The Angry Sea. James Deegan

so she brought Nick? He was pretty fed up with her, I think. I don’t think they were going to continue seeing each other after… after…’

      She started crying again, apologising through her sobs.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ said Liam. ‘It’s fine.’

      ‘Boyfriend seemed a decent bloke,’ said Tom Carter. ‘She’s a teetotaller, so she’d go to bed early every night, and he’d stay up boozing with us.’

      ‘You said she was high maintenance?’ said Liam.

      ‘Yeah,’ said Carter. ‘Like, we had a massive drama yesterday because she suddenly realised she hadn’t packed her favourite bikini. Sunday and Monday, a green bikini’s fine. Then suddenly it has to be her shocking pink one. So we spent half the morning yesterday trawling round the shops in the Old Town trying to get a shocking pink bikini in her size. In the end, the rest of us left her to it. She eventually turned up with the damned thing at about three o’clock. Don’t get me wrong, it looked pretty good on her, but…’

      He tailed off.

      ‘I don’t know what more we can tell you,’ he said, eventually. ‘It’s just a terrible, terrible thing.’

32.

      AT ABOUT THAT time, Justin Nicholls’ car arrived at the gate to No. 10 Downing Street.

      He walked to the front door, nodded and smiled to the uniformed copper on duty outside, and stepped in.

      As he did so, his mobile rang, with an MI6 identifier.

      ‘Nicholls,’ he said.

      It was Alec Palmer.

      ‘The Spanish say the boat was empty when it blew up,’ said Palmer.

      ‘Empty?’

      ‘Yes. There was a guy driving it, but he jumped off and started shooting people, and it exploded a few seconds after that. The human debris field starts a few metres from the vessel itself – there were some Spanish marines nearby who copped the whole thing. But there’s no sign of any human remains from the inside.’

      ‘Could they be mistaken?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘If I’m going to tell the PM, I need to be sure.’

      ‘I’ve spoken to them myself,’ said Palmer. ‘They’re a hundred per cent certain. Meat is meat. No meat, no bodies.’

       Meat is meat.

      Justin Nicholls winced, Charlotte Morgan’s face entering his mind.

      ‘How did they get off?’

      ‘The Spanish are working on that,’ said Palmer. ‘The target boat might have slowed for a few seconds and…’

      ‘A sea transfer?’

      ‘Looks that way.’

      Nicholls nodded. ‘Okay. Let me know immediately if there’s any developments, Alec.’

      ‘Of course.’

      Nicholls ended the call.

      ‘Mr Nicholls?’ said a waiting aide. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’

      She took him down through the back of the house and outside to the garden.

      On the other side of the large, bowling green lawn, on a wooden bench pressed against the tall, brick wall, and under the shade of a large buddleia alive with butterflies, sat the Prime Minister, Penelope Morgan.

      She was ashen-faced but holding it together.

      She always had been a tough cookie, Nicholls thought.

      Next to her was Sir Peter Smith, the grey-haired Cabinet Secretary.

      Smith stood up and pulled a garden chair out and round in front of the bench.

      The two men shook hands, Justin leaned down and kissed Penelope on the cheek, and then he and Smith sat down.

      ‘Is she dead, Justin?’ said Penelope.

      ‘No,’ said Nicholls.

      ‘How do you know? The boat… On the beach at Ceuta… ’

      ‘I’ve just had word. The Spanish say there was only one terrorist left on board when it went ashore, and he got off just before it went up.’

      ‘How can they be sure?’

      ‘Trust me,’ said Nicholls. ‘They’re sure.’

      ‘It was all about her, wasn’t it?’ said the Prime Minister.

      ‘It does look that way,’ said Nicholls, gravely. ‘The cruise liner at Málaga seems to have been a diversion. The main target was the beach at Puerto Banús.’

      ‘You mean Charlie was the main target?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Nicholls. ‘She and two of her friends were taken aboard a yacht – some sort of super-fast, millionaire’s plaything which had been stolen and the owner killed. The Spanish eventually got a chopper next to it and followed it all the way to Ceuta, where, as you know…’

      Sir Peter Smith cleared his throat. ‘So if Charlotte and her friends were on the boat when it left Marbella, but not on the boat when it exploded, how did they get off?’

      ‘They must have had another boat waiting somewhere. You slow down, push them off into the water, and then haul them into the new boat… Not pleasant, but perfectly survivable. Clever, really.’

      ‘So where is she now?’ said Penelope Morgan.

      Nicholls shrugged apologetically. ‘I assume they landed somewhere on the North African coast. We’re working on it.’

      ‘No word from the… from the men who took her?’

      ‘Not yet. But that’s the one thing to hold on to. Look, Penny, there’s no point in kidnapping the daughter of the British Prime Minister just to kill her.’

      ‘What happened to Eddie?’ said Penelope Morgan.

      ‘Her boyfriend? I’m afraid…’

      Morgan looked down, her hands clasped together tightly.

      ‘He was a lovely young man,’ she said. ‘Paddy and I had high hopes of him. I must speak to his parents. They lost another son two years ago on a motorbike. How awful.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      There was another, heavier silence.

      Nicholls looked up at the mortar fence protruding six feet above the weathered brick wall.

      He felt a pang of nostalgia for the old days, when the worst threat they had faced was a few angry Irishmen and their home-made fertiliser bombs. That had been bad, but manageable. He wasn’t sure the new enemy was going to be so easy to contain, much less defeat, unless the playing field changed dramatically – and the rules with it.

      Penelope Morgan cleared her throat. ‘Why didn’t we know about this?’ she said.

      Justin Nicholls was silent.

      ‘It’s a major failure of intelligence, Justin.’

      Nicholls looked down at his feet for a moment.

      The scale and nature of the threat they faced meant that it was impossible to stop every attack, but he knew that she was right.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There will have to be a full enquiry. But, for now, let’s worry about finding her and getting her back alive.’

      The Prime Minister winced.

      Sir Peter Smith stood up. ‘I have a couple of things to do ahead of the COBRA meeting.