'What do you think I've done with you, if it's not involve you?'
'I'll pick up my own pieces.'
The ethos of the Service, which they taught recruits, what was practised in field operations was the supremacy of officers over informants – milk and dump, exploit and quit. But Malachy Kitchen had told her that he was trained in intelligence-gathering, would know first hand what she had been taught and practised. The old man had his shoulder wedged against the right forward support of the pillar… Of course she would milk and exploit, dump and quit.
'I'm not out on a stroll, looking to get back my self-respect. My work is life and death and-' She regretted the pomposity.
He said quietly, 'Maybe there's a shop in the village up the other end and you can buy yourself a medal.'
If she had not had the rucksack on her shoulders, Polly Wilkins would have flounced away, but she hadn't that spring in her. She trudged towards the man on a tramped-down track that skirted the pond.
There were ducks – heavy white ducks, who didn't seem to know it was about life and death. Her father was enthralled by birds, and her mother made sandwiches for them to take to the Chew and Blagdon reservoirs where they'd sit and watch waterfowl. As a child Polly had been dragged along too and had squinted through her father's telescope. For her sixteenth birthday they had given her a pair of pocket binoculars. There were big military-strength ones in the rucksack but she would not show them.
She moved quietly to the scrub between the track and the pond, made certain she did not disturb the ducks. She reckoned that any man who was not a fanatic or a lunatic would have been behind his front door that afternoon, not heaving, without a hope of success, at a platform's support poles. He would not have heard her against the wind but he must have seen her from the edge of his vision… Damn good eyes, a hawk's eyes. He stopped, took his shoulder off the pole.
As she came closer, she could see the gathering malevolence at his mouth and the suspicion in his eyes. She reached him. She saw the scarred, fleshless hands, the face creased with age and distrust, the way his overalls hung on him as if worn on a skeleton. Nothing to say. Her work was 'life and death', and for that innocents were involved. She smiled at him coolly.
She swung the rucksack off her shoulders and let it fall, as if it contained nothing of importance.
She went past him. Where his shoulder had been, she put hers. She heaved, gasped, and felt the support straighten two or three inches towards the vertical.
She could smell him, the tang of dirt and stale sweat.
How bloody long would he stay back and watch?
Three inches or four… Her feet slipped but she dug them into the mud. There was a grunt, then the old man's body was against Polly's. Five inches or six.
They pushed together. Six inches or seven. He was groping in his pocket, then nails filled his mouth, half swallowed between bloodless lips. She thought she might buckle under the weight that knifed her shoulder. The hammer slammed into the nails, taken one at a time from his mouth.
When Malachy came to them and put his weight against the support pole on the left side, she knew his name. She knew his age. She knew the name of his wife. She knew of his love for the eider ducks on the pond.
Dusk came and the platform was secure. Polly had been the leech and had sucked blood. She knew that a paradise was threatened by strangers – that if it was lost, it could never be regained.
'You should go home now, Oskar, get warm and cook yourself something hot. Mal and I will be here tonight, and we'll watch out for strangers.'
The light, through the plantation's trees, failed.
The wind sang above them and the upper branches shook. The man stood easily, then bent and took a sandwich from the bag, unwrapped it, checked its contents and wolfed it. Ricky was propped against a tree trunk and watched the man's movements in shadow. After the sandwich had been eaten, the weapon was secreted in an inner pocket, then the flashlight was thrown to him, without explanation, and he scrabbled to catch it. The man hooked the case with the radio under his arm; his posture said he would wait a moment but no longer.
'So, what are we doing?'
They had not spoken since the Mercedes had been driven away. They had gone into the depth of the trees and had each found a trunk to rest against, backs to each other. Ricky had waited for him to speak, but he had not. Ricky had been reluctant to break the silence between them, as if it would show weakness. They had sat, spine to spine, through the day, had shared the quiet.
The man had an easy voice, clear but accented English, and seemed to mock: 'Does your trawler come here, Ricky, across the fields? Or do we go to your trawler?'
In Ricky Capel's world, disrespect was a crime. The punishment for that crime was handed out by Davey
… but Davey was not here, and this was not Ricky's world. He had seen the photograph in the newspaper, a younger man but clearly recognizable, and the picture of a woman. But there was an envelope in his pocket, which contained cash, and he had been threatened. He trembled. Sitting against the tree, he had eaten two of the sandwiches left for them, but he was still hungry. What screwed his mind: the man seemed to have no fear, seemed not to care that the Mercedes had gone.
He pushed himself up, felt weak. 'Do you have a name?'
The man looked at him, pondered briefly, then again seemed to laugh at him. 'You follow football?'
'A little.' Ricky blinked, confused. 'Why?'
'In London, yes? What team?'
'My boy goes to Charlton, with his grandad. That's Charlton Athletic, at the Valley. What's that got to do-'
'What is the name of the goalkeeper?'
'He's Republic of Ireland and… Dean something.
Christ, I can't remember his bloody name.'
'I am a goalkeeper, Ricky. Quite good, not very good… To you I shall be Dean. For you, Dean is my name.'
'That's just daft,' Ricky spluttered.
The mocking ended. The man said, 'If you need a name for me, it shall be Dean. What you should understand, Ricky, the less you know of me the better you are protected. I am very serious. The less you learn is the best. We go now to find a way to the island, where your boat will come.'
'Right…' Ricky hesitated. He pocketed the bag with the one remaining sandwich. 'Right, Dean.'
They left the plantation. The light was a fading smear ahead. The man led, not taking the signposted road to Nessmersiel, but headed out across fields and found a track flattened by a heavy tractor's wheels.
The mud clung to Ricky's shoes – lightweight and top of the range – and spattered his trouser hems below the waterproof leggings. Gulls from the fields scattered in front of them, screaming. Once, his feet slithered away under him and he was pitched down on to his backside, but he groped himself upright and followed. The man ahead never broke his stride.
They went round a farm where security lamps were bright and saw a yard of cattle, but dogs barked and they kept clear of the buildings. They went right through a mass of wind turbines, whose great propeller blades churned circles over them, then crossed a field that had been ploughed and sown. Ricky lost his right shoe and had to grope for it in the growing darkness, then had to run to catch his man. He was panting, heaving. He was led over a barbed-wire fence and the goddamn goalkeeper didn't hold the wire down for him, and when his turn came it slashed his hands and ripped the crotch of his leggings. They crossed a tarmacadam road, then another fence, and then they climbed a steep slope of grass. Sheep, barely visible, stampeded away from them. Ricky sobbed for breath. When they reached the top, when the wind's strength slashed at them, the man stopped. He stood erect and gazed out towards a little cluster of lights beyond a black emptiness, short of the horizon's last light. Ricky felt himself shaken by the wind's force.