He broke off, and I heard it, too. Creaky footsteps from the corridor opposite my hiding place, which led into the other wing. I hopped back a few strides, then began walking normally. The floorboards under my feet crunched noisily like packed-down snow. I’d just got to the head of the stairs when Declan appeared from the direction of the men’s quarters.
“Charlie, me darlin’! Have you been waiting for me?” he greeted me. He seemed to have recovered his bounce. “Are you ready to eat? After all that pillocking about in the woods, I’m starving.”
We walked down together, passing the two school men with only a short nod of acknowledgement. I tried to act casual, but I found Gilby watching us with a narrowed stare. Perhaps it was my guilty conscience, or maybe he just didn’t like Declan’s cheek.
The dining hall had the same high ceiling of the rest of the house. It was huge, with a massive ornate fireplace at one end that cried out for a pair of sleeping wolfhounds in front of the blazing logs.
There were two long tables laid up, one on the main floor and the other up on the dais which ran across the opposite end of the room from the fireplace. The instructors, naturally, were taking their places at the high table. It was interesting that they felt the need to emphasise their elevated position with such heavy-handed lack of finesse.
There was a hot buffet to one side where people were already helping themselves. Declan and I joined the end of the queue.
Seeing that Einsbaden Manor was being run on military lines, I’d expected the worst of the food, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was more like the fare in a decent pub carvery. Three large cuts of meat and plenty of vegetables that actually
More by accident than design, Declan and I drifted together towards a couple of empty chairs at the nearest end of the long table that was set for the pupils. There didn’t seem to be a seating plan. You just found a space and got on with it.
Declan took the chair to my right. To my left was a big man with fair hair cropped close at the sides and gelled into a flat-top. He ate single-mindedly, resting his elbows on the table and shovelling it in. He had arms that were nearly as thick as my thighs, straining the sleeves of his T-shirt. He glanced at me as I sat down and I gave him a brief nod and a smile.
He didn’t smile back. His pale blue eyes flickered over me once, then he turned his attention back to his plate, as though I wasn’t worth the effort. With a shrug, I dug into my own food and ignored him. Another of life’s charmers.
Declan, however, wasn’t so easily deflected. He looked around at the faces nearest to us, and instantly struck up an easy conversation.
I stayed quiet, letting them talk around me, but kept my eyes open. The instructors were drifting in now, filling up their plates and taking their seats on the dais. Now that they’d washed off their cam cream and hung up their woolly hats for the day, they looked human for the most part.
Rebanks arrived with Gilby still glowering after him, although the Major’s expression settled into cool command as soon as he was among the students, like the professional smile of a politician.
I picked out another face I recognised. The scarred Irishman who’d greeted us at the gate. As I watched him climb the steps onto the dais I caught him pause fractionally and grimace in pain. It was only a small gesture, quickly covered. If I hadn’t been watching him, I probably would have missed it. But the Major had seen it, too, and there was something darker and deeper in his eyes than the incident should have provoked.
It seemed that the scarred man wasn’t the only one of the Einsbaden team who was below par. Another of the instructors entered the dining hall. A tall, wide-shouldered man with a slight but distinct limp. Half of the pupils at the table watched his progress across the room.
Or we did until he turned and glared at us, at any rate. He had sunken eyes under full black eyebrows that met as a single feature across the bridge of his nose, emphasising the slightly Neanderthal bulge of his forehead.
But something about the way he moved reminded me of Sean. They shared the same kind of cohesive control. I marked him out as dangerous without quite knowing why.
“Now there is a man whose lessons we will not enjoy, I think,” said the beefy man next to me, suddenly breaking his silence. He had a deep voice with a trace of a German accent.
“Who is he?” I asked.
The German didn’t look inclined to answer until he saw a couple of the others also waiting for his reply. “His name is Blakemore. Apparently he will be teaching us unarmed combat,” he said then, shrugging. “It was probably not a wise move to antagonise him so early in the course.”
For a moment my heart jumped. He’d seemed to direct that last comment in my direction.
“Who’s been antagonising the man?” Declan asked. He raised his eyebrows at me. “Did he not like the way we fell in the mud at his feet?”
But the German nodded across the dining hall towards Elsa, who had just entered, freshly showered with her immaculate bob dried into place. She looked fit and self-confident.
“When they picked the three of you up I understand that she put up quite a fight,” the man said. He went back to his food, spearing three or four carrots onto his fork. “Mr Blakemore has an old knee injury that has been aggravated and he is not a happy man.”
I remembered the shape that had swung at me and the blow I’d managed to land. When I glanced up, I saw Blakemore studying Elsa with bleak interest that I didn’t like the look of. I could only hope that the unwitting German woman wasn’t going to get too much stick for my actions. But if I wanted my cover to stay intact there was no way I was going to hold my hand up.
***
The next morning we started our training in earnest. At five o’clock the next morning, to be precise, when Gilby’s merry band of instructors came rampaging through the dormitories. They made a point of producing twice the quantity of noise that was required to get us out of our beds. And at three times the volume.
I was shocked into wakefulness as the overhead lights were slapped on and by the nastily cheerful voice of Todd, who had been introduced after supper the night before as the head physical training instructor.
He was short, almost stocky, with hair clipped razor-thin to his scalp. Not because he still hankered after his undoubted previous army career, but because he spent half his life in the shower after exercise. He had the air of someone who’s fitter on a daily basis than you’ll ever be in your life. And knows it.
“Good morning ladies,” he barked, swivelling his bull neck to survey the room’s occupants with just a little too much attention. “Outside in your running kit in fifteen minutes, if you please!”
The door slammed shut behind him and for a moment I continued to lie still, concentrating on slowing down my heart and preventing its imminent explosion. I’ve never liked loud alarm clocks and this was worse. It can’t be good for you to surface from sleep with such suddenness and ferocity. The wake-up equivalent of the bends.
“Come on then girls,” Shirley said briskly, sitting up in her bed opposite mine and reaching for her sweatshirt. “We can’t let the boys think we’re not up to the job.”
Shirley Worthington was from Solihull, the archetypal bored housewife. She was a bouncy woman who wouldn’t see forty again except in the rear-view mirror. Within five minutes of our meeting last night, she’d been handing round photographs of her grandchildren. Not exactly the kind of person I’d expected to find studying to be a bodyguard.
To my left I heard a quiet groan, and then Elsa pushed back her bedclothes and sat up wearily. The German woman looked like death, but I had a feeling I was probably seeing a fairly accurate picture of myself. Only Shirley seemed irritatingly alert.
I glanced over towards the room’s fourth occupant, who was little more than a vague outline under the blankets. Even Todd’s violent incursion hadn’t made an impact.
Elsa heaved herself out of bed and padded across the squeaky floor. “Jan,” she said loudly, shaking the lump by what appeared to be a shoulder. “It is time for you to be waking up now, please.”
Jan King made a muffled comment that probably contained at least four expletives. I’d never come across a woman with such a wide vocabulary of swear words. Or a man, for that matter. And I was used to hanging out around bikers.
Judging from her dulcet tones, Jan was from the East End of London. She was small, sallow-skinned and
