… all those bloody journalists at the front door… perhaps it's best to forget.'
Libby Barnes whispered, 'And best for your career.'
She held the photograph tight against her chest and her tears made a mockery of the work at her eyes.
'Piper Mother did say that, yes.'
Charlie watched her go, and he was left on the pavement where the streets merged into Piccadilly. He watched her through the traffic and he saw the hips swing, and he saw that her shoulders were well back, and once he saw her shake the long hair free of her collar and the hair tossed and caught in the last of the sun.
First he lost her behind a bus that was caught at the lights, and then she was gone. She had been carrying her bag loosely against her knee. She was going home with her new dress, because Polly Venables and Charlie Eshraq were going nowhere. She'd go back to Mahmood Shabro on Monday morning, and she'd try to forget Charlie Eshraq because he had told her that he was going back to Iran.
He turned. The other girl was still close to him. She was leaning against the shop doorway, and she wasn't even bothering to pretend. The car was behind her. All the time that he had been walking with Polly, the girl had been close to him, and the car had been hugging the kerb. She was a dumpy little thing, and he thought they must have cut her hair with garden clippers, and he didn't understand why she wore an anorak when it was almost summer.
He walked up to her.
'I'm going to have a drink, April lady. Would you join me?'
Token snarled back at him. 'Piss off.'
The truck driver was Turkish and he drove his Daf vehicle with the choke out so that the engine seemed to race, as if on its last legs. He manoeuvred into the narrow cul-de-sac and then killed the engine in front of the battered sheet metal gates. When the engine was off, when he could look around him, there came to him the curious quiet of the repair yard.
From his cab he could see over the wall and into the yard. No work there, no activity. He had been told they worked late into the evening.
There was a child watching him from against the wall, chewing at an apple.
The Turk called to the child. He asked where was the engineer.
The child scowled at him. The child shouted back the one word.
'Pasdaran.'
Choke in, the engine running smoothly, the driver backed his truck out of the cul-de-sac. He drove at speed out of Tabriz, chewing and chewing and eventually swallowing the message that had been taped against the skin of his belly.
She had heard of all of them, heard their names, but she had never before been able to put faces to the names.
She knew them by their actual names and by their codenames too, because sometimes David referred to them at home by one and sometimes by the other.
If she had been honest, and she might be honest later when they were home, and that depended on how much she had drunk, then she might have said that she didn't think that much of them. There wasn't much that was special about any of them. On Ann's table were some of the names she knew best. There was dear old Bill, unusually quiet, and his wife who had not yet closed her mouth. There was Peter Foster, whose collar was too tight, and whose wife hadn't stopped talking about the standard of teaching at Infant and Primary school level since they sat down. There was Duggie Williams, who was Harlech, and he was in a foul mood because, according to David, he had been stood up. Mrs Parrish was talking about the holiday they were going to take in Lanzarote. Bill wasn't saying much, and looked as though he had had a death in the family, and Foster seemed as if he might choke. But she rather liked Harlech. She thought that Harlech might just be the pick of them, and she thought that the girl who had stood him up must be just a bit dumb. The music had started, the band had begun, but the floor was still empty, and there was no way she would get David on to his feet before there was quite a throng. The glasses were filling the table. The raffle tickets had been round, and they would be drawn, and then there would be the buffet supper, and after that she might get David on to the floor.
Duggie Williams brought her a drink and changed places with Maureen Foster to sit next to her.
'You must be half bored out of your knickers.'
'I beg your pardon.'
'How did Keeper get you to come along?'
'It was I that said we were coming.'
'You must be off your pretty head.'
'Perhaps I just wanted to have a look at you all.'
'Then it's a bloody miracle you haven't run away already
… I'm Harlech.'
'I know. I'm Ann.'
Bill had started talking. Ann couldn't hear what he was saying, but David was leaning away from her to listen.
'We're not in the best of form.'
She said drily, 'I gathered.'
'We've lost a nice juicy one.'
'He told me a bit.'
'We got fucked up – excuse me – your man, trouble with him is that he cares.'
'Don't you?'
He had strong eyes. When she looked at Harlech then it was into his eyes. She had nowhere else to look. It was only from the side of her eye that she saw Bill's empty chair.
'Not a lot bothers me, that's because of where I used to work. I used to be at Heathrow…'
'So was David.'
'… He was front of house… me, I was back stage. I was on the stuffers and swallowers drill. You know what that is? 'Course, you don't. Nobody tells a nice girl about swallowers and stuffers… I used to be on the duty that checks the daily in from Lagos – I never found anything else that the Nigerians were good at, but, Christ, they can stuff and swallow. Do you want to know all this? You do? Well, the women stuff the scag up their fannies, and the men stuff it up their arses, and they both swallow it. Are you with me?
They put it in condoms and they stuff it up and they swallow it down. We have a special block for the suspects, and that's where I used to work before I came to ID. We shove them in a cell, and we sit and watch them, and we feed them on good old baked beans, and we wait. God, do we wait… Has to go through, law of nature. Everything has to come out except from where the women stuff theirs, but that's a job for the ladies. You have to be like a hawk, watching them, and every time they go in then it's out with the plastic bag and on with the rubber gloves and time for a good old search around. They train by swallowing grapes, and they dip the condoms in syrup so they travel more comfortably, and they use something called Lomotil, because that's a binder. You know, once we had a flight in from Lagos and we pulled in thirteen, and we had every bog in action that we could lay our hands on. We were swamped, and just as well, because half of them were positive. When you've sat, hours and hours, watching guys crap, after that not a lot seems to bother you. Got me?'
'He doesn't tell me things like that.'
'Complaining?'
She didn't answer. Bill was back, talking urgently into David's ear. She heard her man swear, quiet, then he turned to her.
'I'm sorry, I've got to go with Bill. It may take an hour or two. Duggie, will you look after Ann? Will you get her home?'
'You're joking.' She didn't believe it.
Bill shrugged. He was standing at David's shoulder.
'I'm sorry, love, I'll see you when I do.'
He was gone, and Bill was trailing after him. No, she didn't believe it.
' D o you like dancing?' Harlech asked.
The investigator reported to the Mullah.
