To confirm, Harvey, that the shipment is on course and everything in the world is good. Warmest greetings from Burgas.
The road had opened out and they were clear of the buildings. A concrete bridge crossed a river and they were close to the quays where lines of barges were moored. There was quiet and peace. Steyn said, ‘The bridge was a key point in the defence of Vukovar. It’s open ground, except for the docks and the grain silos, until you reach the shoe factory, then Borovo. It was a weak point to defend and was exploited. The enemy came across the river and cut the defences into two. Then resistance was impossible. The men who were here had the best chance in the break-out, those in the centre the least. Why am I telling you
this? Mr Gillot, there was phenomenal bravery here but those imposters – treason and betrayal – gnaw at the pride of the survivors. They wallow in hatred. You are a target for the hatred.’
This is Aleksandre, in the ministry – from Tbilisi – and I confirm that cargo is delivered to us tomorrow and we are satisfied with all arrangements you have made. A pleasure to do business with you, as always. All good wishes.
Steyn changed gear. The lights were red in front of him, a bus alongside, a petrol tanker behind, and the first kids were out on the streets with footballs. Women were hoisting washing lines and old men sat by their front doors, smoking. Many of these homes were pocked with bullet marks and the pavement was dented. Steyn said, ‘We’re nearly there, Mr Gillot, nearly at the start of the Cornfield Road. That is what you want?’
Charles here, sunshine. What we talked about over lunch and on the phone, Harvey, yes, can do that, and at a better price than I quoted you. It’ll have come back from the Province but should still be serviceable. I suppose you’re on holiday – fine for the leisured classes while the rest of us are labouring for the public good and to keep the old country afloat. Call me when you’re back.
Steyn said, ‘Not for me to intrude, Mr Gillot, but my advice is well-meant. These folk won’t be impressed by a grand gesture. There was real suffering here and on a level that people from the so-called civilised corners would find hard to appreciate. Worth considering – they have the same nerve ends, same ability to suffer as you or me. I don’t gild it. You want to go further. We’re nearly there, near the beginning.’
Monty here, my friend. The BPV arrived? I just wanted to bounce at you that I can do a hundred and there would be a 40 per cent discount on what you’re paying for one. I can assure you, Harvey, that the makers give very solid guarantees on their product. Let me know if you want a century, but don’t hang about. Bestest.
There was another bridge and Steyn eased on to the side of the road a little short of the span. Behind, there were ribbon-development bungalows and detached houses, with flowers in the gardens. Steyn said, ‘This is pretty much where the Cornfield
Road started. Don’t harbour an impression of busy traffic going up and down it every night – it didn’t. Very little ammunition could be brought in because of the artillery and mortar fire. A bit along the track, the trees were close to it and Serb snipers in them. Wounded couldn’t be evacuated along it. Of course, a few weren’t cut out for hero status – they’d money put aside and paid heavily for guides to bring them through, but that’s not much talked of. Mr Gillot, this was a place of extraordinary courage, which is why the survivors have little tolerance for betrayal and treason.’
Calling from Marbella, my precious old mucker. We’re making progress and I don’t doubt it’ll all turn up rosy. Where are you? Rang home and had the phone slammed down on me. Trouble with the secretarial staff? Get a grip – sun’s shining here and I’m about to pop the day’s first cork. Wherever you are, enjoy it.
Steyn climbed out of his car – damn near clapped-out, but the supporting charity could run to nothing better. There would be no tears shed when it failed and he finally took the train out. Not his tears and not theirs.
Damn you – we’re missing you. The dog is, Fee is and I am … and we’re frightened for you. Too much said and done, probably, for it to be easy to put a plaster on it. Don’t get the top of your head shot off – don’t. We bloody miss you, whatever damn fool idea’s in your head and wherever you are. Make it through, and we’ll try something. The dog can’t and Fee can’t and I can’t live without the wretched old rogue who is owner and father and husband. Don’t touch anyone there because you’ll destroy them if you do. Look after yourself. Do, please … I’m not interested in this house or the knick-knacks, but I want you, and Fee does, and the damn dog does. Don’t break anyone else like you’re breaking us. God, why did I marry you? Would have been for your bloody smile. Love you …
The phone was switched off. Steyn saw a man who had learned where his life stood, had listened to others, and was now prepared to walk on and away. Steyn thought he knew where it would end, and how, and that a wife’s mayday call would help him not at
all. What to do? Nothing to do … There was a vineyard beside where the car was parked and a man, stripped to the waist, drove a tractor along the lines of almost ripe grapes. Peaceful – a damn fraud. Gillot came out of his seat, arced his back, and a most captivating smile split his face. To himself Steyn admitted that he would have bought anything off this guy, might even have bid for the Eiffel Tower, if the guy had offered it, cut price and discounted. The plastic bag was in his hand, there was a murmur of gratitude, and Gillot was gone.
He could still see, as the distance grew and a firm stride took him further, the holes in the shirt where the bullets had punctured it. Steyn crossed himself – he didn’t make a habit of it. The plastic bag, not much in it, seemed to bounce against Gillot’s thigh. The heat of the day came on and the road had started to shimmer and distort.
‘Is there anything we should be doing?’ Phoebe Bermingham asked.
‘Don’t think so, Ma’am,’ from Steve, Covert Surveillance, SCD10.
‘Maybe not “out of mind” but certainly “out of sight” from where I’m looking at it,’ from Harry, Intelligence, SCD11.
‘Mark Roscoe’s a big boy, and I’d bank on him being sensible enough to look after himself – do what he’s paid to do and not stand too adjacent,’ from Donny, Firearms, CO19.
The inspector from SCD7, Roscoe’s boss, reported the early-morning call, the state of play, the assessment and reprise on the expected course of the morning. And repeated something about ‘a fucking club of vultures’ that had gathered in the town and now headed for the cornfields. Dermot, ill at ease when exposed and isolated among the police, reported that his Penny Laing had found no evidence of criminality that would stand up in a court of law from the alleged events of nineteen years earlier, and had told them she was booked on a flight out in the early afternoon.
Phoebe did the summary. ‘I cannot see that we could have
achieved more. We were faced with an obstructive and obstinate Tango who refused the advice of experienced personnel and safe accommodation. I don’t go so far as to say that Gillot made his bed and therefore can lie on it, but I believe we’ve acted honourably and adequately in this matter – and the fact that he has transferred the threat to himself to a foreign location is, quite simply, to be regarded as a blessing. In view of the extraordinary refusal of the Croatian authorities to grant liaison facilities, I would suggest that Sergeant Roscoe returns to the UK on the first available … I think our hands are clean. Comments?’
None.
Time, then, for Phoebe Bermingham, with a smile on thin lips, to let the detective inspector, Roscoe’s man, and the one from Revenue and Customs, Penny Laing’s, collect their papers, finish their coffee, make their farewells and get the hell out. Not sorry to see them go. The Gold Group, in relation to Harvey Gillot, had been an unsatisfactory frustration. Three new men and women took their places. Another Gold Group was in session, better stuff and straightforward: an Albanian brothel owner from Kilburn had ‘kidnapped’ a star girl who worked for a Kosovan pimp. If the Kosovan and his chums found their Albanian ‘cousin’, he was dead wherever they could reach him with a knife or an Uzi sub-machine gun. The man was refreshingly grateful for the protection offered.
She did not expect that, as a Gold Commander, the name of Harvey Gillot would again cross her table. A difficult man and without gratitude.
Benjie Arbuthnot marshalled them with the same skill as a Cumbrian collie would have employed on a flock of Herdwicks. He had his own bag behind his heels and the soles of the brogues crushed the matchbox, now empty, given him at the airport along with the medical materials.
Mark Roscoe was waved into the front passenger seat, and William Anders – his grumble ignored – was told to dump his bags in the boot, then get into the back with the women. Last
into the boot, flung there without ceremony, were the jacket and vest. Then the hatch was slammed down so that the vehicle shook on its chassis – it was only a hire car. At that stage of developments, he didn’t believe he could have done more. It was Arbuthnot who had arranged for Steyn, the doctor, to be in the hotel’s forecourt from five thirty a.m., wait for the emergence of Gillot and offer the man a lift to where he needed to be dropped. A small thing, but it had seemed important. Best, also, for young Roscoe to have the more comfortable place alongside him: he liked the detective sergeant and thought he might be the only one among them who had a code of ethics that would stand up to any rigorous examination. He had assessed him as a decent man, dedicated, and rare because he seemed to make no judgements on his fellows. He was about the only one Benjie was interested in.
Not interested in Anders. He would greet the Californian with apparent affection, enthusiasm, but thought him egocentric. He believed the trade of digging up putrefied corpses merely kept alive vendettas and stultified reconciliation. At five thirty, on the forecourt, Steyn had told him that the villagers knew Gillot intended to cross the cornfields, and that the hired gun would be waiting where the bodies had been excavated. That would have come through the woman, Laing. He could see from her thrust-out chin, lowered eyes, defiance and back-to-the-wall defensiveness that she’d been humped rotten by a man who was both unsuitable and outside her supposed loop.
He wasn’t interested in the woman Behan. She would have gone to his room with the intention of hectoring, lecturing and gloating, and the salesman’s smile would have flashed at her, maybe a little of the salesman’s pitch given her, and she had ended up destabilised, certainties wrecked, carrying a jacket that was not needed and an inappropriate bulletproof vest. Only Roscoe interested him – and he had seen that the pack was stowed on the detective’s trouser belt.
He wouldn’t tell Roscoe where the hired gun would be placed. To do so would be intervention and would break the law of the safari.
He turned the ignition and was about to murmur a further inanity about the departure of the Vulture Club, but stayed silent, reached inside his jacket and touched the pen that was clipped to the inside pocket. At that moment, he felt old, sad, exhausted, and the past – with skeletal hands – seemed to claw at him. It had been a damn long time ago that he had stood on the dockside at Rijeka … It would be over by lunchtime and then they could, guaranteed, get the first flight of the afternoon out of this damn place.
He said, sprightly, ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, the weather seems to be top hole for the day, so let’s get the club’s excursion on the road.’
Mladen was efficient. It was expected of a leader. He had the sheet of paper in his hand and, for the last time, he repeated where each man and woman should be. One exception had been made – he could not have prevented it. The Widow had decided where she should be and had gone earlier, Maria with her because the heat rose and it was a long walk for an old woman.
From the rest, he demanded discipline. He walked at the front when they left the café, turned at the near-completed church, headed for the cemetery and was on the track that would bring them to the
Kukuruzni Put.
Behind him were many rifles, the sniper’s Dragunov and the RPG-7. Some of the men had only shotguns, and women who were without grenades carried kitchen knives.
Far ahead, they heard a single shot, perhaps fired from a pistol. None could identify it, or think of a reason for it, but they pressed on, hurrying.
One shot fired – he had needed only one. He had fired and killed as cleanly as he had in Zagreb when they had tested him.
The man in Zagreb had slumped to his knees and gone prone. The fox had been bowled over by the impact of the bullet, which would have gone into the heart because there was barely a spasm. It lay now on its back, its legs erect and stuck out. He made the
pistol safe and pocketed it, then bent to pick up the cartridge case. He threw it, bright and flashing in the sun’s low light, towards the tree-line and saw it fall where the grass was long, beyond ploughed ground. It had looped high over the cross. There was blood at the fox’s mouth, rich, dark. It came slowly in a dribble from in front of the incisors. A little flowed over the whiskers and some went into the nostrils. He looked at it for a long time.
The preparation for killing the fox had taken more than an hour.
He had laid out the last of the sandwiches – some crusts and a quarter-slice of ham, with the core of the apple – on the ground near enough to the undergrowth at the tree-line to tempt it. Hunger had won. The animal had come out by the little track that led down to the water. He had seen the fur at the mouth that had brushed against his hand, the tongue that had licked his skin. Obvious to Robbie Cairns why he would kill the fox. It would have taken him down the riverbank to the pool. He would have walked and scrambled over the grass and weeds of the incline. The fox had small light padded feet and would not set off a landmine. It would have tricked him. The fox had nuzzled and licked him to deceive. He was pleased to have shot it and had done it well. No one deceived Robbie Cairns and walked away from it.
He had forgotten his yearning to be loved by the fox. He stood, then walked to the animal and took hold of its tail, above where the mange infected it. He threw it hard and high, heard the body break through the branches and then the splash.