They stood at the side of the track, close to the river.
Parallel lines of yellow tape strips ran from the track out into the fields, each wide enough for two men to walk alongside each other. Between these stunted corridors were wide expanses of grass and weed, but the two men in each corridor did not walk, they knelt, their visors down. They probed with thin sharpened steel prods. Fenton said that it was like watching paint dry. Barnaby said, drily, that the chance of losing a leg when home decorating was slight. Fenton saw the dog, and his face lit. A heavy German shepherd, shaggy-coated, was in the longest grass in a corridor between the yellow tape and twenty-five yards from the track. A long thin cord linked the dog to the handler.
'That's what I need.' Fenton raised his pocket camera, aimed at the dog. 'Tell me about him.'
'He's Boy. Nine years old. He's the best, a prime asset. He was trained first by an American de-mining company. They worked him in Angola, then Rwanda and Croatia. They sold him to us. He's going to work out his time here. He scents the explosive… Not everybody trusts a dog. If he misses a mine he won't detonate it, but the handler following him will. Many prefer to put their trust in the prodder. We argue about it. But Boy is special. When a dog's done its useful work, it's shot. Boy won't be, his handler'll take him home.'
'That's wonderful. Can I go closer?'
'Sorry, no. Mr Fenton, you have to understand that we're in the first week of the season. The men are rusty. They haven't been in the field for four or five months. It's a time of maximum danger for them.'
'I've an angle now, I'm going to write something positive,' Fenton said enthusiastically. 'Something, about brave men, and Boy, working to bring a proper life back to two communities in the valley. I like it, I've got the buzz – the valley where the peace will never again be broken.'
'Would you all like a cup of tea?'
It was what the Princess's mother had always done each time the old Bill had come visiting at dawn in their Ilford house, when she'd been a child.
'It's no trouble to me, easy enough to put the kettle on.'
Except when her father was locked up, the old Bill had been regular early-morning visitors. Her mother, Clarrie Hinds, always brewed up a big pot, and cleared the cupboard of mugs for the tray; if there was a senior man among them she'd usually have sliced up a lemon, just in case. She'd always put a plate of biscuits on the tray, opened a fresh packet for them.
Like mother, like daughter. Her mother said it helped to make a bad experience more pleasant, and also said that tea and biscuits and talk about the weather – would it rain or wouldn't it? – was distracting for the searchers.
This was a sour lot. Tea declined, biscuits refused, small-talk ignored.
It was now nine months since the last time the Princess's home had been 'visited'. They'd been polite enough then. No sledge-hammers, no shouting, no blue lights flashing, and no sirens when they'd driven Mister away. He'd been given at least ten minutes to get himself dressed, and they'd been discreet when they'd taken him out through the front door. It had only been afterwards that she'd heard from Rosie Carthew, Carol Penberthy and Leonora Govan that the house had been surrounded by armed police crouching in their gardens; the Princess hadn't even seen them. The last time, Mister had gone off as if a few golf friends were shipping him to a far-away course – but Mister didn't play golf. This lot were cold, correct, silent.
They knew the house. They'd have been working from the pictures taken when the house was 'burgled' a year back. They'd each been assigned a room. The oldest man among them had an unlit pipe stapled in his mouth. She'd seen him look around from the moment he'd come in through the front door. There were no ashtrays in the Princess's home. She thought he yearned to produce his matches and scratch a flame, but he didn't ask her. The old Bill always asked if they could smoke, and her mother had always produced an ashtray for them. This man wandered between the rooms, took on the role of a supervisor, and the Princess followed him. They went into the kitchen, the sitting room, the living room, her snug where she did her post, the dining room that was never used, and up the stairs to the bedrooms and the bathrooms. She tracked him like a suspicious dog.
When the woman who had searched the dining room, taking everything from the sideboard then replacing each plate and each glass just where they'd been, had met the heavy-bearded man, who'd gone through the sitting room with fine-tooth comb care, the Princess had been at the top of the stairs. The woman and the bearded man were in the hall below.
'You know what's funny about this place, sort of creepy, it's not lived-in. It's like a show house at the Ideal Home. There's nothing out of place – and there's not a book. Did you find one book here? I didn't. It gives you the shivers. Or it's like a hotel room, cleaned for the next guest.'
Then they'd seen her at the top of the stairs, and the Princess hadn't heard another word spoken among them, until they left.
They filed out. Years ago, Clarrie Hinds had said that you never showed anger to them, never flipped, never screamed, because they'd talk about that in the canteen at their late breakfast, and the word would have been passed to the scum, the informers, they paid. To have shouted at them, to have wept in a corner, would have demeaned her dignity, would have diminished Mister's self-respect. They took nothing with them.
'Thank you for your co-operation, Mrs Packer.'
The older man's match flashed in the dull light.
She didn't answer. The cars were starting up in the road. Usually, at her mother's home or at her own since she'd married Mister, when the police or the Church came with a warrant, searched and left empty-handed without evidence in a bag, there would be tight-lipped annoyance at the senior man's mouth. She didn't see anger, but there was a slow smile, which might have been contempt, or satisfaction. It was no big deal. She'd tell Mister about it when he was back, tomorrow or the day after. Their house rule, which she'd never broken, was that she did not call him when he was away. It would keep until his return. They were a partnership. In his strange, unshown way, her Mister loved his Princess.
He didn't crawl all over her, didn't touch her when they were out, didn't smarm her with compliments in front of strangers, but he loved her. It was returned.
The trust was between them. When he came back, she would tell Mister where they'd been, how they'd searched, what they'd looked like. He'd listen to her, never interrupting, and every detail of it would be stored away in his mind, his memory. When she'd finished, he'd say, 'Well done,' or 'That's good,' or, if he was expansive, 'You'd have thought they'd have better things to do…' and life would go on. She never looked to the future, didn't think about it. A long time ago, when they were first married and Mister was on the up, she'd feared he'd be found in a gutter, or in a fire-destroyed car, and that the uniformed Bill would come to escort her to a mortuary to look at his body.
She no longer harboured such a fear. He was untouchable now; as she joked with him, 'God wouldn't dare.' She didn't ask him what the future was, and didn't care.
As the cars drove off, she saw across the road that Leonora was hy her gate, in her bathrobe, and miming at her a charade game of filling a kettle and drinking a cup, but she shook her head, smiled – because it was no big deal and closed her door behind her.
One point confused her. There had been no warning. The night before his arrest, Mister had known they coming for him in the morning. She'd tell Mister that his network hadn't warned her… She went into the kitchen. She made hersell a collee and put bread in the toaster. She took the toast and the mug into the sitting room and switched on the television.
Her eyes roved from the set, from the mug and the plate, over the room. There was no sign that the Church had come mob-handed into the house, it was all strangely tidy and undisturbed. She was almost at the end of the traverse of her gaze over the watercolour paintings, the ornaments, the decanter and the glasses, the fireplace, when she saw the envelope.
It was propped up on a low table beside the chest where she kept her tapestry. She had not put a brown, large-size envelope on that table.
She wondered what they'd left behind.
She laid her cup and the plate on the footstool beside her chair, went to the table and picked up the envelope.
The flap was not sealed, was folded inside. There was no logo on it, nor any handwriting. She opened it and took out a wad of plate-size photographs.
Attached to the back of the top photograph was a stick-on message note. 'Room 329, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.
