Rat Run

Chapter Ten

He sat on the floor. Round him were the sheets of paper torn off his notepad, and on the sheets were pencil lines, and he did it as he had been taught. The lines on the paper were maps, as he remembered them, of the main road and the junction, the length of Bevin Close and the street behind it where the gardens shared the common fence with those of the cul-de-sac, and of the house, number eight. He searched deep in his memory for exact recall of everything he had seen under the street-lights.

He heard the tap on the wall.

The house had surprised him. He had expected that Lewisham's roads would open – without warning – into a closed suburb of high walls, high gates, with mansions set behind them, the equivalent of the supplier's place in the country. What he had found, its ordinariness, had wrecked his concentration: he had spent too long down the cul-de-sac after going into its mouth. It was clever, having a place so unremarkable, which could only be reached by going into the mouth and down the throat of Bevin Close.

The tap came louder on the wall behind him, and its persistence grew.

That very ordinariness helped him. Over London, over the country, there were three-bedroomed semi-detached homes, all built to a common design. He knew it by heart – as an officer, he had had one. His rank at Chicksands was assigned homes of that status in Alamein Drive – into a hall with a living room off it, then another door opposite the staircase into a dining room, a kitchen at the end of the hall; up the stairs and four doors, to two double bedrooms, a single and a bathroom; a garden at the back. In Alamein Drive, Roz had kept the second double bedroom empty and ready for the once-a-year visit of her parents, and he had used the single bedroom as an office bolt-hole.

When he had been dragged along by the hair and the shoulder of his overcoat, in Bevin Close, he had seen a woman at the window of number eight – she had hung on to a child, as if to prevent him coming out and joining in the beating and kicking.

The tapping was firmer, more demanding.

The man from next door had shouted, 'Don't be a bloody fool, Ricky.' He had been called 'Dad'. At the cost of a cut lip, welts on his face and a knee in the testicles, Malachy reckoned he had learned much. Fair exchange. He knew the design of the house, knew that family lived alongside it, knew that the entrance to the close was watched. He tidied the pages of his maps.

He locked the door behind him and stood for a moment on the walkway, then heard the distorted sound of the tapping, and rang the bell beside the grille gate.

Malachy followed Millie Johnson into her flat. She walked unsteadily ahead of him, leaning hard on the medical stick, but she waved him away when he went to take her arm. She was smaller than when he had last seen her, smaller than she had been in the hospital bed when she'd had the fierce bruising and the tubes in her. She sat in her chair and her small eyes pierced him. She was pale, frail, and the arm in which the pin had been put was held in a sling. Would she like tea?

Yes, she would. Did she have biscuits? She did: Dawn had shopped for her. He went into the kitchen, boiled the kettle, made the tea and did a tray of cups and saucers, milk, sugar and a plate of digestives. The woman had changed his life. He paused, in the kitchen, with the tray. The widow of the bus driver had changed his life, utterly, by going alone to an evening of bingo for pensioners. Without her…

'Hurry up. I can't abide stewed tea. It needs to be fresh out of the pot.'

'Of course, Millie.'

He carried the tray to her. She watched, hawk-eyed, as he dripped in the milk, put a spoon and a half of sugar in her cup, and poured the tea. He'd get no praise for his care. He laid a biscuit on her saucer – and waited. She sipped the tea, nibbled the biscuit and irritably brushed crumbs from her lap. He broke the quiet: 'You're looking well, Millie. Very good.'

She challenged, her gaze beading at him: 'What have you been doing with yourself?'

'Not much.'

She mimicked him, 'Oh, "not much". What's with your face?'

'Walked into a lamp post.'

'Try again.'

'Must have been dreaming, didn't see the door.'

'Do better.'

'Tripped on a paving-stone, fell in the gutter.'

'Is that the best you can do?'

'Something like that.'

'You think Dawn doesn't talk to me? Dawn talks.

Who did it?'

'Did what, Millie?'

He saw the shrewdness of the old eyes. If he shifted in the chair, they followed him. If he ducked his head, they lifted. If he threw it back, they were with him. They were aged, but the eyes were keen.

'Bless you, for what you've done.'

'Millie, I've done nothing.'

Still the eyes tracked him. 'You lie there in the bed, in the hospital. People come, you don't want them.

They fuss over you. All you do is hope they will go and leave you. When they've left you, then you can hate. I'm not good with words, Malachy… You hate because of what was done to you, but you are helpless

… You see them. They have contempt for you because you are old. You cannot fight them. You hold on to the bag, all that is left for you. You cannot stand. You are down. There is nothing in your purse but they have your bag. You hate them, and those who sent them. A priest came to me, a simpering fool. What did I feel? I told him I felt hate. I had his lecture: "We are all God's children, my dear. Hate belittles us. We must learn to forgive." Couldn't wait to see the back of him. I hated them. What I wanted, in that bed, seeing their faces, was that they be hurt…'

'You shouldn't talk because it will tire you.'

'Rubbish. Dawn told me what's happened on the Amersham. It made me laugh. I did not say it to Dawn, but I knew it. After the laughter, in the quiet, I realized it… I am attacked and then these things happen. I had not given myself such importance.

Thank you.'

'I don't think, Millie, I'll be here much longer,'

Malachy said, and his voice was a whisper.

'Thank you for what you did.' The eyes, misting, struck at his. 'Please, kiss me.'

He came off his chair, knelt by her and kissed Millie Johnson's forehead. He owed her so much, more than she could have known. Then, he stood, poured her a second cup of tea and left her.

'Tony, got a moment?'

Tony Johnson, detective sergeant, had a moment, had an hour, had all day.

'Yes, Guv, how can I help?'

His chief inspector was eleven years younger than Tony, was on a fast-track career path and was part of the new world: 'Guv' was old, where Tony came from.

He saw the man wince.

'Yes, w e l l… Do you do Enver Rahman? Is he one of yours?'

'One of mine, like having shit on your heel.'

'Tell me.'

'He's twenty-seven, runs tarts, has a fair part of vice in north London and the West End tied down. He's scum, but clever with it. Lives in the King's Cross area, nothing permanent. Pride and joy is a Ferrari Spider. I suppose that would be worth dousing in paint-stripper.' He saw the detective inspector's mouth pucker with annoyance; no bloody sense of humour, never was for any of them that had been on the command course. 'He brings in girls from eastern Europe, and he gets muscle from Lunar House.

His goons would hang about the queues at the immigration centre and look for the likely ones. Has he been arrested? No – and frankly, we've never been close to it. The girls are taught that we're all corrupt, that if they come to us the first thing we'll do is shop them to their pimps, and to Enver Rahman. They're more frightened of us than of their own… And let's say that one was prepared to shop him on a vice charge – what's to happen to her? Are we coming up with a witness-protection package for life? Because that's what she'll need. We are not. If she goes home to Ukraine, she's vulnerable to a knife slash or worse, and her father and mother. If she stays here and we're not doing twenty-four/seven guard – which we won't be – she wouldn't know where to hide. That's why we're not close to locking him away… And he has connections. What we've heard, his uncle is the godfather of Hamburg. A sparrow doesn't fart in Hamburg without his uncle's permission. Am I of help to you, Guv?'

'An airline ticket, Heathrow-Hamburg return but open dated, was bought this morning for Ricky Capel.'

Choice lying was an art form for Tony Johnson.

'Don't think I know that name. Ricky Capel? No.'

'Capel's on the computer trigger stuff for organized crime. His name came up from the airline booking.

Runs drugs in south-east London. Interesting thing is that two tickets were bought, same destination, one for Capel and the other in the name of Enver Rahman.'

'Is Capel low-life, Guv?'

'Would think himself bigger than he is, vain little swine… But it's interesting that he should travel to the city where Enver Rahman has an uncle. Big-time, the uncle, you say?'

'About as big as they get, Guv. It's what I heard. Are we going to send?'

'Be wonderful, wouldn't it? With our resources the way they are? No chance. Thanks for your time, Tony.'

'No problem, Guv.'

He went on pushing paper, moving pages on his screen. It would be hours before he could slip away into the dusk and find a callbox.

'I hear what you say, Mr Kitchen, and will do my best to oblige. First things first, you've given me no proof of identity. I regret that a rent book from a London borough's housing department is not sufficient. Not that I'm suggesting anything, but I assume they can be bought for the price of a moderate lunch. No, Mr Kitchen, I'm afraid I'll require something more reliable.'

As senior partner in the company, as a solicitor of thirty years' experience, he took few short-cuts. None on that morning. The man had been on the doorstep of their offices when he had arrived. Eight thirty, and the man had actually been sitting on the bottom step with his feet trailing on to the pavement. Everything about him – except his shoes – was shabby. He'd sensed trouble, had decided to handle the man's business himself… Had also sensed a matter of intriguing interest, which seldom came into his office in Bedford.

'My problem, Mr Kitchen, is that the solicitor who handled your affairs is now in South Africa, and his secretary who met you is now married and has moved away. So, please, further proof of identity is needed.'

On his screen were copies of terse communications.

He had telephoned down to the basement archive and there was indeed a box there, in the name of Captain Malachy Kitchen, Army Intelligence Corps, of Alamein Drive at Chicksands. He had suggested a call be made to the base but there had been a violent shake of the head opposite him. His firm did wills and con-veyancing for many of the officers there: this man hardly seemed one of them. Old clothes on his back, new scars and bruises on his face. Only the shoes showed a military man's care.

'When is it you were last a visitor here?'

He was told, a month more than two years back, but not an exact date to match against the screen's correspondence.

'I'm sorry, Mr Kitchen, but that is too vague.

Anything else?'

The man sat straighter, pulled down the zip of his anorak, pushed away the neck of his pullover, opened the upper buttons of his shirt and reached down. The twin tags came out in his hand, held by an aged leather bootlace. They were held up for him to examine. He craned forward, read, wrote down the religion, blood group and number, and when the tag with the number was turned, he could see the name.

They were returned to their resting-place against the man's chest. The smell was stifled once the anorak was zipped again.

'That'll do nicely, Mr Kitchen. I'll have the box sent up.'

Ten minutes later the senior partner escorted his client to the main door, wished him well and watched him walk away. For a man so obviously facing acute difficulties in his life, there was a quite cheerful roll in his gait. Back at his desk he cast a quick glance at the box. A will, still there. A building-society savings book, still there. A marriage certificate, still there.

Only the passport had been taken. He wondered what the client had run from, and where he was going now with his passport. He had not liked to ask – but if he had, he doubted that he would have been answered.

They turned into the drive, past the broken gates, and Davey braked. Charlie thought that the gates, electronically controlled, would have been flattened by the first fire appliance to reach the house. All of them in the car, Charlie realized – and it was as true of himself as the others – were strung up tight, like a bow string pulled back. Davey had reckoned they shouldn't be there, not so soon: Ricky had rubbished him. In the car, Benji had tried to raise the journey to Hamburg, where it would lead and why he was called for: Ricky had shut him down. Himself, Charlie was concerned about the cash-flow implications of the fire: Ricky had said he should wait and watch. Ricky wore the big gold chain at his throat, that Joanne had given him, and Charlie knew it had been lost and that Joanne had been belted for asking about it. Ricky fingered it obsessively. Not a bundle of laughs between them as they had driven down from London and into the countryside, not even enough laughs to wrap in a handkerchief. They went past a fence and a horse that had been grazing saw the car and seemed to scream and run. Then they turned a corner in the drive and the house was in front of them.

'Bloody hell,' Charlie murmured, a little gasp.

Ricky and Davey lived in the semi-detached houses of Bevin Close. Benji was in a brick terrace by Loampit Vale. Charlie's place was detached, joined to his neighbour by their garages, nearer to Ladywell Road.

They had four houses that were typical of Lewisham in south-east London. This had been a big pile, had been. A wooden stable block, but the wind must have been coming from behind it, and it hadn't caught. A double garage, with the doors up, was untouched. In front of the building was a mountain of debris, some of which Charlie could make out as furniture, some of which was too charred for recognition. He could make out easy chairs where the material had burned off to leave the wood and springs, a tabletop without legs, wardrobe doors, frames without pictures, the shell of a TV and the front door, but most of the heap had no shape. And parked beside the burned mess, like it was the only place to park, was a scarlet vintage Jaguar.

Beside him in the back, he heard Ricky hiss through his teeth.

The roof in the central part of the house was off.

Some of the beams were in place, others had gone, a few sagged. All the windows were out, like black tooth gaps in a mouth. It was desolation, and quiet.

All of them peered forward through the windscreen.

Sort of made Charlie shudder, everything at bloody peace except for the wrecked house – like it had been a target, picked out and chosen. His father had been a builder, odd jobs, a bit of roofing, a bit of plumbing, a bit of whatever – when he wasn't doing scams with old folks' benefit books – and Charlie had helped him out before he'd joined up with Ricky. He didn't know much about building, but he could see that this pile was beyond repair. It would be a bulldozer job. A site to be cleared, not just scaffolding and work for a year.

George Wright had been done over, done proper. He saw the other car, by the side of what had been the house, and there was a man in a suit, and George. He nudged Ricky and pointed. They stayed put, sat in their car.

The man had a clipboard and a pencil. At that distance the sound of the voices did not travel, didn't need to. The man from the insurance was with George and he had a dour look. He finished scribbling on his clipboard and shrugged, like he was only explaining the reality of the situation confronting him. George was shaking and animated. He gripped the man's sleeve, dropped it, and had his hands at his head, like that was despair. All bastards, weren't they, insurance men? Then George had his head up, gazed at the trees, and the bloody crows – black sods – sat there and honked at the show, and the man hadn't shaken George's hand or had anything good to say and was going for his car. George was left, in a pair of suit trousers and a shirt that had been white before it was stained by the fire's smoke, alone with the crows. The car came towards them but Davey didn't shift off the drive, and it had to go on to the lawn where the first cut had just been done and the lines were good and straight and it left the tyre treads – didn't matter

… Bigger problems for George than his grass.

They went forward.

Ricky said, 'We sort this out, and now. Then there's no misunderstandings.'

He seemed not to see them as they came out of the car, and not to hear them as they stamped on the tarmacadam past the mountain and the open doorway, the kitchen windows that had been smashed, and came to the corner of the house. Behind him were apple trees but the gale from the fire had singed the blossom off them. Ricky was ahead, with Davey trailing him by a couple of paces, and Benji and Charlie hung back because this was not about to be their style of business.

'Sorry to see this, George,' Ricky said briskly.

'What'd you do, leave the chipper on?'

Christ, Charlie thought, his man could play cold.

George Wright had spun on his heel. On his face: end of tether, edge of control.

'What the fuck do you want?'

'That's not nice, George. I come down all polite like a friend, all sympathy. Didn't come down for abuse.

Came to find out what the situation was. You got a difficulty with that?'

'The situation, right. The situation is that the insurance wasn't jacked up in the last five years and it's way under. Got that? My Melanie, she's gone to her mother, she's broke down, and Hannah's with her and worse. I had a load of stuff in the house, and the safe went like an oven. The stuff's cooked – got that?

So, thank you for your bloody consideration, but I am fucked. So, please, drive back where you came from.

Have you got that?'

'That is not helpful, George.'

'What is bloody helpful? I'd like to hear it.'

Charlie could hear the softness of Ricky's voice, and could hear the rising crescendo of George Wright's anger. Davey, behind Ricky, had his hands together behind his back – where they always were when he minded Ricky – but his fists were white-knuckled, clenched.

'I tell you what's helpful, George. You had, from me, stuff on trust. I give to you and you supply, and then you pay me. Now you tell me that the stuff is burned, and I ask myself, "How is George going to pay me what he owes me?" About a hundred grand, yes? Charlie's the one with the head for figures.

Maybe a bit over a hundred thousand that's owed me.

What would be helpful is knowing when you're going to pay me – today, tomorrow, or by the end of the week.'

'Whistle for it, Ricky.'

'Not helpful.'

'I got nothing left. Whistle down your arse for it.'

Ricky's voice was ever softer, his chuckle ever more shrill. 'You're a joker, George. You do a good turn, George. "I got nothing left" – that's funny, George. No building-society book? No deposit account? A little place down on the Algarve that you can raise a mortgage on? Very funny, George. By the end of the week, and that's really generous. What you say, George?'

'Fuck off's what I say.'

Ricky moved sideways. Charlie recognized the manoeuvre. Davey now had a clear sight of George Wright. Charlie knew what would happen, had seen it before.

Ricky said, 'You know how it is, George, if I'm too generous then word of it gets round. People who owe me money hear I'm a soft touch. I get promises for payment, next month or next year, because it's said that Ricky Capel's easy to blow over. "Can't pay this month because the missus has a headache." Might be

"Can't pay next month because the family's going on holiday." Could be "Can't pay this year because the price on the street's down." Or, if the word gets round,

"Can't pay ever because the chipper caught fire."

George, I won't have that word get round, but that's your problem.'

'What I said, get lost, get off my property. I got nothing.'

Charlie knew where it was going and could not argue with the reason for it. Maybe there was a little gesture against his thigh from Ricky, or maybe Davey just read him. If ever the authority of Ricky Capel was challenged successfully then he was dead in the water. And not only Ricky, all of them. All gone, if the word went out that Ricky was the soft touch. Charlie didn't do violence, or Benji, but Davey did. Davey closed on George Wright. He lost sight of the fat little man with the bald head and the sweat on it, lost the sight of him behind Davey's shoulders.

George Wright was felled. Davey stood over him, and the heavy steel-toecapped shoe pressed down on a sprawled-out shin.

Ricky said, 'Problem with a place like this, George, the problem with all the muck around – planks, furniture, beams, everything – is that you could fall over. You could fall over and break your leg. Be easy.

Of course, if you said – after you'd broken your leg – that you hadn't tripped up on the muck, if you said different, then you'd have to wonder where you'd hide, and where your Melanie and your Hannah would hide, come to think of i t… I'm very generous, by the end of the week.'

'Fuck off.'

A blur of movement, almost too fast for Charlie to follow. The shoe went up. He saw the flash of the steel on the toecap. It stamped down on the suit trousers halfway up the shin.

The scream ripped at Charlie, but Ricky didn't flinch.

The foot and ankle below the shin were bent at an idiot angle from the knee.

Ricky was walking away and Davey followed him.

It was two months since Charlie had eaten a meal with George Wright in a little bistro in Blackheath and the guy had been good company. It was a week since Benji had done the last drop-off to George Wright. He hadn't spoken up for him, and Benji beside him had not.

'Not yet, you will be… bastard, Ricky Capel… you will be… Your turn, see if it isn't coming… You know fuck all of nothing, but you will, when it's your turn… What do you think's happening? You got any idea? Big man, you know everything – wait till it's your turn and see what you know… I want to be there, watch it, when it's your turn… '

'Come on, guys,' Ricky said.

He was walking past Charlie, standing and rooted.

Charlie caught Ricky's arm, held him.

George Wright, from the ground, yelled, 'Want to hear it, then, want to? Bloody funny, Ricky Capel, about a chip fire. I was a target! It was petrol – petrol through the window. The target was me. Three kids on the Amersham estate were found hung upside down off a roof – did you hear that? Fucking didn't, did you? You know nothing. They pushed. Next it's the dealer. The dealer sold to the kids on the Amersham. He was tied up to a lamp post, and now he's gone. You don't know where the Amersham is?

Too low for you, Ricky Capel… I sold to that dealer.

It's a line. Me to the dealer, the dealer to the pusher kids. I had petrol chucked in my home. Does the line go the other way? Think about it, Ricky bloody Capel.

Look over your shoulder.'

Ricky pulled himself clear of Charlie.

'Mad, isn't he? Crazy man. He'll come up with it, he'll pay.' The big smile breezed on his face. 'May have to go on sticks to the bank, but he'll pay.'

It was a joke between Charlie and Benji that Davey was plank thick. He could always see when something major exercised Davey's brain. Nothing of a flywheel, like a slow set of cogs turning without oil to help. Always frowned, always blinked, always seemed to rub the side of his face hard, before spewing it.

Davey said, 'Couldn't think of it, Ricky, what the stink was. The dosser down the close, outside your house. The dosser that was there, and his stink.'

Ricky was at the car. 'What you trying to say?'

Davey blurted it: 'The stink, it was petrol. On his coat, he had the stink of petrol.'

'Forget it,' Ricky said, and dropped into the car.

Charlie didn't. And he hardly listened as they drove through the Kent countryside back towards

Lewisham, and Ricky retold stories of his grandfather's war fought alongside the father of Timo Rahman whom he was flying to meet the next day, in Hamburg.

'I want to move her there. I really urge you to sanction Polly Wilkins going to Hamburg, as a matter of urgency.'

The assistant deputy director sat, so Gaunt paced. If the ADD had stood, Gaunt would have taken a chair.

Contrariness was a trusted weapon. His stride across the carpeted office was fast, intended to create an atmosphere of crisis. To wrongfoot the man was his aim. The supine beggar would buckle, he knew it.

'I can't say I'm happy… '

'It's what's necessary.'

'… and Fenwick in Berlin, he won't be happy.'

'I'm up to speed and Polly Wilkins is.'

'It's his territory, that's what Fenwick will say.'

Gaunt rapped his response: 'Rather than satisfying Fenwick's turf aspirations, it would be better to put in place, under my control, an officer who has the feel of him.'

No name, but two faces. Last thing before coming to the assistant deputy director, on high, he had sat in his desk chair and had tilted it back and made the request of Gloria that she describe the faces. She was expert at the task, and he believed he saw better into a man's soul when his eyes were closed and he listened as she portrayed him, the quarry: so much better, so much greater insight, than when he stared at a two-dimensional photograph. She had said, 'The hair is thick, dark and worn long, but it is not unkempt and is cared-for. In the centre the hair curls back, and I don't believe that is accidental, more of a style. There is a high forehead, clean and without the skin cracks of anxiety, that pushes up on either side where the hair recedes. The forehead is that of an intelligent man, not of a brute. The eyes are big. They are open, they do not evade; there are rings under them but that is from tiredness… more than rings, almost bags. I like the eyes. They persuade, but do not threaten.

They have a confidence. Yes, you would trust the eyes.

The nose is prominent, straight and without blemishes. It is not the nose of a fighting man, has not been broken, fractured or lost alignment. I discard the moustache and the beard. They are from the passports used for the first stage of his journey, not from the second stage. If they have been shaven off, he cannot have regrown that degree of facial hair. The mouth, with or without a beard and moustache, is distinctive

– distinctive because it is unique to him. Two aspects – his smile, we'll start with that. Few men smile for a passport picture. He does in each case. It is a good smile, one of honesty. I like his smile and I warm to him, open and frank, showing no deviousness. The second aspect is the teeth. The teeth are dreadful, but clean. The upper bite comes down over the lower teeth and is overfilled and prominent. Big incisors that are packed too close, so they bulge. I venture, he never met an orthodontist – sorry, Mr Gaunt. His ears are not flappers but are close back against his hair, those of my dog when it is listening, keen and alert. He is not big-boned, and from the set of him I would hazard that he is slightly built… If I had to pick on one point, I'd say that most of our guests, given wall space, have a deep-rooted suspicion of the camera, but this man is not frightened of it… Put another way, there's nothing in the face that demonstrates the stresses of anxiety.' He had heard Gloria out, then had buttoned his waistcoat, lifted his tie, shrugged into his jacket and taken the elevator up to where the Gods rested.

'You promised me the moon last time. All bottled up in Prague.'

'And did not deliver because of Czech in competence.'

'Hamburg would be different enough to override Fen wick's irritation?'

'I think so.'

'Think? Is that all you have for me to bite on?'

'I believe so. That we are this far forward is due to Polly Wilkins's efforts. She deserves the chance…'

He stopped, gazed without mercy into the assistant deputy director's face, then resumed pacing. 'After what was done to her she most emphatically deserves the chance.'

'Sanctioned.'

'A good decision.'

Not a time to hang about. Gaunt had what he had come for. He was heading for the door, anxious to be away before riders were attached. He heard the bleat at his back.

'He's dangerous, isn't he? Our man who's on the run – dangerous, yes?'

'Exceptionally so.'

'Murderous little bastard.'

The mischief caught him as he went into the outer office. Gaunt said, 'Perhaps, but rather a nice face, don't you know?'

She packed.

'Don't I get told where you're going?'

Ronnie was watching from the door. It was her apartment and Polly was the guest imposed on the girl from the visa section. Polly would not have said that she was going to Hamburg, but could have said she was going to Germany and left it vague. She did not answer but went on folding blouses and skirts, laying them over the shoes at the bottom and her smalls – didn't really have an idea of what she needed, whether the spring came warm up there or whether it would be perishing cold. The sharing arrangement had been intended as temporary, while a one-bedroom apartment for herself was redecorated, but then a refurbishment budget had gone dry and time had slipped on. It wasn't satisfactory for an officer in the Service, however junior, to share but having her own room was good enough and she'd given up nagging the man at the embassy who allocated premises. She was precious little use to Ronnie, a lonely woman. Too early at work and too late back to offer company.

'Well, how long are you going to be away?'

She didn't know how long she would be away, and didn't answer, just went on filling the case. She could share the apartment but not her life.

The bridling voice whipped her. 'Don't mind me.

I'm not important. I'm not need-to-know. You have a good time, wherever. I'll say this, you look like the cat that found the cream. You just come back when it's finished, whenever.'

A last pair of jeans and a sweater went in. No photographs in leather frames, nothing personal. 'The cat that found the cream'? Probably. Not very fair to show it because there was little enough cream in Ronnie's existence in the visa section. While she was packing the bag Polly had thought she walked tall for the first time since the collapse of the unit in London.

Two years' work there, hard and slogging study.

Satellite photos of every corner of Iraq's deserts pored over. Defectors' statements gutted, analysed, each word weighed. Businessmen from every corner of that wretched region who travelled to Baghdad had been met in hotel bars, had money shoved at them, and been pestered for descriptions of factories and chemical plants. Phone calls and emails intercepted and transcribed. All to answer the great question: were there, in Iraq, programmes for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction? Papers written. In Service tradition it was taught: Capability + Intent =

Threat. Had Iraq the capability or the intent to justify the wolf cry of realistic threat? Caution expressed, caveats and hesitations. Papers returned with red-ink scratchings obliterating the cautions that were embedded in the Service's work practices. Papers resubmitted with honesty seeping out from them.

Caveats and hesitations removed. What they wrote, by Service tradition, was supposed to exude

'provenance'. But provenance had died, and the team

– scattered to the winds – she assumed cursed themselves now for bending at the knee, for allowing valued practices – C+I=T – to be steamrollered and crushed.

She could remember the day when politicians, jutting their chins, had spoken of 'irrefutable proof' of the WMD programmes as justification for the tanks rolling in the sands: she had stood behind Frederick Gaunt's shoulder, had watched the television and heard his silence, and had known it would burst. So quiet when it had done, but a violence in his words she had never heard before. 'They wanted the fucking war. We gave them the fucking war – and our reward will be to be fucked by them.' The inquest, then the cull of the casualties of failure to find the weapons.

Polly Wilkins had been categorized as NBA by the investigators – No Blame Attached – and sent to Prague, but the message had been clear to her: all of the unit was contaminated by that failure. She was scarred by the inquest, poisoned by the failure. She checked her bag for her passport, ticket and euros.

She heaved it off the bed, grimaced, and went to call a taxi for the airport. Because she was the chosen one, elation gripped her.

In the city of Dresden, on their first visit to Germany, an elderly American couple waited for one of a line of public telephones in the square to come free.

That afternoon they had toured the opera house and the Kreuzkirche, then crossed the Augustus-brucke to trawl the galleries of old masters' works in the Zwinger houses. Next they would visit the Hofkirche in the Theaterplatz. They needed a telephone to ring their hotel to confirm a booking for the morning, car and driver, to travel out of the city to the Pillnitz Palace and take them later to Meissen where they would buy porcelain for shipment to Chicago.

They stood, Dwight and Janet, behind a young man. He had dialled, and now he waited for an answer. Always the difficulty at such a time, which phone to target. Which caller would take the least time? They had chosen to stand behind this young man, slight and with bowed shoulders. He spoke.

They could not hear him. But even if he had raised his voice they would have been too polite to listen

– and, anyway, their knowledge of German was scant.

She had her thumb to keep the guidebook open at the page for the Hofkirche and together they matched the view of its towering spire across the Theaterplatz with the photograph.

In front of them, the man hooked the phone back, turned, smiled politely and gestured that the booth was now available. Such a charming-looking young man… Her husband would not have done it -

Dwight had the shyness that age brought – but Janet was bolder. Would he, please, show them how to operate the payphone? She gave him their hotel-room card with the number they needed, and coins. He did it for them, waited until the call was connected with Reception, then passed the receiver to her. And he was gone.

It made them both feel good, as they crossed the Theaterplatz, to have met a young man so considerate.

'Where do you think, Dwight, that guy was from?'

'Couldn't say, could have been from anywhere.'

The office worker was brought by the Bear to Timo Rahman.

In the life of the pate no deals were too small, none was unworthy of his attention. He had come from the yard where he owned the fleet of haulage lorries that carried loads across Europe, legal and contraband, and had arrived at a site on the Elbe side of St Pauli where the old building had been flattened. Bulldozers worked there and shifted aside the mess of concrete, wire and rubble. He had a share, thirty-three and a third per cent, in the hotel to be built on what was now a hole. Dust swirled round him and he wore an orange hard hat jauntily. He would move on from there to the fruit, vegetable and flower market at the Hauptbahnhof where money was paid him for the right to set up a stall. The haulage business brought him tens of thousands of euros a year; the hotel would earn him millions on completion; the stalls were only worth hundreds. Attention to details, whether big or small, was the cornerstone of Timo Rahman's life.

He stood with an architect and the site manager and watched the crawling machines eat at the debris, and he saw the Bear bring the boy. The boy, a cousin's son, would have owned only one suit, and one pair of shoes fit for an office worker, and he walked with great care through the dust clouds, and maybe his shoes would be scratched and certainly his suit trousers would be saturated with the floating dirt.

Timo Rahman broke away from the site manager and the architect.

The boy reached him, stood in his presence and the nerves showed.

Timo Rahman stared out at the bulldozers. It was not for him to show anxiety or any great interest in a messenger who was only the son of a cousin. The demand for news of the lost cargo had screamed at him in the night, had been with him in the days. His casualness was expert as he made the boy wait, then turned to him.

'Again it is you. What matter of home furnishing is there for my interest?'

The boy stuttered, could not be heard.

'Speak up, boy. Shout.'

The boy sucked the dust and air into his throat, coughed, then shouted, 'My manager in the shipping section ordered me to report to you. He has received a telephone message concerning a cargo from Ostrava, in the Czech Republic.'

'I know where my factory is. And you have no reason to fear me.'

'He instructs me to tell you that a part of cargo load 1824 is en route to Hamburg. The time of delivery to the warehouse is uncertain, but it will be within two days.'

'Thank you for bringing such a small matter to my attention. Sometimes you are in the showroom and sometimes in the office, and you should be a credit to the company you serve. I think your suit is damaged by coming to this place. Replace it.'

He took a note from his wallet, of sufficient value to purchase a clerk's suit and a pair of shoes in any clothing shop on the Steindamm, folded it carefully and slipped it to the boy. His generosity would be remembered rather than the message haltingly delivered. He told the boy with firmness that he should be careful when going back across the site, and dismissed him. Long ago Timo Rahman, who was the pate of Hamburg, had learned that a wall of fear protected him, but that kindness generated absolute loyalty among his people. He turned to the Bear.

'He comes… He has evaded them. Already he has proven himself to be a man of quality. If it were known that I assisted him then the wrath – anger and fury – of the world is turned against me. Why do I do these things? They would spit in my eye and break my bones if it were known what help I shall give. Why? I am a little man, I am a peasant from the mountains of Albania. I am sneered at, but not to my face. Those who know of my origins despise me… The time will come. My time.'

He thought the Bear understood not a word that he said, but the man's head nodded vigorous agreement.

He rejoined the architect and the site manager, wiped the dust from his forehead, listened to them, studied their plans, and a quarter of an hour later was on his way to the Hauptbahnhof to talk with the traders at their stalls. He thought little of the hotel that would sit where there was now a hole. What filled his mind was the image of a seashore where a boat would come, and the enormity of what would follow.

The ferry carried Oskar Netzer back to paradise. One day in every two months he took the boat to the mainland, to Nessmersiel, and from there a bus brought him to Norden. In the town he shopped. As a pensioner he travelled free on the ferry and what he bought in Norden was cheaper than in the island's supermarkets. The tide was far out and the mudflats crept to the limits of the channel used by the ferry. He stood on the back deck and watched the mainland shore, all he hated, diminish.

The wind came hard off the mud, from the north-west.

They had travelled together, he and Gertrud, on that same ferryboat five years before. She could have gone by ambulance to the hospital in Norden. Oskar had refused that. He had taken her. They had stood together, her leaning on his arm for support and the blanket round her to keep the chill from her, where he stood now – where he always stood on the boat. And a week later, he had brought her back, and when the crane had lowered the coffin on to the quay at Baltrum, the crew had taken off their caps in respect for her, and he had held the horse's bridle that pulled the cart carrying her to the cemetery at Ostdorf.

Sometimes, and that day he did, he wept as he stood alone at the back of the ferry; his jaw quivered and his cheeks were wet with tears.

When the ferry swung to starboard for the approach to the island's harbour, he saw the seals on their sandspit close to the wreck. It pleased him, lightened the blackness of the mood that sat on him each time he took the ferry. Beyond the seals and the wreck, out in the North Sea, was a darkening skyline that merged into the horizon.

No goodbyes, no farewells, he switched off the lights and locked the door.

Malachy dropped the keys of flat thirteen, level three, block nine, into the hatch beside the barricaded door of the housing offices.

Its use for him was finished and he was gone from the Amersham into the night.