A Foreign Country

57

‘Choices,’ Amelia was saying. Kell could hear her voice coming through the speakers in the Shand library. ‘We could go into Salisbury and see the cathedral, if that would interest you. We could go for a walk. There are lots of lovely pubs in the area if the idea of lunch appeals. What do you feel like doing?’

Amelia was seated opposite CUCKOO in the sitting room, drinking a cup of coffee. In more than twelve hours of interaction, she was yet to put a foot wrong: the loving mother; the consummate hostess. CUCKOO, wearing a different pair of trousers to those in which he had concealed the SIM, was smoking a cigarette, a habit that had raised Barbara to new heights of mischief.

‘Oh, he’s a smoker, is he?’ she had said to Amelia, spotting CUCKOO’s packet of Lucky Strike Silver on the kitchen table. Her remarks were well within earshot of CUCKOO, who was pretending not to be able to understand. ‘Well, if a Frenchman wants to kill himself, I’ll not be stopping him. You tell Mr Levene he should have done a better job looking out for his godson’s health.’

In due course, Amelia was able to persuade CUCKOO to join her on what she described as ‘a short walk around the village’. Kell’s preferred option, of a longer lunchtime trip into Salisbury, was rejected.

‘That gives us an hour, at best,’ he told the team. ‘Depends how long Amelia can keep him out there. As soon as they reach the gate behind the house, we go in.’ Kevin Vigors, the surveillance man, had been tasked with following them at a discreet distance; in the event that they turned for home, he was to alert Kell so that the team would have time to evacuate CUCKOO’s room. Amelia was not carrying any kind of communication device with which to contact the team. That was standard SIS tradecraft; if CUCKOO spotted it, the game would be up.

It was another hour before they left the house, time in which Elsa and Harold, who had assembled their technical kit in three small bags, made last-minute checks while Vigors kept an eye on the live feeds. Finally, as the grandfather clock in Amelia’s hall struck half-past eleven, Amelia and CUCKOO emerged from the house wearing matching green Wellington boots and Barbour jackets culled from the utility room.

‘They should be coming past in less than a minute,’ Kell announced. He looked at Elsa’s face and she was suddenly a stranger to him, a hard edge in her expression, an absolute focus. Harold, so often the joker, was pacing in the kitchen, waiting for the word to go. Vigors, already outside in the garden, clicked his radio twice to confirm that he had seen CUCKOO and Amelia passing the Shand house on the lane.

‘Everybody OK?’ Kell asked, trying to convey a sense of calm and common purpose to the team even as he felt the under-skin crawl of disquiet. It was always like this; there was cruelty in waiting. Once they got into the house, once they were working, he would be fine.

Three clear clicks on the Vigors radio. That meant CUCKOO and Amelia were at the gate which connected the perimeter of the village to a meadow that ran west towards Ebbesbourne St John. Kell was in the hall. Harold came to the kitchen door and looked at him, waiting for the nod. He had one of the kitbags slung over his shoulder; Elsa was carrying the others. Kell counted to ten in his head, then opened the door.

It was ninety seconds from the Shand house to CUCKOO’s bedroom via the short-cut in the garden; Kell had timed it. Harold reached the dividing gate first, opening it up and then moving quickly across Amelia’s lawn to the house.

Barbara had already opened the back door. She said: ‘Shoes off,’ as they pulled up outside. She checked the bottoms of their trousers for mud, pronounced them clean, and within fifteen seconds, Elsa and Harold were in the CUCKOO bedroom.