Gerald Seymour - Home Run

"This is Colonel Eshraq's boy, Charlie, dear. He needs a drink.. . Charlie, my wife."

"Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Shabro."

"I don't know when I'll be back."

The bags were dumped on to the carpet, the fur coat draped over them.

"What would you like, Mr Eshraq?"

"Scotch would be excellent, a weak one, please."

He heard the front door shut. He thought that Jamil Shabro hadn't been able to get out of the house fast enough, not once his wife had returned. It amused Charlie, the way she punished him, spending his money. She brought him the drink in a crystal tumbler, and there wasn't much water, and then she was back to the sideboard, lacing vodka with tonic. He sipped his whisky. From the window he could see Jamil Shabro bending to unlock the door of his car. The door was pulled open and he saw the man's glance flash up to the window, and his wife waved vaguely to him.

"Cheers."

"Cheers, Mrs Shabro."

She stood beside him. He wondered how much money she spent on clothes each month.

"I'm exhausted – shopping is so tiring in London."

Charlie watched the three-point turn. He heard the scratch of the gears. He saw a battered van parked at the top end of the mews. The turn was complete.

"I'm sorry, she's rather a noisy child, my daughter."

The car burst forward.

He saw the light.

The light came first.

The light was orange fire.

The 5 series BMW was moving, lifting. The passenger door separating from the body, and the boot hatch rising.

The windscreen blowing out. The van alongside rocking.

The body emerging, a rising puppet, through the windscreen hole.

He felt the blast. Charlie cringing away, and trying to shelter Mrs Shabro. The full length window cracking, slowly splintering into the half drawn curtains, and the hot air blast on his face, on his chest. The same hot air blast as had hammered his back on the wide road leading into Tabriz.

He heard the thunder. The thrashing of an empty oil drum. The dead hammer blow of military explosive detonating.

He was on the carpet. There were the first small blood dribbles on his face, in his beard, and his hands were resting on glass shards, and the woman was behind him.

Charlie crawled on his knees to the open window, to beside the ripped curtain shrouds. The sound had gone. The 5 series BMW no longer moved. There was the first mushroom of the smoke pall. The body of Jamil Shabro was on the cobbles of the mews, his right leg was severed above the knee and the front of his face was gone. His trousers seemed scissored at his groin. Charlie saw the back doors of the van opening.

A man spilling out, with a camera and a long lens hanging from his neck, and the man was reeling drunk. A second man coming. The second man clutched, like it was for his life, a pair of binoculars. Two drunks, neither able to stand without the other, holding each other up, pulling each other down.

Two men, and they had a camera with a long lens and binoculars.

Charlie heard the shout.

The shouting was above the screaming of the woman on the carpet behind him. The woman was nothing to Charlie, the shout was everything.

"April Five to April One, April Five to April One… for fuck's sake come in… This is April Five, Police, Fire, Ambulance, immediately to April Five location… Bill, there's a bloody bomb gone off."

Charlie understood.

"There are casualties, Bill. Tango Four's been taken out by an explosion… Just get the fuckers here, Bill."

There was a girl running into the mews. Running for dear life towards the two men, and she had a personal radio in her hand.

Surveillance. His meeting with Jamil Shabro had been under surveillance.

He went fast.

He went down the stairs. He went out through the garage door at the back into a small garden, and he went over the high trellis wood fence at the back because he could see that the gate was bolted. He sprinted the length of the alleyway to the jeep.

The body had not been moved, but it was covered now with a groundsheet. The leg was in a plastic bag, holding down a corner of the groundsheet. Harlech's traffic warden, hardly a stitch of clothing left on her, had been tenderly loaded into the first ambulance and driven slowly out of the mews. Too slowly, Park thought, for survival. The scene of crime photographer went about his work. The mews was sealed off but there was a great melee of men round the car. There were men from the local force, uniformed and plain clothes, there were Special Branch, there were Anti-Terrorist squad, and two who stood right back and didn't seem to Park to know quite what they were doing there. He had those two as Security Service. There were a couple of WPCs in the house, and all of them out in the street could hear the crying. There were ambulance crews still in four other houses in the mews. Two cars close to the blast had been wrecked.

Corinthian had gone to hospital. He'd been taking a photograph of Tango Four as the BMW had driven towards them, he'd had the body of the camera heaved into his nose, cheek-bone and eyebrow. He'd have some stitches and a technicolour eye.

He had seen quite a deal in his time, but he had never seen anything remotely like the havoc in the mews. He was on the outside, so was Token. They were the ID and they had strayed into police territory. Of course, the local force had not been informed that April were on their patch. Of course, the Anti-Terrorist squad had not been informed that an Iranian exile, on their files as "at risk", was being targetted. So naturally Keeper and Token were getting the cold shoulder.

They'd be caught up with, later. They'd be interviewed when the mess was cleared. Park was still dazed. He had the noise in his ears. He had the ache in his shoulder from when he had been pitched across the dark interior of the van. He was lucky to be alive.

Parrish arrived. He strode past the constable who held out an ineffectual hand to stop him and into the mews. He walked straight to Park.

No rubbernecking, no preamble.

"Where did he go, Tango One?"

"He's not in the house now," Park said.

"You were round the back, Amanda. Did he come out of the back?"

She was looking at the cobbles. She had her handkerchief tight in her hand. "I heard the bang, I came running. They could have been killed."

Parrish snarled. "Next time you want to play Lady with the Lamp, for Christ's sake get a relief first."

Parrish had his personal radio in his hand. There was a tight anger in his snapped words. "Alpha Control, this is April One. If any of April team are not doing good works could they be got soonest, if it does not interfere with visiting hours, to Tango One's home location, and report back on whether Tango One is in residence. Out."

They walked out of the mews. Park thought half the plods were looking at him like it was his fault, like it had happened because the ID had nosed in. The muzzy haze in his ears was clearing. He hadn't done it before, but he took Amanda's hand in his and gave it a squeeze.

The message came back into Parrish's earphone when they were close to the Lane. He heard it. He didn't take his eyes away from the traffic in front. He turned to Park, all phlegmatic.

"Tango One's done a bunk. He went off in a hell of a hurry, didn't even close his front door. Well done, Florence Nightingale, we've lost the bastard. That hurts. It hurts rather more that we've lost a heap of scag."

"Leave off it, Bill. She did what anyone would have done.

That wasn't a firework. Another thirty paces and we'd have been gone."

"Rotten old world, Keeper, you can quote me… You going to be fit for the Foreign Office?"

"Yes," Park said.

When the body had been moved, when the widow had left with her daughter to go to the home of the dead man's brother, a team of detectives went inside the mews house. There was no point at that time in trying to interview the widow and her daughter, both hysterical and about to be tranquillized.