‘This is where we used to launch our canoe,’ he said.
She peered down a steep, sandy slope overgrown with bracken that was a natural slipway into the river, a good thirty yards below. The water, about twenty yards wide, was as still as a millpond. A few damsel flies sat on the surface, feeding off mosquito larvae or laying eggs, and more hovered just above. Reflections of the brush on the far bank appeared in sharp focus.
‘Wow!’ she said. ‘Wowwwwwww! That is amazing.’
Then she noticed the series of white sticks planted all the way down the slipway. Each of them had precise ruled markings in black.
‘When I was a kid,’ MJ said, ‘the water level was up to here.’ He pointed at the top marker.
Lisa counted eight exposed rulers, all the way down to the water. ‘It’s dropped this much?’
‘Good old global warming,’ he replied.
Then she saw the looped hangman’s rope fixed to the overhanging branch of a tree thick as an elephant’s leg.
‘We used to jump off that!’ MJ said. ‘It was just a short drop.’
Now it was a good five yards.
He peeled off his T-shirt. ‘Coming in?’
‘Let’s put the tent up first!’
‘Shit, Lisa, we’ve got the whole day to put the tent up! I’m hot!’ He continued stripping. ‘And the flies hate the water.’
‘Tell me what the water’s like – I’ll think about it!’
‘You’re weak as piss!’
Lisa laughed. MJ stood naked, then disappeared for some moments into the undergrowth. Moments later, she saw him crawling along the overhanging branch. He reached the rope, which looked dangerously frayed, rolled over and clung to it.
‘Be careful, MJ!’ she shouted, suddenly alarmed.
Holding on with one arm, he beat his chest with the other, making a series of Tarzan whoops. Then he swung out over the river, his bare feet almost touching the surface of the water. He swung back and forward in several arcs, then he let go and dropped with a loud splash.
Lisa watched anxiously. Moments later he surfaced and tossed his head, shaking wet hair away from his face. ‘It’s beautiful! Get in here, wuss!’
He struck out, doing a couple of powerful crawl strokes, then suddenly he raised his head with a pained expression.
‘Fuck!’ he spluttered. ‘Shit! Owww! Bloody stubbed my toe on something!’
Lisa laughed.
MJ duck-dived. Moments later his head broke the surface and there was a look of panic on his face.
‘Shit, Lisa!’ he said. ‘There’s a car down here! There’s a fucking car in the river!’
23
Lorraine stared in numb disbelief. The unlit cigarette between her fingers was quite forgotten. A young, female reporter, talking urgently to the camera, seemed totally unaware that the South Tower, just a few hundred yards behind her, was collapsing.
It was dropping straight down out of the sky, disappearing inside itself, neatly, almost unbearably neatly, as if for one brief instant Lorraine was witnessing the greatest conjuring trick ever performed. The reporter talked on. Behind her, cars and people were disappearing under rubble and swirling dust. Others were running for their lives, running straight down the street towards the camera.
Oh, Jesus, doesn’t she realize?
Still unaware, the reporter continued reading off her autocue or from a feed in her ear.
LOOK BEHIND YOU! she wanted to scream at the woman.
Then finally the woman did turn. And lost the plot totally. She took a startled, stumbling step sideways, followed by another. People were running past on either side, jostling her, almost knocking her off her feet. The mushrooming cloud was now as tall as the sky itself, and as wide as the city, tumbling like an avalanche towards her. In bewildered shock, she spoke a few more words, but there was no sound with them, as if the cable had been disconnected, then the image became just a grey swirl of shadowy figures and chaos as the camera was engulfed.
Lorraine, still in just her bikini bottoms, heard various shouts. The image on the screen cut to a jerky, hand-held shot of a massive slab of steel and glass and masonry crashing on to a red and white fire truck. It smashed through the ladder, then flattened the whole mid-section, as if this was a plastic toy truck a child had just stamped on.
A woman’s voice was shouting, over and over, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God.’
There were cries. Darkness for a second, then another handheld shot, a young man limping past holding a blood-drenched towel against a woman’s face, helping her along, trying to pull her faster, ahead of the cloud that was gaining on them.
Then they were in a studio news set. Lorraine watched the anchor, a man in his forties in a jacket and tie. The images she had been viewing were all up on monitors behind his head. He looked grim.
‘We’re getting reports that the South Tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed. We are also going to bring you the latest on the situation at the Pentagon in just a few moments.’
Lorraine tried to light the cigarette, but her hand was shaking too much and the lighter fell to the floor. She waited, unable to bear taking her eyes from the screen for even one second in case she missed a glimpse of Ronnie. There was an agitated woman on the television now, shouting unintelligibly. She watched an attractive woman clutching a mike, who was standing against a background of dense black smoke flecked with orange flames, through which she could just make out the low roofline silhouettes of the Pentagon.
She dialled Ronnie’s mobile number and once more got the lines-busy beep.
She tried again. Again. Again. Her heart was thrashing around inside her chest and she was shaking, desperate to hear his voice, to know that he was OK. And all the time inside her head was the knowledge that Ronnie’s meeting was in the South Tower. The South Tower had collapsed.
She wanted more pictures of Manhattan, not the sodding Pentagon, Ronnie was in Manhattan, not the sodding Pentagon. She changed channels to Sky News. Saw another jerky hand-held shot, this time of three dusty firemen in helmets carrying a busted-looking grey-haired man, their yellow armbands jigging as they walked urgently along.
Then she saw a burning car. And a burning ambulance. Figures appearing out of the gloom behind them. Ronnie? She leaned forward, close up to the huge screen. Ronnie? The figures appeared from the smoke like faces on a developing photograph. No Ronnie.
Then she dialled his number again. For one fleeting moment it sounded as if it was going to ring! Then she was thwarted by the lines-busy signal once more.
Sky News cut to Washington. She grabbed the remote and hit another button. It seemed that every station was now showing the same images, the same news feeds. She watched a replay of the first plane striking, then the second. It replayed again. And again.
Her phone rang. She hit the answer button with a sudden burst of joy, almost too choked to get any words out. ‘Hello?’
It was the washing-machine engineer, calling to confirm his appointment for tomorrow.
24
The target’s name was Ricky. Abby had met him on a few occasions at parties, when he always seemed to make a beeline for her and chat her up. And in truth, she found him attractive and enjoyed the flirtation.
He was a good-looking guy in his forties, slightly mysterious and very self-assured, with the air of an ageing laid-back surfer dude. Like Dave, he knew how to talk to women, asking her more questions than he answered for her. He was also involved in stamps, in quite a big way.
Not all the stamps were his own. Four million pounds’ worth, to be precise. There was some dispute over their ownership. Dave told her that he and Ricky had made a deal to split the proceeds fifty-fifty, but now Ricky was reneging and wanted ninety per cent. When she had asked Dave why he didn’t simply go to the police he had smiled. Police, it seemed, were off limits for both of them.