Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

"It's nice countryside it's fabulous, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

Bill Davies knew the countryside round the Prime Minister's bolt-hole, Chequers, and round the Oxfordshire home of a onetime Northern Ireland minister, round the estate of a Saudi fat-cat, and the countryside round Windsor Great Park where the Jordanian king had a mansion. He knew about the countryside and loathed it. He called it a hostile environment.

They'd come out of the village on the one long, straight road and were now in the close, high-hedged lanes. His eyes were on the hedges, on the ditches, on the concreted culvert entries, on the trees back from the lanes. It was the nature of the job, and he regarded himself as professional and dedicated to it, that the warning time might be two seconds or three, and the principal wasn't trained to drive, wouldn't have known how to perform the bootlegger turn, wouldn't have known how to get to maximum speed. He'd half frozen just before the last junction, his hand hovering over the Glock, when they'd come to a Transit van half filling the road with the bonnet up and a man working on the engine. They'd had to slow almost to a stop before passing it. His eyes raked ahead.

"You get out into the countryside much, with your family?"

"Not often."

"You've got a family?"

"Yes."

"Boys, girls, both?"

"Boys."

"What age are they?"

"If you don't mind, Mr. Perry…"

He stared through the windscreen. He should have cleaned it. They all wanted to talk, to unburden themselves with their protection officer and it was the route to disaster. He was not tasked to offer a sympathetic ear.

Ahead, there were men and warning bollards and a heap of excavated road tarmac. The road was clear beyond, but one of the workmen held the stop sign facing them. Perry was slowing, but

Davies shouted for him to keep going and they went through to a volley of rich local obscenities. Friends fell Out, and the rule was to keep it as a job. The tools of the job were the H amp;K in its case with the magazine attached, at his feet, and the Glock on his hip. He loved the job. The pity was he might just love the job more than he loved Lily.

"How long have you been at it, doing this?"

"Quite a time."

"Good shot, are you?"

"Adequate."

"Don't you have to be better than adequate?"

"It's about planning, Mr. Perry, boring planning. Planning is the best defence against attack if there is an attack then the planning has failed."

"What do you know about the Iranians?"

"Enough to respect them."

It was final, and dismissive with it. What he knew, and wouldn't say, was that the Iranians were a different league from the Provos.

The Provos would back off from a guarded target, find something softer. He had studied the case histories of Iranian hits: not many killers made it away, for too many the reward was martyrdom. The message from the case histories would make any conscientious bodyguard nervous. He read all the detail he could find on political killing. It was his job.

They were outside a school, and in a line of cars waiting at the gate. It was a school like any other, an old brick turn-of-the-century building and a mass of raised prefabricated huts, like the school his children went to.

Parents were milling at the gate and inside the playground where kids ran and screamed, skipped and swarmed after a football. If he could, he went to Donald and Brian's school to pick them up, but it still wasn't often enough.

"Am I allowed to go and get them?"

"Don't see why not."

Sarcasm, like that was his defence.

"You don't think I'll be shot?"

"Shouldn't think so."

He could have told him, but didn't, that the Irish were gold medal standard at killing off-duty policemen, prison warders and magistrates on the church steps or in hospital wards, or at the school gate. They had no qualms about blasting a man when he wasn't taking the necessary precautions.

He said he would come with Perry, into the asphalt playground, that they must lock the car because of the H amp;K, that he must have Perry and the car in his sight at all times.

They walked through the gate. The loose change clinked in his suit-jacket pocket. Beneath it the holster was tight against his upper thigh. He hung back and watched his principal before turning twice, in complete circles, to observe the faces of the mothers and fathers, the grandparents, the kids chasing the football. He saw the way that men and women came to his principal, slapped his back, shook his hand and laughed with him. The other boy, the one they were getting home, stood by the principal. They came round Perry like they were flies to jam and he heard the roar of the laughter.

A kid, would have been the same age as his Brian, kicked the football high in the air.

The swarm followed the spiralling ball.

He'd ring that night, find out how Donald's game had gone, when he'd done the shift with Juliet Seven.

The ball landed and bounced. The bounce would take the ball over the playground fence, out into the road and the traffic.

He jumped. It was his instinct to keep a bobbing, chased ball out of the traffic. He was grinning at his own athleticism, his back arched with the leap, his fingertips pushing the ball back towards the pack of kids. There was the lightness, emptiness, at his waist.

The gun, the 9mm Glock pistol, fell from the waist holster. As he landed he snatched for it. It was beyond his grasp. It fell away from him. The gun clattered on the asphalt playground, cartwheeled, and came to rest away from the grope of his hands. The kids' shouts and yells died and the black shape of the Glock lay on the asphalt beside the white-painted lines of a net ball court.

The parents' laughter and talk withered. He walked forward, half a dozen paces. He saw the rolling, abandoned football and the young, old, numbed faces. He picked up the gun, and the screaming started. He saw the parents grabbing kids, going down on to the asphalt and sheltering them with their bodies, hugging them, guarding them. He held the gun in his hand, the tool of his job, and did not know what he should say. Perry stared at him, blank and uncomprehending. A great space was widening around him. Through a glass window, he saw the grey, lined face of the head4eacher as she lifted the telephone. He put the gun into his waist holster.

The first cars were already charging away from the school gate. He took a deep breath, then strode towards the school building and the sign for the head-teacher's room.

It took fifteen minutes to sort it. He showed his warrant card, made a telephone call to turn back armed-response vehicles and another to verify his identity for the head-teacher. His explanation to her of his principal's need for police protection was economical and bland.

He walked back across the empty playground.

They were all gone, his principal's friends and their children.

He slipped down into the front passenger seat.

Davies said stiffly, "I owe you an apology, Mr. Perry. That was unforgivable, unprofessional. You are perfectly entitled to ring my guvnor to request a personnel change."

"But I'm a beggar, Bill, so I can't be a chooser. What I'd get might be worse than you." The principal laughed, with a hollowed echo.

"Thank you. If you don't mind, it's Mr. Davies… I don't know what the consequences will be."

"None.." forgotten… just a little dose of excitement. I have to tell you, I saw the gun. The gun was real, but it's the only part of anything that seems believable."

"It's all real, Mr. Perry, and you shouldn't forget that."

The mobile telephone went in his inside pocket. Could Bill Davies talk? No. When could he talk? In fifteen minutes. Would he call back soonest, when he could talk? In the guttering light they drove back to the village.