denzil two photocopied A4 sheets and replacing his cap, “and be on my way. Any worries, don’t hesitate. And obviously, if you spot anyone…”

Denzil took the sheets, gave the officer a distracted thumbs-up, and glanced out of the window. Judging by the five-year-old Jaguar and the intolerant bearing of the couple stepping out of it, it was indeed “them.”

“Mum, you’ve got sick on your back.” He took a deep breath, thought briefly but longingly of the serenity that the afternoon had held, and made the supreme sacrifice. “Give me Jessica. Go upstairs and change. I’ll hold the fort.”

Faraj watched dispassionately as Jean, kneeling naked to the waist on the flagstoned towpath beneath the bridge, bent forward to rinse her hair in the river. Beyond the arches of the bridge lay a grey, baleful dawn. It was 9 a.m., and very cold. Jean’s fingers scrabbled methodically at her scalp, a thin soapy cloud drifted downstream, and finally she raised her head and wrung out the dark rope of her hair. Still crouched over the water, she took a plastic comb from the unzipped washbag, and dragged it repeatedly forwards from the nape of her neck until her hair was no longer dripping. Then she shook it out, and pulled her dirty T-shirt back on. Her hands were shaking now after their immersion in the river, her head ached with the cold, and hunger was knotting her guts. It was essential, though, that she be presentable.

It was the day.

Pressing her flattened hands into her armpits to warm them for a moment, she searched in the washbag, found a pair of steel hairdressing scissors, and handed these and the comb to Faraj. Events had taken on a strange clarity. “My turn for a haircut,” she said, a little self-consciously.

He nodded. Frowned as he took the scissors. Flickered them experimentally.

“It’s simple,” she said. “You work from the back to the front, cutting so that every strand”-she held up her index finger-“is this long.”

The frown still in place, Faraj seated himself behind her. Taking the comb and scissors he began to cut, carefully dropping the severed locks into the river as he went. Fifteen minutes later he laid down the scissors.

“Done.”

“How does it look?” she asked. “Do I look different?”

A word of tenderness. A single word would do.

“You look different,” he said brusquely. “Are you ready?”

“I just want to take a last look at the map,” she said, glancing sideways at him. He was not yet thirty, but the stubble on his chin was silver. His face was blank. Reaching for the book, squinting in the dim light, she re-examined the topography of the area. As the crow flew, they were just three miles from the target.

“I’m still worried about the helicopters,” she confessed. “If we go across country and they spot us, we’re finished.”

“It’s less risky than taking another car,” he said. “And if they’re as clever as you say they are, they won’t be searching round here anyway. They’ll be concentrating on the approaches to the US bases.”

“We’re probably fifteen miles from Marwell here,” she admitted. “Maybe sixteen.”

But fifteen or sixteen miles still didn’t seem very far. It was the infrared cameras that she really feared. Their heat signatures on a screen, two pulsing dots of light growing larger and larger as the beating of the rotors grew louder and louder, roaring now, blotting out all sound and thought…

“I think we should walk to West Ford along the towpath,” she said, levelling her voice with a conscious effort. “That way, if we hear any helicopters, we’ve… we’ve got a chance of hiding under the next bridge.”

He looked expressionlessly down at her hands, which had begun to shake again. “All right,” he said. “The path, then. Pack the bags.”

In the Swanley Heath mess hall, Liz sat in front of an untouched slice of buttered toast and a cup of black coffee. So far, Investigations had turned up nothing of interest concerning any of the names on the Garth House school list. Several of the pupils lived in Norfolk or Suffolk, or had done so at some point in the past, but while most remembered Jean D’Aubigny, none had any significant connection with her. A loner, had been the universal judgement. Someone who was happiest by herself.