Dillon left his bike by the smashed gate, slithered down the slope, and looked over. Lang lay there with the Montesa on top of him and the wolfhound was crawling toward him, dragging its hind legs. Dillon moved to one side where the grass sloped again and went down.

He got both his hands to the Montesa, lifted it up, and tossed it to one side. There was blood on one side of Lang’s face. Dillon leaned down to lift him and Lang cried out in agony.

“My bloody back’s broken, Dillon. Christ, I can feel the bone sticking out.”

“I’ll get help, I have a phone.” Dillon got his Cellnet out and dialed Hannah’s number.

She was with him in seconds. “Are you okay, Dillon?”

“There’s been a bad accident. Lang’s crashed and broken his back. You’d better get onto the police at Okehampton. We’ll need an ambulance or a helicopter if there is one. I’m high on the track above the forest.”

“I’ll get straight onto it.”

Dillon turned to Lang and Danger whimpered in pain, trying to drag himself to his master. Lang turned his head. “There’s a good boy.” He tried to reach the dog with a hand and groaned. “My God, his rear legs, Dillon, the bones are jutting out.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Finish him for me, Dillon, do the decent thing. Can’t bear to see him suffer.”

Dillon took out his silenced Walther. Danger looked up at him, eyes filled with pain. “There’s a boy,” Dillon said, stroking his head, and shot him.

Dillon crouched beside Lang, lit a cigarette, and put it to his lips. Lang coughed and said weakly, “What a way to go. What a stupid bloody way to go.”

“Someone will be here soon,” Dillon said. “One of the advantages of the Cellnet phone system. Instant communication.”

“Not instant enough. I’m dying, Dillon.”

“Maybe not. Just hang in there.”

“What for? A show trial.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve always been so bored, Dillon, had everything and had nothing, if you follow. Ireland disgusted me, so I left the Army for silly political games, and then things happened, all by chance, wonderful, exciting things. Nothing was ever so exciting.”

His breathing was labored. “Take it easy,” Dillon told him.

“No, something I want you to understand, want to tell you because it doesn’t seem to matter now. The first January 30 was a mistake. Tom was a delivery boy for Belov, but the Arab he met was supposed to kill Belov for the KGB. Tom shot him in a struggle for the gun – the Beretta. That’s why we invented January 30. To explain the killing. But Tom was shot and I couldn’t have that, so I knocked off Ashimov, the KGB bastard behind everything. I killed people in Ireland, Dillon, so why couldn’t I kill a piece of slime like that?”

Blood was trickling out of his mouth. “Easy,” Dillon said.

“So it started and after a while came Grace.” His words were distorted now. “Tom and I went to see her at the Lyric. On the way back, those two scum jumped her, heroes of the glorious revolution. Took her up an alley to rape her. Tom and I intervened. I was carrying, you see. I’d made the Beretta my licensed handgun for visits to the Province.”

“And you killed them.”

“They were armed. I shot one, there was a struggle and Grace picked up the Beretta and took out the other bastard.”

“And that was the start of it for her?”

“Got a taste for it. Another kind of performance. I put her through a weapons course here. Very apt pupil!”

He closed his eyes, his breathing shallow. Dillon said, “The Beretta, has Grace got it?”

“Oh yes, needs it.”

Dillon frowned. “Why?”

“Poor Ferguson. Another Bloody Sunday. Like to see his face,” Lang said and coughed, turning his head to one side, blood erupting from his mouth. His body shook violently, then went very still.

A moment later Dillon heard his Cellnet phone. He took it out and switched on and Ferguson said, “Dillon, there’s an RAF base only twelve miles away. They’re sending a helicopter.”

“Too late,” Dillon said. “He just died. I’ll see you in a little while, Brigadier.”

He switched off and turned, as stone cascaded down the slope, and Sam Lee arrived. “What happened, then?”

“He crashed through the gate off the track and came down the slope.”

“Dead, is he?” There was a certain satisfaction on Lee’s coarse face. “Ah, well that’s the way of the world. Even the high and mighty come down to this.”

“Who the hell are you?” Dillon asked.

“The estate shepherd, and that damn dog lying there like that is the best news I’ve had in years.”

He stirred Danger with his foot and Dillon, anger flooding through him like lava, put a knee in Lee’s crotch and raised it again into the descending face, sending the shepherd back down the slope a good forty feet.

It was mid-afternoon when Alan Smith took the Navajo up over the trees at the end of the old RAF landing strip and climbed through the rain.

“One bright spot from the Prime Minister’s point of view,” Hannah Bernstein said. “With Rupert Lang’s timely death, a rather large scandal is averted for the Conservative party.”

“But it still leaves us with the Browning woman, Curry, and Belov. Thanks to Rupert Lang’s rather emotional leave-taking, we now have our suspicions confirmed.”

“I’d like to point out, Brigadier,” Hannah said, “that Dillon’s account of Lang’s dying confession carries no weight in a court of law. If it was put forward by the prosecution, the Judge would have no option but to throw it out.”

“Yes, I am aware of that sad fact, Chief Inspector.” Ferguson sighed. “But I’m deeply disturbed by Dillon’s other piece of information. He said that the Browning woman had the Beretta?”

“Yes,” Dillon told him. “He said she needed it. I asked what he meant and he said: ‘Poor Ferguson. Another Bloody Sunday. Like to see his face.’ That’s exactly what he said. Then he died.”

“How very inconvenient of him,” Ferguson said.

“Isn’t that rather hard, sir?” Hannah told him.

“Not at all. There’s only one Sunday that’s important in my book – tomorrow – and any kind of involvement in that affair by Grace Browning fills me with horror.”

“But she’s here in London, sir,” Hannah said, “ performing at the King’s Head tonight.”

“So are we, my dear, but flying out to Shannon in the morning. She could do the same.”

“Shall I have her lifted, sir?”

“You got the tickets for the show?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll allow her the final performance. Pick her up afterwards. My guess is Curry will be there.” He turned to Dillon. “Are you looking forward to it?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China,” Sean Dillon told him.

FOURTEEN

The untimely death of Rupert Lang, Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, was featured on television news as early as one o’clock. Tom Curry, preparing a sandwich in the kitchen at Dean Close, had the television on and could not believe what he had heard. He felt himself start to shake with emotion, stumbled across to the dresser, and got a bottle of Scotch open and spilled about three fingers into a glass. He swallowed it down, then went into the drawing room and sat on the couch, hugging himself.

“Rupert! Oh, God, Rupert! What happened?” He started to cry and then the phone rang. He let it ring for a while, then picked it up reluctantly.

Grace said, “Are you there, Tom?”

“Rupert,” he said brokenly. “Rupert is dead.”

“Yes, I know. Now just hang on. I’m on my way,” and she put down the phone.

But he couldn’t do as she asked, because there was nothing to hang on to. He had never felt so totally desolate in his life. Rupert was gone, and in that moment he realized that the most important reason for his existence had gone forever. This time he poured an even larger whisky and swallowed it down quickly, then he went and got his raincoat and let himself out of the front door.