They’d have gone by now. That was the plan. Emma would head back to town; Louisa and Lucas would move further along the estuary.
“Where?”
She pointed.
The man hauled her to her feet, while what people called stars buzzed at the outskirts of her vision. She’d been punched before: it was never good. This felt worse.
He grabbed her by the collar, turned her round. Force-marched her back the way she’d come.
Emma could feel his gun in her back; a harsh metal reminder of where power lay.
But Louisa and Lucas would be gone by now, she thought again. And the morning was moving on: even here, there’d be people appearing. Walking dogs, taking exercise. Even here, even in the snow.
Not that people would help. Not civilians; unarmed innocents.
“How far?”
She shook her head: didn’t know. Time was elastic after you were thumped in the head. Minutes twisted round each other, and hid in each other’s pockets.
In her pockets.
Stones.
There were stones in her pockets, which she didn’t remember putting there. But of course, they weren’t her pockets.
“I’m not wearing that scuzzy thing,” Emma had said, and meant it. A white puffa jacket, visibly torn at the breast, and overdue a launder. Not her usual look.
On the other hand, Louisa had had a point . . .
“Come on. Faster.”
Emma moved faster, but stumbled deliberately and fell to her knees. Let him think she was already finished.
Instead of hauling her up this time, he took a step backwards.
“Do that again, I’ll assume you’re faking. Is that what you want?”
What she wanted was a moment—half a moment—where his attention was elsewhere.
“I fell,” she said thickly. Her voice was not her own. “That’s all.”
“On your feet.”
Something slumped to the ground a few yards behind them, but he didn’t even blink.
Snow, dropping from high branches in response to a gust of wind.
Climbing to her feet, she slipped a stone from her jacket pocket. In her hand it felt seamless, egg-shaped, brilliant. One of nature’s pointless perfections, smoothed by time.
It wasn’t the weapon she’d choose to face an armed man with, but in the absence of anything else, it was a comfort.
“Let’s go.”
She’d expected a prod from his gun, but he was keeping his distance now.
Emma started walking, her legs genuinely wobbly. Partly because of the blows she’d taken, but partly, too, for fear. This man’s job was to eliminate witnesses. He might have been sent here for Lucas, but his brief had expanded now.
She thought about last night, and the moment in the graveyard. Bringing her pursuer down, and the bare second she’d spent wondering whether to go for his gun. She’d decided it was too dangerous: pity. It would have been good to have it now.
Instead of this stone, so smooth, so feeble.
In real life, Goliath crushed David every time.
But don’t think of that.
“It’s just up ahead,” she said.
And then the man’s phone rang.
The stubby length of wood in her hand, Shirley edged her way round the barn. Still there came that murmur of voices, like something heard on the edge of sleep, or a rumour of distant weather.
Something slipped into her eye, and she blinked it away. A snowflake.
It was odd to be here, but that was okay. It was odd to be anywhere, really. You just got used to some places faster than others. Like any slow horse, Shirley hated Slough House, but had grown accustomed to it too. You had to accept that you belonged somewhere, and it wasn’t up to you where that was. Memories weren’t optional, any more than fate. Marcus had died in Slough House and it was possible she’d die here, on a snow-blown Welsh hillside, checking out a bloody barn. Of course, she could just duck and cover, wait until the danger, if that’s even what it was, passed along, but if hiding were in her blood she’d not be here in the first place. Things were what they were. And she couldn’t be different now.
Her blood was tickling in her veins. Partly the speed doing its job; partly the knowledge that she was out here on the edge.
Moments when she knew she was alive, largely because people around her were trying to change that.
The voices stopped.
