spoken while her husband had badmouthed their daughter, and Cathy didn't think she'd have spoken when the detectives had come to the house to search through the few personal things that Gladys Eva Jones had left there before the links were cut. Cathy made a pot of tea while the mother sat at the kitchen table. She had no difficulty in drawing the woman out: it was a skill that went with her job.
'We tried to love her but, God knows, it wasn't easy. She didn't want for anything we haven't money, but we gave her what we could. It didn't satisfy her. You see, Miss Parker, we were never good enough for her, and nor was anyone else round here. She went to the university Bill won't admit it, but he was proud. She was the only kid in the street that had got to university. I thought if she hadn't friends here she'd find them there. Perhaps the people she met there weren't good enough either. The few times she came back, the first year away, I could see how lonely she was. There's not much here, but you don't have to be lonely, not if you'll muck in. Gladys wouldn't do that, nor at the university neither. I think she was always pushing for more control of people, but it was so obvious that they didn't want to know her. It's not nice to say this about your daughter, but she's a stuck-up bitch. Bill can't talk to her, but it's the same for me. I tried but she never came near to half-way to meet me. Then she went into that religious thing. She came back once after she'd joined them. Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against foreigners having their own religion, but it wasn't right for her. She came back in her robes, her face half covered, and some of the kids in the street gave her some lip. She's not been back since. Do you know where she is now? Do you know what she's doing? She's in real trouble now, isn't she? Or you wouldn't have been here and the detectives wouldn't have come. She wants to belong somewhere special, wants control, wants people to talk about her. Is she going to get hurt? Please, Miss Parker, try to see she doesn't get hurt.'
Cathy left her sitting at the kitchen table, staring out of the window above the sink at the song-birds wheeling around the hanging sack of nuts.
Once, on a course with the German GSG9 anti-terrorist unit, she'd heard an instructor bark at the recruits about to practise a storm entry to a building, 'Shoot the women first.'
She drove away from the mean little street, headed for the motorway and London. The instructor had said that the women were always more dangerous than the men, more likely to reach for a weapon in the last critical seconds of their lives when there was no hope of survival.
She was wondering whether Farida Yasmin was a help to the Iranian, or a liability.
Cathy thought of the girl, confused and willing, blundering forward with the man. Farida Yasmin craved a little spot where the sun shone on her, but Cathy didn't think she'd find it. A talent of Cathy's was to make instant assessments of the people she investigated: Farida Yasmin was unimportant and she would write only the briefest of reports on her visit; the girl was a loser. But there was nothing she could do to prevent her being hurt, and she felt quite sad.
She knew about loneliness.
'If we don't make it it will be the fault of all these wretched boxes. But thank you for the thought. Luisa and I have always been interested in wildlife.'
Simon Blackmore went back to his wife in the kitchen. They had been washing the plates, cups, mugs, saucers that had been wrapped in newspaper by the packers. The man at the door had said his name was Paul, that he was on the parish council, that he was the man to fix any little difficulties confronting them, was always pleased to smooth the way for new arrivals. He'd told them there was a meeting in the hall that evening of the Wildlife Group, with a talk on migration from a warden of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Then, he'd asked whether Luisa typed, and had explained how the group had lost its typist: 'The most selfish people I've ever known here, and I was born in the village. The worst sort of in comers The sort of people who don't give a damn for the safety of those they live among.' Simon Blackmore had seen the way that the man had looked at his wife's wrists, at the slash scars across the veins.
'What you're being offered, Geoff, sweetheart, is 63 per cent more than you're getting now. It's fantastic. On top of that there's the inhouse bonus scheme, the private medical thing, there's guaranteed three-star minimum accommodation when you're working out of London, business-class flights into Europe. You'll be on at least double the pittance you're getting now at the end of the day. Your pay at the moment is actually insulting, they don't deserve people like you. The sooner you're gone, the better. Get your letter in straight away. Write it tonight. I stopped off in the travel agent's on the way from your place. They said Mauritius or the Seychelles are great I'm talking honeymoons, sweetheart. As soon as you're back from that dump tomorrow, day after tomorrow? let's get tramping round some property. Call me. Love you.'
Geoff Markham heard her blow kisses down the telephone, and cut the call. His mind was too distracted to make the calculation of a 63 per cent increment on his existing salary. He was thinking of the young man out at the rim of the reed-beds, and of the firm certainty of his gaze, watching the marshlands.
'And him, too.' Frank Perry stood by the telephone in the kitchen.
'Gutless bastard.' He stood by the telephone and read the lengthening list of scratched-out names.
Bill Davies shrugged.
'I suppose I shouldn't have done that, cut him off your list sorry.'
'I don't go to church, can't bear listening to his dreary sermons.'
'I just thought, given the circumstances I thought it would help if he showed support.'
Perry turned to the detective. He was beaten down, grey-faced. The hand resting on Davies's shoulder shook as it grasped at the jacket, held tight to it.
'Was I out of order last night?'
'Not for me to comment.'
'I can just take it. Meryl can't. She's drowning. One more thing, one more, another bit of chaos, she'll go under. How long?'
'I'm not supposed to talk tactics or strategy.'
'Bill, please.'
The detective thought his principal was close to defeat and that was not the policy. He'd done them all: he had stood with the Glock on his hip beside cabinet big-shots and foreign leaders and turned IRA informers, and he had never felt any sense of involvement. He thought that whatever he said would go back to Meryl Perry.
'There's a fair bit going on, don't ask me what. We're beefed up, most of which you won't see. It was said at the beginning that our
Tango couldn't last hostile ground, lack of resources, your location more than a week.'
'What day are we?'
'We're at Day Five.'
A tired nervy smile played at Perry's mouth. What's the Al Haig story?'
Davies laughed out loud, as if the tension were lifted.
'Monday, right? Getting to the end of bloody Monday. It's appropriate… United States Army General Al Haig was in Belgium on a NATO visit. The sort of trip where there are convoys of limousines about a half a mile long. A security nightmare. The convoy's hammering along a main route of course, the search teams have worked over it. But they missed a culvert. In the culvert was a bomb; handiwork of a leftist anti-American faction. The detonation was a fraction late and, anyway, it malfunctioned. The car, armour-plated, didn't take the full force, kept on going, and the escorts. In the culvert had been enough explosive to bounce Haig's car right off the road and make a crater fish could have lived in. Al Haig said, 'I guess that if we can get through Monday then we can survive the rest of the week.' It's about hanging on in there. We've about got through Monday, Mr. Perry.'
'I can hold her for two more days if nothing else breaks her first.'
It was the end of the day, and the quiet was all around him. The bird sky danced displaying for him its regained flying skills.
But there was the quiet.
He no longer watched the bird, no longer took pleasure from the extravagance of its flight. He watched the geese and the swans, the ducks and the wheeling gulls, and he looked for a sign, the quiet playing in his ears.
They did not stampede, they did not skim the water with flailed wings to take off in panic, they did not shriek as they would when disturbed. They were quiet, as if they were warned.
Vahid Hossein could see the positions of the policemen on the far side of the marsh, on the higher ground. He had no fear of them. He knew where they were. They would have thought they were still unnoticed, but he saw each movement of their bodies as their legs, backs, hips, shoulders stiffened and they shifted their bodies for relief… There had been an Iraqi sniper on the Jasmin Canal who used the SVD Dragunov 7.62-calibre rifle with an
