kept a battery razor in the car, and the girl detective would have a spare pair of knickers at the bottom of the bag under the Glock.
He was asked if he could identify the package’s contents, and told Roscoe he had ordered a bulletproof vest. He didn’t mention the sprays. He expected it and was rewarded. A dry smile from Roscoe – arid as the desert in Saudi. The woman was shrieking, same hymn book, same slogans. Through the gate and up the lane, Gillot saw Denton, the neighbour. The man stood in a dressing-gown and made a theatrical pose of holding his hands over his ears. Gillot thought that others would be behind their kitchen doors or their front window curtains, listening to the din she made and taking in her message. He left the package by the front door, walked towards the gates and saw the other two detectives clamber fast from the car. He went past them, past the woman, trying to ignore the noise, and up to Denton. ‘I just wanted to thank you-’
A snort. ‘I’m hardly about to express gratitude to you – that noise, half last night and now again. It’s intolerable, it’s-’
‘I wanted to thank you because I think you saved my life.’
‘Did I?’
He had never been into Denton’s house. Denton had never been invited into Gillot’s. He smiled sweetly, the salesman’s smile. ‘You dumped your rotten apples beside the track and couldn’t be bothered to compost them yourself. I’m so pleased you were too lazy to dispose of them properly. If you ever used the track, which you don’t, you’d know wasps have nested alongside a good food source. A man stood there yesterday morning with the intention of shooting me dead. Sadly for him, happily for me, he disturbed the nest and as he aimed and fired, a couple of those horrible things were crawling round the slits of his mask. Indirectly, Denton, you saved my life. Well done, and thank you.’
He kept the smile locked on his face, the sincere one he saved for signing contracts and flattering ministry people. Was he taking the piss? Was there a word of truth in what he’d said?
‘That woman kept Georgina and me up half the night, calls you an “arms dealer”. Is that true?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘True, then. We never knew. We didn’t know that a man in that trade lived beside us. In our church we’ve collected for the victims of conflict in central Africa and others caught up in wars that are virtually sponsored for the financial gain of individual arms dealers. Have you no shame?’
‘Very little.’
‘I see that Mrs Gillot has understandably had enough of married life under the same roof as you and gone. What you’ve done with her clothing is a disgrace.’
He didn’t do the old routine about ‘if I don’t then someone else will’ or ‘everything I sell is quite legally handled’ or ‘I pay my taxes just like you do’ or ‘I bring the chance of freedom to many oppressed people who have the right to lift off the yoke of dictatorship and can only do it by putting their lives on the line and fighting’. He turned his back.
The bullhorn barked behind him. He was stained with ‘children’s blood’, a ‘trader in misery’, a ‘killer of babies’ and a ‘dealer in murder’. He wondered if she, too, had clean knickers to slip on, and if she did not, would the detective have an extra pair to loan her?
At the gates, Gillot told Roscoe of his plans for the day. First a walk with the dog, then to Weymouth, then to a school, then… He saw astonishment crease Roscoe’s face. ‘I was about to think, Mr Gillot, that you were going to do something – forgive me – sensible.’
‘Wrong again.’
‘And something rational.’
‘Doomed to disappointment.’
He heaved the package inside and saw that the horse had now destroyed the prize display, the bedding plants that had to be watered every twenty-four hours and were Nigel’s pride and joy. He kicked the door shut and went to feed the dog.
News travelled.
Roscoe called his boss – had him dragged from the shower – and told him what he’d learned.
The boss messaged the co-ordinator of Gold Group.
Some on their way to work, some still at home, some already at their desks: all learned what Harvey Gillot had said to Mark Roscoe. Some would shake their heads in astonishment, others would ejaculate an obscenity at his idiocy, a few would hear it in silence and feel relief at the potential to lose a problem. The line manager of the Alpha Team was among those the co-ordinator rang.
He tapped out the numbers for a call to an encrypted mobile.
*
Penny Laing reached across him, allowed a breast to brush his face – a nipple against his lips – grinned, then lifted her mobile. She depressed a key and listened. The grin was wiped. The boy wriggled into a position where he could nip her, but she swatted him. He must have caught her mood because he lay back on the pillow. She made a silent gesture, prodded him and pointed to the bedside fitment where a hotel pad and pencil lay. He passed them.
She had the pencil poised over the paper. He giggled and she reached out her free hand to stifle the sound. That, almost, assured him of his momentary power over her and he wriggled some more, was almost under her, pushing at her legs, parting them, then would have seen the panic on her face and came out from under her. He took the free hand and laid it on his belly.
What to do? Her line manager was at home, about to leave for the Alpha-team office. She left her fingers where they were and worked the nails into the hair. They would sack her if they knew. She could fight it and have the detail of her stand with a lover barely out of school laid out before a tribunal, or she could go quietly and have a career blown. It had been good. She listened and wrote one word on the pad – Gillot – and asked the obvious question: why? Had she known about a failed hit? Of course not. Her line manager told her of a shooting, a murder attempt, close to the Tango’s home, then the Road to Damascus business and the decision – as relayed to a police protection team – to travel. She expressed astonishment at news of the attack, gulped at news of the journey, and the boy’s hand wandered over the equivalent part of her stomach… so good.
Penny Laing didn’t tell her line manager that the previous evening she had skipped supper, had stripped naked, showered, had been with a boy on her hotel bed – and the first of the two condoms she always kept in the zipped pouch of her bag had just gone on him when his mobile had rung and the stroking, teasing, kissing had been on hold while he had answered the call from his father. He had been told, had rung off. She had opened herself wide for him – hadn’t for months, not since a frigate had sailed from Portsmouth dockyard – and he had whispered it in her ear, then thrust.
Was she achieving anything? She let her teeth grate. Her line manager waited for an answer. Her hand was around the boy and his finger was inside her, and her breathing was harder to control and… She said she believed she was moving towards better understanding of the events of November 1991. She was asked to report more fully within an hour, by which time her line manager would be safely off his train and in his cubicle alongside the Alpha work area. She ended the call. They squirmed together – and she stopped him. Two condoms, ribbed, already flushed down the toilet and she had no more. She wondered if he would sulk. He pushed her head down so that her lips went over his chest and ribcage, the hard stomach and into the hair and… So good. Had he learned this from a peasant girl, a teenager, or from a widow or divorcee with experience? She should have felt at least ten years older than him, control and domination, and did not. When they had finished and she had gone to the bathroom, rinsed her mouth, brushed her teeth and lost the taste of him, she said that Gillot was travelling to Vukovar.
Incredulity spread on the young face with the perfect skin.
He went limp and was off the bed, picking up his scattered clothing and starting to dress. Penny Laing watched him and thought she grasped the enormity of the step she had taken.
He always had breakfast. None of the subordinates who had ever worked under the direction of William Anders on a gravesite could claim to have seen him vomit what he had eaten. Some starved themselves before work, whether it was at excavation stage or merely the search with the geophysics for the tell-tale signs of disturbed soil. He ate heartily. Rolls, coffee, a cake, and an omelette filled with chopped ham. He saw his driver and waved, then wiped his mouth and saw the couple… almost furtive, not having the cover of dusk that had aided their discretion the previous evening. They came past him. If the woman, the English Customs officer, had recognised him, she gave no sign of it. He chuckled. He sat at the side of the patio and had a good view of them in profile, and
