‘The land of the free,’ said the man with a smile when they were at the terminal and could collect their bags from the overhead lockers; he was on his feet helping to get Eva’s and the quads’ stuff for them. And then he very politely stood in the aisle in the way of the other passengers to let them file out first. In fact he let a number of other passengers go in front of him and only then moved himself. By the time they had collected their hold luggage from the carousel he was nowhere to be seen. He sat in the toilet writing the address and the names Eva had given him before he came out. Twenty minutes later Eva and the quads passed through Immigration and Customs where they were held up for some time and a German Shepherd took an interest in Emmeline’s hand luggage. Two men studied the family for two minutes and then they were through and there was Uncle Wally and Auntie Joan and there was all the hugging and kissing imaginable. It was wonderful.
It wasn’t quite so wonderful in a little room back in Customs for the man who’d called himself Sol Campito. The things from his travel bags were spread out on the floor and he was standing naked in another booth with a man with plastic gloves on his hand telling him to get his legs open.
‘Wasting time,’ said one of the men in the room. ‘Give him the castor oil and blow the fucking condoms out quicker, eh Joe? You crazy enough to have swallowed the stuff?’
‘Shit,’ said Campito. ‘I don’t do no drugs. You got the wrong guy.’
Four men in an office next door watched him through a darkened observation window.
‘So he’s clean. Met the contact in Munich and left with the stuff. Now he’s clean. Then it’s got to be the fat Brit with the kids. How did you assess her?’
‘Dumb. Dumb as hell.’
‘Nervous?’
‘Not at all. Excited yes but nervous no way.’
The second man nodded.
‘To Wilma, Tennessee.’
‘And we know where she’s going. So we keep her under observation. The tightest possible. OK?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Just make sure you keep under cover. The stuff that bastard’s said to have picked up from Poland is lethal. The good thing is we know from his notebook where that Wilt woman is heading with that foursome. Get there fast. This surveillance has top priority. I want to know all there is to know about this Immelmann guy.’
Chapter 7
Wilt’s day had begun badly and got steadily worse. All his hopes and expectations of the previous evening had proved terribly wrong. Instead of the homely pub with a log fire, and a good meal and several pints of beer or better still real ale inside him, and a warm bed waiting for him, he found himself trudging along a country lane with dark clouds closing in from the West. In many respects it had been a disastrous day. He had walked the mile and a half to the station with his knapsack on his back only to find that there were no trains to Birmingham because of work on the line. Wilt had had to take a bus. It was a comfortable enough bus–or would have been if it hadn’t been half filled with hyperactive schoolchildren under the charge of a teacher who did his level best to ignore them. The rest of the passengers were Senior, and in Wilt’s opinion Senile, Citizens, out on a day-trip to enjoy themselves, a process that seemed to consist of complaining loudly about the behaviour of the hyperactive kids and insisting on stopping at every service station on the motorway to relieve themselves. In between service stations they sang songs Wilt had seldom heard before and never wanted to hear again. And when finally they reached Birmingham and he bought a ticket for Hereford he had difficulty finding the bus. In the end he did. It was a very old double-decker bus with a faded ‘Hereford’ sign on the front. Wilt thanked God there were no other passengers in it. He’d had enough of small boys with sticky fingers climbing across his lap to look out the window and of old age pensioners singing, or at any rate caterwauling, ‘Ganging along the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races’ and ‘We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’. Wilt climbed wearily into the back and lay down across the seat and fell asleep. When the bus left he woke up and was surprised to find he was still the only passenger. He went back to sleep again. He had only had two sandwiches and a bottle of beer all day and he was hungry. Still, when the bus got to Hereford he’d find a café and have a good meal and look for a bed and breakfast and in the morning set out on his walking tour. The bus didn’t get to Hereford. Instead it stopped outside a shabby bungalow on what was clearly a distinctly B road and the driver got out. Wilt waited ten minutes for him to return and then got out himself and was about to knock on the door when it opened and a large angry man looked out.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded. In the bungalow a Staffordshire bull terrier growled menacingly.
‘Well, as a matter of fact I want to go to Hereford,’ said Wilt, keeping a wary eye on the dog.
‘So what are you doing here? This isn’t bloody Hereford.’
Wilt produced his ticket.
‘I paid my fare for Hereford in Birmingham and that bus’
‘Isn’t going nowhere near Hereford. It’s going to the fucking knacker’s yard if I can’t flog the fucker first.’
‘But it says ‘Hereford’ on the front.’
‘My, oh, my,’ said the man sarcastically. ‘You could have fooled me. You sure it don’t say ‘New York’? Go and take a dekko and don’t come back and tell me. Just bugger off. You come back and I’ll set the dog on you.’
He went back into the bungalow and slammed the door. Wilt retreated and looked at the sign on the bus. It was blank. Wilt stared up and down the road and decided to go to the left. It was then he noticed the scrapyard behind the house. It was full of old rusting cars and lorries. Wilt walked on. There was bound to be a village somewhere down the road and where there was a village there was bound to be a pub. And beer. But after an hour in which he passed nothing more accommodating than another awful bungalow with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside it, he took his knapsack off and sat down on the grass verge opposite and considered his situation. The bungalow with its boarded windows and overgrown garden wasn’t a pleasing prospect. Lugging his knapsack Wilt moved a couple of hundred yards down the lane and sat down again and wished he’d bought some more sandwiches. But the evening sun shone down and the sky to the east was clear so things weren’t all that bad. In fact in many ways this was exactly what he had set out to experience. He had no idea where he was and no wish to know. Right from the start he had intended to erase the map of England he carried in his head. Not that he ever could; he had memorised it since his first geography lessons and over the years that internal map had been enlarged as much by his reading as by the places he’d visited. Hardy was Dorset or Wessex, and Bovington was Egdon Heath in _The Return of the Native_ as well as where Lawrence of Arabia had been killed on his motorcycle; _Bleak House_ was Lincolnshire; Arnold Bennett’s _Five Towns_ were the Potteries in Staffordshire; even Sir Walter Scott had contributed to Wilt’s literary cartography with _Woodstock_ and _Ivanhoe._ Graham Greene too. Wilt’s Brighton had been defined for ever by Pinkie and the woman waiting on the pier. But if he couldn’t erase that map he could at any rate do his best to ignore it by not having a clue where he was, by avoiding large towns and even by disregarding place names that might prevent him from finding the England he was looking for. It was a romantic, nostalgic England. He knew that but he was indulging his romantic streak. He wanted to look at old houses, at rivers and streams, at old trees and ancient woods. The houses could be small, mere cottages or large houses standing in parkland, once great mansions but now in all probability divided up into apartments or turned into nursing homes or schools. None of that mattered to Wilt. He just wanted to wash Oakhurst Avenue, the Tech and the meaninglessness of his own routine out of his system and see England with new eyes, eyes unsullied by the experience of so many years as a teacher.