The Walking Dead

A wraith figure, Lee Donkin followed the woman. The light ebbed on the Dunstable road. The woman was perfect and soon she would come to the underpass tunnel. She was on her mobile as she walked and the handbag on her arm wasn't even zipped. And it all went bloody pear-shaped. This gang spilled out of the food shop, saw her and recognized her, and it was all kisses, and she was in the middle of them — in a knot of men and women — and she'd been perfect. Wasn't perfect any longer. He crossed the road, drifted on and never looked back. Twenty minutes he'd been following her. Twenty minutes wasted. He cursed, kicked a can off the pavement into the traffic, and went through the tunnel. After twenty minutes of it, psyched and steeled for the snatch, then let down like the fix was finished, he hadn't the will — or the energy — to go looking for another target. He went on into the town centre, head down and hood up, but his savage mood was short-lived. He was in the square. Through the trees, past the vagrants and the dossers on the benches, Lee Donkin saw the posters on the Arndale's walls…Bloody good, bloody ace. Sales, bargains and giveaways on offer this coming weekend. Starting up Saturday, nine a.m. Bloody brilliant. Punters would be coming into town, women would have their purses bulging, and they'd be half asleep, hurrying down the Dunstable road. Bloody first-class pickings.

* * *

Naylor scribbled reminders on the sheets of his Post-it pad and stuck them on his desk surface, where clear spaces could be found. Joe Hegner was far back in his chair and talked on. So much was now crammed, squashed, into Dickie Naylor's mind. Everything that day, the meetings and the briefing, had been of critical importance but his ability to absorb was failing — his thoughts were far away, where he had heard the gulls, the waves and the wind.

'Dickie, his problems are with the quality of the cell he has been given. They're not people of his choice. The Twentyman, or the Scorpion, has not interviewed them, has not had the chance to run vetting over them, or to check references — as a CEO would have. The only one alongside him whom he's certain of is the bomb-maker, the Engineer. The rest he has to take on trust, and that's a big step for him, but he cannot do without them. He will be in safe accommodation, probably a short-term rental. With him will be a driver, a guy who has done the necessary reconnaissance of a target, another who will provide immediate security where the cell is gathered, and another who is there to watch over the perimeter of those premises and is staked out at the end of the street or wherever, and he will need some sort of logistics individual. Can he rely on any of them? He will not be happy to depend on individuals whose recruitment was not in his own hands. Then, introduced into this little coven, there is the boy who will do the walk or will drive the car. They are all, believe me, boxed up together, and there will be tensions — have to be tensions — and it is then that mistakes are made, and you have the chance to get lucky. But the stakes for him are high and he must live with the stresses that might be fracturing the cell. If there's an opportunity, you have to be able to exploit it. Will you? Can you?'

Outside his cubicle office, Mary stood at her desk, gestured to Naylor, tapped the face of her watch and pulled a droll face. She seemed to have looked after the self-invited guest well, because each time he returned there was a new sandwich wrapper beside his chair, or a fresh glass, and most recently there had been a finished soup bowl.

'Sorry and all that, time's up. My answer is, most definitely, I will and I can react to Lady Luck or a mistake.'

* * *

The gulls wheeled and shrieked over the disintegrating carcass of a cod that had been discarded from a fishing-boat. The sea beat in a fury against the headlands of rock fingers at the extremities of the bay, known in the old language as Port Uisken. The wind, with rain in it, came from the south-west at a strength of force eight, blistered spray over the rocks and whined in the telephone wires…On those telephone wires, the message had come that had put them on standby status.