At Risk (43 page)

“I’m studying geology at Newcastle.”

“Interesting?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But it can take you to some interesting places. There’s a Greenland trip next year.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah—icy, even. But I’m a cold places person, if you know what I mean. Like you’re obviously a hot places person.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Well, perhaps we could meet in the middle. In some temperate zone. Like the pub.”

Denzil pulled in to a car park.

“This is it. The Green Man.
L’Homme Vert. El hombre . . .
”

“It looks nice,” she murmured. “Do you mind if I leave my jacket and bag in the boot?”

Y
es, Minister,” said the Deputy Chief Constable. “I believe absolutely that they will go tonight, whatever it costs them. We now think it’s not just a question of jihad, but of familial honour. In this context, neither is negotiable . . . No. Thank
you,
Minister. Goodbye.”

He replaced the receiver. “Home Office,” he explained for the benefit of the dozen or so individuals watching and listening. “And those two jokers damn well better bomb something tonight, or . . .”

A dozen or so pairs of eyes stared at him. The SAS captain sniggered. The moment was saved by the ringing of Mackay’s landline. The MI6 man snatched up the receiver. “Hello? Vince? Where are you, mate? Right. And you’ve got . . .
Brilliant!
Good man. Hang on, I’ll . . .”

He covered the receiver and beckoned to Liz. “Price-Lascelles. That headmaster from Wales. Our bloke’s found him. Bad line.”

Liz’s eyes widened. “OK. Don’t transfer it.”

She walked over to his desk. The headmaster’s voice was very faint, and sounded as if it had been strained through several thicknesses of blanket. “. . . do you do. I understand you . . . speak to me.”

“I need to know about one of your ex-pupils. Jean D’Aubigny . . . Yes, Jean D’Aubigny!”

“. . . remember her very well. What can I . . . ?”

“Did she have any particular friends? People she might have stayed with in the holidays? People she might have stayed in touch with?”

“Have
lunch
with?”

“WHO WERE JEAN D’AUBIGNY’S BEST FRIENDS?”

“. . . difficult young woman, who didn’t make friends easily. Her closest, as I recall, was a rather troubled . . . named Megan Davies. Her people . . . up in Lincoln, I think. Her father was in the forces. RAF.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“. . . what they told me. Nice couple. John and Dawn, I think their . . . pillar to post . . . Megan very wild in consequence. In the end it turned out that we . . . permit pupils to bring drugs on to the premises.”

“Did Jean D’Aubigny go and stay with the Davies family?”

“. . . to my knowledge. She may have done so after Megan left Garth House.”

“Where did the Davies family go after Gedney Hill?”

“Sorry, can’t help you there. They . . . at the time of Megan’s departure.”

“Do you know where Megan went on to? Which school? Mr. Price-Lascelles?
Hello?
” But the line was dead. Everyone in the room was staring at her. Mackay and Dunstan wore particularly indulgent smiles.

Was she way off beam here? Was this complete whimsy?

Replacing the receiver, meeting none of the eyes which followed her, Liz returned to her desk. Pulling down the contacts file on her laptop, she rang the Ministry of Defence. Identifying herself to the duty officer, she had herself put through to Files.

“I’m actually just shutting up shop,” a pleasant-voiced young man told her. “It’ll have to be quick.”

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” said Liz levelly. “This is a matter of national security, so if you don’t wish to find yourself outside a job centre this time next week, I suggest that you remain exactly where you are until we are finished, is that clear?”

“I hear you,” said the young man petulantly.

“RAF records,” said Liz. “John Davies, D-A-V-I-E-S, senior officer of some kind, probably admin, wife’s name is Dawn, daughter’s name is Megan.”

“Hang about, I’m just . . .” There was the sound of keyboard strokes. “John Davies, you say . . . Yes, here we are. Married to Dawn, née Letherby. He’s over at Strategic Air Command.”

“Did he ever have a posting in Lincolnshire?”

“Yes. He spent, let’s see, two and a half years running RAF Gedney Hill.”

“Is that still operative? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It was sold off in the cuts about ten years ago. It was where they used to do the escape and evasion courses for aircrews. And I think the Special Forces Flight did some Chinook training there too.”

“So where did Davies go after that?” asked Liz.

“Let’s see . . . Six months’ attachment in Cyprus, and then he was given command of RAF Marwell in East Anglia. It’s one of the American—”

Liz felt her hand tighten on the receiver. Forced her voice to remain level.

“I know where it is,” she said. “Where did he and his family live when he was there?”

“In a place called West Ford. Do you want the address?”

“In a minute. First I want you to look up a man called Delves, Colin Delves, D-E-L-V-E-S, who holds that post at Marwell today. Find out if he lives at the same address.”

Another muted flurry of keyboard strokes. A brief silence. “Same address. Number One, The Terrace, West Ford.”

“Thank you,” said Liz.

Replacing the phone, she looked around her. “We’re guarding the wrong target,” she said.

A frozen silence, utterly hostile.

“Jean D’Aubigny’s dowry. The reason she was fast-tracked to operational status. She knew classified information vital to the ITS—namely, where the RAF Marwell CO was billeted. She stayed there with a friend from her school. She probably knows every secret inch of the place. They’re going to take out Colin Delves’ family.”

Jim Dunstan’s eyelids fluttered. The blood drained from his face. He looked blankly from Mackay to Don Whitten.

The SAS captain was the first to move, punching out an internal number. “Sabre teams scramble for immediate action, please. Repeat—
Sabre teams scramble to go.
”

“West Ford,” said Liz. “The village is called West Ford.”

A dozen voices at the level edge of urgency. Running feet, the slash of rotors, and the spotlit hangar falling away beneath them.

T
he Green Man was large and plain and beery, with a long oak bar and an impressive array of pumps. There was no jukebox or fruit machine, but the clientele was young and boisterous and noise levels were high. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered a little above head height. After a brief search, Jean and Denzil found a table against the wall, and Denzil went to buy the first round. At the bar, as he waited, Jean saw him surreptitiously counting his money.

He returned with a pint of Suffolk bitter for each of them. As a Muslim, Jean hadn’t drunk alcohol for some years, but Faraj had suggested that she have at least one drink to show willing. The beer had a sour, soapy texture but was not altogether unpleasant. It gave her something to do with her hands and, equally important, something to look at as they talked. Early in the evening she had made the mistake of looking Denzil in the eye—of meeting his open, inquisitive gaze—and it had been almost unbearable.

Talking to him was harder than she would have believed possible. He was awkward and shy, but he was also sensitive and self-deprecating and kind. He was almost painfully concerned that she should enjoy her evening with him, and she sensed him casting around for subjects of conversation which might engage her interest.

Don’t look at him, look
through
him, she told herself, but it didn’t do any good. She was sharing a small and intimate space with a young man whom she found herself liking very much. And planning to kill him.

When it was her turn to buy the drinks, she returned with a pint in each hand and gave them both to him. Her first pint was still only half drunk.

“To save time,” she explained. “It’s a bit jam-packed up there.”

“It gets a lot more crowded when the Americans are here,” he told her. “Not to mention making things a lot harder with the girls for us local boyos.”

“So why aren’t the Americans here tonight?”

“Grounded, probably. Apparently there’s been a terrorist scare. There’ve been a couple of murders up towards Brancaster and they think it might be something to do with Marwell.”

“What’s Marwell?”

“One of those RAF bases that the US Air Force use. You know, like Lakenheath . . . Mildenhall . . .”

“So what have they got to do with Brancaster? I thought that’s where people went sailing.”

“To be honest, I haven’t followed the whole thing very closely. My stepfather told me. He’s . . .”

She waited.

Denzil frowned awkwardly at his pint. “He’s, um . . . he’s a bit more clued up than me, localwise. They reckon the people who committed the murders on the coast might be about to launch some sort of attack on Marwell.”

“Why?”

“Honestly, I haven’t really followed the whole thing. I’ve been out for most of the last few days.”

“Is it near here?”

“Marwell? About thirteen miles.” He raised his glass as if to check the steadiness of his hand. “And given that there are three battalions of troops between us and it, I’d say we’re probably pretty . . .”

She turned to him. She could feel the faint, dizzying effects of the alcohol hitting her system. “Suppose we weren’t? Suppose it all ended tonight? Would you feel you’d lived . . . enough?”

“Wow! That’s a bit of a heavy . . .”

“Would you, though? Would you be ready to go?”

He narrowed his eyes and smiled. “Are you serious?”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Well, OK. If I had to, like,
die,
this would probably be as good a moment as any. My mum got remarried a couple of years ago and is happy for the first time that I can remember, and I’ve now got a baby sister—seventeen years younger than me, can you imagine it,
seventeen years younger than me
—who hasn’t really had the chance to get to know me, and so wouldn’t be hurt by my death, but who my mum would still have. And I haven’t really begun doing anything with my life, careerwise, so in a sense there wouldn’t be anything wasted, so . . . Yeah, if I had to go, now would be as good a time as any.”

“What about your father? Your real father?”

“Well . . . He walked out on us years ago, when I was a boy, so he can’t ever have really cared for us . . .” He rubbed his eyes. “Lucy, I really like you, but why are we having this conversation?”

She shook her head, her eyes unfocused. Then, draining her pint glass, she nudged it towards him. “Could you . . . ?”

“Yeah, sure.”

There was a distant roaring in her head, as if she had her ear to a giant sea shell. Yesterday morning she had killed a boy, much the same age as this one, with a silenced Russian pistol. She had smiled at him and squeezed the trigger, felt the gasp of the damped recoil, and seen the boy’s head empty itself into the corner of the car boot. Now she was reborn, a Child of Heaven, and at last she understood what the instructor at Takht-i-Suleiman had always found so funny—so funny that it regularly reduced him to shaking incoherence.

She had been reborn dead. The moment had, as promised, changed everything. It had thrown a switch inside her, jamming the circuitry and paralysing the networks. She had feared that she would feel too much; instead, infinitely worse, she felt nothing. Last night, for example. She and Faraj had been like reanimated corpses. Twitching in each other’s arms like electrified frogs in a school laboratory.

And Jessica. She had put aside the question of the baby. Lifting her forearm, she bit it until the teeth met, and when she released herself there were two purplish crescents in the skin, oozing blood. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, it just didn’t matter. For a moment, a split second, she felt the dark presence of her pursuer.

“. . . Another pint for
Mademoiselle
Lucy. You’re not married by any chance, are you?”

“Not by any chance, no.” She drank.

“So tell me, unmarried Lucy, just where exactly are you staying round here, and just why are you inviting yourself to pubs with strangers?”