A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

He came back.

  She had heard the explosion and had rejoiced. He could not have done it without her. Now she would persuade him.

  Vahid Hossein came as a shadow out of the darkness, to the car, to her. She tried to take him in her arms to hold him and kiss him, but he flinched away. He gripped the launcher to his chest and rocked. Then he slid down, against the wheel arch of the car. There should have been triumph, but his eyes were far away.

  "What's the matter? You got him, didn't you? What happened there?"

  ~He never replied to her.

  Farida Yasmin stormed away from him.

  She blundered across the common ground towards the lights of the village. The rain sheeted down on to her.

  She backed off the road as a police car came past her with its siren wailing, splashing the puddled rainwater on to her thighs and waist. She had heard the clamour of the explosion and clenched her fists and believed she was a part of it. She saw the crowd ahead of her, in front of the cottage home she had identified for him.

  She joined the back of the crowd. She came behind them and watched as they stared ahead, heard their whispered voices. She was not noticed. The rain fell on her hair and her face. The crowd was held back by policemen but she could still see the blackened walls of the room through the gaping window. The arc-lights showed her the firemen picking through the room.

  She listened.

  "They say it's a gas explosion."

  "That's daft, there's no sodding gas."

  She was behind them. They were not aware of her.

  "Was it the new people?"

  "It was the Perry woman, not the new people."

  "Was it Meryl Perry?"

  "Just her."

  "Where's he? Where's Perry?"

  "Never came, it was just Meryl who came."

  "That's rough. I mean, it wasn't anything to do with her, was it?"

  "Frank was in his house with his guards, it was Meryl. The stupid bastards got the wrong place, the wrong person... She slipped away. She left as she had come, unseen. She walked back, the rain clattering on her. She felt small, weak. Emergency traffic passed her and ignored her as she cowered at the side of the road. She was little and unimportant. She had thought that night, beside the car, as the sound of the explosion had burst in her ears, that she would love him, that she would be rewarded because he could not have done it without her and he would take her with him and she would be, at last, a person of consequence. She stumbled across the ground, went between the thicket and gorse clumps,

  splashed in the rain puddles. She was Gladys Eva Jones. She was an insurance clerk, she was a failure. She was sobbing, as she had sobbed when her mother had carved criticism at her and her father had cursed her, as when the kids at school had ostracized her and the kids at college had turned their backs on her. She saw the outline of the car and the rain spilling from the roof on to his shoulders. He had not moved.

  "It was the wrong person. He was never there. It was his woman... His hand came up and grasped at her wrist. He did not need her. His strength pulled her down. They were not a partnership and there was nothing to share. She was on the ground, in the mud. She would never know love. His hands prised at her clothes, the knee drove between her legs, and she felt the rain beat on the exposed skin of her stomach.

  "I want to see her."

  It was an hour since the explosion and the first scream on the radio, and for most of that hour no one had told him. They had kept him in the area inside the mattresses and the sandbags, and they'd filled his glass. A man had come in a crisp uniform, rank badges on his shoulder, and had used the soft language that they taught on courses for handling the bereaved, and then gone as soon as was half decent.

  "Damn you, I want to see her, listen-' Blake's chin shook.

  "Want away, but you can't."

  Perry shouted, "I've the right."

  Davies said calmly, "You can't see her, Mr. Perry, because there is nothing to see that you would recognize. Most of what you would recognize, Mr. Perry, is on the wallpaper or on the ceiling. It was your decision, Mr. Perry, to stay, and this is the consequence of that decision. Better you face that than keep shouting. Get a grip on yourself."

  It was as if Davies had slapped him. He understood. The slap on the face was to control the hysteria. He nodded, and was silent. Paget came in through the front, followed by Rankin who had his arm round Stephen's shoulder. The child was white-faced, his mouth gaping. The child sleep-walked across the hall slowly, and Rankin loosed his supporting arm and let him collapse against

  Perry. He held the boy hard against him, and thought about consequences. He saw the stern faces around him, and there was no criticism, there was nothing. If the child had cried or kicked or fought against him it would have been easier, but Stephen was limp in his arms.

  He heard Rankin say, "I thought I had him, don't understand, thought I saw him go down."

  He heard Paget say, "He's like a dripping tap. He missed, and the daft tart can't accept that he missed with a double tap."

  The woman screamed.

  They were on the ground in front of her, in the epic entre of her torch beam She shrieked for her dogs, and ran.

  She walked her dogs each evening before going to bed, summer and winter, moonlight or rain.

  Policemen from an unmarked car ran towards the screams. It was several minutes before they could get a coherent statement from the panting, shouting woman of what she had seen.

  "Black Toby.. . his ghost, his woman... Black Toby with her, what he did to be hanged... It's where they hanged him, hanged Black Toby..."

  They went forward with the spot-lamps, her trailing behind them, and her dogs skipping ahead in the darkness.

  Chapter Eighteen.

  e was hunched forward, peering into the misted windscreen. Chalmers was beside him with the dogs under his legs they didn't speak.

  Geoff Markham wrenched the car round the bends in the lanes, back towards the village and the sea.

  Once more he had listened to Fenton on the telephone and been too drained of emotion to take offence at the rambling, cursing diatribe thrown at him. He'd just finished at the borrowed typewriter, had just sealed the envelope, when the first news of disaster had broken, and he'd been in the crisis centre trying to make sense from the confusion of the reports when the second package of news had come over the radio. He'd collected Chalmers from the canteen. The envelope with the letter in it was jammed in his pocket, like a reproach.

  Dear Sirs, I am in receipt of your letter setting out your proposals for terms of employment. I have changed my mind, and am no longer seeking work away from the Security Service. I apologize for wasting your time and am grateful for the courtesies shown me. Obligations, commitments, duty fold-fashioned words used by wririlded fartsl seem to have overwhelmed me. I'm sorry if you find this difficult to understand.

  Sincerely,

  He felt sick, small.

  "I want to go home... Markham's eyes never left the road. After two catastrophic news reports, and after the battering from Fenton, he needed a butt for his anger, and a chance to purge the guilt welling in him. Chalmers was available. Markham snarled, "When the work's finished you go home not a day or an hour or a minute before... We made a mistake. We could have made the same mistake if the target had been in a tower block of a housing estate, in a good suburb, anywhere, but we did it in a village like this at the back end of bloody nowhere. We made a mistake by thinking it was the right thing to move his wife out, get rid of her, to clear the arcs of fire. We lost her. Losing her is damn near the same, to me, as losing him. It was convenient to ship her out, so we took that road. It's crashing down around us, it's disaster. Listen hard, if you say that it's not your quarrel then you're just like them. You are an imitation of those people in that village. They are moral dwarfs. It was not their quarrel so they turned their backs and walked away, crossed over to the other side of the bloody street. You aren't original, it's what we've heard for the last week. So, find anot
her tune. You're staying till I say you can go. I thought better of you, but I must have been wrong."

  "I've no quarrel with him."

  Geoff Markham mimicked, ""No quarrel, want to go home" forget it. Let me tell you, I considered taking you down to the hospital morgue. I could have walked you in there, filthy little creature that you are, with those bloody dogs, and I could have told the attendant to pull the tray out of the refrigerated cupboard, and I could have shown her to you, but I couldn't have shown you her face. You aren't going to the morgue because I cannot show you Meryl Perry's face it doesn't exist. That's why we aren't going there."

  Down the lanes, towards the village... "We all want to cross over the road and look the other way. Don't worry about it, you're not alone. I understand you because, and I'm ashamed, I've said it myself. I went after different work, outside what I do now.

  "Crossing the road", for me, was sneaking out of the office in the lunch-hour and going for a job interview.

  "Looking the other way" was listening to my fiance and hunting for a cash increase. I'm ashamed of myself. I wrote a letter tonight, Mr. Chalmers, and the price of the letter is my fiancee. And what I've learned since I came here is that I, and you, cannot walk away from what has to be done."

  As they approached the village, the clock on the church tower was striking midnight, its chimes muffled in the rainstorm. To the left were the pig-sheds in the field, to the right was the common ground of scrub and gorse, and in front of them was a policeman waving them down. Markham showed his card and a rain soaked arm pointed to a pool of arc-lights. The dogs ran free and they walked towards it. The wind brought the rain into their faces.

  "Why can't you believe you have a quarrel with this man?"

  "He's done me no harm."

  "There's a woman, damn you, with no head."

  "He saved the bird."

  "What bloody bird?"

  "He's done the bird good."

  He thought Chalmers struggled to articulate a deep feeling, but Markham hadn't the patience to understand him.

  "You're talking complete crap.~ The blow came, without warning, out of the darkness. A short-arm punch, closed fist, caught Markham on the side of the face. He staggered. He was slipping, going down into the mud. A second stabbed punch caught the point of his chin. The pain smarted in his face. He saw men hustle forward, the rain peeling off their bodies. They were grotesque shadows, trapping Chalmers, swarming around him, as his dogs fought at their an ides their boots, and were kicked away.

  "Show him show him what the bastard did. He doesn't think it's his business, so show him."

  They dragged Chalmers forward. Markham heard a squeal of pain, thought Chalmers had bitten one of them, and he saw the swing of a truncheon.

  There was a tent of plastic sheeting. Inside it, the light was brilliant and relentless.

  He saw her.

  "Get him up close, get him to see what the bastard did."

  She was on her back. Geoff Markham had to force himself to look. Her jeans were dragged down, dirtied and wet, to her knees and her legs had been forced wide apart. Her coat was ripped open. A sweater had been pushed up and a blouse was torn aside. He could see the dark shape of her hair, but little of the whiteness of her stomach above it. The skin was blood-smeared, bloodstained, blood-spattered. Her mouth gaped open and her eyes were big, frozen, in fear. He knew her. There was the old photograph of her in the files of Rainbow Gold: the eyes had been small and the mouth had been closed; she had held her privacy and worn the clothes of her Faith. Looking past the policemen and over Andy Chalmers's shoulders, he stared down at the body. He had seen the bodies of men in Ireland and they'd had the gaping mouths and the open eyes, and the fear that remained after death. He had never before seen the body of a raped, violated woman. Before they had built the plastic tent the rain had made streams of blood on the skin. Except for Cathy Parker, and her report relayed to him that morning, they had all lost sight of Gladys Eva Jones, the loser, and now he saw her. Except for Cathy Parker, and then it had been too late, they had all ignored her because they had rated this young woman from a small provincial city as irrelevant in matters of importance, not worthy of consideration. He saw in his mind the photograph of the face of Vahid Hossein and the cold certainty that it held.

  Chalmers said nothing.

  Markham stammered, "God, the bastard a frenzy. He must be a bloody animal to do that."

  A man in a white overall suit looked up coldly from beside the body, and said clinically, "That's not a frenzy, she was strangled. The cause of death is manual asphyxiation. That's not her blood -she's not a cut on her. It's his."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means that the "animal" is severely wounded, knife or gunshot. There is evidence of sexual penetration, probably simultaneous with her being strangled. During the sexual act, during the exertion of manual strangulation, he bled on her."

  Markham turned away. He said, to no one, to the mass of

  grim-faced men behind him, "So, there's a blood trail so, the dogs V will have him."

  A voice from the darkness said, "There's no blood trail and there's no scent. If you hadn't noticed, it's raining. In pissing rain there's no chance."

  Markham gestured for them to loose their hold on Chalmers, and walked away. Chalmers was behind him. He groped back towards the car and the road. For the rest of his life, he would never lose the sight of Gladys Eva Jones. He stumbled and slithered in the darkness. The letter in his pocket would be soaked and the envelope sodden.

  "Will you, please, Mr. Chalmers, please, go out and find him?"

  "Are you going or are you staying?"

  "Staying."

  Frank Perry lay on the floor between the mattresses and behind the sandbags. Stephen slept against him, his head was in the crook of his stepfather's arm.

  "So be it."

  "Are you criticizing me?"

  "I just do my job. Criticizing isn't a part of it. I've some calls to make."

  Davies had towered over him.

  "What happened to the people who took Meryl in?"

  "Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore are unhurt. They won't leave what remains of their house and they're staying put."

  Grimly he turned away and disappeared among the shadows of men whose names Frank Perry hadn't been told. Perry closed his eyes, but knew he would not sleep. He could hear Davies on the telephone. It would be easier if any of them had criticized him.

  The brigadier took the call, which woke him from a light sleep on the camp-bed in his office. The voice was very faint. The brigadier shouted his questions, but the answers were vague and there was break-up on the line. In his frustration he shouted louder and his voice rippled from the office room, down the deserted corridors and into empty, darkened rooms... He heard the muffled voice of the man whom he had trusted like a son and barked out questions. Had he succeeded? Was he clear? Could he make the rendezvous point on the Channel beach? How many hours would it be before dawn? What was his location? Had he succeeded?

  The call was terminated. The pad of paper, on which he would have written the answers to his questions, was blank. He played back the tape and heard the insisting shout of his questions and the indistinct answers. In the background, competing with the answers he could not understand, was the splash of water. The cold of the night was around him. He thought of a beach in the black night where the sea's waves rippled on the shingle-stone shore, where Vahid Hossein was hurt and waiting. In his mind was the death that would follow his failure. He weighed the options of survival, his own survival. The hush of the night was around him, and moths flew, distracted, at the ceiling light above him. He rang the night-duty officer at the offices of the National Iranian Tanker Corporation across the city, and he spoke the coded message. Twice, in the minutes that followed, the brigadier called the number of the mobile digital telephone and there was no response. He was alone, surrounded by darkness.

  Frank Perry heard the approach of the lorry, and then its engine wa
s cut. He heard the voices and, the clatter of iron bars being thrown down, as if dropped from the lorry's flat bed. He was thankful, a small mercy, that the child slept and did not criticize him.

  The people of the village slept, with guilt and with self justification with doubts and with resentment, or stared at their dark ceilings. There were few who had not walked up the road and along the lanes and gone to look at the cottage home when it was floodlit by the generators. Most had seen the wide hole where a window had been and the torn curtains that fringed it, and some, even, the long bag of zipped black plastic carried away to the closed van, and the uncomprehending eyes of a child escorted from the building by the policemen in their vests and carrying their guns. No one believed the bland explanation of a gas explosion. None had cared to examine their part in what they had seen, heard, with their friends and their families. They had gone home when the show was over, and they had darkened the village, made it silent, switched off their house lights, crept to their beds. In a few short hours it would be the start of another day, and there were not many for whom their lives would be the same. The rain, over the village, had gone as fast as it had come, leaving the moon to pour bright white light into the homes where they lay.

  "What's that? What the hell's happening?"

  Frank Perry was careful not to wake Stephen. He eased himself into a half-sitting position but did not shift his arm, against which the child slept. There was the noise of sledgehammers beating against metal at the front of the house and the back.

  Davies was cold, without emotion.

  "You said you were staying."

  "That's what I said."

  "So, it's because you're staying."

  "What is it? What is it that's happening?"

  "We call it a blindicide screen. It's old Army talk. In Aden, thirty years back, the opposition had a Swedish-made anti-tank rocket that was used against fixed positions. It detonates the boring charge early."

  "Why?"

  "You should sleep. It'll keep till the morning."

  "You know what? The bastard let me sleep. Joe bloody Paget let me sleep, didn't wake me to tell me. I bloody knew, but there wasn't a body and there wasn't any blood, and the bastard said I'd missed, Joe bloody Paget... You're a miserable sod, Joe you know what you are? Not just a miserable sod, a mean fucker."