Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

In the distance on the sea wall, wrapped in a dark anorak and waterproof leggings, watching them, facing into the thrust of the wind and the drive of the rain, was one of the policemen from the unmarked car. He cradled his gun close to his body, as if to protect himself against the onslaught of the gathering storm, now and in the future.

What Davies, drenched wet and frozen, had been told was that the killer would come soon, but he didn't say it.

Geoff Markham didn't like to drink in the middle of the day and had sipped a fruit juice. The American had washed down the pork pie with a dark pint from a wooden barrel and there had been salad with the pie. In the car, the onion was still on Littelbaum's breath.

Markham hesitated before turning at the signpost to the village. A cattle-carrier lorry swerved past him and gave him a long blast on the horn. It was all as he remembered it. Ahead of him was the high water tower, the dominating feature, and the American gazed at it with a sort of awe but didn't speak. Beside him, flanking the road, was a small car-park and a sign "Toby's Walks: Picnic Area'. Away to the right was Northmarsh, to the left were wide, flat fields covered with half-moon pig shelters. He swung the car on to the minor road. Of course it was the same. How could it be any different?

The American smiled apologetically and murmured that he needed, and badly, to relieve himself.

Markham drove into the car-park of the picnic area and saw what was different. There were two men in an unmarked car, uniformed, wearing kevlar vests and silly little baseball caps. But, there was nothing silly about the barrel of the Heckler amp; Koch aimed at him through the open side window. He braked.

Littelbaum said that he couldn't have lasted much longer, and dived for the bushes. Markham held up his ID card for the policemen to see and sauntered towards them.

He introduced himself and said the American had bladder problems. He asked them how it was. The aim of the gun was no longer on his chest. He was told that they had the registration and the make of a car to look for, and it was all right in daylight.

"What's that mean?"

The policeman grimaced.

"It's a sod of a place after dark. So quiet. Last night, before the changeover but after it got dark, we saw this shape in the bushes. Bloody near crapped myself. Seemed to be watching us. I got the gun on it, then two dogs came out. It was a woman walking her dogs, in the dark, like a bloody ghost, proper turn it gave me. It's Toby's Walks here. She asked, all straight-faced, had we seen Toby? She was serious had we seen Toby? We asked the old biddy, who was Toby? You know what? He was Black Toby, Tobias Gill no lie, it's what she said and he was a black drummer in the dragoons who got pissed up, went looking for a bit of fanny and brought her up here. He was found, Black Toby was, the next morning, drunk and incapable, and she was beside him, raped and strangled. They took him to the assizes and then carted him back here to hang him in chains. It was two hundred and fifty years ago, and the old biddy said he liked to walk round here, rattling his bloody chains. It's that sort of place. After what she'd told us, we heard every bloody bush move last night, every bloody creak of every bloody tree… She meant it. She was really surprised we hadn't seen him."

The American came out of the bushes and was pulling up his zip. Markham didn't laugh at the story. Out there a shadowy figure was moving in darkness among cover, silent, without the rattling of chains, towards a target and a place of death. He felt the cold wind coming off the sea and shuddered.

They climbed back into the car and he drove on.

Of course it was different, and for some it would never again be the same.

Markham asked the American what he wanted to see and Littelbaum's finger jutted towards the church tower. The rain had come on heavily while they'd stopped for lunch, but now had eased into a fine, persistent drizzle. He could see the first houses of the village and the church tower looming above them. He was unsettled. It wasn't only the policeman's story of the ghost of the black drummer, it was also what Littelbaum had told him of Alamut, a place of death, and a bus ride out of Bandar Abbas, a place of carnage. And he remembered what Cathy Parker had said and asked. It would be decided down here, at the village, body to body, as it always was, at close quarters, and was he tough enough?

He felt inadequate. It was no longer about people like himself, rated as intelligent, educated and thoughtful. It was about guns and nerve: this was a power play. Littelbaum pinched his arm and pointed to the parking lay-by at the side of the church.

At the near end was a fine squat tower, perhaps seventy-five feet in height, with wide walls of flint facing. Behind it were the nave and the high chancel windows and between them were stout yellowed stone buttresses. Beyond the church was a ruin, once finer and larger than its neighbour but now roofless and with the rain coming through the clerestory windows. Markham asked the American what he wanted to do, and was told he wished to go inside. He had a fascination for churches and a total respect for the quality of the architects and craftsmen who had built them, but the ruin disturbed him death so close to life. He pushed open the church door. There were a few lights in the dull dim interior, as there had been in the weekend corridors at Thames House that morning.

A clergyman came towards him, a gaunt, fleshless-faced, older man. Markham thought Littelbaum was following him. He offered his hand in friendship and lied, said that he often diverted on a journey to see a worthwhile church. He heard the aged squeak of the hinges of a small door to the side. A smile lit the clergyman's face, as if few came to see his church. The flowers were already in place for Sunday's service, the only brightness stretching towards the altar and the stained glass of the arched window behind it. On the walls were the carved plaques remembering the dead.

The clergyman said, "There was an older church, of course, but that's gone, flooded by the sea first time round then washed away. The origin of the building here is fifteenth century, and a magnificent building it would have been. But the village died. There were four altars here, now there's just the one. Once we had a bell that weighed three-quarters of a ton, but the community sold it off, in 1585, because they were dying from deprivation and hunger. It's so good to meet someone who's interested my name's Hackett."

Markham looked around him, past the old carved-stone font, and could not see Littelbaum. If he had been alone in the church he would have said a short private prayer for those who'd been in the bus.

The clergyman droned on, "Disease, poverty, fires, all decimated the population of the village I sometimes say that this is a place without a present, only a past. That's how it feels here sometimes."

He was in the bath. Meryl had made them undress at the back door, had insisted on it. Davies thought by now that Perry would have told her of the disaster in the pub, would have come up with an explanation as to why they had come back sodden, with sand caking their shoes.

She came into the bathroom.

Davies had hitched his wristwatch to the cold tap, and was allowing himself five minutes' defrost time. The holster and the Glock were within reach on the floor, with the radio. She had brought two of Perry's dressing-gowns to the back door.

There was no knock, and no hesitation or apology. He sat upright and hunched forward to obscure his waist, hips and groin from her. Meryl carried a heap of folded clothes. Her face was expressionless, like those of the nurses had been while he couldn't wash himself, sponging his privates after he'd broken his ankle falling from a ladder when trying to get through a back window to plant a bug. There was a towel on top of the clothes. They could have been left outside the door, and she could have shouted to him that they were there.