HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  "So, I was written off?"

  "Not by the Director General. I am afraid almost everyone else did."

  "Most touching faith you had in me. And did you shake the dust off my obituary? Had you booked St Martin's for a Memorial? Tell me, Henry, who was going to give the Address?"

  "Come on, Mattie, this isn't like you. You've been on this side of the fence. You know what the form is."

  "It's just abominable, Henry, to realize that Century believes a senior officer of the Service will cave in at the end of the first day, like some damn Girl Guide - I'm flattered . . . "

  "We made our assumption, we aborted the field agents."

  A sharpness in Mattie's voice, "They're out?"

  "We aborted them, they're not out yet."

  Mattie sat upright in his chair, his chest heaved. There were still the pain pangs deep in his chest. "You assumed that I would be broken within 24 hours, can I assume that you aborted as soon as I went missing? How can it be that two weeks later the agents are not out?"

  "It was felt, I believe, that aborting a very precious network was a big step, takes years to rebuild. It took them a little time to get to the sticking point. Part of it was that the DG

  convinced himself that you would never talk. All sorts of waffle about Furniss of the old school. Frankly, I don't think he knows the first thing about interrogation. Anyway, wiser heads prevailed, as they say, and the messages were sent, but the agents are not yet out . . . "

  "Christ . . . "

  Mattie stood. Dreadful pain in his face. Pain from his feet that were bandaged and inside bedroom slippers that would otherwise have been three sizes too large.

  "It wasn't easy, knowing nothing, hearing nothing."

  A cold whip in Mattie's voice. "I clung on, I went through hell - yes, hell, Henry, and at Century you couldn't get your fucking act together . . . it makes me sick to think of it."

  "I have the impression that there was more interest, more interest even than in the safety of the field agents, in whether Eshraq was compromised . . . "

  Mattie swung his shoulders. His eyes fixed on Henry.

  "What do you know about Eshraq?"

  "That he is of very considerable importance."

  "While I was away my safe was rifled, yes?"

  "Rifled? No, Mattie, that is unreasonable. Of course we went through your safe. We had to know about Eshraq . . . "

  Henry paused. The silence weighed. He looked up at Mattie.

  There was the attempt at kindness, and understanding, and friendship. "I gather that Charlie Eshraq is not just important for his potential in the field, but also that he is very close to your family."

  "So my safe was gutted."

  "Mattie, please . . . we had to know everything about the boy, and now we have to know whether he is compromised."

  "So you burrow about in my private files and you find that he is close to my family, is that it?"

  "That's right."

  "Here you assumed that I would talk to my torturers about a young man who is like a son to me?"

  "I'm sorry, Mattie, that has been our assumption."

  "Your assumption, but not the Director General's?"

  "Correct."

  "But all the rest of you?"

  "The Director General said he thought that you would go to the grave before you named names."

  "You, Henry, what do you think?"

  "I've seen the medical reports. I know the extent of your injuries. I have an idea of what was done to you. To have escaped after all that argues a phenomenal constitution, phenomenal courage."

  "I killed three men getting away. I broke the neck of one, I strangled one, I drove one down."

  "If there were doubters, Mattie, they will obviously keep their doubts to themselves. I didn't know that, of course, and I am horrified to hear it. One has no idea what one may be capable of in extremis."

  "Am I capable of betraying Charlie, that's what you are asking yourself."

  "To me, Mattie, God's truth, you are one of the finest men that I have known in my lifetime with the Service, but no one, no one in the world, is capable of withstanding torture indefinitely. You know that and nobody in the Service is holding it against you. Everyone thinks it was wrong to send you - my God, I hope the DG doesn't listen to this tape -

  and, well, to tell you the truth, quite a few people think you were a fair old chump to be gallivanting about on your own near the border. That's what comes of being an archaeologist, I suppose."

  Mattie smiled at the irony. He walked to the window. He did not need to hold on to the chair backs. He walked as if there were no pain in his feet, as if he could straighten his back and there was no pain in his chest. He stared out. There was a brisk sunshine lighting the lawn.

  "I may have named the field agents, I can't be certain.

  There were times that I was unconscious, I might have been delirious. There were times when I thought I was dead and certainly prayed I would be. But that was, oh Christ, after days of agony. If the agents were not aborted immediately then I won't accept the blame for that. . . . "

  "And Eshraq, did you name Eshraq?"

  The dog was barking in the kitchen, frustrated at being denied the run of the house. Mattie turned, stared levelly across the hearth rug at Henry.

  "No, Henry, I couldn't have done that. I'd much sooner be dead than have done that."

  "Mattie, truly, I take my hat off to you."

  The lorry began the journey from the north of England to the port of Dover. Midday Saturday, and the lorry observed strictly the speed limits set for it. The driver would not approach the Customs checks at Dover until the evening of the following day. Lorry movement through the port of Dover was always heaviest on a Sunday night, when the drivers were jockeying to get a good start on the Monday morning on the through routes across Europe. The volume of traffic on the Sunday night sailings dictated that the Customs checks on outgoing cargo were lightest. And the early summer was a good time, also, for the sale of machine parts. The ferries'

  vehicle decks would be jammed with both commercial and holiday traffic. The chances of the lorry's cargo being searched, of the containers being stripped out right down to the four wooden packing cases, were very slight. The haulage company also took care to check whether there was any form of tail on the consignment. The lorry had been followed away from the warehouse at the loading depot by a car that checked to see whether it was under surveillance. The car varied the distance between itself and the lorry; at times it was a mile back, and then it would speed up and catch the lorry. The purpose of this was to pass the cars travelling in the wake of the lorry, and to look for the tell-tale evidence of men using radios in the cars, or vehicles that were too long in the slow lanes.

  It was a wasted exercise.

  The Investigation Division had no tail on the lorry.

  Not yet six o'clock and she had already had her bath. She was at her dressing table. She could hear him in the next room, working at the final touches. It was the trip out with Bill Parrish that had set him behind. He hadn't told her where they had gone, and she hadn't asked. He might not have told her where he'd been, what he'd done, with Bill Parrish, but at least when he had returned he had peeled out of his work clothes and put on the old jeans and the sweatshirt and headed back to his decorating. He was pretty quiet, had been ever since he'd come back from the north of England, and she was almost sorry for him. More vulnerable than she'd ever known him. She thought he must have been wanting to please her, because he had set out to decorate the spare bedroom. Not that David would ever have admitted to a living soul, let alone his wife, that his case was up the river and no punt. She didn't care what he said. She'd liked coming home from work and finding the flat smelling of paint and wallpaper paste. It was a big change in her experience, that her husband had gone down to the DIY and had managed the best part of a week without referring to Bogota or the Medellin cartel.

  "Who am I going to meet there?" she called out.

>   "A gang of complete morons."

  She yelled, and she was laughing, "Will it all be shop talk?"

  "Absolutely. Blokes all up at the bar, wives sitting down by the band."

  "You'll dance with me?"

  "Then you'd better wear boots."

  He came into the bedroom. She could scent the paint on his hands that were on her shoulders. Christ, and she wanted them to be happy. Why couldn't they be happy? In the mirror, his face looked as though the light had gone from him. Her David, the Lane's Keeper, so crushed. It was a fast thought, she won-

  dered if she didn't prefer him when he was bloody minded and confident and putting the world into its proper order.

  He bent and he kissed her neck, and he was hesitant. She took his hands from her shoulders and she put them inside her dressing gown, and she held them tight against her.

  "I love you, and I'm just going to dance with you."

  She felt his body shaking against her back and the trembling of his hands.

  Past six o'clock, and a Saturday evening, and the magistrate sat at his Bench in a yellow pullover, and his check trousers were hidden under the desk top.

  The convening of the court on that day of the week, and at that time of day, guaranteed that the public gallery and the press seats would be empty.

  Parrish, in his work suit, stood in the witness box.

  "I understand you correctly, Mr Parrish? You have no objection to bail?"

  Boot-faced, boot-voiced. "No objection, sir."

  "In spite of the nature of the charges?"

  "I have no objections to bail, sir."

  "And the application for the return of the passport?"

  "I have no objection to the passport being returned, sir."

  "You have no fear of the defendant going abroad and not surrendering his bail?"

  "No fears, sir."

  "What sort of figure of bail are you suggesting, Mr Parrish?"

  "Two sureties, sir. Two thousand pounds each would be my suggestion, sir."

  The magistrate shook his head. It was as though he had now seen everything, heard everything. Day in and day out the police sniped at the magistrates for their willingness to grant bail. There could be many reasons and he was not going to waste time speculating on them. If that's what the Investigation Division wanted, that's what they wanted. What he wanted was to get back to the golf club. He granted bail on two sureties of £2000.

  The flight had been delayed, technical problems. The problems were resolved a few minutes after Leroy Winston Manvers and his common-law wife and children boarded the British Airways 747 to Jamaica.

  When he'd seen the bird up then Bill Parrish drove home to change for the dance.

  The detective thought that Darren Cole was very pale, and his fingers were nicotine stained because that was the only fix he was getting on remand.

  He resented being pulled from home on a Saturday evening and told to drive halfway across the county. He wasn't in the mood for hanging about.

  "You're coming out, Darren. Tomorrow morning, eight o'clock, you're walking out. The charges against you will not be pressed, but they will be held in reserve. The charges can be reactivated if you should be so silly as to open your dumb little mouth to any scribbler, anyone else for that matter. I wouldn't come home if I were you. You should stay away from my patch.

  There are people who know that you grassed and if they know where to find you then they will most certainly come looking.

  Take the wife and the kids and take a very long bus ride, Darren, and stay safe. Have you got me, young 'un?"

  The detective left the necessary paperwork with the Assistant Governor. He could be phlegmatic. He reckoned that letting out young Darren Cole would save three, four, days of court time. He was not concerned with the morality of letting out a proven narcotics pusher. If his Chief Constable could cope with the morality then there was no way that a detective was going to get out his worry beads.

  He would have liked to know why Cole was being given the heave, but he doubted if he ever would.

  * * *

  "Who was it, George?"

  Libby Barnes called from her dressing room. She sat in front of the mirror in her underclothes and housecoat, and she worked with the brush at applying the eye shadow.

  "It was Piper Mother."

  "On a Saturday evening? Is it something serious?"

  "Called about Lucy . . . I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you've the right to know. I've lost, dear. I wouldn't want you to think that I lost without a fight, but I've lost, and that's the long and the short of it."

  The photograph was in front of his wife, at the right side of the dressing table mirror. A photograph of when Lucy was sixteen, and sweet. A happy teenager in a Corfu cafe.

  The photograph had been taken the last time they had been together as a family, before Lucy had started her problem.

  "What do you mean, you lost?"

  "The boy who pushed to Lucy has been freed from remand in prison. He will not go to trial. The man who supplied the pusher will also not face charges and has been allowed to leave the country. The importer of those drugs, who has been under intense Customs and Excise investigation, will not be arrested . . . "

  "And you've swallowed that?"

  "Not lying down. . . . It's for the best, Libby. A trial would have been awful, three trials would have been quite hideous

  . . . all those bloody journalists at the front door . . . perhaps it's best to forget."

  Libby Barnes whispered, "And best for your career."

  She held the photograph tight against her chest and her tears made a mockery of the work at her eyes.

  "Piper Mother did say that, yes."

  Charlie watched her go, and he was left on the pavement where the streets merged into Piccadilly. He watched her through the traffic and he saw the hips swing, and he saw that her shoulders were well back, and once he saw her shake the long hair free of her collar and the hair tossed and caught in the last of the sun.

  First he lost her behind a bus that was caught at the lights, and then she was gone. She had been carrying her bag loosely against her knee. She was going home with her new dress, because Polly Venables and Charlie Eshraq were going nowhere. She'd go back to Mahmood Shabro on Monday morning, and she'd try to forget Charlie Eshraq because he had told her that he was going back to Iran.

  He turned. The other girl was still close to him. She was leaning against the shop doorway, and she wasn't even bothering to pretend. The car was behind her. All the time that he had been walking with Polly, the girl had been close to him, and the car had been hugging the kerb. She was a dumpy little thing, and he thought they must have cut her hair with garden clippers, and he didn't understand why she wore an anorak when it was almost summer.

  He walked up to her.

  "I'm going to have a drink, April lady. Would you join me?"

  Token snarled back at him. "Piss off."

  The truck driver was Turkish and he drove his Daf vehicle with the choke out so that the engine seemed to race, as if on its last legs. He manoeuvred into the narrow cul-de-sac and then killed the engine in front of the battered sheet metal gates. When the engine was off, when he could look around him, there came to him the curious quiet of the repair yard.

  From his cab he could see over the wall and into the yard. No work there, no activity. He had been told they worked late into the evening.

  There was a child watching him from against the wall, chewing at an apple.

  The Turk called to the child. He asked where was the engineer.

  The child scowled at him. The child shouted back the one word.

  "Pasdaran."

  Choke in, the engine running smoothly, the driver backed his truck out of the cul-de-sac. He drove at speed out of Tabriz, chewing and chewing and eventually swallowing the message that had been taped against the skin of his belly.

  She had heard of all of them, heard their names, but she had never before been able to put faces
to the names.

  She knew them by their actual names and by their codenames too, because sometimes David referred to them at home by one and sometimes by the other.

  If she had been honest, and she might be honest later when they were home, and that depended on how much she had drunk, then she might have said that she didn't think that much of them. There wasn't much that was special about any of them. On Ann's table were some of the names she knew best. There was dear old Bill, unusually quiet, and his wife who had not yet closed her mouth. There was Peter Foster, whose collar was too tight, and whose wife hadn't stopped talking about the standard of teaching at Infant and Primary school level since they sat down. There was Duggie Williams, who was Harlech, and he was in a foul mood because, according to David, he had been stood up. Mrs Parrish was talking about the holiday they were going to take in Lanzarote. Bill wasn't saying much, and looked as though he had had a death in the family, and Foster seemed as if he might choke. But she rather liked Harlech. She thought that Harlech might just be the pick of them, and she thought that the girl who had stood him up must be just a bit dumb. The music had started, the band had begun, but the floor was still empty, and there was no way she would get David on to his feet before there was quite a throng. The glasses were filling the table. The raffle tickets had been round, and they would be drawn, and then there would be the buffet supper, and after that she might get David on to the floor.

  Duggie Williams brought her a drink and changed places with Maureen Foster to sit next to her.

  "You must be half bored out of your knickers."

  "I beg your pardon."

  "How did Keeper get you to come along?"

  "It was I that said we were coming."

  "You must be off your pretty head."

  "Perhaps I just wanted to have a look at you all."

  "Then it's a bloody miracle you haven't run away already

  . . . I'm Harlech."

  "I know. I'm Ann."

  Bill had started talking. Ann couldn't hear what he was saying, but David was leaning away from her to listen.