‘Yes.’
‘That’s pretty far in, Mr Reed. You seem to have plenty of trouble just finding them. Don’t make it any easier. They’re getting out of this base with enough sensitive material as it is.’
He was shown out by Gandrell.
Left alone, the man with the leather face looked at the Base Commander, gave a slow smile and winked. The Base Commander took it as a shared moment with an equal. ‘Running as hard as he can and a million miles behind,’ he said.
‘I gotta go see SUSLO tonight,’ said Mackeson.
‘Give my best regards to Grosvenor Square.’
Johnny thought he was telling Heather a clever but necessary lie, sitting next to her on a rock, but who knows what will come out when a soul is trawled under pressure for a quick excuse…
‘Kay’s my stepfather’s name,’ he explained. ‘I can’t stand him. He’s a smooth, rich shit. Completely unscrupulous. My mother was always pretty narrowminded and she’s got worse and worse since she married him. I stay away as much as I can. I can’t remember ever seeing my real father. They split up when I was tiny and my mother goes completely off her trolley if anyone even mentions him but I decided I’d rather use his name.’
He was pleased with that. It sounded convincing even to him.
‘Poor Johnny,’ she said.
‘What’s the story with you and that foul sergeant?’
‘Hayter? He loathes me. It’s getting worse and worse. A few weeks ago, he attacked me in the back of one of their vans – banged my head against the side, then next time I saw him he went the whole hog, knocked me out and put me in hospital.’
‘You’ve got him, then, surely. Were there witnesses?’
She sighed. ‘Quite the reverse. He thinks he’s got me. He knew he was in serious trouble as soon as the ambulance came so while I was out of it, he disappeared and got one of his mates to hit him in the face. The end result is I’m up for GBH and he’s saying what happened to me was self-defence on his part.’
‘They’ll never believe that, surely? A woman?’
‘Oh, Johnny. Yes, they will. We’re peace protesters. We don’t qualify as women to a York jury.’
‘So what will happen?’
‘I’m probably going to lose. I could get as much as two years.’
‘Two years?’ he said, horrified. ‘In prison?’
‘That’s right.’ She looked around. ‘So… time is short. Let’s breathe in the fresh air while I still can.’
He looked at the eyesore in front. Raven Stones tower, festooned with the horns, dishes and antennae of BT’s microwave links. This had been her idea of a walk but it wasn’t his. The thing was hideous, industrial and so were the tracks they’d walked along, where some bulldozer had been ripping up the peaty turf. It wasn’t there now, that was one good thing.
‘That was quick thinking – the way you hid those papers. Can I have a look at them?’
With difficulty and at the expense of a lot more of his pocket’s stitching, he got them out again. They were baffling to him – two sheets of tables, technical specifications and one that was some kind of wiring diagram or cabling plan. She let out a sudden whoop.
‘Fantastic! Wait till Maurice sees these. He’s our electronics expert.’
She studied the diagram in silence for a while and he looked at her profile and the fall of her long hair, then she suddenly looked up at the tower in front of them.
‘Look at this,’ she said with excitement in her voice, pointing at the diagram. The cables, if cables they were, had arrows at their ends presumably meant to identify their destinations. The one she was indicating said BTRS next to it. ‘How about that?’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘I’d give you ten to one it means British Telecom Raven Stones.’
‘What if it did?’
‘Oh, Johnny! No, sorry, why should you know? The thing we’ve always suspected, always wanted to prove, is that the base is tapping into the British domestic phone system.’
‘BTRS…’ he objected. ‘It might mean anything.’
‘No,’ she said with total certainty, ‘I think what you smuggled out of there in your jacket, Johnny Kennedy, was the smoking gun.’
They walked for a while then until she stopped and looked at her watch.
‘Shall we go and get some food somewhere?’ He imagined them sitting in a quiet corner of some cosy moorland pub.
‘I’ve got a meeting,’ she said, ‘I really can’t.’
‘You could miss it,’ he said, and knew he’d hit a sour note.
‘No I couldn’t. It’s important.’
‘Is it about Ramsgill Stray?’
‘Of course it is. It’s a public meeting about planning permission.’
‘How come?’
‘They have to put in planning permission. It’s only a formality. They always get it. Now they want a few more of their repulsive domes. The point is, it’s on the edge of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and they’ve bent the boundary so they can get away with it. There’s this outfit called the CPRE, I think it’s the Council for the Protection of Rural England. Anyway, they’ve called a meeting so I want to go and listen.’
Johnny thought about where he was, who he was with and who he might meet and threw caution to the winds. ‘Can I come too?’
‘Do you really want to?’ She looked at him searchingly.
‘Yes.’
‘Look, Johnny. I think I have to say something.’ She hesitated for a long second. ‘If you’re interested in the issue, that’s one thing. If you’re interested in… me, then I think I should tell you that my life’s pretty much taken up by all this stuff. That and my job. Anyway, I’m a pretty bad bet with this case coming up.’
Her directness disconcerted him.
‘OK,’ he said and his voice sounded all wrong to his ears, over-formal, ‘that’s fine. I would like to come to the meeting. I didn’t like the way that policeman behaved.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re not getting it. I don’t need a knight-errant either. We’re all big girls now. We’ve been doing this for a long time. Part of the reason Hayter was worse than usual today was directly because you were there so that forced him to get all macho.’
Johnny was stung. He could feel his role slipping away, accused of some responsibility for the scene.
‘But you said he’s done dreadful things before.’
‘Yes. We have to find ways of coping with it. You should talk to my friend Jo.’
‘What happened to him.’
‘Her. She can tell you herself. She’ll be there this evening, in a wheelchair.’
‘Can I come?’
‘I can’t stop you. It’s a public meeting. It’s just… well, my friends don’t drive sports cars, they don’t fly planes, they don’t wear fancy jackets.’
‘I’ve got an old anorak in the boot.’
She laughed. ‘You haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, have you?’
‘Have we got time for a drink beforehand?’
‘Oh… come on, then.’
The meeting was in a village hall and they saw Jo as soon as they walked in, a woman with cropped hair and a big smile sitting in a wheelchair talking animatedly to the group around her. Margo was one of them and she hailed Heather. The rows of chairs were half full and more and more people were trickling in all the time. Johnny followed Heather over to the group around Jo and tried unsuccessfully to hang on to all their names in a volley of introductions. They were mostly women but there were two middle-aged men sharing a common studious look and another in his twenties who blinked a great deal and said little.
Heather drew Margo out of the circle, ‘We flew over the Stray,’ she said. ‘We circled right round it. You could see everything. It was fantastic. I even flew the plane.’