Gerald Seymour - Home Run

Charlie carried away from the Underground station one packet containing a full kilo of pure and uncut heroin.

"Good God… What are you doing here?"

Park didn't think, too tired to think, just opened his mouth.

"Bill told me to get home."

She had a super mouth, except when it was twisted, when she was bloody furious.

"Marvellous, you came home because the philanthropic Mr Parrish said it was alright, remind me to grovel to him…

What's that on your head?"

His hand went up. He felt the Elastoplast, and it was curling at the edges. "There was a car bomb… "

"The Iranian?"

She must have just come back from work. She had an apron over her work dress, and the vacuum cleaner was out of the cupboard and plugged in.

He said, "We were on a surveillance, the car went up about 30 yards away. We got chucked about a bit."

"It's today, afternoon. That was yesterday, morning."

He hadn't kissed her yet. He was still in the doorway. And so hellishly tired, and it was an old script.

"We had a panic on."

"All the telephones down, were they?"

He didn't know whether she was picking an argument, or whether she was concerned that he had been close to a car bomb. Her cheeks were flushed. He reckoned she wanted the fight. He could remember holding Token's hand the previous day – never understood why Token didn't have a steady fellow

– he just wanted cocoa hot in his throat, and his head cool on the pillow.

"I said a panic. We picked up a target the other night at the airport. I don't know how much, but he's got a substantial amount of stuff. Yesterday morning he visited Shabro, the Iranian who died. The target got away. We don't know where he's gone. It was my decision to let him run, and we've lost him, plus a hell of a load… That's what I mean by a panic.

That's why I didn't think of ringing you… "

"David, what the hell is happening to us?"

"I'm just pretty tired."

"When are we going to talk about it, when?"

"Right now, I want to go to sleep."

She flounced aside, made a way for him. She snapped the switch on the vacuum cleaner and he had to step over the cable to get to the bedroom. At least the suitcase was back on top of the wardrobe.

He didn't register that the vacuum cleaner had gone off.

She came into the room. She sat on the bed beside him.

"Is it really bad for you?"

"If I foul up? Yes."

"How bad?"

"Kiss goodbye to a Liaison Officer posting… "

"In Bogota?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's the best news I've had all week. It sounds like hell on earth, does Bogota."

"It just seems important to me."

"More important than anything?"

"I'm very tired, Ann… I'm sorry I didn't ring."

She went to the dressing table. She took off it an opened envelope, and picked an invitation card out from the envelope.

"What is it?" His eyes were hardly open.

"Invitation…" She laughed, a brittle ring. "The ID

Mid-Summer Ball… are we going, David?"

"It'll be awful."

"I want to meet all of those wonderful people who are so important to your life. I am going to talk to all those fantastic people who have the power to send us to Bogota… "

"We'll go."

"You stand me up…"

"I said that we'll go."

"… and we're dead."

"I'm just so tired… Ann, I don't want us to be dead."

"Then do something about it."

She had the apron off and her shoes and her dress, was half undressed, when she saw that he was asleep.

At the airport he had worn a blazer with the badge of a travel company sewn on to his breast pocket. The travel company knew nothing of a Charlie Eshraq, had employed no courier in Turkey during the period of Charlie's last trip out of the United Kingdom.

In his flat they found a receipt from a bucket shop – followed up, blood out of a stone and the threat of a V A T inquiry before the blood started to trickle. Three return tickets to Istanbul.

No address book. No cheque stubs. The place was eerily clean. Fingerprints, yes they had all that. But that wasn't going anywhere. Not a single photograph to build on. Nothing to say whether Eshraq was his real name. The coffee shop and the laundromat knew him, had never seen him with anyone, if you know what I mean. The owner of the flat had never met him and an estate agent, who blushed rather prettily Statesman thought, said he paid always in cash, always on the nail. There were three possible leads. Manvers, who may have known nothing about him at all. The man in the Import-Export business in Kensington, who turned out to be the brother, wouldn't you just have guessed it, of the Iranian in the car, so his office was shut very tight and the family scarpered and the Anti-Terrorist people were taking the line that if the ID were going into the film business and if Mr Park thought he was Mr David Puttnam that was all very well, thanks for the tip-off, and do us a favour, son, don't ask us to tell you where Mr Shabro's brother is, because you people are bad news and anyway you're so clever that you can surely find him without assistance from Anti-Terrorist Branch. Mr Corinthian's film? No, it was still being examined. No, the Met would probably want it for a couple of days. Expect it in a week or so.

And there was Furniss of the FCO, as Harlech called him.

The ACIO said that Leroy Winston Manvers was now on remand at Brixton prison and out of reach, and that they'd had their chance with him, and no way were they going back there now that the dealer was in the hands of a Legal Aid solicitor.

So Parrish had said to the ACIO that this Matthew Furniss was the key, and the ACIO had not been able to contradict him.

Three of them went to the Home Office. The ACIO had roped in the head of the National Drugs Intelligence Unit, they'd gone round to New Scotland Yard and picked him up.

They'd leaned on him, so that he couldn't excuse himself.

Into the Home Secretary's office.

The ACIO did the talking. Bill Parrish did the prompting.

The head of the NDIU was the weight behind them.

"What it comes down to, Home Secretary, is that we are being denied access to this Matthew Furniss. Now, we've played this very straight. We have not, I repeat not, chased this man and sought him out. We accept that he may be a sensitively placed government servant, and we have gone through the correct channels, and we've been blown off…

Let's not beat about the bush. We were instructed to carry out an investigation into the supply of the heroin that ultimately killed Lucy Barnes. Quite disproportionate resources have been deployed… and we're being blocked. It's right that we should be frank with each other, Home Secretary.

You wanted a priority made of this case."

"You've lost this man Eshraq, and you've lost his heroin?"

"Correct, Home Secretary. We lost him in freak circumstances, you will agree. If we are to get him back, and get his stuff back, without wasting an immense amount of time then we have to have Matthew Furniss."

"I'll look into it."

"Either that or the investigation has to go into the trash-can, sir."

"I said that I would look into it, Mr Parrish. Thank you, gentlemen. Good day to you."

Parrish, not a vindictive man, thought that the Home Secretary looked like a cornered rabbit. Not his to reason why, but he didn't mind taking a small jolt of consolation from the man's discomfiture.

It was a well arranged meeting. No chances taken. Charlie liked that. He had been under surveillance, and he was pretty sure that he had busted the surveillance, but he liked the style of the Greek and the meeting. He had been picked up in Chiswick in West London by an anonymous little bastard with a sallow face and bad eyes. That had been arranged on the telephone. He was pretty sure that the rendezvous was checked out, that they were watched by the Greek's payroll. He was told to take the Underground to the end of the District line in Wimbledon. His description must have been telephoned on, because after he had kicked his heels and had a couple of coffees at the station cafeteria, he was met again. They put him in the back of a van and they drove him round for an hour and a half, and when the van stopped, and he hadn't an idea where he was, then the back doors had opened, and the Greek had climbed in beside him.