A Line in the Sand (7 page)

de, there's not really much point in me sitting here.

ma

Resources

don't grow on trees. Franldy, it's pathetic that a man at risk cannot uaded to move to a safer berth." The superintendent from

be pers

Special Branch spoke. He had come into the room and jerked off his jacket, ready for a fight. He was already bored. Geoff Markham knew the spat for influence between the Branch and the Services was already 39

explosive. It amused him to watch.

"Fatal, the use of businessmen, never worth it," Cox mumbled.

"He's simply a silly little man without the wit to know when he's being

offered common sense," Harry Fenton said.

"But we, dammit, are obliged to react."

"I'll need some facts, if it's to come out of my budget," the superintendent shot back.

So, pass the load to Geoff Markham. The junior would write a report, and decisions could be suspended until it was circulated. Beside

his

doodles of Victorian gravestones, with a couple of church steeples, he

wrote down Penny Flowers's extension number at Vauxhall Bridge Cross and the policeman's number at Scotland Yard. He left them, as a

whisky

bottle was lifted out of the cabinet, and went back to his cubbyhole between the partitions on the outer walls of the open-plan area used by

G/4.

There was a photograph, blown up by the copier, above his desk. The Ayatollah Khomeini glowered down at him, fixed him with a cold,

unwavering stare. It was good to have the picture. It helped him to

understand: the image on the wall was better than anything he read or

was told. It was a snapshot to suspicion and hostility. He rang

Vicky

to tell her he couldn't make dinner. She was giving him the

treatment,

and he put the phone down on her, didn't bother to continue a scrap with her. He opened the file on his desk and gazed at the three

useless sheets of paper that dealt with an identity change five years previously. Nothing was in the file about a life and a name before that change. They'd gone down to the country at half cock, under

prepared the familiar story. He rang Vicky back, made his peace,

and

said at what time he would meet her.

40

wrote on a sheet of paper the questions he would have to answer

He

if

rite a decent report. What was the history of Frank

he were to w

Perry?

What had he done and when did he do it? What were the consequences of

Frank Perry's actions?

?

What should be the threat-level assessment

the American information? What was the

What was the source of

metable for an attempt at a killing? The one thing he wouldn't

ti

write

he'd rather liked Frank Perry.

was that

The area was quiet, the partitioned sections either side of him empty.

above him peered down.

The face

The eyes, long dead, preserved in

the

aph, were without mercy. He rang Registry, told them what

photogr

he

needed. Geoff Markham lived a good safe life, and he wondered how it

e if he were alone and threatened by the enmity of those eyes.

would b

ked along Main Street.

He wal

The rain had eased, left only a trace

in

the

ng

gatheri

wind. There were few street-lights and no cars moving.

did not know what he would tell her or when.

He

He could recall each

day and each hour, five years back, of the first month after he had left the cul-de-sac house in Newbury with his two suitcases; two days with the minders in an empty officer's quarters in the garrison camp at

four days with the minders in a furnished house at the

Warminster;

Clifton end of Bristol; five days with the minders in a hotel on hard side Norwich, after which they had left. Two more days,

times out

alone, in that hotel, then three weeks in a guest-house in

Bournemouth,

then the start of the search for something permanent, and the

absorption of the new identity, the move to a flat in south-east

London. In those first days, he had felt a desperate sense of shamed loneliness, had yearned to call his wife and son, the partners at

the

office, the customers in his appointments diary. In those endless gs on his new identity, for hour after hour, Penny Flowers

briefin

had

demanded he put the old life behind him. She had no small-talk, but emphasized coldly, and reiterated, that if he broke cover he would be

found, and if he were found he would be killed. And then she'd gone 41

with the minders, had cut him off, left him, and the night they had gone he, a grown man, had wept on his bed.

"Evening, Frank."

He spun, coiled, tense. He gazed at the shadow.

"Only me seen a ghost? Sorry, did I startle you? It's Dominic."

you did obvious, was it?"

"Afraid

I was going to shoot you.

"Like

Just taking the dog out.. . I hear

ay.

Peggy's lumbered Meryl with the typing for the Wildlife Field D

good of her.

It's very

I was doing the group's accounts this evening

your donation was really generous, thanks. Prefer to say it myself send a little letter."

than just

"Don't think about it."

"It's worth saying. It was a good day when you and Meryl came here ed in as easily."

wish all the "foreigners" slott

"We love it here."

"Can't beat friends, can you?"

"No, I don't think you can."

"Well, we've had our little piddle, time to be getting back, and sorry I startled you Oh, did Meryl tell you about the field day, for the Wildlife, in May? And the RSPB lecture we've got coming up? Hope you

can come to both. We're doing the marsh harriers on Southmarsh for the

field day any time now they're back from Africa. It's an incredible migration fierce little brutes, killers, but beautiful with it.

Better

be getting back. Goodnight, Frank."

The footsteps shuffled away into the night. Dominic seemed to love the

dog as much as he did Euan.

lked on and took the path beside

Perry wa

the course of the old river, now silted and narrow, and across the nd sliding, over

north edge of Southmarsh. He climbed, slipping a

the

42

up and went down on to the

huge barrier of stones the sea had thrown

ach. His feet gouged in the sand, wet from the receding tide.

be

From

tween the fast cloud that carried the last of the slashing rain

be

moonlight pierced the darkness around him. The silence was broken ly

on

by the hissing of the sea on the shingle. He scanned for a ship's s, but there was nothing.

light

He did not know what he would tell

her

or what she should know of the future.

of the past, n

walked in the darkness, grinding his feet into the fine pebbles

He

and

ied shells.

the empt

He turned his back to the sea. The great black

holes of Southmarsh and Northmarsh were around the clustered lights of

the village. He felt a sense of safety, of belonging. It was his He moved on, retraced his steps, and came back into the

home.

llage.

vi

rds him, a bouncing torch beam lit

Brisk footsteps were hurrying towa

e pavement, then soared and found his face.

th

o, Frank, it's Basil.

"Hell

Choir practice drifted on, why I'm late

out, and same as you, I suppose I felt like a prisoner in the vicarage with that

adful

dre

rain today. Got to get out, get a bit of air before

bed."

"Evening, Mr. Hackett."

"Please, Frank, not the formality, not among friends even those, me, whom I do not see on Sundays!"

forgive

eserved slap on the wrist."

"A d

worry it's what people do that matters, not where they're

"Not to

seen

.

to be

If all my worshippers were as involved in the welfare of the

village as you and Meryl,

be

I'd

a happier man... You look a bit drawn,

d bad news?"

ha

thing's fine."

"Every

I forget, I hear Meryl's visiting Mrs.

"Before

Hopkins. She's very

kind, a great help to that lady, awful when arthritis cripples an

man and I've got you down for churchyard grass-cutting this

active wo

summer, on my rota."

43

"No problem."

"Well, bed beckons.

"Night, Frank."

"Goodnight."

He walked across the wet grass of the green towards the light above the

front door and his home. He still did not know what he would tell her

or when.

Chapter Three.

The atmosphere hung like gas, poisoned, in the house, and had for

three

days and three evenings. It clung to the rooms, eddied into each

corner, was inescapable. They went their own ways, as if the

atmosphere dictated that they should separate themselves from each other. The stench of the silence they carried with them was in the furniture, in their clothes, and had seeped to their minds.

He stood on the green, beyond his front gate, and gazed out over the rooftops towards the expanse of the gunmetal grey sea.

Stephen came down the stairs each morning, gulped half of his usual breakfast, and waited by the door for his mother to take him to school, or by the gate for the other half of the school-run to collect him.

He

came home in the afternoons and bolted for his room, came down for supper, then fled upstairs again. The atmosphere between his mother and his stepfather had filtered into his room. Twice, from the

bottom

of the stairs, Perry had heard him weeping.

It was a bright morning, there would be rain later, and the wind

brought a chill from the east.

Since he had pleaded for time Meryl had not spoken of his problem.

She

was brisk with him, and busy. She called shrilly to him for his

meals,

dumped his food in front of him, made sharp, meaningless conversation 44

while they ate. It was as if they competed to be the first to finish what she had cooked so that the charade of normality might be over more

quickly. If he spread work papers on the table in the kitchen then she

was in the living room with her embroidery. If she had an excuse

to be

out, she took it, spent all of one of the three days helping with

the

nursery class and staying late at school to scrub the floor. He knew that she loved the house and the village, and that she feared that both

were being pulled, by the poison, from her. They slept at night in the

same bed, back to back, apart. The space between them was cold. She had looked into his face once, the only time that her eyes had flared in anger, when she'd pushed him aside and run up the stairs to her son's room, in answer to his weeping.

He watched the gulls flying lazily over the sea, and felt jealous

that

such matters did not trouble them.

His life, many times, in those three days, played in Frank Perry's mind. He remembered his many friends at Shiraz, where the gases were fore the project's move to Bandar Abbas, where the warheads

mixed, be

nds there.

were constructed, and more frie

They had entertained him

and

kissed his cheeks when he gave them gifts, and were deceived. At

the

thought of his betrayal, he screamed silently across the

winter-yellowed grass of the green, and the rooftops where the first smoke of the day crawled from the chimneys, and the open depth of

the

as not his fault: he hadn't been given a chance to do

sea. It w

otherwise.

r

Emma Carstairs drove up, smiling and chirpy. She pushed the doo

open

and belted her horn. Stephen ran past, without looking at him, and dived for the car as if to escape.

Frank heard Meryl's brisk shout behind him. The car drove away.

There

was a call for him. The Home Office in London. He went back into the

45

her washing up the breakfast things. She hadn't

house and heard

asked

m why the Home Office had rung. He picked up the telephone.

hi

e a Philby or a George Blake. Bettany, who had rotted

He felt lik

in

Official Secrets Act sentence, would have felt like this

gaol on an

k

when he'd made his first communication with the Soviets. He too

the

one card from his wallet. Geoff Markham had come out of Thames

ph

House, doubled back behind the building, scurried up Horseferry Road e first bank of telephones.

for th

The brewery answered, through to

Marketing, a shout for Vicky. He felt he was breaking faith, and

the

furtiveness exhilarated him. He told her that the bank was giving him

an interview for a place in investment brokerage; his application

had

been short listed down to the last three. She squealed, she said

he

was brilliant. He gave her the details. She growled that she would r him if he blew it and started on about her teaching

bloody murde