Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“That’s my job,” she said bitterly, then pulled herself gently away from my embrace. “But what’s important now is to get you safely back. I can’t show my face here again, but you’re still kosher. Tell them that, as far as you know, you just rescued me from that Goddamned rapist, OK? We haven’t talked about Kassouli, and you think I’m just a girl writing a pilot book.”

“It doesn’t matter about me,” I said, “except that I don’t want to leave you.”

She smiled at my protestation, then kissed me. “If you disappear now, Nick, Bannister will think you’ve been working with me. How long do you think your boat will be safe then? Jesus! You saw how ready that South African is to pull a trigger! He’ll stop at nothing, Nick.”

The thought of Sycorax at risk made me silent.

“Stay here,” Jill-Beth urged me, “and I’ll get in touch with you.

I’ll leave a message with Jimmy Nicholls and it’ll be real soon, Nick.”

“I want it to be soon.”

“Real soon.” She said the words softly, in promise, and I felt a shiver of excitement. Jill-Beth gently pulled away and stood up.

“Can I keep the shoes for tonight?”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to reach a telephone. I’ll call one of Kassouli’s British executives and tell him to send a car for me. I need to go to London, I guess, in case Kassouli wants me to fly home.” She shrugged. “He’s not real keen on people who screw up.”

“You did your best,” I said loyally.

“Yassir Kassouli’s not interested in my best, only success.” I shivered. The parting was awkward, and made more so by the unasked questions and unsaid words. I smiled. “Don’t leave England without meeting me.”

“I’ve got to return your shoes, right?” She laughed, then tied the laces as tightly as she could. “Take care, Nick.”

“You take care, too.”

She impulsively leaned towards me and kissed me warmly.

“Thank you for everything.” She said it softly, then pulled away from me and bundled up the wet clothes she’d fetched from the dinghy.

“What about Mystique? ” I asked.

“The charterers will fetch her back. I’ll call them from London.” We kissed again, then she started uphill. I watched her shadow moving in the lane and listened to the scuff of the heavy shoes.

The sounds faded and I was alone. The men who’d searched Mystique rowed towards the far bank. Mulder was still downriver and I felt suddenly forlorn. I tried to conjure back the sensations of Jill-Beth’s skin and voice. Till that moment I had not thought of myself as lonely, but suddenly it seemed to me that the American girl would fit so easily into Sycorax’s life.

I sat for a long time, thinking. I should have been thinking about murder and proof and justice, but I had been entranced by a girl’s smile and a girl’s voice and by my own hunger. The music sounded across the water. I consoled myself that Jill-Beth had promised to call me soon, and somehow that promise seemed to imply a whole new hope for a whole new life.

I waited a good hour, but Mulder was as stubborn as I feared and did not return. In the end I stripped naked, bundled my clothes at the small of my back, and went quickly down the ferry slip and into the river. I breaststroked through the quicksilver shimmer of moonlight to my wharf where I pulled myself over Sycorax’s counter.

I dried off, went below, and tried to imagine the finished cabin as a home for two people. Then, dreaming the dreams of love’s foolish hopes, I locked the washboards and hatch, then waited for dawn.

No one stirred in the dawn. The litter of the night’s party was strewn down the garden where a vague and sifting mist curled from the river. Wildtrack II was back in its dock. I’d heard the powerboat come in during the night and I had waited with a hammer in case Mulder should try to enter Sycorax ’s cabin, but he had ignored me. I’d slept then.

Now, waking early, I took one of Bannister’s inflatables and went downstream to where I’d left my dinghy. I emptied it of water, then dragged tender and outboard over the mud and towed them home.

If Mulder saw me from Wildtrack , he did nothing.

I washed my hands in the river, took some money from its hiding place in Sycorax ’s bilge, then walked up to the house. Some of the guests slept in the big lounge, others must have been upstairs, but no one was stirring yet. I made myself coffee in Bannister’s kitchen, then took the keys to one of his spare cars. There was a Land-Rover that Bannister kept deliberately unwashed so that tourists would think he had a working farm, and a Peugeot. I took the Peugeot for my long overdue errand.

I hadn’t driven in over two years, and at first my right leg was awkward on the pedals. I missed the brake once and almost rammed the heavy car into a ditch, but somehow I found the hang of it. I drove north and east for three hours, arriving at the housing estate at breakfast time. Concrete roads curved between dull brick houses.

I parked in a bus-stop and waited for an hour, not wanting to wake the household.

Sally Farebrother was still in her brushed nylon dressing-gown when she opened the door to me. She had a small child clutching at her right leg and a baby in her arms. She looked surprised rather than pleased to see me; indeed, she must have wondered if I was in trouble, for I looked like a derelict in my filthy jersey, torn jeans, and old sea-boots. Sally did not look much better herself; she had become a drab and shapeless girl burdened with small children and large resentments. Her dyed hair was lumpy with plastic rollers and her face was pasty. “Captain?”

“Hello, Sally. Is Terry in?”

She shook her head. “They’re on exercise.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” I was embarrassed to find her so obviously joyless. I’d been a guest at Sergeant Farebrother’s wedding, and I remembered even then fearing that the pretty bride of whom Terry was so proud had the sulky look of a girl who would resent the man who took her from the discos and street-corners. Terry had proved no better than I at choosing a wife. “It’s just that I’ve got some kit here,” I explained lamely. “Terry said he’d keep it for me.”

“It’s in Tracey’s room.” Tracey was one of the children, but I couldn’t remember which. Sally opened the front door wide, inviting me in.

“Are you sure?” I knew how swiftly malicious rumours went round Army housing estates.

Sally did not care. “Upstairs,” she said, “on the left.” She cleared a path for me by kicking aside some broken plastic toys. “I’ll be glad to have the space in the cupboard back.”

“I’m sorry if it’s been a bother.”

“No bother.” She watched me limp upstairs. “Are you all right now?”

“Only when I laugh.” The house had the ammonia stench of babies’ nappies. “How’s Terry?”

“They want him to be a Weapons’ Instructor.” It was said unhappily, for Sally was always nagging Terry to resign the service and go home to Leeds.

“He’d be good at that.” I tried to be encouraging as I reached the landing. “This room?”

“In the cupboard.” A child began crying downstairs and Sally shouted at it to be quiet and eat its bloody breakfast. The house was thin-walled and cheap; married quarters.

I found my bergen under a broken tricycle in the child’s cupboard.

I dragged the heavy rucksack out and hauled it downstairs. “Give Terry my best, won’t you?”

“He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”

“I’ll be in touch with him. Thanks for keeping this.”

“Sure.” She closed the door on me. I saw the curtains twitch in other houses.