Holt prised open the bolts on the front door and slipped the security chain. He could still hear Martins on the telephone. Thirteen minutes until breakfast. He had the impression that breakfast was like a parade. The lock on the door was a new expensive Chubb, and he had seen the fresh alarm wiring at the windows.
He stood on the front steps. He gazed around him The house was a tower at his back, faded red Surrey brick, probably sixty or seventy years old with rounded corners topped by farcical battlements. In front of him were lawns, uncut since the previous autumn, and daffodil swards and beds of daisies and rose bushes that had escaped a winter pruning. There was a clatter of pigeons in flight from the oak and beech and sycamre trees that fringed the grass. He heard the stampede escape of a squirrel in the overgrown rhododendrons that hid the curve of a shingle drive. Holt thought the garden could have been a paradise… A dog was charging towards him. Heavy shouldered, black and tan, ears swept back, a mouth of white teeth. Holt was good with dogs. There had always been dogs at home.
He stood his ground, he slapped his hand against his thigh, welcoming. He heard a bellow, a yelling for the dog to stop, stand, stay, come to heel. The dog kept on coming, stripping the distance across the grass. Holt recognised the markings and weight of the German Rottweiler. Round the corner of the house came an elderly man, built like his dog, hobbling in pursuit, and shouting his command, and being ignored.
The dog reached Holt. The dog sat in front of him and licked Holt's hand. The dog had dreamy pleasure in the wide mahogany eyes.
The man reached them. He was panting.
'You shouldn't be walking outside, not when her's out. Damn bastard spiteful she can be… '
He wasn't looking at the dog. The wet of the dog's tongue lapped the back of Holt's hand.
'… She's a trained guard dog.'
'She's soft as a brush, a lovely dog. My name's Holt.'
'I'm George, and you'd best not be taking liberties with her. Vicious, she can be.'
Holt was scratching under the dog's chin. He could see the rank happiness in the eyes. Holt believed there must be method in the madness. A dog that was loving and called vicious, a garden that was beautiful and left to sink to ruin, a house that was magnificent and nearly splendid but was obviously not cared for. He could be patient, but, by God, he'd require some answers by the end.
'Breakfast, Holt.' The shout from the doorway. He saw that Martins wore corduroy trousers and a Guernsey sweater.
'And keep that beast under control, George.'
Holt walked away. He turned once, briefly, to see the dog watching him going. As he went through the front door, Martins battered him across the shoulders with forced camaraderie.
'Sleep all right? Fine place. You shouldn't just take yourself outside, you were lucky that George was there to control that bloody animal. Word of warning about breakfast, eat everything, she takes it personally if you leave a crumb or a quarter of an inch of bacon rind.
Straight after, we'll talk business.'
They took breakfast in a dining room that could have, probably once had, housed a full-size billiard table, but the flooring was linoleum and there were five small square tables each covered with a plastic cloth. Holt thought it was a civil service canteen, and the food was right for a canteen, and the coffee was worse. Martins said that the house had been bequeathed to the nation in 1947, and that since no one wanted it the Service had been lumbered. He said that it cost a small fortune to run and to heat. He said that Mrs Ferguson was the widow of a Special Operations Executive agent who had been parachuted into France just before the invasion, captured and shot. He said that George was a former serviceman, wounded by mine shrapnel in the Cyprus Emergency, and kept on by the Service as caretaker, gardener, driver, maintenance man. Holt wondered if Jane had ever been in a place like this.
Martins led the way across the hall and into a huge drawing room. The dustcovers were piled in the centre of the carpet, and the fire had not been cleared or laid again. Martins cursed. He lifted the pile of dust sheets, took them to the door, flung them out. At the fireplace he emptied the hod into the grate and then buried a fire lighter under the fresh coal, and lit it. When the smoke billowed across the room he cursed again and went back to the door and left it ajar.
'Typical of houses like this. You have to leave a door open if you want a fire, otherwise you're smoke gassed.
Why the Service has to put up with it defeats me… I imagine you're pretty cut up about Miss Canning.'
They were there, the patient waiting was over.
Martins was bent over the fire, prodding with a grimed poker. Holt stood in the centre of the room and stared through the windows. He could see the dog slouching disconsolately towards a rose bed, then squatting.
'I've done a fair amount of thinking while I've been at home.'
'You must have been devastated, only natural.'
'I was at first, but I've come to terms with it. I'm going back to FCO. Life is for living, that's what Jane's mother said to me.'
'I don't quite follow you.'
'I'm going back to work, I'm going to try to put Yalta out of my m i n d… '
Martins was up from the fire, and the poker was left across the grate. Shock in his eyes, the colour flushing to his face.
'Your girl killed, shot down in cold blood, butchered in broad daylight, and you're talking about 'life is for living', I don't believe my ears.'
'Don't sermonise me, Mr Martins. My feelings are in no way your business, not anyone's business but mine.'
'Oh, very nice. Hardly dead, and you're talking about forgetting her, abandoning her memory… ' There was a waft of contempt in Martins's voice, and a tinge that Holt saw of anxiety.
'She was my girl, I loved her and she is dead.'
'And to be forgotten?'
'You're an arrogant bastard, Mister Martins. What I said is that I intend to go back to work, to go on with my life.'
'Then, young Holt, you are a selfish little creep.'
'If you brought me half way across England to this slum to insult me… '
'I'm merely astonished to hear this gutless crap from a young man who said of his girl's killer, 'I'd want him killed'.'
'And what bloody option do I have?'
'That's more like it. That's the question I wanted to hear.' Martins smiled quickly.
'What the hell can I do?'
'Much better.' Martins heaved the air down into his chest, like a great weight had been lifted from him.
'You had me rather worried for a minute, young Holt.
You had me wondering whether there was an ounce of spunk left in your body.'
'I don't see what more I can do for you,' Holt said simply.
Martins spoke fast, as if unwilling to lose the moment.
'You are, of course, a signatory to the Official Secrets Act, you are aware that such a signature places upon you an oath of silence on all matters concerned with the work of the Service. Everything that I am about to tell you is covered by the terms of that Act, and violation by you of those terms would lead, as night follows day, to your appearing in closed court charged with offences under Section One of the Act.'
Just as if he were falling, as if the ground opened under him, as if he could not help himself.
'What can I do?'
Far in the distance the dog was barking. Holt could see the leaping body and the snarling mouth, and George waving a stick at shoulder height, teasing the animal.
'You can help the man who murdered your girl to an early grave.. . '
The turmoil rocked in Holt's mind. She had been the girl with whom he had planned to spend his youth and his middle years and the last of his life.
'And you can assist your country in an act of vengeance.'
There had been no mention of Ben Armitage, no mention of an ambassador assassinated. But then the arm
