And the day hadn't finished with Bill Davies. The superintendent wanted him back in London, on to the Branch floor at Scotland Yard. A file was thrown at him. He'd been given two hours to digest it; should have been two days. He had speed-read it, "Techniques of Iranian Terrorism (Europe)', when he ought to have been on the touchline watching his son. Then they'd thrown him the principal's file and given him thirty minutes when it should have been a full day. And when he should have been at the flower stall at Victoria Station shelling out for the biggest peacemaker bouquet they could put together, he'd been with his signed authority down in the basement armoury, drawing the kit, the Glock, the Glock's ammunition and the heavier firepower. And there wouldn't be a call to a restaurant to reserve a corner table with lit candles.
The bloody awful day was coming to an end as he'd driven down the narrow straight road into the village on the north Suffolk coast.
He sat on the concrete and metal bench on the green. Later, he would find a bed-and-breakfast, but not before he had absorbed the smell, pace and habit of the village. He sat on the bench with his raincoat folded on his lap and his Glock in his shoulder holster under his suit jacket as the light fell on his day. Bloody awful days went with the job of protection officer and were commonplace in the life of Detective Sergeant Bill Davies.
Frank and Meryl walked back into the village as the dusk shadows thickened.
His arm was on her hip and her hand was against his waist. They had clung to each other on the beach before turning for home. Vince, coming back to the village in his van, saw them and played a raucous fanfare on his horn. It was as if they were youngsters, in love, and didn't care who saw them. Gussie, cycling back, stinking, from the piggery, wolf-whistled.
They strolled past Rose Cottage, and the dark, lifeless windows beyond the for-sale sign. Perry thought it wouldn't be long before lights blazed there, like a new dawn for a new family. Maybe there would be a new guy to drink with in the pub, a new friend for Meryl, new kids for Stephen to mess with. Not that he and Meryl were short of friends, and that was why they were staying. The cottage was chilly and unwelcoming, and he hurried her on.
They kept up the contact. Dominic, sad and gay, rolled his eyebrows gently and made a small grimace as he closed down his shop for the day. The lie was dead. The vicar, Mr. Hackett, strode past them, lifted his cap and smiled. He held her, she held him, because they needed each other and had nowhere else to run. They reached home and squeezed through the gate because neither would release the other.
A man was sitting on the bench on the green. He looked like a salesman killing time before yet another cold call.
In the kitchen surrounded by his school-books, Stephen saw them come in and the light spread in his eyes. The poison was gone. It was their home, their castle. Perry had convinced her that they had only tried to scare him so that it would be easier for them, and that the danger was not real. In the kitchen, in front of Stephen, he kissed her.
Back in Newbury, his wife used to complain to anyone who'd listen that her husband didn't notice women. On trips away and in the office he had never played around because the job consumed him. That first time he'd met Meryl, as he was trying to put some purpose back into his existence, he'd noticed her as a damaged kindred spirit. Getting his coat off the hook in the outer office where she sat, he'd seen her loneliness. It had been in her eyes and her careworn mouth, and he'd blurted out that since he might be coming back a few times they might as well get to know each other and he'd asked her for a drink. She'd hesitated and he'd apologized for his forwardness, and then she'd said there was time for a quick one when the works closed for the day. Their first drink and the attempts to find common ground had made them like a pair on an initial singles-club meeting. It had been a strange chemistry, stilted conversation, but each recognized the wounded solitariness of the other. Dinners had followed, and pecks on the cheek, and both of them had realized that they needed the other to put some foundation into their lives. They'd bought the house on the green together, furnished it and moved in. The first night there, with the wind on the windows, and Stephen in the next room, they'd slept together and loved each other.
It had been accepted by both from the start, that their previous lives harboured secrets. The ground rules were set: no inquisitions, no interrogations. She didn't ask where he'd come from, why he had no anniversaries, no relations sending him cards and letters. He didn't quiz her on Stephen's father. They buried their past under their new happiness and mutual dependence. He could justify to himself the cordoned-off areas of his life. He was a changed man. If anyone from the old Newbury office, a one-time colleague of Gavin Hughes, had met Frank Perry, they wouldn't have known him. But the past seemed now to rush around him, and he wondered whether an old lie was replaced by a new one.
At the last light of the day, going to get a story-book for Stephen from the living room, he paused and looked out of the window. The man in the suit, the stranger, with a raincoat loose on his lap, remained motionless on the bench on the green.
Chapter Five.
The door opened, and he held up his warrant card. In better times Lily had said it was a rotten photo that didn't do him justice; that morning, like as not, she would have said it flattered him. He was tall, had no surplus weight, with a pale face and cheeks drawn in under the bones. His nose and chin were over-prominent, his hair was dark, cut short, and his light blue eyes were dominant. He said briskly, "Morning, Mr. Perry. I'm Detective Sergeant Bill Davies."
He could hear a child's and a woman's voice in the depths of the house. He saw Perry's jaw fall and then tighten. There was never a right time to start the process of protection. He thought of himself as a shadow cast over the principal's life; he could have come in the late afternoon as the family was preparing for supper and television, or in the evening when they were readying for bed, or early in the morning when they were starting a day at the breakfast table, but there was never a best time to arrive on a stranger's doorstep.
"They called you last night, yes? Sorry it had to be the duty officer, but my guvnor tried to reach you in the afternoon and you weren't at home. Sorry it worked out like that."
God help anyone called by the night duty officer the guvnor, the superintendent, would have been familiar with tact, might have thought through what was appropriate to say, and certainly would have had the file to dictate his tone. But not the NDO. It would have been blunt and to the point what the protection officer's name was, at what time he was arriving, and goodnight.
Perry swivelled, looked behind him, back towards the kitchen door and the voices.
Davies said, with confidence, "Just getting the lad off to school? It's Stephen, Mrs. Perry's lad, right? If you don't want me around for the moment that's no problem, Mr. Perry. I can wait till he's on his way, and then we'll do the business. I've got my car here, I can sit there."
It was all about getting off to the right start. It didn't work if the principal refused to co-operate with the protection officer. He needed, from the beginning, to set the tone of the relationship. No call for diving in, breaking the routine of the family, jarring them, then having to mend fences because there was a lingering bitterness. Most principals, in his experience, were frightened half to death when he first came to their homes. The women were worse, and the kids were the big problem, always the headache. Best to go gentle. If his guvnor had called there would have been a few crumbs of detail on why the threat had ratcheted up, but there'd have been none from the night duty officer. The principals were never given the full picture, not even senior persons in government, certainly not judges and civil servant administrators and this principal, Perry, was only a civilian with a past and he would get no detail. The threat was not a matter for debate and discussion.