she’d made them laugh with good anecdotes of protest lines. They’d done a trade-off: Megs Behan would have part of the back seat, and she’d close down on the slogans so they could doze. And she was up Harvey Giliot’s nose – no call to pick a quarrel with her. He knew the saying, might have been Arabic or Chinese, that went ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
The door was open behind him. He was called back on the mobile and was given his instructions. He was too tired to bitch and said what time he thought they’d be in London. He went to Megs Behan and she lowered her bullhorn. He’d thought, from the last blast – not that it mattered now – that the battery was flattening.
Mark Roscoe committed a worse offence than allowing an unauthorised civilian to snooze in the car, but the discipline culture had never burrowed into his guts. He told her where Gillot was travelling to and saw her face lighten. He didn’t tell her the schedule.
Then he waited.
Harvey Gillot wolfed another chocolate biscuit. He had removed the hard drives from his computers in the office, had made the bed neatly in the spare room where he had slept, had left the carpet rolled back in the principal bedroom so that it was easy to see the floor safe was open and empty, had poured some dog meal into the tin bowl, then had hitched up the rucksack of his clothes and what little he would journey with. There was a mirror in the hallway and he checked himself. Clean clothes, the dirty ones dumped in the bin, good shoes for offroad walking. He was well-shaven, no cuts, his hair was combed and he had dabbed on a little aftershave. Larger, of course, heavier in the chest and the upper stomach. A few who were familiar with him would have thought Harvey Gillot had binged – maybe food, maybe alcohol, maybe steroids. He wore a blue shirt, a silk tie and a lightweight jacket.
In his mind was the list of things he had to do: the dog, the travel agent, the solicitor, the school… and the text. He sent it. A last look at the mirror. Was satisfied, lifting the dog’s lead down from the hook, when the call came.
Charles, the sales manager, how was he? ‘Doing very nicely, thank you. All looks pretty sunny from where I stand. What can I do for you, Charles?’
Did he remember what they had talked about? ‘Remember it very well, Charles. You about to tell me that the tailgate on the lorry wasn’t fastened properly?’
Did he not know of the global ravages of the credit crunch? Cancellations, had he not heard of them? ‘I think I’d be interested – at a decent price.’
Charles told him. ‘We might have to do a bit better than that, Charles. Difficult times and all that.’
They haggled. The sales manager flogging military communications equipment, suitable for a brigade-sized force in the field and with total encryption, came down two per cent, and Harvey Gillot came up one per cent. It was a nice little deal. He could put out of his mind the dog, the travel agent, the solicitor and the school, and focus on brokering. Already his head was filled with the possibilities of where that equipment would be wanted – where conflict was about to flare, where there was money and demand. He did a little dance, a few steps, then called the dog.
He waved to the horse. He thought the garden was too destroyed to be repaired for the rest of the summer. The lawn would have been in better shape if it hadn’t been for the automatic sprinkler system fitted the previous year: it had softened the grass table so the hoof indentations were deeper. The flowerbeds were buggered and… It was a vigorous wave for the horse.
He took the Audi out of the garage, drove up to the gates and zapped them, then went out into the lane. Some coats and a couple of dresses would have gone under the wheels. Gillot didn’t acknowledge his onlookers. The woman with the bullhorn wasn’t there but the three detectives were close to their car, the engine running and the doors open. He left his own turning over and walked back to the dog, closed the gates on the horse, then crouched down and ruffled the fur at the dog’s collar. He said some quiet things and got his ear washed by the tongue that had been scooping up shit on the walk. He walked the dog, on the lead, to Denton’s house, pretty as a postcard with climbing roses, opened the gate to the front path, pushed the dog in, dropped the food bag beside it and bawled, towards an open window, that Josie would be along soon. He had gone before the door opened.
He drove away. He fiddled with the dashboard, turned up the air-conditioning but was still sweating. Who loved him? Nobody. Who was his friend? Nobody. There was a bus stop on the far side of the road to the museum and the woman was there – quite attractive if she did something about herself. He didn’t wave and didn’t consider offering her a lift. Roscoe and his people were behind him and further back a marked police car. Good riddance, they’d be thinking – saying. Good riddance to bad rubbish. A teacher way back at the grammar school had told the class it was from Dickens. Ahead of him, immediately, was the travel shop, the lawyer’s place, Fee’s school and then… the unknown. Harvey Gillot had a good feeling. He always had it when he believed he had control of a sort, but didn’t know where Destiny would take him. He went past the top point of the island and the mainland vista stretched to far horizons. If he didn’t come back would anyone care? No.
She swore.
A bad morning, illusions broken, woken from a dream. Romance fled, not even lust remained. Swore loudly, and repeated it. With her suitcases, she had gone to the big hotel on the high point of the island and had endured a rotten night.
The Dentons were at the little wicket gate on the lane and had her dog on a lead. In front of her were the gates to her home and the debris he’d left.
She swore louder.
Nobody there. An empty lane. The lead was loosed, the dog freed. She opened the gates. Many justifications for her curses. The gardener hadn’t offered to drive her back that morning and she fancied he would be looking for fresh employment to fill the hours he had spent at Lulworth View, indoors and out. The clothing on the gate and on the lane, with tyre marks, was an act of crude vandalism. The horse came to her across the drive and she felt tears well. She had seen the state of her beloved, and expensive, garden.
A little regret, which fuelled curses. Too long on her own in the isolation of the island, and no one to know but the retired – the traders she met had never had the guts to get off the place and find a life. She was too bored, too cut off from his work because he no longer seemed to need her support, and too lonely – hadn’t even been proper sex on the side. Had been garden-work sweat that Nigel had washed off in the shower, more was the pity, just a bit of touching and fondling, a quick dart inside and her saying she was on the pill and him recoiling at the mention of it. He’d gone soft on her – afterwards, not during – and followed her round with eyes that longed like the dog’s did when its food was due. Hadn’t even done it properly.
The telephone rang as she crossed the drive, but had stopped as she came through the door. She didn’t care.
Good reason for the oaths, curses, when she was inside. Josie went to the bedroom, where the open wardrobe doors mocked her. The carpet was turned back at a corner and the safe box had its lid off. Empty – the necklace he’d bought her in Riyadh after his first Saudi contract following the wedding, the ring from Jakarta that had celebrated a deal for a paramilitary police weapons update, the bracelet with the emeralds that had been the best thing in a Hanoi shop, amber from Lithuania, jade from Thailand and the gold chain from Johannesburg when he’d sold a pile of junk to the Mozambicans and… All of it had been bought by him and all of it had been given to her, sometimes in gift boxes with wrapping and ribbon, passed across a candlelit table, sometimes coming off a dawn flight and her still in bed, a neighbour taking Fee to nursery school before they moved and the wrapping stripped off as fast as his clothes… All gone. The bastard. There had always been cash there: dollars and euros and sterling. Empty. She took the ring off her finger, dropped it into the safe and put the lid back but didn’t fasten the lock, then kicked the carpet into place.
She went to the other safe, in his office, opened it with the combination and saw that her passport was there, not his, the insurance policies and his will. The computers had been opened and she assumed the hard drives were gone.
At the gates, when she was collecting armfuls of her clothes, the Dentons came close, and she was told of armed police officers who had maintained a vigil on her home through the night and more police who had been at the top of the lane. She was told also of the inconvenience caused by a woman with a megaphone who had kept them awake till the small hours. The couple felt betrayed, they said, hadn’t known her husband dealt in arms. She stomped away with another armful of clothes, said not a word of apology or remorse, just bloody well ignored them.
Josie Gillot thought her life had been destroyed, as her husband’s had.
