Free The Dying Light by Henry Porter

proof.’

    ‘Why do you think you were stopped this morning?’

    ‘I parked in the wrong place. It was all my silly fault.’

    ‘How do you account for that van in the square?’ asked a strikingly pretty woman in her late twenties who introduced herself as Alice Scudamore.

    ‘Security for the minister and all those important people: we live in an age of terrorism and assassination, dear. Look at what happened to David.’

    ‘No, they were filming us,’ said Alice Scudamore. ‘They weren’t protecting anyone! The important people had gone. They were filming us, not from above but head on so they could get everyone’s face.’

    ‘Well, who’s to say?’ said Mrs Kidd with an apologetic smile to Kate. ‘We mustn’t bore her, must we? Hugh Russell says Miss Lockhart is a high-powered lawyer from New York. She doesn’t want to hear about our little gripes. Did you like the service? The readings were beautiful, weren’t they?’

    ‘And you saw the police drone,’ said Mooney aggressively.

    ‘No.’>

    ‘You don’t notice them because they don’t make a sound. We see a lot of them in this town. It was over the square. This one was larger than usual. You know what the police use them for?’

    ‘Surveillance.’

    ‘More than that,’ said Mooney. ‘They mark targets with smart water - crowds and that sort of thing. It’s like being pissed on by a bat. The marker chemical stays on you for weeks. They were marking people in the square, as well as photographing them from the van.’

    ‘You say that’s proof?’ said Mrs Kidd.

    A short man with wiry black hair and intense black eyes leaned into the group conspiratorially and raised a finger from the rim of the wine glass. ‘Evan Thomas is the name, Miss Lockhart. When are you going to get the message, Diana? We’re being persecuted because we knew David.’

    ‘Can that really be true?’ asked Kate evenly. ‘Haven’t the authorities got better things to do these days?’

    ‘Precisely. That’s I exactly what I say,’ said Diana Kidd.

    The man straightened to her. ‘There’s too much evidence for it to be a coincidence. I mean, look at us. We’re ordinary people and we’re being hounded as though we were some kind of terror cell.’

    A voice came from behind Kate and a hand was placed on her shoulder. ‘Well, the day is looking up - Kate Koh!’

    She turned to see Oliver Mermagen, a contemporary from Oxford.

    ‘You were ignoring me?’ He leaned forward to kiss her on both cheeks.

    ‘I didn’t see you,’ she said. ‘And my name is Lockhart now, Oliver.’

    ‘Yes, of course: is the lucky man here?’

    ‘No,’ she said.

    ‘What a pity,’ he said and then looked at the group around her. ‘I wonder if I can borrow our Kate. I won’t keep her long.’

    She was steered into the middle of the room. ‘I don’t remember you being very close to David,’ she said.

    ‘Haven’t lost your bite, have you? If you want to know, we became friends after Oxford. We used to have dinner quite often together in London. Of course I didn’t see him much when he moved down here to the sticks.’

    ‘If you saw David you must know about the illness he had last year; it was quite serious apparently.’

    ‘I heard nothing about that,’ said Mermagen.

    He went on to tell her that he ran a PR and lobbying business, which seemed a plausible setting for Mermagen’s talents. At Oxford he was always panhandling the room for new connections. Eyam gave him the name ‘Promises’ because of his technique of promising someone what he thought they wanted, whether it was his to give or not. Little seemed to have touched Mermagen. His face had flattened and spread outwards and the eyes had become two feverish dots in an expanse of greyish white flesh. Eyam had always said Mermagen reminded him of a Dover sole.

    ‘You must at least know why David came here,’ she said.

    His eyes glided across her face. ‘My word, you have been out of it.