'Just tell me when you're ready.'
'You don't have to come with me into town. I'll be fine. Five minutes there and five minutes back, not a big deal. It's only to a newsagent's on the square.'
'If you didn't know it,' Banks said, irritation rising, 'it's why I'm here.'
'Christ, aren't we dedicated?'
Chapter 19
He waited for his Principal to be dressed, to appear.
Banks paced the living room, could hear the breakfast cooking. He had opened a window and freshened the room.
He strode the length of the carpet, or the width of it, varied his steps, did the settee to the hallway door and the window to the kitchen. Sunlight came in off Inkerman Road, and he wanted to be outside where there was cleanness, not the old smell of his body that still hung in the room. No, he had no objection to walking into the town and stretching himself; it was what he often did from the bedsit, tramped the streets round the green in Ealing to settle himself before taking the Underground into work. It was the habit of long ago, of childhood, to take the collie out and walk the perimeter of a couple of fields, have the dog sniff at fox holes and badgers' setts before collecting his satchel and going up the lane to the stop and the school bus…When it was over, next Monday morning, and his letter, his card and his authorization were dumped on his superior's desk, he would be gone and free to walk till he dropped in mountain valleys and beside great lakes and across desert spaces. He stopped, and could not have said why.
On one side of him the breakfast cooked and he heard her washing up the last night's meal; on the other, behind the door, his Principal whistled to himself and was dressing.
Banks was alone, unseen.
Not for much longer, maybe for the last time, he did the drills.
Jacket on, coins and pebbles and the notebook in the right-side pocket that hung heavily. The target was the door into the hallway.
Swung on his hips, threw back the weight of his pocket, right hand dropping to the Glock. The Glock out of the pancake. Weight on his toes, feet apart, went to Isosceles. Arms outstretched, hands clamped together on the Glock's butt, the right hand's forefinger on the trigger guard. Over the needle sight and V sight was the door — was a bank thief, an assassin, a guy holding a kid in his arms. Did it again and again, and — heard her.
'For Heaven's sake, is it that serious?'
Slapped the Glock back into the pancake, felt the glow of his blush. 'Sorry — did I frighten you? I was just grandstanding. Is there that much danger?'
He felt the tension ooze away, and the blood from his cheeks. 'It's only a precaution. I apologize, you shouldn't have seen that.'
'I'm not a fool, please. I know what things cost. I assume, and you'll not deny it, that you don't come cheap — that the danger's real, and the threat.'
'We try to minimize them.'
'You're telling me that people would want to kill fools.'
Banks said, 'Money was proffered; was taken, and people believed that a promise was given in return. The promise was broken and the payment was reported to the judge. Mr Wright has made lifelong enemies and their aim now will be to track him down, hurt him a great deal, then murder him. The two brothers involved will receive, if they are convicted, exceptionally heavy terms of imprisonment, locked away in maximum-security cells. Mr Wright will be the target of their demand for revenge, and they'll he obsessed by it. They have money and they have contacts. They will ensure that Mr Wright is hunted down. I have to tell you, Miss, that your association with him puts you into the front line. We're around, mob-handed, till the verdict and, hopefully, the sentence. After that, Mr Wright and his family, and you, become increasingly vulnerable — budgets are assessed and are not bottomless pits. That's what it's about.'
'Actually, I'm throwing him out.'
'I told it like it is.'
'It's over, nothing to do with you.'
'That, Miss, is not my business.' Banks shrugged.
'Good sex and going nowhere. I have a transfer, a chance to start something new. Like I said, he's a lying bastard and more fool me for hanging on too long. I'm going to tell him after breakfast. Would you shoot to protect him, knowing what he is?'
He paused, turned away from her, faced the window and the sun dazzled him. 'While I draw my wages, I do what is necessary in my job.'
Ajaq moved, left the bench behind him.
He did not walk on the open esplanade, but went down the steps where the woman and her dog had gone.
His head was level with the top of the retaining wall that separated the walkway from the beach. The dried stones of the shingle, above where the tide pushed the surf, crackled, crunched, under his feet.
Caution was inbred in him. He cursed the noise he made, but went quickly, had estimated how long it would take him to walk the beach, go past the shelter ahead, then climb back to skirt, the pier, descend again for the kilometre to the harbour's entrance. He would arrive when the checks took place for foot-passengers' tickets and passports in the last five minutes before the gates closed on the ferry's sailing schedule. Going this way, on the shingle and with the wall alongside him, he minimized the chance of being observed. If men sitting in a car on the far side of the road beyond the esplanade, or in the back of a van, were waiting for him, he did not think he would be seen. He had no reason to believe that surveillance teams were in place, but suspicion was a habit he would not break.
He smelt the tang from the sea. His feet crushed brittle shells. He checked the luminous face of his watch to see how many minutes remained to him to reach the harbour's gates…not to know how many minutes remained before the boy jostled for a position among the queue on the steps he had been shown. His mind was focused, clear of detritus.
In front of him he saw the roof of the shelter, and bright sunlight played on the faces of two elderly men. One had darkened spectacles, and they sat in silence. He dismissed them. Further ahead, beyond the shelter, was the black outline of the pier, and the waves broke against the pillars to which weed was attached. Near to the pier were more steps that he must climb.
Sudden fear caught him. He wanted to run. It was the sight of the pier and the shadowed depths below it, the slurp of the water against the pillars. He could not see under it because none of the sun's low brilliance reached there. Further out, at the end of the pier, the waves broke with force and tossed spume. He had no knowledge of the sea. In childhood, in northern Jordan and at the home of his grandparents, he had never been taken to the resort town of Aqaba far to the south. The sea and its force — its power as it broke against the pier's pillars — were alien to him. He checked himself.
Muhammad Ajaq despised fear in others.
Fear was corrupting.
He was so far from what he knew.
Coming closer to the pier, near to level with the shelter above him, he could no longer see the shape of the ferry, moored and awaiting him. It was his target and he craved to see it. With fear there was chaos. He had shot men who showed fear. Fear turned a man's mind. He had kicked the legs from under men who trembled, had the pallor of fear on their faces, aimed a rifle at the back of their heads and killed them. Fear destroyed a man. Now it captured him.
He knew it, he must not run. If he ran, submitted to the fear, he would reach the harbour checks with sweat on his forehead and hands, and he would not be able to meet the eyes of men who stared back at him from behind a cubicle desk…Fear would betray him. He had not shown fear when he had been in the brief captivity of the Americans and had used the bogus limp and the bogus papers to extricate himself. He gulped air to calm himself.