Chapter 17 The day after the day after....

'Toast again?' said Christopher as she brought it in. By chance she had used his father's favourite plate, a white one with a pattern of red cherries and gold flourishes.

'Of course,' she said, putting it down on the coffee table. 'Are you sure you don't want a drink?'

'Maybe later,' he said, crunching. She had waited exactly the right length of time to butter the toast, so that it was just melting in places but not dripping off the edges all down his chin. She really was too perfect to be true. Who was she anyway?

'Who are you anyway?' he mumbled through the toast.

Amaryllis sat down opposite him, on the settee where Big Dave and Mrs Stevenson had slept. Christopher no longer had a problem with that - all things considered, it was about the least weird thing that had happened lately.

'Where do you want me to start?' she asked.

'Well, for a start, how did you know where I was? Nobody saw me drive off from the hospital with the two bad guys. How did you know to come to the moor?'

'You're forgetting something, aren't you?'

'What? Did somebody call you from the hospital? The police?'

'The parcel of money,' she explained patiently. 'Remember when I got you to put the microdots in it?'

'Microdots....' He thought back to when they had been preparing the parcel, right back in the morning when they had planned to use it against the baddies in some way. Yes! Amaryllis had said she could track whoever had the parcel... so she had been able to use it to track Christopher! That part of it was suddenly crystal clear.

And as it became clear, the feelings he had became clear as well, and it all flooded into him at once - the fear and the panic and that sense of having been deserted by everyone. Christopher started to shiver again.

'It's all right,' said Amaryllis. 'Just wait a minute, don't think about it, and it'll be fine. Remember you're safe now.'

He took a deep breath, and found himself asking, 'So what was all this about the parcel of money anyway? What was it for? Why did the American push it through the letter-box disguised as a fish supper?'

'The fish supper was a red herring,' said Amaryllis, and burst out laughing. 'It was dirty money - it had been used for drug trafficking. The Americans got it from the Iranians - your brother-in-law in fact, or his henchmen. They tricked the Americans into being postmen for them. Told them you were a terrorist and you'd try and use the money for explosives to blow up a plane, but they were setting a trap for you to walk into - the payoff for the Americans was going to be your head on a platter.'

Christopher shuddered. Amaryllis continued.

'Your brother-in-law's friends were waiting for the parcel to get to you, then they planned to tip off the police and they would find it and arrest you... they'd be able to take the children without you getting in the way. The American bugged it so that if by some mischance the police didn't find it, you would do something silly with it, and he'd be able to keep tabs on you. Until he got the chance to - well - you know the rest.'

'Take the children? My brother-in-law's friends? It doesn't make sense - does it?' He remembered the flash of insight he had experienced on the way to Auchterderran. He didn't really want to believe that Caroline's husband - Faisal and Marina's father - was a crook, but...

Amaryllis hesitated.

'I'll be fine,' he said. 'What has this to do with the children?'

'Everything,' said Amaryllis simply. 'Simon and his sidekick were working for the children's father, in Iran.'

'But their father's a political prisoner.....'

'No, he isn't a political prisoner. He's a drugs baron. He has so many people on his payroll that it's hard to find anybody who isn't working for him in certain areas.'

'But he can't be - Caroline said - '

Christopher ground to a halt. Caroline had let him believe the children's father was a political prisoner because he himself had guessed that was why the man was still in Iran and not in Scotland with his family. The children's father hadn't been prevented from leaving Iran by the merciless penal system; he had deliberately chosen to stay there to be in the best position to continue managing his drugs operation. No wonder Caroline was such a wreck. She must have run away from him, and been constantly worried that he would send people after her. But why hadn't she told him? And what did Amaryllis have to do with it? She was waiting now, watching him to gauge his reaction before saying any more.

'Caroline managed to get herself and the children away from him by being very brave,' said Amaryllis. 'She contacted us a few years ago, and we got her out of Iran. That was well before I retired. When it looked as if she might need protection they brought me out of retirement on a temporary basis, since I wanted to be here anyway.... I think I'm going to have to leave town, by the way. My cover's shot to pieces.'

'If it hadn't been for you, I would have been shot to pieces,' said Christopher. 'Do you still need a cover now that you've really retired? Pitkirtly's a nice quiet little place - well, apart from the things that have been happening over the past few days, that is. You could pick a worse place to retire to, all things considered.'

He didn't know why he was rambling on like this. She didn't want to hear it, and he didn't think he was making sense anyway.

'Getting back to what happened,' said Amaryllis, studiously ignoring his last couple of sentences, 'the children's father wanted to get them back, by fair means or foul. According to his value system, they belong to him - and so does Caroline. He wasn't too bothered about her though - she was no longer of much use to him. Too flaky.'

She said it without censure, just as a matter of fact. She carried straight on. 'He recruited Simon, who was one of ours.'

'A British spy?'

'We call them agents... Somebody got suspicious of him, and they decided I should come out of retirement for a while and keep an eye on things here. Simon was meant to be doing that and we wanted to give him just enough rope... His Iranian friends got a bit out of hand though - that's what all the shooting was about the other night, and the taking of Steve Paxman.'

'So it was all part of the same thing?' Christopher tried to suppress the naïve surprise that was in his mind as he spoke.

'I must be slipping - I used to be able to guess what my target was going to do, and get ahead of him, and I very nearly left it too late this time. Simon's out of circulation now, but it may not stop with him. There could be others. You have to be aware of that. But we're building up a dossier about Caroline's husband which we're going to pass on to the Iranian authorities when it's complete. He could be looking at a real jail sentence. Not a soft option, in Iran.'

'What about the Americans? Where do they fit in?'

'They - well, they haven't been very nice either. They wanted the kids too. They wanted to use them as bargaining counters. To get to their father. That was why they went along with all this stuff about terrorism - they can't really have believed that - one glance at your cv would have told them you were squeaky-clean, just an innocent playing with the big boys... They didn't want you dead though - it was Pearson McPherson who gave you the parcel of money and who rescued you from the gunman that night.'

'So this whole thing with Simon and the money and the shooting and the threats and the mineshaft - it was all to do with the kids?' said Christopher incredulously. He pictured Faisal leaning over the Monopoly board, Marina in the kitchen running her hands through the dodgy money.... he could have died because of the kids?

'Caroline and the kids can move on,' said Amaryllis, watching him closely again. 'You'd be in the clear - it's unlikely they'd send anyone after you again. Especially if you couldn't tell them where the kids were.'

'But - I wouldn't be able to see them again?'

'Just think it over,' said Amaryllis. 'Caroline isn't well enough to come out of hospital now anyway, so that gives everybody a breathing-space. She'll be well looked after - now that they know what she's likely to try and do, I don't think they'll be letting her go anywhere on her own until she's had intensive psychotherapy. And it'll take the kids' father a while to replace Simon. It's not that often one of our agents goes bad. And then they would have to plant somebody else here - I'm guessing it takes a while for people to get used to a stranger in Pitkirtly?'

'You know it does,' said Christopher with a grin, recalling the reception Amaryllis had had at the Queen of Scots that first time. He had a sudden unwelcome thought; but having had it, he couldn't suppress it. 'Where does Steve Paxman fit in? Does he fit in? Where is he?'

'Ah,' said Amaryllis. 'It was a case of mistaken identity. I believe he's in a safe house not far away, living at the expense of the British nation.'

'A safe house? What's that supposed to mean?... Mistaken identity?'

'The Iranians kidnapped him by mistake, thinking it was you. Then Simon found out and was furious with them. He knew it wasn't you and he didn't want his fingerprints found on it. He told us what had happened, in his role as one of our agents, and we worked it all out and got Steve out of the way for a while. In case he got under our feet. Which is why he's had to stay out of circulation. But don't worry, he's fine.'

'Do you mean fine in the secret agent sense, or really fine?'

'Really fine. I hope.' He couldn't see if Amaryllis had crossed her fingers behind her back. He guessed that kind of childish symbolism didn't mean much to her anyway. She continued, 'So everyone's better staying where they are for a while. Which is good for me, because I want to be here.'

'That's one thing I can't understand!' he said. 'Why would anybody want to be in Pitkirtly? Not that it isn't a nice place to live,' he added hastily. 'River frontage, harbour, nice rural area, not too far from Edinburgh and so on. People are all right once you get used to them - '

'And vice versa,' she said.

'And if you really want fun and excitement, you can always join the PLIF steering group.' A smile spread slowly over Christopher's face as he said the last sentence. 'Jock McLean's going to be so put out that he's missed it all,' he added. 'Just because of going to Milngavie.'

After that waves of exhaustion washed over him and he allowed Big Dave, who turned out to have been lurking in the kitchen refereeing the kids' arguments and probably making eyes at Mrs Stevenson, to help him to bed. It was useful having Big Dave there, since he wouldn't have wanted to ask Amaryllis to assist with that. Well, maybe later, was his last conscious thought that night.

His first thought on waking in the morning was panic.

Surely Big Dave and Mrs Stevenson wouldn't stay on now that the crisis was over?

It was much worse than that, he discovered when he went downstairs. Jock McLean and Young Dave had both appeared, somehow divining what had gone on the day before - Christopher later found out that it had all been reported on the television news. Of course there had been certain inaccuracies in the report, and Christopher's name had been given as Christian Wilsinga from Sweden rather than from Pitkirtly, while it seemed that he had been rescued from the clutches of a couple of extortionists as a result of a police intelligence operation, no mention of spies or Iranians.

'Did your department have a hand in these reports?' he asked Amaryllis, who was still hanging around too, thank goodness.

She sighed. 'No, we just left it to the news reporters to screw it up on their own. They can usually scramble things a lot more effectively than we can. They get a third-hand story from somebody who overhears the police talking in the pub, and then they make up the rest.'

'Indeed they do,' said Jock McLean ponderously. Christopher noticed he sounded more ponderous than before; perhaps he himself had now got used to being a man of action and few words, so more sensitive to wordy people. 'I remember,' continued Jock, 'when the Evening News decided to report on an incident at school. They got all the pupils' names wrong, said they had been carrying knives when one had had an air-gun, and described me as an elderly maths teacher!'

He waited for people to howl with laughter at this example of press incompetence, but for some reason there was silence around the kitchen table.

Young Dave, who was dressed for jogging, ate another piece of toast.

'Just let me know if you want to bring a case against them,' he said to Christopher. Somehow, like Jock's ponderousness, Young Dave's self-importance seemed to have been magnified by events.

'Who do you mean? The reporters? The kidnappers?' said Christopher.

'Anybody,' said Young Dave, waving his toast around so that the chunks from the extra-chunky marmalade started to fly off around the kitchen. Fortunately he himself was the only person there who was fussy enough to object to getting marmalade chunks on his clothes. He brushed a particularly large chunk fastidiously from his tracksuit top on to the kitchen floor.

'I don't think I'd go to those lengths, thanks,' said Christopher. He glanced around. 'Where's Faisal?'

'Gone to school,' said Big Dave proudly. 'The Council should give me a job as an attendance officer. I just told him he'd be in prison before he was fifteen if he didn't go, and off he went, easy peasy.'

'Yes,' said Christopher uneasily. 'Thanks for taking Marina there yesterday. The headmistress rang me up to warn me about you, by the way.'

'What?' Big Dave was scandalised. 'The nerve of it. A respectable elderly man like me! Some of those people are just too vigilant for their own good. Seeing the worst everywhere.. Well, I took Jemima along today so that headmistress can put that in her pipe and smoke it.'

Christopher decided at once not to switch on his mobile all day, to avoid having to speak to the head teacher again. Then he remembered that his mobile had been thrown out of the car somewhere en route to Auchterderran. He smiled to himself. Some good had come out of this, after all.

'Has anyone contacted the hospital this morning?' he asked, hoping that someone had so that he wouldn't have to speak to the head nurse woman again either.

There was a pause

'We didn't think they'd give information to anyone who isn't a relative,' said Mrs Stevenson in mitigation.

'You're right, they probably wouldn't,' he agreed. 'I'll ring them later.'

He got up to put more toast on, and found Mrs Stevenson in his way.

'You stay where you are, Christopher,' she said firmly. 'I'll get you anything you want.'

'Just coffee and toast,' he muttered. He didn't want to throw these kind people out, but he had the feeling that he would prefer to be on his own so that he could reassemble his jangled thoughts and try again to make sense of all that had happened.

The post arrived.

Young Dave brought in a letter for Christopher and then left rather abruptly. Maybe he had realised how much sugar he had consumed in the form of chunky marmalade and was going to try and work it off with extreme exercise.

'It looks kind of official,' said Jock McLean, peering at the postmark and looking on the back flap for signs of who had sent it.

'It's the Council again,' said Christopher. 'I wonder what they want this time.'

It was a massive and incomprehensible form, couched in Council-speak. Something to do with applying for funding. It rang a subdued and distant bell in his head.

'Remember,' said Amaryllis, picking up the form, 'you got a letter yesterday about this. Before - before everything kicked off. They were more or less telling you to apply. Do you need help filling it in?'

'Are you offering?'

'I certainly am,' she said. 'I want to see that village hall restored to its former - um - glory - or something.'

'Glory?' said Big Dave. 'When was it ever glorious?'

Christopher wanted to ask her about glory in the context of the tunnel, but he was reluctant to say anything about it in front of the others.

'Just a figure of speech,' murmured Amaryllis.

'If we're going to be filling in forms and that,' said Big Dave, 'we'd better get that kid Darren along to get the young person's point of view.'

Jock McLean made a hideous snuffling noise, and wrinkled up his face like a pig to go with it. 'Point of view? The young person's point of view is usually that they just want to be left alone to hang out with their pals and have a drink. Or twelve. And then maybe go and vandalise some school or old people's home. We shouldn't need to pander to that.'

'I think we'll have to, if we want the money,' Christopher pointed out. 'It's probably part of Council policy that they don't give money to anybody who doesn't press the right buttons.'

It was strange, reflected Christopher, how quickly he had slipped back into his usual routine of eating toast and having mild disagreements with Jock McLean. In some ways it was more restful than talking people down from roofs then being kidnapped and almost thrown down a disused mine shaft, and in other ways it was quite depressing to realise how little had changed. He had vaguely imagined up to now that the only reason why he lacked confidence in gatherings, and was often ignored when others were canvassing opinions, was that he was a man of intellect and not a man of action. But now that he was, unintentionally, a man of action too, it was still happening.

Christopher found himself winding down and becoming more and more monosyllabic, and somehow they all detected that he wanted to be left on his own, and they drifted off in ones and twos. Jock McLean, least sensitive person in the room as always, was the last to leave, apart from Amaryllis, who seemed to be 'minding' Christopher, either on her own behalf or that of the authorities. She wouldn't let him answer the telephone when it rang, but she did pass on a message from the nursing supervisor in the hospital, to say that Caroline was 'comfortable' and that she was now being monitored night and day to ensure that they didn't have another 'high level incident' on their hands.

'High level incident!' laughed Christopher, on the brink of hysteria. 'That's one way of looking at it!'

'Try not to get wound up about it,' Amaryllis advised. 'You'll find there isn't room in your brain to think about all that happened yesterday in one go. Better to just accept that Caroline's being taken care of now, and that yesterday is in the past.'

'So - you do trauma counselling as part of your job?' said Christopher. 'It's really a complete package, isn't it? I suppose filling in the funding application is a kind of therapy? Have you got a mole on the Council as well?'

'Certainly not!' said Amaryllis sharply, and then with a visible effort softened her tone, as if recalling that Christopher was in a vulnerable state and she should be gentle with him. 'No - I just believe in collaborating with people whose interests happen to coincide with mine.'

'Wasn't that how we got into cahoots with Stalin?' said Christopher lazily, getting up from the kitchen table and moving through to the sitting-room, where he picked up an old copy of 'Archives Unlimited', his favourite light reading.