"Too right, Dave, nothing worse than glass cabinets."
"Have to get the pictures down."
"What you think of where the television is?"
"Not happy, should be back against the wall, right back."
"Shouldn't Davies have done this?"
"Should have, didn't."
"Pillock – I don't like all the stuff on the fireplace."
"Quite right. Let's do the windows."
The tall one, Rankin, went to the standard lamp and switched it off. She stood in the darkness and could sense the rising impatience of Frank beside her, could hear the sharp spurts of his breath. The curtains were pulled back. A faint glow eased into the room from the street-lights on the opposite side of the green. She heard the scrape of their fingers on the glass and the window casing, then the noise as the curtains were yanked without ceremony into place. Only then was the standard lamp switched on again.
"Thought they were supposed to have been laminated, Joe."
"They haven't got round to it the work order's in, be done by the end of the week."
"Bloody marvelous."
"I don't like that window, Dave, not without the lamination."
"Don't tell me, I've got bloody eyes. What is it, a hundred metres, to those houses? A sniper, piece of cake, or an RPG."
"What you say, Dave, piece of cake for a rocket launcher or a rifle. God, this place needs sorting out. Come on… They did the hall, the dining room and the kitchen. Frank trailed behind them and she followed. She didn't have to ask. Everything that was glass, china or pottery, everything that was heavy and unattached, would shatter, fracture and fly, maim and wound. They said they needed to see upstairs. She stiffened. Frank muttered that they should go upstairs if that was necessary, but they hadn't waited for his answer and were already on their way up. There wasn't any more mud from Rankin's boots to dirty the carpet. They looked around her bedroom.
"Don't like the mirror, Dave."
It was the big mirror on her dressing-table.
"Tape it over."
She imagined the mirror, where she made up, where she worked the delicate brushes before they went out for an evening, with packers' adhesive tape crossing it.
"Look at all that loose stuff."
On her dressing-table were the cream jars and the glass eau-de toilette bottles, the vase of dried flowers and the silver-backed hairbrushes.
"Have to get it boxed up, Joe."
She would have to rummage in a cardboard box on the floor for her eye-liner and lipstick. She imagined everything that was precious to her put away on the instructions of these men.
The pictures would have to come down, of course. The photograph frames would have to be put into the drawers, and she wondered if she would be allowed to take out the photographs and stick them to the walls, if they would permit that. In the bathroom, at the back of the house, she couldn't have said they lingered on anything that was hers. They were merely indifferent to each item that belonged and mattered to her. Better if they had lingered on them because then the items might have seemed important. They went into the spare room and discussed what should happen to the pictures, the mirror and the ornaments there. They paused on the landing outside the last door. It was as if they had kicked the fight out of her, and the resentment was flushed on Frank's cheeks, but neither of them protested. She could hear her boy's voice, making the noise of a lorry. They didn't ask her to go first, or Frank. The short one went in, the tall one behind him.
"Hello, sunshine my word, aren't they brilliant?"
"Great lorries, sunshine, proper little haulage business."
"Just call me Uncle Joe…" and I'm your uncle Dave, that's a real good one, the Seddon Atkinson."
"The Seddy's good, Dave, but the Volvo's fantastic."
"It's a great fleet, sunshine… No, sorry, don't touch."
"What's your name? Stephen? Well, Stephen, you mustn't touch what's on Uncle Dave's belt. It's gas, it's handcuffs and it's the Glock… Like what?… He did what? That must have been fun, sunshine. You hear that, Joe? DS Davies chucking his Glock round the playground that's nice to store away for when he gets all pompous. I expect it's time you were in bed, sunshine…"
The door was closed softly. They had come, she thought, effortlessly, into her family's life and brought with them their gas, their handcuffs and their guns. And, in the morning, her home would be prepared for defence against a sniper's attack and against the devastation of a rocket launcher's explosion. When they had gone outside, into the back garden, she went for the vacuum cleaner to remove the mud they'd left on her carpets, and before she started it up she heard Frank's voice.
"Don't ever do that again. Don't dare ever treat me and my wife like we're rubbish. We're human beings and deserve to be treated with decency and respect. This is our home, so show a bit of sensitivity when you come into it. Don't look at me in that dumb, insolent way, just don't. We live here. If that's not convenient, soft shit."
She didn't hear their reply.
When they'd finished in the garden and gone out through the front door, and it had been bolted and locked again, while she was in the living room with the vacuum cleaner, she heard Blake's voice.
"You shouldn't have done that, sir, bawled them out. They're at the end of a pretty long day. But don't worry, they won't take it personally, they're used to principals being stressed up. But you shouldn't have bawled them out, sir. One day you might depend on them to save your life, one day soon."
"This is not a zoo. You don't come here to rubber-neck. It's a working area you're causing disruption."
He'd been told but it had slipped in his mind. It could have been the fourth time the detectives had confronted the duty doctor, but it was more likely to have been the fifth.
"I will say when you can talk to my patient and it is the same answer as the last time, and the time before that. No. My patient is severely concussed, quite apart from the effect of the drugs alleviating the pain of a triple femur fracture. No."
They were at the end of the ward. Beside the door to the partitioned cubicle, Geoff Markham hovered a pace behind the two Branch detectives. The doctor was young, harassed, probably sleep-walking and on the edge of his temper.
"It is not my concern what my patient is alleged to have done, my concern is his health and welfare. I understand he has been neither cautioned nor charged. So, he is in my care, and I decide if he is to be questioned. My answer… No."
A policeman was sitting beside the bed on a hard chair, facing the door, his hands on the snub weapon resting on his legs, his face impassive. The second uniformed policeman sat outside the door, cradling his own gun, a wry smile flickering at his mouth.
"I tell you, it's bad enough for my patients to have guns paraded around, but right now they are trying, unsuccessfully, to get the rest they need. They are not resting, as they should be, because this ward is being treated by you like a high-street pavement. Just get out, go away.
Geoff Markham's fingers were locked together, clasped tight, flexing hard enough to hurt. He thought Littelbaum was somewhere behind him. The American had said this was the big and lucky break, but it didn't seem as if they knew how to use it.
"Just listen to me. You are interfering with the running of this ward. I will protest most strongly in the morning to the administrators about that interference. If the condition of this patient, or any other patient in the ward, were to deteriorate because of your refusal to accept my guidance, then I will make it my personal business to see you broken. Get off my territory."
There was a dull blue sheen of light in the cubicle. Geoff Markham thought, could have sworn to it, that he saw an eye glinting from the mound of white pillows. The head of the patient, the face that Rainbow Gold had identified as Yusuf Khan, was half hidden by the left leg raised in traction. The glint was momentary, but he'd seen it.