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Doctor Smythe’s appearance at the head of two strongmen was something Brian would have loved. Especially his ‘visiting time’s over’, which was a baddie-witticism worthy of the Old School. Annabel casually took out her phone and dialled. She raised her finger to ask Smythe to be quiet a moment, then put it to her ear.
“Oh, hi!” she said. “Is that you, Gabrielle? That’s right, it’s Annabel again. I wonder if you could bring the car round? Unfortunately, we’ve got to leave ... I know, but Doctor Smythe’s just arrived with two men ... I don’t know. I’ll find out.” She put the phone on her knee and turned to Smythe. “Who are these two men, Doctor, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m not obliged to answer that question,” Smythe replied. “As I just said, you have to leave.”
“Because I think I recognise them.”
The two men looked at each other and grinned. They came forward with their hands folded in front of them. Annabel put her phone in her bag and stood up.
“I don’t suppose I’m allowed to discharge myself?” Mordred said, behind them. He tried to swing his legs over the bed, but was too weak.
“Stay where you are, John,” Annabel said.
“The Doc says you’ve got to leave,” the first man told her.
Somehow – Mordred had seen it once before, but even then he’d found it difficult to believe his eyes – Annabel’s right leg left the ground and travelled upwards in a one-hundred-and-eighty degree arc, the last portion of which lay directly through her interlocutor’s chin. His head snapped backwards and so did he. Almost simultaneously, she drew a gun from her handbag.
“Visiting time’s just beginning,” she said sweetly. “Get on the floor, please, face down.”
Smythe and his accomplice took a moment to register what had happened – they even looked at each other for confirmation - then did as she told them.
“Put your hands on the back of your head,” she continued. “And interlace your fingers. I don’t want to have to tell you anything twice. This gun doesn’t make enough of a noise for anyone outside to hear, but believe me, what it does do, it does well. And I won’t hesitate to use it if I think you’re trying to be clever. Tariq, there’s a roll of duct tape and some cord in my bag. Make sure these gentlemen can’t move, if you would.”
As Tariq got to work, she took the phone from her bag with her free hand and placed it against her ear again. “I know, I’m really sorry, but I think it’s sorted now. We’ve agreed a little bit of an extension to visiting time. The bottom line is, I don’t think John’s going to be able to make it unaided, and we need to get out now, preferably through the back entrance. Keep in touch.”
She put the phone down and sat on her chair while Tariq bound the prisoners. When they were beyond the possibility of escape she returned the gun to her bag and refreshed her lipstick. Then she stood up again.
“We’d better get going,” she said. “Tariq, you bring John.”
Tariq was going to make a great husband. He just heard and obeyed.
Mordred tried to help as much as possible. It ought to be possible to make his legs go, for example. He hadn’t often been in a state where he found it difficult to move his limbs before. By way of compensation, he apologised. Now he was upright, he felt woozy. Try not to black out, for Tariq’s sake.
Suddenly, they were passing occupied beds. He had no idea what time of the day or night it was, but no one seemed to be asleep. Once or twice, they passed nurses. Because Annabel looked as if she knew what she was doing, and because she was dressed in a suit with an official visitor’s badge, no one stopped them.
Edna was waiting for them at the end of a darkened corridor, after what felt to Mordred like an hour and a half, but was probably no more than five minutes. She seemed agitated, even for a junior agent. He hoped she wasn’t going to start Sir-ing him again. There were limits to being Sir-ed, and when the Sir in question was in pyjamas and not quite right in the head, that was one of them.
“Don’t ‘Sir’ me,” he said, when she was within range. He hoped he’d whispered it.
“What?” Edna replied.
“Ignore him,” Annabel cut in. “Where’s the car?”
“Follow me,” Edna said.
They went down another two miles of corridors, taking the best part of a fortnight. Edna snapped down the horizontal lever on a fire door. There was a rush of cold air and they were outside. A long road running left to right, a car, late afternoon sunshine, gulls, the smell of fish and chips and the sea.
And two men prostrate, on either side of them. They looked just like Smythe’s two buddies, like the men who’d attacked him back at the protesters’ encampment. Except they weren’t moving. Could Annabel have shot them while he wasn’t looking? Doubtful. Not her style. She liked to threaten and kick, not fire. Her pistol probably wasn’t even loaded. She was like him, in that respect. Like him, only better.
“Not my handiwork,” Edna said, indicating the two men.
“We’ll discuss it later,” Annabel said. “Do you know the roads well enough to drive?”
“Like the back of my hand,” Edna replied. She got behind the wheel. Annabel sat shotgun. Tariq hauled Mordred onto the back seat and got in beside him. The car screeched away.
“What do you mean, ‘not my handiwork’?” Annabel asked.
“They were like that when I got here,” Edna said. “I thought you must have done it. Anyway, somebody loves us.”
Annabel turned round as they went through an underpass. “What do you want to do, John? Wake up, you’ve been drugged.”
He remembered the two tablets. “They were just painkillers,” he replied.
She smiled. “In the light of subsequent events, I doubt that.”
The strange thing was, he’d felt quite lucid during the time Pownall was there. Perhaps the getting up and moving around had caused the drugs to work more deeply into his system. Or perhaps they really were painkillers, but with drowsy side-effects. Most likely that, yes. No point getting paranoid.
“We could call London and get you out the same way you came in,” Annabel was going on. “Pownall’s got no pretext to keep you here, and we’re secret service anyway. We’d cancel any warrant for your arrest, even assuming he could cook one up, which is unlikely. Realistically, in other words, he couldn’t and wouldn’t object to you leaving.”
Mind over matter. Now he was at rest again, at least some of his former clarity seemed to be returning. He was going to be okay. He was okay. “You don’t have orders to bring me back?”
“Not yet,” Annabel replied. “Obviously, Tariq and I will have to leave, whatever. We’ve burned our bridges.”
“My own orders were to liaise between the protesters and the Chief Minister.”
“True,” Tariq said, “but given that we’ve just taped a senior Jersey medic and one of his associates to the floor, and kicked the other unconscious, I think we can assume you won’t be welcome chez Pownall for a while. You’re coming with us.”
“You’re not taking deniability into account,” Mordred replied.
“What do you mean?” Annabel said.
“I didn’t kick him unconscious,” Mordred answered, “you did. I was doped up. And Smythe and his associates weren’t acting on Pownall’s orders. They were in someone else’s pay. There’s no reason at all why what happened should come between two rational men dedicated to the grim art of realpolitik.”
“Bloody risky game,” Annabel said. “Pownall’s got all the cards, and, as we’ve just heard from the horse’s mouth, he doesn’t want to negotiate.”
“That may change. I’m not saying I’ll go straight round to his house and ring the doorbell.”
“What do you think, Edna?” Annabel asked.
“John’s sister’s here,” she said simply. “My understanding is, she’s trapped.”
“Trapped?” Mordred said.
Edna nodded. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but since it appears you’re determined to stay, and none of us is opposed to that in principle, I guess you might as well know.”
“Be more specific,” Mordred told her.
“The protesters are in the northwest of the island, backed up against the sea. They’re surrounded by a line of guys who look suspiciously like those you fell foul of. My guess is they’re in Pownall’s pay, but they may not be. There are lots of people in Saint Helier with the money and connections to raise a private army. And the determination to deploy it. They take this ‘World War O’ business very seriously. And they don’t want to lose the opening rounds anywhere.”
“How are we going to get in, if they’ve got the camp surrounded?” Mordred asked. “And how did you get out?”
“She’s a spy,” Annabel said, “that’s how. Don’t be patronising. And you’ll get into the camp the same way. Assuming you’re stupid enough to still want to.”
“Sorry, Edna,” Mordred said. “I’m trying to think of too much at once.”
“You need to reconsider,” Annabel said.
“Not unless you’ve got a new set of reasons,” Mordred replied.
“How about this then?” she said. “They almost certainly won’t even beat up your sister. She’s the leader. Once it’s all over, she’s the first person the media will go to for a sound bite. It’s going to look bloody terrible for Pownall if she’s covered in bruises. No, they’ll put a net over her, then handcuff her, maybe even sedate her, and she’ll get home three or four hours later, foaming at the mouth but unscathed. Whereas you’ve already been beaten, and some of these guys have probably got a grudge against you, and you’re not someone anyone would go to for a quote. You could easily be killed.”
“I can look after myself,” Mordred said. “and I’ve got Edna. Just to be clear, she’s an Olympic gold medallist. She’s quite capable of looking after me and herself.”
“I think you’re asking a hell of a lot of her,” Annabel said.
“Maybe we should talk about Edna in the second person,” Tariq said. “She is actually in the car.”
“You’re being an idiot, John!” Annabel rarely showed emotion, so she was clearly upset.
“Look I - ”
“It would be perfectly possible for me to punch you unconscious right now, and bundle you onto the plane. I’d do it for your own good.”
“But you wouldn’t,” he replied.
“You think not? Why not?”
“You’d have done it by now. The reason you won’t, is because you could be wrong. Theory’s one thing, practice another. We both know something might happen to Hannah, even against Pownall’s supposed will. And you think that if you knock me out and bear me away, and something does happen to her, I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never speak to you again.”
Her face crumpled somehow. It looked like someone had just piled a shovelful of snow on top of it.
“Even though,” he went on, “I probably would forgive you, because I’d know you did it for the right reasons. We’re friends, and that means a lot to both of us. But you daren’t risk it.”
She wheeled round abruptly to look out of the windscreen. She wiped her eyes - or that’s what it looked like: she had her back to him, so he couldn’t tell for sure.
As he expected, she recovered quickly. She took a hand mirror from her bag, and looked at herself. She re-did bits of her face. When she turned to face the back seat again, it was as if nothing had ever happened.
“Tariq?” she said.
“That’s okay,” Tariq replied glumly.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” she told him. “If you want to get on a plane and leave, we’ll do that. If you want to stay, we’ll stay.”
“What if I want to get on a plane and I want you to stay?” he asked.
“That’s not going to happen. You’re not entitled to make up my mind for me. If you leave, so do I. This is our honeymoon and I love you. I’m not going to let you go your own way without me, not even for John. I mean it.”
Tariq seemed to fill with light and joy. “We’ll stay,” he said. “I don’t want you to choose between your husband and your friend. Besides, John’s my friend too. Always has been, always will be.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Mordred said.
“It’s settled then,” Annabel said. “At least between the three of us. Edna, how about you? Could be dangerous. You can go if you want to.”
Edna beamed. “I only joined up for the danger. I got tired of running.”
As they left the capital and entered the country roads leading inland, they noticed something odd. Every half mile or so they kept passing the same man. Or that’s what it looked like. Dressed and built just like the men who’d beaten Mordred up, and exactly like those mysteriously lying on their backs outside the hospital just now.
“What do you think it means?” Mordred asked Edna, as they passed the fourth.
“I don’t know,” she replied. She put her foot down slightly. “But I’ve a feeling we’ll find out before long.”
