Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

He came in through the door, murmured his request to Davies, took a big breath and strode into the kitchen.

Markham said brightly, "I think we need an evening out, Frank. It's time for a splash on my masters' expenses, to cheer ourselves up."

Sausages were frying on the stove. The packet of instant mashed potato was ready at the side. Perry looked at him, astonished.

"We're going out, enough of being shut up in here. We're going out to drink a restaurant dry, to murder their menu. No argument, no hesitation, and I'm picking up the tab."

Perry asked, hesitant, "Where are we going at this time on a Sunday night, who'll have us?"

"We leave that to Bill. He's the expert, spends half his time getting his principals into restaurants that say they're full." He tried to laugh.

Meryl asked, flat-voiced, "Who's going to look after Stephen?"

He turned and saw her blank, reddened eyes.

"I'm sure you've a regular babysitter. Let's get a call to her, we'll collect. Don't you worry about the detail, Mrs. Perry, just get yourself ready and let us take the strain."

Perry said, "I'm not sure-' "Yes, you are, Mr. Perry. It's what's going to happen."

Meryl said, "I don't know that I want to go out."

"Yes, you do, Mrs. Perry. It's what's best."

He manipulated them, they danced for him. He had boasted to the man and woman at the bank that he was prepared to use people in the interests of policy and here he was, doing it. Meryl Perry was lifting the frying pan off the cooker and muttering that the sausages would do for tomorrow, and that she'd already fed Stephen. Perry was at the telephone and scanning the list above it for Donna's number.

Bill Davies leaned through the doorway and said the local police had given him the name of a place but it was twenty-two miles away and they'd have to shift themselves. He'd called the restaurant and he'd organized people to check it out. Markham thought she looked so cudgelled, so damned helpless. He asked her gently if she wanted to change, and wished that Harry bloody Fenton were here to see her. Meryl went out and he heard her deadened step up the stairs.

"Do you have a girl, Frank, to come in?"

"Thick as two planks, but decent and loyal Meryl's been great to her and she's fond of Stephen." Perry lifted the phone and dialled.

Two cars were pulling up outside Blake coming to take over inside the house and the change of shift for the hut. Markham drew a sigh of relief: at least he had achieved something. His mind flipped back to London: the letter would be at his flat in the morning, with the terms of employment. He would ring Vicky later if they survived the meal and ask her to go round and collect it, to read it to him. Once he'd resigned they would boot him out of Thames House so fast his feet wouldn't touch the ground. How would it be, a year later, ten years later, when he walked down the Embankment and went past the bullet-proof windows and the concrete bollards? Would he feel fulfilled, streaming with the commuter hordes into the City? He had played God before, with agents' lives, and was playing God now. He wondered how it would be playing God with savers' investment accounts and pension holdings. If he hadn't met Vicky, he would know sweet nothing about investments and pensions. He heard the anger in Frank Perry's voice.

"What do you mean, you're not coming? Is it you can't come, or won't? It's nothing to do with your father, nothing to do with anyone but yourself. Listen here, we've been damn good to you. We're about the only bloody people in this place who have been. I thought better of you."

Perry's hand trembled as he tried to return the telephone to the wall-fitting. Then, he took a pen and scratched out Donna's name and number from the list on the wall. Over his shoulder, Markham could see the list. Donna was inked out along with most of the others. There were pitifully few names and numbers left unscathed.

At the kitchen door, Bill Davies took the radio away from his face.

"Dave Paget and Joe Rankin will stay on. They've had kids themselves, God help the poor blighters. They can do child-minding.

Meryl came down the stairs.

If her eyes hadn't been red and puffed, Markham thought, she would have looked marvelous. The poor damn woman had made the effort. He noticed Bill Davies take her hand and murmur something in her ear, but he didn't catch what was said. When they'd gathered in the hall, the detective told Paget and Rankin that there were sausages and mashed potato on the stove for their supper. The two men, in their boiler suits and vests, with their pistols hanging from their waists, thanked him balefully.

Blake came through the front door, carrying five fire extinguishers. He dumped them down noisily, then went to the car again, retrieved a heavyweight blanket from the boot with a box of gas grenades, and staggered back into the house. Markham thought it predictable that there should be more fire extinguishers inside, one for each room; the additional bullet- and shrapnel-proof blanket was for draping over a chair to make a wider protective barrier; the gas grenades were standard. But he wished that Meryl Perry hadn't seen them.

She asked where Donna was, and was told.

She wasn't given time to think about it. She was made to run to the open car door, her heels clattering down the path. There was an escort vehicle in front and another behind. Their front windows were down and Markham could see the machine-guns. Well done, Harry Fenton, another great idea. As he helped to hustle her through the gate and pitch her into the car, he thought it was all, already, unravelling. Bill Davies came after him and seemed to be shielding Perry.

Markham drove. Beside him, the detective sat awkwardly because he'd twisted his body so that his hand could rest free on the pistol in his waist holster. Off for a night out with friends well done, Harry bloody Fenton.

The helicopter had been over at last light, and Vabid Hossein had gone into the water at the first sound of its approach. Long after it had disappeared he had returned to the marsh shore. He lay in the darkness in the depth of the cover.

The policemen who watched the marsh, from the village side, on the higher ground of Hoist Covert and East Sheep Walk, had been replaced by fresh men, and he had noted their positions.

The harrier was close to him but he could not see it, could only hear its movements as it scratched in the ground for the last scraps of meat.

The girl had come to the rendezvous point in the late afternoon, bringing food and ointments for the bruising. She had been withdrawn, subdued. When he had told her what she should do the next day, she hadn't argued.

He was curled up on his side in the bramble thicket to keep the weight of his body off the bruising. The skin was bared at his waist and hip, and he could feel the soothing cool of the ointments. He'd thought she wanted to smooth on the ointments herself and he'd refused her. He could not allow himself to be dependent on a woman. He heard the sounds of the bird and tried to shut from his memory the softness of her fingers, seeking instead to recall the sight and touch and feel of Barzin, who was alone in their bed in the house at Jamaran… Each time he summoned the image of her and the touch of her hands, the image dissolved and was replaced always it was her fingers, the girl's… He called to the bird.

The bird was his truest friend, and would not corrupt him. It did not challenge him, was his equal. His love of it did not make him weak.

When it was finished and he was home, he would never talk to Barzin about the bird. She would not understand. He was alone; he was in darkness; he was sodden wet from immersing himself in the water, sucking his air through the reed tube he had fashioned, when the helicopter had circled overhead. He spoke soft, gentle words to the bird, hushed so as not to frighten it, told it what he was planning to do.