The Waiting Time by Gerald Seymour

barrier.
    Perkins called across the road, ‘You wanted access to your client. She’s all yours.’
    Mantle came off the bonnet of his vehicle, pocketed his mobile. Johnson saw the rank dislike on his face and the wide smile at Perkins’s mouth.
    Perkins turned to her. ‘Please listen, Tracy, carefully. Pursue this matter and you will very quickly be out of your depth. If you’re out of your depth, you will sink. Remember that the German BfV regard Hauptman Krause as a jewel, and that he would see you as a threat. A great deal is at stake for both the BfV and Krause. There is always a serious risk that a person who represents a threat, when high stakes are played for, will meet with an “accident”. Accidents, Tracy, hurt. My warning is meant kindly. You should forget the past, you should be sensible. It would all have been different if you’d had evidence. .
    He kept to the speed limit, cruised in the middle lane of the motorway.
    He’d thought she might have just flaked out, slept, babbled her story, or just thanked him. But she sat beside him with her eyes open and murmured a song. He could not make out the words — too much noise from the cars, vans and lorries they passed and which went by them — but the tune was vaguely familiar.
    That she hadn’t spoken annoyed him like grit in a walking boot, a growing pain.
    ‘I make it forty-seven minutes we’ve been going, forty-one miles. A word out of you would be pleasant.’
    ‘What sort of word?’ she challenged.
    ‘Well, for a start, you could express a little bit of gratitude.’
    She thought he was silly, pompous. She turned her head to him, quite slowly, a sharp light in her eyes. ‘Don’t think it was you who got me out. You were just convenient. You saved them a train fare.’
    ‘That’s not called for.’
    Against the tiredness there was a crack of mischief at her mouth. She reached out. He thought it was going to be her gesture of gratitude, that she was going to rest her hand on his where he gripped the wheel. The tips of her fingers, small, brushed the hair at the back of his hand. She had hold of the wheel with a grin on her face. She didn’t look into the mirror in front of her, or the mirror beside her.
    She wrenched the wheel, swerving the car from the middle lane into the slow lane, from the slow lane into the slip road. There was a scream of brakes behind him, then the blast of a horn...
    ‘For God’s sake!’
    ‘I’m hungry,’ she said.
    They were off the motorway. His hands shook on the wheel. ‘That was idiotic!’
    ‘I’m half starved,’ she said.
    They found the café where lorries were parked up outside. She told him what she wanted to eat, took her bag from the car boot and carried it into the lavatories. She was so small, so slight, and the uniform she wore was crumpled, creased. He ordered at the counter.
    He carried the tray to an empty table.
    A bread roll, a small piece of curled cheese and a plastic beaker of thin orange juice, squeezed onto the tray, for himself. For her there was a plate of chips, double portion, a king-size hamburger with oozing dressing and a large Pepsi — which was what she’d demanded.
    She came out of the lavatory. She had changed into jeans and a sweater. Her uniform blouse, skirt and battle green pullover were stuffed into the top of the bag.
    She gulped at the food.
    ‘Are you going to tell me?’
    She had the hamburger in both hands, and the ketchup ran red on her fingers. ‘Where were you in ‘eighty-eight?’
    He thought she ate quite disgustingly. ‘That year I was a captain in the Special Investigation Branch of the RMP — I’d transferred, six years before, out of I Corps.’
    ‘Thought you were a solicitor.’
    He said, ‘I’m a solicitor’s clerk, qualifying to be a legal executive. While your mouth’s full, I might just tell you that your mother asked me to come. She’s had her home turned over by Special Branch.. . because of you.’
    He felt old, boring, and he hoped