‘Those three, they had been at the school together, lived in the same road in the village, worked in the same factory at Vinkovci and died together. The bunker was at the edge of the village on the little road to Marinci and it took a direct hit, a mortar. They all died there … The woman was going between the crypt under the church and her home when a shell from a tank landed in the street and decapitated her. They had a marksman on the Bogdanovci side of the village – good but not as good as Andrija – and he killed those four men. Good men, brave men. His wife was raped after the surrender. When they had finished with her she went to her home – her husband had made for the cornfields but was found and shot – and into the roof where there were still grenades. She held one against her bosom and took the pin free …’
Penny knew where fourteen men and three women had died in the village’s defence, and she knew the names and occupations of the nine who had perished from disease, abuse and torture in the concentration camps. She saw the weapons of the village people and their attackers; rifles were pointed to and she was told who had used them. There were small mortars, a machine-gun, many grenades and an RPG-7 launcher.
Then she was led towards the maps. With the same gentleness
in his voice, the boy eased her forward, back or to the side and turned her, his fingers careful on her elbow. At the maps she understood why the contract had been taken out, why Harvey Gillot was condemned.
‘Tomislav would have fired the Malyutka missiles that the schoolteacher had bought. He had the training from the regular army. He persuaded Zoran that the village would survive and the
Kukuruzni Put
would stay open if we had the Malyutkas. He was the expert. He said the village could be saved. They would have changed the battle. With the Malyutkas, the village would have been saved. Tomislav’s wife is in Serbia and he does not know where are his children, and he does not work. He has only this house and these rooms and these memories.’
She felt weakened by the dried-out heat in the room, the dust that had long settled, the weapons and shrapnel, the greyness of the paper on which the maps were printed. They were near to the door. She sensed that the light dropped beyond it, dusk coming, and the end was near of a day unlike any other in her life. More portrait photographs confronted her. An older man, wearing a teacher’s gown, in a formal half-profile pose, and three youngsters.
‘He was a fine and honest man. He believed Harvey Gillot would keep his word. That one, the second picture, he is Tomislav’s boy. He was killed when they waited for the Malyutkas to come. They took off his testicles and put them in his mouth but we do not know if that was before he died or after, the same with Andrija’s cousin and Petar’s son. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you wish to see more, hear more?’
‘I have seen and heard enough.’
Very gravely, Penny Laing shook Tomislav’s hand. It had a steely strength, and the lack of flesh on the fingers seemed to dig into her skin. She felt, almost, that he thanked her for her interest. There was no life in the house and the door was not closed after them. They left behind them silence – the sound of the dead. The darkness was coming fast.
The boy still held her arm, though she did not need guiding once she had come down the veranda’s steps. She saw no vehicle headlights, no streetlights, but at the far end of the village the half-built church was illuminated and the café showed.
He asked her whether she would like to go to one of the forward positions that Tomislav had marked on the map for the Malyutkas.
Back in the Alpha-team office, on Whitehall in faraway London, they would still be at work, with their time difference, and wouldn’t comprehend what it was to visit a shrine to men and women killed brutally, to walk in a field of ripened corn where a grave had been dug up by a ploughshare, and to look down into a hole in the ground dug nineteen years before. Well … they weren’t there and they knew nothing.
‘Yes, I’d like to,’ she said very quietly.
There was a farm with low light over a cattle shed and tractors that threw the last shadows from the sun, a field of sunflowers and a warm breeze. He pointed to the defensive position from which a missile might have been fired against a tank. She could hardly see her feet, let alone a damn hole – and his breath tasted of chewing gum when they kissed.
She held tight to him, felt him against her, wanted to kiss and be kissed. And she understood why Harvey Gillot would die. Her breath slackened, and she felt his tongue and those gentle fingers smoothed back her hair, touching her neck where the cream had gone. In her mind were images of the young who had died here, of the gaunt Tomislav who would have been crouching in what was little more than a shallow ditch, and would have directed a bloody great missile against armour, and of Harvey Gillot.
He whistled and the dog was at heel, close to his leg. He went out through the gates. It must have been the jolt of opening it or pushing it shut, but a trouser suit and a summer dress slid down and into the lane. He didn’t stop.
Harvey didn’t acknowledge them. The one from the car, Roscoe,
jack-knifed clear of the door, the girl slid down from the bonnet, and the big fellow pushed himself up off the stone. Harvey saw that Roscoe’s hand hovered inside his jacket, the girl’s was over the zip of her handbag, and the big fellow’s jacket was hitched back, giving a good view of the holster.
He didn’t make eye contact as he walked past the car, but he heard a stifled curse – Roscoe’s.
He didn’t look back, walked briskly, and the dog, too, ignored them.
‘Excuse me, Mr Gillot.’
He didn’t turn his head but answered, ‘What?’
‘I’m feeling like a spare bollock, sir. It’s not how my colleagues or I should be treated.’
‘Your sensitivities are pretty much bottom of my list.’
He took a left-hand fork, which would lead him towards the coastal path that went south. Going that way, he would not pass the place where the rotten apples had been dumped beside the track. He supposed he had achieved a sort of liberation. Didn’t know how long it would last and whether, once it had been lost, he would be able to summon it again. It was as if he had shed fear.
On the other side of the island, in the housing estates of Weston – once homes to the scientists, engineers and technicians of the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment, now closed – a new Beirut had been born, it was said. Along with teenage pregnancies topping national charts, there was widespread narcotics dealing and abuse. Harvey Gillot had never used heroin, cocaine or ecstasy, not even smoked a joint. He didn’t drink to excess either. He supposed he was as much under the influence of an adrenalin surge as any of the wan, hooded kids who loafed in Weston, Southwell, Easton and Fortuneswell. He didn’t slow, although he could hear the pound of feet behind him. Bloody good to have given them a finger. He didn’t know how long heroin, cocaine or cannabis would remain in the system, but knew the fear would be back. Not now.
He had packed two cardboard boxes with Josie’s favourites – and there had been a nibble from a Saudi-based company, via
email, and a code signal to say that a freighter of Liberian registration had slipped moorings and was now, cargo aboard, in the international waters of the Black Sea. At that moment he didn’t imagine that a contract killer could wound, maim or kill him. It wouldn’t last, but it was good while it did.
‘Mr Gillot.’
He came through trees, past high boulders and was on the path that overlooked the sea. There were yachts and launches inshore, and further out the car ferry heading for France. Beyond, a couple of bulk carriers would have been going into Southampton and the docks. The gulls were over him, circling and shouting. He met Ben Parsons, who bored for Britain on the subject of a supermarket for the island, listened to him and showed interest, even bent to tousle the coat of the man’s spaniel. And after Parsons and the supermarket – the disaster it would be – came George Wilkins, obsessed with the island’s history; Harvey heard of a plan to commission a plaque commemorating Jack Mantle, a twenty-three-year-old leading seaman who had died heroically seventy years before while firing a 20mm anti-aircraft ‘pom-pom’ at Stuka dive-bombers; he had been awarded the Victoria Cross and was buried in the military cemetery overlooking the old naval base. He heard Wilkins out, and told him it would be a valuable addition to Portland’s heritage. Normally he would not have given either man the time of day. He didn’t do dinner parties or Christmas drinks, he belonged to nothing, and appeals that came to the letterbox beside the gates were shredded unopened. When he walked he heard the footfall behind him. When he stopped and listened to new-found ‘friends’, he could hear the detective’s rasped breathing and fancied the frustration burgeoned. The path was open and flat, and a kestrel fluttered over a field. He stopped at a gate and the footsteps came close. The breathing had an edge.
‘You could co-operate, Mr Gillot.’
‘Should I prepare myself for another lecture on the subject of luck? Needing to be lucky “every time”, and being lucky “once”? Are we winding up for a repeat performance?’
‘I have a job to do.’
‘And probably, Sergeant, you would do it more effectively if your tongue stopped flapping.’
‘You make it hard for me, Mr Gillot, but harder for yourself.’
‘Which sounds rather like something my wife might have parroted, maybe read it on an agony-aunt page. I am, Sergeant, an arms dealer. I buy and sell the weapons of war. I have good years and bad years, but I stay afloat. I pay, believe it or not, the taxes that make up your salary, your pension scheme, your freebies, perks and overtime rates. It could be said that I own a damn great part of you, Sergeant. Through my personal efforts I have bought a
big
piece of Mr Roscoe. You are a public servant. Get that into your head – and scrub out of it that I owe you a bunch of flowers and a basket of gratitude.’ It was as if another dose of the narcotic was flowing through his veins.
He closed the field gate after him and set off across the dried ground, sparse grass, towards the water trough where the horse was … might have been a pony. For all Harvey knew, it might have been a donkey – or one of those mules, high-value animals, that had lugged the crates protecting the Blowpipes over the mountains and through the passes of Afghanistan in the good old days. Whatever, his daughter loved it more fervently than she loved him, and it cost a mint in veterinary fees and fodder. It had a foul temper and was likely as not to bite him. Its name was Norah, he was unsure of its age, and it lived in this rented field in the summer months and at a livery stables in winter. It was brown with white patches and eyed him as malevolently as he reckoned the detective did, but it wore a head-collar. The leading rope was hooked on the fence by the water trough and he unfastened it – felt quite pleased with himself. A short-arm lunge and he had the halter attached to the head-collar. He reckoned he was now on the way to saving the rental on the field.
He left the gate open behind him.
The dog went ahead. He led the horse, or pony, and the detective was behind.
*
The Gold Group was gathered at a table. Phoebe Bermingham, Gold Commander, would have hoped for a consensus, would bite and kick to avoid making the decision herself. On her pad she had doodled around the name Harvey Gillot;
What to do
and
Resources
and
Budget
and
Options, Options, OPTIONS
were fiercely underlined. She sensed, correctly, that few medals were on offer in the case of a man showing pig-ignorant obstinacy. She would use a pencil to indicate who should speak next.
It pointed at the Covert expert from SCD10. The answer: ‘I have checked rosters. Put simply, we don’t have what it would need. I have people away on two narcotics scenes on the south coast and unrelated, and I have to supply Anti-Terrorism with most of the rest. The property in question has a front and a back and is close to a caravan park. It would require more bodies than I have. It’s properly done or not at all. Sorry, but I can’t help.’
The pencil moved on to Intelligence, SCD11. ‘We don’t have a line as yet, Ma’am, to an individual. I have no names and no organisation. We need much more before we can make an identification. Negative. Can’t be anything else.’
And on. The sharpened lead aimed at Firearms, CO19. ‘I have a flat refusal from the natives at the seaside. Not prepared to get themselves into an open-ended commitment. To do the job from London would require a deployment of sixteen officers, a command structure and a communications set-up. We’re not in the marketplace for that. Apologies, Ma’am, but we have to live in the real world.’
She came to the inspector from the specialist squad, the one that had a workload so narrowly defined that it made her nervous. ‘We have Roscoe in place and two others. There has regretfully been something of a breakdown in communications and they’re outside the property’s boundaries. As is pretty much routine, they’re carrying hand weapons, but not heavier stuff, and they don’t have back-up. I have to say that the report of the attack indicates an unprofessional approach. I don’t understand why. I would suggest a very limited time span of protection – perhaps twenty-four hours, no more.’
The pencil was directed at the leader of the Alpha team. ‘Our Penny Laing is on the ground in Croatia. Everyone is very frank and up-front with her. Yes, there is a contract, an expensive one – money has been paid – and they believed they’d hired a good and efficient man. Harvey Gillot is condemned because he took an initial bagful of money, quasi-valuables and property deeds. He didn’t deliver and didn’t return what he’d been paid – which would have been difficult as the village was virtually isolated by a murderous enemy and its defences were about to collapse.’
The pencil tip rapped on the table; the sharpened lead broke off. Phoebe Bermingham, Gold Commander, said, ‘I’m having difficulty getting my head round the situation that existed there – where exactly the place is, what they were fighting about. I’ve asked around. Too many shrugged shoulders and too many “That’s the Balkans, isn’t it?” I find this matter irksome and time-consuming. Do I need further contributions?’