A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  ( .. Bill Davies held the woman, his hand still over her mouth. The sound of bitter argument on the soap played from the living room through the hall and into the cupboard. He said it was all right, he said it was over, and he realized that he had no shoes on... Joe Paget sat motionless in front of his console and watched the green lights of the unbroken beams.. . Far away, Dave Rankin heard the splinter crack of a fence breaking, as if it were rotten and gave under the weight of a man. He walked out of the front garden and across the grass to the Kalashnikov, cleared it and made it safe... Leo Blake sat in his car and tried to slow the beating of his heart. He put the window down, for air, and the stench came to him, from the hedge, of old stagnant mud... ( .. Bill Davies took his hand from Meryl Perry's mouth... Dear Geoffrey, It was good to see you in person and hear you at first hand -if we had any doubts about your suitability or your readiness to take responsibility then you most decisively struck them out.

  My colleague and I are, therefore, very pleased to be able to offer you employment with the bank. You would start in our Pensions/ Investment section where we would monitor your progress before deciding where in our operations you would sit most comfortably. Our Human Resources section is currently drafting a letter setting out a proposed salary structure along with bonus emoluments, which you will receive on Monday. If they are acceptable please let me know when you can start with us the sooner the better as far as we are concerned. We would wish you to resign from your present employment at the earliest opportunity.

  Sincerely,

  The letter was under her buttocks.

  It was Vicky's reward.

  It was creased and crumpled, and her thighs gripped his waist and her ankles locked against the small of his back.

  The drink made her noisy.

  She had cooked for the two of them, something Mexican. His absence at lunch with her mother was forgiven, and she'd drunk most of the bottle he'd brought round. Shyly he had shown her the letter that had lain unopened all day in his briefcase. She had left the plates, the empty glasses and the finished bottle on the table, and taken him and his letter to her bed.

  Wasn't he clever, wasn't he brilliant? Wasn't the future opening for them?

  He was too tired to enjoy it, but he pretended. She grunted and squealed and kept him inside her long after he was finished.

  When would he resign? When would he be shot of the bloody place?

  It was as if Vicky had given him a present... His pager bleeped on his belt. His belt was in his trousers, on the floor by the door, where she'd pulled them off him.

  He prised open her thighs and fell off her.

  All he wanted to do was to sleep, and to forget the one-road village, the prey and the predator, the high church tower that overlooked the marshlands. He crawled to his trousers and read the pager's message. MARK HAM C. IRE JULIET 7FARED HIT GET BACK SOONEST. FEN TON He started to dress. She lay on the bed, limp, her legs apart. He pulled on his underpants, his trousers, shirt, and his socks. The letter still peeped from under her buttocks. He pulled on his shoes and knotted the laces. He went to the bed and tried to kiss her mouth but she turned her head away and his lips brushed her cheek.

  "It's the last time you do this to me, the last bloody time. You're not running back to them again, like they're your bloody mother."

  Chapter Twelve.

  Bill Davies had clung to the pillow in the bed. In his dream mind Meryl had been with him through the night.

  The pillow was the principal's wife. He had held her close against him in the doorway of the cupboard under the stairs when her body had shaken with the sobbing, and he had held the pillow against his chest. The pillow had been soft, vulnerable, needing protection.

  He had slipped out of the house before Mrs. Fairbrother was downstairs, an hour before his wake-up call. He had driven away from the village, out past the church, to the woodland by the car-park and the picnic site. He had pulled up an oak sapling from the ground, wrenched it up from the sandy soil, and had found a pile of posts for fencing that had been left by the foresters, and taken one. He had thrown the sapling and a post into the boot of the car.

  He waved grimly to the men in the unmarked car. They'd be the same shift as had been on last night, and the beggars had played by the rule book and said they weren't permitted to leave their station. He'd have them. Later in the morning he'd burn them when he could get his guvnor on the telephone. It would have been shades of hell for that family, but the unmarked car had followed the rule book, and the family could have died because of it. He shook his head sharply, as if to block the memory, and started up his car.

  He pulled on to the road, and had to brake sharply. He'd damn near run into the back of the van. At snail's pace it was going towards the village. He was about to hit the horn, when he realized the implication of the painted words on the back of the van.

  "Danny's Removals. Nothing too large or too small. Go anywhere, anytime." And there was a London telephone number.

  The removals van was lost and trying to find an address in the village. Why hadn't Blake radioed him, or his guvnor telephoned him? He wondered whether they'd already gone, with their suitcases, and whether the van was just to pick up their furniture and possessions. They could have bloody told him, after everything he'd done for them. He beat his fist in frustration against the steering-wheel. He'd been in charge of the security, and it had so damn near gone wrong. Was he responsible for the family running? Momentarily he shut his eyes, lost sight of the big back doors of the van. He'd thought Perry had the balls to stick it out, even if the wife hadn't. A van meant that Perry was going, or had gone.. . He felt limp, washed through. He thought that he had failed. He couldn't blame them for going, not after last night. He thought the bastards had won. The bastards were not a man with an assault rifle, but the men in the pub, the neighbour, the people at the school. The bastards, the friends, had won the day.

  A man ran out from a hedge ahead, looked like a lunatic on the loose, and waved frantically to the dawdling van. He was wearing a raincoat, under which the hem of a nightshirt showed and bedroom slippers. The brake lights flashed.

  Davies saw the for-sale sign on to which the sold board had been nailed. The man was pointing to the narrow driveway of the cottage.

  He stopped, and breathed hard. He thought it was his tiredness that had made him react so fast and so stupidly. He waited while the van manoeuvred into the driveway of Rose Cottage, then powered away down the empty road. He realized, then, how much the family meant to him.

  In the half-light of the Sunday morning, Bill Davies used the short-handled spade from the boot to hack out the broken tree on the green and the snapped-off post that had held it.

  The broken tree, an ornamental cherry, was in bud and would soon have been in flower. Last night, the wheels of Blake's car and its chassis had miraculously cleared the small plaque commemorating the planting of the tree by the parish council as a mark of respect for the dead princess. He dug a deeper pit and planted the oak sapling in the cherry tree's place, then used the back of the spade to hammer down the stolen post. He tossed the broken tree and the snapped stake behind the water-butt at the side of Perry's house.

  Where there had been a cherry tree there was now an oak sapling; where there had been a stake there was now a post. He used the point of the spade to scuff up the grass and cover the tracks of Blake's tyres. He folded away the spade.

  A teenage boy was working down the far side of the green with a bicycle-load of newspapers.

  Two cars went down the road at the side of the green and plumed exhaust fumes behind them.

  He shivered in the chill of the morning and wondered if she had slept or had clung to her husband, his principal. And Bill Davies was satisfied.. . The evidence of the night action was erased. He had told them, in London, in his interim report, of the highly professional defence of his principal and his principal's family. He had written in a stuttering hand, then controlled his voice to hide its quaver as he'd dictated
a brisk litany of lies. They might just believe it in London. He looked across the green and the roofs of the houses towards the watery low light growing on the sea's horizon line. He looked at the house and the drawn curtains on the bedroom window, and he wondered how they would be... He was walking to the front door when the neighbour spilled out from the next-door house.

  "A word, I want a word with you."

  Wroughton, the neighbour, was in a dressing-gown and slippers. His hair wasn't combed and he hadn't yet shaved. Davies saw the wife behind him, half hiding in the hall's shadows.

  "How can I be of help?"

  "What happened here last night?"

  "I'm not aware that anything happened."

  "There was a car... "Was there really?"

  "And shouting."

  "Must have been a television turned up too loud."

  "Are you telling me that nothing happened here last night?"

  "If there's anything you need to be told, Mr. Wroughton, you'll be told it."

  He stared into the neighbour's eyes, challenged him, then watched him back off and go back inside. Bill Davies could be a quality liar and a good-grade bully. He saw the woman's face at the window beside the door, smiled cheerfully at her and waved. A man with a high-velocity assault rifle had been, in the darkness, a few feet from where that woman, her husband and children had lain in their beds and listened to tyre screams and panicked shouts. There were enough complications in Bill Davies's work day without added responsibility for the neighbours. He felt the burden of it, and stamped up the path to ring the bell. The previous week, he would have sworn it couldn't happen, that he would be emotionally involved with his principal's family.

  Blake told him that a dog team had arrived three hours earlier, found a trail through the gardens down the green, across rough ground and had lost the trail in the river. Apparently there was no blood on the trail. The dogs had worked the riverbank, Blake said, but had failed to regain the scent. A van had come an hour before and collected the assault rifle.

  How were they, in the house? Blake shrugged, they were predictable.

  What was predictable? They were on the floor.

  Would they get off the floor? And again Blake shrugged, as if it wasn't his concern, but the woman had cried in the night and twice the man had come down the stairs and poured whisky, swigged it and gone back up. They'd had the kid in the bed with them.

  Was Blake, ten hours later, sure he'd hit the man? Blake was sure and, to emphasize his certainty, led him to the car and showed him the sharp dent in the paintwork over the near side wheel.

  A small car, a city runabout type, came towards them. Instinctively, his hand slipped inside his outer coat and rested on the Glock.

  He saw a young man at the wheel, his eyes raking the ground ahead as he approached. Bill Davies thought he was looking for the evidence of what had happened in the night but there was nothing for him to see. It was like the aftermath of a road accident when the fire brigade had hosed down the tarmac, the traffic police had swept up the glass and the recovery truck had towed away the wrecked vehicles.

  The car stopped. The window was lowered. The young man, stubble on his face, tie loosened, held up an ID card. Davies thought he had been up all night.

  "I'm Markham, Geoff Markham, I'm the liaison from Thames House. Are you Bill Davies?"

  He nodded, didn't bother to reply.

  "Pleased to meet you. They're singing your praises at our place, up to the rafters. I mean, it was a quality defence of a target. We'd have expected unadulterated chaos, but what you did was brilliant. There's a big meeting this morning, up at secretary-of-state level, that's why I'm here, for liaison. There has to be an evaluation of how the target will take the pressure waste of time, really, because your report indicates exceptional calm. We'd have reckoned they'd be screaming and bawling and packing their bags. What was it like?"

  Davies tried a thin smile.

  "Well, it's what you're trained for, yes? We understand the dogs lost him on the way to the marshes going south... I'll talk to your principal later, when I've had a walk about the place and found somewhere to bed down. Hope I won't be in your way. There's talk of putting the Army in to flush him out, but that's for the meeting to decide..."

  "I won't have it, I can't accept it." The secretary of state flexed his fingers nervously, ground the palms of his hands together.

  "We should be there, we've the expertise." The colonel had driven from Hereford through the dawn hours.

  "Out of the question, there has to be a different way."

  "Special Forces are the answer, not policemen."

  Fenton was there with Cox, at the side of the secretary of state but a step back from him. It amused Fenton to see the politician writhe in the confrontation with the stocky, barrel-bodied soldier. He understood. The Regiment's commitment to Northern Ireland was reduced: the colonel was touting for work for his people, and for justification of their budget.

  "With the military and their back-up, all their paraphernalia, equipment, we escalate way beyond any acceptable level to government."

  "Policemen cannot do it, Counter-revolutionary Warfare wing should be deployed," the colonel demanded.

  "The military going through those marshes, like it's a pheasant-beat, a fox-hunt, ending in gunfire and a corpse. That's an admission of our failure."

  "Then you take the risk on your shoulders for the life of this man, and for the lives of his family we can do it."

  The colonel wore freshly laundered camouflage fatigues and his boots glowed. Fenton and Cox were, of course, in suits. The politician was of the new breed, dressed down for a Sunday morning in corduroys and a baggy sweater. At Thames House, they harboured no love for the Special Air Service Regiment. The gunning-down by plain-clothes soldiers of three unarmed Provisional IRA terrorists in daylight, in a crowded street in Gibraltar had been, in the opinion of the Security Service hierarchy, simply vulgar. Each time, the moment before he launched himself in speech, the secretary of state glanced at Fenton and Cox as if they might offer him salvation, and each time both men gazed away.

  "It would smack of persecution. We have close to two million Muslims in the country, the effect of a military gun-club drive could be catastrophic for race relations in the United Kingdom."

  "Do you want the job done or don't you?"

  "Those relations are fragile enough. Even now we're walking a tightrope between the cultures. Deployment of the Army against what is probably a single individual, and his inevitable death, would create dangerous tensions, quite apart from the effect on international dialogue... The colonel thwacked his fist into the palm of his hand.