The Dealer and the Dead (59 page)

He saw the man with the rifle, and Megs Behan was beside him.

He jostled her, then seemed to stumble, and Megs Behan, from instinct, reached out to steady him. She realised that the rubber-tipped end of the crutch had slipped and he’d lost its support, and the rifle barrel wavered in front of her face, then regained the aim.

They would not have understood. No one she knew – family, friend, work colleague, hack on the paper who had binned her press release – would have understood what it was like to stand on the crushed corn and witness a death march. She had no doubt that that was what it was. There was little spring in his walk, no smile – as if he had nothing left to sell. She didn’t know what was in his plastic bag. He had gone to sleep before her, and she had watched over him, had seen his back and the bruising, two impact points. She could have touched him and had not, could have held him and had not … could have woken
him up, turned him over and suggested that he do the business for the last time – and had not.

She watched.

The crowd around him was now too close set for stones and clods to be thrown. He was no longer pelted, instead was jostled and bounced.

Fists reached out and snatched at the shirt on his right arm, on his left, and other hands pushed hard at him.

A woman, swathed in black, kicked his right shin, and a man tried to trip him. More spat. All jeered.

Under his nose was the barrel of the rifle with the big sight clamped to it. Megs Behan had seen photographs of similar weapons and they were in the hands of warlords, drugs barons and bodyguards around despots. It was the world of smoke and mirrors. She could remember, most clearly, standing at the gate of the house overlooking the coast, enjoying the tolerance of a police team, a seat in their car at night, and what she had yelled into her bullhorn with the volume switch at ‘Full’. Now her throat was dry, parched from the dust kicked up by many feet, and she had nothing to shout. They would not have understood. She supposed there would be – in half an hour or an hour – a rag doll of a body with more cuts on it than there were now and more bruising, that it would be flat out and the crowd would stand around it, as they did in the photographs when the mob had turned against yesterday’s man, Saddam, Ceau
escu or any African ten-minute dictator. She would go back into the office, probably tomorrow, and they would gather around to quiz her, and she might just tell them to fuck off. Her bag was slung on her shoulder. Zipped inside an inner pouch was the note. She reckoned she’d go hungry that night.

Behind him were the detective, the American grave-digger and the doctor. They’d linked arms and forced their way through. Behind them was the crowd that had already had its turn at abusing, throwing, spitting.

His progress was ever more erratic, and the hands grasped his clothing tighter, but he did not retaliate or try to fight them off.

*

‘What are they shouting?’ Roscoe was between the American and the doctor, and they made a wedge to push forward. When necessary, they kicked to clear the way ahead and keep the contact with Gillot.

The doctor, Steyn, shouted into Roscoe’s face, ‘The one who had the launcher accused Gillot of killing his son, his eldest. Many of the others just babble hatred. The one with the rifle, the sniper who needs a crutch, accused Gillot of killing his cousin. His wife was raped. You want more?’

Roscoe demanded, ‘Is this real, not just manic theatre?’

‘Their lives were destroyed – death, torture, fear. The days of that autumn are as clear now as if the artillery was still firing on them, the knives were over their testicles, they were being herded into the cages and their women “entertaining” a platoon at a time. It is
real
enough to bring him to the end of the path.’

‘The hired gun, Robbie Cairns, is at the end of the path … if we get that far.’

One moment Megs Behan was among the crowd and beside the sniper, the crutch embedded in her stomach by the press around her, and the next Roscoe had taken her arm, yanked her free and she was among them. He saw tears on her face – and the clamour was greater, the violence more extreme and his body swayed as he was shaken. The bag was no longer at his hip but Gillot had wedged it under what remained of his shirt and behind his belt buckle.

Steyn said, ‘Nothing can be done. Get involved and he’s dead and we may be. A pace closer to him, with a degree of protection, and we end any minimal chance he has. To survive, small chance, he has to be alone.’

Roscoe didn’t know how the man stayed upright and walked. He couldn’t see the end of the path.

Steyn again: ‘They are even, in Croatia, appealing for Serbs – the enemy of centuries – to come here for
holidays.
Here, they beg the Serbs to come with the little they have. Money, at last, preaches rapprochement, so Gillot is precious. He makes a very decent target, which is rare for them. He’s convenient.’

*

Penny Laing was close to the wizened Petar, who had a shoulder holster across his chest. He smelt of manure and beside him was the deaf woman. She remembered a home that had been rebuilt piecemeal, without the help of craftsmen, and a door that had been boarded up on the first floor, the image of a son who had gone away into the night and not returned, and the devastation of a battle. She remembered being fucked in a barn, and could reconcile nothing of the last week with what her life had been before. A policeman she had met on a narcotics importation stake-out had talked about Northern Ireland and a local politician he had guarded from a Provo attack. The politician had come out of a meeting with military commanders: laundered uniforms, polished boots and certainties as to how their ‘war’ should be won. He had remarked, ‘Anyone who thinks he knows the answer to Northern Ireland’s problems is ill-informed.’ Bullseye. She would have said, on her back in the barn, that she knew the wrongdoing, criminality and worthlessness of Harvey Gillot, arms broker. She would have been ill-informed. She saw him. Pulled right and left, spit on his face, cuts and bruising, his shirt nearly off his shoulders and more cuts on his chest. She swallowed hard.

He came towards her, setting the pace. Behind him was the small group from the hotel – which the spy-buffoon had called the Vulture Club – linked, elbow to elbow. The girl from the NGO was in the centre and they took the pressure off his back, but he had to walk into the teeth of them. Some shook fists at him or waved knives and others jabbed him with rifle barrels. His shirt, once blue, seemed the only colour on show against the drab olive base of the army tunics and the women’s black. What had she wanted?

Easy enough.

She could have spelled it out before she had taken the plane. She knew where the house was, the lay-out of the garden, its size and position overlooking cliffs, coves and a seascape. She knew there was a wife, a teenage daughter at a private school. There would be a spoiled family dog and smug comfort. What had she
wanted? She had wanted to exercise the power of the Alpha team, HMRC. Arrive at the outer gate at 05.55, count to a hundred while the cars were parked, break open the gate with a portable battering ram, then a brisk trot to the front door, count to ten, repeat with the battering ram, pour in, shout loudly and have the family spill from bedrooms. At 05.59 she would have wanted control of the house, could justify breaking down a gate and a door by the need to prevent the destruction of evidence. One guy, big laugh, had shredded his incriminating paperwork but they’d wanted to nail him badly enough to stick the shreds together and had won the conviction. The joy of it would have been
him
in shock, babbling, half asleep, the wife screaming, the kiddie sobbing and the dog whining. Then to a custody suite. Would have been brilliant. His jaw would have been slack and his dignity down the drain.

The chin was out, not ostentatiously, and she thought his dignity was intact.

Was she as big a casualty as him? Not in the same league, she told herself – but a casualty.

He came past her. She had to hold her hands clasped together or she would have reached for him and let her fingers brush his face. She thought his eyes were empty, as if nothing more could be done that would shock or hurt. Wrong. She was ill-informed because Robbie Cairns, who had taken the contract, was further down the path where it ended at the gravesite. Her wrist was caught, she struggled to free herself, then realised Anders had hold of her. He dragged her from the crowd into the bosom of the Vulture Club, and she was one side of Roscoe and Megs Behan was the other. They held the crowd back from pushing against Gillot, toppling and trampling him.

She saw, above all the heads, the straw hat perched rakishly. Past and above it was the tree-line by the river. It was close now, near to the end. The day was barely launched and the sun was still low.

‘I think – I begin to think – that he will walk through this.’ Across the Customs woman, the detective and the peacenik, Steyn said,
‘He’s unarmed. Back then, in 1991, him being unarmed wouldn’t have saved him – just made him easier to kill. Could be, today, that him being unarmed keeps him alive. I don’t know.’

‘Irrelevant.’ The word wheezed out of Anders’s mouth as a surge from behind knocked the breath out of him.

‘It’s like the sting has gone – now it’s parrot stuff.’

‘Could you prevent this, Daniel?’

‘No.’

‘Do I have the weight?’

‘Wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘I’m supposed to believe in the rule of law, not a rope chucked over a branch.’

‘Emotions run deep, Bill. You have no place but to hold your peace.’

‘If he broke and ran, went into the corn?’

‘Cut or shot to pieces within a minute. Is sympathy squeezing in your gut?’

‘He has balls.’

‘And a guy waits for him up the path. Heroics tend to finish with posthumous awards.’

Their voices lapsed and the crowd had swelled round them. Steyn saw Anders glance at his watch and reckoned he checked to see if he’d make the scheduled flight. Likely he would. Likely, also, he’d write a paper on this morning and read it to an august body. He was getting closer to the high straw hat, and beyond it was the hired gun.

They had come into Benjie Arbuthnot’s view. He had a clear sight of the scene, and that section of the path was straight. He thought Gillot had the position of fulcrum, was at the heart and centre of them, and his shirt showed up clear against the blur of the uniforms and the women’s weeds. There was a stork overhead, wings languid and flapping, but no vulture. Higher up, a buzzard rode the thermal. Two hundred yards from them the crowd advanced and Gillot led them. A haze of dust hovered and danced in the early-morning light. Very pretty … He turned.
The path went on and the corn was close, making tight walls to it, and he could see the lone figure who waited there, but couldn’t make out the features as the sun was in his face. Even the brim of his hat couldn’t deflect its brightness.

Up to now they had barely spoken. Silence was a commodity Arbuthnot valued highly and he sensed that the man beside him – with the rifle and the old camouflage tunic – begged, in conversation, to be given the status of chief. He knew that the boy was Simun and that the man was Mladen, who had led the village in the last days of the siege and was the undisputed headman. He judged the moment right for the overture. From the inside pocket of his jacket, behind the pen, he produced his hip flask and passed it to him.

Thanks were translated, the response gruff and noncommittal. Arbuthnot said, ‘It’s ten-year-old Irish, Bushmills, a favourite of mine.’

A good swig was taken, then a dirty hand wiped the top and passed it back.

‘What is your purpose here, sir?’ The boy played interpreter for question and answer.

‘Just happened to be passing.’ He drank, sparingly, then pressed the flask again into the broad hand of the man and was refused. ‘I think it is enough.’

‘No, go on – something wonderfully refreshing about whiskey before breakfast. You were the commander here? I congratulate you. Those bastards in the ministry and the president’s office wrote you off, abandoned you. You fought as lions would. What was it at the end? Exhaustion?’ As the flask was returned to him, Arbuthnot shook his head, pushed it again towards Mladen’s chin.

An answer came through the boy. ‘Some of us, at the end, had not slept for four days and four nights.’

‘Ammunition was finished?’

‘We had none.’

‘You were a man of ability. A good leader – which you were – must also be able to recognise reality. See that?’ Arbuthnot
pointed to the crest on the side of the hip flask, engraved in the silver. ‘That grinning skull with the crossed bones clamped in the teeth and the legend “Or Glory” was my crowd. The 17th/21st Lancers, light armour for reconnaissance. I did time in the mountains north of Aden, in a wretched corner of Ireland and, of course, Germany. A long time ago … Never faced anything of the intensity of the attack you withstood for so long. Proud to have met you, sir.’

He shook the hand offered him. He thought Gillot, at that speed, would reach them in a couple of minutes. Little of what Benjamin Arbuthnot did was casual or without the benefit of assessment, analysis, planning … Again he proffered the flask and murmured something about a presentation on his leaving the regiment. He said, ‘Of course, in the cavalry, with armour, we learned about the various weaponry on the market. This one, we called it Sagger, the NATO code name.’