Emerald Decision

obviously and for such a pathetic motive that he was dangerous unless she suggested — even though she hated — that much compromise — that he was back in favour, that McBride had been a necessary stratagem and nothing more. She picked up bacon, eggs, lard, two cartons of UHT milk, some more coffee — they were running low — and a bag of sugar, had to buy a plastic carrier-bag which advertised English apples, and came out of the shop regretting she had left her sunglasses in the car, shading her eyes against the bright morning sun — which gleamed off the chrome and blue-white paintwork of the police car across the main street of the village, parked outside the black-and-white pub. And a white Jaguar with the vivid orange flash of a motorway patrol stood behind the Panda car. Claire Drummond clutched her throat, stood very still, and studied the village street.

Just the four policemen from the two cars, studying a map across the bonnet of the smaller police car, two of them smoking. One of them pointed up the street out of the village, towards Cheltenham. She began walking, not too quickly, slow down, along the opposite pavement towards the car park at the back of the main street. She did not hurry — slow down, slow down — but something about her manner or appearance or the way she could not help hunching against recognition might have betrayed her—

But she turned the corner out of sight of the police without a restraining cry, or following heavy footsteps. She got into the car, shaking from head to foot, and fumbled the key into the ignition. She drove jerkily to the barrier, as if the choke did not function, and reached out to insert the coin, stretching her arm and cursing because she had parked badly, then dropping the tenpenny piece. She made to get out of the car, and it stalled — she'd left it in gear — picked up the coin, fed it into the coin-slot, and the barrier swung up.

She took three attempts to restart the engine, jerked the gear-stick into first, let out the clutch and jerked forward under the raised barrier. Perspiration dampened her upper lip and her hands on the wheel and made her blouse sticky inside her sweater. She pulled forward to the junction of the alley with the main street. The police car — the motorway patrol — passed her as she waited to pull out, and the policeman in the passenger seat stared at her. Her face felt naked and gleaming in the bright sunlight coming through the windscreen. His eyes transferred to the numberplate of the car and then he was out of sight until she turned out into the main street. She watched her rear-view mirror as she drove out of Andoversford.

No police car followed her as she turned off the A436 up the narrow side-road to the cottage.

* * *

Walsingham listened to the radio traffic at the other end of the mobile HQ the Gloucestershire Constabulary had set up in the middle of the village of Shipton, less than two miles from the cottage which contained the people he sought. The report of a car driven by a woman who answered Claire Drummond's description had been passed immediately, on Walsingham's intervention, to the spotter helicopter diverted from motorway traffic checks on the M4. The helicopter had not, as yet, picked up the Volvo on any of the main roads around Andoversford, and Walsingham waited with an edginess he could not quite despise. They had narrowed the area just by sighting the car — he had no doubt it was Drummond's daughter, so obsessively single-minded had he become in the sleepless hours after the killings — and it would only be minutes before the car was spotted. Nevertheless, he shifted on his chair, and listened intently to the radio traffic. The ACC for Gloucestershire was in one of the other two caravans, checking the co-ordination of search reports inside his designated circle ten miles in diameter. Walsingham knew they would have to request army help by the afternoon, unless—

'Eagle to Mother.'

'Go ahead, Eagle.'

Walsingham savoured the code names like distinct tastes on his tongue — Eagle sharp, acid, Mother sweet with anticipation.

'Green Volvo spotted turning off A436, two miles north-east of Andoversford.'

Tell them to keep well away!' Walsingham shouted down the length of the caravan, already hot inside from the Indian-summer sun beating down on it. The police radio operator was startled, and looked up at a chief inspector in uniform who nodded without expression on his face.

'Do not close, Eagle—'

'What do you think we are? We're well back. There's a cottage up ahead of the car—'

'Where is that?' Walsingham asked, joining the chief inspector at a map pinned to board along one wall of the caravan. The police officer pointed out Andoversford, then traced the red line of the A436, then the narrow yellow thread of the track. He ran one fingernail up the map, and tapped it.

'About there, sir.'

The car's definitely stopping, turning into the gate of the cottage — shit! — we've banked away sharply, and we're out of sight. Orders, Mother?'

Tell them to circle the cottage, but to keep as much out of sight as possible,' Walsingham instructed and while his orders were being relayed, he said to the inspector, 'Let's get men up there at once, Inspector. Guns, and tear-gas.'

'Sir.'

* * *

She found Moynihan bathing his head and face with cold water, and knew at once what had happened. She could almost hear McBride needling him, bringing him closer—

'You bloody fool, where is he?'

'He's gone — Claire, I'm sorry, he—'

'You idiot! You absolute turd' He was all we had. How can we do anything now?' She realized she was shaking him, his hangdog face like a backward child's puzzled and hurt and about to cry. She despised him, and sensed his dependence at the same time. She turned away from him, wanting to scream, to rage. 'We've lost everything — it's all been for nothing!

'Please, Claire—'

'For God's sake what's-the-matter-with-you?' She turned on him, and in the silence as she took in his hurt, beaten face almost unable to register emotional pain, so puffed and misshapen was it, she heard the first distant police siren. He seemed not to hear it, only respond blinkingly to the chalky pallor of her features, wonder at the hand that dabbed round her mouth like a bird seeking a nest. 'No—' she murmured at last, running for the door. The siren was loud now, and there was another, more distant one accompanying it, coming from the A436. She opened the door, and saw a police Rover pulling into and across the gate. The driver and the two other policemen all descended on the far side of the car, and she could see the rifles.

She ducked back inside, slamming the door behind her, rolling her body to the shelter of the wall. Moynihan was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at her, wet hair lank on his forehead, ridiculous broken nose and puffed lips still trying to form adequate expressions. She waited for him to blame her as the second siren wound down the scale and a third member of the sudden chorus wailed more distantly. Then he shrugged, almost pleased that they were trapped there together.

He crossed to the window, something momentous having been decided between them, and peered round the faded curtain. Two cars, one across the gateway and the other a little down the track, its nose poking up over the rise like a scouting animal's — then the police Range Rover disgorging four men who cut through the nearest trees towards the rear of the cottage. Mere details. He looked at Claire, and nodded in expectation. She had moved to the side window of the sitting-room, where she could see the old man in the heavy, burdening fawn topcoat and trilby hat. She sensed his importance, perhaps even his implacability. She returned Moynihan's nod.

Moynihan smiled, then knocked out a pane of the window, and fired immediately through the hole, two shots. Claire saw a head duck back down, the party by the Range Rover scatter, then the rifles returned fire, the heavy bullets shattering the windows, plucking plaster in shards and lumps from the far wall of the room. One whined up the chimney, after ricocheting. No warning, no call to surrender through a loudspeaker, no dispositions for a siege. Claire knew they were not intended to survive. She looked at Moynihan, who loosened off three more shots from the Browning he'd hidden in the cottage weeks before. He yelled with pleasure — she saw a police marksman holding a reddening limp arm behind the Rover. She fired through her own glassless window, bullets skittering from the Astra off the bonnet and bodywork of the Range Rover, starring the windscreen.

Another volley of shots rattled in the room, making their bodies shudder with anticipation.

'I'll watch the back!' Moynihan called, and moved on all fours out of the sitting-room. She watched him go almost with affection. She heard the kitchen window knocked out, but the fusillade of rule shots preceded, drowned, canceled any fire from his pistol. In the silence, she waited fearfully — then she heard one shot from the pistol, and