Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Vince, the vulgar little builder, had telephoned. Had they seen their guttering? Had they heard about the crane? What about the hut? Did they know about the guns? Would they be wanting him cash, if they didn't mind to check their guttering?

Coming home from work, Jerry Wroughton had seen the police car parked close to the junction on the main road at which the lane branched off to the village. He'd thought it was good to see them there, watching for thieves and speedsters, and yobs without tax discs or insurance. He'd driven down Main Street, had seen a second police car coming slowly towards him and thought that it was high time decent, hard-working, law-abiding folk had proper protection. An empty car had been parked outside the neighbours'. He'd been tired, he'd wanted his tea, and he'd been sitting in front of the television when Vince had telephoned. He'd gone upstairs. From the back-bedroom window he could see down into the neighbours' rear garden. He saw the hut and the policeman walking slowly round their lawn. The sight of the machine-gun in the policeman's hands had sent Jerry Wroughton into the bathroom where he had vomited into the lavatory. The killing zone was separated from his own property by a low fence of light palings. He rang Barry Carstairs, and then the fear was worse.

For the next hour, his wife doggedly insisted that it was his right to protest and told him what to do.

It was the worst surprise that had ever confronted Jerry Wroughton.

Her car had provided the lead they required.

It was a two-room flat, one room for the bed and the wash-basin, one room for the easy chair, the television and the cooker. The lavatory and the bath were shared with others on the floor below. The detectives had taken apart every drawer and cupboard, exposed every possession of Farida Yasmin Jones and found nothing.

The Rainbow Gold file had carried an old address with neither a number not a street for forwarding mail. The university records had failed them. The father had cursed and the mother had sulked, but they could not produce a current domicile for their daughter. The detectives hadn't a workplace and so had no national insurance number to feed into the computers. The driving-licence address had not been updated.

But they had the car's registration from the vehicle-licensing files at Swansea. Four men, with the registration, had foot-slogged round the back-street garages of Nottingham.

None of the possessions in the flat, scattered from the drawers and cupboard on to the floor, had produced what they searched for. The detectives had been told to look for evidence of commitment to an extreme fundamentalist Islamic sect, but the possessions were those of an ordinary young woman, one of thousands, working for an insurance company. They had her pay slips on the table.

A list had been drawn up of every motor-repair yard qualified to issue an MOT certificate of road worthiness All they had was the registration of her car. To get into the garages' records, they'd had to promise that the evidence uncovered of VAT fraud and Revenue scams would be taken no further.

They'd rolled back the carpet in the living room, torn away the stuck-down vinyl in the bedroom and prised up the floor boards with jemmies each of the four detectives was familiar with failure, but it always hurt. They were sullen, quiet, surrounded by the debris of the young woman's life.

They had nothing to show that this ordinary young woman had clasped a new faith, or had made a self-justification for a hatred of her own society.

The last chance was the entry-hatch into the rafters of the building. They lifted the slightest among them into the space with a torch to guide him. They could hear his body movements above them. As they made a play at tidying the flat, replacing the young woman's clothing, they heard his shout of triumph.

A suitcase was passed down through the hatch.

Laid out on the table of the living room was a leather-bound volume of the Koran wrapped in spotless white muslin cloth. There were the careful notes of a student, handwritten, listing the five Pillars of the Faith and their meaning, neatly folded clothes that they recognized, and the head scarves At the bottom of the case was a packet of film negatives. The detective sergeant held them up towards the ceiling light.

"Well done, lads. That'll do nicely."

The darkness was his friend. But the quiet was a greater friend than the darkness.

Vahid Hossein sat cross-legged. He had heard a fox call behind him, in the trees, and the shriek of an owl. He listened for each shift of the water-fowl, dippers and waders, in front of him. The bird was close. He did not need his eyes to see it: his ears had located it, and he knew it edged closer. He heard cars but they were a long way off. The only clear sound was of a dog barking in the far distance.

When he had come back to the place where the sausage bag was hidden, he had found that the bird had tried again to tear at the rabbit carcass and not had the strength. This time, feeling with his fingers, through the darkness hours of the evening, he pulled off small pieces of the bloodless flesh, slipped them into his mouth and chewed to soften them, then tossed them towards the sounds of the bird. Each time he threw the chewed meat to the bird he drew it closer to him. By the morning, he would be able to touch it, smooth his fingers on its feathers. It was important to Vahid Hossein that he should win the trust of the bird through his help.

He thought of the marshlands at night and the bird. Later, when he was at peace, he would plan and think: he would put from his mind the white-skinned legs of the girl and the fall of her breasts, and make the plan. It was the same quiet he had found in the desert, in the Empty Quarter. His wife, Barzin, in their small house in the village of Jamaran, had a fear of darkness and of silence, and he could not change it: she would leave a light on outside the open bedroom door. It was harder, when he had left the desert and the Bedouin whose loyalty he had won, and driven on the streets past the barracks of the Americans, to make the plan and to think. The best times were when the quiet and the darkness of the Empty Quarter cloaked him, and he would be back there within two weeks to complete the plan and site the bomb.

If Hossein had lunged, he could have caught the bird by the wing, the leg or the neck -but he would have lost its trust. Then he could not help it. If he helped it, the peace would come. In peace he could plan and think.

The plan at Riyadh, for his last bomb, thought through by Vahid Hossein and accepted by his brigadier, had been complex. The adaptation of the petrol-tanker lorry to hold 2,500 kilos of commercial explosive had been carried out in the Beka'a valley of the Lebanon. The explosives and the detonation leads had been loaded, the time switch had been fitted. The lorry had been driven into Syria, through Jordan and across the Saudi Arabian frontier. Five days after leaving the Beka'a the lorry had been parked fifty metres in front of the eight-storey residential block used by the Americans. The bomb had been set to explode and the driver had run to the back-up car. It was a complex plan, but no thought had been given to the alertness of the sentry on the roof, who had raised the alarm as soon as he saw the driver run. Nineteen Americans killed, 386 injured, but many more would have died without that sentry's advance warning.

For that small mistake Hossein was blamed only by himself.

At peace, his mind clear and rested, in the darkness of the marshes, he thought of the time he should attack his target, now protected. At the change of the protection shift? In daylight or at night? In the middle of the shift? At dawn or at dusk? He chewed the meat and threw each piece nearer to his body, always luring the bird closer.