before that change. They'd gone down to the country at half cock, under prepared the familiar story. He rang Vicky back, made his peace, and said at what time he would meet her.
He wrote on a sheet of paper the questions he would have to answer if he were to write a decent report. What was the history of Frank Perry? What had he done and when did he do it? What were the consequences of Frank Perry's actions? What should be the threat-level assessment? What was the source of the American information? What was the timetable for an attempt at a killing? The one thing he wouldn't write was that he'd rather liked Frank Perry.
The area was quiet, the partitioned sections either side of him empty. The face above him peered down. The eyes, long dead, preserved in the photograph, were without mercy. He rang Registry, told them what he needed. Geoff Markham lived a good safe life, and he wondered how it would be if he were alone and threatened by the enmity of those eyes.
He walked along Main Street. The rain had eased, left only a trace in the gathering wind. There were few street-lights and no cars moving. He did not know what he would tell her or when. He could recall each day and each hour, five years back, of the first month after he had left the cul-de-sac house in Newbury with his two suitcases; two days with the minders in an empty officer's quarters in the garrison camp at Warminster; four days with the minders in a furnished house at the Clifton end of Bristol; five days with the minders in a hotel on hard times outside Norwich, after which they had left. Two more days, alone, in that hotel, then three weeks in a guest- house in Bournemouth, then the start of the search for something permanent, and the absorption of the new identity, the move to a flat in south-east London. In those first days, he had felt a desperate sense of shamed loneliness, had yearned to call his wife and son, the partners at the office, the customers in his appointments diary. In those endless briefings on his new identity, for hour after hour, Penny Flowers had demanded he put the old life behind him. She had no small-talk, but emphasized coldly, and reiterated, that if he broke cover he would be found, and if he were found he would be killed. And then she'd gone with the minders, had cut him off, left him, and the night they had gone he, a grown man, had wept on his bed.
'Evening, Frank.'
He spun, coiled, tense. He gazed at the shadow.
'Only me seen a ghost? Sorry, did I startle you? It's Dominic.'
'Afraid you did obvious, was it?'
'Like I was going to shoot you. Just taking the dog out… I hear Peggy's lumbered Meryl with the typing for the Wildlife Field Day.
It's very good of her. I was doing the group's accounts this evening your donation was really generous, thanks. Prefer to say it myself than just send a little letter.'
'Don't think about it.'
'It's worth saying. It was a good day when you and Meryl came here wish all the 'foreigners' slotted in as easily.'
'We love it here.'
'Can't beat friends, can you?'
'No, I don't think you can.'
'Well, we've had our little piddle, time to be getting back, and sorry I startled you Oh, did Meryl tell you about the field day, for the Wildlife, in May? And the RSPB lecture we've got coming up? Hope you can come to both. We're doing the marsh harriers on Southmarsh for the field day any time now they're back from Africa. It's an incredible migration fierce little brutes, killers, but beautiful with it. Better be getting back. Goodnight, Frank.'
The footsteps shuffled away into the night. Dominic seemed to love the dog as much as he did Euan. Perry walked on and took the path beside the course of the old river, now silted and narrow, and across the north edge of Southmarsh. He climbed, slipping and sliding, over the huge barrier of stones the sea had thrown up and went down on to the beach. His feet gouged in the sand, wet from the receding tide. From between the fast cloud that carried the last of the slashing rain moonlight pierced the darkness around him. The silence was broken only by the hissing of the sea on the shingle. He scanned for a ship's lights, but there was nothing. He did not know what he would tell her of the past, nor what she should know of the future.
He walked in the darkness, grinding his feet into the fine pebbles and the emptied shells. He turned his back to the sea. The great black holes of Southmarsh and Northmarsh were around the clustered lights of the village. He felt a sense of safety, of belonging. It was his home. He moved on, retraced his steps, and came back into the village. Brisk footsteps were hurrying towards him, a bouncing torch beam lit the pavement, then soared and found his face.
'Hello, Frank, it's Basil. Choir practice drifted on, why I'm late out, and same as you, I suppose I felt like a prisoner in the vicarage with that dreadful rain today. Got to get out, get a bit of air before bed.'
'Evening, Mr. Hackett.'
'Please, Frank, not the formality, not among friends even those, forgive me, whom I do not see on Sundays!'
'A deserved slap on the wrist.'
'Not to worry it's what people do that matters, not where they're seen to be. If all my worshippers were as involved in the welfare of the village as you and Meryl, I'd be a happier man… You look a bit drawn, had bad news?'
'Everything's fine.'
'Before I forget, I hear Meryl's visiting Mrs. Hopkins. She's very kind, a great help to that lady, awful when arthritis cripples an active woman and I've got you down for churchyard grass-cutting this summer, on my rota.'
'No problem.'
'Well, bed beckons.
'Night, Frank.'
'Goodnight.'
He walked across the wet grass of the green towards the light above the front door and his home. He still did not know what he would tell her or when.
Chapter Three.
The atmosphere hung like gas, poisoned, in the house, and had for three days and three evenings. It clung to the rooms, eddied into each corner, was inescapable. They went their own ways, as if the atmosphere dictated that they should separate themselves from each other. The stench of the silence they carried with them was in the furniture, in their clothes, and had seeped to their minds.
He stood on the green, beyond his front gate, and gazed out over the rooftops towards the expanse of the gunmetal grey sea.
Stephen came down the stairs each morning, gulped half of his usual breakfast, and waited by the door for his mother to take him to school, or by the gate for the other half of the school-run to collect him. He came home in the afternoons and bolted for his room, came down for supper, then fled upstairs again. The atmosphere between his mother and his stepfather had filtered into his room. Twice, from the bottom of the stairs, Perry had heard him weeping.
It was a bright morning, there would be rain later, and the wind brought a chill from the east.
Since he had pleaded for time Meryl had not spoken of his problem. She was brisk with him, and busy. She called shrilly to him for his meals, dumped his food in front of him, made sharp, meaningless conversation while they ate. It was as if they competed to be the first to finish what she had cooked so that the charade of normality might be over more quickly. If he spread work papers on the table in the kitchen then she was in the living room with her embroidery. If she had an excuse to be out, she took it, spent all of one of the three days helping with the nursery class and staying late at school to scrub the floor. He knew that she loved the house and the village, and that she feared that both were being pulled, by the poison, from her. They slept at night in the same bed, back to back, apart. The space between them was cold. She had looked into his face once, the only time that her eyes had flared in anger, when she'd pushed him aside and run up the stairs to her son's room, in answer to his
