What she would do was uncertain. That she would do something was not.
First thing, a hard knock on the door, repeated twice. She stood her ground and listened, heard a muffled voice: who was there? Megs Behan ‘was there’. What did Miss Behan want? To talk with him, to see him.
A clearer voice: what did she want to talk about?
‘About you, Mr Gillot, to see how you’re facing up to what’ll happen in the morning.’
She supposed the threat was implicit that she would stand four square in the hotel’s corridor, shout slogans, as she had outside the house on the Isle of Portland, and wake every guest not still in the bar. She had the slogans clear in her mind and the alcohol had loosened any inhibitions: she would bawl them – well, he was going to be killed in the morning and she had no compunction about making the last night of his life awful. She gathered her breath, readied herself, and the door opened. No warning, hadn’t heard a footstep. Just a sheet round him.
Almost a smile. A gesture: she should come in. Definitely a smile. She stared into it. The smile was on his lips, but also in his eyes, and it mesmerised her. There was half-light in the room from the moon. The sheet was loose and she couldn’t say how secure it was on his hips. Tried to sound casual: ‘Just wanted to know how you were. You know, because of what’s happening in the morning. They’ll kill you – no talk – just kill you. No fucking about. What I thought, Mr Gillot, was …’
She paused – gave him the opportunity to rail at her. Nothing.
‘What I thought was this. How many men, women and children, in Africa, the Middle East, Central America, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are going to die tomorrow having been killed by weapons that you supplied?’
Still the smile. No answer.
‘Come on, Mr Gillot, have a sporting guess. How many tomorrow? How many the same day that they kill you for cheating?’
‘A drink, Miss Behan?’
The sheet was lower at his waist, less secure, and he moved across to a cabinet, opened the door, revealed the built-in fridge and bent down.
She said, ‘I suppose the defence of people like you is, “If I don’t sell the guns someone else will.” That’s pathetic. Or are you going to say, “It’s not guns that kill but the people handling them”? It’s got mould on it. How about “I never do anything outside the law and I pay my taxes”?’
‘With ice or water, both or straight?’
‘Don’t you try and divert—’
‘Simple enough question.’
‘It’s a disgusting trade and anyone with half a degree of honesty and decency would acknowledge …’ She had barely realised it. The drink was in her hand. She thought that if he took another step the sheet would fall to the carpet, but he sat on the end of the bed. She hovered above him and launched in again: ‘But it’s not often that the biter’s bitten, and it’s you looking at the end of a barrel.’
She swigged, felt the whisky raw in her throat. She edged towards him as if that would help her dominate and destroy. ‘And maybe there’ll be a second, two seconds, when you’re in the same place as all the victims of those guns you sold, knowing what it is to be—’
She tripped. The Scotch flew up, the glass tipped in her hand and she was half on the bed. She saw what she’d stumbled on: a dark mass. He reached forward, picked it up and he held it where the silver moonlight came through the window. He said it was his vest. He pointed at the black blotches and said a handgun had fired twice at short range: without it he would at worst have been dead and at best a quadriplegic.
‘You lived. What of those who did not, killed by your guns? Any answers?’
The sheet was off him. He took the glass from her, crouched once more in front of the cabinet, tossed another miniature into the bin and gave it back to her. He sat on the bed and didn’t cover himself.
‘Have you seen what your profits achieve? Have you actually been to war yourself? Or do you just hide in luxury hotels and—’
‘Never. I’ve never heard a shot fired for real, except at me. Otherwise weapons are a commodity for me, Miss Behan.’
‘That is disgraceful, disgusting and …’ She hesitated, didn’t know what else would insult him.
‘I buy and sell, and most of those I sell to – ordinary people, not governments and army generals – are pretty grateful for what they get.’
‘Just despicable.’ That was the word. She was irked because he sat still and naked on the bed, in shadow, and didn’t respond. She drank, and wondered how it was to wear a vest and have two shots fired into your back.
‘I’ve never been in a battle. Sorry and all that.’ The smile broke through again, broad and almost affectionate. ‘You have, I’m sure, been in more battles, fights, conflicts, low-intensity stuff, insurgencies, border skirmishes than I’ve had hot dinners. You wouldn’t lecture me on the evils of arms dealing if you hadn’t known warfare at first hand.’
‘Utterly irrelevant.’
‘This isn’t some sort of interrogation, Miss Behan. You can decline to answer and keep your fingernails. I’ll try again.’
She flushed – might have been the sight of his body, or the Scotch. ‘You’re serving up bullshit, clever crap.’
‘You good on freedom, Miss Behan?’
‘What does that mean? More bull and crap?’
‘Freedom. You could say that I deal in
freedom,
Miss Behan.’ His head was down and his voice was soft.
‘That is ridiculous.’
‘Ever had a Guevara T-shirt?’
Doubtful, not knowing where it led, and brittle. ‘Once.’
‘And wore it until it fell apart, washing-machine fatigue. Great face, Che Guevara, great symbol. A “freedom fighter”, Miss Behan, heroically standing against Fascist dictatorships and military juntas, great guy. What did he fight with, Miss Behan? Might have been a toothbrush, might have been a
hammer from a hardware shop, might have been a Scout’s knife … or it might have been the weapons that he was sold, likely at cut price, via the Cuban government.’
‘You can’t say that.’ She didn’t know what he could or couldn’t say. The whisky burned in her. Beyond the window the river ran silver, and the stone cross was proud, clean and brightly lit. And the smile on his face was for her.
‘The mujahideen in Afghanistan were fighting Soviet occupation and tyranny, and I was arming them. I’ve had gear brought on the backs of mules through the Chechen mountains from Georgia because people wanted the “freedom” you take for granted. In your book, I suppose there are good guns and bad guns, justifiable bullets and murderous bullets. I don’t make such judgements. I don’t have a check list and tick off boxes because the newspapers, and your organisation, tell me that one side in each conflict is good and the other bad. The majority of the trading I do is in the interests and aims of HMG. Her Majesty’s Government uses taxpayers’ money to shift firepower around where it’s needed in the furtherance of policy. Didn’t you know that?’
She bridled. ‘You’re confusing me.’
‘Not difficult. I don’t think you’ve ever been to war. I think you’re just a keen paper-pusher, but I think also you’re too old to be messing with jargon, posters and placards. I think you know small things only, because from big things comes doubt.’
She finished the glass.
She stepped over the vest on the carpet and was close to him. He made no effort to cover himself. She thought she recognised fatigue, but the smile came through and lit his face. Of course, his responses were rubbish and insulting to her intelligence. Of course – without the Scotch – she could have stood her corner and argued him to the floor. What derailed her certainties was that he seemed so indifferent to her attacks and so relaxed in his answers. He didn’t fight her. And an image came into her mind. The man in her picture had dark hair, most likely dyed, and a warrior’s moustache. He wore a heavy black overcoat against the night cold, and was pushed forward by masked men until the
noose came into the phone’s lens, voices were raised and abused him. That New Year’s Eve she had been in a Hackney pub, tanking with friends before a party. The television had blared the insults thrown at the fallen president as he was pushed on to the scaffold. She had choked at the sight of it and had looked away from the execution of Saddam Hussein. She had thought the transmission obscene and – frankly – it had buggered up for her the supposed night of celebration. The deposed dictator had not cringed, had not shown fear. She felt, then, ashamed. The idea of an argument on the evils of the international arms trade with a man who would die in the morning seemed to her to degrade … She could have argued and won, but … He would be bloodied, broken, battered, dead before the sun was high.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘I expect I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Behan. It’s what I’m aiming towards.’
She didn’t understand, and didn’t know how to react. She could turn and head sharply for the door, slam it after her. She could sit on the bed beside him and talk the politics of universal disarmament. She could stand by the window and wait for the sunrise … Or she could have another drink, roll a cigarette and do the vigil.
She thought, then, that he slept.
She fetched red wine, vodka, gin and a tin of tonic, went back to the bed, took one side of it – careful not to wake him – and settled without touching him. She pondered which bottle she should open first as she made the cigarette and lit it.
They would kill him in the morning. Before they did so he wouldn’t beg or plead. She supposed it would be a release from the burden of being condemned. The drink slipped down well and he slept cleanly, his breath regular. She knew what time the phone would ring with the call, but thought dawn would be with her first.
It was still dark when the party broke up and the last stragglers headed for bed.
Back-slaps and minor hugging from William Anders for Benjie Arbuthnot.
Roscoe watched. He thought their embrace ostentatious and that they shouldn’t have behaved as if this was an alumnae reunion, but their talk had been heavy with nostalgia – where they had been, whom they had known, which warlord had slaughtered what community, and where the Soviets had fouled up. He thought the occasion had merited some solemnity. He had been told why the forensic pathologist was on site, but the matter of Arbuthnot’s appearance had not been dealt with. He couldn’t imagine what brought a retired spook to the backwater of Vukovar, but his time would come.
And Anders’s side-kick, Dan Steyn, had left an hour earlier in a pretty awful state – Roscoe had seen his headlights traverse the bar windows. He’d liked him, and thought the man gave a decent appraisal of the town and its atrocity, but it had been black-edged and without optimism.
The woman from Revenue and Customs had been late leaving them, but little Megs Behan had gone early. He rather envied her common sense in heading for bed before the others had hit the heavy drinking. Funny old world, but he reckoned Megs Behan was the pick of the bunch. She had a cause and made sacrifices for its integrity. He’d liked her; all that irked him was her blatant satisfaction at having booked a seat for the morning’s show. He had, almost, admired her one-woman stand at the house. Mark Roscoe would have claimed he could recognise a fraud at fifty paces and the honest people who had principles worth sticking with. He rated Megs Behan in that slot.
He didn’t know about Revenue and Customs. He had found her monosyllabic in her answers on the detail of the village, unhelpful. There was, obvious to him, some disaster in her recent past but he had neither time nor the inclination to probe and … He stood to shake Anders’s hand after the clinch had been broken, and wished the man well for whatever sleep was still available.
He refilled his glass with flat mineral water from a bottle. It
was three hours, minimum, since he had drunk wine, and he thought Benjie Arbuthnot had shown similar abstinence, and done it cleverly: others’ glasses filled and him passing the bottle round but not topping his own.
They were alone.
Roscoe wondered how long it would be before a woman came round with a vacuum-cleaner and how long before the waiter, asleep on his arms at the bar, would shudder and wake. Roscoe was good at missing sleep, could survive on cat-naps, but he admired the older man’s stamina.
‘Should I know, Mr Arbuthnot, why you’re in Vukovar? I mean, all the crap about the Vulture Club, and the grandstanding, doesn’t tell me why a has-been from Spooksville is here.’ He had hoped that provocative rudeness would rile. It didn’t.
‘Tying loose ends.’ A shrug, a grin, a gesture of the hands that was a pro-consul’s bogus helplessness.
‘I’ve heard that before from you – it’s garbage. What should I assume?’
‘Sergeant, assume what you wish.’
‘For reasons best known to himself, Harvey Gillot will walk the Cornfield Road this morning. Will you be alongside him?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Then … when he welshed on the deal and the men who waited for him lost their lives, were you with him?’
‘Beyond your remit, Sergeant.’
‘Is he your stalking horse? Should you be doing the walking?’
‘This isn’t an interview room, Sergeant.’
Roscoe, for want of something better, mocked, ‘Will you walk in front of him and do something heroic?’
‘No.’
‘Not the man of the hour? Does “tying loose ends” not mean intervention?’
‘Listen to me for a few moments, Sergeant. My wife knows a girl who used to work – a Zoological Society grant kept her alive – on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Her expertise was with cheetahs. Wonderful animals in their natural habitat – can do a
sprint of up to three hundred yards at seventy miles an hour. Magnificent. Plenty of them there but that doesn’t make their survival certain, they’re vulnerable. Lions come and eat their young. The girl my wife knows used to sit in her Land Rover and follow them. The adults would sprawl on the roof above her – tough if she had a call of nature – and the young ones had the names of chocolate bars, Dairy Milk or Fruit and Nut, which the girl used to dream of. But no matter how attached to them she felt, she lived by a rule that couldn’t be circumvented. She couldn’t intervene. She might have followed the life of a female cat through conception, gestation, birth of her cubs, then the upbringing of the little ones, them being taught to hunt, kill and survive, but the lion pride comes close and the young ones are doomed. She cannot charge the pride with her Land Rover or blast on the horn, she must sit and watch the massacre. It’s a rule in any jungle, any wilderness, that events must be permitted to take their course. Harvey Gillot looks after himself.’