"When does the marksman shoot, Mr. Littelbaum?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Does the marksman shoot as the predator approaches the tethered goat or when it's on the goat?"
"He shoots when he has the optimum chance of a clean kill. It's nice country out here. It's a little bit like west Iowa country."
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For telling me."
"Do you feel the better for it?"
"I'm devastated… but yes, I'm the better for knowing it."
"Would your Juliet Seven be the better for knowing it? Will you tell him?"
"I don't know I feel like throwing up. He was betrayed, treated like shit."
"I think we're going to hit the rain, which is a shame… Listen, Mr. Markham, we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to do your Juliet Seven a favour. The Israelis could have machine-gunned the bus and left their calling-card, bullets and grenades. We insisted on the fire and gave the Mossad the hardware, which guaranteed slow, difficult progress for the Iranian investigators. We bought your man time for his disappearance. He should have been safe, beyond their reach I imagine, if you ever have the chance to look for it, it was his error that led them here. We did enough for him. Do you think there's time to stop for a pork pie and a beer?"
The beach seemed endless, stretching to the horizon where the cloud was poised over the grey stones of the wall behind which was the marshland. The wind and rain beat relentlessly on their backs.
Not until they turned for home did his principal start to talk. Davies stayed a pace behind him.
"Look at this place. It's as good as dead, it's condemned. Everything here is for nothing. The sea rules and eats at the place, like it's rotten and decayed. Seven hundred years ago this place was alive. It had a great fleet for trade, fishing and boat-building.
The Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans settled here, where we are now. It had wealth. Their boats sailed after fish as far north as Iceland and they traded as far south as Spain and east to the Baltic. The sea killed this place, that same sea. In January 1328, there was a storm and a million tons of sand and stone was washed across the river mouth. The wealth went and the land began to follow it. The sea has the ultimate power. It eats at the cliffs and at the beach every minute of every day. Right here, where we are, it's a yard a year. Up the coast, not far, it's four hundred yards in the last five years. The fucking place, and everyone who's here, they're all doomed. Little people, fucking pygmies, living their lives, thinking they can change things. They've bulldozed sea walls, concreted the base of the cliffs, put in groynes and breakwaters, but it doesn't make a damn of difference. The sea keeps on coming. A couple of miles down the coast was the tenth biggest town in England, five churches, built by people who thought that they'd last for ever. Now they're all gone into the sea. They were pygmies then and pygmies now. The sea cannot be resisted. We're all dead here, doomed, we have no future. We build little houses, little gardens, make our little lives and for what? For flicking nothing. People paid masons to carve gravestones so that the lives of their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters would be remembered but the stones are under the sea, like they'd never existed. We worry about the present but we're just too small. The future is the sea coming in, taking, snatching, in spite of our little efforts to protect ourselves. There is nothing we can do because there is no defence… Will you tell me, when do you think the bastard will come?"
In the distance on the sea wall, wrapped in a dark anorak and waterproof leggings, watching them, facing into the thrust of the wind and the drive of the rain, was one of the policemen from the unmarked car. He cradled his gun close to his body, as if to protect himself against the onslaught of the gathering storm, now and in the future.
What Davies, drenched wet and frozen, had been told was that the killer would come soon, but he didn't say it.
Chapter Eleven.
Geoff Markham didn't like to drink in the middle of the day and had sipped a fruit juice. The American had washed down the pork pie with a dark pint from a wooden barrel and there had been salad with the pie. In the car, the onion was still on Littelbaum's breath.
Markham hesitated before turning at the signpost to the village. A cattle-carrier lorry swerved past him and gave him a long blast on the horn. It was all as he remembered it. Ahead of him was the high water tower, the dominating feature, and the American gazed at it with a sort of awe but didn't speak. Beside him, flanking the road, was a small car-park and a sign "Toby's Walks: Picnic Area'. Away to the right was Northmarsh, to the left were wide, flat fields covered with half-moon pig shelters. He swung the car on to the minor road. Of course it was the same. How could it be any different?
The American smiled apologetically and murmured that he needed, and badly, to relieve himself.
Markham drove into the car-park of the picnic area and saw what was different. There were two men in an unmarked car, uniformed, wearing kevlar vests and silly little baseball caps. But, there was nothing silly about the barrel of the Heckler amp; Koch aimed at him through the open side window. He braked.
Littelbaum said that he couldn't have lasted much longer, and dived for the bushes. Markham held up his ID card for the policemen to see and sauntered towards them.
He introduced himself and said the American had bladder problems. He asked them how it was. The aim of the gun was no longer on his chest. He was told that they had the registration and the make of a car to look for, and it was all right in daylight.
"What's that mean?"
The policeman grimaced.
"It's a sod of a place after dark. So quiet. Last night, before the changeover but after it got dark, we saw this shape in the bushes. Bloody near crapped myself. Seemed to be watching us. I got the gun on it, then two dogs came out. It was a woman walking her dogs, in the dark, like a bloody ghost, proper turn it gave me. It's Toby's Walks here. She asked, all straight-faced, had we seen Toby? She was serious had we seen Toby? We asked the old biddy, who was Toby? You know what? He was Black Toby, Tobias Gill no lie, it's what she said and he was a black drummer in the dragoons who got pissed up, went looking for a bit of fanny and brought her up here. He was found, Black Toby was, the next morning, drunk and incapable, and she was beside him, raped and strangled. They took him to the assizes and then carted him back here to hang him in chains. It was two hundred and fifty years ago, and the old biddy said he liked to walk round here, rattling his bloody chains. It's that sort of place. After what she'd told us, we heard every bloody bush move last night, every bloody creak of every bloody tree… She meant it. She was really surprised we hadn't seen him."
The American came out of the bushes and was pulling up his zip. Markham didn't laugh at the story. Out there a shadowy figure was moving in darkness among cover, silent, without the rattling of chains, towards a target and a place of death. He felt the cold wind coming off the sea and shuddered.
They climbed back into the car and he drove on.
Of course it was different, and for some it would never again be the same.
Markham asked the American what he wanted to see and Littelbaum's finger jutted towards the church tower. The rain had come on heavily while they'd stopped for lunch, but now had eased into a fine, persistent drizzle. He could see the first houses of the village and the church tower looming above them. He was unsettled. It wasn't only the policeman's story of the ghost of the black drummer, it was also what Littelbaum had told him of Alamut, a place of death, and a bus ride out of Bandar Abbas, a place of carnage. And he remembered what Cathy Parker had said and asked. It would be decided down here, at the village, body to body, as it always was, at close quarters, and was he tough enough?