He closed the door behind him.
Erlich drove away fast. There was only one place now he could head for.
Dan Ruane stood in the middle of the concourse. There were high white sheet-screens around the shooting scene. Rutherford's body was still there, but covered by a blanket. There was the fast flash of the photographer's bulb, Scene of Crime completing their work. The suitcase and the grip bag were now open. The clothes were being lifted out, checked, noted, piled. There were chalk circles round the three spent cartridge cases.
"We lost a brave and able young man because your cowboy didn't know what the hell he was doing… "
"Crap."
"… and because he couldn't face the music, he ran."
"You won't like it, Hobbes, but you're going to get them, home truths, stuffed up your gullet. The failure was yours. You moved nowhere on this. Every break you had, every lead, came from Bill Erlich. You sit in your goddam ivory towers, you think you matter in the world, whatever world. Erlich came here expecting action, expecting a good scene, and he got himself pissed on. Your resources are pathetic. Your work rate is pathetic.
Your commitment, beside Bill Erlich's, well, it's laughable."
The photographer with the flash camera on the tripod was watching him. The two detectives on their knees and taking the clothes from the suitcase and the grip bag were listening to him.
The policeman with the chalk mess on his fingers eyed him. And Dan Ruane, the big man, didn't give a damn who listened.
Hobbes stood his ground. " H e ran away… "
"Say that again, and I'll put your teeth at the back of your throat."
Hobbes stood his full height. "Grow up, Ruane. This isn't the Wild West. Just tell me where you think he's gone."
It might just be, just, that Erlich had one more chance, not more than one more chance. And it might just be, just, that if Erlich didn't take that chance then Dan Ruane would be on the flight out with him. One more chance, and that was stretching it, that was all Erlich had.
"He'll have gone where he reckons Colt's gone… Have you a better idea where he should have gone?"
" W e have very little time, Dr Bissett."
" Y e s. "
"What we have going for us, and it's not a lot, is that with everything else that's queuing up, they take time to get their act in place."
" Y e s. "
"What I reckon is that the ferries are our best chance. You with me?"
"Which ferries?"
"Weymouth, Bridport down south, boat across to France. One of the night sailings. They'll take time to get their act in place, that's our best hope."
" I f you say so, Colt."
They were past Salisbury. Colt drove into the lay-by beside the darkened windows of the shop. The village was called Bishopstone. It was a small place, tucked away from the great world in vast tracts of farmland. He had followed the side roads, as far as was possible, through the villages. He was safe among the villages and on the high-hedged lanes, because that was the country he knew. Bishopstone and Heathrow, they were not of the same world.
" W e have to decide where we go from here," Colt said.
" Y o u make the decision."
There was a quiet grimace on Colt's face. "It's rather awkward.. . They'll give it back to you, of course, but I don't have enough money for the ferry tickets. Will you lend me what we need?"
"I've just small change."
" Y o u haven't…?"
"I left my cheque book at home, for Sara… I doubt I've five pounds… "
"Jesus… "
Colt heard the cringe in Bissett's voice. "I left my cheque card, too. I didn't think I'd need English money in Baghdad."
Colt's eyes never left the road.
He drove on. Wild and lovely and lonely country, on from Bishopstone, and once he braked hard and threw Bissett forward, and he missed the big sow badger that treated the road as its own. At Broad Chalke, he found a telephone box that was not vandalised. He took coins from his pocket. He parked under trees, away from the lights near the telephone box and the bus stop.
She was out in the scullery, working to a hurricane lamp because the electricity had never been run into the damp stone extension of the kitchen.
The telephone rang.
Fran was good at it and old Vic, down at the pub, would take all the plucked pheasants she could bring to him.
She came out of the scullery, and the breast feathers were spilling off her arms and her chest, through the kitchen and through the small room where old Brennie grunted before the closed fire. The cottage was bitter quiet without Rocco's snore, without the jangle of his collar chain. She never knew whether it was real, him sleeping through the telephone's ringing. He said it was the war, the trench slits, sleeping in them and all, under the artillery at Monte Cassino.
She heard his voice. "Thought you were gone, Colt."
He said that he was in deep trouble.
"They going to get you, Colt?"
He said that a man had been shot, likely killed, because they were trying to get to him.
"What you wanting from me?"
He said that the boys would have money, Billy and Zap, Charlie and Kev, Dazzer and Zack, Johnny. He said that without money he was gone, and she should try old Vic. He said that he needed five hundred.
"I can't get that sort of money, Colt, not quick."
He said that if he did not have the money, then he was gone.
He said that he would be there in an hour, in the village, for the money. And they'd get it back, he'd see to that.
"They been here for you, Colt. You shouldn't be coming. They shot Rocco in the Top Spinney and they went into your house, Colt. They went into your mother's room with guns."
He asked, were they in the village now.
"I been in all evening, I don't know whether they're back in Top Spinney."
"One hour, and I'm sorry as hell about Rocco…" he said.
"Colt, you wouldn't have known, your mother died this evening."
She heard in the telephone the sharp gasp of breath, and the purring when the line was cut.
Namir and Faud were seen arriving back at the Embassy. The time of their arrival was noted, they were photographed. The building was under observation by the Watchers from B Branch.
All calls into and out of the Embassy were intercepted. The urgent summons for the Military Attache to return to his office was picked up. A telex marked MOST URGENT – IMMEDIATE ACTION was sent to Government Communications Headquarters calling for exceptionally thorough monitoring of all frequencies used by the Embassy for transmissions to Baghdad.
The first transmission from the Embassy was sent 22 minutes after the return of the Military Attache.
In London there were no troops, no machine guns, no armoured personnel carriers, but the Iraqi Embassy was as effec-tively sealed as the British Embassy in Baghdad. B Branch Watchers were peeled off duty outside the Soviet Embassy, and the Syrian Embassy, away from the mosque that attracted the fundamentalist fringe in Holland Park, away from the Kilburn and Cricklewood pubs where the songs of Irish rebellion were sung. The Watchers gathered on the street corners near the building, and they sat in cars that were hazed with cigarette smoke. The building was surrounded, and a telephone call ensured that Faud's car, with one wheel on a double yellow line, was clamped.
It was not possible at that early stage in the operation to crack the code the Iraqis were using, but the volume of the radio traffic grew to an abnormally high level.
"We were betrayed."
The Director had come from his dinner table. He had waved the Colonel to a seat, but the Colonel had preferred to stand, sensing that Dr Tariq had not understood what he had said.