"Yes Ray?" There was something breathlessly excited, deeply angry about Banks' voice. She felt physically assailed and weakened by its outrage.
'-nothing more to do with it or you!" he stormed.
"My family comes first-!" It was the whine of a man who had been compromised by another, led into danger.
"She was on her way to school! Their bloody car just climbed the pavement and knocked her against the wall!" There was breathing, but no pauses; the anger was one fearful, long exhalation.
"She's all right, just concussed and shocked, a few scratches no thanks to you!" His own guilt was evident, he was beating it towards her as if fighting off a swarm of bees that tormented him.
"Besides, the whole thing's been cleared up! They've paid most of the money. Cheque came this morning from the biggest firm I supplied… plus a cheque for the site work!" He did pause then, knowing he had admitted the nature of the stick, the nature of the carrot. She could not despise him.
"I'm glad she's all right, Ray, I really am," she managed to offer. He seized on it like an admission of culpability.
"I shouldn't have listened to you in the first place!"
"No… probably not."
"Just don't try to involve me again in anything? he threatened guiltily.
No' Ray…"
Banks broke the connection. She felt dizzied.
Giles Pyott saw her sway with weakness and hurried to her, grasping her to her shock, until she recognised him and leaned against him like a drunk needing support.
"Are you hurt?" he asked as she looked up at him. They must, he thought, have looked like lovers he ridiculously old, but certainly to be envied.
Marian shook her head.
"No. Just delayed shock or something," she murmured vaguely. Then, the soldier's daughter, forcing a smile, she added: "Corporal Davies always rescues me!"
She tried to mock the gravity of his expression, but he ignored her attempt at humour.
"What happened, Marian?" he asked sternly.
"Daddy," she warned: "Nothinghappened!"
"Someone tried to kill you. You were more confiding from hospital."
"Must have been shock didn't know what I was saying."
Giles tossed his head. It did not serve to clear his features or shake off concern.
Tell me what happened. Shall we go now?"
"Mm."
He picked up her briefcase and ushered her towards the concourse. The other passengers on the InterCity Shuttle had vanished towards Euston's taxi-ranks or the tube, they were virtually alone on the platform, except for a clattering, towed caravan of parcel skips. Their noise startled her unreasonably.
"What happened?"
"Someone set fire to the flat I told you." He sensed her frightened attempt at secrecy.
"Who did it? Listen, my girl' he ignored the arch, mocking glance she gave him 'you weren't the almost-victim of an attempted lesson in smoking this time. Quite possibly, someone wanted you dead." It seemed ridiculous, saying that to his daughter, crossing the crowded Euston concourse, amid baggage and the announcement of delays.
Tell me what happened."
She seemed to revive in the fresh morning air as they reached Melton Street and he pointed out the Jaguar parked near the corner of Euston Street. They crossed as gingerly as two pensioners on the zebra stripes.
"It was a petrol bomb, through the kitchen window. The fire officer told me that."
She was concentrating intensely as she spoke. Or perhaps simply studying her uncertain footsteps, he could not be sure.
"It took them no more than fifteen minutes to bring it under control saved the bedrooms, the office… I wasn't burned," she added with a perceptible shudder.
Thank God," he murmured involuntarily, unlocking the car, throwing her briefcase on the back seat amid newspapers and books.
He watched her brush her hair away from her face with a gesture that was defiant, but saw the almost cringing sense of fear in her eyes. As if she guessed his response, she said:
"Yes, they did frighten me, Daddy they frightened me very much. If that was what they wanted and not, not—"
"Get in the car, Tig," he said, and she immediately brightened at the use of his childhood name for her short for the Tiger he always claimed she was. Giles remembered murmuring the pet-name over and over again as she lay on the grass, her arm burnt, her eyes filled with stunned, traumatic terror.
As the car pulled away from the kerb, up Euston Street towards Gower Street, she sniffed loudly and said:
"I must talk to Kenneth about it."
She lit a cigarette. He wanted to disapprove of it, in his car.
"Why?"
She turned violently to him as he halted in traffic.
"Because only he can explain it!" Her voice cracked with strain. There were dark stains under her wide eyes. She stabbed at the air with the cigarette.
"It seems to be Kenneth's world, invading mine doesn't it? It doesn't seem to be casual, does it?"
"Marian," Giles said heavily, "I don't know what this is, but I blame you and I blame Kenneth in equal measure." Suddenly, in his fear for her, he could not control his parental anger.
"How can you have stirred all this up? What the devil did you think you were doing, and on whose behalf? My God, you could have been killed!
Marian stared ahead, her lower lip quivering. He was wrenched by guilt. She knew she could have died. Perhaps it was better to take her to Kenneth. Damnable Kenneth, who had no child to lose… Unfair, he corrected himself. Nevertheless, he could vent his anger more justly on Kenneth than on his daughter.
"Sorry, Tig," he murmured.
Her hand covered his as it rested on the gear lever. He tried to ignore the hot waves of terrified gratitude at her safety which seemed to rise in his body like lava.
His complete lack of any luggage stirred the vague and momentary interest of a young Customs officer as he walked through the green channel. It was a small rehearsal which sharpened his senses so that when he emerged into the concourse of Terminal 2, he was almost immediately aware that they had already picked him up two of them.
Midday, Heathrow, and one of them was no more than ten yards from him, moving parallel and without concealing his interest, even signalling to the other man. They wanted him to know they were close.
Gant had shaken them off in Oslo by raising the alarm, swamping the maintenance hangar with airport police. It had cleared the area around him, giving him the time and space to catch the morning flight to London. He needed to see Burton, explain Strickland and the-pausing to catch their reflections in the windows of the bookstall, he felt as if struck by a fist. The newspaper headlines, the pink Financial Times bearing a picture of Burton and someone who looked Eurasian celebrating a new transatlantic leasing partnership between Artemis Airways and the Skyliner.
Disorientated, he could not be certain if it was the headline that disturbed him most, or the smaller item on the front page of the Herald Tribune… Hero's Arrest Sought, and himself staring back at him from the newspaper.
In the reflecting window, one of the two men tailing him waved at him with a rolled newspaper, the briefest gesture, the clearest meaning. We know you, we have you… Gant suppressed a shiver. He felt rocked by tiredness and the news item, so that he snatched clumsily at the Herald Tribune and began reading it as if oblivious to the immediate danger.
FBI warrant Mclntyre, then former Vietnam hero… It was Vance's financial affairs, and the accusation that he had left America to avoid interrogation; charges of conspiracy, bribes… Yes, Agent Mclntyre added that Gant was… He thrust the newspaper untidily back into the rack and turned away. The Burton story was emblazoned in other headlines Whiz-Kid Bounces Back… Delighted with Deal… Great Future Ensured… Burton and his lovely wife, Charlotte, pictured last night… Turning away, he felt himself already struggling in deep water against a riptide, even before he glimpsed the tail who had waved his newspaper grinning at him.