Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 14

He had showered first, flushed away the smells of the night, had dressed casually – not the previous day’s clothes, left stubble on his face. Zed had taken her turn in the bathroom and he thought she scrubbed herself hard as if she too wanted to erase what had happened; or perhaps she always did, washed fiercely. He was not proud…

Had reason not to be proud. The psychologists who monitored them had a mantra about burn-out which was apparent when the invented legend palled, lost relevance, when the Undercover might cross over and take up the target’s cause or criminality, or when the strain of living the lie became overwhelming. He preferred what an old instructor had told him, a woman of almost unique ugliness, never knew her name, and the stories of her verified successes were often rumoured; she had been with him at the start but he’d not seen her for months before being Phil, then acting out Norm, then Andy. She said that the danger, and the time to quit, was when the Undercover knew that he, or she, was ‘running on empty’. Had ignored the evidence of the needle drifting down towards the red sector on the gauge, was on a long road, far from any garage marked on the satnav, had gone on too long… was, in effect, a danger to colleagues, a pushover to adversaries, was putting himself at risk and the great mass of citizens that should have been better protected. She said that it wasn’t brave to hood-wink the team leaders and carry on with symptoms hidden, was not courageous to be in the field and refusing the inevitable… shelf-life, she’d said, was finite, might not be long: the Undercover would know it long before it became apparent. Dressed, ready to go, rucksack packed with the little he had brought, he sat on the bed, and thought some more. Thought where they might be, the people who had seemed – once – important to him.

They would not have been up yet, his mum and dad. There was a machine at his father’s side of the bed that made their morning cup of tea. If their cat was still alive it would be marching over their duvet, unless it had been run over, or died from an ailment, might be another. There had been a photograph of him in their bedroom, but it might have been binned. Perhaps, in privacy, they wept at the manner of his going, some crap about ‘important work and going under the radar and better that we lose sight of each other. I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t matter’. Some went home to their wives and kids too often, or to their parents, and the addresses were under the bad guys’ surveillance, and ended for the innocents in a shambles of late-night evacuations, even new identities. He thought of them… thought of girls who he might have known better and had not dared to… thought of men, women, who were either hard cases in the narcotics distribution chains, or just hapless and not knowing another way of survival, or who believed in a cause with passion and were intelligent but could mete out violence. Where were they? Cell doors not yet opened on the landings. Banged up and watching breakfast TV, and remembering the shit face they had trusted and who had lived a lie amongst them… thought of a girl – soft skin, a defiant jaw, good hips and good breasts and a good brain – and wanting to kill, or help to kill, and was now towelling herself dry: he had kissed the skin and ridden the hips, and his finger had brushed her breasts. She would be a song bird in a small cage, and would spit if she remembered him. And thought of others in the Marines, in the classrooms, in the uniformed police, but all gone. It would all happen in the next several hours.

Usually, at the end, before he’d sidle off to the shadows, disappear, the bosses would give him a cuff on the back, or a brief hug, tell him, ‘Well done, mate, you were fucking awesome. Done great, have a rest, then we’ll have the next one lined up. Of course we will, because you’re a star boy.’

She came out of the bathroom, had left her towel there. Walked past the window where the curtains were open, didn’t seem to care – seemed bleak, like her soul was lost, and started to dress… And he thought of the pair who ran him. Probably decent people, bags under their eyes, and smacked with lack of sleep. Demands that they justify the budget, and that a file could be closed, and the next one jacked up on the screen. Never-ending, never finished… and saw the script on the TV sets that announced ‘Breaking News’ and later there would be the footage from mobile phones and the sound of the screams and perhaps the gunfire, and the people running with the gurneys to the ambulances bringing in the day’s casualties at the Accident and Emergency entrances. They were Gough and Pegs, and would be somewhere outside the hotel door and would try to tail him, and him drop the message, and it was odds-on that he’d not see them again, have no call to and have no wish to. If he failed they failed, and there would not be a psychologist to offer up excuses for them: burn-out and running on empty. Just another day.

She’d pulled on her clothes. Then went back into the bathroom a last time and carried something but he did not see what it was. He would drive north to the channel port where the ferry was docked. They would not fuck that night. After the crossing he would take her wherever she told him, and she’d walk away with a package under her arm, last he’d see of her would be when she rounded a corner… wrong, next to last. He would be behind a screen in the court, she would be in a guarded dock… He would not sleep with her on the boat but would sit on the deck whether it rained, hailed, whether a gale blew. Out of the bathroom, and seemed thicker round the waist, and… Just another day, as easy or difficult as the rest of them. She zipped her bag, set it down beside his. He went round the room carefully and checked the floor, and the cupboard and under the bedside tables. He found the wrapping of one of the condoms, and pocketed it. They would leave nothing, no indication they had been there.

‘Some breakfast?’

‘Just something small.’

‘And you’ll tell me the plan, Zed, for the morning and the afternoon.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He carried the bag and the rucksack down the stairs.

Hardly any breakfast for either of them.

He stood behind her, and Zeinab paid the bill. He came forward and said they wanted to walk a little on La Canebière before leaving, and asked if their bags could be lodged for an hour. Why not?

Another couple were behind her, and the woman coughed loudly as if to let her know, forcibly, that they needed to hurry. Could have had a room above them, or on the floor below them, and the man let her do the complaining and merely wheezed. Indifferently, they were thanked for their custom, wished a good day, and it was added – an afterthought – that the management looked forward to welcoming them again… Zeinab had a reservation, made in London, for two single rooms, had exchanged them for a double, should have had a refund on the bill, had pointed to the sum required, but there was a shrug and she was eased sideways by the next check-out. And did not fight it… it was what Scorpion, or might have been Krait, had said to her. Not to attract attention, not to be looked at, nor noticed… She took the receipt, stepped away.

She gave it to Andy, was asked if she wanted it, shook her head. She led and he followed.

The early sunshine lit her face. She blinked, then focused. The knives and firearms in the shop window opposite gleamed at her. She was pushed by the flow of people going to, coming from, the open market, and thought how her mother would have been envious of the chance to buy fruit and vegetables of that quality, and how much better it was than Dewsbury’s market, and ground her nails into the palms of her hand to block the thought. Her parents, spiritually, were gone from her life. She would go home again for a weekend – if the university kept her – or would have to move back if they did not, but she would no longer be the servant of their beliefs, ideals, all changed when she had been straddled on the pillion and gone to the home of the boy in love with the Kalashnikov assault rifle and when she had been over Andy, almost an idiot but caring for her, and helping him.

Opposite the hotel, across the width of the small square, were a couple – middle-aged and probably British – and the man had a map unfolded and pored over it, and they talked busily and the woman had an opened guidebook. He was half a pace behind her.

She said they had an hour. He seemed remote to her. Merely nodded acceptance. And herself? Uncertain, excited, wanting to share but unable. As if she wrestled with herself… arms flailing and hacking with her knees and biting and scratching, and the signs of it suppressed. But above all, superior to the uncertainty, was the excitement. Not about religion as taught in the mosques at home, not about the politics of victimhood as dripped from the TV screens after Westminster or Manchester or the bridge over the river in London. About the adrenaline rush of excitement – not about the denunciations of police chiefs and ministers, or even the stories of the deaths of her cousins. More about the worship of the rifle that the young man with the crippled arm had shown her, and his love for it, and his yearning to hold and fire it… to have that power. Hold that fucking power… an obscenity, and her mother would have near fainted and her father might have taken his belt to her… that power. They strolled, like neither of them had a care. Not the cause but the rifle entrapped her: she went willingly because the weapon had won her… Zeinab knew little, beyond the basics, of counter-surveillance techniques. She did not look behind her… and Andy’s free hand held hers. They walked slowly and climbed the gentle hill and she looked in shop windows.

Abruptly, Andy asked her. ‘Where is it?’

‘Why do you need…?’

‘I have to plan the route out… I’m not an idiot, Zed. What you do, I don’t care. If it’s illegal, not my problem. To me, you are fantastic, brilliant, incredible. I am privileged to know you. What do you come to Marseille for, what does anyone come to Marseille for? For weed, for nothing else. I have no difficulty with it. Obvious. We get it on board, and we go. Going fast, quitting the place, burning the rubber. It is in your hand and we are gone… okay? That’s good? Where do you meet the supplier? I tell you, Zed, I’m not an idiot, and you should trust me.’

She saw only sincerity. She looked into his face and watched the honesty in his eyes and had thought that afterwards, far away, there would be a place, a refuge, remote, and they might be together, safe and hidden – another day.

‘I have to be at the Place de la Major, by the cathedral, beside Quai de la Tourette. I take delivery there.’

‘And I’m not asking what you want… but I’m there, will watch over you. Trust me.’

She would, believed him. In a bookshop they saw a cat comfortably perched on second-hand volumes and the sunshine fell on its face which was calm, content, and without a trace of fear. They climbed and the street widened. And did not look back.

Karym did the tail…

He was captivated by her, amazed that she had come in the night to La Castellane, climbed the stairs of the block, visited him, seen his bedroom, showed interest in his collection of Kalashnikov books. Had held his stomach as he had ridden away to the north with her as his pillion, could still feel her shape against his back, and her softness, and remember the strength of her arms, the sharpness of her nails. Without the experience of the money satchel, and the Samson moment, he would not have dared anything as rash as taking her – a stranger, an outsider – to his home. He was a changed man…

… took the far side of La Canebière and flitted between doorways, lingered when they did. It was what his brother had told him to do. Hamid had returned in the night to the project, had gone to his own apartment where his own girl was. Had called for Karym, kid brother, to come at dawn. Had boasted of his new relationship with the great man, with Tooth. Had told him – like it was a hero’s story, not an imbecile’s – of going into the water, catching a packet before it sank, had been 35 minutes, at least, in the water, had been congratulated. Then had been taken to a hotel on the south side, and a room provided while he showered, cleaning the cold and the seawater off him, and his clothes returned washed and dried and ironed. The driver, Tooth’s, had then driven him back to the quayside and he had ridden away on his bike, and had known his future was secured.

Two hours in his own bed for Karym, and no sleep, just tossing with the memory of her feel against his back and her touch of his stomach, and recalling what he had said of the rifle, and her understanding that he was an expert. What to tell her? Could be how the army of North Vietnam had out-gunned the Americans, their Marines who had the M16, could tell her that, and believed she would be fascinated, interested… if they had the time together.

He followed. Any teenager from La Castellane knew how to look for a tail following, and protecting the girl and her friend. He had not seen one, but it was what his brother had ordered him to do, watch for it. He saw shoppers, saw troops in a patrol of four, saw police in a squad car, saw a tourist couple who seemed continuously to argue over their map, saw no tail.

She had agreed to what he suggested.

His conclusion: her courage was failing her… easy enough to be with other fanatics and close to what was familiar and to play the good calm kid, and with a basket load of necessary resolve. Their sex would by now be out of the window, back in history… It was becoming real, and far from what she knew, and cash was invested in her. Her face had gone sombre. Clear in his mind… her brief’s accusation of entrapment, and him under oath in the box. Denial. Who to believe? Her flickering eyes and wavering gaze and bowed head in the dock, and his straight ahead look into the jury’s eyes. Her blood-lust against his courage. A no-brainer for the judge when he summed up the case… He would lie better than she did. A piece of cake – but not proud of it, seldom harboured pride… And almost, put vulgar, wet herself, he reckoned, when she’d been far beyond any horizon on La Canebière, lost in thought and had failed to shift out of the path of another four squaddie patrol. Pretty near been spiked by the rifle barrel. Her eyes would have focused on the soldier, the weapon, the webbing and grenades and the flak-jacket: he had simply assumed she’d step aside. She had deep lines on her forehead: he read them as acute anxiety. Held tight to her hand.

And he made her laugh. Gave her arm a jerk. He pointed across the tram tracks to a narrow central park that divided the traffic lanes. The sun was pretty on the trees, tables and chairs were outside cafés, and there was a bandstand for the summer season, and it looked good… looked better with the giant shapes of a giraffe and whatever a new-born one was called. They were double life-size at least, had a myriad of meaningless lines painted on the smooth plastic of the bodywork, and it seemed like they had just wandered in off one of the side streets, or out of a bank, or been in a bar, in a café: that’s what he said to her. For a moment she had thought him serious, then had burst out laughing. He supposed most of the kids, in the countdown to a suicide attack and wearing the vest, or any of them who drove the kid to the drop-off point and watched him walk away, first paces to Paradise, or who were just the lowest form of foot soldier, would have felt the stress before playing their part. She held tight to him, might have stumbled if he had not been there, then regained composure. He saw them, back on the pavement, bickering, and him with the map and her with the guidebook. Seemed to come steadily closer. It was a good move and he respected it.

The man said, ‘Excuse me – you speak English? Please, if you speak English…’

He replied, ‘I do and am. How can I help?’

And Detective Chief Inspector, Gough, came close to him. He said in a firm voice, ‘Bit lost, and the boss over there seems to think we’re in one place, and I’ve a different view on it. Have a look at our map, please.’

Well choreographed. The civilian analyst, Pegs, had parked herself on a bench a few yards away, had then addressed a remark at Zed, something anodyne, but she responded and gave Gough and him space… only for a few seconds and not to be laboured. Something like, ‘Where will we need to get the Metro to…’

The voice tailed. Andy Knight, who he was that week, day, hour, jabbed with his finger on the map and found the Cathedral de la Major down by the waterside, and said softly that the relevant place was Place de la Major and Esplanade de Tourette. Said it would be there in an hour. The pick-up. Would it be open, the big voice boomed, but Andy apologised, did not know, called her and started to walk away. She came to him.

‘Where were they looking for?

‘Some cathedral.’

‘You showed him, knew where it was?’

‘They’d been arguing, and there are two cathedrals.’

They walked on. He thought it a cleverly done brush contact, as it had to be, and Gough had done the switch in voice level correctly. Had to have been clever. The boy was easy to recognise. The arm, maybe a polio or maybe botched surgical intervention after a break, hung awkwardly, and it was easy to recognise his weight and shape and the same clothing as the night before under a light in the square below the hotel window. At the top of the hill was a jewellers, and he led her inside, and murmured close to her ear.

‘I don’t know where you’re leading me, Zed, don’t want to know. I still say it, you are more special than anyone I have been with before…’ Not saying much because that field was bloody near empty, but the dose was well poured and had a high sincerity content. And he needed her trust, and her confidence. ‘… Won’t take a refusal. Something to remember Marseille by.’

It was 150 euros, a thin gold bracelet of fine links, simple and understated and a private type of gift: it would sail through on his expenses at the end of the assignment. Inside, the manager had seen the pair of them and had tried to lever Zed over towards the windows where the rings were. He paid, fastened it on her wrist, and the light lit the gold chain. And the pendant on her chest shone, markers of his deceit. They went out, and crossed the road and she laughed again at the sign of the monster giraffe and the little one… in his mind was the battering of what seemed a drum beat. Something inevitable but he did not know what.

His wife was in uniform, that of the Municipal Police, assigned that day to an area of Marseille that was affluent, for the smart crowd from the blocks lining the Avenue du Prado. She had put on her pistol, and her belt, from which was slung the kit – cuffs, canisters of gas, a baton – and asked him, from the door of the apartment, the familiar question.

‘Are you home for supper tonight?’

‘Don’t know, don’t see why not.’

‘Anything special – I am just going to schools. Talk about drugs. You?’

‘Planning – a buffoon from Paris is coming. A protection screen. We’re talking about it.’

‘Those people from England, did they…?’

‘No idea, maybe they went home.’

He was told what to take out of the freezer so that it would have defrosted for their dinner, together or separately. She closed the door after her. He’d have five minutes more with the newspaper, then follow her out, go to his meeting. An interesting day or a dull one. ‘Samson’, the executioner, had no preference.

‘You know something?’

‘I know plenty.’

‘Heh, you mess with me, Tooth… My difficulty, I think more of the past than the future. I am comfortable in the past, but the future confuses me.’

‘I tell you, Crab. You talk shit.’

‘My past is good. I am a success, respected. I have a big house, men duck their heads to me. I have around me what could be called ‘‘the best police force that money can buy’’, you like that. That’s good, yes? As you have, Tooth… To get there, some men lost their lives, others have a worse limp than me… But, what happens next is a concern to me. What’s round the corner.’

They were on the patio. The wind had shifted, coming now more from the south, and the rugs over their knees were already layered with the fine sand that blew in from the Sahara deserts. Tooth’s man had brought coffee for them, and biscuits.

‘It is big shit that you talk, Crab – did you sleep poorly?’

‘A bad sleep, and a bad dream.’

‘Do I have to hear why? You playing at a penitent in a confessional?’

‘No. The dream is personal. I…’

There was shipping on the horizon, heavy enough to ride the storm, and other craft that went in and out of the docks, but precious few fishing boats. He understood the fear that the French gangster, his friend, created. Could see why the Arab had bloody near drowned rather than face him and cough up a story of failure. A hard man, a hard face, and the tinted glasses masked nothing. Himself, he had, mildly put, lost the appetite for it since the dream.

‘You have cold feet, Crab. My old friend of many years, a gang boss thought to be fearless, ruthless, and now old and frightened. It is hard to understand you – what was the dream?’

‘Personal, mine alone.’

‘What was the fucking dream, Crab?’

‘I shouldn’t have spoken, forget it.’

‘I dream sometimes, my old friend, of the first time I killed a man and the first time I had a girl. I tell you, they are not bad dreams. Killed many and screwed many, and none is a nightmare. Spit it, Crab.’

‘About what happens…’

‘A riddle,’ he mimicked. ‘You say ‘‘what happens’’. It’s monkey talk. It means?’

‘My problem. I started it. Knew what I was doing, and called you, and you did the graft, put it in place.’

‘Good to hear from a valued friend. Of course I helped. You asked and I answered. Tell me – ‘‘what happens’’ – in plain talk.’

‘They don’t have weapons like that, not where it’s going. Not where a flood of them are ending up. It is mayhem, it’s death, pain. An automatic rifle takes killing to a different level. Way up. It is something bad, what the dream said.’

Almost a sneer, like their mutual love affair was failing. ‘You should take a pill, Crab, and then sleep without a dream.’

‘It was just a dream – sorry, Tooth, rude of me – only a dream. First time I killed a guy and first girl I shagged… The guy was a dealer, didn’t want to clear a debt. He screamed, God, like – I’m told – pigs in an abattoir, a hell of a noise, so much blood. He went into concrete, foundations of new houses. The girl was good, both of us fourteen. I reckon she liked my pants, City – Manchester City pants – better than what was inside them, she said, cheeky little bitch. I’ve not had many that were better, and she was the first.’

‘You all right now? Don’t like a friend to be unsure, an old friend.’

‘I’m good now, thanks.’

‘Don’t want an old friend going weak.’ Not spoken like a threat, gently said.

‘Have to keep telling myself ‘‘I just do business’’, keep saying it. Can we talk about something else, Tooth?’

‘Like the second killing or the third, like the second girl or the fourth, fifth, sixth…?’

Two hands met, veined and calloused, the stains of sun damage blotching the skin, but each strong, fearsome. And they were laughing. Tooth told him when they would leave to do the bit of ‘business’. Crab wanted the exchange done, the transfer completed, himself out of this fucking place. Should never have come, knew it, and kept on laughing because that was expected of him. Two old friends, raddled with age, each clutching the other’s hand, and laughing because that might kill his dream. And home by that evening and back where he was safe.

August 2017

The mother of Nico Efthyvoulu had given him the money to buy it. She had gone into her widow’s bedroom after he had told her of his chance to purchase a small stake in a new bar that would open near the train station. Tourists visiting Athens, going to the ruins, walking among the Acropolis stones, would never be close, but he had told his mother that there would be good local trade. She had gone to her tin, kept under the bed, long emptied of sweet-tasting biscuits, and returned to him, in the kitchen, with the bank notes. He had smiled, told her it would be a fine investment, promised the money would be returned when profit showed. It was a month short of a year since Nico had been released from the young offenders’ institution. His mother was anxious to the point of desperation, that the boy, 21 years old and with gelled hair and smart clothing from the charity stall at the end of their street, should have a legitimate focus in his life.

Hot, almost to stifling point, and near to midday, and the sun scorching the streets, he wore a long coat that was suitable for when the snow came. He watched the bank and steeled himself. He needed the length of the coat to conceal the weapon he had purchased from a man in the quarter of the city behind the harbour… and the bastard had tried to screw him. The agreement was for 425 American dollars, cash. He had already lost out on the exchange rate, and then the bastard had insisted that the cost of the rifle would now be $500. What had been promised, what they had shaken hands on – $425 in a wad of old and untraceable notes – was left on the table. Gone from the table was the AK-47 and the loaded magazines that went with the sale… Much of that money would be needed for the new dentures required by the bastard, and perhaps some would go to the costs of rewiring his broken chin. Nico had never been gentle, not as a child and not now as an adult, when crossed.

The bank was quiet and had few customers at that time of day. It was a good neighbourhood, and most of the residents would have survived, not with anything to spare, the collapse of the economy. They would have done their banking when the place opened, when it was cool, and they took out their toy dogs. He sweated because of the thickness of the coat.

All that Nico Efthyvoulu had been able to buy was an old weapon. He had been assured, before rearranging the bastard’s face that it might have been manufactured years before, proven by the serial number – many numbers but finishing with 16751 – but its reliability was guaranteed. He had gone into the high wilderness north of the E75 ring road, on a foul day when few walkers would have ventured out, had found a discarded can, had fired two shots it. The first had missed but the stone face behind it had shattered. The second had pitched the can over. A good hit, and two were enough to satisfy him. The mess of scratches and gouges on the wood stock were confusing because he did not know the cause of them, or the reason they were there. Until this morning he had kept the weapon in a bedroom cupboard, at the back, the door locked.

He straightened. Some kids, ten years or so younger than himself, were playing football in the centre of the square. He passed them. At the entrance to the bank, he paused, then cranked the lever that controlled the shot selection, went to ‘single’, took a deep breath and felt the weakness in his knees and the shake in his hands, and hoped his voice could muster authority. He pulled up the knotted dark handkerchief around his neck until it covered the lower half of his face. The doors swung open in front of him.

The kids abandoned the football and watched, waited, eyes popping, mouths gaping.

Inside, in the cool, there was only one other customer, in earnest discussion with a cashier on the far side of a high screen, older with thin grey hair, and a suit but no tie. A girl was counting money at an open till beside her colleague. He tried to shout, sound commanding, and the counter girl looked at him, seemed bewildered, like he was part of a game show on the TV, Saturday night. But, she hit the alarm button, might have been below her counter, might have been a button on the floor. It shocked him, and his reaction was to fire at her. About as dumb as he could get, and there was as yet no cash offered him, stacked notes on the counter and bound in wads with elastic bands. The bell screamed in his ears. He had not hit her because the glass deflected the bullet up over her shoulder and into the wall behind. It should, perhaps, have been newly made glass that was proof against even a high velocity round, but the cut-backs around all sectors of Greece’s wrecked economy dictated the glass was sub-standard, there for show and image. He yelled at her again, but had picked out a feisty one. Behind the glass with the spider’s web of lines and distortions, she bawled back at him. He fired again, again, each time releasing the trigger and then squeezing another time on it. He had not looked sideways until he made out the other customer’s yell for him to chuck it down. Had he heard that…?

And turned, and looked into the face. The lower part of the face was almost hidden by the service pistol the man held, arms extended, eyes above the V and the needle sights. It registered. The man yelled his identification, a police officer. Both fired. The pistol was aimed and the rifle was at the hip and loosely pointed in the direction of the idiot, the fool who had had no call to intervene. Nico Efthyvoulu could have wept that it was his luck, his crass fortune, to try to rob a small-time bank, and find himself standing beside a cop. The stock, scarred and marked and ugly, cannoned back and into his hip and spun him, and the fierce, searing pain hit him in the back. He heard the girl behind the counter scream, shrill and hysterical, and heard the impact as the pistol clattered from a loose hand and hit the floor. The man who’d held it sagged at the knees and the first of his blood was falling on the pistol. Fucked up, all fucked up, and the pain ran in rivers down his back.

He turned, staggered, towards the door. As if for a valued customer, the door automatically opened and the warmth of the street buffeted his face. He lurched through, doubted he would get any further. It had killed him, the rifle had destroyed him, and he had lied to his mother to pay for it. He lurched to the bottom step and the kids were in a line on the far side of the street. The pain had lessened in his back and now there was numbness, and weakness. He would not get down the street, would not reach his home in the little wretched Citroen, all he could afford… the rifle slipped from his hand. Nothing left for him… He saw the kids. They came across the street. In the distance was a siren, faint but coming clearer. He thought the kids came to help him. Wrong again.

The boldest of them scooped up the rifle. They ran. They whooped in excitement, then scampered as if for their lives. They went round the corner, and his eyes misted. If he had had the strength, before the weapon had fallen from his grip on the steps, he would have taken it by the barrel, two hands beyond the curved magazine, and swung it high above his head and smashed it down on the imitation marble steps at the bank’s entrance. Would have battered it until the fucking thing broke… but Nico Efthyvoulu did not have the strength, saw little, and heard only vaguely, and there was blood in his mouth.

Hamid had lectured his brother. Where to be and when.

He had used his girl’s hair-drier to get some of the moisture off the packet. A lousy night was behind him, little sleep, nightmares of drowning, trying to read the big man’s remarks, repeated endlessly, and wondering whether he had secured an alliance… The package seemed insignificant for the trouble taken, but not for him to query. Funny thing, and not yet settled… plenty of talk about what he might do in the following months, what might be put in his path, and the influence that Tooth’s reputation carried, and good contracts… Not agreed was what his payment would be, and when the big bucks would begin to roll his way. Had not drawn the lines before, joined up the flag points. Had trusted. No figures to chew on. All about the future, what might happen. Options? Could hardly write it all down, then threaten to reveal all to the guys in L’Évêché because the chance was high that Tooth owned half of them, would be told, would send some boys out either to cut him up with half of a Kalashnikov magazine or – worse – put him in a car, do a barbecue on him. Did not know an option. A fast thought: easy to run a small-time distribution and sales business out of a stairwell at the bottom floor of Block K, difficult to run with a man such as Tooth, but too late to be thinking it now. Another thing to consider, Tooth had never touched the package, did not open it, examine it… and the fisherman might have been a nephew or might have been in obligation. Hamid thought he was out on a branch, his weight starting to bend it, make it whine and creak. He used tape to fasten the package against his chest and underneath his heavy leather jacket, and he’d wear his biker’s helmet with the dark visor.

It would take a long time for him to forget the feeling of agony in his lungs as the air disappeared and the pressure grew, while he had scrabbled to get a grip on the package – and he had not been paid, was on a promise. And his brother had brought a girl, a small-bit courier, to the apartment where he lived with their sister, and said he had talked to her about the history and power, and effectiveness of the AK-47 weapon, the Klash, and been talked about… What a fucking fool, would need some discipline and some sorting… Much on Hamid’s mind as he came out of the project on his Ducati 821 Monster, and took the Boulevard Henri Barnier down towards the main drag that led to the city centre… and why they were doing the business in the open, not in the recesses of a café he did not know, no bastard had told him.

He might ask about money, might just, when he was there, had Tooth close to him. Might… Felt the package hard against his chest.

Pegs said, ‘We’re not going to get close again.’

Gough said, ‘Little chummy is like a shadow nailed to them.’

‘Have to go on what we have.’

‘Anything else and we show out – we’ll seem like the unwanted bloody relative who keeps pressing for invitations.’

‘I’ll do it.’

They had exhausted the tourist bit. No way was there justification in again approaching the ‘love bird’ pair who had and started to come down the hill of La Canobiere, and Pegs had spotted the flash on the Tango’s wrist, gold on pale tinted skin, when the pair had come out of the jeweller’s door. ‘Gone native, definite, and humped her all night’, Pegs had said. ‘The loose cannon, difficult and dangerous to rein in, and the little guy is the tail to verify they are clean. Can’t go near him,’ Gough had said. She had her mobile out, and he was back studying the map, and the couple were 150 yards behind, but coming on briskly. She dialled the number given her and punched out the text, sent it. It was about back-up, what their regulations listed as a duty of care. She shrugged, done.

Gough said, ‘Then best that we go find ringside seats.’

The Major’s phone fidgeted.

Never one to give deference to authority, Samson reached across, took the phone, checked the message. His boss was on his feet at a lectern at the front of the briefing room, using a stick to highlight the proposed route the Paris visitor might take, and where there were interfaces of potential danger… He had, himself, been on duty on the morning that a police chief in the city had done a reconnoitre around the roads and locations that the Prime Minister of France, then Manuel Valls – February 2015 – would travel on in the afternoon. Included in the itinerary was the La Castellane project, where he’d visit a centre for ill-educated potential juvenile offenders, on to which money had cascaded. As the police chief’s cavalcade had approached the housing estate, a minimum of six Kalashnikov rifles had opened fire… the message sent, ‘Don’t fuck with us’ or ‘Strangers not welcome’. Done with a directness… they had gone in at midday with overwhelming force, and in the afternoon the Prime Minister had been rushed from one handshake session to another. Then the circus in the afternoon had pulled out, and the place had sunk back to its obscurity, and to its usual trading. It was a lesson, and one learned… He was in full flow.

The marksman stood. His chair scraped. He held up a single finger. There was a growled ripple of annoyance that a uniformed man of low rank in the GIPN should interrupt an important meeting. The single finger told his superior, the Major, that he should wrap up in one minute. He did.

Samson said, ‘The English have bleated for help.’

The Major said, ‘Then they shall have it, perhaps with a lullaby sung by a nanny.’

He was told where the meeting place would be.

In the car, powering away to the armoury where his gear was, Samson remarked, ‘Open air, wide spaces, well chosen ground. Many approach routes and many exits by vehicle or on foot. Easy visibility and the chance to identify a reaction force. A location I respect, might have chosen it.’

The Major said, ‘And I cannot call up a bus load of your colleagues and hope for a degree of covert observation. But, I had exhausted even my own interest, so you have my gratitude for your intervention.’

They headed for the armoury. Not to have gone there would have been dereliction. Without a rifle, Samson was the same as the great strong man of the Bible after his head of hair had been cropped, or after the famed executioner had lost the support of his tricoteuse. Small arms were of no importance to him. They went fast but could not use the siren to clear their way, only the flashing lights.

‘What do you feel, Major?’

‘I feel for those English. It has seemed too simple, without crisis. I think they may not have recognised where they are… they will learn.’

‘I have to believe, Zed, that I will come out of this in good order. You understand, I do this for you.’

She might not have heard him. Her eyes roved round her. She stood and he was at the wheel of the VW. His mind was straightened, the dilemma answered. He could see the shape of her, and the wind tugging at the cleanness of her hair, and the clothing that hid little of her, and the defiance of her chin and boldness of her eyes: knew what he would do. She spotted the boy.

The boy came on an old scooter. He saw it more clearly in the bright sunlight than in the poorly lit square, past midnight. Not the transport of any person of importance, no status about the Peugeot runabout. A kid’s toy… and he wondered how far beyond her depth as a sympathiser with the cause, a jihadi courier, she now was. The kid seemed to ogle her, like she was a trophy. Not a social worker, Andy Knight – who he was that day – shut his mind to her problems, and to the sight of her. The kid came towards her, running the bike slower, letting the engine idle under him, and pointed to the pillion.

Again he shouted, ‘You stay with me, Zed. With me.’

The sun caught the bracelet of gold chain that he had bought her an hour before. He would have sworn that she would have obeyed him, muttered an explanation to the kid, walked back to the car. Wrong… she smiled at him. She gave him the wide rare smile, one saved for the grand occasions, the one that had seduced him, and beckoned with her finger, and her leg was lifted, and was swung. She was on the pillion. The Peugeot pulled away.

She played with him. He could see that her arms were round the kid’s waist and already her fingers moved on the thin fabric of his T-shirt. His cheap market-stall anorak flew as he accelerated and her head was on his shoulder and her chest hard against his back. Traffic flowed around them and fumes zapped from the exhaust.

He followed as best he could. He thought she teased him Could not lose him, do without him: he was her ride home, but she mocked him. Twice she turned to check he was still in sight, and then had spoken to the kid, and the little beggar had pulled away sharply from lights, and let the exhaust trail out behind. He could not lose her, and followed… a good game, but not a game that would play far. Down to the end of La Canebière, and a hard turn to his right, and he broke across the traffic flow and drivers had to brake, hit horns and swore ferociously.

He followed, did not yet know how and where it would end.