men are toiling, with a little bit of painting, sketching. There's no one in our cosy little set-up who has a quarter of the talent you have. I won't hear of it.'
'It's just not possible.'
Debbie persisted. 'We go after the kids are safely in school, we're back before they come out. Everyone's got kids. We'll be back in yonks of time… '
Sara looked away. She turned her back on Debbie. She looked out of the window. They were in the dining room of Debbie's house. She looked out through the big picture window and across the manicured lawn and down towards the ponds and away towards the line of birches at the bottom of the garden. It was a big house, at least four good bedrooms, and the garden must have been the best part of two acres.
'Is there a problem? I mean, tell me. Is it just because we're amateurs?'
The classes were at Debbie's house. When she had rung in response to the advertisement card on the board in the Tadley Post Office, she hadn't thought of where the classes might be.
She had wanted to draw again, and to paint, and she had not wondered before the first class as to the group she would be joining. She was the outsider. She came from a housing estate in Tadley, and her husband worked at the Establishment behind the Falcon Gate. She had not stopped to think that she might be inserting herself into a social scene that she had walked away from when she had left home. Rich wives, with rich husbands, simply amusing themselves twice a week. She liked them, that was the trouble.
After the class they treated themselves to lunch, cold poached salmon the first day and the best cut of cold beef the next, and wine to go with it, and a raffle amongst the six of them for a bottle. Five pounds for each class… And there had been her materials. She could say, in all honesty, that she had looked out her college paints and brushes but they had been dried up and beyond recall. It must have been a dozen years since they were last used. For the first class she had just taken two soft pencils, and she had sketched while the others had mixed watercolours for the still life ol a bowl of apples, oranges and pears. For that day's class she had taken her own watercolours, bought with the Visacard in Reading… They were going by minibus to London for the visit to the Tate Gallery, with a driver, and the transport alone was? 1 5 3 head.
Just a miserable mistake.
She had waited behind after lunch. She had helped Debbie clear away. She had wanted to speak to Debbie after the others had left, and all the talk over lunch had been of the trip to the Tate.
She could have bought each of the boys a pair of trainers for what she had spent on the watercolours.
'It's nothing to do with whether I'm good, whether I'm lucky enough to have been given more talent than you, the rest of you…'
It was to do with money, bloody, bloody, money.
She turned back to Debbie. She felt dirtied in her old jeans, and her old student painting smock. The other women hadn't pulled something out of a bottom drawer to come to the classes.
The other women, Debbie and her friends, would have been shopping in Newbury or Hungerford, run round the boutiques, for something careless and suitable. Debbie's husband owned a software business outside Newbury.
'Bloody hell, am I stupid.' Debbie's voice had softened.
Sara turned to her. There was a turquoise stone set in a pendant and hanging from a fine gold chain at Debbie's throat. The chain was long, too long, and Debbie had unbuttoned the two top buttons of her blouse so that the stone wouldn't be hidden, Sara thought the stone would have cost all of their own take home money for a month after the mortgage was paid.
'It's boring old money, isn't it?'
Sara nodded She should have been at home. She should have been thinking about the boys' tea, and about Frederick's dinner
'Well, I have the solution,' Debbie said. 'You're going on the payroll, Sara. You're going on a freebie to the Tate because you're going to be our guide. And here, too, because when we need a model, you will be our model.'
She wanted so much to belong, could not help herself.
Debbie said, 'You're prettier than any of us, anyway. You'll be brilliant.'
Sara said, 'I really don't… '
'You're not modest, are you?'
The Chief Inspector was not a snappy dresser. If he had been working for three days and three nights then it was in the suit he was wearing now, and his shoes had mud on them, and Erlich didn't think Ruane would be impressed.
A yawn, then a big sigh. They were in a small office on the fourth floor, and one wall of the office was glass, and the heater was full on. Again the yawn.
' N o w, what can I do for you, gentlemen?'
Erlich was getting sharp on the routine. He could get through it in a minimum of words. The voice was English, the face was Caucasian. Height, about 5' 10'. Age, mid-twenties. Eyes, bluish.
Complexion, tanned. Build, solid without spare weight. Hair, short and fair. The name he answered to, 'Colt'.
The Chief Inspector of Special Branch no longer yawned. ' A n Englishman shoots a C.I.A. staff man and an Iraqi journalist in Athens, that's a pretty bizarre set-up, Mr Erlich. What's the motive?'
'Iraqi state-sponsored terrorism. Our opinion, they would have set it up, used your national as the contract man.'
'Can't be all that many Englishmen qualified for work of that sort, don't grow on trees. A single shot, you say, through the head at twelve paces. He ought to be quite an interesting young man.'
Erlich said, 'I want an identification.'
' I ' m sure you would… Working for Iraqi intelligence? An Englishman? If we find him for you, I fancy we'd value a few minutes of his time ourselves, if we find him… '
And the yawn broke again on the Chief Inspector's face.
Erlich said, ' I ' m asking for your best effort, sir.'
' D o what I can, can't promise more.'
Erlich thought that he wouldn't be doing anything before he'd put his head down. Trouble was, if he put his head down then he might not wake up again for 24 hours.
He went through the hallway of New Scotland Yard with Ruane, past the flame that burned alongside the Book of Remem-brance. Outside, he braced himself as the wind lashed them.
'Will he do us the business, Dan?'
'Maybe. He'll do his best.'
Erlich said, 'I didn't get the message we were exactly priority.'
Ruane said, 'They may have a crowd in town from Abu Nidal.
That's to say, they do have a very dangerous crowd, they just think they're Abu Nidal. They have no line on a target, but they have four addresses staked. He came off that to meet you.'
'Good to hear that somewhere at least the killing of an American matters.'
' N o, it's not t h a t… he owes me at poker.'
Colt was escorted into the Colonel's office.
He was invited to sit, he was offered a cigarette. He sat opposite the Colonel. He declined the cigarette, he lit for himself a small cigar. The Colonel beamed across at Colt.
Not for Colt to ask why he had been summoned to the Intelligence Section of the Ministry. He rarely asked questions of them.
He had learned early on that they did not appreciate questioning.
They appreciated only answers to their own questions. He jolted.
Away along the corridor from the Colonel's office, a man screamed. A rising wail of pure agony. And then a shorter second scream. And then silence.
Colt had already shut the sound from his head, and the colonel showed no sign of having heard it. When a rabbit was in a snare, pinioned, and the fox closed in, then the rabbit screamed in tear and agony. Colt knew the sound, he knew the ways of the regime that was his host.
'Are you well, Colt?'
