CONDITION BLACK (20 page)

"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."

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8

He drove out of London, with a road map across his knees. He might just get the New York posting if he fouled up. Some of the instructors at Quantico said that hunches were good, and some - more - said they were crap. Ruane had been out when Bill had got back to the Embassy and his hunch told him to get down into the country again. New York-based Agents earned less than the city's garbage collectors, and the only worse posting than New York H.Q. on Foley Square was the regional office at Brooklyn-Queens. If he really fouled up it would be the fast heave out of Rome, and if he fouled up really bad then it could be Brooklyn-Queens, New York City.

He edged his way along amid the commuter traffic flow.

The Quantico bible, verse one, chapter one, said that Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The seven big Ps. He had two P's worth on the back seat of his Ford along with his waterproof coat and the Wellington boots. He had bought himself some thermals and a sleeping bag and a camouflaged bivouac cover.

The motor was fine, cramped but he could cope with thai and where he was going was just right for a dismal-looking little motor.

Once he was past Reading the traffic had thinned. He drove care fully, and the light had gone by the time he could take the turn off the motorway for the cross-country route to Warminster.

Erlich was a town boy. He had lived in Annapolis, Maryland,
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with his grandparents, then he had gone to Santa Barbara, University of California, then to Battle Creek and the town school, then to Quantico and on to Atlanta and Washington. Country was not his place. There was big, raw, country where his mother now lived, out on the White Mountains and on the long trail, but he had never felt at home in country. He did not know the way of the country, nor the pace of the country. Or the
suspicion
of the country.

Two miles short of the village, his headlights picked out the gate. The entrance into the field had been solidified with stone chips. He reckoned it was a good place for him.

He parked the Ford in the field, hard against the hedge. The hedge was thick holly and would screen his car from the road.

In the darkness he put on his boots and slipped on his waterproof coat. He rolled his sleeping bag tight inside the camouflage bivouac screen. He felt in his pocket, checked that he had his monocular glass.

Between the trees ahead he could see the dull gold glow of the village lights.

When the Serious Crime Squad boys came down to the village and bothered to announce themselves then, they always asked to see Desmond's log. His wife was in the kitchen and his supper would be up in a quarter of an hour, and the small ones were in bed. It was a useful time for Desmond to get his log up to date.

The log listed as many of the visitors to the Manor House as he knew of. Pretty dull reading it made, but it was what Serious Crime wanted.

He knew about the flowers being delivered because the van driver had called in at the shop to ask directions. Desmond knew just about everything involving the shop because he had won Mrs Williams' gratitude when he had put two kids in court for breaking her plate-glass window the last New Year's Eve. Nothing surprising about the flowers because obviously Mrs Tuck was very ill. The young constable felt he was a coming man. How many policemen in the Wiltshire force could boast a visit from an F . B . I . Special Agent plus an officer from the Security Service?

He wondered what poor Mrs Tuck's son had done to warrant the attention of the Security Service and the F.B.I. Properly speaking, that visit would have to go into the log too, and Serious Crime could make what they would of it.

He wondered, too, whether that pig of a son would come back to see his mother before she died

The flowers were on the compost heap and the voluminous cellophane wrapping and the ribbons were in the rubbish bin beside the back door, He wouldn't have the bloody flowers in a vase and on display She was upstairs and dying, his wife, and he was damned if he would allow their bloody intrusion into his life and into her death.

" Y o u owe them nothing . . . They make a joke of your mother's illness. Flowers, damn them, just to get a message to you. How can you owe them more than you owe your mother and me? How could you involve us in the infernally dangerous mess you are in?"

"I'll be gone by the morning," Colt said.

He
was
involved, Major Tuck was most emphatically involved.

He was involved because before he switched on the light in any room he first went to the window and drew the curtains closed.

He was involved because he cared for his son's freedom. He was involved because in the late afternoon dusk he had walked the dog around the garden and known that the dog would show him if the house was watched from the kitchen garden wall and the paddock hedgerow or the front garden wall on either side of the front gates.

"Will I see you again?"

"Will I involve you again?" Colt asked, and there was the careless smile at the boy's mouth.

God's truth, he'd miss the little bugger. God's truth, he wanted him gone because when he was gone then at least he knew the boy was safe and at liberty. God's truth, the smile on his wife's face, as the boy had sat with her and held her hand, had been the best thing in his life for months. God's truth, he could no longer remember how he had been at that age, in France, alone, a satchel of gelignite for company.

" I f you can come again . . . "

" I will."

She took the pheasant from the snare. She loosened the wire from its throat. In three of her snares there were strangled pheasants, two cock birds and a hen. She could move in the fields without light, her father had taught her well - it was six years since the keepers had last caught him, since he had last been before the magistrates in Warminster. Her footfall was without sound, her breathing was silent. She was a wraith moving in the care of the darkness, back towards the village.

He came past the empty keg barrels that were piled as haphazardly to await collection by the brewery as they had always been. He came past the oil tank and the rusted plough that had been at the back since he could first remember. He went through the outside back door and through the gents toilet.

Colt came into the back bar.

The beer smell was in his nostrils. The cigarette smoke was in his eyes. The jukebox music was in his ears. He paused in the doorway.

He saw the faces and he saw the astonishment. He might not have been away. Two years back, and they had all been in the bar. Billy and Zap, the brothers who worked in the bike garage in Frome . . . Charlie on the dole and proud of it . . . Kev from the farm on the Shepton Road . . . Dazzer who had tried to be a postman but who wouldn't pack in the evening drinking and couldn't get up in the morning . . . Zack, who had done time for

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sheep stealing from Home Farm, three months in Horfield . . .

Johnny, whose grandfather had left the plough at the back to wipe off his slate twenty years before, at least . . . and old Brennie. He was back two years. Old Brennie by the guttering fire, where he had been two years back, where he had been with the German Shepherd sleeping on its side at his feet when Colt had last come to the pub. The village boys were around him.

Billy and Zap, Charlie, Kev, Dazzer, Zack, Johnny, all around Brennie. Christ, and old Brennie had on the same brown Windsor soup jacket that he had worn that night two years back. Fran was the only one who hadn't seen him. She was beside her father, with her back to the door.

They were all staring at him. As if he was a ghost. Not a word spoken.

Fran turned. She swung her shoulders to see what had killed the talk around the fire. Her face lit up, then she frowned and her eyes blinked, like they weren't sure.

As she stood, her heavy coat was caught for a moment against her father's leg, and the lining showed and the deep pocket and a cock pheasant's head jutting from the pocket. For a moment, Fran's fingers clung to old Brennie's shoulder, because it could not be real.

He stood his ground in the doorway.

Then the explosion of her movement. She ran across the room.

Four feet from him, she jumped. Her thighs were on his hips, her arms were round his neck.

Not a word said. Not a word from any of them.

Colt kissed Fran. Fran kissed Colt.

Old Brennie grunted something, and none of the kids knew what he said. But old Brennie went to the bar and he slapped down his pound coin, and told old Vic to get up a bitter dash.

Colt felt the pulsing energy of his Fran and her warmth. And when he had let her down, then he held her face in his hands, let his fingers rest on her cheeks, and he kissed her lips and her chin and cheeks and her nose and her eyebrows and her ears. He kissed her until old Brennie shook his arm and handed him the pint. He held her against his chest, and he drank the pint straight down, and tossed the glass at the group of them, and Zack caught it, and old Vic was already pulling his pump.

They were all on their feet and round him.

Zack said, "Shit, boyo, you shouldn't be here . . ."

Kev said, "Colt, the filth watch for you, they're here regular . . . "

Dazzer said, "There was a Yank in the village . . . "

Charlie said, "You show yourself here, Colt, you're for the fucking jump . . . "

Billy said, "The pretty boy, the copper, he's always sniffing round your house . . . "

Johnny said, "What we heard, they've guns when they come looking for you . . . "

"Have you come back for your Ma, young 'un?"

"Yes, Brennie, I came back to see her . . . "

"I was sorry to hear about your Ma."

"Thank you, Brennie."

Old Vic had come into the bar from behind the counter. He carried the filled pint sleeve glass to Colt. Old Vic went to the main bar door and he pushed it shut and he set the bolt across.

Colt saw it in old Vic's face. He was expected to drink up, and he was expected to get his arse out. Old Vic wouldn't want trouble. Old Vic had taken his position by the counter, his arms folded across his chest. He was waiting for Colt to be gone.

"Where you been, Colt?" Kev asked.

Colt drank.

Where he had been, what he had done, that would mean nothing to any of them. Old Brennie used to claim that he had never in his life travelled further than Warminster and the magistrates's Court. Billy and Zap had been as far as Southampton, to watch football, and given that up as a waste of weekend drinking time. Zack had been to Bristol for Crown Court and prison, Australia was the moon, Iraq was the stars. Kev had been to the special school in Warminster that handled pupils too disruptive for the comprehensive.