Free The Outsiders by Gerald Seymour Page B

Not even a rat, Winnie Monks thought, would come to Thames House for succour.
    At the back of the building there was a drive-in for the car pool. A vehicle was waiting, the engine ticking. Two men sat inside it, and a driver.
    Caro Watson walked briskly to the car, and the driver was out, had the boot and the rear door open. Winnie recalled that when the girl had been little more than a rookie at Thames House she’d had lovely hair. It had been her pride and joy. A week after the return from Budapest, and before the funeral, it had been cut short – not in a smart salon to create a gamine effect, the Audrey Hepburn look, but apparently with garden shears. It was tidier now, and better kept, but still had little style.
    The boot lid was slammed, and Caro Watson sank into the car.
    ‘Hold tight,’ Winnie Monks murmured, ‘and squeeze them till he squeaks.’
    It had been a horrid funeral. Some such occasions, where Winnie Monks came from in the upper valleys of South Wales, could be joyous with the beauty of the music. The parents had been fed with half-truths at best, lies at worst, and had not known that their son was involved in an arms procurement investigation, or the circumstances of his death. They had been told that he had been involved as a pedestrian in a motor accident, to explain the facial injuries. They would not have seen his body below the throat and noted that his right hand was severed at the wrist. One side of the church, in an Oxfordshire village within sight of the Chiltern hills, had been filled with local people, and the other by the load from London, a coachful. Winnie had read a lesson – Caro Watson had cried right through the service. The director, his deputy, his section leaders and every last one of the Graveyard Team had been there. Afterwards they had stayed a decent interval, then had boarded the coach again and left the village. Ten miles down the road the director had spoken to the driver and they’d pulled in at the next pub. That was where the wake had taken place and the drink was on the director’s credit card. They’d all been pissed when they’d got back to the building overlooking the Thames. Secrets had been guarded, and the inquest had been a formality, but a year later – on the anniversary – Winnie had returned to the village, laid her own flowers on a well-tended grave and called on the parents. She went back each year on that September day – had last been there less than two months before.
    She was seldom emotional, but when the gateman let the car out her prayers went with it. Then she set off for a lonely home. A new day had already started as she stood at the bus stop, and it would be a big one: either a crushing disappointment or a clenched-fist triumph . . .
     
    ‘Belt up, Ed – God, you can moan for Britain.’
    But Ed kept going. The retired second-hand Ford dealer from an Essex suburb had a captive audience and would milk the moment.
    ‘Leave it, Vera. Didn’t you hear them? They’re going to Marbella, first time. Don’t know one end of it from the other. I’m only being helpful.’
    ‘You’re miserable – and it’s nothing to do with you.’
    ‘It’s common good manners to share experience . . . What I’m saying to you both is that the Costa del Sol has changed in recent years. You want to be careful.’
    The flight had been delayed and the rain had come on heavily. On take-off, the buffeting of the wind as they’d clawed for altitude had frightened Posie – Jonno too, but he’d hidden his nerves. She’d caught his hand in hers.
    ‘Costa del Crime, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the old gangsters who were there when there wasn’t extradition. No, it’s the hooligan yobs who’ve flooded the place. Not just British – Poles, Albanians, Serbs, Moroccans, Irish. Any language you want to hear, you’ll get it on the Costa, and all looking for a fast buck. Plus the place is going down the drain so they have to hustle harder. What do