Carpenter picked up the wedding ring and examined it as Digger left. It was a simple band, twenty-four-carat gold. Inside was an inscription: 'Simon and Louise. For ever.'
Alice Roper popped her head round the sitting-room door and told her two boys to get ready for bed.
'What's the point, Mum? It's not like we've got school tomorrow, is it?' moaned David. 'It's Sunday.'
'It's almost ten,' said Alice. 'Do as you're told.'
'When can we go back to school?' asked Ben.
'Soon.'
'When's soon? Monday?'
Alice didn't know what to say to her children. They'd been kept away from school since the day Ben had been approached in the street and they'd had to move away from the family home. She didn't want to worry her children, but obviously they knew something was wrong. No school. Moving to a strange house. She didn't want to lie to them, but how could she tell them the truth, that men were trying to kill their father? 'I don't know, Ben. As soon as I do, so will you. Believe me, it's no fun having you under my feet all day.'
'I hate this house,' said David.
'You and me both,' responded Alice. 'Now bed. Both of you.'
Her husband was sitting at the kitchen table, his hands round a mug of tea that she'd made almost an hour earlier. The kitchen was tiny, about a third of the size of the one in their own home. Everything about the so-called safe-house was small, And there were only two cramped bedrooms so the boys had to share a double bed.
'Sandy, we can't go on like this,' said Alice. She sat down opposite him.
Roper looked up, his eyes blank, as if his thoughts were a million miles away. 'What?'
Alice waved a hand round the kitchen. 'This place. It's just not suitable.'
'It's temporary. And it's safe.'
The house was in the middle of a sand-coloured brick terrace at the end of a small cul-de-sac in one of the older areas of Milton Keynes, the anonymous new town some fifty miles to the north of London. The Church had also arranged to use a room in a house at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. The owners were being paid handsomely and had been told that the men in the room were Drugs Squad officers on a surveillance operation. From their position they could monitor everyone who entered and left the dead-end street. There were only two ways into the house: the front door, which was approached across a small paved courtyard separated from the road by a low brick wall, and the rear door, which opened on to a walled garden. Beyond the garden there was a school playing- field. Anyone approaching the rear of the house could easily be seen from the upstairs bathroom window, where a man from the Church was permanently stationed with binoculars and night-vision goggles. Roper could see the advantages of being in the house, but the rooms were small and, other than the garden, there was nowhere for the children to play safely.
'They won't even let me out to buy food,' complained Alice. 'I have to give them a shopping list, like I was an invalid or something. Half the potatoes they came back with this morning were rotten.'
'I'll speak to them about the potatoes,' said Roper. His shoulders were slumped and his eyes had dark circles under them. Neither had slept much the previous night. The man on bathroom duty had a smoker's cough and an irritating sniff, and the walls had little in the way of soundproofing.
'This isn't about potatoes, it's about living like animals,' said Alice. 'It's like we're the ones in prison here. Every time we want to use the bathroom we have to ask permission. I bet Carpenter has more freedom than we do.'
'It won't be for ever.'
'It feels like we've been here for ever already,' she said. 'This isn't fair on the children.'
'I know.'
'Why can't they go and stay with my parents?'
'Because if Carpenter knows who I am he'll know everything else about us. Every friend, every relative. Nowhere will be safe.'
'I can't even go for a walk.'
Roper leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, exasperated. There was a small damp patch above the kitchen sink. The house had been neglected for many years: the once-white paintwork had yellowed, the door handles on the kitchen units were loose and the gas cooker was caked with burnt grease. Alice had done her best to clean the place, but she was right, it wasn't suitable for a family - although with the best will in the world, Roper didn't see what he could do to remedy the situation. The purpose of the safe-house was protection, not comfort. And, as he kept telling his wife, it wouldn't be for ever. Gerald Carpenter wasn't being vindictive and his attempts to put pressure on Roper weren't personal. All he wanted was to keep his freedom, and once a judge had handed down a sentence that would be an end to it.
Roper's mobile phone rang. He stood up, grateful for the interruption. It was in the hallway, on a glass table with ornate brass legs. There was a regular phone on the table but the Ropers had been told not to use it. The only people who knew the number of the landline were the Church and it would only be used in the event of an emergency. Roper picked up his mobile. The caller had blocked his number. Nothing unusual in that. Most of his Church colleagues routinely withheld their numbers and when he was working undercover virtually every call he received was from a blocked number. He put the phone to his ear. 'Roper,' he said.
'How's it going, Sandy?' someone asked.
Roper frowned. It was a guttural voice with an accent he couldn't quite place. West Country, maybe, but flattened out from years of living in London. It wasn't a voice he recognised. The mobile was his personal phone so the only people who had the number were friends, family, and the Church.
'Who's that?' he asked.
'Someone with your best interests at heart,' said the man. 'What did you think of the pictures, then?'
Roper bit down on his lower lip. The call was almost certainly from a throwaway mobile and therefore virtually untraceable. Even with the full resources of the Church technical boys they'd only be able to pinpoint the general area where the phone was being used. If he could have recorded the conversation then maybe they'd have been able to pick up clues from the background noise but as it was Roper was helpless.
'What do you want?' he asked.
'You know what we want,' said the man.
Alice came out of the kitchen and stood behind him, evidently sensing that something was wrong. Roper turned away from her, not wanting her to hear. 'How did you get this number?' he asked. He didn't expect an answer but he wanted to keep the man talking until he could think of something to say, something that would help him identify the voice.
The man chuckled. 'How's the missus?'
'You can tell Carpenter he's wasting his time,' said Roper. Alice put a hand on his shoulder but Roper went into the sitting room. Through the net curtains he could see two Church bodyguards sitting in a blue saloon, but he knew there was no point in attracting their attention. There was nothing they could do. Nothing anyone could do.
'Tell him yourself when he gets out,' said the man.
Alice followed Roper into the sitting room and stood in front of him, her arms folded across her chest. 'Who is it?' she mouthed, but Roper turned his back on her.
'There aren't many ways you could have got this number,' he said. 'It isn't listed.'
'We've given you every chance to save yourself and your family any grief,' said the man. 'What happens next is up to you.'
'And what is going to happen?' asked Roper.
'Sandy?' said Alice, but Roper silenced her by pressing a finger to her lips.
'You know what happened to the cop. We can get to you just as easily as we got to him.'
'So why the phone call?'
'Last resort,' said the man. Roper could definitely hear a trace of West Country in his accent. 'We were told to look for alternatives. We'd offer you money but the word is that you're one of the untouchables, Sandy. Tell me I'm wrong and we can put six figures in your bank account tomorrow.'
'That's a possibility,' said Roper. If he could persuade them to transfer money into his account it would leave a trail the Church could follow, a trail that would lead, hopefully, to Carpenter.
The man chuckled again. 'Do I sound as if I've got 'fuckwit' tattooed across my forehead?' he asked. 'We've
