one, and because of the awfulness of Grove's mental state it had also been stressful and alarming. She could still hardly bear to think of the consequences of what she had done.
She shrank from this, and other thoughts came at her in ar, onrush of trivial detail, a reaction against the tensions of the last few hours.
There were many practical things she had to sort out. Flight confirmation was one of them; she had made only a provisional booking and needed to hear back from the travel agents.
Then she had to pack her stuff, and check out of the hotel. Get across to Gatwick Airport with enough time to turn in the rental car, check in, go through security, hang around in the departure lounge, buy books and magazines she didn't want, and all that. Flying always took time, but presumably never as much as it saved, otherwise no one would do it. Before she left England she should also check in with her section chief, or at least leave a message in his office. She still had a hunch trouble was waiting for her there; would Ken Mitchell's one hour of effective passion compensate for that? Teresa combed her hair, peered closely at her eyes in the mirror. Gifts, she should buy some souvenirs to take back with her. She wondered if she would have time to go round the Old Town shops before they closed.
She glanced at her wristwatch.
Something was not right. How long had she been in Grove's scenario? What had changed?
The washroom was greypainted, clean, cool. The sound of air-conditioning was loud around her, emanating from a grille high in the wall by the door. Bright sunlight glared into the room through a square window set in the sloping halfroof above her.
A memory of Grove came to her, but she thrust the thought away in panic. All this time in England, circling around the Grove issue, and now she had at last confronted it she shrank away from it.
She wanted only to get home, try again to restart her life without Andy. Out there: she wondered what was out there, in the confusing world made by Grove. She had taught him to shoot. That child, that woman, they might be alive now if she hadn't shown Grove how to hold his weapon correctly.
No! she thought. No, that's not true! Rosalind Williams and her little boy were shot and killed by Grove eight months before. On the day it happened she was in Richmond, Virginia, thousands of miles away. lt was a historical certainty. What she had seen was only a scenario, a recreation of the event which by close observation she had seemed to influence.
. She had taught Grove how to handle his gun. Some influence.
In reaction to these unwelcome thoughts, another flood of personal concerns coursed through her: whether she should sell the house in Woodbridge, move into an apartment in Baltimore or Washington, or relocate right away from the area. She had good friends who lived in Eugene, Oregon; maybe she should make a break with everything, and move to the Pacific North West. In the meantime, should she stay with the Bureau, transfer to another section or station? Or maybe she should think about what did they call it? ~ OCERS. The Optional Corporate Early Retirement Scheme. The Bureau management had been talking up OCERS, as if it was the answer to their many woes of funding, deployment, overmanning, and all the other administrative problems they regularly memo'd to the sections.
Closing her bag she looked up again and caught an off guard glimpse of herself. She should have been ready for it, because she had been staring at the mirror off and on for the last five minutes, but for that instant she saw the reflection of a rather bulky middle-aged woman, her darkbrown hair starting to turn grey, her face not one she remembered or wanted to remember. Standing there in her warm quilted anorak, bundled up against the wintry Weather outside, she thought, How did it happen so quickly? How have the years of my life vanished?
She walked through the reception area, looking ahead, zipping up her anorak and wondering if she should pull on
the hood.
'Goodbye, Paula,' she said to the receptionist. 'See you
again.
'Cheerio, Mrs ... Has it started to rain out there?'
Rain? I'm not sure.' Teresa pushed through the glass doors, and walked across the hardstanding outside.
Heat from the sunwhitened. concrete rose around her. The sun was high in a brilliant sky.
Teresa stared around her in amazement: the trees were in full leaf, the distant sea was shining so brightly it seemed silver. the houses of the lower town were softened by a gentle heat haze.
The only clouds visible were on the horizon far away to the south, somewhere over the French coast. Two young women, walking along the road, were dressed in shorts and Tshirts.
Teresa unzipped her anorak, and slipped it off. When she drove up to the ExEx building this morning there had been a cold easterly wind, spotted with ice and freezing rain. She remembered hurrying from her car, keeping her head down against the wind, then, in the reception area, flapping her anorak to try to shed some of the water from it, and mopping her face with a tissue. Now it was midsummer.
She looked around for her car. That morning, the cold morning, she had had to park it against the kerb, a short distance away. She walked towards where she had left it, but a darkred Montego was parked in its place. The two nearside wheels had mounted the kerb and were resting on the grassy verge.
Her own car, the rented Ford Escort, was nowhere around.
Teresa went to the Montego. On its left side was a long paint smear across both doors, and a deep dent, where the car had hit something solid and whitepainted. When she peered in the front window on the driver's side she saw a car radio, pulled from its mount but still connected by wires, discarded, hanging down under the dashboard.
Teresa tried the handle, and the unlocked door opened. Feeling a chill of fear, in spite of the stifling heat of the day, Teresa reached down to the release of the luggage compartment lid.
She heard and felt the lock click open behind her. She went back, raised the lid.
A semiautomatic rifle and a handgun lay on the carpeted floor. Several boxes of ammunition were also there; one had broken open and a handful of rounds lay spilled about. She recognized the handgun as a Colt, the one Grove, and she, had used to kill Mrs Williams and her child in the woods. She had not been able to get a good
