shit to Scotland; so I don't want to take a chance on shooting you.
'I've been in your world, and so I know how it works. So my proposal is that we're going to go now, and we're going to leave you with the thing you came after.' He glanced towards Sarah's bag, on the floor. 'Is that it in there?'
'Yes,' she replied, a catch in her throat.
'Okay; take it out and leave it there. Then pick up the gun and come over here.' She nodded and did as he said, then moved over to the door behind him.
'I want you to carry a message from me. Brand, to whoever pulls your strings. I don't want to know who was behind it, or even how you kil ed Joe. The end of the story's in that envelope; I'm going to leave it for you, and I'm going to walk away.
'You have two choices, son. You either take that package and what's in it, and give me your personal word that you wil never come near me or any of mine again, anywhere, or I'l yield to my basest instincts and put a bullet through your head, right where you lie.
'Which is it to be? Are you going to be sensible, or are you going to be dead?'
Zak Brand twisted his head to look up at him. 'Sensible,' he hissed, in an agonised voice.
'Just as well. Stay where you are until you hear us drive off. And don't think of cal ing any back-up you may have out there. If any vehicle as much as moves towards us as we leave here, or tries to tail us, I wil turn right round, come back in here and kill you. Do you believe that?'
'Yes.'
'Then just keep on believing.' He put an arm around Sarah's waist and steered her through the door.
She said nothing until they were in the Jaguar; then she turned to him.
'Is that it?' she asked, with fury written on her face. 'That man killed my parents and we're just going to leave him there?'
'Do you real y think I want to?' he snapped back at her. 'That's the way it has to be. But he hasn't got away with anything.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean this. I can't shoot the bastard because I need him to deliver 296 his message to whoever sent him. Much as I'd like to get them all, I never could, because wherever they're from and whatever their background, be it state, organised crime, or foreign government, their resources put them beyond even my reach. If I tried to track them, which I could do by tailing Brand…'
'Brand?' She frowned.
In spite of himself, Babs Walker's drawing-room tour of Sarah's past flashed through his mind. 'Your lover's real name is Isaac Brand,' he told her, coolly. 'He's a Special Agent of the FBI, and he was one of the two guys Joe Doherty assigned to me… only he had other loyalties.
'If I did tail him, I'd be putting you, al of us, at terrible risk; so I can't.'
Skinner looked at her, and a hard light flickered in his eye. 'But he's at risk himself now. Brand took his orders from someone, and even if he's only met that one link in the chain of which he himself is a part, now he's failed in his mission and been exposed.'
A look of blood-chilling satisfaction crossed his face; it might even have been taken for a smile. 'And that makes him…' he murmured
'… the weakest link. Goodbye.'
He switched on the engine of the big car. 'I could have made him dead, but you could say I've done worse. He isn't a pursuer any more; I've made him a target. He's got two choices. Either he takes a big risk and tries to bargain for his life with that envelope, probably not even knowing what's in it, or he takes a big risk and runs. Either way he'l never know anything but fear for as long or as short as he lives.'
She looked at him as he drove off; for the first time he noticed how pale she was. 'And us. We'll be safe, you're sure?'
'I'm sure. When we get home I'll go to see a pal in Whitehall, just to make certain. I've already sent him by courier, via the British Embassy, the item that Clyde Oakdale gave me this afternoon when I passed by him by accident in a crowded shopping mal, out of shot of the video cameras and where we couldn't be overheard by any nearby microphones, like those which are undoubtedly planted in his office.'
She gasped with surprise, then frowned. 'But how did you set a meeting up, without that being overheard?'
'I sent him a text message on his cellphone.'
'You cunning so-and-so,' she exclaimed. 'So what did Clyde give you?'
'A copy of everything in the envelope we left back there. Do you think I'm completely bloody daft?'
'You mean you expected someone to come after me when Clyde gave me the original?'
'No. I knew that someone would come after it, not after you; I just didn't expect it would be so soon, or that the guy who would do it would be the same guy I asked to keep an eye on you after you left Oakdale's office.'
'You mean you asked Brand to look out for me?'
'That's how good he was… or how stupid I was.'
'And Terry's… Brand's people; how will they know about the duplicate?'
'They'l figure out that I wouldn't have given it up unless I had some sort of pretty good insurance.' He looked at her. 'Now trust me on this,' he said, 'with your life and the lives of our kids.'
Sarah was silent for a long time, knowing that he was the only man she had ever met, other than her father, whom she could trust to that extent. 'Since you put it that way, I must,' she murmured, grimly.
They drove on in silence for a while, back to the Walkers' home. 'How much did you overhear back there?' she asked him, eventual y.
'Nothing. I got there just as he was getting ready to shoot you. Why?
Did I miss something?'
'No,' she said. 'Nothing at al.'
76
She had no idea how long she had been sitting there, staring numbly at the wal. Somewhere in the back of her consciousness, she heard the door open again. Somewhere behind her she heard two men enter the room, one of them her husband… she knew the very sound of his footfall… and the other certainly Neil Mcllhenney, for wherever Mario went in a crisis, his friend would not be far away.
But she made no move to turn; she simply sat there, on the edge of the armchair, her father's gun, and his body, at her feet.
'Oh my Lord,' Mcl henney murmured. 'Mario, here's where I disobey orders; this is for you to deal with on your own. If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen, doing something useless.'
McGuire barely heard him; instinctively, he snapped off the light and stepped into the living room. In the second before Neil turned away, she looked round and up, and he saw her face in the moonlight. Her expression made him shudder; it was that of someone he had never seen before, someone who, for al she knew, was ful y dressed and greeting a surprise visitor, not sitting naked on a chair, looking up at her husband as if nothing untoward had happened. Whoever she was, she wasn't Maggie Rose, not as he had ever known her.
'I didn't appreciate…' he heard her begin in a chil ingly calm voice
… not hers, someone else's… as he left Mario to what he had to do.
In the kitchen, he fil ed the kettle, found three mugs and dropped a tea bag into each one; he had no idea why he was doing it, other than to pass the time. He stood there and waited, trying to imagine how Pat Dewberry would embellish her story, now that no one was left alive to contradict her.
They had had no time to arrest her formal y; al they had been able to do was call two constables from the nearest patrol ing car to sit with her until DC Alice Cowan from Mcllhenney's Special Branch team could get there to relieve them.
'Neil.' McGuire's voice came from the hal. Mcllhenney stepped out and found him on the stairs, one hand on Maggie's waist as if he was steering her. He had put her bathrobe around her shoulders, but it hung loose on her
