At Risk (40 page)

F
araj watched dispassionately as Jean, kneeling naked to the waist on the flagstoned towpath beneath the bridge, bent forward to rinse her hair in the river. Beyond the arches of the bridge lay a grey, baleful dawn. It was 9 a.m., and very cold. Jean’s fingers scrabbled methodically at her scalp, a thin soapy cloud drifted downstream, and finally she raised her head and wrung out the dark rope of her hair. Still crouched over the water, she took a plastic comb from the unzipped washbag, and dragged it repeatedly forwards from the nape of her neck until her hair was no longer dripping. Then she shook it out, and pulled her dirty T-shirt back on. Her hands were shaking now after their immersion in the river, her head ached with the cold, and hunger was knotting her guts. It was essential, though, that she be presentable.

It was the day.

Pressing her flattened hands into her armpits to warm them for a moment, she searched in the washbag, found a pair of steel hairdressing scissors, and handed these and the comb to Faraj. Events had taken on a strange clarity. “My turn for a haircut,” she said, a little self-consciously.

He nodded. Frowned as he took the scissors. Flickered them experimentally.

“It’s simple,” she said. “You work from the back to the front, cutting so that every strand”—she held up her index finger—“is this long.”

The frown still in place, Faraj seated himself behind her. Taking the comb and scissors he began to cut, carefully dropping the severed locks into the river as he went. Fifteen minutes later he laid down the scissors.

“Done.”

“How does it look?” she asked. “Do I look different?”

A word of tenderness. A single word would do.

“You look different,” he said brusquely. “Are you ready?”

“I just want to take a last look at the map,” she said, glancing sideways at him. He was not yet thirty, but the stubble on his chin was silver. His face was blank. Reaching for the book, squinting in the dim light, she re-examined the topography of the area. As the crow flew, they were just three miles from the target.

“I’m still worried about the helicopters,” she confessed. “If we go across country and they spot us, we’re finished.”

“It’s less risky than taking another car,” he said. “And if they’re as clever as you say they are, they won’t be searching round here anyway. They’ll be concentrating on the approaches to the US bases.”

“We’re probably fifteen miles from Marwell here,” she admitted. “Maybe sixteen.”

But fifteen or sixteen miles still didn’t seem very far. It was the infrared cameras that she really feared.
Their heat signatures on a screen, two pulsing dots of light growing larger and larger as the beating of the rotors grew louder and louder, roaring now, blotting out all sound and thought . . .

“I think we should walk to West Ford along the towpath,” she said, levelling her voice with a conscious effort. “That way, if we hear any helicopters, we’ve . . . we’ve got a chance of hiding under the next bridge.”

He looked expressionlessly down at her hands, which had begun to shake again. “All right,” he said. “The path, then. Pack the bags.”

I
n the Swanley Heath mess hall, Liz sat in front of an untouched slice of buttered toast and a cup of black coffee. So far, Investigations had turned up nothing of interest concerning any of the names on the Garth House school list. Several of the pupils lived in Norfolk or Suffolk, or had done so at some point in the past, but while most remembered Jean D’Aubigny, none had any significant connection with her. A loner, had been the universal judgement. Someone who was happiest by herself.

And at a school like Garth House, where most of the children would have had problems of one sort or another, the desire for solitude was something you respected, Liz guessed. Children knew when to leave each other alone in a way that adults often didn’t. Mark had rung her the night before but she had left her voice mail to field the call. She would not be returning it.

Investigations had also informed her that the D’Aubigny parents were still refusing to talk, or indeed to assist the police in any way. Reading between the lines, Liz suspected that this was the lawyer’s doing, and that if any pressure was put on the parents—if they were charged with the wilful obstruction of justice, for example—Julian Ledward would use the case as an opportunity for civil rights grandstanding.

And despite an extensive search operation involving several units of the Moroccan police, MI6 had still not located Price-Lascelles. The latest theory, based on the fact that the Garth House headmaster had loaded several spare containers of diesel into his jeep before leaving Azemmour, was that he had not gone to Casablanca, as reported by the house-boy, but had driven up to the Atlas mountains. The search area, Judith Spratt had reported glumly, had expanded to approximately a thousand square miles.

Liz looked around the room. The police and firearms officers were in one group, the Army officers in another, the SAS team in a third. Bruno Mackay, she saw, was standing with the SAS team, and at that moment laughing uproariously at something that Jamie Kersley had just said.

Liz had taken a seat next to PC Wendy Clissold, who had spent much of the meal giggling on her phone. At the table’s far end, a tactful distance away, sat half a dozen excruciatingly polite young Army Air Corps helicopter pilots.

“They reckon today’s the day, then,” said Clissold, “that they’re going to have a bash at that Yank base.”

“That’s what they reckon,” said Liz.

“It’s not what I reckon,” said a familiar voice at her shoulder.

Liz looked round. It was Don Whitten, and he had clearly had a bad night. His eyes were bloodshot and the bags beneath them purplish-grey. The tips of his moustache, by contrast, were yellowed with nicotine.

“Remind me never to join the Army, Clissold. The beds don’t suit me. You’re not allowed to smoke in them, for a kick-off.”

“Isn’t that a violation of your civil rights, Guv’nor?”

“You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?” said Whitten mournfully. He turned to Liz. “How did you do? Accommodation satisfactory?”

“Quite satisfactory, thanks. Our hut was very comfortable. Are you going to have some breakfast?”

Whitten patted his pockets for his cigarettes and peered at the serving counter. “I’m not sure whether all this fried food is appropriate for a fitness guru like myself. I may confine myself to a Filter King and a cup of tea.”

“Go on, Guv’nor. It’s free.”

“True, Clissold. Very true. Have you heard from Brian Mudie this morning?”

“What d’you mean, Guv?”

He looked at her wearily. “When he rings you, tell him I want that inventory on the forensic from the bungalow fire ASAP. Everything. Every button, every razor blade, every Kentucky fried chicken bone. And packaging. I particularly want to know about packaging.”

Clissold looked uneasily at her fingers. “As it happens, I have just been speaking to Sergeant Mudie. They’re still making up the inventory . . .”

“Go on.”

“There was one thing he said . . .”

“Tell me.”

“When you were a kid, Guv, did they have that stuff called Silly Putty? That bouncy stuff you squeeze and . . .”

Whitten seemed to sag in his chair. Beneath the strip lighting, his skin was the colour of a corpse’s. “Tell me,” he repeated.

“More than a dozen melted containers, Guv. All empty.”

His eyes met Liz’s. “How much would that make?” he demanded tonelessly.

“Depends on the size of the containers. Enough to flatten this building, though.”

Wendy looked from one to the other of them, mystified.

“C4 explosive,” explained Liz. “Putty’s one of the principal ingredients. The toy shop sort is best.”

“So what’s the target?” Whitten demanded.

“RAF Marwell seems to be the popular favourite right now.”

“You don’t think that, though?”

“I haven’t got a better suggestion,” said Liz. “And we’ve rather run out of time.”

Whitten shook his head. “That lot over there”—he nodded at the Army officers—“think that Mansoor and D’Aubigny are just going to walk slap-bang into one of our search teams. They’re crediting them with no intelligence whatsoever.” He shrugged. “Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps we’re overcomplicating things. Perhaps the two of them are just going to find the largest concentration of people that they can, and . . .” He made a starburst with his hands. From the Army officers’ table, there was more laughter.

“I told Jim Dunstan,” said Whitten. “I said we wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for you.”

Liz shook her head. “Wouldn’t be where? Inside a razor-wired enclosure trying to pretend we know what we’re doing? Waiting for a couple of trigger-happy maniacs who could be anywhere in East Anglia to do us the favour of showing themselves?”

Whitten regarded her in silence. Liz, angry at herself, took an exploratory bite of her toast, but she seemed to have lost all sense of taste. More than anything she wanted to walk out to her car, and leave. Draw a line under the case. Leave it to the police and the Army. She had done all that she could do.

Except that she knew she hadn’t, quite. There was still a single thread, tenuous but nevertheless logical, to be followed. If the D’Aubigny parents thought that their daughter had no connection of any kind with East Anglia, and had never been there, then they would unquestionably have said so. Julian Ledward could huff and puff as loud as he liked, but the fact was that the D’Aubigny parents’ silence had to mean that they knew of a connection. And if this was the case, given that they didn’t have much clue about the path their daughter’s life had taken after she left home, the chances were that it was a connection established
before
she left home. Which took her—and Liz—back to school, and Garth House.

Go for it, Jude. Find the key. Unlock the door.

“It’s like a bullfight,” said Wendy Clissold.

Liz and Whitten turned to her.

“I went to one once, in Barcelona,” explained Clissold hesitantly. “The bull comes in, and the matador comes in, and everyone knows that . . . that there’s going to be a death. You dress up, put perfume on, and buy a ticket to watch a death. Then you go home.”

Whitten tapped a cigarette on the plastic tabletop. His eyes were the colour of old beeswax. “Key difference, love. At a bullfight, you’re pretty sure who’s going to be doing the dying.”

F
rom the confluence of the Lesser Ouse and the Methwold Fen Relief Drain to West Ford was about three miles as the crow flew, but the towpath distance was closer to four. The going was not uninterruptedly easy, either. There were broken-down stiles to negotiate, stretches hundreds of yards long where the towpath became impassable cattle-trodden marshland, and places where farmers had interrupted the right of way by running barbed-wire fences to the water’s edge. All of these obstacles had to be surmounted or bypassed, and by 10 a.m., despite the cold of the riverbank and the gusty wind, Jean was sweating freely.

They saw several helicopters, but these were far away, swarming like gnats over the dim eastern horizon behind them. None came within five miles of them; above their heads there were only the clouds, racing thinly on the wind. And with every step she and Faraj lengthened the distance between themselves and the search’s epicentre at Marwell.

They passed several people on the riverbank. There were walkers hunched into jackets and coats, there was a pair of elderly fishermen with thermos flasks, keeping a chilly vigil beneath their umbrellas, and there was a blowsy woman in a turquoise windcheater chivvying an elderly Labrador along the towpath. None of them paid Faraj or Jean any attention, preferring to remain enclosed in their private worlds.

Finally, at about quarter to eleven, the edge of the village came into view. The first dozen or so houses passed by the towpath were red-roofed boxes with pseudo-Georgian detailing, part of a late-twentieth-century speculative development. Beyond these, the river narrowed and passed between, on the north side, a stand of mature yews marking the boundary of the churchyard, and on the south side a coppice of rough evergreen woodland bisected by a public footpath.