A Foreign Country

51

Seated at an outdoor table at the Coach and Horses, a well-regarded pub on the Salisbury road at the eastern edge of Chalke Bissett, Kevin Vigors looked up from his second pint of Old Speckled Hen to see a navy-blue Renault Espace, number plate X164 AEO, coming around the corner. He stood up from the table, crossed the road to a telephone box and rang Amelia’s landline.

‘285?’

‘CUCKOO just turned into the village. Should be with you in three minutes.’

‘Thank you,’ Amelia said.

She replaced the receiver and looked at Kell, who was standing beside the Aga.

‘That was Kevin,’ she said. ‘Time for you to be going. He’ll be here in two minutes.’

Kell wished her good luck and walked to the back door, leaving the garden via the gate that connected Amelia’s house to the Shand property. Within moments he was standing with Elsa, Harold and Barbara Knight in the library, staring at the banks of surveillance screens, like traders anticipating a crash.

‘We should see him any second now,’ Kell said, taking off his coat and throwing it on a chair. Elsa looked up and caught his eye, smiling a private smile.

‘Here he comes,’ she said, returning her gaze to the screen in the upper left-hand corner.

A camera, high on a pylon with clear sight of the dark lane ahead, had picked out the approaching taxi. The twin headlights bumped along the road until the vehicle came to a halt. Kell watched as CUCKOO opened the rear door and stepped out on to the road, stretching his back after the long journey. He was wearing the same black leather jacket that Kell had searched in the hotel room in Tunis.

‘Wanker,’ Harold muttered, and everybody tried not to laugh.

Right on cue, entering the frame in the lower left-hand corner, came Amelia, her head and body in silhouette against the glare of the headlights. Though the reunion was taking place less than a hundred metres away on the lane, the team could hear no sound as she stretched out her arms and enveloped CUCKOO in a mother’s bone-crushing hug.

‘God, I hope she is all right,’ Elsa said, but Kell ignored the sentiment, because he knew that Amelia Levene would be just fine.