Secret Asset

40

He was going to have to get rid of the car, and part of him wanted to get rid of Rashid as well. Stupid! Bashir had thought furiously, as they had driven out of Wokingham and west along the M4. The road had been almost deserted that late at night, lit by a crescent moon that hung like a brooch from a cloudless sky. Rashid had been stupid beyond belief. Though from the way he had sat slumped half asleep in the passenger seat, he was completely oblivious to the trouble he had caused. In the back Khaled also slept.

The temptation to remove Rashid passed—he was needed after all. But Bashir’s anger remained. It was not helped by the need to keep a low profile, and stay inside all day. They were living in a small house on the outskirts of Didcot, part of a new estate of starter homes that skirted a golf course. Like all its neighbours their house enjoyed a close-up view of the nearby power station and its reviled cooling towers.

Yet for all the grimness of its surroundings, the house had the bonus of a garage, in which Bashir had put the Golf, swapping places with the white builder’s van, which he had parked on the street.

But the car was going to have to go. They needed to work on the van and they’d have to do that in the garage, safely out of sight.

Bashir stuck closely to Rashid in the following days, since he did not trust him enough now to allow even the shortest solitary walk. But staying inside all day was intensely monotonous for all three of them. There was nothing for them to do. Meals and prayers and the Koran—that was their life.

Bashir had a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of the area and spent one afternoon scrutinising it for remote tracks in the unpopulated countryside lying west of them. Then one evening he went out while it was still light, since he was worried he would not be able to find a suitable place in darkness. He gave Rashid and Khaled strict instructions not to leave the house on any account, though it was only Rashid he was concerned about. The landline was disconnected, and he had destroyed Rashid’s incriminating mobile phone before they left Wokingham. As long as he didn’t go anywhere, even Rashid should be unable to get into further trouble.

He was surprised how quickly the urban sprawl of Didcot gave way to farmland, and drove past field after field of orchards until he turned off the main Wantage road and moved south towards the Downs, pulling over on the small roads from time to time to consult his map. He drove through a village of brick and beam cottages, where a solitary man emerged from the churchyard with a terrier on a lead. Bashir felt conspicuous, and tried to reassure himself—he told himself there were plenty of Asians in Oxfordshire.

He turned onto a road of potholed asphalt that climbed in a series of sharp zig-zags to the top of the Downs. The Ridgeway crossed here, and he could see hikers in shorts and thick boots walking west towards Bath. The road split, the paved fork continuing south, crossing up and down across the humps of the hills. To the right a sandy track, half overgrown, meandered into a small wood. It was clearly never used.

Bashir drove down it cautiously, hearing the grass brushing the van’s bottom, and gorse bushes scratching its side. At the first small clearing, he pulled over and parked under an enormous beech tree.

He got out, locked the van, and began to walk further along the track. On either side, holm oaks towered above him, blocking out the sunlight and casting spooky shadows. Bashir could see that the track remained just accessible enough by car. After two hundred yards he came to a curve in the road, and almost immediately to a small clearing with a shallow pond where the track ended. The water looked mucky, algae-filled. No one would want to swim there.

Mentally Bashir marked a spot next to the pond where he would put the Golf. It should be days, possibly weeks before it was discovered, he thought, and in the state it was going to be in, it wouldn’t tell anyone much. In any case, very soon it wouldn’t matter even if it did. All he needed now was a full can of petrol.