Condition black

7

He sat in the old chair beside the bed. It had not been recovered since the black cat had massacred the upholstery, and the black cat had been buried under one of the beeches more than ten years. Colt's fingers played with the short lengths of frayed yarn.

His mother was still sleeping,

The sight of the lost flesh on her face had shocked him because he had not, quite, stopped to consider how he might look.

Getting there, that had been his aim, Finding her alive, his only hope.

He was very still. His breathing was regular and matched the breathing of his mother

They had done him well, The organisation had been better this time than in Athens. An empty stree, just the old woman. That Wasn't organisation, that was luck. The old woman had been looking not at him but at her dog. The taxi drivr hadn't been looking at him either, head down in his change bag. A sprint to the end of the street, the cut through to the footpath, the lock-up garage. The small Bedford van, and the bag with the change of clothes. He had seen no one on th footpath, and no one saw him go into the lock up garage, he woukl have sworn on that. Driving the Bedford van along the fringe of the capital, south to west, over Putney Bridge, hitting the small streets of Fulham, and all the instructions had been precise. A second lock-up garage behind an arcade of shops, The van into the second lock-up garage The chance to squirm out of the overalls, strip off the rubber gloves, discard the woollen cap, get into the new set of clothes, put the pistol in the pocket of the overalls in the bag. On the other side of the yard from the second lock-up garage had been the Escort.

He had driven away. He had felt a new man. He reckoned that when they were sure he was clear they would send someone down to drive away the Bedford van, to retrieve the Ruger, and return it to the Embassy arsenal. He had driven out of London on the M4, past Heathrow, and then taken the Hungerford turning, and then turned again for Marlborough. He had slept after he had killed the man on the road that led arrow-straight south of Perth, He had slept, back in the apartment on the Haifa Street Housing Project, after he had killed two men in Athens.

He had come off the Marlborough to Devizes road, bumped onto a mud track in a forestry plantation and slept so that he could be at his most alert when he approached home. He had slept while the evening had closed on the afternoon, until night had overtaken the evening.

There was a grey light seeping between the heavy drape curtains at the window. The room had been his childhood refuge. He had always come to this room when he was small and his father made a play at disciplining him.

The light from between the curtains had settled on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. On the mantelpiece, in an old wooden frame, was the photograph of a bearded man wearing a battledress blouse and with a neckerchief knotted at his throat. His much younger father. It was the photograph that he saw every time he came back to the refuge and safety of this room. When he had been suspended from preparatory school, when he had been expelled from public school, when he had screwed up the Mendip Hunt and the Master of Fox Hounds had called to threaten his father wilh a civil court action, when he had taken the Stanley knife to the great ibex head trophy in the hall and they had wrestled and kicked and bitten on the hall floor, when he had had the call that warned him of the raid on the squat, he had come, each time, to sit in the old chair at his mother's side of the bed and he had seen the photograph of his father. His father had called him, successively, an idiot and a fool and a saboteur and a hooligan and a terrorist. What did his father expect? Colt was his father's son.

The dog stirred, sighed, stretched, lapsed again to sleep across Colt's feet.

The light was spreading in the room. He saw the marks on the carpet. It was the mud from the kitchen garden. It was the way he had always come back to the house when he came in secret.

Through the hole in the kitchen garden wall, where rain and frost had undone the mortar and the stonework, past the ancient privy now cascaded in ivy, to the back door where a spare key was always lodged above a beam and below the slates of the porch.

He heard a door open. He heard his father's first cough of the day. The dog heard his father's tread on the landing and settled closer to Colt's legs.

They were the first down to breakfast, and the first to check out from the guesthouse.

Erlich's Burberry was in the boot of the Astra with his shoes.

He wore the new boots which he now realised were a size too large, and the waterproof coat. Rutherford wore a heavy sweater and ankle-length walking boots.

Once they were off the by-pass, into the lanes, Rutherford drove fast. They surged out and past a lone milk cart. They squirted through the rain puddles in the road. Erlich saw the isolated cottages where the lights were only on upstairs, and he glanced down frequently at the map spread out across his knees.

It was a good time to be calling at Colt's place.

He had gone downstairs and had quietly called the dog and there had been no response. He had looked into the room off the kitchen where the washing machine and the freezer were, and he had seen the empty basket. It was after he had filled the iron kettle and set it on the Aga's hotplate that he saw the mud prints on the kitchen floor, and on the kitchen table, beside yesterday's newspaper, was a bowl with the dregs of cornflakes and milk in it, and in a saucer was the stub of a cheroot sized cigar.

He boiled the kettle. He never hurried himself. It was 48 years since he had learned the lesson, the hard way, that hurrying was for fools. A bad night, a storm blowing hail onto frozen fingers, the railway viaduct north of Rouen, too much haste with chapped fingers, the jabbering French at his shoulders urging him to work faster, the connection between the command wire and the detonators not properly made. It had been a good night to get on the viaduct because the weather had driven the sentries to cover. The explosives had not fired. The weather had changed with the dawn. There had not been another opportunity to blow the viaduct while the sentries huddled away from the wind and the hail. Three weeks of reconnaissance and planning wasted.

He made the tea. He laid the tray and he put the bread in the toaster. He took an extra mug from the cupboard. While he waited for the toast, he wiped the floor clean with the mop. He carried the tray up the stairs, and twice he bent to retrieve lumps of drying mud. He went into the bedroom.

The boy was where he thought that he would be. He saw the boy's head tilt upwards… His son. His son beside his still sleeping wife.

He set down the tray on the dark space of the mahogany dressing table. He had not shaved, nor combed his hair. He was in his pyjamas and dressing gown and slippers. He cared not a damn. Never stood on ceremony, and not starting now.

He took his son in his arms.

He held Colt tight against him. God be thanked! No words aloud, nothing to say. He felt the broad sinew of the boy's back, and he felt the quiet breath of the boy against his cheek. This was his son, and he loved him. He looked from Colt's face, from the calm of the boy's face, down to the face of his wife. He wished that she would wake. He would not wake her. He would not interfere with the drugs that the nurse left, administered each evening, but he wished so fervently that she could wake naturally and see her son and her husband holding each other in love.

When he broke away, as the dog was belting his legs with its tail, it was to pour the tea.

He spilled the tea, made a hash of pouring it, because his eyes were never off his son's face.

He brought the mug of tea to his son. He thought that the boy looked well. He was tired, he could see that, hadn't slept properly for two, three nights, but still the boy looked well. And at that moment the smile froze from Colt's face and the hackles rose the length of the dog's spine, and he heard the grate of car wheels on the gravel under the window.

The door opened in front of Rutherford.

Erlich could see over Rutherford's shoulder, into the gloom of the hallway. The dog came first. Dogs didn't hassle Erlich. The drill with dogs was to stand ground, keep the hands still, avoid eye contact, act as if they didn't exist. Somebody must have told Rutherford, once, the same thing. Rutherford didn't acknowledge the dog. Whoever had opened the door was masked by Rutherford's head.

"Major T u c k? "

A deep voice in response. "That's me."

" M y name's Rutherford, I'd be grateful if you would invite me inside with my colleague…"

He was a big man. Erlich saw him now. A big man in a big old dressing gown with his hair untidy and his stubble not shaved and his eyes sunken. The dog had retreated behind the man's legs, growling and blocking entry.

"… It's frightfully early, I do apologise."

Erlich saw those deep eyes rove over the two of them. Their boots were in the car, and their waterproofs. From first light they had been on the high ground at the back of the house. They had been in the wood, under the dripping trees. They had scoured the windows of the house with binoculars. They had seen the lights come on, and damn all else. Erlich smiled at the man, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to come calling at three minutes past eight o'clock in the morning.

"What do you want?"

"Just to come in, just to have a talk," Rutherford said calmly.

"A talk, what about?"

Erlich looked into the eyes of the man, tried to read them, found nothing.

"Government business," Rutherford said.

"What's government business to do with me?"

An edge in Rutherford's voice. " I ' m from the Security Service, Major Tuck. My colleague is from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Government business is your son, Major Tuck. We'd like to come inside

… "

"I don't entertain at this time of day."

"I've already apologised, Major T u c k. "

"Don't go on apologising. Just don't be any more of a nuisance."

" Y o u are the father of Colin Olivier Louis T u c k? "

" I am."

Rutherford asked, " D o you know where your son is, Major T u c k ? "

The question hacked at the old man. " N o, no, I don't. I don't know where my son is, no."

"Have you any idea where your son is?"

Composure regained. " N o n e. "

" N o idea at all?"

"Absolutely no idea."

"When did you last see your son, Major T u c k? "

" T w o years ago."

" N o communication since?"

" N o. "

"Aren't you curious, Major T u c k? "

"Curious of what?"

Rutherford said, "Curious as to why a member of the Security Service and a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. .. "

"I am not responsible for my son."

Erlich said, "Might I use the lavatory, Major T u c k? "

Rutherford said, " W e are investigating an incident of state-sponsored terrorism, murder."

Erlich said, " T h e lavatory, please, sir."

"I won't have people storming into my house at all hours to use the lavatory, dammit. No, you can't come in. You'll find a public convenience, which I am sure Mr Rutherford will locate for you, behind the pub in the village. Good day to you both. I'll not be hounded because of my son… "

"Hounded, Major Tuck, surely not?"

" M y house watched, my mail opened, my telephone… My son makes his own bed… Good day."

When they were onto the by-pass, when he could cruise without having to worry about shunting into a lorry round a blind corner, Rutherford said, "I tell you what, I felt sorry for him."

" Y o u did."

" Y e s, I'm not ashamed to say it. I felt sorry for him."

" D o you remember Walter de la Mare's 'Listeners'?"

"Hardly. Not since school…"

Erlich recited,

"But only a host of phantom listeners,

That dwelt in the lone house then,

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men.

"I felt as if we were listened to, that's all."

Dr Tariq had flown the night before with a Brigadier of the Air Force, a civilian attached to the personal staff of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, a laboratory technician, and four bodyguards from the Chairman's own squad.

The aircraft in which they had flown, an HS-125 executive jet, had had the insignia of the Iraqi Air Force removed from it. They had flown out over Saudi air space, down the Red Sea coast, through Egyptian air space, then south over the Sudanese frontier and into Khartoum.

They had slept on the third floor of the Hilton Hotel. There had been rooms assigned to Dr Tariq, the Brigadier, the civilian and the technician, and a fifth room for the bodyguards. At the other end of the corridor were the South Africans. On the floor above were the teams from Argentina and Pakistan. Two floors below, discreetly apart, were the Indians and the Iranians. Most professionally managed, as it should have been, because the Sudanese hosts had conducted such an auction before.

He had breakfasted in his room, relaxed in the knowledge that his laboratory technician would have been collected from the hotel along with the other teams' technicians before first light, and with his equipment taken to the airport.

In mid-morning, Dr Tariq was driven to the international airport. The destination was an old aircraft hangar beyond the main runway. An oppressively hot morning, and inside the great tomb of a building the heat was worse. The technician reported that from the tests carried out with a remote-controlled drill, he could guarantee that the merchandise was indeed weapons-grade plutonium. He said, though Dr Tariq was more interested in the quality of the material than its origin, that the plutonium had come from a company in West Germany. The civilian in Dr Tariq's party was a senior member of the staff of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. His presence ensured that funds for the purchase of the 15 kilograms of plutonium would be available.

A grey-suited European, perspiring, masked by outsized polar-oid dark glasses, moved amongst the groups who had taken their positions 30 paces apart on the circumference of a circle round the packing cases on the dust-drenched floor. The European moved from group to group, taking bids.

In less than ten minutes, Dr Tariq was the highest bidder.

He agreed the payment of $2,300,000 for each kilo.

And, within a further half an hour, five packing cases that held the containers, sealed with concrete and lead lining, were loaded onto his aircraft. Dr Tariq followed his delegation into the plane.

He left the South Africans and the Pakistanis and the Argentinians and the Iranians and the Indians to haggle over what was left.

Nobody called him "Sniper" to his face, only behind his back – the older ones with a taint of envy, the younger ones with a slight sneer. But they all acknowledged that Percy Martins carried weight.

Martins said, "Tork's trouble is that he's been there too long."

The Deputy Director gazed at the slow movement of the barges and the dredgers and the pleasure craft on the river. The Desk Head (Israel) drummed the blunt end of his pencil on the highly polished table.

Martins said, "He's gone native, become a bum boy for the Israelis."

Percy Marlins could say what he liked these days, and he did.

But everything about the Service, everything about Century House, had chaged since he had run a mission into the Beqa'a Valley of eastern Lebanon in which a marksman had taken the life of the murderer of a British diplomat. He was a hero of the good old former times. The fiasco of the capture by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of the Desk Head (Iran) while pottering about after archaeological remains in Turkey, the disastrous consequences of his interrogation in an Iranian gaol in Tabriz, the loss of an entire network of Field Agents, ensured that all was now different. Martins, O. B. E., hero of the Beqa'a, had established his reputation before Whitehall had put a stop to any mission that smacked of derring-do or risk.

Martins now headed the Desk that watched over Jordan and Syria and Iraq, and he was safe until he cared to retire.

"That's not entirely fair," Desk Head (Israel) said.

The Deputy Director said gently, "I tend to agree, Percy, not entirely fair."

Martins said, "What have we got? We have H area, A area, and B area. Tork is pushing the Israeli belief that this means Aldermaston. Maybe they are right, don't get me wrong, but where else are there H and A and B areas? Shouldn't we be checking at Sellafield or Harwell? And at the French nuclear centre, and in America, and in South Africa, and in Pakistan for that matter?"

The Deputy Director inclined his head. He was already 15 minutes late for his weekly session with Personnel. "I believe Percy has a point."

Martins powered on. "A typical Israeli tactic, involve everybody else with their difficulties. They love it, having everyone rush around doing their work for them."

The Desk Head (Israel) snapped, "A serious warning, strongly suggestive of an attempt on the part of Iraq to steal nuclear secrets or possibly to entrap or seduce one of our own nuclear scientists is not to be taken lightly."

" Y o u call this a serious warning? It's altogether too airy-fairy in my view."

The Deputy Director took his cue. "I think we may justifiably request, via Tork, more detailed information from our friends in Tel Aviv, yes?"

"So, you'll do nothing?" The Desk Head (Israel) began to riffle his papers together.

"Speak a few words in a few ears, not make a panic." The Deputy Director smiled. "Good enough, Percy?"

Martins tugged at his small moustache. " I f the Israelis want us to spring about in every direction they will have to share with us something rather more concrete."

Carol, of course, was back, holding court in the outer office, back from her day at the Falcon Gate replenished with gossip. On the picket line she had gathered more weapons-grade scandal in a day than she would normally have accumulated in a month.

Bissett's open door was well within range.

Carol said…

The A90 building was awash with Department of the Environment fraud investigators.

Carol said…

The best bit was that-you're not going to believe this-a bulldozer had been ordered on the Establishment account, but delivered to A90 when it should have gone to the man's home where he ran a landscaping business. Wasn't that awful?

Carol said…

On the A90 site, it had been decided that 3500 metres of ductwork to carry nitrogen into the glove boxes where the plutonium would be worked, if the place ever worked, was going to have to be ripped out and replaced because the 2000 welds connecting the ductwork weren't up to scratch, couldn't be repaired. Five million taxpayers' pounds down the plug. Wasn't that dreadful?

Carol said…

He heard the rise and fall of Carol's voice as she distributed her precious discoveries from the picket line. The door opened across the corridor. Boll going for a late lunch in the Directors' dining room, taking a short break from the annual assessments.

Bissett hunched himself over his desk as Boll went by. Thanks to Carol's shattering revelations, thanks to the bank manager's renewed assault, thanks to his humiliation at Boll's hands over the lecture invitation, it had not been a productive morning. How would he, indeed, assess himself? " T h e work of this gifted, original physicist is undervalued in the Establishment." Was it?

He was no longer confident of that.

"I won't jump, not for those patronising bastards."

"It's a simple warning, and one to be acted upon."

"I wouldn't cross the road for them, not if one of them was being mugged for his last pound coin."

Barker was head of D Branch. D Branch included the Military Security section. The Military Security section was Hobbes.

Barker said, "Come off your cloud, young man."

Hobbes said, "They snap their bloody fingers, those bastards, and they expect us to come running."

Barker said, and it was not like him to be cruel, " N o doubt if they had accepted you then your attitude would have undergone the old sea change."

Hobbes said, "Very catty. Anyway, I haven't the manpower left."

Barker said, "I don't need a bulletin on the 'flu casualties. Do me a favour, stop fucking about, just nominate somebody." He understood young Hobbes's dislike of the Century House crowd, and in truth shared it to a degree. One day, someone would take the lad aside and tell him just how lucky he had been to be rejected by the Secret Intelligence Service and to have squeezed into Curzon Street instead.

"I suppose Rutherford could do it."

"What's he up to now?"

"Nannying an F. B. I, fledgling."

"That American thing…?"

Dickie Barker was 64 years old, one year off retirement. He would have served, to this day, 40 years in the Security Service, He had worked in the Watcher Service of A Branch, the Personnel Vetting section in B Branch, the Soviet Satellite Section of C

Branch, the Political Parties (Left) section of F Branch. In his run-up to retirement he headed D Branch with sections working to him that dealt with the Civil Service, Government Contractors, Military Security and Sabotage Prevention. Many newer men, Hobbes among them, had not been too proud to seek him out for advice on this and that. He had a deep wellof experience and, when his P.A. wasn't off sick, a constantly patient and amiable manner He had helped Jim Skardon interrogate Fuchs, He had been among the watchers who had tailed Alan Nunn May. He had been in the team that kept the bungalow home of Peter Kroger under surveillance. He had observed Bossard, he had prepared the case against Bettany who had worked only two floors below him in the old Leconfield House building. If he had had a very good evening, he would talk of the day. when the F.B. I, heavyweights were over in Leconlield House, running riot through Registry, shitting on the Service and playing the game that every Briton was subversive. It was said of Dickie Barker that second only to his contempt for the Secret Intelligence Service was his dislike of the American agencies.

"I could tell Rutherford to put the American on hold."

"Yes, Rutherford would do. Tell him to park his pram, prefer-ably in the middle of Oxford Circus. Have him in here before the end of the day."

Erlich spoke fast, didn't hide his excitement, said what he wanted

… He listened. He replaced the receiver.

Ruane was across the room, getting off his coat, back from lunch.

"You all right, Bill?"

Erlich looked up. He looked into Ruane's face. There was a quiver in his voice.

" I ' m being pissed on, Dan."

Ruane gestured him to follow, walked smartly into his office.

He held the door open, closed it behind Erlich. A growl in his voice. "What sort of shit talk is that?"

Erlich said, "They gave me a liaison. There is a shooting in London, an Iraqi, former government employee, is killed. I'm not informed, I am left to read it in the newspaper. I react. I ring my liaison and I tell him what I want… "

"Want?"

"Want, Dan, because I am here to investigate a murder. Yes, I tell him what I want. I tell him I want every detail on the investigation into this local killing. Anything they've got on identification, etc. etc. My liaison said he was unavailable. He said he had other work, and would be back to me when it was finished. What do I do, Dan?"

Ruane had ducked out of sight. When he reappeared it was with the box of brushes and polish, and his stockinged feet swung to the desk top.

"When I know what I want and no one will give me what I want, then I go and take it."

"Thanks…"

" Y o u screw up, and I never heard of you. You hear me?"

Colt was still sitting beside his mother when his father returned to the bedroom in the early afternoon.

When his mother had woken he had leaned forward to kiss her check, and she had smiled. Her eyes had closed again, but then, at least, her breathing had been steady, and from the time that she had woken he had loosely held her hand. Her peace brought a calm to Colt. His thoughts were of memories long buried, of the family holidays, and laughter and merrymaking at Christmas in the Manor House. Only good memories concerned him.

It was good she was asleep. If she had been awake then she would have wanted him to talk. He would not have wanted to tell her of the two boys to whom he had taught English, and who had learned nothing, but who had shed their puppy fat and their conceit and learned to pitch tents and make camp fires and shoot a rabbit at a hundred paces with the Colonel's Kalashnikov rifle, and skin the animal and cook it and eat it. Through teaching those boys his own freedom he had further taken the eye of the Colonel and dictated his own transfer from the uplands of rock and desert around the army compound and the Colonel's bungalow to the prison cell that was the apartment on the Haifa Street Housing Project. She would not have wanted to hear that he had been taken from the wild happiness to the capital city to be trained as a killer of targets. Best that she was asleep.

His father carried a tray into the bedroom. Three soup bowls, some buttered toast cut into fingers, a jug of orange juice and three glasses.

His father said that he had been into Warminster to the bank, and that he had needed to do the shopping. Colt thought that his father had found an excuse to leave son and mother together.

His father lifted his mother, propped her high against the pillows, fed her soup with a spoon, and he talked as if she could not hear him.

"They were Security Service and the F.B.I…"

"I heard the voices."

"I sent them packing."

"You don't want those bastards in your house."

"… I told the American to go down to the pub because I couldn't let him inside, because the lavatory door is beside the kitchen door and because this is obviously a non-smoking house, and because on the kitchen table you had left a saucer with a revolting little cigar end in it."

Soft, murmured words, as he fed the soup into his wife's mouth, and after he had given her each spoonful he wiped carefully at her chin to remove what the shake in his hand had spilled.

" T h a n k s. "

" Y o u always were a careless little sod."

"What did they want?"

"When I'd seen you, where you were."

"What did you tell them?"

His father looked into Colt's face. "That I wasn't responsible for your actions. They said it was about state-sponsored terrorism, I said that you had made your own bed… "

" D i d they believe you?"

"I didn't ask them… " A coldness in the whisper voice.

"Isn't political murder a cut above your league?"

" I f you say so."

"I mean, that's not running around with those animal loonies…

"

Colt said, like it was an explanation, " H e got in the way. He wasn't the target. He was C. I. A. "

"They won't ever let up after a trick like that."

Colt said, "I'll never be taken."

" T h e idiots all say that."

" Y o u could have turned me in, when you were in Warminster this morning."

"Could have done… should have done. Could have let the American in before breakfast, for that matter."

"But you didn't."

"During the war there were men who died under torture, rather than give my name – your soup will be cold – I would never inform, even on a stranger."

Colt's glance caught the wartime photograph. There were the clear features of his father and behind were the fading faces of his colleagues in arms. One of them, on the extreme right, had been his mother's uncle. He wondered which of those blurred figures had been taken and tortured, and had held his silence that his father might live.

"Thank you for sending for me."

Erlich said, ever so gently, "That's just terrific, Miss Worthington."

"It's only what I saw. You see it or you don't see it."

" A n d again… "

" S o that you can write it down, Mr Erlich. He had fair hair, cut close, not shaven like those skinhead types, I don't suppose you have them in America, cut very tidily. He was wearing this woollen cap. If it hadn't slipped, just for that moment before he straightened it, then I would not have seen his hair. Rather golden fair hair."

" A n d you'd know the face again?"

" O h, yes, Mr Erlich."

"Positive?"

" H e looked at me, he smiled at me. When you've seen a man kill another man, then that man smiles at you, well, you are going to remember that face."

" A n d he said…"

" H e said 'Hey, there'. That's when I looked up. The man, the foreigner, you see I thought that he was the worse for drink, and I started to cross the road. I had heard nothing. As long as I live it will be with shame, because I thought he was drunk and I started to cross over so that he wouldn't involve me. Then he fell and I saw the blood. Up to that time the man in the boiler suit had stood away from him, but then he went closer. I don't hear very well these days, I heard nothing. The man lying on the pavement, he just stopped moving, and I shall never know if I could have done something for him or not, but I was just going to get out of the way because I thought he was a drunk."

It was the old training from Quantico that an interrogator never showed excitement. Didn't matter if he was getting the laundering system of a crack baron, or a confession to serial murder, the Fed was taught at the Academy not to show excitement. To show excitement was to lead. Never lead. He shouldn't have told Miss Worthington that she was terrific. That was a slip. It was the fifth house that he had called at in the street. He had knocked on the door. She was just inside the door and he could see her shape through the glazed glass. He had knocked and rung the bell, but she had been a long time answering. He had sensed she was faint, that the small dog was frantic. His intuition, that she was a prisoner in her own home. The shopping basket with the list in it had been on the carpet by the front door. It had been his intuition and his understanding. Nothing said. He had taken the basket, gone to the corner shop at the far end of the street. He had bought a packet of porridge, one pork chop, oven-ready chips, a carton of frozen broccoli, one apple, one orange, a small loaf of wholemeal sliced, and an 8oz tin of Pedigree Chum. And after he had ticked off each item on the list he had asked for two half LB bars of milk chocolate and a small bunch of chrysanthemums. He had come back to the house. He had allowed her to peck in her purse for the coins to reimburse him, but not for the chocolate and the flowers. He had cooked her meal, fed her dog. He thought that if she had not been standing near the door at the moment he had knocked, if she had been in the recesses of the house, then he would never have been admitted. She was 24-carat gold dust.

"Miss Worthington, my paper says that the police do not have a description of the assassin."

"I really couldn't say."

"Haven't they been to speak to you, Miss Worthington?"

"I wouldn't talk to them."

"Why not, if that's not impolite?"

"I wouldn't open the door to them… You're different, Mr Erlich, and you're American."

" D o you have American friends?"

"Two of my best friends are Mr Silvers and Miss Ball."

Well done, Phil Silvers, well done, Lucille Ball, he thought, and he took the photograph from his inside pocket.

Miss Worthington, I am going to show you a photograph of a man. You really have to he very honest with me. If you don't recognise him, yon must say so. If you do recognise him…"

He laid the photograph on the table beside her, where there was her book and her reading light and her c l o s e w o t k spectacles.

She changed her glasses, took off her heavici pair, replaced them delicately from the table. He didn't prompt If she said what she thought he might wish to hear, then he would face weeks of wasted effort. She glanced at the photograph She didn't bother to hold it and peer at it.

"You're very clever, Mr Erlich."

"Clever, ma'am?"

"Of course that's him."

He was up from his chair. He kissed her on both checks. When he stepped back he saw the flush of colour in her pale face.

She said gravely, "It was a terrible thing he did in our street, and he could have hurt those dear little girls."

" A n d before that he killed a man who was my friend."

"You'll go after him?"

"That was the promise I made to the widow of my friend."

" D o you go to chapel, Mr Erlich? No, I don't expect you have time. I will pray for your safety, young man. Any person who can take the life of any of God's children, then smile at an old lady, he would have to be very dangerous. What is his name?"

"His name is Colt."

" T h e best of luck to you, Mr Erlich. I have so enjoyed your visit. And, I will be praying for your safety."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Well, think, Frederick."

"I don't know."

''That is just a pretty stupid answer."

"If you shout, Sara, you will wake the children."

"Just how bad is it?"

"How bad.,,?" He laughed out loud. His voice was shrill, matching hers. "How bad do you want it? I.C. I, have turned me down. That bloody man at the bank is turning the screws. Boll is doing annual assessments now and I'm behind on my work project, and getting nagged

"They wouldn't put a bailiff in…?"

"For what?" he scoffed

"Frederick, you have to tell me what we are going to do…"

They could take the cars, his and hers. They could take furniture. They could take thei clothes off their backs. Christ, it was obscene. .. All the lights were off in the house except for the bedside lights in the children's room, and the strip light in the kitchen. The heating was oil, because the boiler was shuttown. They couldn't take the television set, because it was rented.

"I'm going to say goodnight to the boys."

"Frederick, we have to talk about ii "

"Something'll turn up."

He stood at the bottom of the stairs. He thought that she was beautiful with the tired frightened anger in her eyes. He did not know how to talk to her. A dozen years of marriage and he knew nothing that mattered about her. If she ever went away from him, abandoned him, he could not have survived. Yet he did not know how to talk to her, and he loved her. Yes, something would have to turn up.

"Is that the best you can offer?"

"That something'll turn up, yes."

Bissett groped his way upstairs towards the bar of light under the boys' door. He had always provided for his family. He had not expected that his wife should go out to work. That was his upbringing. Old-fashioned, yes. Working-class, yes. He had been the bright star of his college, he had a first class degree in Nuclear Physics, he was a Senior Scientific Officer, he lived in the house that he and the building society had paid?98,000 to buy, yet he would never escape from his upbringing. It was his responsibility alone to provide for his family.

Something would turn up, yes. He paused outside the boys' door. He could hear them larking about and giggling.

Away up the road, up Mount Pleasant, up Mulfords Hill, across the Kingsclere to Burghfield Common Road, were the arc lights and the fences of the A. W. E. It was Boll country, Basil country, Carol country, a world of fraud and waste and burnt-out hopes, of excruciating effort, constant danger, trivial rewards, Ministry police with machine pistols country. Less and less did it feel like Frederick Bissett country.

" N o w then, you naughty little blighters, time for sleep."