Gerald Seymour - Home Run

Purveyors of bathroom ceramics to His Magnificence.

"Christ, Harriet… I am so afraid… " His lips mouthed the words. "These charming domestic scenes will surely end, my darling."

"Survive, old boy." That's what she would say and that was the name of the game, survival. Survival was going back to Harriet, one day, going home. And the price of going home, at any rate going home in a skin she would recognize, well, that price was unthinkable. "Don't think it, old boy. You can't afford to think it because you know so much. So many lives depend on your silence."

"You'll tell the girls, won't you? Get them to come and take care of you until this is all over. Oh yes, it will be over. Sooner or later, most probably later, it will be over. I rather fancy there'll be a debriefing of sorts and then they'll drive me to Bibury and you will be at the door. It will be summer still, oh yes." He wiped the underside of the basin with his hands and saw the beetles. Small black beetles on the floor. They had an entry point where the tiles were poorly fitted against the wall.

He started to count the beetles. They were difficult to count, because the little blighters were meandering all over the floor under the basin.

He had not heard the footfall, nor the bolt being drawn back, nor the key being turned.

He was counting beetles, and there were three men in the room. There was a moment of annoyance when he lost his place among the beetles. The men came fast. He was dragged upright. His arms were twisted behind his back. One of the men buried a fist in Mattie's hair and pulled him across the room. Pain on his scalp, and pain at his shoulders from his bent back arms, and his shoes flapping loose and his trousers dribbling down over his hips.

He was trying to remember the rules. At all times courtesy and good manners. Bloody important. Bad mouth them back and he'd get a kicking. Fight them and he'd get a beating.

That's what he used to tell his students at the Fort. "No future in getting a good hammering if the only witnesses to your pride are a gang of lowlife thugs."

The one who had hold of Mattie's hair kept his head bowed.

He could only see the floor. He could only see the steps down. He was propelled forward.

They were going fast down the stairs and then across the entrance hall of the building, and towards the back of the hall, and into a narrow doorway. Down a flight of breeze block steps, into the cellar.

A room of white, bright light. He saw the zinc bathtub. He saw the hose pipe that was attached to a wall tap. He saw the heavy hooks protruding at different heights from the wall. He saw the plank bed with the leather thongs fastened at each end. He saw the lengths of insulated cable lying casually on the floor.

He saw the table and the two chairs, and the white, bright light was facing one of the chairs. That chair was empty. In the other, his back to the light, was the investigator.

He was put down on to the empty chair. He wriggled on the hard seat to get the waist of his trousers back up from his hips. The men who had brought him down the two flights of steps were all behind him. He could hear their breathing, but he could not see them. He could only see the face of the investigator, and if he looked past the face of the investigator then there was only the ferocity of the white, bright light. He could feel the tremble in his thighs, and in his fingers. He could feel the sinking of his stomach and the looseness.

He heard the creaking turn of a tape-recorder's spools. He thought the machine was on the floor beside the feet of the investigator. He could not see the microphone. The investigator put a small attache case on the table and opened it. He took out the sheets of paper Mattie had written, and a single cardboard file holder. He closed the attache case, put it back on the floor.

The investigator pushed the file halfway across the table.

The light fell on it. The title of the file was " D O L P H I N " .

The investigator took the handwritten sheets of paper and held them in front of Mattie's face and tore them into small pieces.

He saw them flake to the floor.

"I am not stupid, Mr Furniss, and I had not expected that you would be stupid either."

As soon as he was out from under the railway bridge, the rain streamed down over his face.

He turned, but no one stirred or watched him go.

Because Charlie had brought a bottle of sherry he was good news amongst the dossers who used the pavement under the bridge. He hadn't had more than one swig himself. The bottle had passed from hand to hand, and he had even been lent a sheet of cardboard packing to use as a blanket. Good guys.

Didn't bother with questions. Guys who had accepted him because he'd passed round the bottle.

The rain was dribbling off his nose. He might be back, and he might not. He was another of the city's flotsam, footloose for the day and congregating for the night where there was shelter from the rain. He could have gone to a hotel, or to a boarding house, but Charlie had reckoned that was risk. He had felt safer in the dossers' sleeping place. He had been aware of the light of a policeman's torch on his face, past three in the morning. They wouldn't be looking for him amongst the dossers, no way.

At the Underground entrance he ducked out of the rain. He bought a newspaper; scanned it fast. He saw the photograph of I the burned out, blown up car, and he saw a picture of Jamil Shabro, and the caption "dedicated monarchist". Three dead.

Shabro, the traffic warden, DOA, and an old lady who lived right above the blast. Five seriously injured, the old lady's sister among them, blinded in both eyes. No mention of a surveillance operation. He had not dreamed it, and he had no means, even now, of gauging what was the scale of the hunt.

They'd pick him up, sure as hell, because they'd mounted surveillance on his meeting, they'd have him held at the airport whenever he flew back.

And then the jigsaw pieces started tumbling. They had spotted him at Heathrow on the way in. That was what the performance at the airport was all about. He'd been under surveillance ever since. They could have lifted him and the rucksack at any time. Why had they not? What were they waiting for? Maybe they would think Jamil Shabro was his dealer. If so, that gave him a tiny breathing space. One less hand at his throat.

Inside the ticket hall he dialled the number that Mr Furniss had given him in St James's Park.

He was answered by a secretary. He asked for Mr Stone.

He said he wouldn't give his own name.

"Yes?"

"Who is speaking?"

"I am a friend of Mr Matthew Furniss."

"Of Mattie's?"

"He said I should call you."

"Did he now – in what connection?"

"To discuss business with you."

He heard the hesitation. "Mattie said that?"

"He told me to come to you."

"What's the name? No name, no meeting."

"Charlie."

"Hang on. Shan't be a second."

Flossie Duggan responded to the winking light, lifted her telephone. Neither of her telephones had a bell. Mr Furniss did not like telephones ringing all day around him. She was still red-eyed and her waste paper basket was a quarter filled with screwed up Kleenex.

"He's not here at the moment, Mr Stone… Yes, he knows Charlie. Old friend of Mr Furniss' family. Is there anything else, Mr Stone?… And best wishes to you, too."

He fed more coins into the machine. He wrote down the address and the time of his appointment, then rang off.

Inside the station he paid for a key to a left luggage box, and at the box, and masked by its open door, he lifted a Sainsbury's bag from his rucksack, before squeezing it into the locker. He wound the top of the plastic bag round his wrist. He went back to the telephones.

Another call, another meeting set up.