'I think I'd like to sit in, Dickie.'
'I'd expected that you'd want to,' Naylor said drily.
'See that the right questions are asked.'
'They know what's required of them. I won't be there.' He followed with what he hoped was irony. 'I wouldn't want to be in the way.'
'My experience, Dickie, is that in these circumstances it's easier to give orders and not get dirty — easier on the conscience.'
He thought a dart speared him. The car had stopped. He recognized the two of them. They reached inside a rear door and dragged out their ghost. Both were heavier in the body and thinner in the face than they had been when he had last seen them. The ghost tried to shamble between them, but then his feet were kicked out from under him and they dragged him as if that would augment the wretch's fear and humiliation, his helplessness. The taller one, his hair greyer than Naylor remembered from the Bosnia-Herzegovina assignment, had the rucksack hooked on one shoulder. The shorter one was balder, his head shinier than when a Serb warlord had been the ghost — and the answer required had been the location of a kidnapped aid-worker, being held by Arab fighters, whose life was in extreme jeopardy. He was seen; the shorter man — Clydesdale — tapped his chest, as if to indicate that the envelope delivered to RAP Northolt was secreted there. He was noticed; the taller man — Boniface — raised his spare fist and gave him a thumbs-up. They were as unconcerned as the pair of jobbing gardeners, father and son, who came to his home every month and always had pleasant small-talk for Anne.
Holding the umbrella, he guided the American towards the door of the building. He reached the entrance, saw a torch beam roving and heard their surprised pleasure.
'Oh, that's good, Donald, there's a new power point. Oh, gets better! There's a tap and all.'
'Excellent, Xavier — water and electricity, couldn't be better.'
The hooded figure cowered against a wall. For a moment Naylor was a voyeur and could not take his eyes from him. On an A Branch night exercise, a generator was run off the power point — the cable laid at the Service's expense — and the water supply had never been cut off after the war; then and now it was used for brewing tea.
Naylor said brusquely, to assert his authority, 'Excellent to have you both on board. Time is of the essence, and we don't have much of it. My colleague will be with you, and he has my full confidence. Myself, I've calls to make.'
He stumbled away, the lie ringing in his ears, back out into the rain. His age caught him, and shame, and he shook, could not control the trembling. He left them with the American and the ghost, and thought himself damned.
She was alone. Groping her way through the house, Faria was guided only by slivers of light that came through the boarded-up windows. Around her was the smell of old, dried filth, but it was old…The yobs who had wrecked the interior had not been inside for months, no vagrants had slept there for weeks. It would do for them.
She checked the dismantled kitchen, the back room, the front room and the hallway, but not the stairs. She heard the scurry of the mice as they fled ahead of her and her face brushed against thick spiders'
webs. She was alone but trusted. After their flight from the cottage and after being told the schedule they now worked to, she had said that she knew of a house out to the west of the town centre, behind Overstone Road, that was owned by the cousin of a friend of her father, that was derelict, that would not be put up for sale until there was improvement in the property market. Faria lived in the ghetto fashioned by the ethnic minority to which she belonged. Inside it, she was isolated. It shaped her. Within it, her feelings of revulsion for the society around her, beyond self-created fencing, spawned spores…Meandering through the grey darkness of the house's ground-floor, she could recall each insult that had been offered her. She believed she had the strength to earn the trust. His fingers had been on her stomach, in the crevice of her navel, and she would do what was required of her — that strength had been given her.
She used her arms, extended, to warn herself of obstructions— the toppled, legless settee, broken chairs, torn-up carpeting — went back into the kitchen, and stepped over the fallen cooker. She went down on her knees and pushed back the bottom plank that had been nailed against the outside of the door and that she had prised away with a half-brick. She lay on her stomach, in the dried filth, wriggled through the gap and emerged into the light. She gasped down the cleanness of the air, then crouched in the rain and replaced the plank.
She crossed the garden area, overgrown with grass and weeds, ignoring the rubbish scattered there, and went through the broken fence on to the waste ground. Faria retraced the way she had come from where she had left them, went to tell them that she had found a safe-house, that the trust in her was well justified.
'The prosecution's case, members of the jury, is a concoction of innuendoes, half-truths and — believe me, I get no pleasure from stating this, but it must be said — slanders against the good names of my clients. I am asking you, most earnestly, in the name of justice to reject that concoction.'
Banks listened from the public gallery, and thought he despised the barrister.
'Much has been made by the prosecution of the supposed identification of my clients by that conveniently produced eye-witness. I urge you to reflect on how much weight you can place on the word of a young woman, scarcely out of her teens, who has lived for months cheek by jowl with police officers, who, of course, are anxious to obtain a conviction. I am not saying she lied…I am saying that she was influenced — I am prepared to believe in her innocence — by those officers. I put it to you that this simple young woman, without education, has sought to please. Can you say, in all honesty, that her evidence was not doctored, was not rehearsed under the supervision of the officers? I doubt it.'
He had not, of course, seen the witness give her evidence, but he had Wally's description of her. The inspector was beside him, his body tilted back and his face impassive. What David Banks thought, as the barrister droned, was that the previous evening — for a mature adult, who'd been given responsibility, had been issued with a killing weapon — he had made a complete and utter idiot of himself. It had gone on too long.
'You find yourself, members of the jury, asked to convict two businessmen whose sole interest in life — other than caring for their sick mother — is trading, buying and selling. I cannot tell you that their dealings with the Revenue are totally transparent. Nor can I say that their returns on VAT demands are wholly satisfactory…You are not, and I emphasize this, judging my clients on matters of taxation. You are hearing a case that involves a quite desperate and reckless attack on a jewellery shop, and the prosecution's efforts to vilify my clients — in respect of it — have failed.'
The barrister's voice had an oiled sincerity. Never could tell with a jury, Wally had said. Unpredictable, they were. Could be swallowing what was served up to them — not one of them, his Principal. His Principal, for what it was worth, had played hero. What happened to him, weeks and months ahead, was not Banks's concern. What was his concern, it had gone on too long. He squirmed in his seat.
'I will say what I can on an area of extreme delicacy — and you will receive further guidance on this from our judge. There are now restrictions on your movements and freedoms, and I regret them. You should, however, understand, that no connection exists — I repeat, no connection — between my clients and such restrictions. You will, and I rely on you, as do my clients, ignore the circumstances under which you are hearing this case.'