Gallery Whispers

by Quintin Jardine

  seat, while the third man sat in the back. She stood directly in front of

  the vehicle, her pistol levelled at a point between them so that she

  could react to any sudden movement. 'Out!' she called again. 'This is

  loaded, the safety's off, and I will fire.'

  Her lover grinned at her, as he opened his door, calmly and stepped

  out. On the other side, Hawkins did the same. He no longer wore his

  heavy glasses, and for the first time she caught a resemblance to the

  man in the photographs she had been shown weeks before.

  'You're not going to shoot me, Karen, love,' Wayne drawled. She

  saw that he was holding a small box in his right hand.

  'Don't bet your life on it, you bastard. Right in the balls if I have

  to. The other man: I want him out too.'

  'Shapoor's harmless, love. Don't you worry about him. Old Hencke

  and me, we're the dangerous ones. Now just you stand aside and let us

  drive on out of here.'

  'No way.'

  He held up the box in his right hand, and pressed downwards with

  his thumb. She frowned for a moment, then gasped in horror as a

  compressed, booming, rolling sound came from within the Conference

  Centre. 'You're too late, Karen,' he said, still smiling as he

  dropped the box. 'The rest of the Iranian delegation is cosmic fucking

  dust by now, the Paddies, the Israelis and every one else for yards

  around them have all bought it. Within an hour there will be a

  new Government in Iran and a whole new Middle Eastern power

  structure.

  'That's if there's any Middle East left. Sometime in the next thirty

  minutes CNN will have a call from a so-called Iraqi source claiming

  responsibility. There's a fair chance they'll take Baghdad right out in

  response.'

  His smile disappeared, and a look which might have been a plea

  came into his eyes. 'Now, come on, stand aside and let us drive out of

  here. You've been a great help to us, so far. Don't screw it up now,

  otherwise Hencke might have to break his promise to me.' She realised

  that the man she had known as Crombie was holding a gun, and in the

  fraction of a second which it took her to register the fact, Wayne's

  right hand came into view and she saw that he had one also.

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  'Please, Karen,' he said, 'do the sensible thing. Like I said, we both

  know you can't shoot me.'

  'No, but I can.' The voice calm and deadly.

  Twenty yards away, Andy Martin stood, barely in their line of sight,

  his pistol drawn and aimed. Instinctively the two bombers looked

  towards him. Wayne's right arm moved: and that was it.

  Martin fired twice, inside a second, both shots hitting Ventnor in

  the middle of the forehead. In the same moment, Karen swung her

  pistol on to Hawkins and pulled the trigger. Only once, but it was

  enough; her bullet took out his right eye and exited through the back

  of his head.

  The Iranian inside the car screamed and raised his hands. 'Out, out,

  out!' she yelled at him.

  As the man opened the back door and threw himself on to the

  ground, the chief superintendent was aware of another cry. Softer,

  terrified, female. He turned towards its source as she stared at the

  figures on the ground, at the spreading pools of blood.

  'What the hell are you doing here, Estelle?' he shouted.

  'I slipped our escorts,' the little journalist whispered. 'I wanted to

  find out who you really were.'

  He frowned, grimly, as he re-holstered his pistol. 'Well, now you

  know. I told you to stick with me if you wanted a scoop ... if they let

  you tell the story, that is.'

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  100

  'How is Mr Skinner?' Karen asked. 'I heard they took him away in an

  ambulance, but nothing after that.'

  'He's fine,' Martin replied. 'He was knocked out for a few seconds

  when his head hit the deck, that's all. Bob's had tougher scrapes than

  that and walked away from them. Sure, someone called for an

  ambulance, but the big fella sent it back empty.

  'More to the point,' he continued, 'how are you? How was your

  interview with the Fiscal this afternoon? Did it go all right?'

  'Yes. Mr Pettigrew was very kind. I've always imagined that when

  you . . . when something like that happened, the officer involved

  would be really heavily questioned.'

  'Sometimes. Depends who's doing the questioning. Davie's a good

  guy; plus the boss had a word with him before he saw either of us. He

  was fine with me as well.'

  'What worries me, sir'

  He raised a hand and glanced around their surroundings. He had

  brought her to the Rosebum Bar because it was sufficiently far from

  the West End to be journalist-free. 'Listen, up the road, discipline says

  it has to be "sir", but in here, it's Andy.'

  She smiled. 'Okay. What worries me, Andy, is that I didn't prevent

  that bastard from triggering the bomb.'

  'How could you have done that?'

  'I could have shot him as soon as he stepped out of the car.'

  'Sure you could. Suppose you had done just that, and he'd been

  unarmed, the box had turned out to be Smarties, and Estelle, a foreign

  journalist desperate for a story, had happened on the scene - to find

  you with a smoking gun in your hand, standing over the body of the

  guy who'd let you down.

  'Not even Bob would have been able to keep the Fiscal off your

  neck then.'

  She shuddered at the thought. 'What about Estelle?' she asked. 'I

  thought you were seeing her tonight.'

  'Not tonight, or any other,' he chuckled. 'She's gone running off to talk

  to an agent about syndicating her story. It'll be worth a million to her.'

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  'She doesn't know about Wayne and me, does she?'

  'No way does she know about that; nor will anyone outside our

  force, ever, not even Pettigrew. Estelle knows what she saw and what

  I told her ...' He paused.

  ' . . that the two dead men were international terrorists hired by an

  Iranian dissident group angered by their government's softening line

  towards the West. That Shapoor Bahwazi, the third man in the car, an

  attache with the Iranian delegation, was one of its ringleaders. That

  their first objective was to kill the Iranian Prime Minister, but that the

  way the seating plan worked out they extended it to include taking out

  the Israelis.'

  'What's happened to Bahwazi?'

  Martin smiled, coldly. 'The Prime Minister, no less, ordered him

  expelled from the UK this afternoon and flown back to Teheran. That

  way, there'll be no fuss, and no high security trial on our patch. He'll

  be up against a wall within a week, after they've got the other names

  in his group out of him. You'll probably catch the execution on CNN.

  They had their telephoned communique, by the way, but by that time

  the CIA had warned them off broadcasting it.

  'By then of course, they'd already run the story, as had everyone

  else, of the explosion in the Conference Centre, made safe by the

  boss.'

  She sighed, heavily. 'I still blame myself for that; in spite of what

  you said.'
<
br />   'And I'll say it again, until you accept it. You've got nothing to

  blame yourself for, except maybe for charging out there to tackle two

  dangerous guys on your own. Look, Wayne didn't give you any

  warning, he just triggered the bomb . .. which by that time was in a

  safe area, thanks to Bob. No, Karen, you did great.'

  'But I couldn't shoot him, Andy,' she protested. 'It was my duty,

  and I couldn't do it. If you hadn't turned up'

  'No, it wasn't your duty at all; there were no civilians about. It was

  your life alone that was at risk, and you had three options open to you

  ... if you had been on your own.'

  She frowned as she sipped her lager. 'What were they?'

  'One, you could have let Hawkins kill you. Unacceptable. Two, you

  could have stood aside and let them go. Understandable. Three, you

  could have shot Hawkins in the hope that Wayne couldn't bring himself

  to kill you either. As it turned out that's what you did.

  'Better that way,' he murmured. 'Better in the long term that you

  didn't put him down yourself; believe me.'

  'You've had to shoot someone before, haven't you.'

  He nodded. 'Twice. The first time was the night Mario was hit.

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  Afterwards we never knew who actually killed the guy, whether it was

  Brian or me. We both hit him, more than once. The second time .. .

  I'd rather not talk about.'

  'Does the experience still affect you?'

  'There's the odd bad dream. If it gets to you too badly, you'll never

  carry a firearm again. At my rank, I suppose in theory I don't have to.

  But if I'd made that choice .. .' in spite of himself, he shuddered.

  'We wouldn't be sitting here right now,' she said.

  'Nah! I've got faith in you. You'd have popped Hawkins and Ventnor

  would have put his hands up and we'd have walked away.'

  'Yeah,' she muttered, suddenly bitter. 'And I'd have had to go into

  the witness box and give evidence with him in the dock, and his brief

  digging up all sorts of stuff about my sex life. Better the bastard's

  dead. Except that. ..' Her voice cracked and she looked away.

  He took her hand, enfolding it in his. 'When you really mean that,'

  he said softly, 'you really will be all right.

  'You know, we're wounded soldiers, you and me, with a terrible

  thing in common. We've just got to make the best of it.'

  'I suppose so.' She looked up at him again, and gave his hand a

  quick squeeze. 'Andy,' she asked, hesitantly. 'I don't fancy being

  alone tonight. Would it be bad for discipline if I came home with you?

  Just this once, of course.'

  He looked at her, and he knew that he would never really be the old

  Andy Martin again, however hard he tried. His disappearance had had

  nothing to do with his engagement to Alex, either. That man had died

  on a black night in another place.

  'Just this once,' he replied, 'I think it would be for the best.'

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  101

  Olive Mcllhenney was watching the television in the corner of the

  living room, but with little interest. She knew that upstairs in her

  daughter's bedroom, Spencer and Lauren would be glued to the small

  portable set, expanding their encyclopaedic knowledge of Coronation

  Street, but since the onset of her illness the characters had seemed flat

  and the storylines boring, in comparison with her own real-life drama.

  Still she watched it, though, for something to do while she waited,

  hoping all the while that her visitor would be on time, since she felt

  ill-equipped for the mounting tension which she was experiencing.

  When Neil had wanted to call the visit off, her insistence that she had

  got over her earlier setback was a little short of the truth.

  She looked at the clock as the doorbell rang, and saw that her

  visitor was in fact a minute early. Carefully, in the slow steady way

  which had been forced upon her, she rose and walked out to open

  the door. 'Ms dark,' she said. 'Good to see you; good of you to

  come.'

  'Call me Penelope, please,' said the woman, as she stepped inside.

  'It's no problem at all. I'm free every night for the rest of this week.'

  'Come on through, then.' Olive ushered her through into the lounge,

  pointing her at the comfortable sofa. There was a coffee table between

  it and her chair, and on it sat a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

  'Have a glass with me,' she insisted. 'My list of pleasures is a bit

  curtailed, but I'm still okay for sex and drink. I insist on quality in

  both respects, so this is pretty decent stuff.' She smiled as she filled

  both glasses most of the way to the top.

  'Cheers,' said Penelope dark, taking a sip. 'I'm glad to hear that

  you're trying to live as normal a life as you can. That's very important.

  Now, what exactly did you want to talk to me about; woman to

  woman, as you said?'

  Olive took a breath, stopping short of the point of pain. 'I need

  some lifestyle advice, Penelope,' she began, cautiously. 'I have every

  confidence in Deacey and in my treatment, but I'm under no illusions

  that Neil and I will ever walk up another Munro together.

  'When this thing,' she tapped her chest, 'is battered into remission,

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  what will I be able to do? What plans can I make? Can I go back to the

  classroom, can I have another baby if I want? How physically fit am

  I going to be?'

  The other woman looked at her, running her hand over her ash-

  blonde hair, playing for time as she considered her answer. 'My dear,'

  she began, 'I don't think you should be under any illusions here. If

  you get some degree of remission, for a period of years even, you will

  never be fit enough to teach again. As for having a child, if you ever

  fell pregnant, you'd be advised to terminate.

  'You'll have a life, oh yes. But in all honesty I can't say that you're

  likely to be able to do much more than you can now.'

  Olive threw back her head. 'Jesus,' she whispered. 'This is it?'

  'I'm afraid so.'

  'But I find this hard to take as it is.' Her fists clenched. 'I tell you

  this, Penelope,' she exclaimed, as if she had been goaded beyond

  endurance, at last, by her fate. 'If it got any worse, I could not stand it.

  The idea of a slow steady decline, with Neil and the kids having to

  watch, with him having to do the most personal things for me ... the

  thought of that appals me.

  'I will do anything to avoid that. I tell you, if it happened, I'd climb

  into a nice hot bath and cut my wrists.' Her voice rose, until she broke

  off in a paroxysm of coughing.

  'Ssh, ssh,' said her visitor, soothingly. 'Don't even think such a

  thing. That would be awful for them. Imagine Neil coming in and

  finding you: worse still, imagine if it were Spencer or Lauren. If they

  saw something like that it would mark them for life.'

  'What else can I do?' Olive shot back, her breathing restored. 'The

  hospital never gives you enough drugs to off yourself. I've noticed;

  they're damn careful about that. But if it comes to it I'll find a way,

  suppose I have .to shuffle down to the Waverley Station and chuck

  mys
elf in front of a train.'

  Penelope dark picked up her glass and took another sip. 'There is

  a way,' she said, quietly, 'that would be less painful for Neil and the

  children; and most of all for you.'

  'What's that? Neil has so much crap in the garage that I couldn't

  get the car in to do a hosepipe job.'

  The woman on the settee shook her head. 'That's not what I meant.

  Listen; I'm a doctor. Olive. If it did come to it, and you were really

  sure, I'd be prepared to help you.'

  'How?' The word was slow and feather-soft.

  'I'm about the hospital a lot. I have access to drugs; I could

  prescribe, or procure, something sufficiently powerful, painless and

  virtually instantaneous. If you could arrange for the children to stay

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  with someone, as you've done before, and for your husband to be out

  one night, I could visit you.'

  'But you'd get into trouble afterwards. You could go to jail,

  Penelope.'

  'No, I'd arrange it so that it looked like you had committed suicide

  ... which is, of course, exactly what you would have done.'

  'Still,' Olive murmured. 'I don't know if I could let you do that.'

  'That would be my ethical decision, not yours. All I would be

  doing would be offering you a better way to achieve something upon

  which you were already determined.

  'You can spare Neil and your children from the thing you dread;

  you can do it humanely. I can offer you that choice. Olive. Whether

  you take it is up to you, but I think it's right that you should have

  it.'

  'The trouble is, Dr dark,' said Neil Mcllhenney, as the kitchen

  door swung fully open, 'the law doesn't agree with you.' He stepped

  into the room, with Bob Skinner following behind. There was a dark

  bruise on the Deputy Chief Constable's forehead.

  'I shouldn't apologise for setting you up like this, but I will,' the

  sergeant said. 'The truth is it was Olive's idea; when she heard what

  was at stake she insisted on doing this.'

  Penelope dark looked at him, apprehensively. 'What do you mean,

  "at stake"?'

  'Deacey Simmers' reputation, and freedom. He was right in the

  frame for killing Gaynor Weston and Anthony Murray.'

  She put her hand to her mouth. 'But I never meant that,' she

  gasped.

  'I'm sure you didn't; and maybe when he was arrested you'd have

  come forward. But it would have been too late by then. The damage