The Adjacent Read Free

indefinitely. In one sense he was right, because it was to be their last night together. After Melanie’s death the other medical and relief workers were so demoralized that they began to close down the clinic, abandoning the local people to the heat and the drought and the militiamen.
    They never found Melanie’s body. She walked out in the afternoon of the day after their argument, seething with rage at him, saying she wanted to be alone. He said nothing, let her go. Their rows always hurt them both, because underlying the differences was a genuine bond of love and long-term commitment. For Tarent, one of the most urgent reasons for wanting to escape from the field hospital was his wish to repair the damage the episode was causing them. But that day, knowing he was watching her helplessly, Melanie pulled on theKevlar vest over her nurse’s uniform, packed a rifle, took a canteen of water and a radio, followed the rules, but she was leaving the safety of the compound at one of the most dangerous hours of the day. When the explosion was heard in the near distance there was the usual immediate head-count, and they knew she was missing. No one had actually witnessed the attack, but one of the orderlies said that immediately before the explosion he had noticed a point of light in that direction, something in the air, higher than tree-height, and so bright it had hurt his eyes. All the security guards, and some of the medical team, drove out in reinforced vehicles to investigate. Tarent was in the front vehicle, his gut instinct telling him it had to be Melanie, that it was all over, but because all they could find was a huge triangle of blackened earth and no sign of a body, her death seemed at first to be uncertain. There was just the weirdly regular scar caused by the explosion, three straight sides forming a perfect equilateral triangle, an inexplicable shape for a crater, with no sign of other wreckage, no blood anywhere, no human remains at all.
    By the end of the following day Tarent and the others knew she had to be dead. Even if she had somehow survived the explosion, one so powerful that it appeared to have wiped out everything in its immediate vicinity, she would have been morbidly injured. Without medical treatment, without fresh water, without protection from the daytime heat, it was impossible to survive.
2
    THE OOR PEOPLE CAME TO COLLECT HIM THE NEXT MORNING – they telephoned the house thirty minutes before he was to be ready, and arrived at the exact moment they specified. Tarent was still upstairs, carefully packing his cameras, when he saw the car drawing up outside the house.
    His farewell to Gordon and Annie Roscoe was more hurried than any of them would have liked. Gordon shook his hand, but then unbowed and gave a hug – Annie held him closely and cried.
    ‘I really am so sorry about Melanie,’ Tarent said, again at something of a loss as to know how to say the right or true thing, and settled for the true. ‘Melanie and I were still in love,’ he said, ‘after all these years.’
    ‘I know, Tibor, I believe you,’ said Annie softly. ‘Melanie always said the same.’
    Tarent joined the others in the car. This time his minders were a man and a woman – the man was wearing a grey business suit, the woman a
burqa.
The driver was another woman, glassed off from the main compartment of the car. An attaché case parked on a rack at the back of the passenger seats bore the OOR insignia, but that was the only clue as to the identity of these people.
    During the drive that followed neither of the officials said anything casual or unguarded to him, and the woman never spoke at all. She faced Tarent most of the time, regarding him opaquely from within her shroud. Soon after leaving the Roscoes’ house the young man spoke to pass on instructions.
    He said that they were taking him to London where there was an apartment he could stay in overnight. He gave Tarent a key, and told him where he should return