8.10pm. Tuesday, 7th November
The rain was cold – the sea water colder – Honor’s teeth chattering in her head before they even cleared the wash of the car. They could half-swim, half-wade for the refuge box – lie up till dawn and let the winds play themselves out until the tide turned. When it did, the watchers on the bank would come for them. As North calculated his options, the Range Rover drifted past, seawater rushing through the open windows filling it, drowning and claiming it, the headlights shining as it sank beneath the black water. He’d loved that car.
Once in the box though, their pursuers knew just where to find them. They could sit it out in their own nice dry cars and wait for dawn.
Honor made the same calculation. Kicking her feet, her arms in a clumsy crawl, she was heading away from the refuge box towards the island. If they made it to shore, they’d have a couple of hours before their pursuers managed to get hold of a boat. “If” they made it.
The exact same moment the water went over her head for the second time, he glimpsed the memory key floating on top of the waves, bobbing, accessible but out of reach. He thought about letting her drown – strands of Honor’s hair drifting upwards as she sank. One last look at the memory key as it disappeared, and he dived for her under the crashing waves, his legs working ferociously. Dragging her to the surface, he swung her body behind so she lay on her back, her hair spread out in the water, and put his arm around her neck. Her pretty neck. She fought him, her hands pulling away his forearm.
“I can do it myself,” she yelled, slapping him away and coughing up sea-water.
In the Army, North saw men fight out of bravery, saw them die rather than be thought a coward, but this was the first time he watched as a woman refused to drown out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Most people don’t know how they’re going to die. North knew because the bullet in his brain would kill him. Death held no mystery, and for the first time in years, for the first time since an Afghan insurgent shot him, North realised the bullet might not have the chance to kill him, because Honor and the cosmic chaos she trailed were going to do the job first.
By the time they crawled on to dry land, North was trembling as much as Honor. Spread-eagled on the beach, they lay with the stench of brine and rotting seaweed in their noses. For some reason he thought of evolution, of Adam and Eve gilled and fresh from the sea, and of starting over.
“You have to be the stupidest person I’ve ever met and I work with idiots,” Honor said, her face half-covered in sand, her lips blue-black in the darkness. “Do you ever think about the consequences of your actions?”
North got to his feet, stumbled on a lichened rock, then steadied himself against the gusting wind and the horizontal rain. He checked the rucksack, attempting to keep its contents protected from the elements – but he might as well have not bothered. The money was so much mulch. The pages of the passports running with ink, the thumbnail photographs either missing or cock-eyed. The two boxes of purple pills had been washed away. He checked his pocket – he had one final strip. The gun? Salt-water immersion wasn’t ideal but the Sig would still fire – he was sure of it. He may well have been right, but the gun was gone too.
The missing gun proved nothing. It did not make Honor’s case for her.
He spat once, the taste of salt in his mouth. On the upside they weren’t dead yet, and they only needed to walk the length of the island through the storm to get to Peggy’s cottage. And, bonus – he still wore his shoes. Things could be worse. It was all in your attitude.
Honor had lost her shoes in the water, her pale feet gleamed in the light from the rind of the moon. He started walking. Behind him, under the noise of the shifting shingle and the dull roar of the sea and the gale, she cursed him. Her language was terrible.
It took less than an hour to make it across the island to the cottage which Peggy bought a year before. It was in darkness, shuttered and locked up.
North considered the noise he would make jemmying open the door – who it might bring and the distance they lived – against the racket the wind was already making. It was a solid door, heavy oak with a cast iron lock. He needed a crowbar. At the very least, a piece of metal he could use as leverage, or a heavy stone to smash the lock. He was deciding they were safe enough in terms of the noise when with her bare foot, Honor moved a conch on the doorstep to reveal a large black key.
“You’d probably prefer to break it down,” she said, sliding the key into the lock and turning it in one swift movement. “Next time, eh, Slugger?”
She stood back, her face all-kinds-of-righteous, and North lifted the cast iron latch, the wind taking the door from him and almost pushing him bodily into the room.