A smile that was defrosting. ‘To us it was Malyutka.’
‘Very difficult to use. I think it was the decision of the schoolteacher to try to bring in the Malyutka weapon?’
He could hear the shouting and make out individual voices – the deeper harshness of the men, the shrill hatred of women. The knives flashed. God forbid, the thought came: it was not an arms dealer, an asset of the Secret Intelligence Service, but a Christian martyr being dragged to a death of barbarous cruelty. He thought, perhaps, he had used up a last vessel of goodwill at Vauxhall Bridge Cross. He had been given the medical pack and the rattling matchbox. He couldn’t expect to be welcomed back again, even into an anonymous interview room on the ground floor, and would not again be afforded the privilege of receiving help in any form. New men and new women, in slacks and shirtsleeves, trousers and severe blouses, would chime in chorus:
Only an arms dealer, wasn’t he? Only a one-time asset but now well past his sell-by date, isn’t he? What’s the big deal? History – who cares?
Benjie Arbuthnot did.
‘One man wanted it. It had been successful in Vukovar, but they had no more. He told the teacher what he wanted.’
‘Friend, how many of your men had experience of using it?’
‘One.’
‘It is at best very difficult for a trained man to use, impossible for a novice. You did not have men with the skills to make it effective.’
‘We did not.’
‘It wouldn’t have saved you, not the village or the town.’
‘Perhaps. If I’d said that then I would not now be the leader.’
His wife, Deirdre, always remarked that her husband had the persistence of a polecat. She would have meant the persistence the murderous little creature showed when it was hungry and needing to feed young, stalking a rabbit or closing on a nest where there were fledglings. He thought this man both cunning and careful. A poor education, but the stature of one who would be followed. Arbuthnot had chosen his moment and had allowed the silences to build as the column had approached where they stood on the path between the corn. Now he played the final cards in his hand. Poor education, yes, but common sense and caution. The sort of man who would have risen easily in the British Army of Benjie’s day to the rank of senior sergeant and would have been trusted implicitly by any officer, depended upon.
‘And at Vinkovci or Nustar where the crates went on to the Cornfield Road, would the senior commanders have allowed a delivery of such importance to go to this village alone?’
‘It would have been a problem, but it was the teacher’s problem.’
‘Would they, in fact, have been taken by more senior commanders for more important sections of the defence of Vukovar? My friend, would any of the missiles have reached here?’
‘I do not think so. I never thought so … It cannot be said. The teacher promised it would come to us.’
In his shoulders, Arbuthnot mirrored sadness, and in his voice there was regret. ‘So it was for nothing? Collecting everything of value, sending young men with the teacher to the rendezvous? Believing in the weapons? You are a commander, proven in combat. You know it was for nothing.’
‘What I know, sir, and what I will say are not similar.’
‘My friend … No, not for me, you have it. Wonderful, yes? The Bushmills whiskey of Northern Ireland.’ The hip flask was again offered, and Arbuthnot again insisted. ‘Quite the best thing to come out of the place … What is happening is
nonsense.
You were the commander, you are the leader. End it.’
‘I cannot.’
‘It is barbaric, medieval. It drags you back when you should step forward. Look for the future, not the past. End it.’
‘I say to you I cannot.’
‘The cry is for leadership.’ It was the last card of the deck. He seemed to slap it down on green baize as if he was with Deirdre in Shropshire and among other dinosaur friends, not here. The shouting was deafening and they came close. The hip flask was rammed back into his hand.
‘You are wrong, sir. The cry is for blood. If I do not give them blood I am not the leader. The whiskey is good. Thank you, sir.’
As the purveyor of a trade where deceit, obfuscation, half-truths, half-lies and deceptions were praised he found rank honesty interesting when it was shown him. Almost deflating. He couldn’t disagree with the man.
Level with him, not half a dozen feet away, Gillot staggered, seemed to pause, and reached down into the waist of his trousers. He dragged out a lightly filled plastic bag – it would have come from any high-street supermarket – and threw it at Benjie. The old spy scrabbled for it, dropped the flask and had to crouch to pick it up. He saw the engraved skull and the crossed bones, the words from the cap-badge, ‘Or Glory’. He might have said:
Fuck all glory here, my old cocker.
It might have been Anders who grabbed him, or Steyn, but his eyes had misted. He clutched the plastic bag and was swept along with the herd.
Had he been recognised? He didn’t know – no greeting had been offered him. He had expected none. He had said that Gillot must
face
and
confront,
and he now did so. At a cost.
*
They came together. A trip, a push from the side, a knife brandished in his face, and a woman’s spit on his cheek. He lost his balance. Harvey Gillot went down. Darkness closed around him and the brightness of the sun went. So many of them, pressing, shoving, knees jabbed into his chest and elbows. No room for them to swing their fists or use their feet. He tried to curl up, protect his privates and face. The bedlam above him was indistinct … and he heard Roscoe.
As if Roscoe took control. A little pool of light first. It lit faces and he saw the beards on the men, the gaps of missing teeth, and smelt the breath. He saw the lines at the mouths of old women and the crows’ feet, and Roscoe’s hands had hold of his shirt and the back of his trousers, at the belt. He was lifted. More light came. Was in his eyes. His phone, deep in his pocket, rang its chimes. Might be Charles or Monty or the good guy in Marbella, or his wife and daughter. Might be long-distance international from seaside Bulgaria or Tbilisi – or might be someone who sold armoured saloon cars. Wouldn’t be a salesman from a personal-injury insurance company, peddling.
He stood. Might have been down for five seconds, no more than ten. The phone stopped.
Gillot kicked out his right leg to make the first step and go forward. His eyes squinted and were wet. He had taken that first step, then cannoned into a man and damn near bounced back off Roscoe. He tried to pull Roscoe away and hadn’t the strength. Abused him – ‘Don’t want you, don’t need you.’
Saw, up ahead, the gunman. Near to him a cross was strewn with ornaments and pennants, planted in a ploughed stretch of field. Behind it were green grass and a tree-line. Roscoe had his arm and used his other hand to push men and women back. He sensed, but didn’t turn, Megs Behan behind him, the doctor who had driven him and Benjie Arbuthnot. There were others who meant nothing to him. Roscoe had hold of him, shepherded him and half-shielded him. He didn’t know what he meant, but he shouted, ‘I can do this myself.’
Almost a sneer: ‘Right now, you can’t even piss on your own.’
‘Don’t want, need—’
‘You’ve got me.’
‘And the great plan, you got that?’
A hesitation, a pang of uncertainty. ‘Working on it.’
Which meant – and Harvey Gillot’s dulled mind saw it – that Mark Roscoe, the detective who had come to his home to plead a future life in a safe-house with a panic button beside the bed and been rejected – now had nothing more in his knapsack than the thought of walking in front of him, acting out the part of a fairground coconut. Would he have survived if he’d stayed down on the path and the crowd’s hands and boots had been at him, with the knives and rocks that were about to follow? Probably not. Would he have survived if Roscoe had not pulled him upright? Possibly not. He was now in debt to the detective.
‘I owe you nothing.’
‘Just keep walking. Walk right on past him.’
‘And what do I do?’
‘You walk. He’s mine.’
Robbie Cairns watched them come. Gillot, the target, was at the front, looking like a derelict who slept rough in Southwark Park on the far side of Lower Road. He didn’t think the target could have walked if he hadn’t been held up – by a policeman. The man would have had to spend a couple of hours being made up and costumed to disguise himself. Obvious he was a policeman.
They were coming closer to him. He stood with his legs a little apart, his weight on his toes, and the sunlight was across him, not in his face. The policeman wore a suit but had been on the ground and was dusty: there was mud on his face, his shirt was messy and his tie askew. The target, Robbie Cairns saw very clearly, tried to free himself from the policeman’s grip and wriggled, was a fucking eel, which rucked up the suit jacket. If a shoulder holster had been worn, Robbie Cairns would have seen it. If there had been a pancake version on the belt, he would have seen it.
They were fifty or sixty paces from him, and he saw now that
the great crowd behind and alongside had thinned and that most of the people, whether they were in fatigues or wore black, had drifted into the corn and trampled it but they gave him space.
There was a knot – ordinary clothes and ordinary people except one idiot in a straw hat with a bright handkerchief half out of his jacket pocket – of two women and three men, a couple of paces behind the policeman and the target. He had the pistol out of his jacket pocket and had been satisfied with his shooting early that morning of the fox. He could justify it as a test firing and he had almost forgotten the eyes of the animal, the mouth and its tongue.
The man, the idiot, broke clear of the people who followed and split off into the corn. He had, a moment, a sight of the hat, then lost it, and his eyes were back on the track. They were going to fucking bluff it. Not many did. A few thought they could walk past, as if he wasn’t there, as if the pistol wasn’t aimed at them – not many. He cocked it, and the bullet went up into the breech.
Robbie Cairns thought that maybe he would have to shoot a policeman, unarmed, and didn’t feel it mattered to him. He had shot a fox and that mattered more, and had strangled his girl with the hands that held the pistol and that mattered most … They came on and walked at him.
Curious, but he felt a sort of calm. Almost as if he was at peace. He smiled.
He walked better now, no longer fighting against the detective’s hand on his arm. He didn’t try to squirm clear of him. Maybe another twenty steps and they would be close enough for a hired man to shoot. Maybe another twenty steps beyond that and they would be clear of him and out of his range … Forty steps to walk. Best foot forward, Harvey. And when he was clear, he was free. When he was free, it was over … Start of the ‘sunlit uplands’, Harvey boy, new world, a new life, forty steps away. No more looking over his shoulder, chasing shadows, running because the wind hit the roof or a tree cracked above a pavement. What stood in the way of the forty steps was the slight-built man, short and forward on his toes, like a boxer ready to fight. In the way was the gun in his hand. He kept the smile. He recognised the gun as one from the factories of Israeli Military Industries but couldn’t recall whether it was the Desert Eagle or the Jericho 941, which seemed to matter to him. They were fast thoughts, a drowning man’s views of life, and took him through three or four steps.
Roscoe murmured, ‘You keep walking. I lead and you’re covered by me. Just go on by him.’
‘Not your fight.’
‘Just fucking douse it.’
‘Why are you here?’ Time for one more question and time, perhaps, for one more answer.
‘Not for you. Don’t go getting an ego surge on that. My badge. My job. Enough?’
Had to be. The gun came up. Was held in both hands, and the fore-sight wavered, wobbled, then steadied.
Roscoe had the voice of authority – maybe he needed to piss his pants but he did it with quality. A firm voice, not a shout: ‘I am a police officer, Mr Cairns, from SCD7. You are identified. A warrant is out for your arrest. Lower the gun, Mr Cairns, and accept that further violence is stupid, pointless. I am coming past you, and Mr Gillot is coming with me. It’s over.’
They kept walking. Harvey Gillot remembered the hammer-crack sound of two shots fired on the track where he took the dog, and the two thudded blows of the bullets hitting the back of the vest at the Hauptbahnhof. He kept the smile in place. ‘What would you buy from me, sir? Any damn thing you want, sir, I can do for you. Best price, and goods of the highest manufacturing skill. Only the best and near to perfection. Discounts available for favoured customers. What’s it to be, sir?’ Harvey Gillot did the smile and realised that Roscoe’s body had edged in front of his, that his knee hit the back of Roscoe’s and that the man was shielding him. Didn’t fight it.
‘I’m relying on you, Mr Cairns, to be sensible. You’re a long way from everything you know, and you’re involved in something strange and confusing. Put the gun down. Drop it, then turn and walk. I am unarmed, Mr Cairns. Be careful and be sensible.’
The barrel had locked.
He knew what it sounded like, and knew what it felt like when a man wore a vest … He had no vest. Roscoe wore no vest.
There should have been a curled lip on the hired man’s face and something of cruelty. Should have been the sign of the beast, Harvey Gillot thought, and the man was just so bloody ordinary … he would have walked past him on an airport concourse, on a train platform, on a high-street pavement and not noticed anything other than a sort of dead-beat concentration – like that of a carpenter worrying with a spirit-level or an electrician with a wiring puzzle or a plumber called out when the central heating had failed, trying to do a job well. Just a damn job.
The barrel had locked and concentration lined the face. No
hatred there, and no contempt. He felt, alongside him, that Roscoe had coiled. It was all show and bullshit. He smiled and Roscoe did the boss-man act. He heard nothing around him, no other voices, but a bird cried high above and the wind ruffled the corn and their feet shuffled, and they came on. He could see it very clearly, the tightening on the trigger bar, the whiteness growing on the knuckle … and the thoughts were of a lifetime at the time of drowning.