He nodded, looked me up and down, then leaned in close to murmur a threat that was all the more dismaying for its totally unexpected nature. “Keep asking questions,” he said softly, “and next time you won’t get away so lightly.”
Shock kept my face blank, but I was still turning over Todd’s words as I made my way upstairs and back to the dormitory. Shirley’s bed stood stripped to its mattress by the window, with the pillow and blankets stacked neatly at the head, and the locker empty beside it. I wondered how many more of us would jack it in before the course was up.
And for what reasons.
***
We had a reasonable gap in the timetable between unarmed combat and the next driving session, so I headed for the shower, standing for a long time under the stinging spray with my hands braced against the tiles.
The only question I’d asked that might have upset anyone was my casual inquiry about Kirk and my mention of Hydra-Shok hollowpoint rounds. Rebanks had side-stepped both casually enough, so why the big fuss about it now? It didn’t make sense, unless Todd was just using that as an excuse to take me down a peg or two. But, did he really need an excuse for that?
I pushed my sodden hair out of my eyes and realised that I’d forgotten to bring my shampoo with me. Leaving the shower running I stepped out onto the mat and roughly towelled myself off, before hurrying through to the bedroom.
But as I opened the bathroom door I caught a glimpse of a figure rushing out through the main door into the hallway, letting it slam behind them.
I shot to the door and yanked it open, but surprise had slowed me down, and by the time I stuck my head out into the corridor, they were gone. With water dripping off me in puddles and only a towel for cover, I wasn’t inclined to give chase.
I stepped back into the room and shut the door.
Whoever I’d interrupted had left my locker open, with half the contents scattered out onto the floor in front of it. The mobile phone Sean had given me was on the bed, switched on.
When I picked it up I found that they’d been scrolling through the dialled numbers. There weren’t many to go at. In fact, the only one in there was Sean’s own mobile. For a moment I stood there clutching the phone. Who was searching my stuff, and why?
And, more importantly, had they found what they were looking for?
I abandoned my shower, even though my hair was going to be uncontrollable for being wet and dried again without conditioner. I hurriedly put the contents of my locker back together again, checking as I did so that the Hydra-Shok round was still where I’d hidden it.
I’d dropped it into the bottom of a sock which I’d then rolled back into a pair again. Not a ploy that would have held off a determined searcher for long. Now I picked the bullet out and looked quickly for a better hiding place.
Shirley’s empty bed caught my eye. I lifted up the foot end and discovered that the narrow steel legs were hollow. If I turned the round sideways-on, it would just about wedge in place inside the leg. I made sure I repositioned the bed back exactly onto its original indentations in the carpet when I was done, and stood back. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
***
I had to resist the urge to check that the hollowpoint was still in its new hiding place when we packed in for the afternoon and the three of us trooped wearily back to the dormitory.
I still had no idea who my mystery searcher might have been. During the afternoon’s lesson I’d had plenty of opportunity to look round for guilty faces. Trouble was, just about everyone had begun to look shifty and suspicious all of a sudden, instructors as well as pupils.
Since Shirley’s departure, the cosy feel among the women seemed to have evaporated, too. I hadn’t realised how much she’d held us together, cheered us along.
Now, Elsa headed for the shower without much by way of conversation and Jan picked up her cigarettes.
She paused by the doorway. “You fancy a game of pool in a bit?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said. I picked my phone out of my locker. “I want to call home first.”
Jan eyed me with a rare smile. “I don’t envy you your mobile bill this month,” she said, fishing. “He must be something special, the amount of time you spend on the phone to him.”
I grinned back. “He is,” I said.
It was only when she’d gone out and closed the door behind her that I realised how little of that I’d had to feign. It made me cautious in my greeting of Sean when he picked up at the other end.
He matched his tone to mine and launched straight in. “We’ve been doing some checking,” he said, businesslike. I heard the “we” and wondered if it was a deliberate attempt to put distance between us. “As far as we can tell your cover is solid. Someone’s been looking, but they haven’t broken past the stops Madeleine put in unless, of course, Gilby’s working for the army.”
My heart did a back-flip. “What?”
“Don’t panic,” Sean said. “I don’t think that’s a likely one. It would seem that Major Valentine Gilby is not a popular boy in a variety of circles.”
He filled me in on the Major’s military career, which had been on a fast track until the Gulf War. “He was put in charge of a group of Iraqi prisoners who mysteriously ended up walking across a minefield. Which wouldn’t have been so bad,” Sean said, his voice dry, “except for the fact that a team from CNN happened to capture the whole thing on camera. Doing it was one thing, being caught doing it by the media was quite another. There was hell to pay.”
“So he got the boot,” I said.
“In very short order,” he agreed. “But it’s not quite that straightforward. Gilby only held the rank of captain then. It would seem he’d kept enough records to show that he was just following orders, and he threatened to go public unless they made him up to major and let him go with full honours.”
“Sneaky,” I said, with a certain amount of admiration. If only
I glanced at the door to the bathroom. I could still hear the shower running. Looked like Elsa was taking her time in there. I moved over to the window anyway, just in case, and hitched my hip onto the window ledge.
From there, if I craned my neck, I could see across the forecourt to where Blakemore’s FireBlade and Gilby’s new car were parked on opposite sides of the gravel, facing each other. It was as though they were preparing for a duel.
As I watched I saw Gilby and Blakemore walk down the steps. Blakemore was in full leathers. The two men exchanged a few words, then went to their respective vehicles. The combined noise of their engines being started up was clearly audible, even at the other end of a telephone line.
“What the hell’s that?” Sean wanted to know.
“Boys and their toys,” I said. I watched Gilby perform another of his pebbledash starts with blatant disregard for a cold engine, heading for the driveway. Blakemore streaked the Honda across the gravel after him.
“Gilby’s got a new motor that’s supposed to be something special and he’s trying to race a FireBlade with it,” I said. “It’s a Nissan Skyline R-30-something or other, apparently.”
“R-30-what?” Sean demanded sharply. “Is it a thirty-two, a thirty-three, or a thirty-four? What does it look like?”
“Like a car. I don’t know,” I said, surprised. “I’m not sure of the number. R-32, R-34, what difference does it make?”
“At current prices, about forty-five grand,” Sean said. “If it’s an R-34 he’ll have paid a fortune for it.”
“My God, Charlie, you do live in the impoverished north, don’t you?” Sean said, and there was no mistaking
