Free The Avenue of the Dead by Evelyn Anthony Page B

unprotected. There was no insurance policy for him. She hadn’t forgotten or forgiven that.
    She twisted her chair round so that her back was presented to Lomax; he saw the angry movement and smiled with a sour little twist of the lips. She didn’t like being followed. He didn’t like following. There were fragments of bomb splinter still floating around in his back. Sometimes they caused pain. This was one of those times. He glanced at the woman Davina was sitting with – made up, artificial … He hated the type. She had emptied her vodka and was beckoning for another, smoking all the time. Leaning towards Davina, talking, talking … He cut into his steak. It was superb. He had in fact been to the Unicorn before, during a four-day visit to Washington as part of an SAS advisory group. Unfortunately their advice had not been taken. The attempt to release the hostages had gone ahead and failed, with a tragic loss of American lives. The loss of good men because of bureaucratic, political muddling. He had a professional’s admiration for the courage and skill of his US counterparts. He responded to their anger at the humiliation inflicted upon their country and its people. He would have flown out with them, given the chance. He had the soldier’s contempt for the soft civilians in places like London and Washington and Paris, playing chequers with the lives of brave men. He not only disliked the US capital, he shunned cities generally. He had felt more at home in the windy, rainswept bandit country of Armagh than he ever did in the manicured countryside of southern England.
    Whatever those two women were discussing across the room from him was important to a lot of people. The husband was a personal friend and adviser to the new President. The wife was a drunk and – he used the old Scots epithet – a hoor. Some dirty little scandal was fomenting under the custom-built, electronically operated bed, and that did not excite him. He missed his old life and his comrades with an ache as real as the painful jabs from the loose steel in his back.
    Elizabeth Fleming was drunk. Not drunk enough to slur her words, or fumble with her cigarettes over the coffee. But drunk just the same. Davina recognized the signs; the eyes were too wide, their stare too concentrated. The lowered voice was almost theatrical. Her words had a peak of exaggeration to them which invited disbelief. One hand lay on Davina’s wrist, pinning it in a gesture of affection which had just emerged after a childhood of dislike.
    â€˜I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so lonely here – so cut off. Nobody to talk to, nobody I can trust. You’ll stay for a while, won’t you, Mousey? You won’t be going back to England?’
    â€˜You’re in trouble, aren’t you, Liz?’ Davina asked the question gently. She could see what Neil Browning meant when he dismissed her as attention-seeking, living in a fantasy world. But there was something in the eyes and the way the painted mouth trembled at the corners which she recognized. Fear. Whatever else she was, Edward Fleming’s wife was afraid.
    â€˜How do you know?’ It was a whisper, exaggerated, silly.
    â€˜I know you,’ Davina said. ‘You were the most confident girl imaginable. Except for Charlie, of course. You were a pair, you two. You had the world at your feet, like a nice little football, just waiting for you to tip it into goal. You’ve lost that, Liz. You’re scared and you’re running. Put the brandy down and listen to me. I came here for a holiday; I thought it would be nice to see someone from Highfields after all these years – you’re, a celebrity, your husband rates a Time magazine article to himself these days. I never expected to find you like this. It worries me.’
    To her surprise Liz Fleming withdrew her hand. ‘We haven’t seen each other for years. Why