At Risk

34

Less than half a mile from the cell in which Kieran Mitchell had spent the night, a black Vauxhall Astra pulled in to a parking bay in Bishopsgate, Norwich. Climbing from the passenger seat, Faraj Mansoor glanced around him at the ranks of cars, the Georgian rooftops and the cathedral spire, and took a handwritten shopping list from the inside pocket of his coat. Remote-locking the Astra, the driver patted her pockets for change and sauntered across to the pay-and-display ticket machine.

At Faraj’s side a man in a green and yellow Norwich City scarf was extracting a small child from a battered Volvo estate car and harnessing her into a Maclaren buggy. “Saturday mornings,” he grinned, nodding at Faraj’s shopping list. “Don’t you hate them?”

Faraj forced a smile, not understanding.

“The weekend shopping,” explained the man, slamming the Volvo’s door and releasing the buggy’s brake with his toe. “Still, it’s the Villa game this afternoon, so…”

“Absolutely,” said Faraj, conscious of the dead weight of the PSS in his left armpit. “Tell me,” he added. “Do you know where there’s a good toy shop here?”

The other frowned. “Depends what you want. There’s a good one in St. Benedict’s Street, about five minutes’ walk away.” He gave elaborate directions, pointing westwards.

Returning, the woman slipped her arm through Faraj’s, took the shopping list from him, and listened to the tail end of the directions. “That’s very helpful.” She smiled at the man in the scarf, dipping down to pick up the mouse doll that the little girl in the buggy had dropped.

“She’s called Angelina Ballerina,” said the girl.

“Is she? Goodness me!”

“And I’ve got the video of Barbie and the Nutcracker.”

“Well!”

A little later, still arm in arm, the two of them arrived outside a shop window in which a sparkly Santa with a cotton-wool beard rode a fairy-lit sleigh piled high with games consoles, Star Wars light-sabres and the latest Harry Potter merchandise.

“What’s the matter?” asked Faraj.

“Nothing,” said the woman. “Why?”

“You are very silent. Is there a problem? I need to know.”

“I’m fine.”

“No problem, then?”

“I’m fine, OK?”

In the shop, which was small, hot and crowded, they had to wait almost a quarter of an hour to be served.

“Silly Putty, please,” the woman said eventually.

The young male assistant, who was wearing a red plastic nose and a Santa hat, reached behind the counter and handed her a small plastic container.

“I, er, I actually need twenty,” she said.

“Ah, the dreaded party bag! We actually sell party bags pre-filled, if you’re interested. Green slime, orcs’ eggs…”

“They’ve… they really just want the Silly Putty.”

“Not a problem. Twenty Putty of the Silly variety coming up. Uno, dos, tres…”

As she followed Faraj out of the shop, bag in hand, the assistant called after her. “Excuse me, you’ve left your…”

Her heart lurched. He was waving the shopping list.

Apologetically pushing her way back to the counter, she took it from him. On it were visible the words clear gelatin, isopropol, candles, pipe cleaners; his fingers covered up the rest.

Outside, as she clutched the list and the carrier bag, Faraj looked at her with controlled anger from beneath the brim of his Yankees baseball cap.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes watering in the sudden cold. “I don’t think they’ll remember us. They’re very busy.”

Her chest, though, was still pounding. The list looked harmless enough, but to anyone with a certain sort of military experience it would send an unmistakable message. That said, of course, such a person was hardly likely…

“Remember who you are,” he told her quietly, speaking in Urdu. “Remember why we’re here.”

“I know who I am,” she snapped in the same language. “And I remember all that I have to remember.”

She looked in front of her. At the end of an alleyway between two houses she could see the cold sweep of the river. “Superdrug,” she said briskly, glancing down at the shopping list. “Or Boots. We need to find a chemist.”