A Line in the Sand (15 page)

enough. He had needed the last shot, and they'd given it him. He 91

was

thirty-seven hits out of fifty shots, the bare minimum. The

bullet-hole on the line had saved him... He'd sweated. There had

been

one little bastard, off an armed-response vehicle, arrogant sod, who had gained maximum score first time round and who had watched his

final

scrape through with a smirk... Damn all use as a protection officer if

he couldn't shoot straight. He'd been toying with a bacon sandwich in

the canteen, his hands still shaking, when he'd been called to the telephone.

And the day hadn't finished with Bill Davies. The superintendent

wanted him back in London, on to the Branch floor at Scotland Yard.

A

file was thrown at him. He'd been given two hours to digest it;

should

have been two days. He had speed-read it, "Techniques of Iranian Terrorism (Europe)', when he ought to have been on the touchline

watching his son. Then they'd thrown him the principal's file and given him thirty minutes when it should have been a full day. And when

he should have been at the flower stall at Victoria Station shelling out for the biggest peacemaker bouquet they could put together, he'd been with his signed authority down in the basement armoury, drawing the kit, the Glock, the Glock's ammunition and the heavier firepower.

And there wouldn't be a call to a restaurant to reserve a corner table with lit candles.

The bloody awful day was coming to an end as he'd driven down the

narrow straight road into the village on the north Suffolk coast.

He sat on the concrete and metal bench on the green. Later, he would sorbed the smell,

find a bed-and-breakfast, but not before he had ab

pace and habit of the village. He sat on the bench with his raincoat folded on his lap and his Glock in his shoulder holster under his

suit

nt with

jacket as the light fell on his day. Bloody awful days we

the

job of protection officer and were commonplace in the life of

Detective

Sergeant Bill Davies.

Frank and Meryl walked back into the village as the dusk shadows

92

thickened.

His arm was on her hip and her hand was against his waist. They had o each other on the beach before turning for home. Vince,

clung t

coming back to the village in his van,

raucous

saw them and played a

nfare on his horn. It was as if they were youngsters, in love,

fa

and

didn't care who saw them.

, cycling back, stinking, from the

Gussie

ggery, wolf-whistled.

pi

lled past Rose Cottage, and the dark, lifeless windows

They stro

beyond

e sign.

the for-sal

Perry thought it wouldn't be long before lights

blazed there, like a new dawn for a new family. Maybe there would be a

new guy to drink with in the pub, a new friend for Meryl, new kids for

Stephen to mess with. Not that he and Meryl were short of friends, and

that was why they were staying. The cottage was chilly and

coming, and he hurried her on.

unwel

up the contact.

They kept

Dominic, sad and gay, rolled his eyebrows

gently and made a small grimace as he closed down his shop for the day.

The lie was dead. The vicar, Mr. Hackett, strode past them, lifted his cap and smiled. He held her, she held him, because they needed each other and had nowhere else to run. They reached home and

squeezed

through the gate because neither would release the other.

A man was sitting on the bench on the green. He looked like a salesman killing time before yet another cold call.

In the kitchen surrounded by his school-books, Stephen saw them come in

and the light spread in his eyes. The poison was gone. It was their home, their castle. Perry had convinced her that they had only tried to scare him so that it would be easier for them, and that the danger was not real. In the kitchen, in front of Stephen, he kissed her.

Back in Newbury, his wife used to complain to anyone who'd listen

that

her husband didn't notice women. On trips away and in the office

he

had never played around because the job consumed him. That first

93

time

he'd met Meryl, as he was trying to put some purpose back into his existence, he'd noticed her as a damaged kindred spirit. Getting

his

coat off the hook in the outer office where she sat, he'd seen her loneliness. It had been in her eyes and her careworn mouth, and he'd blurted out that since he might be coming back a few times they might as well get to know each other and he'd asked her for a drink. She'd hesitated and he'd apologized for his forwardness, and then she'd

said

there was time for a quick one when the works closed for the day.

Their

first drink and the attempts to find common ground had made them like a

pair on an initial singles-club meeting. It had been a strange

chemistry, stilted conversation, but each recognized the wounded

solitariness of the other. Dinners had followed, and pecks on the cheek, and both of them had realized that they needed the other to put

some foundation into their lives. They'd bought the house on the

green

together, furnished it and moved in. The first night there, with

the

wind on the windows, and Stephen in the next room, they'd slept

together and loved each other.

It had been accepted by both from the start, that their previous lives secrets.

harboured

The ground rules were set: no inquisitions, no

interrogations.

She didn't ask where he'd come from, why he had no

anniversaries, no relations sending him cards and letters. He

didn't

quiz her on Stephen's father. They buried their past under their

new

happiness and mutual dependence. He could justify to himself the

cordoned-off areas of his life. He was a changed man. If anyone

from

the old Newbury office, a one-time colleague of Gavin Hughes, had

met

Frank Perry, they wouldn't have known him. But the past seemed now to

rush around him, and he wondered whether an old lie was replaced by a

new one.

At the last light of the day, going to get a story-book for Stephen from the living room, he paused and looked out of the window. The 94

man

the suit, the stranger, with a raincoat loose on his lap, remained in

motionless on the bench on the green.

Chapter Five.

The door opened, and he held up his warrant card. In better times Lily

at

had said it was a rotten photo that didn't do him justice; th

rning, like as not, she would have said it flattered him.

mo

He was

tall, had no surplus weight, with a pale face and cheeks drawn in

under

the bones. His nose and chin were over-prominent, his hair was dark, t, and his light blue eyes were dominant.

cut shor

He said briskly,

"Morning, Mr. Perry. I'm Detective Sergeant Bill Davies."

He could hear a child's and a woman's voice in the depths of the house.

He saw Perry's jaw fall and then tighten. There was never a right time

to start the process of protection. He thought of himself as a shadow cast over the principal's life; he could have come in the late

n as the family was preparing for supper and television, or

afternoo

in

the evening when they were readying for bed, or early in the morning re was

when they were starting a day at the breakfast table, but the

never a best time to arrive on a stranger's doorstep.

"They called you last night, yes? Sorry it had to be the duty officer,

but my guvnor tried to reach you in the afternoon and you weren't

at

home. Sorry it worked out like that."

yone called by the night duty officer the guvnor, the

God help an

superintendent, would have been familiar with tact, might have

thought

through what was appropriate to say, and certainly would have had

the

file to dictate his tone. But not the NDO. It would have been blunt the point what the protection officer's name was, at what time

and to

he was arriving, and goodnight.

Perry swivelled, looked behind him, back towards the kitchen door

and

the voices.

95

Davies said, with confidence, "Just getting the lad off to school?

It's

Stephen, Mrs. Perry's lad, right? If you don't want me around for the

moment that's no problem, Mr. Perry. I can wait till he's on his way,

and then we'll do the business. I've got my car here, I can sit

e."

ther

s all about getting off to the right start.

It wa

It didn't work if

the

refused to co-operate with the protection officer. He

principal

needed, from the beginning, to set the tone of the relationship. No or diving in, breaking the routine of the family, jarring them,

call f

fences because there was a lingering bitterness.

then having to mend

st principals, in his experience, were frightened half to death

Mo

when

first came to their homes. The women were worse, and the kids

he

were

e big problem, always the headache. Best to go gentle. If his

th

ve been a few crumbs of detail on

guvnor had called there would ha

y

wh

the threat had ratcheted up, but there'd have been none from the night duty officer.

he principals were never given the full picture, not

T

even senior persons in government, certainly not judges and civil

servant

rators

administ

and this principal, Perry, was only a civilian

with a past and he would get no detail. The threat was not a matter te and discussion.

for deba

had worked late into the night in his room at the

He

,

bed-and-breakfast

and early in the morning before his breakfast, on the file and the village. He'd had the electoral list, the large-scale map that

showed

every house, digests of police and local-authority files on

residents,

written names against houses.

and had

Only one property, currently

for

s unoccupied. With that mass of information digested, he

sale, wa

had

lan of how they would work together, him and the principal.

made the p

e in my car, Mr. Perry."

"I'll b

Perry said, in a low voice, "My wife knows, the boy does not."

96

"That's not a problem. We'll let him get off to school, then we'll talk."

"He's being picked up, the school-run, in about five minutes."

"You know where to find me, Mr. Perry."

There was a shout from the kitchen, from the woman, about the door being open. Who was there? Perry turned and yelled back into the depth of the house that he wouldn't be a moment. There was defiance in

his face; there usually was at the start from the principals.

"I'll see you in a few minutes, Bill..."

"Detective Sergeant or Mr. Davies, please, and you are Mr. Perry and

your wife is Mrs. Perry it's the way we do it." He said it

brusquely,

coldly. There wasn't call in the job for familiarity. What they

said

at the Yard, in the SB protection unit, get too close and the principal starts to run the show. That would not happen with Bill Davies's

principal. He had a job to do, he was a paid hand, and it mattered not

a damn whether he liked or disliked the man. He would tell him later about the workmen and the technicians, who would be crawling round the

house by late morning, up the walls, through the rooms, in the garden.

There was no soft way of making a start.

"The neighbours don't know."

"No reason why they should we're used to discretion. The less they know the better."

Perry frowned. He was a moment summoning up the question, then

rushed

it.

"Are you armed?"

"Of course."

"Has the situation got worse?"

97

"The doorstep isn't the place to discuss it. When you're ready, come and get me out of the car."

The door closed on him. Of course he was bloody armed. Perry would have said all the brave things when the Thames House people had come on

their visit and been rejected. Now, he would be realizing where the brave things had led him.

Davies sat in his car. He had a good view of the house, and the green in front of it, the road and the homes on the far side of the house, the sea. The car was from the pool. It looked like any other

Vauxhall

sold for company fleet driving, but it had the big radio with a pre-set console linking Davies to the SB's operations centre, a fire

guisher, and the box with the comprehensive first-aid

extin

equipment.

a metal container, reached by lifting the rear seat central arm

In

rest, was a compact case holding a Heckler & Koch machine-gun, with ition and magazines, and a dozen CS gas grenades.

ammun

In the boot

was

age-intensifier sight for the

an im

K, a monocular night-sight, a bullet-proof square of reinforced

H&

they called the ballistic blanket, the gas masks and