He heard the latch door close. He was awake, but there was a long moment when he could not gather where he was, when his own sitting room seemed a stranger. He heard the footfall beyond the door. It was all there in front of him, there was the vase on the mantelpiece that his parents had given them for Christmas two years back, there on the sideboard was the photograph of himself and Ann, marrying. There was her sewing basket beside the fire grate…
Park called out, 'Is that you?'
He could hear her shrugging off her coat. He heard her voice. 'Who else would it be?'
He had his mind clear. The wall clock told him it was seven.
Seven what? Which seven? He shook his head. Christ, and he had been so tired. The plate on which he had taken his lunch was on the arm of the chair, bucking as he moved. It must be evening. He must have been asleep six hours. All of April had a day off, courtesy of William Parrish, and none of the hours lost going through the Civil Service time sheets. He hadn't changed two bulbs, he hadn't fixed the washer on the kitchen sink tap, he hadn't tacked down the carpet in the hall, he hadn't even made their bed.
She came into the sitting room.
'What are you doing here?' As if she were astonished. 'I didn't think you'd be here… '
'We were given a day off.' He stood, he felt ashamed that she should see the plate on the arm of the new chair. She had bought the chair. He had said they couldn't afford it, she had said that she refused to live in a slum and that while she was working she would bloody well spend her money how she pleased.
'Why, why did you have a day off?'
' There was a trial finished yesterday. We had a good result.
We were given a day off.'
She picked up the plate. There was no mark on the chair's arm but she flicked it with her fingers anyway. 'There was a trial yesterday that ended at early afternoon, I know that because I heard it on the car radio coming home. I sat here until past nine… I am a dim little thing, aren't I, but I didn't understand how it would take you more than five hours to get from the Old Bailey, Central London, to here.'
'We had a celebration.'
'Nice for you.' She headed for the kitchen. He followed.
She spat over her shoulder, 'A pity about the tap.'
''I m sorry.''
'David, if there is a choice between April, the Lane, or your home, me, I know where the apple falls. Please, don't tell me you're sorry.'
She was a great looking girl. She had been a great looker when they had first met, when he was on uniform duty at Heathrow, and a great looking girl in white at their wedding day, and a great looking girl when he had come home to tell her, all excitement, that he had been accepted into the Investigation Division. She was still a great looking girl, shovelling his dirty plate into the dishwasher. Ann had bought the dishwasher. David had said they didn't need a dishwasher, Ann had just gone out and bought it in the sales. She was as tall as him in her heels, and she had flaxen blond hair that she drew up into a pony, and she had fine bones at her cheeks and a mouth that he thought was perfect. She worked in the outer office of a prosperous architect, and she dressed to impress the clients.
'So, you all went off to the pub, where there was, of course, no telephone… and I presume you took the opportunity to tell them how they were getting it all wrong.'
'I told Bill what I thought we should be doing… '
'Great way to celebrate.'
He flared, 'I said that I thought we weren't winning. I said that we should be more aggressive, work overseas more, I said that the men we put away yesterday were laughing at us when they were sent down.. . '
'God, they must think you're a bore.'
'Do you know that last year our cocaine seizures were up by 350%? Do you know that means that three and a half times as much stuff came in last year as the year before… '
'What I care about is that my husband works 70 hours a week, that he's paid what a probationer constable in the Met gets. I care, used to care, that my husband is never at home when I want him, and when I am privileged to see him all he wants to talk about is filthy, sleazy, nasty drugs.'
His breakfast plate, and his breakfast mug followed his lunch plate into the dishwasher.
'It's a disease that'll kill this country – AIDS, that's nothing in comparison. Ann, there's a billion pounds spent on drugs in this country each year. It's the principal reason for mugging, burglary, assault, fraud… '
'I don't know anyone, David, who is a junkie. No one in our block is, that I know of. No one in my office. I don't see junkies when I'm shopping. Drug addiction is not a part of my life, except when you bring it into our home.'
'It's not something you can just turn your back on,' he said flatly. 'Whether it's me you're married to or anyone else.'
She turned. She came towards him. She put out her arms and looped them around his neck. Her mother had told her to come back, and not just to collect her suitcases, her mother had told her to try again. One last bloody time, she had told her mother, she would try again. 'Are they all like you, in April?'
'Yes.'
'All on 70 hours a week, seven days a week?'
'When it's hot, yes.'
'Do all their wives bitch?'
' Those that have stayed, yes.'
'I bought some steak, and a bottle.'
She kissed him. He couldn't remember when she had last kissed him. He held on to her, and the telephone rang. He picked the telephone off the wall bracket.
'Yes, it is, hello Bill…'
He felt her arms coming away from his neck. He saw the sadness flood her face. He was listening. He saw her grab inside her bag, and slap the meat down on to the kitchen table.
'The Lane tomorrow. Eight sharp. Look forward to it…
Ann, she's great, she's in great form. Thanks, Bill, see you in the morning.'
He could see that she was crying. Park did not know how to stop his wife's tears. He did not know how to tell her of his excitement because the April leader had called him for a meeting, eight o'clock in the morning, at Investigation Bureau's offices on New Fetter Lane, and promised a good one.
The teaboy's message was carried by a passenger from Bahrain to Abu Dhabi on the Gulf, and then flown on, having been passed to a member of an IranAir cabin crew, to Tehran.
The message reached the desk of a counter-subversion investigator in an office on the fourth floor of a small office block, close to Bobby Sands Street, once Churchill Street.
The block was not identified in any way, but was a part of the Ministry of Information and Intelligence. To the investigator the transcript of a briefly heard conversation was a source of amazement.
The investigator had read the message several times. He knew 'Dolphin'. There would have been a dozen men in the section who knew the codename of Matthew Cedric Furniss.
He had known the codename from far back, from times that were not referred to when he had worked for a different master, before the Revolution. He was astonished that the same codename was still maintained over so many years. In the Islamic Republic of Iran the British Secret Intelligence Service was hated with a loathing second only to that reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Spies for the Great Satan. The investigator was not a man to initiate action, too great a survivor for that. To have survived a career with the Sazman-e Amniyat Va Attilaat-e Keshvar, the Organisation of National Security and Intelligence, to have found a safe haven in an organisation dedicated to rooting out all traces of S A V A K, that was survival indeed. His way was to assemble information and present it to those few people in the regime who had the power to act. To many, the investigator was a valued tool.
On his computer, IBM state-of-the-art, he punched up the entry on Matthew Cedric Furniss, and composed a brief note on the information that the British head of Iran Desk was travelling in the region to pass on a reassessment of intelligence aims and means.
