Head Shot

72

Skinner was still dazed by the enormity of Joe Doherty's death as he walked along the tree-lined street in which the Walkers lived. He had stopped believing in coincidences when he was around eighteen years old.

'Why couldn't you take a hint, old pal,' he muttered, sadly. 'As if Wylie's boat blowing up when we should have been on it wasn't enough to give you the message.'

The thing that surprised him to an extent was that he felt no real threat to his personal safety. He was sure beyond any doubt that the explosion had now been reclassified as an accident, and that the remains of Jack Wylie's computer were as useless as they had no doubt looked when they were recovered from the hulk.

The secret was buried once more; there would be no sense in disturbing the ground by killing a foreign national, and a policeman at that. Yet he could not be one hundred per cent certain; that was why Leo Grace's Glock, all fifteen rounds in its magazine, was tucked into the waistband of his slacks, nestling cold but comforting against his back.

The day was still warm when he reached the clergyman's house, large by British standards but modest when set against Leo and Susannah's home. He crunched his way up the drive and rang the bell; after a few moments, the door was opened by a pert, blonde woman, around Sarah's age.

Until then, he had not been aware that he had met Babs Walker. He remembered only an encounter with one of his wife's friends, during the period of their separation, when he had been in Buffalo to visit his son, rather than with any hope of patching things up. The thing he recal ed most clearly about that meeting was how frosty the woman had been towards him.

There was still a faint chill about her as she greeted him at the door. 'Bob. Right on time; won't you come in.' She held the door open for him, then escorted him through to their main reception room, where her husband was waiting. From somewhere below, the den, he guessed, he heard a child's laugh.

'Welcome,' said the minister, 'it's good to see you again, but for the circumstances.'

'Yes,' Babs added. 'We never seem to meet in happy times, do we, Bob.' He had no doubt from her tone that she stil disapproved of him.

He guessed that there was little forgiveness in the preacher's wife.

He glanced around the room. The Walkers were keen collectors of family photographs; they stood in frames on every surface; parents, he supposed, children at various stages from birth, and the couple themselves, individual y in high school graduation robes, and together on their wedding day.

'Nice,' he said, absently. 'I hope Sarah isn't too much longer. She said she'd get done with Oakdale as quickly as she could.' A glance was exchanged between husband and wife; he caught it, and Ian realised as much.

'She will be a little later, actually, Bob,' he confessed. 'She has another meeting to fit in.'

Babs Walker was out of his vision as he looked at her husband, but he knew that she was smirking at his discomfiture. 'That guy?' he asked.

'Yes. He cal ed this afternoon, and said he was in town. I caught Sarah on her cellphone just as she was driving to meet the lawyer. She agreed to see him immediately afterwards.'

Skinner shrugged, feeling the gun move against his back. 'Fair enough.

She's thought it through; she reckons it's the thing to do.'

'Will you have some lemonade while you're waiting. Bob?' Babs asked.

'No, thank you very much. But coffee would be appreciated.'

'Sure,' said lan. 'I'l make it.' He headed off towards the kitchen, leaving his visitor with his wife.

She shot him a vixen smile as soon as they were alone. 'Please be seated,' she urged, indicating a deep blue couch. As he settled himself in she went over to a sideboard, took something from it that he could not see at first, then walked round to sit beside him.

It was an album. 'While we're waiting,' she said, 'I thought you might like to see some more of our photographs.'

'That would be nice,' he answered, insincerely.

She opened the volume at the start; the first page showed two girls; they were in their very early teens at most, but he recognised them both.

One of them was by his side; the other was his wife. 'Most of these have 286

Sarah in them,' Babs told him, as she flicked through the pages. It was almost a montage of his wife's life; school student, prom queen, diploma winner, undergraduate. And then there were adult shots, the two of them together, Sarah and Babs, friends together at barbecues, on a ski trip, some with Ian and with other young men, boyfriends of the time, of whom he had heard, no doubt.

His hostess stopped to point one out. 'That's Ron Neidholm, the footbal player. He and Sarah had this red hot thing going while she was in med. school; they couldn't keep their hands off each other. But he went off to Dallas and she got bored. She was quite a girl in her youth, was my friend.' Bob kept an icy smile fixed on his face.

Finally, she came close to the end. 'This is the most recent one I have,' she exclaimed, as she turned the page, 'her last big fling… to which she was certainly entitled, since you were being a very naughty boy at the time.'

The photo showed two couples in evening dress, at a formal dance.

'Sarah's hospital ball,' Babs explained. 'She had one too,' she said, with a lascivious chuckle. He stared at the photograph, his smile gone, looking at the two Walters, at Sarah and at another man, young, confident, handsome, smiling, a big cigar held between the first two fingers of his right hand.

'That's him,' she said. 'The guy she's gone to meet.'

He was on his feet in a single lithe moment. 'Where?' he barked.

'What?'

'Where are they meeting?'

'I can't tel you that,' she protested.

He reached down and yanked her to her feet. 'You can,' he hissed, 'and you will.'

She looked at his face and realised that he was right. 'At lan's church,' she croaked.

'Where is it?'

'Go left, to the end of the street, then right and it's about half a mile.

But what…'

He shoved her back on to the couch and left her, speechless, as he ran out of the house, racing for dear life towards the meeting place of his wife and the man he had known until that moment as Special Agent Isaac Brand.