A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  "I'll be at my desk, Mr. Fenton, I've got a mountain of work."

  Fenton ignored him and told the superintendent, on the telephone, that they should meet, that they should consider a protection officer.

  Markham's mountain was a missing man, who had bought all-weather clothing that did not fit him and a guidebook, and a woman, who had left the address recorded on the file with no forwarding details. He rang Vicky, said he was thinking about his interview, said he did not know when he would be clear said it wasn't his fault, not anybody's fault.

  The call came through as she worked at her keyboard, distracted her. She finished the entry, picked up the phone and heard his voice.

  She had been Gladys Eva Jones, only daughter of a train driver out of the Derby depot. She had been a plain girl, with poor eyesight, a love of mathematics and a desperate loneliness. Her school-teachers, perhaps out of pity, had concentrated sufficiently on her that she won a place at Nottingham University. She had clung limpet-like to gangs of fellow students, and she'd seen the efforts they'd made to avoid her. One night, second year, drunk in the union bar, they had told her to get 'flicking lost' because she was so 'fucking boring' and so 'fucking ugly'. She had gone to an abandoned lecture room to sob out her misery. She had been the girl found by an Afro-Caribbean cleaner, and she had wept on his shoulder. It was he, six years before, who had taken her to the classes of Sheik Amir Muhammad. She had learned the Five Pillars of the Faith the Shahada, the Salat, the Zakat, the Sawm and the Ha]]. She had recited the words, "There is no deity but God. Muhammad is the apostle of God." In her last year at the university, she had gone to her lectures wearing the chad or the rou push. She had felt the protection of her Faith, and the respect it gained from fellow believers, and had taken the names Fanda and Yasmin. Her degree was mediocre, but she knew that reflected the prejudice of her examiners. She had been turned away by many potential employers, but that reflected the prejudice of the management who interviewed her because she wore with pride her chad or Her mentor had been Sheik Amir Muhammad, her friend Yusuf Khan, and she felt herself to be safe in a world of enemies. She had not known she was under the watching eye of an intelligence officer from the Iranian embassy.

  Three years after her conversion, when Yusuf Khan had appeared to abandon the Faith, forswear the prayer meetings of Sheik Amir Muhammad, and had left their small group, she had been rocked. At that time, her own obedience to the Faith had been total... Without Yusuf Khan's friendship, her own commitment to the Faith had gradually weakened. She had the intelligence to be aware of the change, but she had tried her best to ignore the weakening. At night, alone, she could analyse the shifting ground on which her Faith was based. She had wanted a place for herself, had wanted respect. At first, the white girl, she had been a prized convert and a focus of the Sheik's attention, but new converts had come to the small red-brick mosque and she had sensed she was no longer the centre-point of interest. Even so, Farida Yasmin had still been shaken to the core when the Sheik, with Yusuf Khan sitting silently behind him, had quietly told her that she could best serve the true religion if she, too, were to seem to walk away from everything that was precious and reassuring. She had not doubted them, she had been obedient to their wishes. She had felt undressed, dirtied, when she had gone for a job interview at a Nottingham insurance company, two years back, dressed in a skirt and blouse and not in the black chad or She said her prayers each day at the appointed time in the privacy of her new bed sit home and in the insurance company's lavatory, but the comfort of the mosque was now denied her.

  For much of those two years she had been ignored; no contact had been made. At first she had been merely miserable, then resentful. The friendship of the mosque was in the past, and the present offered no warmth because she despised the other girls who worked around her. She had been given no explanation of why she had been recruited as a 'sleeper', nor what would be expected of her one day, until six weeks ago. Arriving back at her one-bedroom flat from another day's humdrum work for the insurance company, Yusuf Khan had been waiting on the pavement for her. After she had telephoned the company and pleaded a family bereavement they had driven north, and the following week they had gone to the Suffolk coast. She did not know who had instructed Yusuf Khan to contact her, but at last she felt a small sense of usefulness. Farida Yasmin, an unknown soldier of Islam, had just come back from the lavatory when her telephone had rung.

  She hid her face from the other women tapping at their keyboards. The virgin Farida Yasmin always felt pleasure flush her cheeks when he spoke to her, because they shared the secret of their Faith and the secret of their work against God's enemies.

  "Tell me you're right, and it's not real."

  "They try to frighten you.. . If you're frightened then you're compliant... If you're compliant then it's easier for them... What's easiest for them is when you run."

  "If it was real, bad real...?"

  "What they want is convenience. I stood my corner and they backed off. Because they backed off, I can't believe it's bad real."

  "What's going to happen?"

  "I don't know. When I sent you out God, I'm sorry, I was foul - a man came, a creepy little bastard. He came into our house and he looked around like he was wondering what sort of price he could get for everything that's special to us. He left a brochure of locks and bolts and alarm systems. We've to choose what we want and they'll be fitted. There's a pamphlet he gave me with all the things we have to do it's like being sick and listing all the pills you should take and how far you should walk, that kind of thing. Look under the car with a mirror each morning, don't establish patterns over regular journeys, after dark go into a room and don't switch the light on till you've first drawn the curtains, look for strangers watching the house, and there'll be a panic button. You've got to make net curtains..."

  "I hate net curtains."

  "I said you hated them. Please, Meryl, we've got to have them."

  "Why?"

  "Because.." because.." net curtains absorb flying glass."

  "It's not much, Frank, what we have to do."

  "It's what he said."

  "You want to know what I think?"

  "I want to know if you're going to stay."

  "You're brought up always to believe a policeman or an official. I think, as you said, it's a scare and they're doing what comes convenient. You've convinced me, Frank. They've got all the powers they want and if it was really serious I think they wouldn't have listened to what you said, they would have shifted you... It's my home too."

  "And Stephen's... Are you going to stay?"

  "I won't find another home."

  "I won't make another home, not another home where thete's love, where there's friends."

  "I think you were right, Frank. It was just to scare you, so's you'd make it easier for them."

  "Are you going to stay? Whatever you want, I'll do. I can make a phone call. I can have the removal van here tomorrow and we can pack the bags. No goodbyes, nothing, scuttle out in the dark. Leave everybody who's important to us, no explanation. Fear all the waking hours, and no sleep because of the fear. Don't get to know anyone again, not ever, because you'll be moving on, running, rootless. I can make a phone call and it will happen, and it will be convenient for them... What do you want to do?"

  "It's our home... If it were real they would have moved you. You'd have been kicking and screaming, but they'd have shifted you."

  The wind was freshening and the sea lashed the beach stones. He wanted, so desperately, to believe her. To believe her was to be given courage. She held his hand.

  He was in his cabin when the master brought him his one meal of the day, a plate of rice and boiled mutton, a bowl of spiced cooked vegetables, an apple and a glass of fruit juice.

  Only the master had access to the locked cabin. It was a woman's space, with bright decorative curtains, a cheerful woven carpet, and the photographs on the walls were of pretty views from home. The master's wife would have used the ca
bin as her day room, where she could sew and read and pray beyond the sight of the Iranian officers and the Pakistani crew.

  As the master talked he ate calmly. The next night, out in the Channel, he would leave the ship. He did not hurry over his food, was at peace, as the master again reiterated the procedures that would be used. He knew they were planned with meticulous care. He had been told in the airless room high in the Ministry of Information and Security of the many people involved in tracking down his target, and the thoroughness of their work. Nothing had been left to chance.

  He had been shown the photographs, and had been talked through the schedules. It was the way of his people and he had complete confidence in the plan drawn for him. It was the work of many effortful months, and his own role was simply to conclude it. Later, when the darkness had come around the tanker, he would again slip down the corridor and out on to the deck space, and he would walk far from the bridge lights, sit alone, and think of his wife, of the mission that had been given to him and his homecoming.

  When he had finished the food he passed the tray back to the master, thanked him curtly. Then he sat in his chair, and studied the enlarged photograph of the face of the man he would kill. He had no cause for fear, he had been told that the man was unprotected.

  Sergeant Bill Davies should have been watching his boy play football. But it had been a pig of a day, starting at half past midnight when Lily had thrown two pillows and a blanket down the stairs and screamed at him that the sofa was where he'd sleep or she was leaving.

  Four bad hours of sleep, then out from home in south-west London and across all the bloody traffic streams to beyond east London. Half awake, jazzed to hell, he had been in the worst possible frame of mind for shooting. If he'd failed with the Glock and the H&K, failed to make the necessary score, then he was out on his arse for a month until the next slot came round, with his personal weapon withdrawn. He'd forgotten, until late the last evening, to tell Lily that he was in a shooting slot, that he wouldn't be there to see his elder boy, Donald, play central sweeper, and she'd screamed that it was the last straw, that he was more married to the Branch than to her.

  He'd never been a crack shot, good enough on the Heckler & Koch, had the necessary score there, but he'd gone down the first time round on the Glock. He was the only one in the group who had failed with the handgun. They'd put him through it a second time. The instructors wanted to pass him, willed him to get the score, and the guys and girls from armed-response vehicles and Static Protection and Special Escort Group, they'd all rooted for him, but he had failed again mid-morning. The instructors had told him to get a coffee in the canteen, that they'd try one last time before the lunch-break. If he failed the last time then he'd have to hand in the gun, and it would be a month behind a desk until the next chance. If they knew back in the office about Lily throwing the pillows downstairs and yelling about leaving, it could be handing in the gun for all time because they'd have said his emotional stability was unproven.

  He took the Isosceles stance, readied for double-tap shooting; walking squares, swinging to aim when the damn target swivelled, drawn-weapons position and shooting. The last shot, a 9mm bullet, was on the line of the target circle in the figure shape, ten metres range. Some instructors said that on the line was failure and some said it was good enough. He had needed the last shot, and they'd given it him. He was thirty-seven hits out of fifty shots, the bare minimum. The bullet-hole on the line had saved him... He'd sweated. There had been one little bastard, off an armed-response vehicle, arrogant sod, who had gained maximum score first time round and who had watched his final scrape through with a smirk... Damn all use as a protection officer if he couldn't shoot straight. He'd been toying with a bacon sandwich in the canteen, his hands still shaking, when he'd been called to the telephone.

  And the day hadn't finished with Bill Davies. The superintendent wanted him back in London, on to the Branch floor at Scotland Yard. A file was thrown at him. He'd been given two hours to digest it; should have been two days. He had speed-read it, "Techniques of Iranian Terrorism (Europe)', when he ought to have been on the touchline watching his son. Then they'd thrown him the principal's file and given him thirty minutes when it should have been a full day. And when he should have been at the flower stall at Victoria Station shelling out for the biggest peacemaker bouquet they could put together, he'd been with his signed authority down in the basement armoury, drawing the kit, the Glock, the Glock's ammunition and the heavier firepower. And there wouldn't be a call to a restaurant to reserve a corner table with lit candles.

  The bloody awful day was coming to an end as he'd driven down the narrow straight road into the village on the north Suffolk coast.

  He sat on the concrete and metal bench on the green. Later, he would find a bed-and-breakfast, but not before he had absorbed the smell, pace and habit of the village. He sat on the bench with his raincoat folded on his lap and his Glock in his shoulder holster under his suit jacket as the light fell on his day. Bloody awful days went with the job of protection officer and were commonplace in the life of Detective Sergeant Bill Davies.

  Frank and Meryl walked back into the village as the dusk shadows thickened.

  His arm was on her hip and her hand was against his waist. They had clung to each other on the beach before turning for home. Vince, coming back to the village in his van, saw them and played a raucous fanfare on his horn. It was as if they were youngsters, in love, and didn't care who saw them. Gussie, cycling back, stinking, from the piggery, wolf-whistled.

  They strolled past Rose Cottage, and the dark, lifeless windows beyond the for-sale sign. Perry thought it wouldn't be long before lights blazed there, like a new dawn for a new family. Maybe there would be a new guy to drink with in the pub, a new friend for Meryl, new kids for Stephen to mess with. Not that he and Meryl were short of friends, and that was why they were staying. The cottage was chilly and unwelcoming, and he hurried her on.

  They kept up the contact. Dominic, sad and gay, rolled his eyebrows gently and made a small grimace as he closed down his shop for the day. The lie was dead. The vicar, Mr. Hackett, strode past them, lifted his cap and smiled. He held her, she held him, because they needed each other and had nowhere else to run. They reached home and squeezed through the gate because neither would release the other.

  A man was sitting on the bench on the green. He looked like a salesman killing time before yet another cold call.

  In the kitchen surrounded by his school-books, Stephen saw them come in and the light spread in his eyes. The poison was gone. It was their home, their castle. Perry had convinced her that they had only tried to scare him so that it would be easier for them, and that the danger was not real. In the kitchen, in front of Stephen, he kissed her.

  Back in Newbury, his wife used to complain to anyone who'd listen that her husband didn't notice women. On trips away and in the office he had never played around because the job consumed him. That first time he'd met Meryl, as he was trying to put some purpose back into his existence, he'd noticed her as a damaged kindred spirit. Getting his coat off the hook in the outer office where she sat, he'd seen her loneliness. It had been in her eyes and her careworn mouth, and he'd blurted out that since he might be coming back a few times they might as well get to know each other and he'd asked her for a drink. She'd hesitated and he'd apologized for his forwardness, and then she'd said there was time for a quick one when the works closed for the day. Their first drink and the attempts to find common ground had made them like a pair on an initial singles-club meeting. It had been a strange chemistry, stilted conversation, but each recognized the wounded solitariness of the other. Dinners had followed, and pecks on the cheek, and both of them had realized that they needed the other to put some foundation into their lives. They'd bought the house on the green together, furnished it and moved in. The first night there, with the wind on the windows, and Stephen in the next room, they'd slept together and loved each other.

  It had been a
ccepted by both from the start, that their previous lives harboured secrets. The ground rules were set: no inquisitions, no interrogations. She didn't ask where he'd come from, why he had no anniversaries, no relations sending him cards and letters. He didn't quiz her on Stephen's father. They buried their past under their new happiness and mutual dependence. He could justify to himself the cordoned-off areas of his life. He was a changed man. If anyone from the old Newbury office, a one-time colleague of Gavin Hughes, had met Frank Perry, they wouldn't have known him. But the past seemed now to rush around him, and he wondered whether an old lie was replaced by a new one.

  At the last light of the day, going to get a story-book for Stephen from the living room, he paused and looked out of the window. The man in the suit, the stranger, with a raincoat loose on his lap, remained motionless on the bench on the green.

  Chapter Five.

  The door opened, and he held up his warrant card. In better times Lily had said it was a rotten photo that didn't do him justice; that morning, like as not, she would have said it flattered him. He was tall, had no surplus weight, with a pale face and cheeks drawn in under the bones. His nose and chin were over-prominent, his hair was dark, cut short, and his light blue eyes were dominant. He said briskly, "Morning, Mr. Perry. I'm Detective Sergeant Bill Davies."

  He could hear a child's and a woman's voice in the depths of the house. He saw Perry's jaw fall and then tighten. There was never a right time to start the process of protection. He thought of himself as a shadow cast over the principal's life; he could have come in the late afternoon as the family was preparing for supper and television, or in the evening when they were readying for bed, or early in the morning when they were starting a day at the breakfast table, but there was never a best time to arrive on a stranger's doorstep.