The Prisoner's Wife by Gerard Macdonald Page B

do.”
    For a while, Danielle didn’t speak. Stretching her arms tightened her white cotton shirt against her body. “Your house,” she said finally. “How many bedrooms?”
    Shawn glanced at her. “Enough that we don’t have to share, if that’s what you mean.”
    A lean man dressed in knee socks and green tweed knickerbockers emerged from an avenue of lime trees. The flesh of his face had thinned, limning the skull beneath. He carried a Purdey Woodward shotgun, which, Shawn knew, cost roughly the same as a ranch house in California.
    â€œJustin,” he said, “how are you, my man? How’s Piglet?”
    Justin pointed the engraved gun toward his neighbor in the car. His voice, when he spoke, was husky, close to a whisper. The voice, Shawn thought, of a throat cancer patient. “We need to talk,” he said. “About your war.”
    â€œAt this range,” Shawn said, considering the shotgun, “that thing could do some damage. You mind pointing it away from us?”
    â€œNot loaded,” said Justin. Turning away, he demonstrated, touching the gun’s bob-weight trigger. Pellets scattered new leaves from a weeping lime on the far side of the lane. Birds flew yelling in the air. Danielle dived downward, her forehead touching Shawn’s knee.
    â€œ Now it’s not loaded,” Shawn said. Gently he lifted Danielle’s head. “Let me introduce you guys. Danielle Baptiste, Justin Roxburgh Hallam Fox. Piglet’s his wife. Did I get that right, Justin? What exactly do you want to talk about?”
    Justin peered briefly into the car, considering Danielle. “Bit soon after your wife, I would have thought,” he said. “Afghanistan. Durand Line. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”
    â€œYou are both quite crazy,” said Danielle.
    Shawn restarted the car. “Here’s the deal,” he told Justin. “You stop shooting my pheasants, we’ll get together, sort out the war.”
    â€œPheasants in this village are mine,” said Justin. He was reloading his shotgun. He pointed it beyond the churchyard. “My gamekeeper breeds them.”
    Shawn put the car in gear. “Justin,” he said, “your gamekeeper’s dead. Buried next to Martha.”
    Justin raised the weapon in salute. Danielle lowered her head below the level of the car’s shotgun seat. Shawn drove slowly past the churchyard and made a right into his own driveway.
    He reached across Danielle to open her door.
    â€œThis is it,” he said. “We’re home.”

 
    13
    WEST SUSSEX, 23 MAY 2004
    Late that night, in his own house, under a full moon, Shawn woke, naked. It was four in the morning—that was a guess. On his bed, Martha’s little cat stood, arching its back, hissing at something unseen, in the moonlit dark.
    Shawn listened. Somewhere in the house, someone was moving. He pulled on sweatpants. From under a pillow he took the loaded Makarov that, when he was still in the business, he’d managed to carry out of Peshawar. Without switching on lights he walked barefoot down the upper hall of his house. Behind him, the cat mewed. He was alert, waiting for sounds from the floor below, when hands grasped him from behind.
    Danielle whispered, “Shawn? What is happening?”
    â€œJesus,” Shawn said, “don’t ever do that to me. Don’t ever grab me in the dark. Could have put a bullet in you.” She was wearing one of his T-shirts with a towel tied around her waist. “What are you doing out here?”
    She held his unclothed arm. He could feel her shivering. “Someone came in my room. The door—it has opened—”
    He slipped off the safety on his pistol. “You saw this person?”
    â€œJust the door. It opened.”
    â€œDraft,” he said. “Gust of wind.”
    â€œFeel,” she said. “There is no wind. Someone stood watching me. After a time, the