“OK, I will. See you.”
As intended, he had seen and taken note of the ring. The faint but unmistakable note of disappointment in his voice, however, had given Jean an idea. It was not going to be easy, but she knew what she was going to have to do. Dumping her basket on the inclined ramp of the counter and letting the girl take the items out and scan and bag them, she reached out and touched the boy’s arm as he made for the exit. He looked round at her, surprised.
“Can I just ask you something?” she whispered. “Outside?”
“Er, sure,” he murmured.
Turning, Jean pulled two ten-pound notes from the velcro wallet. Engrossed in the business of the till, Beverley had not registered the exchange.
Outside the shop Jean assumed her friendliest expression. It was not easy. Smiling was almost painful.
“Sorry to sort of… grab you like this,” she said. “But I was wondering, do you know of any good pubs round here? I’m staying nearby…” she nodded vaguely westwards, “and I don’t know the area, so…”
He scratched his head cheerfully, further disordering the straw-coloured hair. “Well, let’s see… there’s the George,” he jerked a thumb left-handed, “but it’s a bit Ye Olde, if you know what I mean. A bit mums ’n’ dads. I usually go to the Green Man, which is a mile or so up the Downham Road.”
“That’s good, is it?”
“It’s the best round here, I’d say.”
“Right,” said Jean, meeting his anxious, self-conscious gaze with a warm smile. “That’s… Can you tell me exactly how to get there on foot? Because I’m not a hundred per cent sure that I’m going to be able to borrow my parents’ car.”
She was amazed at herself. She had thought that it would be next to impossible, this close-up deception, but it was so easy. As killing, when it had come to it, had been so easy.
“Well, you want to cross the cricket ground, and…” He looked down at his feet and took a deep breath before once again meeting her wide-eyed, enquiring gaze. “Look, I can… I can take you if you want. I was going up there myself tonight, so if you, er…” He shrugged.
She touched his forearm. “That sounds really great. What sort of time?”
“Oh, er… eightish?” He looked at her with a kind of dazed disbelief. “Say eight thirty? Here? How would that be?”
“That would be lovely!” She gave his arm a quick squeeze. “It’s a date, then. Eight thirty here.”
“Er, OK. Great. Where was it that you said you were staying?”
But she was already walking away.
59
On the tarmac outside the hangar, the SAS were taking on the PO19 Tactical Firearms Unit at football, and losing. Without doubt, the players were having a considerably better time than their immediate superiors, who were sitting inside waiting for news. Phones rang at intervals, and were snatched up, but no news of any importance had come in. Helicopters and regular and Territorial Army teams were maintaining their patrol.
The area was not a densely populated one, and the locals were somewhat bemused by this activity, and by the huge resources of camouflaged manpower that had been mobilised. The county had been intensively leafleted over the course of the morning, and everyone now knew that those suspected of the murders of Ray Gunter and Elsie Hogan were an Asian man and an Englishwoman.
This time when her phone went off Liz did not dive to reach it. All morning, as the negative results came in from each sector, she had had an increasing sense of her own uselessness, and only a terrible fascination with the endgame process prevented her from slipping away and driving back to London. Leaving was what Wetherby would certainly have counselled under the circumstances; there was no advantage to the Service or to anyone else in her staying around.
But Wetherby’s advice had not been sought, and until all the intelligence had come in from Garth House, Liz was going to stay put.
At 3:30 p.m. one of the Army officers voiced the thought that no one else had dared put into words: that perhaps they were searching the wrong area. Was it possible, he ventured, that they had been sold a dummy? Led by a false process of deduction to guard the wrong institution? Could Lakenheath or Mildenhall be the real target?
The question was greeted with silence, and all present turned to Jim Dunstan, who stared expressionlessly in front of him for perhaps a full quarter of a minute. “We continue as we are,” he said eventually. “Mr. Mackay assures me that the Islamic regard for anniversaries is absolute, and we have several hours until midnight. My suspicion is that Mansoor and D’Aubigny are lying up waiting to run the cordon under cover of darkness, and darkness will be with us within the hour. We continue.”
Shortly after 4 p.m. the rain came, wavering grey sheets of it, lashing the hangar roof and dimming the outlines of the waiting Gazelle helicopters. The air smelt dangerously electric and the Army Air Corps pilots glanced anxiously at each other, mindful of their airborne colleagues.
“All we bloody well need,” winced Don Whitten, forcing his hands frustratedly into his jacket pockets. “They say rain’s the policeman’s friend, but it’s our enemy now, and no mistake.”
Liz was about to answer when her phone bleeped. The text message indicated a waiting e-mail from Investigations.
Price-Lascelles still n/a in Morocco but have identified and contacted one Maureen Cahill, formerly matron at Garth Hse. MC claims D’Aubigny’s closest friend Megan Davies, expelled from GH at age 16 after various drug-related incidents. MC says she treated D’Aubigny & MD in school infirmary after psilocybin (magic mushroom) overdose. According to school records Davies family (parents John and Dawn) lived near Gedney Hill, Lincs, but house has had several changes of occupants since, and no current record of Davies family whereabouts. Do we follow up?
Liz stared at the screen for a moment, and then printed out the message. That final sentence suggested that she was clutching at straws, but in truth it was all she had to go on. If there was any chance, however slim, of saving lives by ordering an investigation into the whereabouts of the Davies family, then she had to take it. That this investigation would be manpower-intensive did not have to be spelled out. Davies was a very common name indeed.
Go for it, Liz typed out. Use everything. Find them.
She looked outside. The rain was pounding remorselessly down. Dark was falling.
60
Again,” said Faraj.
“When we get to the pub I ask to leave my coat in the car. I leave the bag, too-under the coat-in case they’re running bag checks on the pub door. I persuade him to stay at the pub for as long as possible, preferably till closing time, and then take me back to the house. When it’s time to leave the pub, I set the timer to one hour, turning the red button all the way to the right. In the car I drop some coins, and squeeze round to the back seat to retrieve them. While I’m down there, I stuff the backpack under the passenger seat. When we get back to his house, I stay for ten minutes maximum, perhaps arranging to meet him tomorrow, and then I leave. I walk back around the cricket ground by the road, and knock six times on the door to this pavilion. We then have an estimated thirty-five minutes to get away.”
“Good. Remember that he must not take the car out of the garage once he has returned there. That’s why I want you to return as late as possible. If there seems to be any possibility of him or any other member of the family taking the car out again, you must prevent him. Either steal his car keys or disable the car. If you cannot do these things, then take the backpack into the house with you and hide the bomb somewhere there.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Put the backpack on.”
They had prepared this earlier, when there was still light. He had wired up the C4 device-a fairly straightforward job, necessitating a single small screwdriver and pliers-and together with its digital timer and electronic detonator this was now enclosed in an aluminium casing. At one end of the casing was the red timer-activator button, and protruding from the other a stubby inch-long aerial. If necessary, the timer could be over-ridden and the device remotely detonated by a matchbox-sized transmitter which was zipped into the inside breast pocket of Faraj’s mountain jacket. The maximum range for remote detonation was four hundred yards, however, and it went without saying that if either of them was that close when the device went off, things would have gone badly wrong.