He felt inadequate. It was no longer about people like himself, rated as intelligent, educated and thoughtful. It was about guns and nerve: this was a power play. Littelbaum pinched his arm and pointed to the parking lay-by at the side of the church.
At the near end was a fine squat tower, perhaps seventy-five feet in height, with wide walls of flint facing. Behind it were the nave and the high chancel windows and between them were stout yellowed stone buttresses. Beyond the church was a ruin, once finer and larger than its neighbour but now roofless and with the rain coming through the clerestory windows. Markham asked the American what he wanted to do, and was told he wished to go inside. He had a fascination for churches and a total respect for the quality of the architects and craftsmen who had built them, but the ruin disturbed him death so close to life. He pushed open the church door. There were a few lights in the dull dim interior, as there had been in the weekend corridors at Thames House that morning.
A clergyman came towards him, a gaunt, fleshless-faced, older man. Markham thought Littelbaum was following him. He offered his hand in friendship and lied, said that he often diverted on a journey to see a worthwhile church. He heard the aged squeak of the hinges of a small door to the side. A smile lit the clergyman's face, as if few came to see his church. The flowers were already in place for Sunday's service, the only brightness stretching towards the altar and the stained glass of the arched window behind it. On the walls were the carved plaques remembering the dead.
The clergyman said, "There was an older church, of course, but that's gone, flooded by the sea first time round then washed away. The origin of the building here is fifteenth century, and a magnificent building it would have been. But the village died. There were four altars here, now there's just the one. Once we had a bell that weighed three-quarters of a ton, but the community sold it off, in 1585, because they were dying from deprivation and hunger. It's so good to meet someone who's interested my name's Hackett."
Markham looked around him, past the old carved-stone font, and could not see Littelbaum. If he had been alone in the church he would have said a short private prayer for those who'd been in the bus.
The clergyman droned on, "Disease, poverty, fires, all decimated the population of the village I sometimes say that this is a place without a present, only a past. That's how it feels here sometimes."
He was in the bath. Meryl had made them undress at the back door, had insisted on it. Davies thought by now that Perry would have told her of the disaster in the pub, would have come up with an explanation as to why they had come back sodden, with sand caking their shoes.
She came into the bathroom.
Davies had hitched his wristwatch to the cold tap, and was allowing himself five minutes' defrost time. The holster and the Glock were within reach on the floor, with the radio. She had brought two of Perry's dressing-gowns to the back door.
There was no knock, and no hesitation or apology. He sat upright and hunched forward to obscure his waist, hips and groin from her. Meryl carried a heap of folded clothes. Her face was expressionless, like those of the nurses had been while he couldn't wash himself, sponging his privates after he'd broken his ankle falling from a ladder when trying to get through a back window to plant a bug. There was a towel on top of the clothes. They could have been left outside the door, and she could have shouted to him that they were there.
She laid the towel and the clothes on the chair beside his head. Davies stared straight ahead, and wondered how close she was to the edge of her sanity. It wasn't his job to prop up the morale of his principal, let alone that of his principal's wife. He felt himself to be the crutch on which she leaned. It was nothing to do with his personality, his warmth or his wit. It was because he had a Glock 9mm pistol in a holster lying on the bright pink fluffy mat beside the bath. She came into the bathroom, where he was naked, for comfort from him and from his gun.
The wristwatch showed that his time was up. He had not the heart to tell her that he could not be her friend. He reached for the towel, hid himself clumsily, stood up in the bath and began to dry himself.
He thanked her for bringing him the clothes. She went out of the bathroom and closed the door after her. She had not said a single word.
Duane Littelbaum paused, took his handkerchief and mopped the sweat off his forehead. He swayed, clung to the rail, and climbed again. He had a horror of heights, but beyond the horror was a cruel sense of obligation. He had to climb the tower. He went up the narrow, worn, spiralled steps; if he had slipped he would have plunged. The door at the top was bolted and the bolt rusted. He couldn't move it. He balanced on a smooth, worn step, then heaved his shoulder into the door. It gave, pitching him forward, through the doorway, on to the small square floor of the tower's top.
The wind snatched at him. His coat was lifted and his tie was torn from his waistcoat. The drizzle made his eyes smart.
He looked around him and clung, with both hands, to the low, crenellated wall.
From the vantage-point, he gazed down over the village.
His hair was ripped to a tangle. He could see the road that was the one point of entry into the village and the lanes off it, the clusters of homes, and the patchwork shape of the green. He saw the house, and the roof of the small wood hut behind it. He saw the endless, disappearing seascape.
The house, its position, was of small interest to Duane Littelbaum. He sank to his hands and knees and crabbed around the square floor space, never dared to look vertically down.
There were the marshlands.
Dull, yellowed, reeds and dark-water channels between them, the marshlands were to the south of the village behind the sea wall, and to the north-west. Reached by the one road, the village was an island surrounded by the old reeds, the dark water and the sea. He estimated that each of the great marshes was a full three thousand metres long and a minimum of a thousand wide. He saw the thick cover of trees around the fringes of the marshlands, the tracks between the marshlands and the village.
In spite of his fear, without thinking, he straightened his back, lifted his head and his nostrils flared. He snorted the air into them.
He was satisfied.
He had posed the questions and had answered them.
He crawled back towards the flapping door. He took a last look at the marshes and saw the gulls, white specks, meandering above them. He wedged the door shut after him, and came down the spiral steps with his eyes closed.
He heard the clergyman's voice.
"Everything went, the bells, the lead, the best-cut stones. Sad, but inevitable. They have a history, the native people of this community, of great suffering. It makes for a cruelty and a self-sufficiency. The original church was lost because survival took precedence over principle."
Littelbaum walked out into the rain and the wind. Markham came after him.
"What do you want to do now?"
"Go back to London."
"You don't want to see the house, at least drive past it?"
"No."
"You don't want to meet the protection officer?"
"Thank you, he'd be a busy man- well, he should be, he wouldn't want "tourists". No."
"Actually, you hitched a lift with me. I had a day planned down here. I needed to see for myself."
The interruption brooked no argument.
"Are you a marksman? I don't think so. Are you expert at drawing defensive perimeter lines? I doubt it. There's nothing for you here. Don't sulk, Mr. Markham. You're a good driver always do what you do well."