Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

To remember her.

Davies, in shirtsleeves because he had two bars of the electric fire on, was at the familiar slot of the dining-room table with the newspaper spread out, reading the market and the financial comment. He coordinated the radio link to the crisis centre and the locations of the mobile patrols.

And to mourn.

He was not allowed, by Davies, to go upstairs to their bedroom.

"Not protected there, Mr. Perry, I'm sure you understand."

He was not allowed, by Paget, to go out through the kitchen door into his sunlit garden.

"Rather you didn't, Mr. Perry, wouldn't be sensible."

They denied him the space that he yearned for.

Perry sat on the floor between the mattresses and behind the sandbags.

Chalmers moved.

It was a full half-hour since Geoff Markham had given up on the search for the speck. The sky was clearer, brightening blue with pale cirrus corrugated lines of cloud, and it hurt more to look for the bird. He was thinking of the future of his career, whether he would be positioned back with Rainbow Gold, whether, he would be assigned to a university town where there were faculties of nuclear physics and microbiology growing botulisms at which Iranian students were enrolled, or whether he would be dumped into the new team working on illegal immigration, or the old Irish unit or narcotics.." when Chalmers moved.

Chalmers was already twisted round, his eye-line no longer on the skies above the marsh. The Regiment men would be down in the reed-banks and the water now, and there was nothing to show their presence. Chalmers stood, his back turned to them, and moved.

There was no discussion, no conversation, no explanation.

Chalmers whistled softly for the dogs to come to his heel, then started to track back up the path towards the village.

He walked with his head craning upwards, as if the sight of the bird, the speck, was too precious to be lost, and Markham was left to trail behind.

The path brought them back to the village between the hall and the pub. Chalmers strode surely, briskly, never looked down to see where his feet trod, and puddles splashed on to his trouser-legs.

Cars scuttled past them, and a van with a builder's ladder lashed to the roof, but that was the only motion of life in the village. It was a bright, sunny morning with cheerful light and a bracing wind, but no one walked and took pleasure in it. He thought the fear and the shame were all around, in the houses, the road and on the lanes as if a plague had come and the inevitability of disaster was upon them.

A fierce rapping, knuckle and glass, and a protest shout, startled him. He saw a woman at a window, her face contorted in fury. The woman pointed at her cut front lawn. One of the dogs had crapped on it, the second lifted a stumpy rear leg against the Venus statue that was a bird-bath. Chalmers didn't call off his dogs, didn't look at her or seem to hear her, just walked on and all the time he studied the skies. Markham stared pointedly at the far side of the road.

They went by the house on the green, the sun making silver patterns on the new wire of the screen.

Chalmers never glanced at the house, as if it held no interest for him.

They went through the village.

A few times, Markham looked for the bird and could not find it. He thought of it, high in the upper winds, soaring and circling and searching, and he thought of the power of the bird's eyesight and he thought of the man, Vahid Hossein, in pain and in hiding. Andy Chalmers had talked of respect and of duty to a beast that was hurt. He didn't think they would understand at Thames House, and it was pretty damned hard for him to comprehend why respect was due to a wounded killer and what duty was owed him. Chalmers walked remorselessly through the village, and out of it.

Beyond the village was a river-mouth, then more wave-whipped beaches; at their furthest point were the distant bright colours of a holiday community nestling in the sunlight.

A path ran alongside the river on top of an old flood-defence wall. In the fields between the village and the path, cattle grazed on grassy islands among the pools of the winter floods. Chalmers was ahead of him, high above the river and the fields, and all the time he gazed upwards.

Hungry, thirsty, the foul taste in his mouth, his shoes sodden, his feet cold, his back stiff, Geoff Markham followed blindly, thinking of food, coffee, a shower, dry socks, a clean shirt and dry shoes, and… he careered into Chalmers's back, jolted against it. Chalmers didn't seem to notice him. Beyond the fields, going away from the village, and the banks of the river and the raised pathway, was Northmarsh. The sunlight gently rippled the water.

The sun caught the flight of the bird, now lower in the sky, but still high above the swaying old reed-heads of the Northmarsh.

The bird had come down from the upper winds and now it quartered over the marshlands. It was as he had seen it over the Southmarsh. The bird searched.

Chalmers walked to where the path cut back towards the village then stepped over a fence of sagging, rusted wire and settled himself down on the small space of rabbit-chewed grass beside the water and the reed-beds. His dogs began to fight over a length of rotten wood. There was peace, quiet and serenity, until Markham heard the bird's call.

"Do you want help? Do you want the guns here?"

"No."

He watched the bird search, and listened for its shrill, insistent call.

"Man'? It's Joel, I'm doing night duty. Sorry to disturb you yeah, I know what the time is… Duane's been on. He's very perky. They have the jerk winged and holed up. Duane says it's close to over. I need your say-so for getting the wheels moving y'know, camera, microphones, lights, action. I guarantee you that the mullahs are about to have a very bad day. They are going to squirm like never before. Duane says it won't fit the Brit picture, going public -Duane says to go quiet till there's a prisoner or a corpse, then hit the mullahs, and hard. Can I start to move the wheels, Man'?.

That's all I need, thanks. Oh, the jerk got the target's wife last night they're so fucking incompetent it's not true but the game's still running…"

How many sausages for Stephen? How many for the nanny policewoman? Did Davies like his eggs turned over? Should Blake be woken? Rankin had found one of Meryl's aprons and wore it tied to his lower stomach so that his waist holster cleared it.

And Perry hadn't been asked how many sausages he wanted, nor about the raid on the refrigerator. There would be a plate for him in the kitchen with sausages, bacon and eggs, whether he wanted it or not. He wasn't consulted because he was only the bloody principal. He felt a sickness in his stomach. He ached for Meryl. Paget came past him, carrying two loaded plates, heading for the dining room, the french windows and the outside hut, where the new team were on duty.

He had to be with her and alone, to kneel and cry for her forgiveness.

The policewoman shepherded Stephen into the kitchen. Davies followed with his newspaper, and Blake in his stockinged feet.

He was an afterthought. The life of the house went on, they were all sitting at his kitchen table.

Paget called out, "And you, Mr. Perry got to keep body and soul together."

They did it for Stephen, forced their cheer down his throat.

"Just going to the toilet start without me."

The window in the lavatory had an anti-thief lock, and the key was in the small wall cupboard. He bolted the door behind him. They were his only friends and the mark of their regard for him was that they tried to clear the mind of her boy from what he had seen, heard, the night before. They tried hard, had to, because what he had seen would have been so hideous, brain-scarring. He heard the banter and the laughter round the table as he unlocked the window. He crawled out through it, took the one fast step across the narrow concrete path, climbed Jerry and Mary Wroughton's fence and dropped into their garden. He had to be alone.