The South Lawn Plot (21 page)

T
HE WINDOWS WERE ROLLED DOWN
to allow the unseasonably warm air to pass through the car. The hedgerows were showing their first green but not so much that the verdant pastures of Essex were hidden from the car's occupants.

Samantha Walsh dropped a gear as the vehicle closed in on a bend. The car, a sporty model hired for the trip, took the curve with ease.

“You handle it well, I have to say,” said Nick Bailey.

“And why do you have to say?” said Walsh as she pressed her foot on the pedal and took the car up to a notch over sixty. The road was now stretching out straight ahead for almost half a mile, an unusual occurrence in a part of the county known for narrow, twisting roads that were at times little more than country lanes.

“I am a police officer, need I remind you. We learn to drive as if somebody else's life depends on it. And I'll have you know that I did do an advance pursuit course. Want to see?”

“That's okay,” replied Bailey. “I'm quite enjoying the countryside rolling by. As opposed to flashing.”

He smiled. She smiled and patted him on the arm.

“If this was a James Bond flick you would be sitting in the ejector seat, so just count your blessings, Mr. Bailey.”

“I'm stirred, not shaken.”

And so it went. The two had bantered since leaving London just after the morning rush hour. As much as possible, they had taken secondary roads. The car had a satellite guidance system, but they had kept it turned off, preferring instead to follow road signs with the names of villages that sounded like they were out of a guide to a lost, yet comforting, older England.

A few miles behind them sat the village of Little Tipping Major, which, they had assumed, was the larger companion to Little Tipping Minor. In the pub where they had enjoyed lunch, Walsh and Bailey had been disappointed
to hear that Major was in fact all alone in the world though they were not the first visitors to ask about Minor.

The village itself was a biscuit box classic. It had a green, a duck pond and several cottages with thatched roofs, a luxury these days because of sky high insurance payments, but an obvious tourist draw. Lunch had been in a rose garden behind the sole village pub, the Ploughman's Rest, and though it was too early in the season for actual roses, the two had sat for a grateful hour nibbling at ham and water cress sandwiches and sipping ale, the local brew in Bailey's case, the ginger variety for the driver.

It had been Walsh's idea to drive down to Essex. She had a few days before becoming fully immersed in her new assignment. The trip would be a nice break for both of them and might just answer the questions that had been nagging at her since that foggy night on the bridge.

By a silent compact they had not actually discussed the reason for their journey while on the road. But that reason was becoming harder to ignore as the miles fell away. Their destination was now only six distant.

The straight run quickly behind them, Walsh slowed at a particularly nasty turn. Her caution was well timed as a truck came roaring into view, moving at well over the speed limit.

“Go get him! Book him, Danno,” Bailey shouted above the rush of the slipstream coming in the passenger side window, a wind now tainted with a whiff of farm animals packed into the truck.

Walsh contented herself with a smile.

“We should be there any minute,” Bailey said. “There will be a red brick wall on the left hand side and a gate about a quarter of a mile after you first see it. It's the only large estate for quite a distance around here. A rather significant acreage, over a thousand, along with a farm, woodland, the lot.”

“Maybe we should just move in. I always fancied myself as a country lady,” said Walsh, smiling.

“You'd go bonkers in a fortnight,” said Bailey. “I know I would anyway.”

It was as he delivered his prediction that Bailey spotted the beginning of the wall. Walsh saw it too and eased even more off the pedal.

“So how are we going to play this?” Bailey asked. “I mean this is not an official visit by the London plod, and they might find a copper and reporter combo a bit odd. Suspicious. Know what I mean?”

“Just leave it to me,” Walsh replied. “When we meet whoever comes out to see us just stay in the background a bit. Look like the heavy.”

“Oh, I can do that alright,” said Bailey. “I'm a regular Henry Cooper.”

Walsh laughed aloud. “Who? Look, you're just going to have to do,” she said. “You know what they say on the nature programs about when you come up again some wild animal while hiking in the woods. Just puff yourself up a bit and look mean. Anyway, I'll keep the attention focused on me. Just watch.”

Bailey shook his head in doubt but he had no time to argue as Walsh turned the wheels and took the car into what was a long driveway leading to a large house still visible behind a screen of trees that were only beginning to bud. The avenue was lined with large trees. Beech, Bailey reckoned.

One thing he noticed was the condition of the place. Unlike a lot of old country houses, this one looked prosperous. The paving on the drive was near perfect and the iron railings that separated it from the fields on either side had been recently painted. The trees, too, appeared to be properly pruned, and as the car came closer to the house, he could make out long, neat shrubbery beds and clusters of rhododendron bushes.

This place was fully maintained and clearly had money. Whoever these guys were, Bailey thought, they were not one of those vows of poverty crowds.

“Nice quarters. I'm in the wrong business,” he said, as much to himself as Walsh.

They passed through a second wide open wrought iron gate and into a spacious courtyard. There was a moat and a stone bridge across it leading into an inner enclosure. Walsh stopped the car, the tires making a crunching sound against the gravel.

“I reckon we shouldn't be too forward. I'm sure they've heard us and will send someone out,” she said.

Bailey looked towards the bridge. She was right. Already a man was walking across it in their direction. Walsh and Bailey both got out of the car.

“You stay with the car until I give you the signal,” Walsh said. As she spoke she quickly opened a couple of buttons on her blouse.

“Puffing yourself up,” Bailey said with a grin. “Crafty, very crafty. The old padres will be going weak at the knees.”

“They might,” Walsh replied before walking towards their greeter, an elderly man who Bailey thought likely a little beyond being impressed by Walsh's ample assets.

Bailey stood by the car trying to look like, as Walsh had put it, the heavy. As he figured she would, Walsh uttered the first words of the encounter. She would take the lead as much as possible. This was her style, a copper's style.

“We came down from London,” he heard her tell the man. “I'm Detective Sergeant Samantha Walsh,” she added as she produced her warrant card.

Very smart, Bailey thought. She covered both of us with the word “we,” and yet she never said I was another copper.

The old man said something in reply that Bailey could not quite make out, but as soon as he had spoken, he began to walk back towards the house. Walsh, apparently invited to follow, also began walking towards the bridge. Without looking back she gave a hand signal to the effect that Bailey should follow.

Bailey moved at a fast clip. He caught up by the time they had entered the inner courtyard, an enclosure paved in gray flagstone and dominated in the center by a six foot statue of what Bailey took to be a saint.

“St. Anselm,” the old man said, unprompted, as he passed the statue. They entered the house through a solid-looking wood double door. It took a moment to adjust eyes to the somewhat gloomy interior, but when he could properly make out his surroundings, Bailey could see that they were standing in a spacious hall with dark wooden staircases at each end. The paneled walls were dotted with framed photographs and several oils of stern looking clerics.

“Please wait here a moment. I shall fetch someone to meet you,” said the old man before limping off to his left and down a corridor illuminated by sunlight coming through a series of stain glass windows.

“Nice digs,” said Bailey. “Nice boobs, too.”

“Shut up,” Walsh responded, a suddenly sharp, authoritative edge to her voice.

Bailey bowed in mock salute. Walsh was turning in a circle taking in the immediate interior.

“All four dead priests studied in this place at one time or another,” she said. “All their deaths have been officially explained and seem to fit into a random series of unconnected events. But the four are not entirely unconnected. They were all here, here in this seminary. That's not random, not as far as I'm concerned.”

“Yeah, I'm with you on that. Watch out, here comes our man,” Bailey responded.

Along the corridor a man dressed in black trousers with a maroon sweater was walking towards them. He seemed to glide along wooden floors that gave off the whiff of a recent polishing. Several feet from Walsh and Bailey he extended a hand to Bailey but Walsh quickly stepped into his way.

“We came down from London,” she said somewhat curtly. “I am Detective Sergeant Samantha Walsh, Metropolitan Police.”

“And your companion?” came the reply in a tone that, while, polite, was clearly expecting an answer.

“Bailey. How do you do?” It was now Bailey's turn to step into the front line. He extended his hand. It was an attempt to steer aside any further questioning. Bailey wanted to avoid presenting himself as a police officer if he possibly could.

“It's the detective inspector who is asking the questions today,” he said to the man, clearly a priest though he was not wearing the Roman collar.

“Really?” the priest said with an emphasis on the first syllable.

Christ, Bailey thought, maybe he's rumbled us. But the priest did not inquire further as to the relationship between his visitors.

“Very pleased to meet both of you. How can I be off assistance? My name is Father John. Would you like some tea, a tour of the house perhaps?”

“A short tour would be fine, but no need for tea,” said Walsh. “And I hope you don't mind answering a few questions as we see the house.”

“No bother at all,” said Father John. “But if you don't mind I have a question or two myself. What is it precisely that brings the London police to Ayvebury? I say precisely because I have an idea in a general sense. Our poor fathers. Please be careful on the floors. They have just been polished, and we would not want an accident, would we?”

“Certainly not,” said Walsh. “We've had quite enough of those.”

M
ANNING PAUSED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STEPS leading to his front door. He could not shake the sense that he was being followed, but every time he had turned to check there had been no sign of anyone, or of anything untoward. It was dark, so surveillance would be all the easier, he thought. But no, he was being paranoid. He stared back along N Street.The only noticeable sound was of a gaggle of college students bundling into a house a few doors away.

He turned his eyes to the front door of his home, and that of his wife and daughter. It had been left to Rebecca, an only child, by her deceased parents.

A funny thing, he thought, and not for the first time. He had met his American wife while she was on vacation in Ireland. She was a native Washingtonian, and wouldn't you know it, he was later posted to D.C. It was fate, in the stars, they had both concluded. Then they got married.

Manning had been posted to a couple of other cities in the intervening years as well as doing time back on home turf. Then he had returned to the American capital with a promotion, his wife, and their daughter, Jessica. And now he was wondering if he might quit diplomacy and settle down in Georgetown.

He had stayed late at the embassy, not so much to work but to clear his head and gather himself. It had not been easy between them these past few months. They had discussed having another child. But Rebecca was working so damn hard for the prosperous of Georgetown and suburban Maryland, though admittedly pulling in plenty of money from her interior design business.

Rebecca Epstein Manning was, for certain, one of the hottest interior designers in town. And because of this they had finally agreed that their daughter Jessica would have to wait a little while longer for a sibling. By way of compensation she had been given a kitten which had now grown into a rather large cat.

Manning reached into his pocket for his keys. Opening the front door he stepped into the hallway. There was a light on in the kitchen at the rear of the house. Rebecca was working again. She must have heard him walk in the door, or sensed his presence in the hallway.

“I'm back here,” she said.

“Be there in a second,” Manning replied. He took off his coat and his Washington Nationals baseball hat and threw them over the coat stand.

Jessica, he surmised, was probably in her room, reading under her bedcovers. The thought made him smile as he walked down the narrow hallway to the kitchen.

It reminded him of somewhere, this kitchen. He stared at the rear window as he entered it and understood why he had felt that he was being followed. It was not a person that was tracking him but a memory.

The face flickered in the glass of the window that looked into the back yard. He saw it for only a split second. A grinning mouth, eyes wide open, nose and everything else hidden by the black balaclava. The grin changed to a laugh, a crazy laugh. And then it vanished.

“Eamonn?”

“What?”

“Are you okay? You look like you've just seen a ghost,” Rebecca said, putting down a pencil with which she had been sketching on a sheet of construction paper.

“A ghost, where? Oh, sorry. I was miles away, just thinking about something I had forgotten to do today.”

“Must have been a pretty serious ‘to do.'” Rebecca was sitting back in the chair at one end of the pine table, eyeing him doubtfully.

“You've been working too hard lately, Eamonn. Jessica is beginning to forget what you look like.”

“Well, you've not exactly been idle yourself,” he responded, and with an edge to his voice that he had not quite intended.

“True, but in case you haven't noticed, I'm bringing a lot more of my work home with me. It isn't easy keeping a business going when you have to uproot every so often and head for the ends of the earth.

Manning ignored his wife's half-hearted jibe and made for the fridge.

“It's in the oven,” said Rebecca. “Grab it and sit down.”

Manning obeyed. He wasn't quite sure what the ‘it' was. His wife could be adventurous with her cooking, although mostly it came out well enough.

“Take a seat,” Rebecca said. “And it's moussaka by the way.”

Manning nodded and began to eat. His wife had already poured a glass of water for him. He wanted to get up for a beer, or glass of wine, but thought better of it.

“I'm assuming you're still thinking of quitting the embassy and getting a job here,” she said. “Well, I've been making a few calls and one of them was to Josh Zoellick. He would be delighted for you to come on board. He reckons you're just the type of guy he needs for his overseas operation. It would be right up your alley, Eamonn. Diplomacy with a tangible result.”

“You mean money.”

“Yes, that, too.”

He had met Zoellick at a party thrown by one of Rebecca's clients. Her family had known the Zoellicks for ages, Rebecca had assured him afterwards. He could not quite make out what the man did for a living, but it seemed to have something to do with international real estate sales. It had been a loud party.

“He's particularly interested in the fact that you speak decent French. There might be a bit of travel to France involved, but that's no hardship. You could take Jessica and me along from time to time, and it would be easy to skip from France over to Ireland to see your mom,” Rebecca said.

There was no argument with that, Manning thought.

“I'm offering you a way out, and you know you want out,” Rebecca continued.

“If you don't like it you can always use it as a steppingstone to something else. We know loads of people in this town, but if you don't make the move, we'll be saying bye-bye to the lot of them by the end of the summer. And that means Jessica moving school again.”

“I know,” Manning said, his mouth full of moussaka.

He pulled at his tie, now in a tight knot that would take some undoing. It had little planes on it. Nesbitt referred to it as his flights of fancy tie.

“You're right,” Manning said, this time surprised at the certainty of his response. “But Zoellick will have to wait a bit. There's no leaving the embassy this side of the big move and a trade and investment conference on Northern Ireland that looks like taking place in May. You know as well as I do that quitting the diplomatic corps isn't just a matter of quitting. It's more a case of surgical extraction.”

“I know that, Eamonn. And Josh is more than willing to wait until summer, even the fall. He's a good guy. And he'll pay well.”

Rebecca had picked up her pencil again.

“How's Jess?”

Rebecca smiled. It was that smile, the one that curled upwards from the edges of her mouth. Upwards and forever. He had gone weak at the knees the first time he had seen her smiling. He was only a few feet from her in that crowded pub in wherever it was.

A friend had once advised Manning to start up a conversation with a woman by remarking on something she was wearing. Jewelry, he had advised, was especially good for breaking the ice. Bumping into this woman, obviously a Yank, had been easy. The next few minutes could have gone either way. Manning had pointed to the Star of David that Rebecca was wearing around her neck. The last time he had seen one of those, he had said, was on a flag in Jerusalem.

Rebecca had turned quickly and with what looked like a frown on her face. She seemed to look right through him and for a moment Manning had feared his move had fallen flat. Then she spoke.

“And did it seem to you that the flag was flying in its rightful place?” she had said. He had been on his game enough to know that this was a loaded rhetorical question and he had just smiled by way of response.

“Earth to Eamonn. Come back to me,” she said now. “Jess is just fine, and her cold seems to have gone. She's probably still awake reading so why don't you go up and give her a kiss goodnight, evict the kitty and then turn the light off. It's getting late.”

Manning nodded again and stood up. “That moussaka was good. The Greeks bear some gifts that don't need scrutiny.”

He walked into the hallway again and turned up the narrow stairway that broadened at the summit. He stepped along the landing to a second set of stairs leading to the top floor. He bounded up, suddenly energized by the thought of his daughter's greeting.

As Rebecca had rightly predicted, Jessica was tucked into a book though she was sitting up with the bedside lamp on. The cat, Claws by way of name as well as temperament, bolted through the door as Manning walked in. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, Sweet Pea. What's the book?”

“Well, it's about this girl in England who is sent to the country during the war and she has lots of adventures.”

“Sounds great, but look at the time.”

Manning pointed at the Mickey Mouse clock on the lowboy chest of drawers beside Jessica's bed. It was a few minutes after nine.

“School in the morning, kiddo. Our friend in the English countryside, what's her name?”

“Emily.”

“Well, Emily will just have to bide her wee until tomorrow night. She would have been in bed early herself because of the blackout.”

“I know about the blackout, but what's bide her whatever it is, Dad? Sometimes I don't understand you at all. It's that funny accent of yours.”

Manning smiled.

“There's nothing wrong with my accent. You're the one with the accent.”

“No, I'm not,” she protested, giggling as she did so.

Manning reached for the bedside lamp and flicked the switch. Leaning over his daughter he gave her a gentle kiss on her forehead.

“Now get some sleep,” he said.

“Goodnight, Dad.”

“Night, Jess.”

Manning stood over the bed for a moment before taking a couple of steps to the window. Pulling the closed curtain aside he looked down on the street below. A chilly wind that had been in the forecast was now sweeping along N Street. One man was out walking a dog, his head bowed. Manning glanced up and down the street and below the window for as far in as he could see. It was quiet. He stepped away from the bed. Jessica had turned on her side and seemed to be asleep already.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Can we go to Somerset someday?”

“Only if you get some sleep first.”

“Okay.”

Manning left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Even at her gentle age, Jessica Louise Manning enjoyed her privacy.

As he reached the bottom of the lower stairs, he glanced down the hall to the kitchen. Rebecca was still sketching. He walked across the hall and through a sliding double door into the main living room.

It was tastefully lit by strategically placed lamps and reading lights. And there were books, lots of them, on shelves attached to two of the walls. The observant visitor might have noticed an apparent his and hers partition, one wall being dominated by tomes dealing with art, design and travel, the other by volumes mostly dealing with military history and political biography.

This was something of a deception. Rebecca's reading tastes were extremely general and her knowledge of military history had been one of the attributes that had attracted him to her in the first place. Her father had been in the United States Army, and Rebecca had grown up just across the Potomac in the part of town known as Generals' Row.

Manning slumped into a reclining chair and leaned over the side to pick up his current book from the floor. It was about the siege of Stalingrad, a tale of military woe to beat most of them. He began reading where he had left off and immediately he was back in the Kessel.

Nodding off was easy enough but nothing was easy inside the vision that confronted him in his half-sleep. It was of an endless blasted landscape with out of it rising an army of skeletal figures clothed in white camouflage, an army of the dead advancing steadily towards him, the last invader alive.

Rebecca's voice set the ghostly host to flight.

“Eamonn, go to bed, you need some sleep.”

She was standing over him, a stern expression on her face, but there was also concern in her voice.

“Yeah, okay, good idea. What happened? I just started to read.”

“That was an hour ago.”

“I know things have been a bit crazy lately,” he said, “but when all this stuff is over, we can take it easier. It's going to be a headache, because it looks like it's going to involve the president and British prime minister and maybe the Irish one, too, the Taoiseach.

“Love that word,” Rebecca said. “Sounds like a rude t-shirt.”

Manning rose from the chair. He moved to kiss his wife but she allowed him only the briefest touch on the lips.

“Go to bed. I'll be up soon. I'm nearly done,” she said.

Manning shrugged and with a loud yawn walked towards the stairs.

“The word means leader. But you already know that,” he said as he reached the halfway point on the staircase.

There was no reply. Rebecca had already returned to the kitchen and her world of Georgetown's more select, if not entirely discreet, interiors.

Manning stopped and breathed in deeply. When he had got out of the movement, when he had escaped, he had vowed never to commit any violent act in his life again. But there was no hiding from it. He would kill anyone who threatened his family. He would do it quickly, efficiently and without remorse.

He was, he knew in his heart, no lifer diplomat.