A Line in the Sand (44 page)

blackberry

pie to him.

He said his name was Blackmore. There were half-emptied packing

cases

in the hall behind him. He told her no more about himself other than name.

his

A woman came down the stairs, picked her way between the

rolled carpets and the boxes, but the man did not introduce her and 290

rdly held the pie he had been given.

awkwa

attered.. . Her name, where she lived, the societies and

Peggy ch

groups in the village... The woman had a sallow skin, a foreigner, from the Mediterranean.. . The bus timetable, the early

perhaps

the village, the walks,

closing day in the town, the best builder in

the milk delivery... Neither the man nor the woman responded... The ut of the village, the pub, the hall, the shop, the green -and

lay-o

they should not go near the green because of the disgraceful attitude le who lived there, endangered the whole community,

of the peop

t for

protected by guns, showed no respec

the safety of the village...

e man shrugged limply as if to indicate that he had work to be

Th

d passed the pie to the woman behind him.

getting on with, an

ds to take it, Peggy saw, very clearly

When she reached out her han

at

th

the woman had no nails on the tips of her fingers and thumbs. Peggy's inted sharp red to match her lipstick, but where the

nails were pa

dried, wrinkled skin.

woman's nails should have been there was only

and unlikely to

She came away feeling that they were uninteresting

contribute to the life pulse of the village, and that her pie was

wasted on them.

"Show me."

She had waited all through the night in the car, huddled in the

seat.

passenger

As she had waited, her mind had been churned with

the

torment of her split identity. The quiet had been broken by the owls, and once a fox shadow had passed close. She had sat, hunched, cold, and waited. She remembered Yusuf's kindness, and the calmness of

the

teaching of Sheik Amir Muhammad, and the strength given her by the lim faith, and she thought of the confidence

conversion to the Mus

that

the name Farida Yasmin had brought to her. It was as if

the old world,

the existence of Gladys Eva Jones, demeaned and diminished her.

Again

and again, alone, she murmured the name that had given her strength and

confidence. Without it, she was base and trivial. The old world

was

lustful and cheap, the new world proud and worthwhile.

291

"Show the wound to me."

Through the night she had listened for the crack of distant gunfire and

heard only the owls.

she had

e hours had slipped away, so her anxiety for him had increased,

As th

nagging and worrying at her, until she could no longer bear the

ss of the vigil. She had felt an increasing sense of

loneline

disaster

.

breaking

In the dawn light she had left the car and tried to trace

the route he had taken her the day before. In Fen Covert,

she'd avoided fallen dead branches, stepped lightly on the leaves

and

not scuffed them, kept wide from the path, as he'd shown her, and

she

had heard the baying of big dogs. Then she had walked more quickly and

her anxiety for him had been at fever point. Across the marshes,

d Covert, she had been able to see right to the tower of

beyond Ol

the

age church. The early sun gleamed on the river that ran from

vill

the

marshes, and by the river were the dogs.

Behind the dogs, controlling them, were the handlers. Behind the

, guarding them, were the marksmen with the guns on which

handlers

the

ng telescopic sights were mounted.

bulgi

They hunted for him. They

had

lled him, and the knowledge of his survival brought pricking

not ki

tears of happiness to Farida Yasmin's cheeks.

"You don't have to be shy but you have to show me where you are hurt so

I can help."

un had risen and the clouds

While the s

had gathered off the sea and

chased it, the dogs had tracked back on the riverbank, then searched from it, and she'd known they'd lost the scent.

away

When the cloud

had crossed the sun, and the greyness had dulled the marsh reeds,

she

had seen the handlers call off the dogs. But she had taken note of he marksmen settled, where they watched from after the dogs

where t

had

292

gone. She had kept in the trees. She had gone into the woodland

of

Fen Hill.

Because of what she had endured, the anxiety, her anger snapped.

"Fine, so you won't show me where, so you don't want help well, get up,

keep walking, turn your back on it, go home. Don't think about me, what I've done."

If it had not been for the bird Farida Yasmin would not have found him.

It had lifted off, flapped away, cried, then circled the bramble clump into which he'd crawled. He had seemed to be sleeping, which had

amazed her because his face was furrowed in pain. She had wriggled on

her stomach into the back of the thicket and been within arm's reach of

him when he had woken, jerked up, slashed his face on the thorn barbs, gasped, grabbed at her, recognized her and then his eyes had closed, his body had arched as if the pain ran rivers in him. He had told her

of his failure, of the car, the lost rifle. The words had been

whispered and his head stayed down.

She whipped him with her hissed words, "Because of you what I've done for you I've police waiting for me. I'm on the line for you. Are you

staying or are you going? Are you going to let me treat your wound or

not?"

The rent was at the side of his fatigue trousers. The car must have caught his hip and upper thigh, ripping the seam of his trousers at the

pocket. She had seen the long distance he had come, from where the that

dogs had lost his scent to Fen Hill. He could not have come

far

with a broken femur or fractured pelvis.

Farida Yasmin thought the failure would have hurt him the worst.

Her hands trembled as she reached for his belt, unfastened it and

dragged down the zip. It was hard to pull down.

s were

The trouser

sodden wet. She crouched low above him, under the roof of bramble 293

and

thorn, then pushed her arm under the small of his back and lurched his

buttocks clear of the ground. He didn't fight her as she dragged

the

trousers down towards his knees.

She saw the mottled purple and yellow bruising.

She saw the hair at the pit of his stomach, the limit of the bruising, and the small contracted penis. He stared up at her.

Her fingers, so gently, touched the bruise and she felt him wince.

She

tried to soothe his pain. She told him of the dogs and where the

marksmen were. She told him what she would do and how she would help him. Her fingers played on the bruising and caught the hairs and

she

saw him stiffen. It was where her fingers had never been before.

His

breathing came more slowly, as if the pain lightened. It was what the

girls had talked about in the schoolyard, and in the coffee shop at the

university, and in the canteen at work, and then she, the virgin,

had

thought their talk disgusting. Her fingers caressed the bruising

as

his fingers had stroked the neck of the bird.

The voices were soft, atmospheric, metallic, coming over the monitor.

t know whether she can take it, not much more."

"I don'

ssure you, Mr.

"I have to a

Perry, that your security is constantly

under review."

d known, realized, what I said to you and that jerk who came

"If I'

with

you, what it meant, Geoff what it would do to me, and, more important, do to her..."

what it would

re now two more ARVs sorry, that's armed-response vehicles

"There a

in

the village, four in total, and eight highly trained men. That's

in

294

on to Mr.

additi

Davies and Mr. Blake, and the men in the shed. You

should see it, Mr. Perry, as a ring of steel dedicated to you and your

family's safety."

In the hut, the speaker was turned down low. Paget was eating

, Rankin watched the screen and flicked between the image

sandwiches

of

garden and the front door, while they listened to the two

the rear

men

talk.

dy changed your tune. Why?"

"You've bloo

"There are questions I cannot answer."

"That's convenient."

"You have to believe, Mr. Perry, that everything that should be done ing done. Look, take last night, a professional and expert

is be

defence-' "Are you serious? It was fucking chaos."

After the han dover and the debrief, Joe Paget and Dave Rankin had been

up into the small hours going through, in exact and minute detail, moment of the alert.

every

Had the camera given them a target? Why

was the next garden not covered by the beams? Why had they not moved frame from the side of the house?

the cold

They had been close to,

bloody disaster, Rankin had said, maybe a few seconds off it, and

Paget

hadn't disagreed.

"That's not the way Mr. Davies reported it."

"What the hell do you expect him to say?

up.

Grow

Get real! She

n't take the punishment, not much longer."

ca

e've made our commitment, Mr. Perry."

"W

I told you and that jerk we were staying, it was because I

"When

g friends. That's the worst."

believed we were amon

"Don't you read newspapers? It's how people behave when they're afraid

each week it's in your newspapers. A family have a child recovered from

itis

mening

and they're about to fly back from a sunshine holiday,

295

but the other passengers won't travel with them for fear of infection.

They're bumped off the flight, no charity. How many examples do you want? It doesn't matter where

you are. An American Navy ship shoots

down an Iranian passenger aircraft, and it's a mistake, but the

r driven by the

Iranians don't accept apologies and bomb the ca

captain's wife on some smart street in San Diego. The detonator was incorrectly wired. She lives, but she's chucked out of her job,

she's

a pariah and might endanger others. I can reel them off. It's a

herd

mentality. The fear makes them vicious, dictates they turn on the victim. It's human nature, Mr. Perry..."

There was the squeak of the planks at the door of the hut. Rankin swung, Paget gulped on the last of his sandwich. Meryl Perry was

in

the doorway.

On the speaker was Markham's metallic voice. '... I suppose it's

so

because

few people, these days, ever get really tested that they're

so scared of the unpredictable."

Her tone was dead, flat, like her eyes and the pallor of her cheeks.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, I came for Stephen's tractor."

Paget remembered her screams over the detective's radio, and Rankin had

heard them as he had tried to get round the house and fouled up in the

cold frame. Paget scrambled to kill the speaker. Rankin groped

under

his chair and found the boy's tractor.

"Do you always listen to us? Is everything we say, Frank and I, listened to?"

rteen.

oment, Meryl hated them.

At that m

"Do you hear everything? What I say to Frank, what he says to me, are

you listening? Is that how you spend your days?"

She could hear the rising pitch of her own voice. Paget wiped old 296

umbs from his mouth and looked away from her.

cr

Rankin passed her

Stephen's tractor. She snatched it.

r, they were huge, dark

To he

apes

sh

in the baggy boiler suits with the big vests over their chests.

r than Frank, and they seemed not to

They were older than her, olde

re.

ca

Standing at the door before they'd known she was there, she'd

to

seen one of them grin at the smooth reassurance being dished out

ank.

Fr

ou get a big laugh out of what we say. Do you snigger when you

"Y

hear

bed? Not much noise when we're in bed, is there?"

us in

trol was gone. Meryl was over the edge. They would think

Her con

her

upid, or just a woman. They would wonder why she

hysterical, st

didn't

st shut up, start the ironing, do the dusting, make the beds.

ju

She

rself.

squeezed the tractor in her hand, tighter, hurting he

Nobody

ld her anything. The wheels fell off the tractor. When any of

to

them

lked

ta

to Frank, and she came close, they stopped, and Frank cut short