A Line in the Sand (14 page)

no

He headed

for the door.

on, I've got a mountain of work."

"I'll be at my desk, Mr. Fent

Fenton ignored him and told the superintendent, on the telephone,

that

they should meet, that they should consider a protection officer.

ountain was a missing man, who had bought all-weather

Markham's m

clothing that did not fit him and a guidebook, and a woman, who had left the address recorded on the file with no forwarding details.

He

he was thinking about his interview, said he did

rang Vicky, said

not

know when he would be clear said it wasn't his fault, not anybody's fault.

85

ame through as she worked at her keyboard, distracted her.

The call c

ked up the phone and heard his voice.

She finished the entry, pic

adys Eva Jones, only daughter of a train driver out

She had been Gl

of

the Derby depot. She had been a plain girl, with poor eyesight, a love

of mathematics and a desperate loneliness. Her school-teachers,

aps out of pity, had concentrated sufficiently on her that she

perh

won

a place at

gham

Nottin

University. She had clung limpet-like to gangs

of fellow students, and she'd seen the efforts they'd made to avoid her.

ht, second year, drunk in the union bar, they had told

One nig

her

et 'flicking lost' because she was so 'fucking boring' and so

to g

'fucking ugly'. She had gone to an abandoned lecture room to sob

out

her misery. She had been the girl found by an Afro-Caribbean

r,

cleane

and she had wept on his shoulder. It was he, six years before, who had

to the classes of Sheik Amir Muhammad. She had learned

taken her

the

s of the Faith the Shahada, the Salat, the Zakat, the Sawm

Five Pillar

and the Ha]]. She had recited the words, "There is no deity but God.

s the apostle of God."

Muhammad i

In her last year at the university,

she had gone to her lectures wearing the chad or the rou push. She had

felt the protection of her Faith, and the respect it gained from

w

fello

believers, and had taken the names Fanda and Yasmin. Her degree was cre, but she knew that reflected the prejudice of her examiners.

medio

ed away by many potential employers, but that

She had been turn

reflected the prejudice of the management who interviewed her because she wore with pride her chad or Her mentor had been Sheik Amir

Muhammad, her friend Yusuf Khan, and she felt herself to be safe in a

world of enemies. She had not known she was under the watching eye of

an intelligence officer from the Iranian embassy.

Three years after her conversion, when Yusuf Khan had appeared to

abandon the Faith, forswear the prayer meetings of Sheik Amir

Muhammad,

and had left their small group, she had been rocked. At that time, her

86

own obedience to the Faith had been total... Without Yusuf Khan's

friendship, her own commitment to the Faith had gradually weakened.

She

telligence to be aware of the change, but she had tried

had the in

her

ignore the weakening. At night, alone, she could analyse

best to

the

ifting ground on which her Faith was based.

sh

She had wanted a place

for herself, had wanted respect. At first, the white girl, she had prized convert and a focus of the Sheik's attention, but new

been a

converts had come to the small red-brick mosque and she had sensed she

was no longer the centre-point of interest. Even so, Farida Yasmin had

shaken to the core when the Sheik, with Yusuf Khan sitting

still been

lently behind him, had quietly told her that she could best serve

si

the

eligion if she, too, were to seem to walk away from everything

true r

that was precious and reassuring. She had not doubted them, she had obedient

been

to their wishes. She had felt undressed, dirtied, when

she had gone for a job interview at a Nottingham insurance company, two

years back, dressed in a skirt and blouse and not in the black chad or

She said her prayers each day at the appointed time in the privacy of

her new bed sit home and in the insurance company's lavatory, but

the

comfort of the mosque was now denied her.

For much of those two years she had been ignored; no contact had been made. At first she had been merely miserable, then resentful. The ship of the mosque was in the past, and the present offered

friend

no

cause she despised the other girls who worked around her.

warmth be

She

en given no explanation of why she had been recruited as a

had be

'sleeper', nor what would be expected of her one day, until six weeks rriving back at her one-bedroom flat from another day's

ago. A

humdrum

d been waiting on the

work for the insurance company, Yusuf Khan ha

vement for her.

pa

After she had telephoned the company and pleaded

a

ereavement they had driven north, and the following week they

family b

had gone to the Suffolk coast. She did not know who had instructed Yusuf Khan to contact her, but at last she felt a small sense of

87

usefulness. Farida Yasmin, an unknown soldier of Islam, had just

come

back from the lavatory when her telephone had rung.

She hid her face from the other women tapping at their keyboards.

The

virgin Farida Yasmin always felt pleasure flush her cheeks when he spoke to her, because they shared the secret of their Faith and the secret of their work against God's enemies.

"Tell me you're right, and it's not real."

"They try to frighten you.. . If you're frightened then you're compliant... If you're compliant then it's easier for them... What's easiest for them is when you run."

"If it was real, bad real...?"

"What they want is convenience. I stood my corner and they backed off.

Because they backed off, I can't believe it's bad real."

"What's going to happen?"

"I don't know. When I sent you out God, I'm sorry, I was foul - a man

came, a creepy little bastard. He came into our house and he looked around like he was wondering what sort of price he could get for

everything that's special to us. He left a brochure of locks and

bolts

and alarm systems. We've to choose what we want and they'll be

fitted.

There's a pamphlet he gave me with all the things we have to do it's sick and listing all the pills you should take and how

like being

far

you

walk,

should

that kind of thing. Look under the car with a mirror

each morning, don't establish patterns over regular journeys, after dark go into a room and don't switch the light on till you've first drawn the curtains, look for strangers watching the house, and

l

there'l

be a panic button. You've got to make net curtains..."

t curtains."

"I hate ne

"I said you hated them. Please, Meryl, we've got to have them."

88

"Why?"

"Because.." because.." net curtains absorb flying glass."

"It's not much, Frank, what we have to do."

"It's what he said."

"You want to know what I think?"

"I want to know if you're going to stay."

"You're brought up always to believe a policeman or an official. I think, as you said, it's a scare and they're doing what comes

convenient. You've convinced me, Frank. They've got all the powers t and if it was really serious I think they wouldn't have

they wan

listened to what you said, they would have shifted you... It's my

home

too."

"And Stephen's... Are you going to stay?"

"I won't find another home."

"I won't make another home, not another home where thete's love, where friends."

there's

think you were right, Frank.

"I

It was just to scare you, so's you'd

make it easier for them."

"Are you going to stay? Whatever you want, I'll do. I can make a l.

phone cal

I can have the removal van here tomorrow and we can pack

the bags. No goodbyes, nothing, scuttle out in the dark. Leave

everybody who's important to us, no explanation. Fear all the waking nd no sleep because of the fear.

hours, a

Don't get to know anyone

again, not ever, because you'll be moving on, running, rootless. I can

make a phone call and it will happen, and it will be convenient for

... What do you want to do?"

them

t's our home... If it were real they would have moved you.

"I

You'd

have been kicking and screaming, but they'd have shifted you."

freshening and the sea lashed the beach stones. He

The wind was

so desperately, to believe her. To believe her was to be

wanted,

given

89

courage. She held his hand.

He was in his cabin when the master brought him his one meal of the day, a plate of rice and boiled mutton, a bowl of spiced cooked

vegetables, an apple and a glass of fruit juice.

Only the master had access to the locked cabin. It was a woman's

space, with bright decorative curtains, a cheerful woven carpet, and the photographs on the walls were of pretty views from home. The

master's wife would have used the cabin as her day room, where she could sew and read and pray beyond the sight of the Iranian officers and the Pakistani crew.

master talked he ate calmly. The next night, out in the

As the

Channel, he would leave the ship.

od,

He did not hurry over his fo

s

wa

at peace, as the master again reiterated the procedures that would be

used. He knew they were planned with meticulous care. He had been in the airless room high in the Ministry of Information and

told

Security of the many people involved in tracking down his target,

and

ughness of their work. Nothing had been left to chance.

the thoro

He had been shown the photographs, and had been talked through the schedules. It was the way of his people and he had complete

confidence

in the plan drawn for him. It was the work of many effortful months, and his own role was simply to conclude it. Later, when the darkness n the corridor

had come around the tanker, he would again slip dow

and

out on to the deck space, and he would walk far from the bridge lights, sit alone, and think of his wife, of the mission that had been given to

him and his homecoming.

he had finished the food he passed the tray back to the master,

When

thanked him curtly. Then he sat in his chair, and studied the

enlarged

photograph of the face of the man he would kill. He had no cause

for

fear, he had been told that the man was unprotected.

Sergeant Bill Davies should have been watching his boy play football.

But it had been a pig of a day, starting at half past midnight when Lily had thrown two pillows and a blanket down the stairs and screamed 90

at him that the sofa was where he'd sleep or she was leaving.

Four bad hours of sleep, then out from home in south-west London and across all the bloody traffic streams to beyond east London. Half awake, jazzed to hell, he had been in the worst possible frame of

mind

for shooting. If he'd failed with the Glock and the H&K, failed to make the necessary score, then he was out on his arse for a month

until

the next slot came round, with his personal weapon withdrawn. He'd forgotten, until late the last evening, to tell Lily that he was in a

shooting slot, that he wouldn't be there to see his elder boy, Donald, play central sweeper, and she'd screamed that it was the last straw, that he was more married to the Branch than to her.

He'd never been a crack shot, good enough on the Heckler & Koch, had the necessary score there, but he'd gone down the first time round on

the Glock. He was the only one in the group who had failed with the handgun. They'd put him through it a second time. The instructors wanted to pass him, willed him to get the score, and the guys and

girls

from armed-response vehicles and Static Protection and Special

Escort

Group, they'd all rooted for him, but he had failed again mid-morning.

The instructors had told him to get a coffee in the canteen, that

they'd try one last time before the lunch-break. If he failed the last

time then he'd have to hand in the gun, and it would be a month behind a desk until the next chance. If they knew back in the office about Lily throwing the pillows downstairs and yelling about leaving, it could be handing in the gun for all time because they'd have said

his

emotional stability was unproven.

He took the Isosceles stance, readied for double-tap shooting;

walking

squares, swinging to aim when the damn target swivelled,

drawn-weapons

position and shooting. The last shot, a 9mm bullet, was on the line of

the target circle in the figure shape, ten metres range. Some

instructors said that on the line was failure and some said it was good