Gallery Whispers

100

'How is Mr Skinner?' Karen asked. 'I heard they took him away in an ambulance, but nothing after that.'

'He's fine,' Martin replied. 'He was knocked out for a few seconds when his head hit the deck, that's all. Bob's had tougher scrapes than that and walked away from them. Sure, someone called for an ambulance, but the big fella sent it back empty.

'More to the point,' he continued, 'how are you? How was your interview with the Fiscal this afternoon? Did it go all right?'

'Yes. Mr Pettigrew was very kind. I've always imagined that when you… when something like that happened, the officer involved would be really heavily questioned.'

'Sometimes. Depends who's doing the questioning. Davie's a good guy; plus the boss had a word with him before he saw either of us. He was fine with me as well.'

'What worries me, sir'

He raised a hand and glanced around their surroundings. He had brought her to the Rosebum Bar because it was sufficiently far from the West End to be journalist-free. 'Listen, up the road, discipline says it has to be "sir", but in here, it's Andy.'

She smiled. 'Okay. What worries me, Andy, is that I didn't prevent that bastard from triggering the bomb.'

'How could you have done that?'

'I could have shot him as soon as he stepped out of the car.'

'Sure you could. Suppose you had done just that, and he'd been unarmed, the box had turned out to be Smarties, and Estelle, a foreign journalist desperate for a story, had happened on the scene — to find you with a smoking gun in your hand, standing over the body of the guy who'd let you down.

'Not even Bob would have been able to keep the Fiscal off your neck then.'

She shuddered at the thought. 'What about Estelle?' she asked. 'I thought you were seeing her tonight.'

'Not tonight, or any other,' he chuckled. 'She's gone running off to talk to an agent about syndicating her story. It'll be worth a million to her.'

'She doesn't know about Wayne and me, does she?'

'No way does she know about that; nor will anyone outside our force, ever, not even Pettigrew. Estelle knows what she saw and what I told her…' He paused.

'.. that the two dead men were international terrorists hired by an Iranian dissident group angered by their government's softening line towards the West. That Shapoor Bahwazi, the third man in the car, an attache with the Iranian delegation, was one of its ringleaders. That their first objective was to kill the Iranian Prime Minister, but that the way the seating plan worked out they extended it to include taking out the Israelis.'

'What's happened to Bahwazi?'

Martin smiled, coldly. 'The Prime Minister, no less, ordered him expelled from the UK this afternoon and flown back to Teheran. That way, there'll be no fuss, and no high security trial on our patch. He'll be up against a wall within a week, after they've got the other names in his group out of him. You'll probably catch the execution on CNN.

They had their telephoned communique, by the way, but by that time the CIA had warned them off broadcasting it.

'By then of course, they'd already run the story, as had everyone else, of the explosion in the Conference Centre, made safe by the boss.'

She sighed, heavily. 'I still blame myself for that; in spite of what you said.'

'And I'll say it again, until you accept it. You've got nothing to blame yourself for, except maybe for charging out there to tackle two dangerous guys on your own. Look, Wayne didn't give you any warning, he just triggered the bomb… which by that time was in a safe area, thanks to Bob. No, Karen, you did great.'

'But I couldn't shoot him, Andy,' she protested. 'It was my duty, and I couldn't do it. If you hadn't turned up'

'No, it wasn't your duty at all; there were no civilians about. It was your life alone that was at risk, and you had three options open to you … if you had been on your own.'

She frowned as she sipped her lager. 'What were they?'

'One, you could have let Hawkins kill you. Unacceptable. Two, you could have stood aside and let them go. Understandable. Three, you could have shot Hawkins in the hope that Wayne couldn't bring himself to kill you either. As it turned out that's what you did.

'Better that way,' he murmured. 'Better in the long term that you didn't put him down yourself; believe me.'

'You've had to shoot someone before, haven't you.'

He nodded. 'Twice. The first time was the night Mario was hit.

Afterwards we never knew who actually killed the guy, whether it was Brian or me. We both hit him, more than once. The second time…

I'd rather not talk about.'

'Does the experience still affect you?'

'There's the odd bad dream. If it gets to you too badly, you'll never carry a firearm again. At my rank, I suppose in theory I don't have to.

But if I'd made that choice…' in spite of himself, he shuddered.

'We wouldn't be sitting here right now,' she said.

'Nah! I've got faith in you. You'd have popped Hawkins and Ventnor would have put his hands up and we'd have walked away.'

'Yeah,' she muttered, suddenly bitter. 'And I'd have had to go into the witness box and give evidence with him in the dock, and his brief digging up all sorts of stuff about my sex life. Better the bastard's dead. Except that…' Her voice cracked and she looked away.

He took her hand, enfolding it in his. 'When you really mean that,' he said softly, 'you really will be all right.

'You know, we're wounded soldiers, you and me, with a terrible thing in common. We've just got to make the best of it.'

'I suppose so.' She looked up at him again, and gave his hand a quick squeeze. 'Andy,' she asked, hesitantly. 'I don't fancy being alone tonight. Would it be bad for discipline if I came home with you?

Just this once, of course.'

He looked at her, and he knew that he would never really be the old Andy Martin again, however hard he tried. His disappearance had had nothing to do with his engagement to Alex, either. That man had died on a black night in another place.

'Just this once,' he replied, 'I think it would be for the best.'