‘Probably a tri—’
‘You need to tell someone!’
‘Nobody’s listening to me.’ He rubbed his nose, then said, ‘On account of what happened in Slough.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘And I might be wrong.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘So what I thought I’d do is head that way myself.’
‘… Seriously?’
‘It’s about three hours by car. Bit more than.’
He tossed keys in the air and caught them. Ho’s, she guessed.
‘And what if you’re right? What if they’re up there?’
‘You’ve got a gun now, haven’t you?’
She should stick to plan A, she thought. Everyone else was doing plan A. She didn’t want to be doing plan B if everyone else was having fun.
‘Or you could head for the Abbey. Join the crowds.’ He tossed the keys again. ‘Your choice.’
‘Why do you want me with you?’
‘Sidekick?’
He didn’t need a sidekick, she thought. He needed a dick whisperer. But same difference.
What would Marcus do? Abbey or Abbotsfield? Everyone was at the Abbey. Which meant, if there was glory going round, the shares would be measly, and no one would notice.
‘You coming, then?’
Marcus, she thought, would make sure all exits were covered.
‘… Yeah, all right.’
And now they were there.
They’d spent three and a half hours in the car. Not a lot of conversation involved. They’d swapped at the two-hour mark, and Shirley had driven the second leg, satnav chirping occasionally. The gun was still an awkward bulge in her pocket. In another pocket was the wrap of coke. It occurred to her that if they were stopped and searched, that combination wouldn’t make for much of a character reference. So it would be best, she decided, if they weren’t stopped and searched. Some problems were more easily solved than others.
The blood on Coe’s chin had dried, but he hadn’t wiped it away. Her ear felt unpleasantly warm, but the Sellotape ensured no dripping.
Every hour on the hour, they checked the news: nothing much. Dennis Gimball was still making headlines, his last-gasp bid for attention. And reports filtered in from round Westminster Abbey, where the streets were thronged with mourners.
‘This better not be a waste of time, dipshit,’ Shirley said, but not out loud. Not because Coe might be a psychopath, but in case he wasn’t. If he did have feelings, his future looked grim enough without Shirley hurting them.
In Derbyshire, they’d entered a different world. Hills rose all around, and trees shaded the roads. Hedgerows sprang up, sometimes giving way to ditches, and there were sheep and cows in all directions.
Last time she’d been in the country, she’d seen a peacock. It was one of the few living things she encountered there that probably hadn’t been a Russian spy.
Where the road took a dip, a signpost appeared: ABBOTSFIELD. ‘You have reached your destination,’ the satnav chipped in. Nice to have a consensus.
‘Hey,’ she said. She didn’t know what to call him: Coe? J. K.? You’d think that would have been settled one way or the other during the previous year. Whichever he preferred, he was asleep right now, or as good as. Shirley punched his shoulder: lightly, but not so lightly he could pretend to sleep through it, and he opened his eyes. ‘We’re here.’
Coe removed his earbuds and looked around.
There were police officers, quite a few of them; not armed, it didn’t appear, but flagging down traffic. Coe flashed his Service card, which earned him a pair of raised eyebrows. Cars were parked along one side of the main street, and on the other side two news crews were shooting to-camera pieces. More cars were parked along the three side streets, each of which puttered into nothingness after a hundred yards or so. The main street, meanwhile, looped around the church, squeezing between what Shirley wanted to call its back garden, though was full of headstones, and a high wall which probably guarded a manor house or something. The country had its own rules, and she wasn’t sure she understood them. But whatever they were, they originated behind that wall, or one like it.
There was a police van outside the church, near a porch-type arrangement which was garlanded with flowers and toys, and multicoloured scraps of paper, cut into shapes. Hearts and more flowers. Another van belonged to a third news crew, currently occupying the path leading to the church, which Shirley thought intrusive. On the other hand, she was turning up with a gun in her pocket. That too might seem a little uncalled for.
Now that she was here, she hoped it was.
She followed the loop round the church, found a space almost big enough for Ho’s car, and wedged it in. Engine off, she patted her pocket automatically – gun still there: where else would it be? – then studied the area. Beyond the church was a row of cottages, splashes of colour dripping from window boxes; elsewhere, bunches of flowers were tied to lamp posts, and there was something chalked on the road too, a child’s drawing it looked like: more colour. More flowers, in fact, Shirley realised, and then: That was where one of the bodies fell. There’d be a war memoriaclass="underline" most villages had one. And now Abbotsfield had one everywhere you looked.
‘Why are you really doing this?’ she asked Coe.
Coe stared straight ahead for a while. ‘If they come for me, over Gimball?’ he said at last.
‘Which they will.’
‘It might be a good idea to have something my side of the ledger.’
So I killed an MP, she thought, but I drove all the way to Derbyshire on the off chance of catching some bad actors.
She really didn’t think the one would cancel the other out.
‘What now?’
He said, ‘The front street’s pretty well covered.’
‘With unarmed policemen.’
‘At least three of them have guns.’ He pointed. ‘Two round that corner. One further down the road. We passed him first, just after the village sign.’
She’d thought he’d been asleep. ‘Rifles?’
‘One. Two machine guns.’
‘You’re good at this.’
He said, ‘Bit paranoid. It helps.’
She wondered if that were a joke, then decided it didn’t matter.
‘So what do you suggest?’
He shrugged. ‘Getting here’s used up all my ideas.’
‘I might go in the church.’
‘You might not want to carry that thing in your pocket.’
She’d jam it down the back of her jeans. The jacket would cover it.
That’s what she did once they were out of the car. Coe nodded, presumably agreeing she was now less noticeably tooled up, then gestured down the road.
‘I’m gonna take a look down there.’
And once he’d done that, she thought, he could take a look the other way, and then they’d be more or less done.
She crossed the road alone. There’d been bells ringing when they drove into the village, but they’d stopped now. The TV crew were moving their equipment from the church path onto the pavement. They regarded her for a moment, but evidently decided her unnewsworthy.
‘Full house?’ she asked, meaning the church.
One of them, thirtyish, in a T-shirt that read ON YOUR CASE, checked her out briefly, then said, ‘Yep.’
‘Much TV here?’
He considered. ‘Four crews?’
Seize the media, thought Shirley.
‘And a couple from the radio doing vox pops by the shop,’ someone chipped in. She said ‘radio’ like she meant ‘measles’; one of those things you’d have thought had been cured by now.
They left her there, on a crazy-paved path through the graveyard that led to the church porch. More flowers had been piled here: an untended mass of bouquets that made Shirley wonder what the point was; fifteen or twenty quid on a gesture nobody would notice, except as part of a large, undifferentiated orgy of sentiment. The only person left feeling better was the florist. But the scent met her as she passed: hit her like a swinging door. At that same moment, her phone rang.