Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 12

Andy drove, Zeinab dozed.

He went steadily, allowed the local drivers – cars and vans and lorries – to power past him. Her head was on his shoulder.

Because her breathing was calm, and her hand was loose on his thigh, he allowed himself a puckered frown. He accepted it, that the problem eating at him was a career breaker. He could imagine, easily, how it would have been for her during the long night hours.

He headed towards the source of the problem, and before her eyes had closed and her breathing slowed, and her fingers had found his upper leg, he had played the part of the friend from home who was infatuated, obsessed, the ready-made chauffeur who asked only vague questions. He thought her too ill-informed on life outside Savile Town to bother to question whether a guy was that simple, that easy to befriend… She would have undressed, put on whatever nightclothes she had packed, had waited in her adjoining room for his light knock on her door. She would have imagined that she could open the door, look at him with a fraud’s shock, hesitate, let him enter, let him lay his fingers on her arms, then loop them behind her, then kiss her, then move her back towards the bed, then… and she had waited. She had come to his door. She had stopped outside it, would have steeled herself and might even have raised her hand, and been about to knock. She would have heard his bogus snoring, volume lifted, would have listened, turned away. He had told her in the evening and across the bistro table how tired he was after the drive south. Once she had cried out as if a nightmare, had slotted into her sleep. Just the once. The problem would not disappear, he would not ignore it.

They had spent the half-way point in the journey in a camp-site, buying coffee and then walking over fields, using a farmer’s track. He had held her hand, comfortable and not passionate, and assumed that an equivalent exhaustion plea, as done the previous night would be barged aside. The light had been starting to dip. Cattle grazed on what grass they would find, and the wind whipped them and tugged at her coat and her hair. The track they’d walked had been scoured clear of puddles. Song birds were pitched in the air then blown towards the olive groves beside the cattle pastures. It was beautiful country, small farmhouses, cottages for workers, clumps of poplar trees without foliage and bent sharply, and a few clouds scurrying overhead. He had noticed, could not have helped it, the way that the wind plastered her clothes on the contours of her body. It was a growing problem that infected his mind.

He saw elegant cranes, swooping gulls, and swans that cowered in the shelter of the river-banks, and a solitary heron that patiently fished, and when they had walked their shadows had merged. The scale of the problem ran riot in his mind, and he could not exclude it, and he did not know what the answer would be… With the wind buffeting her, Andy Knight – his identity for that day, that week, and for all of the months of the last year – thought she looked brilliant: which was the problem. They left the camp-site.

Marseille loomed below them. When they were within sight of the sea’s churning waves, he eased her hand off his leg, gripped the wheel with his right hand and touched her chin, lifted it, and saw the way that her head jerked up. He recognised the stresses burdening her. Like a frightened cat, stiffening, arching her back, wide-eyed and alert, then seeing where she was, and with whom. Below them, away to the south, was the grey concrete ribbon of the airport runway and a passenger jet was on its final descent. He played innocent, gave no sign of recognising the conspiracy. Smiled at her, warm, and the traffic sped past them.

‘Glad you did not take a plane, quicker but less fun.’

She stumbled with the start of her reply. ‘Yes… well… yes – always more interesting, don’t you think, seeing, absorbing new horizons? Yes, glad.’

The road took them down a long, fast, winding hill. He saw white clusters of tower blocks, built like fortresses to repel strangers. Far in the distance and hazed in the dropping light of the early evening was a massive cathedral with a steep spire. He had never been a tourist, had no interest in it. Sightseeing would have been a dreary waste of his time, and he concentrated on steering a safe line on the road, and of maintaining his cover. The easiest way to screw up, the instructors said, was to relax, to be loose-tongued, to forget the disciplines. She told him they should head for the centre of Marseille, and was plotting a route on her phone screen. He was just a friend, nothing more and nothing less… they were near to the sea and the docks, and the night was closing on them – which was the heart of the problem.

Karym sat in the growing darkness and pondered.

What he should have asked of his brother, how his brother might have answered him.

He nibbled on pitta bread. No filling inside it. If he had gone back to the apartment, where his sister would be after a day in the shopping mall, there would have been salad in the fridge, but he could not be bothered to walk that far – not just for tomato and cheese and cucumber. He felt good now as the light fell. A girl had come up to him, had settled beside him on the rock that blocked entry to La Castellane, and had brought him the piece of bread. Normally, that girl would not have spoken to him because he had a damaged arm, had no friends, had a brother who dangled him but gave him only crumbs from the table… Now he had the status of a minor celebrity after his experience when rivals attacked, most especially because he had saved his brother’s cash.

Question. ‘What does a big man, a man with reputation, want with you?’

Answer. ‘Mind your fucking cheeky tongue.’

‘Everyone knows his name… In the city no one knows your name. Why do you have to run to him, like a lapdog?’

‘You talk too much, you do not know when silence is better.’

A girl had brought Karym a piece of pitta bread, would have straddled him willingly now, but not have known how to talk about an AK-47. The wind blew embers off the cigarettes of those around him on the perimeter of the La Castellane project. He sat and ate, then noted that two kids edged close to him, and that the Algerian boy pushed the Tunisian forward, but both were reluctant to come closer. Karym would have liked to possess a deeper voice, would have enjoyed being able to command. He watched them. They seemed eager to speak, but also frightened of him. He finished the pitta bread that the girl had given him… nobody, ever before, had been nervous of him: nervous of his brother, not of Karym.

‘Yes?’

‘Did you know…?’

‘Know what?’

‘…who saved you. Who, do you know?’

‘How would I?’

‘At the place, my cousin was there. He saw that…’

Karym interrupted the Tunisian boy. ‘Saw what?’

‘His cousin saw, saw who fired,’ from the Algerian boy.

‘A cop fired, just a cop.’

‘Which cop, what cop, do you know?’

And he was bored, and he saw the start of chuckles lighting their faces. ‘I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t…’

Both spoke together. ‘You should care, should know which cop you owe your life… it was the cop they call Samson… the marksman, the executioner, that cop… you owe your life, Karym, to Samson… what will you do, go to L’Évêché, ask for Samson? Take some flowers for him? Invite him to come and take lunch in La Castellane? Be his friend…? You live because of the cop, Samson.’

The chuckles had become giggles, then their laughter shrilled at him. They ran. He seemed to feel his knees weaken. He stayed sitting, if he had tried to walk away from his perch he was not sure that his legs would support him. He remembered, hot on his skin, the blood of his attacker, and the weight of him when he had kicked the scooter off, had pushed away the body, lifeless from one shot. He had heard that Samson, the killer, had been inside the project a few days before, when his brother had made the barbecue, and had used the big sight on the top of his rifle barrel to scan darkened windows and the rooftops of the blocks, all the time looking for a target; trapped in his nostrils behind the balaclava would have been the sweet and sickly stench given off by the burned body and the gutted car. He spoke to himself, softly, not for anyone else to hear, whispered the words.

‘Thank you, thank you, m’sieur. I am grateful. Always will be grateful. You are my friend.’

And meant it, a true friend. He would like to talk with the cop, Samson, and show off his knowledge of the Kalashnikov, and… He buried the thought. A friend of a cop? Not possible. The wind was sharper, and the overhead cables were braced against it, and sang like a wounded creature. He felt isolated and no longer revelled in his new attention, and wished his brother were there with him.

Hamid shivered, took a step forward, then hesitated.

The voice rasped behind him. ‘You queasy, young man? You scared?’

And he would not have dared show his fear – but could not take the second step.

Deep in a narrow inlet that ran between steep and pitch-black cliffs was a tiny village comprising a few holiday homes, and some traditional fishermen’s bungalows. It was reached by a rough track that, over centuries, had been gouged out of the cliffs. Four-wheel drive and a steady nerve were needed to reach the hamlet. He had gone down with increasing reluctance, on the Ducati motorcycle. The area of coastline was called Les Calanques. It was most often visited by boat, in high summer, and tourists were ferried under the cliffs and through the islands. It was now the depth of the Marseille winter, and tourists rash enough to contemplate a boat sightseeing tour would have arrived in the vieux port in Marseille and found notices on the quayside telling them ‘Cancellation, due to bad weather conditions’. He could not delay long in case his fear shouted to the men snuggled clear of the wind in the back of the vehicle. In front of him, as he stood on a rocking pontoon, one confident stride away, was a fishing boat. The boat was the size used by locals who went out with the long lines and brought in lobsters, crabs, and monkfish – the great prize and paid the best rate. It had an open deck behind a wheelhouse. The vehicle’s headlights showed a paint-scraped hull. Two men were aboard.

The older one and probably his teenage son, worked at ropes and at pouring fuel into the engine, and they wore boots that gave them a good grip on the wooden deck. They seemed oblivious to the pitch of the boat. Hamid stood on the floating pier leading to the boat. He struggled to stay upright, had twice groped for an imaginary handrail, and each time he had been close to toppling… and this was in the shelter of the headlands to his left and his right.

But Hamid had been recruited because he had a reputation for achieving results. A man of power and influence had pursued him. The possibility of big rewards had been dangled in front of him. He was dazzled by the man’s name, and the awesome stories of his ruthlessness as an enforcer… Hamid had thought he could be plucked from his present status as one of several local leaders in the La Castellane project who had a franchise, permission to sell, on one stairwell. If this man, Tooth, let it be known that he favoured Hamid it was the same as opening the doors of a bank vault. On the pontoon, his legs unresponsive, he tried to find courage. Behind him a vehicle door opened, then shut, and he heard the sound of shoes kicking at the gravel leading to the pontoon. He knew little of the sea, could not swim. Dinning in his ears was the roar of the water chasing the length of the inlet and rolling up the shingle beach, and he heard the clattering of waves on protruding rocks, and in the edge of the headlights’ cone was spray bouncing high.

A voice growled. ‘Do you want my work or not? Are you shitting your pants, boy? Are you going or staying?’

He breathed deep. There was a spit in the voice behind him. He was pushed. Firmly, but not violently. Enough force for him to stumble that elusive last step, and then a void was under his feet. He was propelled into an emptied space, and then he tripped on the boat’s side. He fell forward, cannoned down on to the decking and felt a bruising pain in his left shoulder. The voice now was a cold chuckle. The older man and the boy eyed him for a moment, then they pulled him up. They were still in harbour, still tied to the pontoon, and the boat lifted and fell. He was given a life-jacket: neither the fisherman nor the kid wore one. The engine started up. They headed out towards a wall of darkness, had not reached the open sea before Hamid threw up over the side, what he had taken for his breakfast and the snack for his lunch, and retched until his throat was sore.

The motion was worse. He said a prayer, first time in years. Recited what an imam had taught him – and could not speak and had no idea how the terror could be confronted. They went for a rendezvous with a freighter, to take delivery of cargo.

Tooth watched the navigation lights round a marker buoy.

‘A powerful night out there, Tooth,’ Crab said when his friend was back in the car, the door closed and the noise of the night shut out. ‘A desperate night.’

‘The best of nights, my good friend,’ Tooth said. ‘The customs, the coastal radar, they see nothing. The waves are too high and the boat too low in the water. It is a good place, and time, to receive parcels, packages.’

‘He was shitting himself… You know, Tooth, when I was a kid there was a guy in gaol who looked, each morning, as if he’d just wet his pants – fear. We still hanged people then, and there was this guy who had bad sweats because a man he’d shot was in hospital and had relapsed, and if he died short of a year after he was hit then it would be murder. Murder then, in this category, was an execution job, rope and a scaffold. He was counting off the days willing the man to live through the next week. He’d taken a turn for the worse… What I saw of that Arab of yours, he was shitting and sweating. What’ll it be like out there?’

‘Don’t think about it…’ A low laugh. ‘Nowhere you’d want to be. I put the bar high for him. Either he is a punk or he is someone I can use. You test a man before you trust him.’

‘We are going to do well out of this, and even better once the route north is tested, proven. You ever fired one, Tooth?’

‘No, wouldn’t want to. It’s what little bastards do. Losers and failures, and the Baumettes gaol is full of them, and all of them thought shooting with an AK made them a big man and gave them status. Me, I say that firearms are for the ignorant.’

October 2013

Dazzer looked around him. He had survived… with little to spare.

Had to hand it to the chopper people. The helicopters had arrived when ammunition was low, when the opposition was beginning to creep forward, little gooks ducking and weaving between the stones of a dried-out watercourse, and inside fifteen minutes they would have been gearing themselves up for the final charge.

He saw bodies, saw a couple of the lorries alight and, rare good fortune, they were loaded with food and general supplies and not the ammunition and ordnance they often carried, and saw an old man who half sat and half crouched and had lost any ability to fight on, and saw the rifle.

Dazzer, operating out of Bagram and doing runs towards the Pass, down beyond Jalalabad, was no longer military. Had been once. Now in his 40s and with a stomach to prove it, along with a shaven head, a few steroid squits livening his complexion, and tattoos over much of his skin, had served with an infantry battalion, then made the sensible choice. The rifle was near the old man but out of his reach. Dazzer was one of the scores who had chucked the Queen’s Shilling and gone for the better pay offered by the host of private military contractors who picked up the military load during governments’ downsizing of the Afghan quicksand. He had a good eye for such things and reckoned it an old weapon, a collector’s piece. He had not shot the old man himself. The two helicopters, Yanks, had done the damage and lifted the possibility of this being Dazzer’s final day as part of the ‘mortal coil’ business. Could have been a bad day for him except that he was a survivor, with the scars and scrapes to prove it, and a couple of times during his Afghan pay days, the medical teams had wondered if it was appropriate with this guy, given the bawdy nature of the ink work on the cheeks of his backside, to call for a priest. They hadn’t, no padre had administered last rites. One of the boys, a scouser, had been hit but a medivac bird had taken him out, not that the regular military ever fell over themselves to get PMCs clear of harm’s way and into a surgery tent, but the civilians put food on their tables and bedding on their cots, and often enough it was bullets going into their magazines. They waited now for an armoured escort that would push a burned-out lorry, written off, over the edge of the tarmacadam road and into a gully. He reckoned the weapon the old man had dropped would earn him something.

He’d seen him from the start of the attack. Dazzer reckoned the old man had rheumatism, or arthritis, had mobility problems and had gone as far forward as the factor of surprise would permit. From the first exchange of gunfire, Father William had been at the front… good name for the guy, Father William, as good as any. Dazzer had kids in a couple of cities in the UK, might have had more he didn’t know of, and there were two more that his wife cared for. There had been times at home when he had read his kids – the legit ones and the illegits – bedtime stories, and he reckoned he did a star turn when it was You are old, Father William, the young man said, And your hair has become very white: And yet you incessantly stand on your head – Do you think at your age it is right? And he would do the full act beside the bed and read the next two verses upside down, head on the floor, and the kids would howl with laughter… Not that he saw them anymore because they were older and didn’t need stories, and their mums didn’t want him back in their lives. It was a Father William who lay, very small and seeming to be no threat, on the roadside. He’d fired the rifle. Dazzer had seen him, and it had near knocked his shoulder away. He knew most versions of the AK-47, but did not think, a cursory glance, that he had handled this one before, a vintage piece.

Perhaps Father William had bad legs and perhaps he’d had poor eyesight, and there was a broken pair of spectacles, heavy black frames twisted and snapped, in the dust of the hard shoulder. He had not been a first: a ‘first’ for Dazzer would have been when a mujahideen, old or young, took off and did a runner. This old boy, a good old boy, had not broken the mould. Dazzer dragged on his cigarette and would have murdered for a beer. The convoy leader was trying to hurry the bulldozer, because this was an idiot place to be hanging about. He walked over to the body. Gave Father William a quick glance, and picked up the weapon.

Worth a bit, or more than a bit… It wasn’t for Dazzer to interfere with the body, but permitted to handle the weapon, make it safe. He thought him ‘a good old boy’, Father William, because he had approached without being able to duck and weave, too stiff in the joints, and the Kalashnikov stock had been at his shoulder, and he’d only fired aimed shots, but his eyesight must have been heavily impaired if the thickness of the lenses was a judge. Had come on ahead, the mob of skilled fighting men behind him. Dazzer reckoned that the guy had felt it necessary to prove himself, show that he was not a burden. Father William had fired three times at Dazzer and the gun had been wavering and it would have been pure chance if one had hit. He was rakishly thin and his clothes hung on him, like he was a scarecrow, and his beard was loose and tangled, and strands of hair protruded from under his cap. There had been two spare magazines in a pocket: nothing else marked him as an enemy, willing and able if his eyesight had held up or he had been lucky enough to blast Dazzer to oblivion… who would have cared if he had? Answers on a postcard… He’d tell them about the old boy when they reached their fortified camp, had had a couple of tins each… there must be a story about the age of the weapon that Father William had carried.

It looked to be worth money. He’d heard about dictators and the like, those who had milked their own treasuries, lived in grand sprawling palaces, or did well on the narcotics trails, and they’d bought AK-47s that were gold-painted, real gold, like a bloody fashion accessory. But he reckoned there were others who’d be only too happy – if they were a war groupie or wanted a souvenir of their combat days – to have something that looked to have done business at the coalface. Dazzer had been shot at often enough with Kalashnikovs, and had twice suffered wounds that the field medics had patched, and he knew that age meant no loss of effectiveness. The bloody thing would last for ever. It looked to be 50 years old, but Herbie, who he’d meet up with once the road was cleared and they moved on with a reinforced escort, would be at the stay-over camp, and he’d know if it were even older. Dazzer didn’t do souvenirs. Some of the drivers and the guys riding shotgun used to collect anything they could pull or chop off a dead fighter, but not him. Didn’t do mementoes but did do the sale of anything that looked to have value stamped on it. And, added value was the blood on the stock that leaked into the notches and the bit where a sliver of wood had long been detached, made a tiny puddle there: blood would stain well and would be a talking point for a prospective purchaser.

He picked it up, made it safe, wrapped it tightly inside the folds of an old khaffiyeh that he’d used to keep dust and dirt out of his face since ‘winning’ it for that purpose in Iraq, out of Basra. Two magazines went with the weapon. He was pleased to have his hands on it, and it would fit snug in his armour-plated cab, down under his seat. It was vintage stuff and would fetch a good price, and Herbie would confirm it.

When he drove away, after the bulldozer had cleared the road, he found that his hands were shaking. Did not usually have the trembles after an action, but it was the sight of Father William that had done it, him being pitched without ceremony down into the gully with the wrecked vehicle, while his rifle was well wrapped and well cared for, and under Dazzer’s seat. He’d keep it safe until he had the big freedom flight out, then go to his buyer, and it would be a decent earner.

Zeinab’s phone call was done.

Reservations had been made by the London people, those she had met in the park. Naturally they would have been cautious.

She would challenge him. They were into Marseille and she did not speak, let him concentrate on the signs and driving in close, fast traffic. Her hand had tightened on his thigh. As he increased speed, she increased the pressure of her fingers. He had a strong face, she thought, not an artisan’s. He drove well. A strong face and calm eyes. Something nagged. A vehicle ahead of him cut between lanes, carved through his road space, and all around them were blaring horns and oaths, but he had stayed cool, swerved, braked and manoeuvred, had driven on… why the nagging concern when he was a professional driver and did not swear or flick a finger in the air? He did not wriggle under her hand, did not make eye contact with her. It would be her challenge. The nagging doubt, or confusion, was gone.

They went below ground, down into the car park she had directed him towards, and named the hotel’s street.

He zapped the car, saw the lights flash and the locks click home.

He carried the bags.

She had hooked her hand in his arm, and carried a sheet of paper with a photocopied street map… she found La Canebière, the main through road in the city. Evening had come and crowds were dense on the pavements. He felt her stiffen and her hand was claw-like on his arm. She had seen the soldiers; he had not. They were a stick of four and the smallest of them had a big combat radio on his back. They had rifles, helmets slung from their webbing belts, wore bulletproof vests. They seemed wary, alert, fingers alongside the trigger guard. The soldiers came past, then were lost in the crowds.

‘Why are they here?’

He said, ‘Don’t know… No idea.’

Ignorance was better than the alternative: ‘They are here, dear Zed, because this country is awash with north Africans intent on getting to Paradise, lifting a leg over six dozen Paradise-based virgins, and the best way to stop them, limit their effectiveness, is to shoot them, given half a provocation. Double tap to the skull. Shoot one of the beggars in the chest or stomach and he might muster enough reflex to squeeze off any detonator button in his hand – blow the side off his head and he may drop what sets his gear off and the bloody thing might just fail… end result, a few shoppers, some school kids out on a big deal evening, might live. It’s what the troops are there for.’ Shrugged. How would a heavy goods vehicle driver know why troops were on the streets of France’s second city?

They crossed the road, on to a shopping street with a reputation, but he thought it cheapskate. She led. They cut away from the main drag and came into a small square where men hosed down the cobbles and others packed away unsold fruit and vegetables and dismantled the tables. Low light, and music and laughter bubbling from a score of fast food places, and cafés, and the shadows were deep. She’d paused under a high neon strip in a bistro’s doorway. Checked her map again. She was looking around her, and the wind caught at her hair and her clothing, and shifted rubbish from where the market had been, and saw the hotel’s sign. The notice outside said the rate was 95 for a single, and 105 for a double, with shower. They had come down Rue des Récolettes, were now in Cours St Louis. Opposite the front door was an armurier, the double windows filled with pistols, rifles, machetes… She was watched. Men ogled her, women looked at her with suspicion. They would have seen the texture of her skin, noted that she wore her hair uncovered. She looked hard at him, then led the way to the door. It was his problem… He heard the receptionist question her: it was she who had rung in, had changed the booking?

‘Yes, that was me,’ she said. ‘Not two singles but one double, with shower.’

She was told that a card was needed; she rooted in her bag, found her purse, counted euros on to the desk… then looked back at him and he saw, clear and defined, the challenge in her eyes. She was given the key, told what floor. And no one there to feed him advice, nor to reiterate the regulations of an Undercover on the payroll of SC&O10, and hardly cared, and followed her up the stairs.

‘When I give up, you know what?’ Gough had his hands together like a supplicant at Sunday morning worship, and looked across the cotton tablecloth and over the small candle, and his elbows were firmly planted on the table.

‘What should I know about?’ Pegs replied, curt.

Their order had been taken. They were the only clients and a woman behind the desk left them in peace: seven of eight tables empty, but the woman’s first remark to them had been, inevitable, to enquire if they had a reservation. They were near to their hotel, and had wandered along gloomy streets in the old quarter and had found this place.

‘I am going to walk out of Wyvill Road, out on to the pavement, and then…’

‘And then what?’

‘I will have shredded my pass, and my jacket will weigh a whole ton less. Ditched the burden that I carry, and…’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Gough. So tedious when you’re maudlin.’

‘I will take off my coat, chuck it in the air. I’ll use that wall beside the pub to get myself upside down. I will handstand my way across the street…’

‘You’ll fall on your face.’

‘Why, why will I do it?’

‘Asking me, telling me?’

‘Trying to tell you… Failure, lack of achievement, not enough success. I go out through the door, magic card gone, expenses reference number deleted, and I’m toast. Maudlin? Perhaps. The truth? Yes. Whether on Rag and Bone, we have lined up a good result is no matter. We screw down this kid, and the boys that liaise with her, and we have a few bottles and think we’re God Almighty’s élite of detectives. Is London safer the next morning? Is Manchester, or Leeds, or bloody Dewsbury? Don’t think so. There’s a gap on the ground and there are plenty willing and able, to fill it. We are not going to win… there is no Mission Accomplished day, even on a faraway horizon. What personal sense of esteem can we fool ourselves we deserve to enjoy? We’ll go and nothing will have changed. At best what we have done is shove a thumb against the crack in the dyke wall. Just temporary, sticking plaster. There’ll be another crack the next day, the next week.’

The woman brought their food. Chicken for her, fish for him. A litre of house red to wash it down.

Gough barely looked at his plate. ‘We are so thin on the ground. We’re trying to do this job with paupers’ money. We have a man on the plot and pitiful resources deployed to protect him. Why? Because there are a hundred operations competing with Rag and Bone, and we are so fortunate that we happened to be around at the right time and laid a hand on our man’s shoulder. We have no slack, Pegs.’

‘Eat your food, Gough. Enjoy.’ She topped up his glass, filled it to the brim.

‘I cannot estimate how he will shape up. Don’t know where he is. I have a duty of care, am supposed to have, but it’s abrogated.’

‘Less time worrying about him, Gough, more time worrying for yourself – and worrying about what happens to me. If we lose the package, worse, if we lose our asset, you and I will be so alone. No one will stand our corner, and…’

She stood. Her plate was less than half cleared. He might have had a few small bites at his chicken. She cleared her glass, gestured for him to empty his. She walked to the counter and put down 100 euros in notes. She picked up the order pad, tore off a couple of sheets, and would fill them in later, do it with left-handed script. She led him out of the door. The wind caught them on the street, narrow and poorly lit, cobblestones rough under their tread.

‘Sorry and all that, Gough, but we need to get close up, personal, do it better than we did last night. Or we might as well get on the first plane out. Ditch it. Cannot leave him much more bare-arsed than we’ve already done… Agreed, it would be nice to win sometimes.’

He felt crushed, emotion drained, no ambition. They walked arm in arm.

Out in the city centre, by the hospitals and the principal cemetery – on Rue d’Orient – Major Valery prepared for bed. He had a routine. Had followed it since the start of his duty in Marseille after his transfer from the north. He thought that routine as relevant now, or more so than when he had brought his children and his wife here from the city of Lille.

The children were now in bed.

His wife had spent the evening preparing for tomorrow’s classes, but was now upstairs, undressed, in bed, reading. First he turned off all the lights on the ground floor. Then he would sit a full fifteen minutes in darkness and would listen to the sounds of the street: then he would check the pictures from the discreetly sited cameras that covered the front and rear of the property. Then he would go upstairs, his pistol in his hand, would change into his pyjama, would go to his side of the bed. The pistol and his mobile phone would be placed on the table, next to the lamp.

He could not have accurately measured the threat to himself – or to those he loved. The Major, of course, was reasonably trained in the art of personal survival. He could shoot straight, could be effective in unarmed combat, could use a baton and strike an enemy’s shoulder close to the neck, disable with the intensity of the pain. What he could not do was be present for the school day to protect his wife, now concentrating on her book – nor safeguard his children, one sleeping quietly and one with a hacking winter cough. He assumed a real and clear-cut threat existed. He might not know the names of all those men who sat in the rotten core of the city’s commerce and who had reason to hate him. His defiance of their power and influence was fostered in his refusal to accept bribes, arrangements that would benefit him… there had been another attempt to suborn him that evening. So blatant. A Mercedes car parked outside L’Évêché, a message sent inside from the outer gate telling him that he would learn something to his advantage if he came out of the building and spoke to the driver. He had come. Through the opened window of the costly black saloon had been offered a tightly wrapped package. It might have contained 20,000 euro, might have been 30,000, might have been a long lens image of his children in the playground, of his wife returning from the weekly shop, bags around her feet as she fished in a pocket for the key. He had seemed to reach for the package, as if accepting it, and it had been released, but he had not grabbed it. It had fallen in the dirt. He had turned, walked away, and the courier would have had to leave his car, walk round it, pick up the padded envelope, return it whence it came. He would have made those enemies angry, and the ones in the Town Hall, and the councillors and those in positions of patronage, and the gangsters when he took them off the street.

He would climb the stairs. He would go to the bed and lay the pistol and the mobile phone beside the lamp. The weapon would be armed, the safety engaged. The bell on the phone would be turned low… He barely thought of the English detective team, trying to do a job for which the necessary budget was not available. He turned out the light. He slept lightly. He liked to have the pistol close, and needed to have the phone beside it.

The room was clean. The bed was covered with a white sheet and a floral duvet. A print on the wall showed a view of the vieux port. Outside, a radio played New Orleans jazz. A wardrobe covered half of the wall between the door and the bathroom. An easy chair was lodged by the window that looked on to the square below. The curtain was drawn but thin, and the snap of the wind penetrated the open window and fluttered the material. On another wall was an Impressionist’s view of Les Calanques, steep white stone cliffs that were brutally sharp and the sea beneath the rocks was gentle. A forgettable room, suitable for those anxious to hurry on with their lives.

A strip of light shone at the bottom of the bathroom door.

They’d had a café supper, meat and salad, ice-cream and coffee.

Andy Knight – a temporary name with a personality easily altered to suit necessities – sat on the bed. Little said at supper and neither of them drinking alcohol. Total inevitability recognised. Not much of a room and a noisy bed which would not inhibit them. He had opened his bag, pondered what to take out, gone for clean socks and a clean shirt, and a wash bag. Had cleaned his teeth, had undressed, was on the bed, naked, waiting… she had gone to the bathroom and had carried a nightdress with her.

He supposed the problem was solved. It had not arisen when he had taken on other legends. She’d washed and the plumbing reacted with a gurgling in the pipes. The toilet flushed, then the taps ran again… He could tell himself that it was what they both wanted. He saw the stern face of the Detective Chief Inspector, and the contempt at the mouth of the civilian woman, and the hypocrisy was rank because both, so obviously from their body language, did hard humping. Relationships between officers on a team was as frowned upon as sex by an Undercover with a target… they were Gough and Pegs. He had no name, had glanced at her passport and seen that she used a phoney one with the actual photograph but a different identity.

He had been an ‘action’ man, had walked as a volunteer into a ‘heart of danger’, had been admired, praised for his ‘dedication’, might have been a combat hero but for the camouflaged hole burrowed out by a buck rabbit on the common above Lympstone, but understood little of women, had never known a long, serious bond, something that might have a future.

The door opened. she switched off the light. She wore the nightdress, and the curves of her body were well shown by it… He thought her more nervous than he was.

One problem settled, another rose to take its place.

Would he…? Would he turn her in…? She sat beside him, then reached across him and the bare skin of her arm brushed his chest. Would he? Probably would. Would she do her double damnedest to kill him if she knew the truth of his loyalties? Probably would… They were touching, like young lovers, clinging to the vestiges of innocence: were able to do that because the lies lived strong and well.

Turn her in, shop her, tout on her? What loyalty, after doing it on a noisy bed above the square by the street market in central Marseille, was she owed? Did affection exist? Questions and issues rampaged. Lust or love, or just eating what was piled on the plate and in front of him? The last thing he saw clearly on her face was shyness. Her hand was on the stem of the bedside light and it wriggled to find the switch. It clicked. She was a shadow, barely lit by the lamp in the square, filtering through the curtains.

He would not choose when the arrest squad came for her. He might be there and might not. He could be bundled aside as the guys spilled out of a convoy of cars and covered her with aimed firearms… could have been eased away from her and then would see her taken down and weapons a few feet from her head on the flickering image of a video recording. She would be in shock, near to wetting herself, perhaps not realising at that moment that the heavy goods driver she had taken in her arms and… in trauma when she did know. Not screaming, but quiet, crushed and huddled. His call. For him to decide. She was close to him, warm against him. Would he turn her in, after this and when the assignment dictated it, betray her – and walk away, and have a beer at the pub and blow a kiss at the girls who pulled the pints, and take time somewhere at the end of a far track where the demons could not travel, nor trouble him, and go back to work with another name and another target and Rag and Bone ditched? Would he? And have a hug and a squeeze from Prunella in the office? Would he consign her to HMP Holloway, maximum security? She covered his mouth, kissed him… Of course he would turn her in. Of course.