by Alan Judd
He saw her eye caught by the small misshapen lump of metal on his bedside table.
‘My bullet,’ he said. ‘They dug it out of my shoulder. Hit the wall first, they think.’
‘Just as well. Horrible thing. You were so lucky.’
‘Martin isn’t – wasn’t – al-Samit, the one who’s allegedly coordinating terrorists here. Nigel knew that when he persuaded him to go back to Afghanistan to find out who the real al-Samit is.’ He spoke slowly, watching the effect of his words like an observer noting the fall of shot.
She stared. Her features showed nothing except concentration.
‘When Martin got there he realised he’d been set up, betrayed,’ he continued. ‘They were going to kill him, but he escaped. He went into hiding when he got back here but he did ring the office and tell them the only thing he knew about al-Samit. She’s a woman. Nigel would have known that when he told the police that Martin was al-Samit, and probably armed.’
She continued staring.
‘His body fell on top of me, apparently. Knocked me flat. Gave me my black eye.’
‘Perhaps you should keep that, too.’
Her words were muffled as her face suddenly crumpled, almost as in laughter. She bowed her head and opened her handbag, her shoulders shaking. He struggled to sit up further and touch her but she waved him away, holding a tissue to her face and repeating that she was sorry. When he eventually got himself upright he leaned forward. He couldn’t reach her hands but could just touch her knee.
She was sobbing wholeheartedly now, hiding her face in both hands. ‘If I’d known he was the only baby I’d have – I’d have – I’d never have—’ She let the tissue fall and clutched his fingers with one hand, pressing them to her knee.
A nurse holding a tray and tea-cups opened the door. ‘Cup of tea, anyone?’
‘Thank you, just—’ Charles tried to indicate with his bad arm that she could leave the tray with them but she backed out, saying she would come again later.
Sarah bent to pick up the tissue, then let go of his hand and stood to repair her face in the small wall mirror, working deftly with aids from her bag. ‘Sorry about that. Took myself by surprise.’ She made it sound as if she’d spilt something on the tablecloth.
‘Does Nigel know you’re here?’
‘No.’
‘May I come and see you when I’m out?’
She nodded and turned from the mirror to look at him. ‘He loves me, you know. Nigel. He still loves me.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ She turned back to the mirror. ‘Nor do I blame him,’ Charles said.
A different nurse knocked and entered with tea. Sarah sat again to drink it while they briskly discussed the practicalities of his discharge, how he would return to London, how helpful the police had been in getting his possessions and his bill from the Feathers, what the PCC inquiry would involve, how fortunately limited was the press coverage.
She put down her cup and stood. ‘Sorry I was so pathetic.’
‘You weren’t.’
‘I came here to cheer you up. Didn’t do a very good job.’
‘You did.’
‘’Bye, Charles.’ She bent swiftly and kissed his forehead, leaving him in a waft of perfume he thought he knew, or should know. But he thought that about most perfumes.
18
Sonia drank green tea, barely separating cup and saucer when she sipped. The faint click they must have made when she reunited them was inaudible because of the hotel harpist.
‘Fancy her, don’t you?’ said Sonia.
Charles looked at the harpist as if noticing for the first time her long hair, strong slender arms, graceful figure and young face. He and Sonia had agreed that the risk of surveillance was negligible now that its purpose had been so definitively achieved, so far as Nigel was concerned. ‘Haven’t thought.’
‘Come off it, you’ve hardly taken your eyes off her since she started playing. Always a harpist or pianist or waitress or something for you, isn’t there? In the background. God, it would be awful to be married to you.’
‘Helps me think.’
‘About what?’
A friend in Ops had told her that the real al-Samit was still active and that Charles had been under surveillance throughout his trip to Shropshire. The SIA had concealed a beacon in his car one night. ‘Apparently Measures ordered it because he was sure you’d eventually lead them to Gladiator,’ she said. ‘And the police firearms team was briefed that he was likely to be armed and would resist arrest. In Ops they all thought – still think – it was being done with your cooperation and that the beacon was backup in case something went wrong. The theory now, they’re told, is that Gladiator was the real al-Samit and that his predecessor and successor is a stand-in.’
‘But what about Gladiator’s call telling them it was a woman?’
‘That was a ruse to put us off the track. According to Measures. The irony is that nothing much is happening, quite genuinely. The real al-Samit, whoever she is, doesn’t seem to be getting it together with the aspiring martyrs. It’s all talk. Nobody’s actually doing anything concrete. They’re a lot of adolescent wasters who need to grow up. Which makes it easier for Measures to say that Gladiator was the al-Samit who mattered, and that now they just use it as a codename for any messenger from AQ.’
The harpist finished to restrained applause from the dozen or so tea-drinkers. She executed a half-curtsey and left. ‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Sonia.
‘She’ll be back. She’s only gone for her tea.’ He moved his leg out of range of her kick. ‘Recruit Sarah. It’s the only way.’
‘D’you think she’s recruitable?’
‘Maybe.’
‘D’you really think you should?’
‘I do, yes.’ He sat back carefully, twiddling the spent bullet between his fingers. He had carried it since leaving hospital. His shoulder was still giving him some pain. ‘I know you think I shouldn’t, and you might be right. But Nigel getting me arrested was one thing. Getting Martin killed was quite another. She’s upset in a way I’ve never known her before. She might do it. Or at least not prevent it.’
‘You’re so detached. You make her sound like a case you’re running.’
The bullet slipped through his fingers and he bent slowly to pick it up. ‘I am behaving as if detached. Doesn’t mean I feel detached.’
‘Sure you’re not just a sentimentalist? Keeping the past alive to stop it becoming past, fending off eternal extinction? Like what Shakespeare says about lust in age: a little fire in a dark field. Are you sure that’s not really why you’re so determined to involve her?’
‘I can’t be sure there’s nothing of that. But it’s not the main thing.’
She looked seriously at him. ‘Do you love her, Charles?’
He was struck, as always, by the confidence with which women spoke of love, as if they knew exactly what it meant. ‘I did.’
‘Still?’
‘She’s part of me. I’d like to be part of her, if that’s an answer.’
‘And here’s your harpist again. With her tea.’
‘Little fires in dark fields.’
She smiled. ‘We all need something to keep us warm. If your plan works it will have been right. If it doesn’t, it will have been all wrong. Just like the office.’
‘I need to know when she’s likely to be alone in their house in Oxfordshire.’
Sonia sipped her tea again. This time the clink of cup on saucer was audible. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
It was another week before the Bristol was returned, valeted and as near gleaming as its faded paintwork permitted. It was delivered by an SIA driver who enthusiastically described the invisible repair of the aluminium boot-lid and the expensive replacement of the rear window.
‘Minus the beacon, I assume,’ said Charles.
‘Not my department, sir. Lovely motor, though.’
Some days after that Sonia – free to use the phone now – ca
lled to suggest a drink. They met after work at an hotel not far from Matthew Abrahams’s Westminster flat. Charles had been to his funeral in Cambridge that morning and was grateful for company, and a drink.
‘Sorry it’s taken so long,’ she said. ‘The CEO – as Measures insists we now call him – has an intranet calendar, but it doesn’t show his private engagements. So I contrived some business with his secretary and discovered he’s hosting Whitehall bigwigs for Sunday lunch in Oxfordshire this weekend. A couple – one from the Cabinet Office and a junior minister – are staying on the Saturday night, avec spouses. Sarah’s going down on the Friday. Apparently she doesn’t work on Fridays. How was the funeral?’
‘Good, as funerals go. It was in King’s, his old college. They did him proud; a lot of people. Restrained emotion, dignified and moving. I talked to Jenny and his sons. They all coped very well. But this is the send-off he’d want, bringing this to a close. Didn’t see Nigel there.’
‘He was lunching the Foreign Secretary. Far more important. Says he’ll go to the memorial service.’
Charles set out again on the M40 on the Friday morning, this time in a downpour that overwhelmed the windscreen wipers at anything over fifty miles per hour. The rain was forecast to continue through the weekend. He took the ring road around Oxford, then headed west along the A40 until Burford. The hill was awash with water gushing from the drains and the gutters on the stone roofs were overflowing. He stopped for coffee in the Lamb, to give himself more time to think.
In fact, he didn’t think constructively for more than about ninety seconds at a time, distracted by memories until driven out by a cleaner who set about the stone flags with a noisy floor-polisher.
There was a lull in the rain, so he wandered down the high street to the Windrush. It was heavily in spate, barely contained by the arches of the stone bridge, and the fields upstream were flooded. Downstream, it did not yet threaten the high grass bank around the church, having free run across the meadows below. He walked through the churchyard, pausing as always when in Burford by the church door to acknowledge the grave of John Meade Faulkener, neglected author. Climbing the bank to watch the grey torrent, he took out the pay-as-you-go mobile he had bought and dialled Sarah’s number.
‘It’s Charles. I’m in Burford. May I come and see you?’
‘Now? Well, yes. I’m a bit busy. We’ve got people this weekend. I’ll have to go out later.’
‘Just a coffee.’
‘That’s fine, it would be lovely to see you. What’s that noise?’
‘It’s the river.’
‘Mind the Swinford bridge here. It floods easily.’
The road to Swinford ran parallel to the Windrush. The river’s course through the fields was marked by willows flooded up to their branches. He turned left past the not-yet-inundated cricket pitch and paused on top of the narrow bridge to stare again at the swirling spate. The bridge was smaller and lower than that at Burford, the road on either side under greater threat. As was, he thought, the nearby pub, which had a catering van parked outside. He drove on up the hill to the house she’d described. It stood behind a stone wall with a freshly painted green gate and her sky-blue Fiat in the drive.
The rain had resumed and he was drenched between the car and the porch, where he stood shaking water from himself. His knock provoked a dog’s bark and Sarah’s reproving voice. She opened the door while struggling to restrain an overweight black spaniel. ‘Don’t mind Milly, she’s harmless. Come in. Isn’t it awful. I’ve never seen so much rain.’
Her struggle with the dog meant they didn’t have to decide whether to greet each other with a kiss on the cheek or a handshake, or nothing. From the kitchen at the back a sodden garden descended in levels to another stone wall, beyond which was the meadow and its flooded willows. The river surged through the midst of the flood, a giant grey snake of water. The spaniel sniffed Charles’s legs. Sarah put the kettle on the Aga.
‘Milly, stop it,’ she said. ‘Sorry, she won’t leave people alone. I hope you don’t mind dogs?’
‘Not at all.’ Milly continued her devoted sniffing. ‘They always like corduroys.’
‘Milk, sugar?’
‘Just milk, please.’ He waited for her to hand him the mug. ‘Interesting how little we know of each other. Whether either of us takes sugar, whether I mind dogs.’
‘Have we ever been together in a kitchen before?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’ They had been in bedrooms, restaurants, pubs, parties, college balls, her Dublin study, her London house, the nursing home, his room in the Chesham and the police station. As students they had walked miles together in the country, yet had remained domestic strangers. ‘Domesticity might be a real test.’
‘It certainly might. I’ll remember sugar if you remember Milly’s name.’
He sipped his coffee. Given what he was about to say, it was important not to be too chatty. ‘You can probably guess what I’ve come for. I’ve come to ask for your help.’
She looked sharply at him. ‘It doesn’t seem to me that you need my help. You’re quite capable of destroying my husband’s career by yourself.’
‘If I cause his ship to run onto the rocks and capsize, you go down with him. But if he can be persuaded to disembark quietly at the next port – health reasons, another job, anything – then you’ll be okay. He wouldn’t even need to know that you would back me up. I could do it without telling him, just as long as I know you would.’
Milly forsook Charles’s corduroys and began an inspection of her empty food bowl. They both watched her, then Sarah turned and stared out of the window, cupping her coffee mug in both hands. ‘D’you get pleasure from being ruthless?’
‘No, but it would give me pleasure if Nigel resigned, because of what he’s done.’
‘Would it give you pleasure to bring him down anyway, if he didn’t resign?’
‘Sarah, he’s committed a crime; two crimes – three, counting my arrest – the second tantamount to murder. If with your help I can force him to resign – just resign – he’ll have got off very lightly.’
‘But if I don’t help you’d do it anyway?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you would do it to me, too?’
‘I don’t want to do that. That’s why I hope you’ll help me. I hope not to.’
‘You hope.’ She emphasised the word, still staring out of the window. Milly stood mournfully with her nose against the back door. The rain had almost stopped. ‘You hope.’ She repeated it slowly, with greater emphasis.
‘Sarah, it was your son, our son, whom Nigel caused to be killed.’
She put down her cup and turned to face him, her arms folded.
‘He knew it,’ Charles continued. ‘He knew what he was doing, and he did it without compunction. Whatever his reasons.’
She stared at him for a few moments more, then turned back to the window. Milly scratched softly at the door. ‘I’d give anything for a cigarette,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Why don’t we take the – Milly – out into the garden. It’s stopped raining. She wants to go out, look. It might be good for us to walk.’
She fetched a pair of Wellington boots from the utility room. ‘You can borrow Nigel’s if you like.’
‘I’ll be okay in my shoes.’
To his surprise, she smiled. ‘Of course, your everlasting brogues.’
‘They wore out, the old ones.’
‘I didn’t know they did that. I thought they were supposed to see you out. That’s what you used to say.’
‘These will.’
It was better in the open, discussion no longer confined and intensified by walls. Milly ran about, peeing and sniffing. They walked down the pebble path, through a lopsided rose arbour and down the stone steps to the lower level. Charles had to walk on the grass to stay beside her, the lawn squelching at each step. Unbroken grey cloud moved seamlessly and rapidly.
Beyond the wall lay the flooded meadow with its sinister grey surge.
‘What would you do if I said yes?’ she asked.
‘I’d confront him.’
‘Where? How? What would you say?’
‘Anywhere, anyhow, by phone if necessary. I’d say, either you resign or I write to the cabinet secretary, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office and the parliamentary oversight committee, the latter to make sure it leaks. That way I stay within the system, break no rules, remain legally watertight. But they might be persuaded to ignore me – disgruntled old hangover from the old regime, congenital boat-rocker, impossible to prove; bad time for this to come out, bad for morale in the new SIA, reflects badly on the government that only recently appointed him. Better have it investigated at leisure by someone who’ll establish nothing. But if I can say that his wife will support me in vouching for his treachery and is prepared to appear before the oversight committee herself, they’ll cave in. They’re bound to.’
‘He’s due here this afternoon.’
They leaned against the wall. It was easier to stare at the flood than face each other. ‘And if I say no?’ she asked.
This time he did not reply. He heard a car on gravel, voices, a door banging.
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ she continued, still staring at the river. ‘You’d do it for the pleasure of getting him.’
‘Not for pleasure. For Martin, for what he did to Martin.’
‘Martin’s dead.’
He looked at her face in profile. She had aged, of course, her cheeks sagged a little and her lips were compressed, but it was still the profile he remembered.
‘You must think I’m hard,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I am. But, you see, he’s always been dead to me. He had to be. It was how I coped.’