Gerald Seymour - Condition black

Away up the road, up Mount Pleasant, up Mulfords Hill, across the Kingsclere to Burghfield Common Road, were the arc lights and the fences of the A. W. E. It was Boll country, Basil country, Carol country, a world of fraud and waste and burnt-out hopes, of excruciating effort, constant danger, trivial rewards, Ministry police with machine pistols country. Less and less did it feel like Frederick Bissett country.

" N o w then, you naughty little blighters, time for sleep."

He drove out of London, with a road map across his knees. He might just get the New York posting if he fouled up. Some of the instructors at Quantico said that hunches were good, and some – more – said they were crap. Ruane had been out when Bill had got back to the Embassy and his hunch told him to get down into the country again. New York-based Agents earned less than the city's garbage collectors, and the only worse posting than New York H.Q. on Foley Square was the regional office at Brooklyn-Queens. If he really fouled up it would be the fast heave out of Rome, and if he fouled up really bad then it could be Brooklyn-Queens, New York City.

He edged his way along amid the commuter traffic flow.

The Quantico bible, verse one, chapter one, said that Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The seven big Ps. He had two P's worth on the back seat of his Ford along with his waterproof coat and the Wellington boots. He had bought himself some thermals and a sleeping bag and a camouflaged bivouac cover.

The motor was fine, cramped but he could cope with thai and where he was going was just right for a dismal-looking little motor.

Once he was past Reading the traffic had thinned. He drove care fully, and the light had gone by the time he could take the turn off the motorway for the cross-country route to Warminster.

Erlich was a town boy. He had lived in Annapolis, Maryland, L with his grandparents, then he had gone to Santa Barbara, University of California, then to Battle Creek and the town school, then to Quantico and on to Atlanta and Washington. Country was not his place. There was big, raw, country where his mother now lived, out on the White Mountains and on the long trail, but he had never felt at home in country. He did not know the way of the country, nor the pace of the country. Or the suspicion of the country.

Two miles short of the village, his headlights picked out the gate. The entrance into the field had been solidified with stone chips. He reckoned it was a good place for him.

He parked the Ford in the field, hard against the hedge. The hedge was thick holly and would screen his car from the road.

In the darkness he put on his boots and slipped on his waterproof coat. He rolled his sleeping bag tight inside the camouflage bivouac screen. He felt in his pocket, checked that he had his monocular glass.

Between the trees ahead he could see the dull gold glow of the village lights.

When the Serious Crime Squad boys came down to the village and bothered to announce themselves then, they always asked to see Desmond's log. His wife was in the kitchen and his supper would be up in a quarter of an hour, and the small ones were in bed. It was a useful time for Desmond to get his log up to date.

The log listed as many of the visitors to the Manor House as he knew of. Pretty dull reading it made, but it was what Serious Crime wanted.

He knew about the flowers being delivered because the van driver had called in at the shop to ask directions. Desmond knew just about everything involving the shop because he had won Mrs Williams' gratitude when he had put two kids in court for breaking her plate-glass window the last New Year's Eve. Nothing surprising about the flowers because obviously Mrs Tuck was very ill. The young constable felt he was a coming man. How many policemen in the Wiltshire force could boast a visit from an F. B. I. Special Agent plus an officer from the Security Service?

He wondered what poor Mrs Tuck's son had done to warrant the attention of the Security Service and the F.B.I. Properly speaking, that visit would have to go into the log too, and Serious Crime could make what they would of it.

He wondered, too, whether that pig of a son would come back to see his mother before she died

The flowers were on the compost heap and the voluminous cellophane wrapping and the ribbons were in the rubbish bin beside the back door, He wouldn't have the bloody flowers in a vase and on display She was upstairs and dying, his wife, and he was damned if he would allow their bloody intrusion into his life and into her death.

" Y o u owe them nothing… They make a joke of your mother's illness. Flowers, damn them, just to get a message to you. How can you owe them more than you owe your mother and me? How could you involve us in the infernally dangerous mess you are in?"

"I'll be gone by the morning," Colt said.

He was involved, Major Tuck was most emphatically involved.

He was involved because before he switched on the light in any room he first went to the window and drew the curtains closed.

He was involved because he cared for his son's freedom. He was involved because in the late afternoon dusk he had walked the dog around the garden and known that the dog would show him if the house was watched from the kitchen garden wall and the paddock hedgerow or the front garden wall on either side of the front gates.

"Will I see you again?"

"Will I involve you again?" Colt asked, and there was the careless smile at the boy's mouth.

God's truth, he'd miss the little bugger. God's truth, he wanted him gone because when he was gone then at least he knew the boy was safe and at liberty. God's truth, the smile on his wife's face, as the boy had sat with her and held her hand, had been the best thing in his life for months. God's truth, he could no longer remember how he had been at that age, in France, alone, a satchel of gelignite for company.

" I f you can come again… "

" I will."

She took the pheasant from the snare. She loosened the wire from its throat. In three of her snares there were strangled pheasants, two cock birds and a hen. She could move in the fields without light, her father had taught her well – it was six years since the keepers had last caught him, since he had last been before the magistrates in Warminster. Her footfall was without sound, her breathing was silent. She was a wraith moving in the care of the darkness, back towards the village.

He came past the empty keg barrels that were piled as haphazardly to await collection by the brewery as they had always been. He came past the oil tank and the rusted plough that had been at the back since he could first remember. He went through the outside back door and through the gents toilet.

Colt came into the back bar.

The beer smell was in his nostrils. The cigarette smoke was in his eyes. The jukebox music was in his ears. He paused in the doorway.

He saw the faces and he saw the astonishment. He might not have been away. Two years back, and they had all been in the bar. Billy and Zap, the brothers who worked in the bike garage in Frome… Charlie on the dole and proud of it… Kev from the farm on the Shepton Road… Dazzer who had tried to be a postman but who wouldn't pack in the evening drinking and couldn't get up in the morning… Zack, who had done time for

• sheep stealing from Home Farm, three months in Horfield…

Johnny, whose grandfather had left the plough at the back to wipe off his slate twenty years before, at least… and old Brennie. He was back two years. Old Brennie by the guttering fire, where he had been two years back, where he had been with the German Shepherd sleeping on its side at his feet when Colt had last come to the pub. The village boys were around him.