He trailed, from the Range Rover, behind his estate owner into the station and he jerked his dogs to heel. It would be the first time in Andy Chalmers's life that he had left the mountains that were his home. Mr. Gabriel Fenton collected the first-class ticket, return,
and the sleeper reservation, pointed through the doorway to the waiting train, cuffed him cheerfully on the arm and left him. Chalmers walked towards the platform and heaved the dogs after him, ignoring the scowl of the attendant and the amusement of other passengers, before picking up his dogs and climbing on board.
"Please, Mr. Fenton, you have to listen to me. I've just come from that house. Believe me, it's horrendous in there. We've created a monster, and I'm not overstating the case here..."
There was a secure line in the newly created crisis centre at the police station in the town of Halesworth, twelve miles inland from the village. Down the line Fenton told Geoff Markham he was suffering an attack of melodrama, should pull himself together.
"You're not here. If you were here then you'd understand. Let me tell you, it's dark, there's hardly a light on, they're bouncing round off their furniture. She's the problem. Sometimes it's hysterical weeping, sometimes it's just sitting, withdrawn. She's traumatized. He'll follow her, he thinks he's going to lose her he's got the guilt bad, keeps saying it's all his fault. It'll be worse in the morning because the kid doesn't have a school to go to. They're near to quitting. We're crucifying this family, and he's close to demanding a safe-house, a new identity."
Fenton told Geoff Markham that his job, down there, was to keep Frank Perry in place.
"That may seem reasonable enough in London, Mr. Fenton, but viewed from where I've been today it seems poorly informed rubbish. I am trying to stay calm, of course I am. What do you suggest I do? Do I tell him what use was made, in Iran, of the information he provided, how much blood there is on his hands? Do I tell him about a tethered goat? That'll really get to him, Mr. Fenton, too right... I'm not losing it, Mr. Fenton, I merely try to explain the situation confronting me."
Fenton told Markham that policy dictated Frank Perry should stay there.
"What do I do? Lock him in the bloody broom cupboard?"
Fenton told him to get Perry's friends in and get the bottles out.
"If you only listened to me, Mr. Fenton. The friends have all quit the ship, they're jumping off the decks. All right, most of their friends. I'm planning to meet the vicar in the morning, seemed a decent man. I thought if the village saw the vicar with him that might spark some conscience..."
Fenton told him to take the Perrys out for the evening, splash out on a smart meal, no expense spared, to sweet-talk them and relax them.
"I'll do that, Mr. Fenton, I'll book a table for tonight for them and a busload of police should be a really jolly evening. I'm sorry to have troubled you at home... Maybe we can find a restaurant that serves boiled goat."
Donna should have stayed the extra year at school. At eighteen she was already as much on the shelf as the tins of beans, sweet corn and quick-cook curries that she stacked at the supermarket in the town. She was trapped and she knew it. She wrote in a child's laborious hand for jobs in hair salons and with beauticians, but most of her letters were ignored and a few were rejected in three lines. She was unskilled and unqualified. In the village, only Meryl Perry had time for her and gave her the old magazines with which she could dream of smart salons and bright beauty shops where rich women would come to her for advice, gossip about their private lives and offer her respect. Only the Perrys cared enough to fuel the dream, and she broke the boredom of home, and her parents, for ever sitting in front of the blaring television, with little pockets of relief when she stayed with Stephen while Frank and Meryl were out for an evening. They picked her up, they dropped her back, they gave her a small sense of importance.
He came in through the door, murmured his request to Davies, took a big breath and strode into the kitchen.
Markham said brightly, "I think we need an evening out, Frank. It's time for a splash on my masters' expenses, to cheer ourselves up."
Sausages were frying on the stove. The packet of instant mashed potato was ready at the side. Perry looked at him, astonished.
"We're going out, enough of being shut up in here. We're going out to drink a restaurant dry, to murder their menu. No argument, no hesitation, and I'm picking up the tab."
Perry asked, hesitant, "Where are we going at this time on a Sunday night, who'll have us?"
"We leave that to Bill. He's the expert, spends half his time getting his principals into restaurants that say they're full." He tried to laugh.
Meryl asked, flat-voiced, "Who's going to look after Stephen?"
He turned and saw her blank, reddened eyes.
"I'm sure you've a regular babysitter. Let's get a call to her, we'll collect. Don't you worry about the detail, Mrs. Perry, just get yourself ready and let us take the strain."
Perry said, "I'm not sure-' "Yes, you are, Mr. Perry. It's what's going to happen."
Meryl said, "I don't know that I want to go out."
"Yes, you do, Mrs. Perry. It's what's best."
He manipulated them, they danced for him. He had boasted to the man and woman at the bank that he was prepared to use people in the interests of policy and here he was, doing it. Meryl Perry was lifting the frying pan off the cooker and muttering that the sausages would do for tomorrow, and that she'd already fed Stephen. Perry was at the telephone and scanning the list above it for Donna's number.
Bill Davies leaned through the doorway and said the local police had given him the name of a place but it was twenty-two miles away and they'd have to shift themselves. He'd called the restaurant and he'd organized people to check it out. Markham thought she looked so cudgelled, so damned helpless. He asked her gently if she wanted to change, and wished that Harry bloody Fenton were here to see her. Meryl went out and he heard her deadened step up the stairs.
"Do you have a girl, Frank, to come in?"
"Thick as two planks, but decent and loyal Meryl's been great to her and she's fond of Stephen." Perry lifted the phone and dialled.
Two cars were pulling up outside Blake coming to take over inside the house and the change of shift for the hut. Markham drew a sigh of relief: at least he had achieved something. His mind flipped back to London: the letter would be at his flat in the morning, with the terms of employment. He would ring Vicky later if they survived the meal and ask her to go round and collect it,
to read it to him. Once he'd resigned they would boot him out of Thames House so fast his feet wouldn't touch the ground. How would it be, a year later, ten years later, when he walked down the Embankment and went past the bullet-proof windows and the concrete bollards? Would he feel fulfilled, streaming with the commuter hordes into the City? He had played God before, with agents' lives, and was playing God now. He wondered how it would be playing God with savers' investment accounts and pension holdings. If he hadn't met Vicky, he would know sweet nothing about investments and pensions. He heard the anger in Frank Perry's voice.
"What do you mean, you're not coming? Is it you can't come, or won't? It's nothing to do with your father, nothing to do with anyone but yourself. Listen here, we've been damn good to you. We're about the only bloody people in this place who have been. I thought better of you."
Perry's hand trembled as he tried to return the telephone to the wall-fitting. Then, he took a pen and scratched out Donna's name and number from the list on the wall. Over his shoulder, Markham could see the list. Donna was inked out along with most of the others. There were pitifully few names and numbers left unscathed.
At the kitchen door, Bill Davies took the radio away from his face.
"Dave Paget and Joe Rankin will stay on. They've had kids themselves, God help the poor blighters. They can do child-minding.
Meryl came down the stairs.
If her eyes hadn't been red and puffed, Markham thought, she would have looked marvelous. The p
oor damn woman had made the effort. He noticed Bill Davies take her hand and murmur something in her ear, but he didn't catch what was said. When they'd gathered in the hall, the detective told Paget and Rankin that there were sausages and mashed potato on the stove for their supper. The two men, in their boiler suits and vests, with their pistols hanging from their waists, thanked him balefully.
Blake came through the front door, carrying five fire extinguishers. He dumped them down noisily, then went to the car again, retrieved a heavyweight blanket from the boot with a box of gas grenades, and staggered back into the house. Markham thought it predictable that there should be more fire extinguishers inside, one for each room; the additional bullet- and shrapnel-proof blanket was for draping over a chair to make a wider protective barrier; the gas grenades were standard. But he wished that Meryl Perry hadn't seen them.
She asked where Donna was, and was told.
She wasn't given time to think about it. She was made to run to the open car door, her heels clattering down the path. There was an escort vehicle in front and another behind. Their front windows were down and Markham could see the machine-guns. Well done, Harry Fenton, another great idea. As he helped to hustle her through the gate and pitch her into the car, he thought it was all, already, unravelling. Bill Davies came after him and seemed to be shielding Perry.
Markham drove. Beside him, the detective sat awkwardly because he'd twisted his body so that his hand could rest free on the pistol in his waist holster. Off for a night out with friends well done, Harry bloody Fenton.
The helicopter had been over at last light, and Vabid Hossein had gone into the water at the first sound of its approach. Long after it had disappeared he had returned to the marsh shore. He lay in the darkness in the depth of the cover.
The policemen who watched the marsh, from the village side, on the higher ground of Hoist Covert and East Sheep Walk, had been replaced by fresh men, and he had noted their positions.
The harrier was close to him but he could not see it, could only hear its movements as it scratched in the ground for the last scraps of meat.
The girl had come to the rendezvous point in the late afternoon, bringing food and ointments for the bruising. She had been withdrawn, subdued. When he had told her what she should do the next day, she hadn't argued.
He was curled up on his side in the bramble thicket to keep the weight of his body off the bruising. The skin was bared at his waist and hip, and he could feel the soothing cool of the ointments. He'd thought she wanted to smooth on the ointments herself and he'd refused her. He could not allow himself to be dependent on a woman. He heard the sounds of the bird and tried to shut from his memory the softness of her fingers, seeking instead to recall the sight and touch and feel of Barzin, who was alone in their bed in the house at Jamaran.. . Each time he summoned the image of her and the touch of her hands, the image dissolved and was replaced always it was her fingers, the girl's... He called to the bird.
The bird was his truest friend, and would not corrupt him. It did not challenge him, was his equal. His love of it did not make him weak.
When it was finished and he was home, he would never talk to Barzin about the bird. She would not understand. He was alone; he was in darkness; he was sodden wet from immersing himself in the water, sucking his air through the reed tube he had fashioned, when the helicopter had circled overhead. He spoke soft, gentle words to the bird, hushed so as not to frighten it, told it what he was planning to do.
Vahid Hossein shifted slightly, so that he could reach out with his hand beyond the tangle of thorns. The bird pecked at it as if he might have held a last piece of rabbit flesh... A lack of patience had caused him to make mistakes: trying to break into the house without sufficient preparation; taking the assault rifle... He criticized the bird for its laziness it should hunt, it was strong enough now... He should have taken the rocket launcher, it would be the RPG-7 next time, he told the bird. His fingers found the neck and crown of the bird's head and smoothed the silky feathers. He hoped it would hunt in the dawn light and that he would see its power and beauty as it dived to kill.
He trusted the bird as his friend.
They sat at a corner table.
Frank Perry was drunk.
"What did I do?"
The restaurant had cleared, and he had taken on a drunk's aggression.
"Will some bugger tell me what I did?"
The principal was in the angle of the corner, his wife was to the right of him and the detective to the left, with a clear view to the door. Markham had his back to the room. The evening was a disaster, he thought, of titanic proportions.
Perry snatched at the bottle and poured again.
"I've the bloody right to know what I did."
One of the cars was out at the front with its driver, but its passenger sat with his gun across his knees close to the glass door. The other car was at the rear of the car-park, covering the outer entrance to the kitchens. A policeman was sitting by the swing doors through which the waiters had brought the French food. The customers who had been there when the late party had stampeded in, seven of them, at three tables, had stuffed themselves, gulped their drinks, paid up and were long gone.
Perry swilled the wine, the most expensive on the list. Drops dribbled from his mouth and ran on his jaw.
"Why can't I be told what I did? Why won't any bastard tell me?"
Meryl hadn't spoken a word through the meal. Twice, after wiping her lips with the napkin, she had dabbed her eyes. The detective's contribution had been to ask for various condiments to be passed him. The waiters had brought the coffee and retreated to the kitchen.
Frank Perry belted his hand on the table.
"Right, no one tells me, then we're off. We get the hell out and that's that, end of story."
The principal was trying to push back his chair but he was wedged in the corner. Then he tried to shove the table forward, driving it into Markham's stomach. Bill Davies was snapping his fingers at the policemen by the main door and the kitchen swing doors, and they were adjusting the straps that held their machine-guns and mouthing into their microphones... Geoff Markham thought how it would be on the telephone that night to Harry Fenton. He'd failed, the principal was running. The failure would be the marque to end his career at Thames House. However many years he lived, decades, he would be dogged by that failure... He took out his wallet and extracted a credit card. The owner came hurrying God, he'd be glad to see the back of them and took it. He straightened his tie, then rammed the table away from him, trapped the man.
"You want to know?"
"I've the bloody right to know!"
The bill was waved under his nose. It must have been prepared and ready. Without checking it, he scrawled his signature on the docket and took back the card. He waved the owner away, gestured for him to retreat and give them space.
"What did I do?"
There was at Thames House, and it would be the same at the bank, a culture against honesty. No advancement ever came from telling it as it was. He was hemmed in at work, and it would be the same in the future, by men and women who weighed their words for fear of giving offence. It had been the same at home, and the same at university. He had drunk nothing but carbonated water, he was utterly sober. For the first time in his life, Geoff Markham thought the moment had come for sheer honesty, the whole truth.
He spoke quietly, "You were a second-rate salesman. You were a grubby little creature on the make. You were into illegality, fraudulently writing out false export declarations for Customs and Excise. You were greedy, so avaricious for the commissions you were getting that the chasing of the money became more important to you than that your wife was screwing on the side and your marriage was gone-' Perry swung a wayward fist at him and missed the target, Markham's chin, but hit the bottle's neck and toppled it.
"You were on a fast ride and going nowhere, but the greed held you and you wouldn't back off. To hell with the wife opening her legs, the money kept rollin
g in, and then, one day, comes the morning after, the dawn hangover, and there's a call from a lady and most persuasively she's asking for a meeting. You thought you were in control until you sat down with Penny Flowers. Do you remember her, Frank? I hope you do, because where you are now is down to her. You dangled from her little finger..."
In the background romantic piano music played serenely. The wine stained a path across the tablecloth from the toppled bottle.
"She was asking you for a little bit of help and if you didn't care to do so, she was offering you a big bit of a prison sentence, like seven years and, of course, you chose to help. When you walked away from that first meeting with Penny Flowers you'd have thought you could handle it, without breaking sweat, and you were wrong. She's a tough bitch, but you know that now. You don't get clear of Penny Flowers's claws. It starts easily enough, always does. It's the classic way, Mr. Perry, of agent handling. Did she tell you that she liked you, that you were really important? She would have regarded you as cheap dross, because that's the way all controllers regard all agents."
The wine stain reached the edge of the table and the first drip fell into Meryl's lap.
"At first, it would have been sketch-maps of the plant, then character profiles of the prime personalities. After that, it's documents, later it's photographs with a supplied camera. Cheap dross you may be, but not an idiot. You understand now that you're into espionage, and you know the penalty in Iran for espionage. The sweat's started. The sweat becomes colder each time you fly there, and you're looking over your shoulder because it only takes one mistake to alert the security there. Each night in your hotel room, you'd have wondered whether you'd made that mistake. But you couldn't shake clear of Penny Flowers, and there was always one more trip back, always one more question she wanted answered..."
A Line in the Sand Page 29