The Dealer and the Dead (49 page)

‘Hard place, Fo
a, Mr Arbuthnot. Still is.’

‘Just a little memory of good times. The joker, for going out of the window, did the medial ligaments of his right knee, was given twenty-two years at The Hague, a war criminal. The corporal had concussion for a week. Anyway, time to press on.’

It was almost done by sleight of hand, not up to a magician’s or conjuror’s standards but expert enough as a brush contact in Sokolniki Park to have been missed at thirty paces by an FSB tail. The package came from the other man’s pocket, was never fully visible and dipped, like a relay baton, into Benjie’s hand, then was sunk into his leather bag. The man who gave him the package was the station officer from Zagreb, an uncle by marriage to Alastair Watson, and old links lingered. The ‘joker’ with the bust knee had been a major in the Yugoslav National Army, a regular, and indicted for the killing of Muslim villagers during the ethnic cleansings around Srebrenica and Goražde. He had been tracked down to the hateful small town of Fo
a where he would have believed himself safe until the Reaper called, but had been wrong. He wouldn’t have known that an intelligence officer with an impressive pedigree was in Bosnia-Herzegovina, looking to round off a career with trumpets and triumphs. Benjie didn’t know whether Megs Behan understood a word of it.

‘I don’t think there’s much else I can do for you, Mr Arbuthnot.’

‘Already it’s more than I’d dreamed possible. And you say Bill Anders is in town? Excellent. We can drink wine, eat dinner, and I’ll hear about dissections and autopsies on rotten meat.’ Perhaps
he had played the buffoon, his supreme art, long enough. His voice dropped. ‘It’s because he was an asset, a useful one.’

Quietly said, ‘Not a problem.’

The voice boomed again: ‘I’ll tell Alastair I met you, couldn’t get sense, that you were drunk as a marquis – I’ll tell him.’

Soft spoken: ‘What you asked for and what I’ve given you were authorised at VBX. I have to hope there won’t be disappointment. Go carefully.’

Chuckled laughter, handshakes, and they were gone. Benjie Arbuthnot had been a big enough figure in the Service to warrant a little attention when he requested it. That a station officer had driven to Osijek, a little more than a hundred and thirty miles each way, and had delivered a package was proof of the esteem in which he was held – and his ability to play the bombastic idiot was undiminished. With the idiot there could be an old-world charm, consideration for others. A matchbox was attached to the package with Sellotape and he removed it, pocketed it separately.

He advanced on the detective. ‘I gather from Miss Behan that you’re headed for Vukovar. I’ve a hire car booked. Can I offer you a lift? The name’s Benjie. It’ll take about half an hour.’ He liked to organise. When he organised, he controlled.

Megs Behan didn’t consider herself a fool, thought herself sharp enough to realise that Benjie Arbuthnot had a razor mind, and decided he probably gathered up people like her and the detective. It would have been a habit. She fancied also that she could recognise a lie or an evasion.

He drove well, but near the centre of the road. He seemed to have confidence in overtaking lorries, tankers, and took no hassle from blind bends. She didn’t share it and twice, from the back, she’d let out a sharp gasp.

Roscoe had asked, ‘Where did you learn speed driving, Mr Arbuthnot? Fairly limited opportunities, I’d have thought. Police, military, anti-hijack course?’

A lie. ‘Nowhere, actually. Just sort of comes naturally. Foot down on an open road.’

And then Roscoe had asked, ‘So what brings you to Vukovar, Mr Arbuthnot?’

An evasion, a sweet smile: ‘Oh, just some loose ends in an old man’s life that need tying before the curtain call.’

They passed mile upon mile of fields where the corn stood tall and the sunflowers had ripened. She thought that lies and evasions killed the art of conversation, and wondered where in Harvey Gillot’s life this man had walked and whether he had been central to it. How near was it to this road that a village had come together to pass a death sentence?

He was unlike any of the other men of the village that Penny Laing had met. He waved Simun away, as if the boy was a dog to be put back into a kennel. He had said his name was Josip. He had a pudgy face, but it showed humanity. He was shaven but wore a frayed cotton shirt with a disintegrating collar and appeared to be uncared for. He gestured that she should follow him. She looked back but the boy had already turned. Simun lit a cigarette and his face gave no indication of annoyance that she had been taken from him. She gritted her teeth and scurried after Josip.

He didn’t have the same worn, scarred tiredness in his eyes, or the lines acid-etched around the mouth or scrawniness at his throat. She had seen the scars on Simun’s father’s body, and had stared at the folded trouser leg at Andrija’s knee. Then there was Tomislav’s shrine, and she had been in the kitchen where Petar and his wife lived but couldn’t speak to each other. There was a light in this one’s face.

‘I am not one of the heroes, Miss Laing. I am not of the Three Hundred and was not at the pass at Thermopylae. I ran away.’ It was good English, fluent, idiomatic, and a little sad mischief played in the eyes.

‘About as late as possible, I loaded a car and went with my wife and our children. I left my dog behind. I am ashamed of that, leaving my dog. Not everyone, I promise you, Miss Laing, was a hero.’

He led, she followed. They went up a path that was overgrown, the weeds and grass brushing against her knees. Branches bounced off him and against her; she used her arms to protect her face.

‘We have made an industry of playing victim. The defence itself was truly heroic and I cannot comprehend how men and women survived so many days in such hell. I could not have. In Zagreb, where I had fled with my wife and children, there were occasional snatches of film – black-and-white, soft focus – of the battle around Vukovar, long-lens pictures from far across the fields. We saw only smoke rising in the distance and climbing through the rain. How men and women stayed alive, and sane, I do not know … except that I was in the gaol in Zagreb afterwards – you should know it was for fraud, not violence, nothing sexual. I am respectable – and it was not easy … but it was nothing compared to the existence here and what happened afterwards, the men in the corn, the women taken anywhere that a Serb could drop his pants and not get his arse wet in the rain. It was awful, and myths were born.’

She could see a building ahead, walls that had once been white, and realised then that among the grass and nettles, the thistles and cow parsley were felled gravestones, but they had been toppled as if vengeance had been wreaked on them. The building had a roof of nailed-down corrugated sheets, and graffiti on the lower walls. The door at the back of the porch hung crazily.

‘Only the Croats were victims? How far back should I take you, Miss Laing? They do not speak often here of the “excesses” of the Croat regime, the Ustaše, in the Second World War, the massacres at the concentration camp of Jasenovac, the burning of villagers inside their churches and the throwing of Orthodox priests over cliffs … and they do not speak often of the early stirrings of the Croatian state in that spring and summer of the Homeland War, the creation of two tiers, the second and lower for Serbs. It does not justify what happened here, in Vukovar or at Ovcara – but no one is only a victim. You should know that, Miss Laing.’

They went inside what had been a church. Enough light came
from broken windows and gaps in the roofing. She listened but her eyes wandered. Should she feel superior? She doubted it: churches and chapels had been firebombed across Northern Ireland when the poison there, as here, had burst out. It was only a matter of degree. The painting on the wall to her left was faded but she recognised a white horse rearing, a man astride with a plunging sword, a dragon snarling. Penny Laing had not expected to be in this shadowland and find a symbol of her England: St George was busy dragon-slaying.

‘The Croat police came into Serb houses and looked for the young men. If they did not find them they shot dead their fathers, grandfathers and uncles. It happened, but is not in the stories of the victims. Here, nobody comes. A few of us have in the past brought building materials and paint and made this interior respectable so that we are not ashamed. We come only at night. The icons were looted, the murals are past repair and the roof does not keep out the winter. No Serb lives here and has need of a church. No one wishes for a reconciliation and no lessons from conflict are learned.’

Who was she to stand in judgement? A village broken, shells and mortars falling, snipers at work, the dead not properly buried and the wounded without morphine in a cellar, yet the church of the enemy was clean and polished and, of course, it had been broken into, trashed. She would have done it herself. She had few certainties to lean on. They went out into the light. He looked at her, seemed to decide whether or not she was worth sharing with – and shrugged.

‘The ultimate claim for the cult of the victim is that the delivery of the Malyutkas would have saved the village, perhaps the town as well. It is a myth. I did research when I came back here. The Malyutka has a minimum range of half a kilometre, too far. It is not effective below five hundred metres. It is very slow and the controller must guide its flight with a joy-stick – his signal travelling on an unravelling wire. If he is fired on and flinches, he loses control. The manual says that a controller of a Malyutka must, to be proficient, have achieved more than two thousand simulated
firings, then fifty more every week to maintain his skill. We had one man who knew a little of the weapon, and no one else who had ever handled one. It was for nothing. There could have been a hundred Malyutka missiles and the defence here would still have failed. There was exhaustion, hunger, and too many wounded with no drugs. The myths grew flesh and the legends added skin. I tell you truths, but no one in the village would hear them.’

He stopped, took her hand and held it. He bit his lip and breathed hard.

‘I should tell you also, Miss Laing, that it was I who set in motion the process for the killing of the arms dealer. I made the contacts and paid over the money given me. In this small matter I take responsibility.’

The birds sang close to them and a shadow flicked over his face. She looked up in time to see the wide wingspan of a stork. There was coolness in the shade of the trees, and wild flowers grew among the weeds. She needed certainties but she had few left to support her.

‘And you should, Miss Laing, take responsibility.’

He let her hand fall. It hung against her thigh. She wanted to run and could not.

‘Each word of your pillow talk, your privileged information from London that you gave to the boy – when you loved him and thought he loved you – went to Harvey Gillot’s killer, into that chain of communication from the village to him. He knew today to be at Munich station – almost, Miss Laing, you told him yourself – and he fired twice. The dealer was blessed, and still does not join the angels. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. He will come here, and the killer too, because you were told of Gillot’s journey and whispered it in the sweat of loving to the boy. We are told everything. We are told you are a good fuck, Miss Laing, but that you are noisy. You, too, have responsibility.’

‘What will I do?’ A small voice, a husk, and no certainties left. She swayed.

‘Is there anywhere with no myths and no legends? Have you heard of such a place?’ He laughed, in sadness.

She walked away from him, quickened her stride. At the end of the path she found the boy, smoking. She passed him, ignoring him. She went to where her car was parked. She had been ignorant and was devastated. She did not know herself.

Ignorance. Granddad Cairns sat on a hard chair in a dreary interview room at the back of Rotherhithe police station. A window, barred, faced on to a car park and a high wall. He had been enough times in that station, in that room, on that chair but had never felt stripped naked – what ignorance did. A policeman said, ‘He’s looking at a charge of murder – not the attempted murder of Harvey Gillot on the Isle of Portland but the actual murder of an innocent young woman who is – was – not a part of the criminality your family feeds on. Her only guilt, as we understand it, was to associate – God knows why – with a very cruel psychopath, your grandson. We can do you with obstruction, probably aiding and abetting, maybe with perverting, and if we’re on a bonus we might get into the area of conspiracy. You’d die inside, Mr Cairns. The alternative – let’s use language you understand, Mr Cairns – is to grass on Robbie: what he’s done in the past, what else we can nail to him, everything, full and frank. When you think about it, remember that from your dick has come a quite horrible creature.’