ever make babies, but his face was unmarked. He looked down at a local wannabe hero, and heard him choke, vomit and whimper with pain.
He took the bag with the fish and chips and laid it on his knees as Vern pulled away from the kerb. What would the kid do? Nothing. What had he to show for it? Not a mark on his face or his upper body, and he was hardly going to go down to Accident and Emergency, peel down his boxers and show a nurse that his balls were black and blue.
Should have let the car get a scratch from a blade down the side.
Should have stepped back. Shouldn’t have come to the country and the big open spaces. Robbie didn’t feel good, but he said nothing, gave Vern no explanation. His foot hurt. They’d go for it tomorrow, in the morning, because he had seen the dog.
His supper had been put on the dining-room table. The television played loud in the snug. He had eaten his supper, something from the freezer and the microwave, had loaded the plate into the dishwasher and gone back to his office. When the television had been switched off, the doors had opened and closed, and a light had shone under the main bedroom door. Wherever he went in the house, every room, he was followed by the dog, which stayed close.
When he was ready to put the animal out, Harvey switched off the lights in the living room and eased the patio doors open, making certain he was not silhouetted against anything bright. The silence beat around the walls, no voices, no clatter of a weapon being armed. He heard the sea and thought it restless, almost unforgiving. When the dog came in, he closed the outer doors, locked them and drew the curtains, then went methodically around the house, checking each door and window except those leading out from the main bedroom. Should he have gone into that room, knelt beside the bed, taken Josie’s head in his arms and…? He didn’t. He kicked off his shoes and dropped on to the settee in the living room. Best to be in denial. The dog had settled on the rug near him. Harvey Gillot didn’t know who Samuel Johnson was, but he did knew what he had said: Nothing concentrates one’s mind so much as the realisation that one is going to be hanged in the morning. He lay on his back on the cushions and the dog snored. The wind, from the south and west, beat at the roof. He thought the waves were fiercer against the rocks at either end of the cove and there were all those gravestones down there, broken and toppled. They lay beside the ruins of the church, and the ruins of Rufus Castle were close by. Bloody ruins. He reckoned his mind was concentrated, and not even denial could block out his anxiety about the morning. He didn’t know if he would sleep.
10
Harvey woke. There was no rope round his neck, but he massaged the skin of his throat as he blinked and tried to get clarity. She stood in the door, had a silky gown round her, held loosely at the waist. He thought, a bad moment, that she had Pierrepoint’s posture – a couple of years back he’d seen a biopic about the executioner – but when she saw he had woken, she turned away and was gone. He hadn’t focused quickly enough to read her face.
The door closed, wasn’t slammed. It might have been another moment – if he’d been faster off his backside and crabbed quickly across the room – for him to take her in his arms and hold her close. He had not. The door was shut in his face.
He didn’t follow her. He went to the second bathroom and involuntarily touched the robe hanging from the door. It was, of course, dry. He considered then what made for a worse cocktail of poison. A contract on his life? Or the gardener shagging his wife? He ran the shower, letting it warm, then stepped under the spray. He wondered how his body stood up in comparison to Nigel’s. He wet-shaved with a plastic razor, there for a visitor who had stayed overnight without kit, but no one stayed over: they lived in isolation. He dried hard, didn’t use the robe, as if it was the personal property of another.
Ignoring the principal bedroom where there was a walk-in wardrobe that contained his best suits, good casuals and shirts, he dressed in yesterday’s clothes – but for the socks.
He put on flipflops. He wouldn’t go back into the bedroom to rifle in the wardrobe before hell froze over. He looked out of the window.
The sun was still low, peeping over the hills behind the Lulworth cliffs and throwing long ribbons of gold on to the water. The wind had died, and the ferry chugged across his view while a handful of yachts and launches hugged the inshore waters and went to sea. It was pretty damn normal. He stretched and coughed, then searched the trees behind the walls, the castle’s keep to the left and the rock promontories bordering the cove for sign of the threat. He saw nothing.
Like a child, chastened, he bent over the settee and straightened the cushions, smoothed them.
He looked for a friend. The dog still followed him as it had the previous day. When it had wolfed its food he picked up the bowl to wash it and found in the sink her mug with the dregs of tea. She had made some and not brought him any. It seemed important. He was reeling at the toxic nature of the dislike, distrust. He realised it would destroy him – more self-indulgence and self-pity.
He wouldn’t lie in a ditch and cower. He padded back to his office, and murmured to the dog that he needed a few minutes – tried to explain it was only a quick call that had to be made, asked for understanding, and found the dog reasonable. He flicked through his address book and dialled.
‘Monty?’
It was.
‘Harvey here – yes, Harvey Gillot. You good?’ Yes, Monty was good, but Monty was half in and half out of the shower and did Harvey know what time it was and how uncivilised a call was at ‘A couple of things I need.’ What did he need? ‘Can you get your hands quick on a BPV supplier?’ Yes, Monty had a stock of bulletproof vests in his own warehouse, but were they talking of the ones proof against gunfire or merely knives?
‘Bulletproof.’
Not a problem. And what quantity? A hundred? Two hundred, three? And what delivery date?
‘Bulletproof. Quantity of one only.’ Only one? Delivery tomorrow. He had the address. Obviously a discount for bulk orders – was Harvey aware of the price for a single item? It would be six hundred sterling, but for a long- standing friend it could be five hundred. It would be handgun-proof, but not, obviously, high velocity. Where was he going? Kandahar? Bogota? Gaza?
He said grimly, ‘It’s for going out here, the Isle of bloody Portland, Dorset, and walking the dog on the coastal path, but that is not, please, for shouting off the rooftops. What about sprays?’ There was US-made Mace bear pepper spray, recommended for campers up-country in Montana or Oregon and frowned on in the UK, about twenty-five sterling a canister. What was legal throughout the UK was a spray that let off a vile stench and marked clothes beyond the capability of household washing-machines at about thirteen pounds.
‘Whatever you have. Delivery tomorrow. I’m grateful, Monty.’
He rang off, and told the dog that – give or take five minutes – they would go for a walk.
He was alone now. Robbie thought this time, minutes but could be hours, was the hardest.
He waited and watched the gates.
He had told them, back at the hut at first light, that he wouldn’t attempt to scale the walls because there was too much ground that was dead to him, unseen, and he didn’t know what the alarm system was or where the cameras and beams were. He had said he would be close to the gates and would wait for the target to come out.
Vern had queried him – he didn’t often. ‘The gates are electronic and he’ll come out in his car. Where are you and what do you do?’
‘He won’t. He’ll be walking.’
Leanne had challenged him: ‘How can you say, Robbie, that he’ll walk out of the gates?’
‘Because of the dog.’
Both had looked at him, confused. ‘Because of the dog? You sure of that, Robbie?’
‘He has a nice garden, very pretty. He spends time and money on it. He doesn’t want dog shit all over it. He’ll take the dog out and walk to where the dog can shit and he doesn’t have to clear it up.’ It had satisfied them.
The decision he had made was that the target would come out of the gates, swing to his right, go past the
