Rat Run

Chapter Fifteen

He walked and could have dropped. Without the strength and tread of his shoes, he would long ago have stopped and sunk down to a bench beside a pavement. He had a sandwich in him, sausage and chilli, and the bulk of a map bulged his hip pocket. He had gone east from the city.

Behind him were the proud places of the city, and its shamed corners – the outer and inner Alster lakes, the Rathaus, the New City and the Old City, the warehouse quarter and the former docks where cranes now lifted building materials for apartment blocks, over bridges and alongside canals, and through satellite communities housed in high towers, under autobahn routes using threatening pedestrian tunnels.

But at Kirchsteinbek, with the map unfolded and his finger tracing the route, he turned south – and he thought the danger of the city receded. Ahead of him now were scattered villages, small towns and fields, drainage channels excavated geometrically across them. The map guided him.

Bare poplar trees, tops bent in the wind, made aisles for him along straight roads. He passed a modern gaol wall, set back on his left, and the light had gone down enough for the arc-lights to shine out brilliantly. The map told him that soon he would swing his course to the west. There was a memorial stone set in the grass short of the prison perimeter but his eyes were too exhausted and his attention too dulled for him to read its inscription. In the growing darkness, beyond the gaol, a track led to low buildings, and beside the road, set among the poplars, was the sign: KZ -

Gedenkstatte Neuengamme, and below it was a second sign directing visitors to a museum and exhibition centre. Before the prison there had been traffic on the straight, endless road, but none after it.

The buildings, what remained of a concentration camp, seemed isolated. Malachy went faster, struggled to lengthen his step, and his shoes stamped out on the road's Tarmac. He wondered who came here, and why. Were there still lessons for learning?

Hallucinations delved in his mind. Did men in vertical striped pyjama suits, which hung on fleshless bodies, watch the tramp of a lone figure on the road?

Did he smell the smoke that curled from a high brick chimney? Did he hear the trap of a gallows sprung, and the rattle of shots? If he could have run he would have. He did not have it in his limbs to hurry and the sights and sounds of the fantasy played in him till he was far beyond the shadows of the place.

Malachy Kitchen lived. Ghosts had died there – starved and died, fallen from exhaustion at a work site and died, had been dragged to a noose and had died, or had been forced down to kneel in a grave pit and had died. He saw no self-pity and heard no cry for mercy.

He lived.

Far away, behind his back, was the evening glow of a city with orange light bouncing off low clouds, where men searched for him.

At the end of the road was the Elbe river and a bridge. Across it was a bus shelter where two elderly ladies waited. They eyed him with acute suspicion.

The stubble was on his face, his clothes hung wet on his body, his breath came in pants and he sagged down on to a seat beside them. They shifted from him as far as was possible and held their handbags tight in their gloved fists. He thought of the young woman who, to save him, had kissed his mouth, and he thought of the last young woman he had tried to kiss: she had turned away from him, flinched from him.

He asked them where the bus went. They were in their best as if they had visited family or friends. The bus went to Seevetal.

Was there a railway station at Seevetal? They showed no willingness to engage in conversation with the vagrant who shared their shelter. There was a railway station there.

Where did the trains go to from Seevetal? They sniffed in unison, as if he disgusted them – to Hamburg, Rotenburg and Bremen.

Malachy's head dropped. The tiredness came in waves across him. He thought of two young women.

One had turned her face from him, one had kissed him and he dreamed… The sharp jab of a bony elbow woke him, and he walked behind them to board the bus. In his mind was only pain and the sight of the one young woman, his wife.

25 January 2004

'For God's sake, don't you understand anything? No way was I going to traipse down to Brize Norton. What did you think I was going to do? Hold up a bloody banner on the apron, "Welcome Home to My Hero"? Don't you know what you've done to me?'

The doorbell rang.

He might at least have shown some fight, but he played what they called him, 'a gutless bastard', and denied nothing. Just said, each and every time, that he didn't know what had happened. In denial: that was what her father had said on the phone when Roz had called him an hour ago, denying it because he couldn't face what he'd done – and her father had said he was right behind his girl for not meeting the aircraft in from Basra.

The doorbell rang again, as if this time a finger was on the button and staying there… It was now eight days, on the corps's calendar in the kitchen, since 'it' had happened, whatever it was, and six days since the gossip mill in Alamein Drive had produced the whisper. He'd come home the afternoon before, like a rat running, with a train warrant and a taxi from Bedford station. He'd tried to kiss her when he'd dumped his bag down – no bloody chance.

Explanations were what she'd demanded, but all she'd had was the whimper that he didn't know what had happened, like that was supposed to be enough for her.

The bloody bell kept ringing.

It had all been explained to her in the secretariat, while he'd been on the train and coming home. Resignation would be best, and then a quiet departure – no future. The papers would be sent round. God, there were some hateful bitches in Alamein Drive! So she'd entertained a couple of guys – what was the big deal? Just Jerry and Algy, and maybe they'd stayed till late, or was it early? Didn't half the bitches entertain a friend when the husband was away? If he'd fought, Roz could have believed him. All that last evening, she had followed him round the house and demanded to know if it were true: was he, her husband, a

'gutless bastard'? Doors slamming behind him, he'd retreated, but she'd followed. Through the kitchen, the dining room, the sitting room, out into the garden where the whole bloody world of Alamein Drive would hear her yelled question, but not the answer. She'd slept in her bed; he'd used the sitting-room sofa. She'd shopped that morning, every curtain in Alamein Drive twitching as she'd gone to the car, and twitching again when she'd come back and offloaded the plastic bags – like it was she who had done it.

'Right bloody entertaining for me, my husband called a coward. I don't suppose you thought of that.'

Maybe if he'd hit her it would have been better. He was slumped at the kitchen table and he winced each time she attacked. She spun.

She crossed the hall. Roz's dad, retired sergeant – a man who had spent the best part of his service in ditches in Ireland knowing that if a farmer's dog located him it was down to a Browning 9mm automatic to stop him being bloody tortured, then slotted, by the Provos – her dad had said on the phone that her room was all shipshape at home for her, that she should ditch the useless bastard.

The padre, who doubled as the welfare officer – and wanted everyone to call him Luke – was at the door.

She said curtly, 'Yes, Luke, good to see you. Before you ask, is it convenient? No.'

The old fart had papers in his hands, shuffled them in his fingers. 7 brought these round, and I wanted to know how he was.'

She did it mock-brightly, a little flutter in her voice. 'He's fine. Nothing wrong with him. Quite himself- why shouldn't he be? Sort of everyday thing, isn't it, being labelled as a runner, a cop-out, a coward? He's in good shape.'

'I'm very sorry.'

'I doubt you're half as sorry as me.'

'He'll have to go. No choice but to resign his commission.

It's not something you can come back from. I wish it were.'

'Marked with it, yes.'

'It could be said, Mrs Kitchen, that a little too much revelry went on here in his absence. Frankly, that's what I heard from Major Arnold. He was quite distressed but thought he ought to tell me. If Mal had heard about them, your visitors, then that might account for a poor performance in a combat situation.'

'He would only have heard such lies, Luke, if bloody nosy sods had passed them on. Is that right?'

Only over her dead body was the padre entering her home. Roz stood square in the doorway. A woman, nearly opposite, had found a reason to visit her wheelie dustbin.

Another woman, down the drive, had come out of her home with a brush and started sweeping her path. Be a bloody shame when their entertainment ended, but she'd be gone before the next day broke. He was flushed and had a twitch at the side of his chin. He rubbed a mole there with the hand holding the papers.

'I have to say, Mrs Kitchen, that I was monumentally disappointed to hear of this. I thought Mai a first-class officer – but, we are all subject to errors of judgement when assessing colleagues. Actually, I appreciate your dis-comfort. It's not easy for any of us when a man falls short of expected standards. Wearing my welfare hat, I've brought his resignation form, which has already been counter-signed by the colonel, so he'll need to do that. There's an AFO 1700 that I am formally delivering – it requires this married-quarter to be vacated within ninety-three days, but better sooner rather than up to the deadline. It's a wretched shame, Mrs Kitchen – trouble is that you cannot go back on life and patch up mistakes. It goes without saying that it would be better for all concerned if Mai stayed away from the mess.'

She snatched the papers from him. 'I'll tell him.'

'Excuse me, Mrs Kitchen. What I've said to you has been one-on-one – not for repeating. I wouldn't want-'

'Wouldn't want to join the back-s tabbers,' she spat at him savagely. 'No, there's enough of them already. You'd have to be in the queue. Don't lose sleep over it, Luke, because you'd be behind me in the line.'

Roz turned away.

The padre's parting shot had a worried whine in it: 'He'll need a deal of love, and some care.'

'He won't get that from me.' She kicked the door shut behind her.

He was standing three paces from her in the sitting-room doorway. So, he had learned what she thought of him. So, he had heard what was his future. Not her fault. None of it was Roz Kitchen's fault. He took the papers from her, not a word, and scrawled his signature, and she slumped, buried her head and wept. She heard the stamp of those damn great heavy shoes on the stairs, then the sounds of him moving in the bedroom. She heard him call for a taxi to be at the main gate in an hour. She felt no love, and doubted he would find it anywhere.

She had written her signal, interminably long but everything that she had been told, and had transmitted it. Then she had flopped on to the camp-bed.

Polly Wilkins slept, dreamless.

She was curled on the top blanket and below her the sounds of the consulate and its business went unheard.

The phone woke her. She started up, did not know where she was. Darkness had gathered in the room, the wind heaved at the tiles and the rain pounded against the one small window. She groped towards the phone, banged her shin on the desk edge and swore.

'Yes – who is it?'

'Polly?' She heard Gaunt's voice sharp in her ear.

'Yes, me.'

'Polly, I sing your praises. To that venal idiot aloft upstairs, I said this morning I had complete faith in you. He wanted Berlin on the road to Hamburg double damn fast. I declined that offer. Were you asleep?'

'Yes, afraid I was.'

'Would you say, Polly, that I was always honest with you?'

She sighed deep. 'Spit it out, Mr Gaunt.'

There was a pause. She heard the silence on the line.

She wondered if he was tilted back in his chair, if he had straightened his tie first, and she waited to be punched.

'I'd say, Polly, that you fucked up… A bit harsh? I don't think so. Yes, that's being honest.'

'In what way did I fuck up, Mr Gaunt?' she asked, control in her voice, which suppressed her winded fury.

'Simple enough, my dear. Put with greater politeness, there's a boring old saying, "Can't see the wood for the trees." You heard a story, an extraordinary one, and then you rejected its relevance. You were told about drugs importation and said to yourself, "That's off my bailiwick," and discarded it. You could not see, in my humble opinion, the wood for the trees. Your man's laudable, but useless, obsession with the narcotics trade is the trees but you missed a sight of the wood. Hear me. A boat, a remote shoreline, a collection… It was laid in your lap. It was the information that I was confident enough you'd find. It was why I backed you.'

She let the air seep from her lungs and hiss between her teeth. 'Yes, Mr Gaunt, I fucked up.'

'Get there.'

'Do I have the cavalry?'

'I rather think not – better to keep it close… Oh, yes. What's he like, the Crusader?'

'Rather sweet.' For a moment, to the intimacy of the phone, she giggled – then cut it. 'But damaged, quite badly damaged,' she said, with sincerity

'And capable?'

'Have to be, wouldn't he? Or he wouldn't have come this far.'

'He should be a bellwether to you – a sheep that leads and others follow, know what I mean? That island, Polly, is where you should be.'

The phone purred in her ear.

The van in the driveway had a logo of an antenna on its side and below, in printed paintwork, the slogan

'Better Satellite TV Reception Throughout Your Residence'. Two men carried boxes of equipment into the travel agent's home.

He said to his wife, 'I don't know what it's for, but they have me by the balls and if they twist it will hurt.'

'The Rahmans are only new rich, unimportant to us,' his wife said.

They stood in the hall, their children dismissed to their bedrooms, and watched the boxes taken past them, up the stairs and left on the landing. The two men came down again, went outside and returned with a collapsible ladder and tools. The loft hatch in the ceiling above the landing was opened, and they manoeuvred the boxes through the gap.

He said, 'They are from the organized-crime unit – they would make bad enemies, the worst.'

'The Rahmans are Albanians. We owe them nothing.'

Later, one of the men came down, went again to the van and returned with two galvanized buckets. The travel agent asked him why they were needed. He was told, matter-of-fact, that two roof tiles would be moved. From one hole there would be a view for the camera lens down on to the back garden of the adjacent home, from the other there would be a view of the drive at the next-door house and the front door under the porch. When rain dripped down between the shifted tiles, the buckets would catch it. He noted, and she did, that neither man had wiped his feet on the inside mat, and that the dirt from their shoes had made a track up the stair carpet. He did not complain, nor did she. Because they have me by the balls and if they twist it will hurt, neither dared to protest at the mess tramped into their home.

She held his arm. 'What would happen to us if Rahman knew what we have agreed to?'

'I thought of him as a businessman who had done well – but he is the target of the organized-crime unit.'

Any man in the city who read, daily, the Hamburger Abendblatt was familiar with the blood vendettas and feuds of the Albanians and the viciousness of their response when crossed. 'I don't know what would happen to us,' he lied.

Later the men came down the stairs with their empty boxes and their ladder, and one said that if the equipment worked satisfactorily they would be back within two weeks to change the batteries. The travel agent's wife now found halting courage. What about the buckets? If it rained, and the forecast said it would, for the next several days, who would empty the buckets when they were full and overflowed?

But the men shrugged in disinterest. They went out into the evening and left their trail of dirt behind them. There was the crunch of tyres on the drive. The act of betrayal of a neighbour was marked by the roar of a vacuum-cleaner on the carpets of the hall, stairs and landing, and above the replaced hatch in the roof, two lenses beamed down on the Rahman house.

The club on the Reeperbahn – across the wide street from the dour brick-built police station – was sandwiched between an Italian restaurant and a shop, now closed, that sold sex aids. The club advertised itself in neon as providing a bar, dancing girls and kino booths for single or multiple occupancy. Timo Rahman had acquired the club nine years before. The last conscious act of its previous owner, a Russian from the Dnieper region, had been to sign away the deeds in the belief that the transfer would save his life: with the ink not dry on the paper, he had been clubbed, then dragged out and thrown into the boot of his own car. It had been driven to the quayside by the Fish Market. As the effect of the clubbing had worn off he had kicked frantically at the tomb he was in as the car had been manhandled forward and had toppled into the oiled water. The club now provided some four per cent of the annual turnover of the Rahman empire.

'You will enjoy the show, Ricky,' he said.

He treated the mouseboy as an honoured guest. The best table, the best view of the girls on the stage, the best service. He was an attentive host. As a cosmetic blonde danced, and her implanted bosom bounced, he explained the history of the Reeperbahn street, the quarter where rope was made for the docks and the rigging of sail-powered trading ships, but the mouseboy was distant from him, seemed not to hear him and fidgeted with the stem of his glass. When the girl, naked now, finished her dance and stood full-frontal to accept the applause, he smiled with warmth.

'I am told by Enver that you have bars at home, Ricky, in London. But I think they are different from those in Hamburg. Let me show you what we offer.'

He had raised an eyebrow, the merest gesture. The manager hovered close to him and passed a padded envelope to the Bear.

'The speciality of the club, Ricky, is in the kino booths

– explicit videos…' In his own tongue he murmured a question to his manager, heard out the reply and turned again to the mouseboy. 'Many customers are satisfied sufficiently to return here, perhaps each year. The one I would like to show you is being watched by a party of factory workers, from Essen, where they make toothpaste. They are always satisfied and come each March.

We should see what they are enjoying.'

He led. Ricky Capel followed, and a pace behind was the Bear with the envelope.

They crossed the bar and he held back a curtain.

They were in a corridor lined by doorways in which were set small glass windows. He heard the baying laughter, as his guest would have, of the factory workers from Essen.

He took his guest to the far door of the corridor, the source of the laughter.

Timo Rahman peered through the window in the door. He saw a dozen men, in jeans and casual shirts, some balding and some grey-haired, some standing and some hunched forward on chairs, all of them, as they rocked in laughter, gazing at the wide screen on the far wall. The good boy, his best nephew, Enver had said the video was high quality, and the sound.

'Here, Ricky, look and enjoy.'

Because the Bear was behind him, pressed against him, his guest was nudged forward, pushed close enough for his nose and eyes to be against the glass.

Where he stood, Timo could see the screen. He saw Ricky Capel flush, his eyes widen. Around them, in the corridor, was a cacophony of laughter from the booth and the ever louder grunting from the girl on the screen. She rode her man. The man's head rolled, swayed, and he seemed to cry out but the noise of his little yell was drowned by the girl's grunts. He saw the curse slip from Ricky Capel's lips, but soundless.

More of the factory workers from Essen stood and now they clapped in the rhythm of the girl's down thrusts and some, bent with laughter, grunted with her, as she did. The Bear's weight was against Ricky Capel and he could not have extricated himself from the viewing window had he tried to. On the screen, in a crescendo, she thrust down and he thrust up, and now the grunting overwhelmed the laughter and the clapping – then they both sagged. She rolled off him and there was a long, collective gasp of disappointment from the audience, like a moan. She moved from the camera's view, and the mouseboy was left on the bed and in the moment before his stiffness fled him, he reached up – a kid at a football game who has scored a goal – and punched the air. The factory workers beat their hands together above their heads as if they were on the terraces of a stadium, and the screen went black.

Timo led them back up the corridor, but he paused at the curtain. He took the envelope from the Bear and held it in front of his guest. He let him read the address. The envelope was large enough to take a video cassette and he had written on it: Mrs Joanne Capel, 9 Bevin Close, London SE, England. Beside him, Ricky Capel panted and the colour had gone from his face, as if he was about to vomit.

'I think, Ricky, we do not have a problem.'

'No, Mr Rahman, we don'-t.'

'I think, Ricky, it is unnecessary for that envelope to go in the post.'

'Yes, Mr Rahman, I'll take him.'

'I think, Ricky, that always I knew I could depend on you.'

'That's right, Mr Rahman.' A small low voice with its character hacked from it.

They went back into the bar where another girl danced, where Timo took the envelope from the Bear and used the strength of his hands to rip it to many pieces.

'You sure about this, Dad?'

'Not happy, son, but sure on it.'

He turned the key, kick-started the diesel. The planking of the wheel-house of the Anneliese Royal throbbed with the motion, and the roar was in Harry Rogers's ears. Billy watched him for a moment, then turned and pushed young Paul outside. They had done better time up from the west than he'd anticipated, had hammered in the car up the motorway and there was – without anything to spare – enough of the previous tide to get them out of the east-coast harbour.

He saw below him, from the side window, his son and grandson working with the ropes, one on the quayside loosening them and one furling them on the deck.

Annie had said, on the step as he had left home, that just once – once in his life – he should have told his nephew, Ricky Capel, where to jump off, and she'd said, and meant it, that she'd break his back if anything happened to the boy, Paul – which was bloody daft, because if anything happened to the boy, out in those seas they were sailing into, then it was short odds it would happen to all of them.

The ropes were done and Harry edged them away from the quay, going in reverse. He throttled up power and black smoke spewed behind. When they'd climbed on board, the assistant harbourmaster had braved the wind and rain and come down from the sanctuary he shared with the coastguard and Customs people. Probably bored out of his mind because no other boat was putting to sea that night. Harry had blustered that mortgage repayments on the Anneliese Royal didn't wait on the weather, and had parried him with bullshit about being in place when the storm blew itself out. Good hunting, he'd been told, and the assistant harbourmaster had run for shelter.

They moved towards the end of the groyne, where the light flashed.

He could see, from the wheel-house, the big plate-glass window and could make out the small shapes of the assistant harbourmaster, the duty coastguard and the Customs woman, who was doing the night shift. They'd all have had their binoculars up, but Harry didn't see that because the rain ran rivers on the wheel-house. Ricky Capel had called him again and had given him co-ordinates for the German coast, but had sounded sort of distant and had said, 'It's not a hundred per cent, Harry. It may not happen. Just as likely you'll get a cancel from me. A good chance of a cancel, but you get moving. Don't tell the world where you're headed. If it's a cancel I'll call you on the mobile and turn you back. It'll probably be that, a cancel.' But the cancel call hadn't come.

The old boys, eighty years before, going to sea in a beam trawler under sail power and taking on a force nine or ten – fifty-knot wind speed – had had a saying:

'Grumble you may, but go you must.' He thought of them, weather hardened, and of the boat that would be his one day, which they had gone to sea in. She passed the end of the groyne, where a solitary lunatic watched his fishing-rod, and left the safety of the harbour. Waves slashed against the Anneliese Royal, lifted and dropped her.

'My chief waited for you, Mr Gaunt, but he's gone now. Has a dinner this evening with Home Office fat cats – I don't reckon wild horses would have pulled him off that. For my chief, a dinner with them is like a call to the Sepulchre. He asked me to hang on and see you, see how we can help. So, I'm what you've g o t…

Sorry about that.'

'I'm grateful to you, Detective Sergeant. I hope I haven't mucked up your evening.'

'You haven't – and please call me Tony.'

'Fine, Tony. Could we set some ground rules?

Official Secrets Act, no notes taken, conversation that didn't happen – you know the game. I don't want the party line, just want it straight, the way it is, and don't ask me why I requested this meeting. The subject of my interest is Ricky Capel.'

'Aged thirty-four, married to Joanne, one son, lives at nine Bevin Close, that's south London on the east side.'

They were in a chief superintendent's office with beech panelling, pastel slat blinds and photographs from courses of sitting and standing participants; there was a picture of the office resident in uniform and shaking the hand of the grinning prime minister. Among the photographs there were shields presented by Texan, Jordanian and Brazilian police forces – and the room was scrupulously tidy. Gaunt wondered balefully if, as a visitor, he should have removed his shoes before entering. What was a refreshing relief, the detective sergeant had pushed aside the leather-tipped blotter and the crystal ink-stand, and had planted his backside on the desk.

Immaculate as always in his suit and waistcoat, with his tie over the collar button, Gaunt could recognize a worker ant. A damned tired one… He liked such men.

'I'm assuming there are a hundred places you'd rather be than here, and I'll try not to waste your time.

What is the single most important thing about Ricky Capel?'

'That he's never been nicked.'

'He's a big player. Why has he never been arrested and charged?'

'Cunning, not educated, intelligent but clever.

Doesn't overreach himself.'

'As easy as that?'

'A guy who's never been nicked, each year he gets to be more careful, cuts down on the risk factor.'

'But you target him?'

The detective sergeant snorted, almost derision.

Gaunt liked that near streak of contempt for his question. It was not the right place for him to pace and intimidate, so he leaned back in the visitor's chair, swung his feet on to the desk and rested them beside the baggy flop of the policeman's jacket. He thought it would show a welcome disrespect for the high and mighty whose office it was.

'How does he walk round you?'

'Because we're in the quick-fix world. Focus groups and think-tanks rule us, and they say that targets must be met, must be. We have a slop of money coming in here at Criminal Intelligence, and there's budgets for Crime Squad and the organized-crime people at the Yard. Best way to justify the cash is to get results, achieve those bloody targets. What you don't do – and it's my chief's Bible – is think long-term. Resources are allocated at targets where results can be guaranteed.

Then my chief can go down the Home Office, take a dinner and spiel out the statistics of success. To go after a clever, cunning bastard – Ricky Capel – takes cash, manpower, commitment, with no promise of getting the handcuffs on him. He's doing very nicely, it's what he'd tell you… There's all sorts of wars being fought at the moment and I reckon we're losing the lot of them. My war, people-trafficking for vice and the importation of narcotics, is going down the plug-hole and fast. Not that my chief would tell you, but we got it wrong and we're losing. Is that out of order?'

'I wouldn't say so, Tony.' He asked with effortless casualness, well practised, 'What business would take Ricky Capel to Hamburg?'

He saw the policeman's eyes flash, and the rhythm with which he slapped his heels against the front of his chief's desk was cut.

'You're well informed, Mr Gaunt.'

'Why would he be there?'

'You know about Albanians?'

Gaunt said easily, 'I cast an eye over matters Albanian from time to time.'

'The big hook-up is with Timo Rahman, godfather of that city, supplier of the heroin that Capel brings in.

I don't know the route used but Rahman is the source.

The link goes back a long way, right back to Capel's grandfather. I read that in the file. The grandfather, that's Percy Capel, did time in the war in Albania and worked with a gang led by Rahman's father. That's where you'd find what the link is. Percy's an old thief and lives next door to Capel… not that he'd give you the time of day.'

'No, I don't suppose he would.' He knew more, and it gave him little pleasure, than the policeman – could have told him about a boat supposedly coming to an island off the Frisian coast of Germany, but that would have meant sharing. It was Gaunt's habit to leech blood, a one-way trade. He lifted his shoes off the table and glanced, with slight ostentation, at his watch, as if he had consumed enough of the detective's time. 'I much appreciate you staying on and meeting me.'

'What I'm saying to you, Mr Gaunt, is that Capel's supping with the devil, but for both of them it's a mistake.'

'How's that?'

'We've learned it. The Albanians suck a man dry when he thinks they're just partners, then move in and ditch him. The other side, Capel isn't in Rahman's league of skills and on anything big he would be the weak leg.'

'An interesting observation. I'll let you get on home.

Been grand meeting you.'

But the man was not finished, and gushed, 'I tell you, Mr Gaunt, it pisses me off that we're losing, that Capel and his like are winning. We've the courts and the legislation and the prisons, but we're not filling them. I could take you to an estate, not much more than a mile from here, where there's addicts and pushers who sell to them, and dealers, where there's old ladies who live behind barricades and in fear. I don't suppose that's in your remit, Mr Gaunt, old ladies getting their arm broken for what's in a purse.'

It seared in Gaunt's mind. He recalled the long signal sent him by Polly Wilkins that detailed hours spent in the Planten und Blumen garden and what a man had told her. It fell into place. A man had tried to claw back his life by climbing a pyramid. He offered no sign of it, and stood.

'Very helpful you've been, Tony. A last chore for you. Please, see if there's anything in the Capel file that might equate with a rat run – you know, a round-the-houses short-cut as an importation route

– any trace to a b o a t… Oh, if I ever wanted to go to that estate – probably very close to where I work – and meet a pensioner who was mugged for her purse, who would I go to see, and where?'

A slip of paper was taken from the chief's desk notepad, and the accompanying silver-coated pencil, inscribed 'To a Valued Colleague From the Police Academy, Toronto', scribbled something. Gaunt pocketed it without reading what had been written.

He never showed enthusiasm for information given.

Going down in the lift and out into the evening, he realized that he had spent an hour with a policeman who was so embittered by defeat that he had pulled the marionette strings of a broken man and given the poor beggar purpose – quite bizarre, but life was ever thus. He reflected: a man with purpose in his step could always be found useful work.

He lay full length on a platform bench.

Police had come to him a half-hour before and towered over him. They'd had pistols, handcuffs, gas and batons on their belts, but he had shown them his passport and his onward train ticket. The man had grimaced contempt, the woman had sniffed, and they had left him. A train came through, pulling half a hundred, Malachy's best guess, wagons of chemicals.

He was awake, had been since the police had checked him. When the wagons had rumbled away into the night, a silence fell round him and the station's life died. He had reached Rotenburg. He must wait, chilled and damp, another hour for a night service that would take him – via Bremen, Oldenburg and Emden – to the coast.

Off the coast was an island, but he did not know what he would find there, or if he would find anything.

He sat on his bed and a blanket shrouded his shoulders.

The nightmare had worked in the mind of Oskar Netzer. If he lay on his bed, he would sleep because of his age and his tiredness. If he slept he dreamed, and the nightmares chased relentlessly after him. He saw men loosen the noose round a frail neck, take down a child's corpse and put the noose on another.

The blanket gave him sparse warmth. Always at the last, the picture in his mind was of his uncle Rolf, who had helped to drive the children, their carers and guards, their doctor and the ropes to the cellar where hooks were set in the ceiling. Because that blood ran in him, he was part of the evil. He had come to the island of Baltrum, with his wife, to find peace but it escaped him. The blood in his veins was contaminated. He threw off the blanket and stood up heavily. The joints of his legs – as if he was cursed – ached at the movement, and he went to his living room. Respite, if it were to be found, would be in the bundles of planning applications that littered his table, and the drawings of a proposed new sewage works.

Only by fighting each change that came to the paradise, Baltrum, could Oskar Netzer exorcize the guilt that ran in his blood. He pored over applications and the proposal… Anything and any person who was new to the island and threatened it must be fought root and branch – as Lutherans had said three centuries before – without compromise. The light, from a low-wattage bulb with no shade, beamed down on him as he scanned typescripts and drawings, and was saved from sleep.

He had many names, discarded, and in the morning he would have a new one. In the morning he would be given the passport and documents for Social Security.

He had the name given him at birth – Anwar.

He had the names, for a week or a month, on the travel papers with which he criss-crossed international boundaries.

He had the name Sami, student of mechanical engineering and lover of Else Borchardt.

He had the name Mahela Zoysa, on whose

Sinhalese identity he had come into Germany and which, in the morning, he would give up.

He had the name, in the Organization, of Abu Khaled but he was far from the company of colleagues. For Abu Khaled, a man had died in the top-floor rooms of an apartment – that sacrifice had been made for him.

He preferred to sit on the linoleum, with his back against a wall and a calendar above him that showed a faded picture of the fortress of Gjirokastra in Albania. He shunned comfort, preferred the floor to a chair or a mattress… Alone, unwatched and delving into memories he would choose the floor to rest on.

The memories danced for him, changed step as if a beat altered, seemed to him to be on a loop and always returned to him as the boy, Anwar – a child of the city of Alexandria.

He had been born in 1972: that year, as he knew now, was when Palestinians had assaulted the festival of the Munich games – and had not been prepared: the planning had been inadequate. A year later, 1973, a month after his first birthday, as he knew now, Egyptian troops had stormed the Zionist defences on the Canal, but had lost and been humiliated. He was Anwar, named in deference to the president whom his father supported. He had been nine when patriots, rich with faith, had killed the Great Pharaoh, Anwar al-Sadat, and later, as a teenager and out on the breakwater beyond the yacht club and alone, he had learned to be shamed by his name. He should have enrolled at the university in 1991, but he had gone from his home in the night with a small bag, and had left no note. He had never, since the night he had gone from his father's house, sought to make contact.

His father, if not dead, would now be in his seventy-sixth year. His mother, if not dead, would be in her seventy-third. He did not know if they lived, if they knew of the life of their youngest child. Nor did he know of the careers taken by his two brothers and his sister, of their aspirations and ambitions. He did not know if the family still occupied the house with the veranda at the front and the wide balcony beyond the bedrooms at the back, whether there was still a yacht club for them to visit and the Semiramis Hotel for them to eat at… Did they still buy books at the Al-Ahram shop? Did they, any of them, have love for him? Did they curse him? Was his name ever mentioned in that house?

It was, he accepted it, weakness to hold memories.

In the morning he would take a new name, and the next night or the night after he would travel on. Then he would find the young men and women, whose names, addresses and coded greetings were locked in his mind.

He waited and had never challenged the promise made to him that a man would come.

He worked in a shop selling sportswear and shoes.

Each day, from his home in the Manchester suburb of Wythenshawe, he travelled on three buses to get to the Trafford Park retail complex. He was twenty-two and his parents were from the old military city of Peshawar, in the North West Frontier province of Pakistan, but they were now anglicized and his father worked in a local education authority office as a clerk, his mother part-time on the counter of the local library. Both had expressed surprise when at the age of seventeen, he had begun to attend Friday prayers at a mosque close to the city centre, but they had not prevented him. A year and a half later, abruptly, he had abandoned the religious training; then his parents had shown relief. What gave them the greatest pleasure was that their one child had a job with corporate training and a smart outfit to wear at work. It was where he had been told he should find employment, and he had accepted dirt wages and long hours. He had seen, last Christmas and last Easter, the masses pour into Trafford Park to saturation point – more people than had been in the Twin Towers that the martyrs had flown against. A man would come, one day, into the shop or would sit beside him on one of the three buses and say, 'And let not the hatred of others make you avoid justice.' He would answer the man: 'Be just: that is nearer to piety.' The words from the Book, 5:8, were clear in his mind and always with him.

He waited for the man to come and served in the sports shop during the day, and prayed each night in his room that he would be worthy of the trust placed in him.

Malachy felt the train slow, and as the rattle of the wheels died he heard the scream of sea birds. He reached up, unhitched the window blind, let it fly clear, and rubbed condensation off the glass.

He did not know whether he had reached, almost, the end of a journey or the start of one. Could not have said if this was where, almost, an old life ended and for him a new day started. Would not have been able to tell himself if this was the place, almost, that disgrace was finished and where he would now find the searched-for quality of respect.

His face was pressed against the cleared window.

Under the platform lights passengers, dazed from the night journey, coughed, spat and hacked their throats clear, then lugged down suitcases, parcels and rucksacks. The station was Norden. He could smell, distantly, sea air, but by the time the train jolted away and picked up speed, the rain falling from the darkness obscured the glass. When he stretched up and looked down the length of the carriage he saw only emptiness. He was alone. Through the mist now settled on the window, he saw occasional front-porch lights, an illuminated forecourt to a petrol station, a car showroom. Some of the roads were lit like daylight and some were dark – and the gulls cried louder, as if greeting him.

The last stop of the train's route – from Munich, on to Cologne, then to Rotenburg, Bremen, Oldenburg and Emden – was the harbour at Norddeich. It was flat there, exposed, and the wind ripped at flags and came in battering gusts on to the side of the carriage. The isolation, he thought, was precious to him and gave him strength. He stepped down from the carriage.

Ahead of him, tied up, was a ferry. To his left a marina of yachts nestled behind a sea wall, and to his right, crowded close, a fishing fleet. He saw the wind, the rain, hit the ferry's superstructure and rock the masts of the pleasure-craft and the small trawlers.

He walked towards the ferry and the elements almost keeled him over. He braced himself to advance. He found a man in a precariously rocking hut, who smoked an old pipe and had a coffee mug cupped in his hands as if for warmth.

Was this the boat, the ferry, for the island of Baltrum?

The man, bored and cold, shook his head.

Where was the ferry that went to the island?

The man growled, indistinct, 'Nessmersiel/ then sucked at his pipe and billowed smoke.

How could he reach Nessmersiel for the ferry?

He should go by bus.

When and where did the bus go from?

First the man shrugged. Then he took his pipe from his mouth, sipped from his mug and waved back in the direction the train had come.

Malachy thanked the man for his kindness and wished him a good day. In another world, the old one, he would have felt a spurt of anger at the slowness of the extraction of answers… but the former life of Malachy Kitchen had ebbed. He smiled. He went out through the door where a length of string, holding it open, strained to breaking-point. Where he had been, what had happened to him, had slowed his anger, deadened it.

The wind scurried against his back as he walked past the deserted train, away from the tethered fishing fleet and the rattle of rigging on the yachts in the marina. Rain bit at his shoulders and hips and at the back of his legs. He walked well and the pains, aches and itches were behind him. He was alone, as he would have wanted to be, and his journey was nearly done, or was nearly started.