The translation went on. Andrija was skilled as a sniper. He would have fired his Dragunov rifle to drive the enemy into bunkers and into armoured vehicles. Tomislav would have used the Malyutka missiles the village had bought. A Malyutka would destroy a personnel carrier, which might have fifteen Cetniks inside it. If the missiles had come, they would have held the village: it was said with certainty. She felt now that she was merely an intruder – and couldn’t read the boy well enough to know whether or not he still respected her.
No missiles, ammunition exhausted, and in the final hours Andrija had left his wife with the wounded in the crypt under
the church, and gone into the corn. He had been twenty-three and his wife two years older. It was estimated he had killed twenty Cetniks during the siege, and had he been caught in the corn he would have died a slow death. On the second day, walking, crawling, alone, he had detonated an anti-personnel mine that had shattered his leg, virtually severing it. He had used a shirt sleeve to tie a tourniquet, then dragged himself on his stomach the last two kilometres, the limb pulled along after him by a thin weave of muscle, ligament and skin. His wife, Maria, had been taken from the church by the Cetniks and raped repeatedly. Before, she had had fine long black hair but by the second month in the refugee camp after repatriation it had turned grey and she had had it cut short. Simun said they had not had sex since they had been reunited. She would not have permitted it and he would not have wanted it.
Penny felt washed out and exhausted by what was said. Almost timidly, she asked a question. What did Harvey Gillot mean to Andrija?
He said, through Simun, that he had not had the will to live since he had recovered in the hospital ward because he was crippled. Life had so little meaning for him that he had refused to go for fitting and training in the use of prosthetic limbs. Now he wished to survive long enough to hear it announced by Mladen – on the café veranda – that Harvey Gillot had been killed. His wife was suddenly animated, nodded vigorously, and Penny saw savage beauty – as if a shadow had lifted.
‘Would you thank them, please, and tell them of my gratitude? What will happen to Harvey Gillot should he come here?’
She could see it in their eyes. No answer was necessary. The same death that had awaited Andrija if he’d been captured in the corn, slow and hard.
He was met at the terminal. He had not known it but he reckoned then that he had been tailed off the train from the coast and shadowed across London. An officer, plainclothes, introduced himself as Mark Roscoe’s senior. He decided the sergeant had
snitched on him because there was dislike at the man’s mouth and in the eyes. The others were uniform and carried machine pistols. He was escorted through the checks and past Immigration, people staring at him because of the company he kept. Nobody spoke. Other than the first exchange at the introduction, the inspector did not have a word for him. He sat down in the coffee section, didn’t have long to wait because of his late arrival, and Roscoe’s chief stood, arms folded, a few paces away while the guns patrolled. He had coffee and a cake, then bought a newspaper. When the departure was called he hitched up his rucksack, walked to the travelator, the platform, and the allocated carriage. Harvey Gillot didn’t look back, and he thought they’d stay until the train had pulled away.
It was, Harvey Gillot accepted, an eccentric route to take. He had come to Paris, had walked from Gare du Nord to Gare de l’Est.
He had eaten at a fast-food joint, something tasteless but filling, and had drunk mineral water, ignoring the wines. He had sat on a bench among a small army of young American backpackers. There had been police on the station concourse but also patrols of armed troops, who carried low-slung automatic weapons. He had taken, in effect, a fugitive’s route. The onward ticket had been waiting for him at a booth, he had paid cash for it, and it was as though a link had been broken in a chain. He was used to it, practised it with frequency, skill, and would have wagered good money that the bastard with the balaclava and the wasps couldn’t have had his eyes on a trail or his nose on a scent. He thought himself free but maintained basic security procedures, which were second nature. He had not done the courses, but knew enough people who had, and had done middle-man negotiation for former army officers to lecture heads of state on personal protection. He had stayed outside the conversations of the Americans around him and would barely have been noticed as he sat among their massive bags … but the troops with their assault rifles stirred the memory of the attack and of the contract.
Panic had swept through the backpackers. Harvey Gillot didn’t know where it had come from but word said that the couchettes were double booked and that late arrivals might have to sit up through the night. Big bloody deal – bigger for the Americans than for the refugee who travelled on a ‘penance’ and didn’t know what it was. When the train was called, there had been a
stampede and he had been carried with it. And the panic? A false alarm. He had his own cubicle, and in the morning a cold breakfast would be brought to him, with coffee. He didn’t take off his jacket or shrug out of his shirt until the night sleeper for Munich had cleared the station.
He hoped he would sleep, wasn’t sure that he would.
Always useful, Harvey Gillot reckoned, to have a topic of conversation, analysis, if sleep came hard. He had chosen the potential in armoured cars. He lay on his back, the curtains drawn, and rocked with the motion. He pondered on sales-pitch talk: ballistic integrity, durability, quality control, and on the Mercedes Benz range of saloons and SUVs, price tags of a quarter of a million euros for starters, their suitability for the streets of Baghdad, Moscow or Shanghai. What a package, what value, and there was the Jaguar range … He didn’t see fields of ripened corn and sunflowers or the great river against which a town had been trapped, squeezed and devastated when a village on the only path into it had been defeated.
He walked into Departures. He didn’t turn and wave to Vern, and hadn’t reached into the front passenger seat of the car to kiss Leanne. They had taken him to the airport, pulled up at the drop-off bay and he had been out of the car, had slammed the door and walked.
Nervous. Apprehensive. The great turmoil of the concourse buffeted against him. He headed inside and gazed at the flickering boards. He hadn’t been back to move her. She would still be on the bed – colder and paler. He hadn’t settled on an alibi. It was in the bloodstream of the Cairns family that care should be taken to destroy technical evidence and to line up a witness who would put them at another location – pub, club, restaurant – at the time that mattered. He had done nothing after the clean-up because he had been summoned to his grandfather’s flat. He could have turned round, walked out and headed for … There was nowhere else. Couldn’t go to the flat because the bed was taken, and the hands of the woman who lay on it were frozen, she was silent
and her skin was white, except for the bruising. He had nowhere to go, no other life to lead.
One thing was clear: he would be on that flight. Time and money had been invested in him, two contact numbers were in his pocket, and he shouldn’t ‘fuckin’ think of coming back till it’s done’. Enough for him to be nervous and apprehensive.
And more.
Robbie Cairns, feared hitman and taker of big-money contracts, had travelled outside his country only once before. Three years ago he had been on a week’s trip to Marbella with his mother and sister because there was talk of investing in a villa a little along the coast at Puerto Banus. He had hated it – had been burned by the sun, then had peeled like a bloody snake. He had not been abroad since because he’d had no call to and because money in the Cairns household was tight. The big heist that would pay for luxury vacations was always the next one.
Like a little boy lost, he scanned the board and cursed his sister for not coming in to show him where he should go. Then he saw it. Probably his eyes had gone over that part of the board a half-dozen times – Munich on the board, a Lufthansa flight and its number. It would be the last flight of the day, and there was a surge of businessmen and -women who had shoulder bags that held computers. Robbie Cairns had only a football kitbag, small and scratched, given him by his father fifteen years back. He didn’t play football – might have taken out a guy who’d tripped him. The bag was black, with red piping, and had the club’s crest of a fist gripping an upright sword. He thought his father had probably been given it, free, in a pub. It would have been easy enough to get to see Charlton – down Evelyn Street from Rotherhithe to the top end of Greenwich Park, over the Blackwall Tunnel road, then another mile, wouldn’t have taken more than a half-hour – but it would have bored him, and he had no friend to go with. In his bag were spare socks, a razor and a soap dish, two sets of underwear, a shirt and a pair of faded jeans.
He showed his passport. The guy flicked through the empty
pages, then wiped it over a light set into his desk. That made more of the nerves and more of the apprehension. He was given back the passport, no smile or thanks, and the eyeline had already moved behind him. He knew that his Barbie hadn’t been found.
There were other kids at school who had shown signs of brutality; they had been slapped down in front of the council’s psychiatrists. Robbie Cairns was not among them. There was a kid, an eleven-year-old, who had crucified a cat, nailed it to a fence. There was a girl, aged seven, who used to stay beside a bush, a pretty one that attracted butterflies; she had caught them and pulled their wings off. Nothing abnormal about Robbie Cairns. He had never felt the need to hurt, just went about his work, took the money and slipped what he had seen and done to the back of his mind.
Couldn’t now.
She was cold and silent, but she gnawed and nagged in his head, like a rat would … but she hadn’t been found.
A group of women sat in a corner of a lounge bar near Theatreland. They had seen
Les Misérables –
not for the first time – and were having a drink before going off in their different directions. What they had in common was that they worked in Fragrances at a department store. Also shared was their irritation that one of their regulars was not present, had kept them hanging about in the theatre foyer almost until the curtain rose, had wasted a seat that someone would have filled, had behaved so out of character.
‘She’d better have good explanation.’
‘If she was sick or something, there’s telephones.’
‘And there was staff training this morning … it’s not like Barbara.’
‘She lives in one of those new places by Canada Water, I saw it on some pension stuff we both had. I’m coming from Catford so I’ll catch the earlier bus and check on her. As you say, it’s not like Barbara.’
They had time for one more round and talked of the wonders
of the show, which they knew almost line by line – and next morning, Melody, who specialised in
eau de toilette,
would break her bus journey in Canada Water.
‘I want to go, simple as that.’
‘If you didn’t know it, Megs, I’m talking to a select committee in the morning. If you also didn’t know it, Members of Parliament have not only influence but also dosh to dole out. I’m here tonight as a reflection of the importance of the morning’s session.’
The windows were open and the breeze was up, shivering over the papers spread in front of him. The window had to be open so that his cigarette smoke drifted outside and the smell was erased before dawn.
‘Sorry and all that, but I need to go.’
‘I’m only here, at this godforsaken hour, because of tomorrow. I’m not here to hand out travel vouchers and petty cash. First “want”, now “need” – you push your luck, Megs.’
‘I ask for very little.’
What hurt most, she liked him, might have fancied him, but he had a girlfriend – a teacher in a comprehensive – and was touchingly loyal to her. They were the oldest two in Information and Support, earned a pittance, though more than any of the younger others. But he was Megs’s senior and demanded that she remember it.
‘You are, undeniably, an important and valued member of our team.’
‘I can do a cheap flight, maybe via Astana or—’
‘Where’s that?’
‘It’s the capital of Kazakhstan – or I’ll go via Anchorage, whichever is cheaper to reach Croatia.’
She had been joking, but there was too much paper on his desk and his humour was stifled. ‘Is there nothing else, Megs, that would more valuably employ you? I mean, sleeping in police cars and driving a rural community half insane with a loudspeaker isn’t winning hearts and minds. Please, leave me alone. It’ll seem better in the morning.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Believe me, Megs, that should have been “it” five minutes ago. Look, a field trip such as you propose would have to go before the finance people, maybe a board member, for sanction. I have neither the time nor the inclination. Go away.’
‘Sod you.’ Was that offensive? Would a bloody great argument help her cause?
He was smiling at her, had the look of a man who longed to get his teeth into forbidden fruit, but wouldn’t grope. ‘I’m sure you’ve been told often enough that you’re prettiest when you’re angry and it’s true. We love you—’
‘It’s “no”?’
‘Bullseye. No money for an airfare and no subsistence. You’ve failed to explain to me what Harvey Gillot is going to do in some village west of Vukovar, how his visit, and your presence there, will enrich our work. Christ, he didn’t sell. We vilify arms brokers for
selling.
Are we saying, Megs, and getting ourselves into an acrobat’s contortions, that we condemn Harvey Gillot because he did
not
flog weapons to a Croat community when to have done so was in defiance of an enforceable Security Council embargo? Megs, it’s late, I’m tired, I have a bloody mountain to climb before I’m due at the Palace of Fun, Truth and Hope. Go home.’
‘And if I said I was resigning?’ It would have sounded like a big card played, but she was grinning.
Maybe he didn’t notice the grin, or was too tired to care. ‘These are difficult times and we’re crunched to the bone, looking at every possible economy measure. You don’t give us easy options.’