Ghostmaker

by Victor Davies

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers; Political Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

In the great tradition of DAY OF THE JACKAL, a chillingly tense tale of assassination and betrayal. Captain Jack Boulder was his regiment's rifle champion, and runner-up for the Queen's Prize. Now, thanks to a spot of unauthorized freelance activity in Northern Ireland, he's just plain mister, running a gun club in the City. So when the spooks send him £500 in the post just for picking up the phone and listening, he listens. In spite of the ruthlessness with which the army dumped him, the notion of serving his country still means something to him, and of course it's flattering to be told that you're the only man for the job... So begins a chillingly tense adventure of assassination and betrayal, in the course of which Jack does what he does best, only to discover that the enemy is not who he had been led to believe, and that not only his life but those of his wife and sons are seriously at risk. Authentically detailed and blisteringly fast-paced, 'The Ghostmaker' is a highly accomplished debut.

Release date: August 16, 2012

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 352

Sample

He contrived, as usual, to be on the platform at six fifteen, edging through the knots of homegoing City stragglers, the wine-bar
happy-hour crowd, and the creeps who never switch off their desk lights until the office gauleiter has left for the day.


She was there, as usual, at the far end. He assumed she aligned herself with the leading coach because it came to a stop opposite
the exit at her destination – wherever that was. He deduced that she was not careless with her time.


He had never discovered where she got off because his own route ran only from St Paul’s to Shepherd’s Bush, eleven stops straight
as a thrusting bayonet under West London.


What was her destination? Did she go on beyond the Bush? Why could he never remember?


Weaving his way along the platform, he positioned himself behind and slightly to one side, where he could appreciate the rounded
half-profile of her left breast. She was wearing the crimson linen suit and the black stockings that gave off a sheen almost
intense enough to call a glitter. He experienced a pleasurable flick inside his trousers.


As usual the train came worming out of the tunnel at precisely six twenty and, as usual, he trailed her into the carriage
and sat opposite. She crossed her legs. As her stockings came into contact and rubbed together he picked up the tiny screeching
sound even above the rumble of the doors closing. Another flick. He remembered she’d done this to him before. She had a half-smile on her face which hovered provocatively in shadows. Had an
overhead light gone? He couldn’t quite get her into focus.


He looked around the carriage at the usual cast of characters: the cud-chewing dims who only come alive when the music starts
to bounce, the counting-house lackeys, resenting every moment of enforced wage-earning, the aggressively suited company men
returning to their stuccoed homes in Holland Park … They depressed him. He was as trapped in the grey hustle for daily bread
as any of them. Nothing unique. It grated that, in this morose company, he was just another bloody trooper.


Only she was special.

All he wanted was to devour the sight of her, but custom and manners always prevailed. As if programmed, he opened his evening
paper. He always did that as the train left Chancery Lane. He simply couldn’t understand himself being so craven. His battered
good looks had always triggered women’s curiosity; had drawn them to him.


Holborn … Tottenham Court Road … Oxford Circus … Bond Street. He peeked occasionally. She shifted slightly and recrossed her
legs.


The longest uninterrupted section of tunnel ran between Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate. He’d made this journey so often that,
even with his eyes closed, he could judge almost to the second the approach to each station.


He glanced up for the arrival at Lancaster Gate but his timing must have been off. Perhaps the train was going slow, although
it seemed to be rattling along at a fair speed. Odd. He returned to his newspaper.


A minute went by and suddenly he felt bothered. He looked up to see that other passengers – but not her – were glancing around, ill at ease. One of the dims, a rust redhead,
whined to her friend, ‘Takin’ its time, innit?’


But it wasn’t. The train ploughed on, the bolted iron ribs of the tunnel flashing by the windows with strobe-like hypnotic
effect. Several passengers stood up and shuffled to the doors in anticipation of the Lancaster Gate platform sliding into
view.


A tall pin-striper, puzzled, stooped to peer through the window. He was confronted by the grimy tunnel wall and the horizontal
power cables still flashing by when he clearly expected to be coming into the station. He turned, a questioning look on his
waxy face.


Others were picking up his concern. A woman asked loudly, of no one in particular, ‘This is the Central Line, isn’t it?’ None
of the passengers now searching for signs beyond the carriage windows bothered to reply. On rattled the train.


He worked out that ten minutes or so must have elapsed since they’d left Marble Arch. Something was wrong. He folded his paper
and laid it beside him on the seat.


As if reading his thoughts, a grey-haired matron said, ‘Something’s wrong. I don’t understand.’ She pulled a Selfridge’s shopping
bag onto her lap and cuddled it.


‘Wot she mean?’ the dim asked her friend. She stopped her rhythmic gum-chewing.

Two backpacking youths with buttery Scandinavian complexions shrugged at each other. One said, ‘Please, Lancaster Gate is
next. Yes?’


‘Don’t ask me, mate,’ said a youth. ‘I’m going to Notting Hill. But we do seem to have been in this bleeding tunnel a long
time.’ The train roared on.


Another five minutes elapsed and the scene of ill-suppressed hysteria reminded him of the time he had been on a charter flight to Miami and the plane had flown into clear air turbulence. Only this time there was no pacifying
cabin crew and no seat belts.


The interconnecting door with the next carriage opened and a white-faced group pushed forward. ‘This can’t be right,’ said
the leader, a bullet-headed authority figure. ‘What’s the driver playing at?’ He shouldered his way down the carriage and
pounded on the metal door separating them from the driver’s cabin. There was no response.


Bullet Head muttered a curse, then said, ‘Christ! He must have had a heart attack.’

A small woman in a hat quavered, ‘That may be so, but wouldn’t the train have gone through Lancaster Gate anyway? I didn’t
miss it, did I? We haven’t reached it yet, have we?’


The woman with the Selfridge’s bag began rocking and crying. This galvanized Bullet Head, who tugged at the red emergency
handle and began to attack the driver’s door with his feet and fists. Each blow simply bounced back at him. The train ploughed
on.


He watched Bullet Head’s perspiring efforts and, for the first time, felt the icy douche of fear swilling around his innards.
There was something … something he should know that was tantalizingly just beyond his ken.


Bullet Head said, ‘The bloody fool must have diverted us into a side tunnel.’

‘Maybe it’s a bomb scare,’ said someone.

The tall man, who’d been waiting to alight, abruptly lost his composure and pointed angrily at the tube map. ‘What diversionary
tunnel? Do you see any damned diversionary tunnel?’


Bullet Head turned puce and roared, ‘They don’t mark them on the passengers’ maps. There has to be some place where they park
the trains at night.’


The carriage was becoming oppressively packed as more and more agitated passengers pressed forward from the other carriages.
He could no longer see the woman clearly through the bodies. From his seated position, he caught only the occasional glimpse
of those mocking crossed knees.


People tugged open the slit windows for ventilation. Curiously, although the iron ribs continued to hurtle by outside, he
could feel no incoming blast of air on his face, only the sort of gut-twisting paralysis he’d felt the first time he came
under Iraqi shower-and-spray machine pistol fire. Despite an urgent desire to run to the kharsi, he’d stayed long enough to
ventilate two of those bastards with neat groups in trunk and head.


The only way he could stand up now was to climb onto his seat. He glanced at his watch. Jesus! They’d left Marble Arch at
least twenty-five minutes ago. At this speed they should have gone through a dozen stations and be breaking into daylight
and suburban Middlesex.


Women were screaming and several had fainted. An elderly woman in a hat began to pray out loud.

‘Oh, do shut up!’ said a chic brunette, dressed in lawyer black.

A girl in school uniform began to sob. Through shuddering breath, she cried, ‘I know what this is. It’s like that book.’ Her
denimed Neanderthal boyfriend took her by the shoulders and shook her until her head lolled. ‘What are you talking about,
you silly cow?’


‘The one where all these people are on a ship. They think they’re trapped in the fog. Only they’re not.’

‘We’re not in a fog. We’re in a sodding tunnel, and in a minute we’ll be coming into a station,’ said the Neanderthal. The
girl began to sob again. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I think we’re condemned to be on this train for all eternity.’


‘You wicked little girl!’ exploded the woman, crushing her Selfridge’s bag in her rage and anxiety. ‘That’s blasphemy!’ And
then she threw back her head and began a horrifying keening that spread, like a contagion, the length of the suffocating coach
and beyond.


He wanted to yell above their heads that it was too absurd, to say give it a bit longer, keep calm. To say … pray.

In front of him the press of bodies suddenly divided and he stepped down onto the carriage floor. The muck sweat was sluicing
off his cheeks and chin. Somehow he knew exactly what he had to do. He faced the woman calmly. Now he knew how it ended –
had always known but, like the goldfish with its two-second memory, had to relearn the scenario each time.


She uncrossed those exquisite legs, smiled up at him and said, in a siren’s purr, ‘You should listen to that little girl.’

She started to laugh directly into his shocked, uncomprehending face. In her open mouth he could see only darkness. He reeled
back, fell into his seat and began to scream.


The train thundered on. Outside, the iron ribs relentlessly followed one upon another, a monster drawing him into its black
bowels on the ripples of its iron gullet.


Jack Boulder’s heart leapt in his chest, trying to escape its mountings. He was wide awake in an instant, lying in a sweat
puddle, his head throbbing. Grace was already leaning over him, her long, pewter-blonde hair hanging forward over her sleep-dazed face. ‘My God, Jack, what is it? Just look at the time – it’s not yet five.’


He swung his feet to the floor and rested his damp head in his hands. She touched his bare, hunched shoulders and could feel
the heat and moisture coming off his body.


She slithered off the mattress, her nightgown dragging upwards to reveal her elegant legs. It fell back into place as she
padded to the bathroom and returned with two towels. She had wetted one and now dabbed it over his brow and the triangular
torso that still thrilled her every time she ran her hands over it. As she dried him off, she asked, ‘Was it the same dream?’


Jack nodded. ‘It’s the third time in a week. It’s so vivid, so terrifying.’

Grace’s brow knitted. Terrifying was an unlikely word for Jack to select. He was fearless – too fearless sometimes.

She looked down at his dishevelled hair. ‘Was it the same woman?’

‘Yes.’

She hesitated, and then said, ‘Is it someone you’ve met, Jack? Someone you’ve become … interested in? I mean, you really fancy
her, don’t you, wanting to get a look at her tits and so on …’


He raised his head to meet her gaze. ‘Grace, men are always wanting to look at women’s tits. She’s just some witch from a
dark pit inside my head. A figment. Nothing more.’ His arms encircled her thighs and he pulled her close so that his head
was against her belly.


She stroked his hair and heard him say, ‘I’ve only ever been in love with one woman and, at the moment, she is rummaging through
my hair to see if I’ve started a bald patch.’


Grace said, ‘Oooh!’ and yanked at a forelock. She began to giggle. ‘I’ll start a patch for you if you keep dreaming about this harpy. Why can’t you dream about fancying me?’


His heartbeat had returned to normal and he pulled back his head grinning roguishly. ‘Who says I don’t?’

‘Really?’ Grace brightened. ‘You never mention it. What do I wear in your imagination?’

‘Oh, the usual stuff,’ said Jack airily. ‘School tunic, blue knickers, thick black stockings …’

‘Pervert!’ said Grace.

As he spoke, Jack’s hands slipped under his wife’s nightgown and pulled it over her head.

‘Do you know what the time is?’ she murmured.

‘You’ve already told me,’ said Jack.

‘We’ll have to be quiet or we’ll wake the boys.’

‘The clap of doom wouldn’t get those two out of bed at this hour …’

Afterwards Jack, a veteran of early reveilles, said, ‘I’ll never get back to sleep. I’ll go for my run.’

Dawn was not even a suspicion in the sky as he loped from the house to begin his regular three-miler. As he jogged along the
empty pavement, there was nothing untoward to draw his attention to the house displaying the for-sale sign. Head down, watching
for dog turds, he failed to notice the upstairs curtains shifting minutely as if someone had moved in the room, causing a
small displacement of air.


He got back to find that Grace had embarked on her daily act as a female sergeant major, and was shouting up the stairs for
the children to stir themselves.


She said to Jack, ‘Do you think you ought to see a doctor?’

He shrugged. ‘He’d only tell me to stop eating cheese at night.’

The boys clattered in and Grace said no more. They were both fair-headed but after that any similarity between them ceased. Ben was twelve and already a serious boy, a reader
who asked questions; Malcolm at eight still had no inkling of the kind of world that awaited him and therefore lived in a
state of infant bliss.


Mal headed straight for the cereal box, but Ben stood by the kitchen sink, slapping the back of his head, attempting vainly
to make a rebellious tuft on his crown lie down.


‘Ben, for goodness’ sake stop hitting yourself like that. Your eyeballs’ll pop out.’

‘It keeps sticking up. They call me names at school.’

‘What names?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Mum, they call us both Bog Brush,’ piped up Mal.

‘Oh, dear! But I’m afraid your father doesn’t like you looking like a pair of sheepdogs. You’re his little soldiers.’

Grace’s flip tone invited a response but Jack held his tongue. She took a comb from her bag and ran it under the tap, then
raked it through Ben’s recalcitrant locks, flattening them successfully against his skull. Breakfast resumed.


The telephone call came minutes after she’d packed the boys off to the local primary where she herself had taught until Mal
arrived. She lifted the receiver. ‘Hello?’


A woman’s voice, cool and neutral, said, ‘Please may I speak to Captain Boulder?’ For no logical reason, Jack’s word-picture
of the woman on the train flashed into her head.


‘Whom shall I say?’ Her formal tone was a sure sign to Jack that she had a dubious caller on the line. He often teased her
about it, saying she sounded like someone who’d taken elocution lessons.


‘It’s a business matter,’ said the measured voice.

Grace opened her mouth to make an acid retort to the dismissive tone, then changed her mind. She held out the receiver and said, ‘For you. Sounds like someone selling insurance.
You’ll be late if you’re not out of here in five minutes.’ She had made no attempt to cover the mouthpiece.


The voice said to Jack, ‘I’m not selling insurance, Captain Boulder. This is a serious matter that I do not wish to discuss
with your wife listening in. You have, I believe, made numerous applications recently for jobs a little more rewarding than
manager of a gun club. Please just answer yes or no.’


‘Yes’, said Jack. And added, ‘I don’t use my rank any more. I’m a civvy now.’

‘Very good,’ said the woman. ‘Thank you for your discretion. Ask me no questions now but, as an expression of my seriousness,
you will receive an envelope in tomorrow’s mail containing five hundred pounds. Do not show this to your wife. Do not discuss
this conversation with her. If you do, you will be squandering a rare opportunity. Your good fortune will come to an abrupt
halt with the money that will be in your hands tomorrow.’


‘How—’ began Jack, mind racing, but the woman spoke over him.

She said, ‘If all is satisfactory, I shall arrange a further conversation with you. Goodbye for the moment.’ She rang off.

Grace was staring at him. He hung up. ‘You didn’t have much to say for yourself. Who was she?’

He said carefully, ‘You were right. Some insurance pitch. I put the phone down on her.’

‘This early in the morning? Strange, isn’t it?’

Jack shrugged. ‘I think they try to get you before you leave for work.’

*

In the house across the road, one of the listeners said, ‘Good. He hasn’t told her. And he thinks on his feet.’

All the same, he was followed on the tube into the City and a daylong check maintained for unusual contacts or any mention
of his curious telephone call.


‘Nothing,’ reported the team.

The observers watched Jack take his early run and then linger on the corner jogging on the spot.

‘Good man,’ said one. ‘Tough-looking johnnie, isn’t he? He’s waiting to waylay Postman Pat.’

It was ten minutes before Jack spotted the postman in the distance hauling his trolley, and jogged along to meet him.

They watched Jack being handed his mail, watched him finger the package and slip it into the waistband of his tracksuit trousers
under the jacket before trotting back to the house.


They turned to the earphones, listened to the domestic clatter, Grace urging Ben and Mal to hurry, Jack claiming the bathroom,
and even caught the sound of ripping as he opened the package. They imagined his stunned look as he fanned out the banknotes,
now realizing for the first time that the call had been no hoax.


‘Nothing works as well as the old green-backed convincer, does it?’ murmured the senior man.

Jack left the house fifteen minutes earlier than usual, leaving Grace still coping with the pre-school pandemonium. At St
Paul’s he positioned himself at the phone box specified in the typed note that had accompanied the money. He lifted the receiver on the first ring.


‘Good morning, Captain Boulder,’ said the woman. It was an upper-class accent, with a drawl that spoke of worldliness, the
voice of someone easily bored. He wanted once again to correct her salutation but instinct told him to let it go and listen.


‘You were your regiment’s rifle champion. You shot at Bisley, and were runner-up for the Queen’s Prize.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. So that was it. He knew that at this point he should ask for an address where he could return the money.
He didn’t.


‘Why didn’t you win?’

‘Bit of bad luck, really. You need to be in the right frame of mind for shooting at that level. My father had been killed
earlier that week in a traffic pile-up. I wanted to pull out altogether but there was pressure from the regiment who were
mad keen to have another pot to add to the regimental silver collection. So I played the brave little soldier.’


‘Tell me, Captain Boulder, under what circumstances did you leave the Army?’

‘Look,’ said Jack, ‘I like to find five hundred quid in the post as much as the next man. But I don’t think you’ve bought
the right to my life story.’


‘Oh, but I’m about to,’ she said calmly. ‘I’m about to offer you a week’s work for which you will be paid one hundred thousand
pounds.’


‘Oh, sure,’ said Jack. ‘Who do I have to kill?’ Even as the words escaped his mouth he knew he had asked the right question.

‘Please do not be flippant. This is a matter, as I told you yesterday, of great seriousness. You may correct me if I’m wrong
in any detail, but is it not true that you were invited to resign your commission after Sean McGurk, a known IRA leader, came to his front door one morning in the Irish Republic and was shot dead from a great distance by a single
shot? The same Sean McGurk whose active service unit had been responsible for the deaths of two of your own men. I’m told
the shot was placed so precisely between the eyes that at first the Garda could not believe it had not been fired at close
range. A beautiful shot,’ she added almost dreamily. ‘So neat. So perfectly formed. Just like that little red spot Hindi women
sport on their foreheads.’


Jack attempted to butt in, but she gave him no space. She went on, reprovingly, ‘Your fine handiwork may have made you a hero
to your men and brother officers but the Paddies had to be extremely cross with someone so they picked on the poor old British
Government who, in turn, were extremely cross with you – especially as there was talk of a ceasefire in the air.’


‘No one ever proved it was me,’ grunted Jack, as she drew breath. ‘British officers don’t go man-hunting without authorization.’

‘Don’t they now?’ She sounded both dry and amused.

‘How do you know all this?’ said Jack. ‘I was allowed to leave the Army without any fuss. They weren’t going to give me up
to Dublin and cause an even bigger stink. There was nothing in the papers.’


She said, ‘I know a great deal about you, Captain Boulder. And be assured you have my respect. I’m only sorry that a man of
your talents spends his days in a soundproofed basement among all those stockbrokers nursing fantasies that they, too, could
be Sheriff of Tombstone. Rather pathetic, don’t you think?’


‘It’s a living,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped playing games with me? Who are you?’

‘You may call me Mrs Canning.’

‘You want me to bump off your husband. Is that it?’

She laughed lightly. ‘Nothing so bourgeois. But you really don’t believe you can earn a hundred thousand pounds without, shall
we say, a considerable tussle with your conscience, do you?’


‘I was coming to that,’ said Jack.

She cut in, ‘You have a forty-thousand pound mortgage, you have two sons aged eight and twelve to educate, you have little
money in reserve and you’re often unable to clear your monthly credit-card bills. You last took your wife to a restaurant
five weeks ago.’ Anticipating his reaction she added, ‘Don’t be alarmed. All that information is readily available to credit
agencies and private detectives with access to computer networks.’


Jack glanced at his watch. He was already late. He licked his lips. A hundred thou? Christ! He said, ‘Can we meet?’

‘Not just yet. Do you wish me to go on?’

Jack said slowly, ‘Well, I’m listening. This is all something of a thunderbolt. Okay, I realize this is more than a practical
joke. You wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to find out so much about me. Although some of what you said is bullshit. You
didn’t get my Army record from any credit agency.’


She did not reply.

Finally, he said, ‘I’d like to hear more.’

‘This phone, same time tomorrow,’ she snapped, and left him listening to the dialling tone.

The boys were upstairs, grappling with their homework. Grace swept crumbs from supper off the table into her cupped hand and
looked at him curiously.


‘All right, Boulder,’ she said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

The listeners paused in their game of pocket chess.

Jack said, ‘What do you mean?’

Grace said, ‘You’ve not said a word either to me or the boys all evening. You’re somewhere in outer space. What’s up?’

‘I’m just feeling a bit low,’ said Jack. ‘I miss the guys, the comradeship. Don’t you?’

The listeners resumed their game, cocking half an ear, backed by the reel-to-reel recorder doing its stately eavesdrop.

Grace brushed her hands clean over the swing-bin. ‘The Army can get stuffed as far as I’m concerned. I never knew when some
embarrassed colonel was going to call on me to say you’d driven over a landmine and ask how I’d like the pieces delivered.’


They had been married fourteen years. Her Jack was no pretty boy but his weatherbeaten face and nose broken in a battalion
boxing tournament had left him with the kind of ruggedness that triggered near delirium in some women.


She assumed that from time to time he must have been tempted to stray, even if only in his head, especially when soldiering
took him away from home – but his behaviour had never given her any reason to think that he actually had. On home ground he
was a model husband. His impetuosity was boyish; it never involved adventures with other women. She knew how much temptation was thrown in his path,
had seen the way women reacted to him even when she was within face-slapping distance … And it had been the same qualities
in Jack that attracted other women – his sheer animal masculinity and his blindness to his own sex appeal – that had drawn
her to him in the first place.


Grace could see genuine naivety in his face about female predatory instincts and this, she realized with a stab of resignation,
was another part of the challenge.


They had met at a wedding: Grace was just out of teacher-training college and was taking infant classes while Jack was a second
lieutenant. He was in his dress uniform with his just-earned parachute wings. One of Grace’s girlhood friends was marrying
a fellow officer from Jack’s regiment.


In the marquee, after the toasts and the speeches, when most of the wedding party were tipsy, she had observed no fewer than
three bridesmaids and a couple of older women twittering around Jack. He was gazing raptly at his admirers under their wide-brimmed
hats and floral circlets.


Grace was sitting in a little gilt chair, watching the group and thinking, idly, that Jack must be the most conceited man
on earth, when suddenly he turned and headed straight for her. She stared him in the eye as he advanced towards her, looking
so grim that she was already giggling before he reached her. He said, awkwardly, ‘You need a refill.’ She burst out laughing.
He looked like a man going over the parapet in the face of enemy guns.


‘Look here,’ she said, teasingly, ‘isn’t your presence required over there?’

He glanced back guiltily at five angry pairs of eyes, then said, ‘I couldn’t help myself. I needed to meet you,’ so simply that it certainly wasn’t a practised line.


Four months later they were married and living in Germany. Grace found a job teaching at a school for the children of NATO
personnel.


The revenge execution of Sean McGurk – Grace refused to call it murder – and its aftermath had been shattering for both of
them. The army and his family had been Jack’s life and it had been hard for him to adjust to the civilian jungle. She saw
his terrible nightmares as just one symptom of his inner turmoil.


Now, Grace knelt by his chair and laid a hand on his knee. ‘Look, Jack, the only thing we can thank the Army for is the cover-up.
You must have been insane. If there’d been any advantage in it for the brass and the politicians, you’d be doing life in an
Irish prison. And how long do you think it would have taken for the Provos to get to you?’


‘Quite right, my girl,’ murmured the senior man, taking black’s remaining bishop.

Jack said, ‘It’s just this gun-club job. These people I teach to shoot are clowns from Fantasy Island. What the hell goes
on in their heads? I mean, toting .44 Magnums and Browning automatics as a hobby. It’s crazy. And in that dungeon I don’t
see daylight from clock-on to clock-off.’


Grace massaged his knee soothingly. ‘You’ll just have to keep trying for something better. For God’s sake, Jack, don’t spoil
this one. We’re the original beggars who can’t be choosers. Think of the boys.’


Jack nodded glumly. Then he brightened and said, ‘Oh, by the way, some good news. Some fool paid me extra for giving him fast-draw
lessons. I earned every penny – he nearly got me in the foot!’


He was not comfortable with the glibness of the lie but he’d caused Grace enough anxiety with the McGurk affair. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wad. ‘There’s five
hundred there,’ he said.


‘Naughty, naughty,’ said the senior man. ‘She’s not going to go for that.’

But Grace exclaimed, ‘Wonderful! That’s great timing. It’ll almost clear the Visa bill.’ Then she climbed into h