Enough stories of the ‘old days’ tripped off Granddad Cairns’s tongue. Never any point in telling his grandfather that he had heard them before. A favourite was about Leatherslade Farm, near to Aylesbury, out in deep countryside. Granddad Cairns had been twenty-two when the gang had hit the big-time and robbed the Royal Mail train coming south overnight from Scotland. He’d been on remand on a conspiracy-to-burgle charge, and could remember the draught of excitement when news of a
two-and-three-quarter-million-pound heist had spread along the corridors of HMP Brixton (Remand), and also – the bit he enjoyed most – the ridicule at the gang’s cock-up. Should have gone straight back to London, to their roots and homes, and stashed the cash in a warehouse or lock-up garage.
Instead they’d holed up at Leatherslade Farm in a remote corner of the countryside, reckoning that they wouldn’t be seen among all the quiet fields and hedgerows, their presence not noted. Wrong. They were down a long lane that wasn’t made up and they’d thought no one in the whole wide world would dream anyone was there. Wrong enough to get thirty years each. It would have been the rope if the driver had pegged a few weeks earlier from the head injuries they’d done him. A man was supposed to come along afterwards and fire the place, but he hadn’t and the fingerprints were over everything and convicted them … That man was thought to be holding up a flyover pillar on the motorway at Chiswick. But, truth was, locals were queuing up to tell the police of goings-on at Leatherslade Farm. Granddad Cairns used to say, finishing up, ‘I hate the countryside. Had my way, I’d cement everywhere that’s green. Go and look over a town house before doing some business there and no one sees anything. Go and look at a country house and half a village has seen you. Cement’s what’s needed.’ Robbie came up a trodden track and now he could look across the gully that ran down to the ruins, the graveyard and the beach.
Through the trees, he could make out most of the house, and the patio, but none of it clearly because of the branches.
Couldn’t see whether there were cameras, or an alarm system.
There was a woman on a lounger at the edge of the patio – he hadn’t seen her before – and then a dog bounded close to her.
He had seen what he needed to: a dog.
By the time he reached the lane again, having cut through a caravan park, he had established that the house didn’t have a back exit on to the path below.
At the top of the lane, opposite the museum, there was a bench
and Leanne was sitting on it. She had the wig on, the cardigan off and the brochures under her arm.
She asked him, as they strolled up the hill, how it had gone.
He said it had gone all right.
She said she’d done the rounds and gossiped while two couples had looked at her double-glazing and the plastics. The people in Lulworth View, she was told, weren’t worth a call because ‘they keep to themselves’ and ‘they’ve hardly a word for anyone’, but she tried the speech grille on the gate and a man had answered. She’d explained and he’d said she could shove … He hadn’t finished.
Robbie Cairns said quietly, ‘Doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has a dog.’
‘How did it go?’
She peeled off her rucksack and dropped it. ‘It was pitiful,’ Megs Behan said.
Surprise. ‘How come?’
‘It’s like we were part of the scenery, like we’d be missed if we weren’t there. Another year and the police’ll be giving us biscuits, and DSEi will be sending out a trolley with coffee, tea or hot chocolate. We don’t even embarrass them, let alone get up their noses.’
Puzzlement at a sort of heresy. ‘Not joining the doubters, are you, Megs?’
She gazed at her project manager. She saw his concern. Others in the open-plan area at Planet Protection had their eyes fastened on their screens, but would have been wondering whether sunstroke or her period had caused such a dramatic loss of faith. She was Megs Behan and her commitment was legendary. Others had left to have babies or get work that paid better, and some had gone because their lives had moved on and the dedication had frayed. Not Megs Behan. ‘It was a complete waste of time being there.’
His resolve stiffened. ‘Perhaps you aren’t yourself, Megs. We have to be seen there, we have to …’
‘But we’re not seen. That’s the problem. No photographers. The bloody downturn, and who cares what British factories manufacture as long as the money’s coming in? Weapons of war are fine as long as the cheques don’t bounce. I’ve focused on Harvey Gillot. He didn’t turn up. But, as regards the fair, our response is predictable and therefore goes unreported.’
‘Perhaps you’ve been stretching yourself a bit far.’ He turned away.
She swigged water from the dispenser. ‘What we need is some Shock and plenty of Awe, and we need to beard those people where it hurts them. So, I’ll be wanting a bit from petty cash. I’m going to Gillot’s home. I’ll—’
He spun back. ‘Nothing illegal, Megs.’
‘Outside his door. In his face. Where his family and neighbours see me.’
‘But with dignity.’
‘I’ll humiliate him. Everyone near to where he lives will know what his trade is – dealing in death, brokering what kills children, trafficking in the apparatus of genocide.’ She had no idea what his home was like, where the main gate was, how close other properties were. ‘I want to make him squirm. Press releases and standing docile behind a barrier don’t work any more. So, please, a float from the petty cash.’
There was then an extraordinary moment in the open-plan office. Applause rang out, and cheers. She stood taller.
The project manager said, ‘I like what I hear, Megs, and as usual you’re innovative …
but
don’t hazard the good name of this organisation. It’s not to be brought into disrepute. We need funds, and funds aren’t attracted by stunts. We’re dependent on areas of government – however much we dislike it – to help us pay our way, and we have beneficiaries who won’t tolerate association with anything vulgar.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ She was grinning, a cat with cream on its whiskers. ‘I’ll flush him out tomorrow and make his life hell.’
*
Looking up from a wad of receipts he was checking against a column of figures – expenditure and inflow – Lenny Grewcock pondered. For a moment his hands came together in front of his mouth and nose, but it was contemplation, not prayer. He knew the name of the target, but not why a community had condemned him. He thought of the young guy, Robbie Cairns, son of Jerry and grandson of the old blagger. How good was Robbie Cairns? As good as his reputation? In it for Lenny Grewcock – not the money, chicken-shit, he was taking from the deal – was the chance of a link to people in Hamburg, who had access to deals across Europe. It was important that he was seen as an efficient, reliable friend. He wondered whether he would hear of the successful result from a phone call and a coded message, from the evening paper or the TV. Already, while he checked the accounts of a club in a side alley off Jermyn Street in the West End, his mind had been ticking over advantages and opportunities that would come his way when the Hamburg end kicked in.
In a workshop, at a lathe that shaped chair legs, Jerry Cairns’s mind was only barely on the work. He knew the name, passed to him on a wisp of cigarette paper, of the target and reckoned that by now his Robbie would be tracking the man, tailing him and lining him up. He would learn of the hit from the television in his cell. He supposed, as he worked the lathe, that to have a son like Robbie – a celebrity at what he did – was the same as having a darts prodigy or a successful TV actor for a kid: a little of the glory spattered on to the father … as the money did, if the boy had done well. And to be under the protection of Lenny Grewcock was a matter of no little consequence. Jerry Cairns had no fondness for his younger son – didn’t tell anyone, never had, not even the boy’s mother, his wife, that he couldn’t abide the boy – his cold eyes. But when he came out of gaol, he’d need a cut of the money his son brought in. He worked on his quota of chair legs and waited to be escorted back to his cell where he could switch on his television and watch news bulletins.
*
He didn’t do it often, but Granddad Cairns savoured sitting at a corner table in the old-world pub by the plaque that said the Pilgrim Fathers had boarded the Mayflower there. His second pint was in front of him, about his limit: his bladder couldn’t take any more. He lived off the money that was slipped him by Robbie. Couldn’t have managed without the help he had from the boy because his life had involved too much gaol time and thieving wasn’t pensionable. He liked this pub, could drop in for an afternoon and be accepted because the lunch trade was gone and the evening trade hadn’t started up. He would hear of Robbie’s hit from Leanne: a fine girl, and she had time for him – she’d call by as soon as they came back from the coast to let him know. If it wasn’t Leanne it would be Vern: he would stand in the doorway, take his grandfather’s shoulders in his hands, incline his head down and whisper, then give him a bit of a squeeze. Robbie wouldn’t come, wouldn’t tell him. Granddad Cairns knew of nobody who liked his younger grandson. Knew plenty who were petrified of the little sod, and some who’d cross the road rather than have to walk past him. There was a poster up outside the Rotherhithe police station that showed the closed doors of the refrigerated bays of a mortuary: one was open with the feet of a body sticking up from a shroud and the caption was ‘Carrying a gun can lead you into the coolest places.’ If his grandson was there, he knew of nobody who’d shed a tear. But he liked the money, needed it. At home he would sit in his chair and wait for Leanne or Vern to come by. Each time the money was better.
The hut was in shadow, there was no movement in those at either side of it and the grass in front of the line was not worn down. All were well shuttered, some had padlocks on the doors and they backed on to a field – maybe the one where he had seen the hawk fly and kill. While Robbie stood back, Vern used a short crowbar to prise open a window. Then they lifted Leanne and eased her through. She was passed the tool and, less than a minute later, after a squeal of tearing wood, the main door sagged open. Using the crowbar inside minimised the visible damage. Now they went
through a fast routine: two pairs of plastic gloves each, a shower cap, and the day’s third check that the mobiles were off. Robbie dumped on the floor the bin-liner that held the clothing, and the sack with the hardware, then slumped on to a bench at the back.
What to do?
Nothing.
They had closed the window shutters, and the door, and there was no light inside. Robbie had the bench, Vern stretched out on the floor where a rug covered the linoleum, and Leanne had a chair. She asked Robbie again if there was anything more he needed to see and he said again that he had seen what he needed to see. Puzzled, did he mean the dog? Certain, because he had seen the dog. As if it was his little joke, and they’d be told when he was good and ready, not before. Obvious to Robbie Cairns that the dog was the provider of opportunity, but he didn’t say how, why … He did say that when it was dark he would go out with Vern for fish and chips. Then he dozed.
They waited. It was the first time that any of them, gathered around the tables outside the café, could remember that they had not talked of an episode in the defence of the village and its betrayal. Not even Mladen had offered his description of a moment when the line had wavered and he had stabilised it. The one with the keenest memory was Tomislav, but his head was bent low and he offered nothing. Andrija had the same coffee in front of him as he had had an hour before; he had not a drunk a quarter of it. Petar chain-smoked and did not contribute. Simun was sitting away from them; he was permitted to be close but had no part in the stories of war. They waited to be told.
Josip had been there and was now gone. The original chain of contact, he had told them, was now shortened. From London, word of the hit and the death would be sent to Hamburg, and from there it would go to an apartment in Zagreb, to a man of power and influence against whom no charges had been laid in spite of the recent assassination of a prosecutor who had investigated him. Known in the capital city as the Falcon, he
would call Josip and give a codeword to mark the completion of retribution. It was agreed that then, word received, the village would come together at the church, would walk in column to the cemetery and flowers would be laid on the graves. The principals would go then to Mladen’s house. The reward for the outlay of twenty thousand euros would be found in a half-dozen bottles of sparkling wine, Double Gold, from Ilok. None around the tables had thanked Josip for what he had organised and probably they would not when he brought the news for which they waited.
A car came by and slowed as it approached the café. It was driven by a girl with blonde hair; her complexion had been ruddied by the sun. It braked.
It had been a change of mind, off-the-cuff, which was unusual for Penny Laing. The light had dropped, the countryside had lost lustre and pastel shadows had overwhelmed what had been vivid. She had left Vukovar behind and taken a side road between strip fields of ripened corn. She had gone through Bogdanovci, seen signs ahead for Marinci but had gone to the right and been guided in the failing light by a church tower.
She had come to the village. She could not have said to what purpose – it was too late to see anything, or to wander and soak up atmosphere, or to find someone who would devote an evening to her gratification. The pull of the place had broken though common sense – she should have taken an early night in her room.
There was a crossroads where she stopped. To left, right and ahead, the roads were empty. The church she could see was incomplete and the walls were of concrete blocks that had not yet been rendered. Some homes had lights on behind thin curtaining. She was about to turn and go back to the Vukovar hotel when she saw a cluster of brighter light in front. She drove towards it.
At the edge of the village she saw a group of men sitting on a concrete veranda and braked. She was trained to wade into
conversations of substance with strangers. Her job did not permit shyness, and a big question needed answering. She was watched by old eyes. She sensed indifference rather than hostility, but no trace of welcome.