Perfect People

77

The front door was opening. The Disciple put his finger on the stopwatch start button: 7.32 in the evening. Dark. Someone came out of the house holding a big umbrella. Watching through his night glasses he could see it was the male Infidel. Moments later, as the sensors picked up the Infidel’s movement, the outside lights came on.

Now!

The Disciple pressed the button. He was standing well out of range of the lights, in the dark, in the wet field, in the same lined boots in which he had trudged through the snowy sidewalks of Rochester and New York City. He was wrapped up in warm layers, and his black baseball cap, pulled down tight, gave his face some small measure of protection from the brutal wind and the rain as sharp as needles.

It was the same rain endlessly falling, endlessly sucked back up into the clouds, then dropped again. Sucked up from the sewer, dropped, sucked up again, you could never escape, didn’t matter where in the world you were, snow made from water from the sewers fell on you, rain from the sewers fell on you, there was no place you were free from it, there never would be, not until you had purged the sewers, not until you had ridded the cities and the valleys and the plains of every last atom.

He checked that the sweep hand was moving on the stopwatch, then watched through his night glasses again; the image burned red in the glare of the lights. The Infidel escorted a middle-aged woman in a flapping coat across to a small Japanese car, held the door for her, slammed it when she had entered, then hurried back to his porch. Now the Disciple could see the woman Infidel as well, standing back inside the doorway. Both of them waved as the car drove off. No sign of a dog; one less problem to have to deal with.

Wondering who the woman was, he watched the lights of the car brush along the hedgerow as it made its way down the long farm track, heading away into the night, into another part of the sewer. Then he raised his glasses and stared through the mist of driving rain at the house. The Infidels had closed the door.

He lowered his glasses, put his finger on the stopwatch button and waited. It seemed like an eternity before the outside lights went off.

Instantly he pressed the button and looked down at the watch. They were set for three minutes.

The Disciple moved forward across the field. By morning the rain would have erased his tracks. A light came on in a downstairs window and he raised his glasses and switched off the infra-red. The male Infidel was sitting at a desk in front of a computer; he switched on a desk lamp; he raised something, a glass, a tall-stemmed glass, to his lips, and drank.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land. Psalm 37.

The Disciple was staying in a small, draughty room in an old hotel on the seafront in the resort city of Brighton and Hove. His room overlooked a windblown promenade, a rusting, ruined pier, and a sea that had been churning dark and restlessly, like his heart, during the three days that he had been here.

It would be so easy, just to wait until the lights went off in the house, make his move, do his duty and then leave, cross the Channel tonight on a ferry in his rented car. By tomorrow night he could be sleeping in the arms of Lara, and the Lord.

But no. Like Job, his patience had to endure further testing yet. An email from his Master, from Harald Gatward, instructed him to wait a little longer, to prepare more thoroughly, to bide his time until the time was right. That at the moment, God had warned, there was danger.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Psalm 32.

The Disciple lowered his glasses. He listened to the sounds of the night, of air hissing in the winter grasses, of a gate creaking and the distant clatter of a train, felt the rain against his face, the damp chilling his bones, but in his heart burned a deep glow of warmth. Dr and Mrs Klaesson and their Spawn were inside the walls of that little building.

When the command came he would be in the arms of Lara and the Lord, before anyone had even discovered their bodies.