Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

The bell rang.

He glanced at his watch. Blake would come to take over from Davies. But there had been only one ring, sharp and persistent, unlike the three Blake and Davies used. The bell went on, endless. Perry was watching television, the story of the renovation of a wildlife park in the Himalayas, the sort of programme that made him forget where he was, what had happened to him. Stephen was sitting on the floor with his arm on his mother's knee. Meryl was sewing.

He didn't think, and stood up. The bell was still ringing as if a finger was jammed on it. He was in the doorway between the living room and the hallway when Davies came out of the dining room, pushing back the bottom of his jacket to reveal the pistol in the waist holster.

The last thing the lorry men had done, after the laminated plastic had gone over the windows, was drill a spy hole in the front door. Davies didn't seem fussed by the bell, took his time. The bell ring pierced the hall, too loud for him to hear what Davies said into the button microphone on his jacket lapel. Perry understood: the camera covered the front door, the monitor was in the hut. Davies was clearing the visitor with the men in the hut.

"It's your neighbour."

"That's Jerry, Jerry Wroughton always on the scrounge. Probably wants-' "Do you need to see him?"

"He's a good friend."

Davies switched off the hall light and unlocked the door. Jerry Wroughton's finger slackened off the bell button.

"Hi, Jerry, you in the business of waking the dead?"

Then Perry saw the clenched mouth, the quivering jaw -hadn't ever seen Jerry look so famous and he smelt the whisky.

He'd been about to ask his neighbour to come inside.

He thought Jerry Wroughton was remembering what he had rehearsed, the mouth flapping without words as if the memory was slow coming. Meryl had said that Barry Carstairs had read off notes.

"What's the problem, Jerry?"

In the dark hall Perry went sideways as if to see his neighbour better, but Davies drifted across to stay in front of him, shielding him.

"Come on, Jerry, spit it out."

"What's going on? That's the problem. What's happening?"

The poor bastard, sent out into the night by Mary, had forgotten his lines.

"Say what you want to say that's our way, yours and mine say it."

It came in a torrent.

"I come home I find you under guard. Police in your garden, police with machine-guns. I talk to Barry Carstairs you're on a death list, the kid's been put out of school because of the risk. Who's thinking about me, about Mary, about the twins? What's the risk to us?"

"Come on, calm down."

"You're all right, you're bloody laughing! What about us? What protection have we got?"

"Jerry, you're upsetting yourself. Believe me, you don't have to. Just head on back home, sit in your chair, and-' "You've got a problem, it's for you to fix it, it's not our problem. You made your bed, you lie on it."

He tried to be soothing and conciliatory. He thought he owed that to a good neighbour. Right, so Mary had primed him with drink and nagged, and Jerry had gone all pompous, but he was still a proper friend. He rocked on his feet and breathed deeply, which was what he always did to control a rising temper.

"What are you saying, Jerry?"

"You've no right to bring your problems to our doorstep. Right now our children are sleeping a few yards from where you've got guns protecting you. Who's protecting them? Who's protecting Mary when she's in the garden at the washing-line, when Beth and Clive are playing outside or don't they matter?"

"There's been a professional assessment of what needs to be done. They'd have considered-'

Davies stood between them like a statue, impassive. He didn't contribute an iota of support.

"What good's that to us? We've done nothing wrong. We've done nothing to need protection. Whatever your quarrel is, it's not ours.

"If they come for me, they'll have the right address. Is that your worry? That they'll get the wrong house? No chance!" He laughed, couldn't help himself. The image came into his mind, so fast, of the turbaned mullah with the beard, carrying the assault rifle, knocking on doors in the village and going into Dominic's shop, calling up the ladder to Vince, into the pub, asking for directions.

He shouldn't have laughed. Jerry shook, quivering with fear and anger just as Perry had, a long time ago.

"All I can say, Jerry and I don't get told much is that I'm in their hands, and they're the experts. We're all in their hands."

"That's not bloody well good enough!"

"What is good enough?"

Jerry Wroughton stood his full height. Spittle bubbled at his mouth. It was the moment for which he had needed the cocktail of whisky and his wife's nagging. Davies was between them.

"You should leave just go."

"Where?"

"Anywhere just get the fuck out of here. You're not wanted."

"Since when? I thought you were my friend."

"Best thing you can do is go be gone in the morning."

"I thought friends stuck together, in good times and bad. Don't you want to know what I did, why the threat's there?"

"I don't give a damn what you did. What matters to me is my family. I just want you out."

He didn't care any more. There was a sickness in his throat, and he realized the shallowness of what he'd assumed was a valued friendship. There were plenty of other friends, with depth to them. He might just talk about it in the pub tomorrow, and they'd all laugh as he described the gutless hen-pecked prig, Jerry Wroughton. For long enough, on his own doorstep, he'd tried to humour the man. His temper snapped.

"Go home and tell Mary that they offered me relocation and a new life. I chose to stay. I told them that this was my home, with my family and my friends… Friends."

He stabbed his finger past Davies's elbow, towards Jerry Wroughton's heaving chest.

"Are you listening? Friends. I may not get support from you, when I'm up against the wall, but I'll get it from my true friends, and I've got enough of them. Meryl and I, we don't need you, either of you. Go tell her that."

The telephone rang behind him. He realized, at that moment, that he could no longer hear the television. Meryl would have turned the sound down: she and Stephen would have heard every shouted word.

He walked away and Davies closed the door behind him.

"He's a pathetic bastard."

"You called him a friend, Mr. Perry. You have to face it, people get cruel when they're frightened."

"I've friends here, believe me, real friends."

"Glad to hear it."

He picked up the telephone in the kitchen.

She was the only one left at the new cluster of desks down at the far end of the work area. The consoles were covered, the desks were tidied, all the lights were off except hers.

Geoff Markham came out of his cubicle and locked his door after him. The red-haired woman didn't look up from studying the illuminated green square and speaking soundlessly into a telephone. There was a ribbon of light under Cox's door, but the senior journeyman often did that sloped off home and left his room lit so that the lesser people might believe he still beavered… Vicky was expecting him at her place for a verbatim of the interview, but Markham wasn't in the mood for an inquest.

He wandered towards the woman, towards the halo of light on her hair. He wanted to talk, wanted his feelings massaged. If she hadn't been there he would have gone out of the front doors on to the Embanj( n-lent, sat on a bench and stared into the river, watched the barges and the ripples. He waited until she put down her telephone.

"Hello."

She didn't look up.

"Yes?"

"I just wondered can I get you anything?"

"Are you the tea-lady?"

"Can I help in any way?"

She said brusquely, "No."