The Walking Dead

He thought of the short term, and the long term.

Short term, he would clear the bedsit in Ealing and load what he had into his suitcase and bin bags. He would drive them down to the bungalow on the Somerset and Wiltshire border, and dump what he did not need far at the back of his mother's garage…Long term, he might put it all behind him and forget his past, fly to Australia, New Zealand or Canada. He did not know which. Somewhere that had mountains and valleys and isolation. He could imagine the short term, his mother's anxiety at the direction change of his life, and could summon up a picture of the long term, the freedom from burdens — and the coach lurched to a stop.

They were at the barrier by the guard-house.

Banks went forward down the aisle, stood on the step, and the driver opened the door. He spoke to the sentry, saw the motorcycles that had escorted them peel away, and the barrier was raised. He would write the letter at the weekend, put failure behind him…and he would never again go to Isosceles stance and fire a weapon. It was for the best.

* * *

'I am not at liberty, even in this company, to divulge the source of this material.' The assistant director was loath to think of the circumstances in which it had been obtained. He had come down from his upper floor to what he liked to call the 'coal face', the open-plan area where a desk head analysed material, then passed taskings to surveillance, police liaison, the Internet watchers and those who trawled the financial records of suspects. His audience, perhaps twenty of them, was young and most were half his age.

'From an operation currently running, we understand that the Saudi citizen Ibrahim Hussein — you are familiar with the biographical details — will detonate himself somewhere in Birmingham, some time on Saturday. I regret this information is sketchy, but it's the way things pan out. That's all I have, all I can give you to work from. As we have done for the last several months, we all have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for a result, a satisfactory one. Thank you.'

He looked around him, hoped he wore an expression of suitable gravity and seniority. A rather bright little thing, a recent recruit from the Asian community in Bradford — working in the section that followed air journeys by Muslim boys from the UK to Pakistan and back — asked whether further intelligence could be expected, and added boldly, 'because this is pretty thin, Tristram, and gives little hope of interception'. He replied gruffly that he hoped for more but could not guarantee it. He had been sifting on the corner of the desk head's table, was shirt-sleeved with his tie loosened. The faces confronting him were grim, set, and he felt the sense of grievance. He slid off the table, was anxious to be gone before they found a mouthpiece. His shoes hit the floor. He gave them a fast smile and was on his way.

'Does this morsel have provenance, Tristram?'

He stopped, turned. She must have come in late, must have been standing beside him. 'I'm sorry, Mary but I'd rather not…'

'It's a perfectly straightforward question, Tristram. Does the intelligence have provenance?'

It was asked with innocence. The assistant director had not reached his eminence without recognizing danger. He would have said that Mary Reakes — and it was why she had earned the promotion that would put her inside Dickie Naylor's cubicle first thing on Monday morning — had the innocence of a darting snake, a black mamba, and that reptile's venom in her sacs.

'It's an area of delicacy that I am not prepared to expand on, if you'll excuse me.'

'I don't think that's good enough, Tristram.'

There was silence around her — just the subdued bleep of computer screens and the stifled hack of a cough.

'It's what we have. It's where we are.'

'Would that be where Dickie is and where Joe — where the American is?'

'You're pushing me towards areas, Mary, that I'm not prepared to visit'

He had taken two, three steps towards the door, then realized she was in front of him, blocked him.

'May I summarize, Tristram? A prisoner has explosive traces and is in police custody. The forensics are then denied, and the police are instructed to release the prisoner. He disappears into the night. Dickie is not at work today, and the American is off radar. I rang the Naylor home — no, he's not there, not off sick. I rang the American's hotel. He left at four this morning. I assume the two are involved in the gathering of this intelligence. Can you confirm that conclusion or do you deny it?'