'And there's another road?'
'Has to be another road, dumb head, or there wouldn't be a garage – why do you want to know?'
She was owed it and she wouldn't get it, an explanation.
He carried the rucksack into the kitchen. Formally, because that was the way he had been taught as a child, he thanked Polly's mother for her hospitality. He opened the kitchen door and walked through into the garden.
She followed him.
She caught him down by the small vegetable patch, her father's joy.
'Are they watching for you, Charlie?'
'It doesn't help you to know.'
'It is for you. Why, Charlie?'
'It's a long story, and there isn't enough time.'
He should have been gone. If they were watching the front, then they might have the back covered.
She had hold of his hand. 'What have you done wrong?'
'Nothing, everything.'
'Mr Shabro told me what had been done to your family.
He said that you weren't capable of friendship.'
Gently, he took away his hand from her. 'Perhaps one night we'll go dancing, dance till it's morning. You have to believe that I'd like that.'
'Is that a lie, Charlie?'
'No, it's not… sweet Polly, the more you tell someone the more you involve someone, the more you involve them then the more you open them to hurt… it's best left unsaid.'
'Will I see you again?'
Charlie caressed her cheek. 'We'll dance all night. Promised.'
'Am I not old enough to know? Is that it?' A bitterness, a choke, in her voice.
'It would hurt you to know.'
He kissed her.
He felt the sweetness of her.
Perhaps one night they would go dancing…
He ran out of the back of the garden.
There was a grim satisfaction in it for Keeper. They'd all sweated, each of them on the track that had lost the Tango, then found him again. Token had done well when he'd come out of the garage and gone fast to the right and then turned in mid-stride. Token had done well to keep walking and go straight past him. Token said she'd been close enough to rub the sleepy dust out of the Tango's eye and she'd said that she found him quite dishy. Harlech had done well, because the Tango had climbed on a bus, and then hopped off at the lights and doubled back. Harlech had done a terrific job because he'd been fast enough on the radio for the car to pick the Tango up. Corinthian had tracked the Tango down on to the Underground, and stayed with him for the train jump, predictable but tricky. Then Token's turn again, in her reversible anorak with headscarf and the glasses with no power in the lenses. Between them they'd held on to him, all the way to King's Cross main line station.
It was Keeper's opinion that the Tango was trying what he thought were good evasion tactics, and Keeper reckoned he was a rank amateur, good instinct and poor training, but he wasn't complaining.
He sat on the InterCity. He could see the back of the Tango's head. Harlech was way down the carriage and he would be able to see the top of the Tango's forehead, and Token was in the carriage behind Keeper, and Corinthian was in the carriage ahead. Going very smooth, hammering at a hundred miles an hour plus on the rails heading north.
David reckoned that the Tango might have nodded off, his pillow the rucksack which had to hold the best part of a quarter of a million pounds in cash. Unless Mr Venables had it, and that didn't seem likely, not if he was tipping off the constabulary. Better get Statesman in to give the gnomes the once over after dark.
• •*
Mattie Furniss knew it was late at night.
It seemed an age since they had carried away the tray on which his supper plate had been, and the glass of water.
They came for him when he was lying on his bed, when he had taken off his trousers, and he had pulled the blanket over his body to hide his nakedness from the peephole. His underpants were hanging over the bottom of the bedframe to dry.
It had been a hideous day. He had been waiting for the rattle of the door, and the sight of the men come to take him down to the cellar. There had only been the tray with his food in the early morning, and the tray for his food in the early evening. He had heard a car come in what he had judged to be the middle of the day, and he had heard voices outside, and he thought that he had heard the voice of the investigator, but they had not come for him.
He could walk, just about, on his own. The soles of his feet were heavily swollen, but he had learned a rolling gait that would take him over a short distance. He was hunched from the strain that had been put on his shoulders.
When at last they came, they had not allowed him time to put on his trousers, nor the pants, nor his socks. Between his guards, Mattie Furniss went down the stairs. He wore only his shirt. He was hobbling and bent. He was beyond reach of help, he was going towards pain.
Down the stairs and into the hallway, and his instinctive turn was to the left, towards the doorway to the cellar. He was pulled to the right.
He stumbled and fell. They let him go down, and his knees felt the coolness of the tiled floor. They jerked him up and on to his feet and the pain shivered through him.
They took him through a kitchen. There were moths arcing around the light bulb that had no shade. There were two large metal pots on an electric cooker and on the table there were plates laid out with salads at the side. He saw the food that was unlike anything that was brought on the trays to his prison room. He was frog-marched through the kitchen and out into the glare of the lights in what he thought must be the yard at the back of the house.
The light came from the headlamps of a Mercedes car. The lights threw a bright wash across the yard and against the wall of concrete blocks. He thought the height of the wall was a foot or so above the height of his own head had he been standing erect and not been bent by the pain in his shoulders and ribs. That, too, was instinctive, that he checked the height of the wall. Many scenes now, all fast in his mind.
He saw the pockmarks where bullets had struck the wall, and the holes were in a group that was only three, four, feet across. He saw the guard who cradled a rifle, probably a Soviet AK-74, across his elbow. He saw the investigator standing with his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers. He saw a young cleric with the turban of brilliant white and the camel hair cape and the thin-rimmed spectacles.
It was done as if it were a routine in which the only character who didn't know his part was Mattie. And he was learning, so fast. No talk. The sounds of the engine of the Mercedes tilling and of the scrape of Mattie's feet across the hard earth yard. The feet scraped because he was losing the power to walk, going jelly in the legs. Across the yard to the place in the wall with the bullet holes.
They had to drag him.
The use was gone from his legs. Thinking of Harriet who was his wife. Thinking of the cottage that was his home.
Wanting to plead, and wanting to cry, and the voices strangled In his throat. Against the wall the guards loosed his arms. He collapsed. The dirt was on his knees, and on his arms and on his chest. Death was grovelling in the dirt yard of a villa on the outskirts of Tabriz. Death was choking in the night air, beyond the reach of help. Death was feeling the slackening of the gut muscles… Death was the metallic crack as a Soviet rifle was cocked. There was a hand in his hair and his head was wrenched upwards and his body weight was taken so that he was left in a kneeling position and the cold damp dirt of the yard cloyed on his privates. Too frightened to pray, like that Lutheran pastor would have prayed. Thinking of all those who were too far from him to help him, but closer than the God he
