‘You’re at the heart of this, Benjie – yes?’
‘Sadly, my dear, you are correct.’
‘Your suggestion to him that he should move the stuff on, dump those villagers?’
‘In line with policy, and putting more money in his pocket. But correct again.’
‘And it bothers you?’
‘A little. Let’s move on.’
They discussed, back to their more normal routine, the grandchildren, that night’s supper and which bottle they’d open to drink with it.
In the hotel dining room, William Anders and Daniel Steyn had a view from their table that took in the river, the snaking barges
going upstream, the illuminated white cross, the hotel’s lawns and patio, where a few still sat and gossiped, the car park and the glass doors at the rear of the building.
Anders chuckled. ‘A very serious lady, and no doubt behaving out of character.’
Steyn grinned, grimaced. ‘She’ll make a good feed for a toy-boy.’
They saw the woman, blouse and jeans, head down, shades worn in spite of the darkness. She came across the patio and between the tables, using a route that skirted the lights. A boy held her hand but was led.
‘Miss Penny Laing, I believe.’
‘Far from home, and further from the world’s realities.’
‘That, Daniel, is pretty judgemental.’
‘And expresses, Bill, my acute jealousy of the boy, who I seem to recognise as the son of the
capo
of that village – and a pusher of pills on a minor scale. He is, I wager, doing a good job of guiding.’
‘People get caught up here, strangers, and all about a feeling of guilt.’
‘Correct – weren’t here, didn’t know. The ignorance makes guilt – and opens the legs.’
They were both laughing, coarse, from the belly, and Daniel poured more wine – good, from the Ilok vineyards. His mobile rang, and he answered it, listened, impassive. He thanked the caller and shut his phone. ‘That village, the process you started, Bill. They did the contract and bought the hit. There was a target this morning in England. It failed.’
‘Not the end of the story. Who told you?’
‘Funny old place, this – hear all sorts. Don’t ask. Not the end of the story because money was paid. He’ll go again, has to. You know about the First Battalion of the Ninth Marines, Bill, who had the heaviest casualties of the entire corps during the Vietnam War – got themselves called the Walking Dead. That’s a good name for Harvey Gillot, and it’s a bit down to you. But don’t lose sleep.’
‘Are you suggesting I’d lie awake because some weapons peddler gets zapped and I helped the process along? If the hit screwed up then I’m sorry – and it’s that which might affect my sleep. I hope they go again.’
They drank, and the woman and her boy were gone.
The peal of the alarm clock was followed by a jabbing elbow that broke into Benjie Arbuthnot’s sleep. Deirdre said, ‘You’ve a call to make.’
Would he argue with her at thirty-one minutes past six in the morning? Would he request tea first? ‘Yes, dear, of course.’
‘And don’t prattle. Tell him straight.’
He crawled from the bed, slipped on an old dressing-gown – cotton, light, bought at a street market in Buenos Aires when he’d been building bridges in the mid-eighties – and shuffled out of the bedroom. Early sunlight streamed through the windows of the old gamekeeper’s lodge to which he was now, in retirement, banished: his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren lived in the big house and farmed the land. It was a long time since he had stood on the quayside of a harbour in Croatia as a freighter had edged closer to shore. Responsibility? He had always fought, tooth and claw, to avoid the suffocation of it. But he had had a bad night, and Deirdre would have recognised it, so he was pushed from his bed and sent to clear his – very slight – conscience.
He had the number in his study. Not quite a trophy room, but there were photographs on the walls of the young Benjie in a sports team at school, another of his class at the Royal Military Academy, and a couple of him in camouflage fatigues with his troop and their Ferret scout cars on the inner German border and in south Armagh, more of Deirdre and himself in the Argentinian capital, in Damascus and Peshawar, but little that gave an indication of life after the cavalry. Did he do ‘responsibility’? Barely. A small photograph hung discreetly, almost out of sight behind the curtains. The Swiss had made an excellent
20mm rapid-fire anti-aircraft weapon – the Oerlikon – and it had been thought useful in the early 1970s to get a few down to the Sultanate of Oman without the stigma of overt UK association. A tried and trusted conduit had been used. He stood beside Solly Lieberman. The former cavalry officer and the former invasion-landing-barge crewman, the muscled and well-proportioned Briton with the near-emaciated American. The photograph had been taken by Deirdre at the factory gate in Zürich and—
‘Stop faffing about and get on with it,’ she shouted, from above.
Responsibility? The word was a stranger to him. Benjie Arbuthnot had employed many assets, and some would have died after interrogation and torture, by hanging or firing squad. Most would now have drifted into old age and eked out their remaining years. Some would have been handed on to new station officers and remained active. Now he would be hard put to name the majority, but Solly Lieberman had a place of honour in his memory. He had been at the funeral, interdenominational and sparing with religion, had stood at the back and slipped out before Harvey Gillot, the lady who ran the office, a bank manager, a solicitor, an accountant and a landlord had made their way down the chapel’s aisle. What had he admired most? The sheer brass and anarchy of little Solly and the … Harvey Gillot had had Solly Lieberman’s accolade. Old habits died hard. He unlocked a drawer at his desk. Opened, it showed a shoebox full of mobile phones – pay-as-you-go and disposable. Flat battery, of course. He plugged one into the mains, then dialled. When it had been used, it would be thrown into the depths of the lake in front of the big house and allowed to settle into thick silt.
‘Me here. No names, friend.’
‘What sort of bloody time is this?’
‘It’s a fine morning, and late enough.’
‘I thought you’d call me last night.’
‘Been fretting?’
‘Yes, and I’m entitled to.’
‘How are you on taking advice?’
‘I have good days and bad. Three police outside the gates are
offering me advice wrapped with ribbons that I’m declining. To them, I’m obstinate, stubborn, an imbecile, and they’re probably right. From you, I’m open to advice.’
He was already dressed, yesterday’s clothes, and had washed but not shaved. The house, empty but for the dog, had seemed a cold, desolate place during the night … Did he want her back? It was empty and sad. He held the phone to his ear, stood in the living room and watched the horse.
‘I take it as read that you won’t be crawling into a hole, hiding there.’
‘No.’
‘And can’t wait around at home, do the funeral arrangements and check the will.’
‘The police say they’ll withdraw protection this evening.’
‘And what do you say?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Ready for advice?’
The horse grazed the lawn, not that the gardener’s mower had left much for it to feed on. The geranium beds were wrecked, and it had tugged at the low branches of some shrubs. There were a couple of mini-mountains of its business on the patio, and the neatness outside was history.
‘Not going to gild it.’
‘I doubt you ever did.’ Harvey Gillot thought his irony was wasted.
‘You have to face up.’
‘How?’
‘You have to confront it.’
‘Where do I “face up” and “confront it”?’
‘There – has to be.’
‘What do I do “there”?’
‘Sorry, I don’t know. But if you don’t go there, you’ll be a fugitive for the rest of your days. I’m not big on religion, and doubt you are, but bits stick from childhood. St John the Baptist said, “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.” The big
word
repentance,
a gesture … from Matthew three, verse eight. Are you with me?’
‘I seem to remember, from schooldays, that John the Baptist – at the behest of a dancing girl – had his head chopped off and served up on a salad plate … and I don’t do penance.’
‘I’m saying you have to go there and sort out your goddamn problem, because the alternative is the hole in the ground and looking over your shoulder. Face it and confront it.’
‘Is that for real?’
‘For real. You don’t have a rucksack of options.’
‘Where would you be?’
‘Not too far behind you, for my sins, there and thereabouts. How was it last night?’
‘Pretty bloody.’
It would have been the horse, but the outside security lights had been on for most of the time. The beast had moved through the shrubs, wheezing, and there had been its hoofs on the patio, and the dog had been restless. He’d hardly slept. Big in his head, awake or dozing, were the balaclava and the dark shape of the gun, the aim as it tried to lock.
‘And it will be as bad, as bloody, or worse. You have to face it.’
‘And confront it. I’ll just …’ Harvey paused. His mind was deadened and he couldn’t summon the clarity to think and decide. He still held the phone to his ear but his attention was on the sea, the expanse of it. Typical, he thought, from what he remembered of Arbuthnot, that there was no interruption, no nagging for him to speak. He didn’t know what would be there or who. He did know that life as a fugitive was not acceptable. There was a man he’d met at British Aerospace whose wife had had terminal cancer. She’d been offered the big treatments, had reflected and declined. She had died sooner but with her own hair and without the pain of the chemo sessions. Face it and confront it.
‘I don’t know how it will be,’ Harvey Gillot said, into the phone.
‘Time enough to find out.’
He said he would try to start out that night, and was now stumbling over the words. The enormity of it hit him, and Benjie Arbuthnot was muttering on a bad line about Blowback, and Gillot had as little idea of what that meant as he did about ‘penance’, but he saw a head, taken off at the neck, on a salver with lettuce, cucumber and tomato. The gate bell rang. He ended the call.
‘How did it play?’ Deirdre asked.
‘Will do what he was told –
advised
to do.’
She gazed quizzically at her husband – she had been thought by those who knew her as a Service wife to be devoid of sentiment. ‘Are you killing him?’
‘I might be – I don’t know. I hope I’m giving him life.’
The arrival of the delivery van and the opening of the gates would have woken the woman outside, shaken her, and she stood with the bullhorn raised.
The package was handed to Gillot. He checked the identity, was satisfied, and wrote his name with the stylus offered him. He saw that Roscoe was close behind. The detective had the flushed look that came from tiredness and his trousers were creased, but he had shaved. The deliveryman walked away, and Gillot thought he must have been puzzled to be greeted by an armed police check and a lone demonstrator. He thought that they would have kept a battery razor in the car, and the girl detective would have a spare pair of knickers at the bottom of the bag under the Glock.
He was asked if he could identify the package’s contents, and told Roscoe he had ordered a bulletproof vest. He didn’t mention the sprays. He expected it and was rewarded. A dry smile from Roscoe – arid as the desert in Saudi. The woman was shrieking, same hymn book, same slogans. Through the gate and up the lane, Gillot saw Denton, the neighbour. The man stood in a dressing-gown and made a theatrical pose of holding his hands over his ears. Gillot thought that others would be behind their kitchen doors or their front window curtains, listening to the din
she made and taking in her message. He left the package by the front door, walked towards the gates and saw the other two detectives clamber fast from the car. He went past them, past the woman, trying to ignore the noise, and up to Denton. ‘I just wanted to thank you—’
A snort. ‘I’m hardly about to express gratitude to you – that noise, half last night and now again. It’s intolerable, it’s—’
‘I wanted to thank you because I think you saved my life.’
‘Did I?’
He had never been into Denton’s house. Denton had never been invited into Gillot’s. He smiled sweetly, the salesman’s smile. ‘You dumped your rotten apples beside the track and couldn’t be bothered to compost them yourself. I’m so pleased you were too lazy to dispose of them properly. If you ever used the track, which you don’t, you’d know wasps have nested alongside a good food source. A man stood there yesterday morning with the intention of shooting me dead. Sadly for him, happily for me, he disturbed the nest and as he aimed and fired, a couple of those horrible things were crawling round the slits of his mask. Indirectly, Denton, you saved my life. Well done, and thank you.’
He kept the smile locked on his face, the sincere one he saved for signing contracts and flattering ministry people. Was he taking the piss? Was there a word of truth in what he’d said?
‘That woman kept Georgina and me up half the night, calls you an “arms dealer”. Is that true?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘True, then. We never knew. We didn’t know that a man in that trade lived beside us. In our church we’ve collected for the victims of conflict in central Africa and others caught up in wars that are virtually sponsored for the financial gain of individual arms dealers. Have you no shame?’
‘Very little.’
‘I see that Mrs Gillot has understandably had enough of married life under the same roof as you and gone. What you’ve done with her clothing is a disgrace.’
He didn’t do the old routine about ‘if I don’t then someone
else will’ or ‘everything I sell is quite legally handled’ or ‘I pay my taxes just like you do’ or ‘I bring the chance of freedom to many oppressed people who have the right to lift off the yoke of dictatorship and can only do it by putting their lives on the line and fighting’. He turned his back.
The bullhorn barked behind him. He was stained with ‘children’s blood’, a ‘trader in misery’, a ‘killer of babies’ and a ‘dealer in murder’. He wondered if she, too, had clean knickers to slip on, and if she did not, would the detective have an extra pair to loan her?