Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 20

The vivid light showed him the scarlet across her face, still wet and glistening, and the meld of other matter mixed with the blood, and she cried out once more.

He thought it would have hurt her to show pain, the equivalent of weakness. She might have known by now that he would be there, on his stomach or standing, hunched over and letting the rain fall on him and the wind to buffet his jacket – but there.

Much of his life in those moments surged in his mind. What they said about a drowning man: there had been moments out on the ribs when in training for the Marines, and in service, when they had been tipped overboard, wearing life-jackets, and had spent those endlessly long seconds trapped under the bulk of an inflatable, learning not to panic but to be rational and manage the crisis. Easier said. Most of the lads had handled it well. A few had flipped mentally and had failed to hold down the air in their lungs and might have tried to shout while underwater and had filled their throats with water, and had come up coughing, choking, and spluttering, and one had had to be revived by the instructors and had been carted off in an ambulance, breathing but not much else. He’d come back four days and nights later and had been free and easy with the anecdote. ‘Yeah, saw the whole lot… first row with my dad, first tears with my mum about going away, first shag with a bicycle from the next block who charged a fiver, first runaway when the police came and a gang of us were in a graveyard and being fucking stupid, first interview for this lot and near wetting myself, first time a company sergeant major told me that I might be useless shit but I had shot well on the range…’ The whole of his life was there, and all his names, and the pain he’d caused the family, and the arrogance with which he’d damn near bad-mouthed the hapless pair of plodders who ran him, and the beauty of being with her, with his Zed. And all the lies told her, and the contempt with which she’d regarded him, the little guy that she could snap her fingers for. And was confused and loved nobody and hated nobody… and had no contact with the newspapers’ litany of condemnation that would follow any atrocity, anything she planned to do, and had no sympathy with the broadcasters who queued to offer a version of piss-poor poetry in their commentaries on attacks that took the lives of what were called ‘the innocents’. A good job, a relief, that he did not do judgements or he would have been there all damn night churning them over in his mind, when there was a job to be done, and time he did it.

He put aside his own life, what he had remembered of it. And pushed away the recall of the sweat and scent of her… all gone, and a mind cleared, and thinking back only to the days on the common overlooking the Exe estuary, bracken and gorse and scrub and occasional trees bent by the wind with the leaves torn off. Now an empty street and a bright and vicious light that allowed no hiding place for a target.

He went through his checks and nestled the weapon against his shoulder. Would have liked to have a test firing and gauge the sights he’d be using and how the trigger was set and what pressure it would take, and the weight of it and how steady it would be when he held it in the teeth of the wind and with the rain coming down. But did not have the chance.

He saw her trying desperately to break free of the bike’s weight, and had already moved enough to have part of her body, her chest and a shoulder, over the rider, almost as if she protected him… he did not reckon that figured in her mind. If she could free her leg then she could crawl left or right and on either side of the cone of light was darkness. Competing moods swarmed over each other, and had neither coherence nor shape – changed fast and had no pattern. A mess: what life was.

Time, as they said, to piss, or time, as they said, to get off the pot. Fair point, and he did not argue. Allowed himself a last luxury before his finger snaked inside the guard and found the trigger, rested there… Saw the bird, pretty and fine-plumed, but trapped in a cage with rusted close-set bars, and prepared himself. The voice alongside him murmured: was he ready?

‘Yes, friend, ready.’

She could see so little. Her eyes were covered by a film of what she assumed was blood. But she fired a shot. Her mind worked well, might have been aided by the growing intensity of the pain in her left leg as the numbness wore through. Had no target and was blinded by the spotlight but tried to aim at it, into its brilliance. Which was futile, had no purpose and wasted a shot.

Not possible for Zeinab to shift the weight of the bike, and she lay across the boy. Could not extract herself from that position, enveloping him, what a lover might have done. Could not have said that what remained of his face had already started to cool, nor that the whiteness of death settled on his cheeks, but was aware there was no breathing.

A voice was yelling at her over a megaphone, distorted in the wind, and she’d no idea whether it was English with a foreigner’s accent, or French. They would be telling her that ‘resistance is hopeless’, that she was surrounded and ‘you have no escape route available to you’, and ‘if you are hurt, Zeinab, the ambulance team will give you the very best medical help,’ and ‘throw aside your firearm, Zeinab, so we can help you’.

She fired again, but the light was constant on her face, and one of the boy’s eyes was wide open and was ringed in blood from the scalp wound… A party of them had been to a TV studio in Manchester before a filming schedule of a limited view of life in the Hall of Residence for first-year university students. To get to the main studio they had been walked through, like it was a fucking Holy of Holies, the newsroom. Had seen the screens and the little desks with the computer consoles, and the reporters had been pointed out, and where the camera crews waited for action, and the desks of those who would edit and control output into news programmes. Somewhere it would have happened… a crisis moment of excitement… in Marseille or London, even reaching Leeds, and interruptions in programmes to report a ‘developing incident’, and soon her name would float in the air and be snatched, caught, introduced to the homes of people she knew. She had felt emboldened to ask why there was not more coverage from the front line around Mosul or near to Raqqa, and had been told the coverage was limited because ‘those places are shit, wet shit, and not worth the lives of any of our teams’. When they had her name and her address in the street in Savile Town, and the course she was failing to study at Manchester Metropolitan, they would want to come running. And they’d meet a cordon and might hear shots, hers – the big thump from the Kalash, and they’d be jabbering into their microphones, knowing nothing and seeing less. She fired again, and again missed the light that captured her. With her free hand she stroked his face, where the hair came down to his ear, and saw the acne marks on his face, and remembered his lectures on the virtues of trade. He had been betrayed as she had, had been lied to, had believed them.

And fired again, and fired another time.

Stroked his head and then tried, again to move the bike off her leg and could not shift it.

Darkness was at each side of the street. If she could get out from underneath the bike, then she could crawl either to her right or to her left and it was only a few metres, and she imagined a ditch alongside the road, for flooding rainwater, and she could nestle down in it and then heave herself farther up the hill. There were swathes there of dark strips which meant rough ground, and the chance was good that she could take herself farther from where she now lay, pinioned. She did not think it a delusion. Zeinab looked down, not easy for her to twist her head that far, but caught a glimpse of her leg. Between the handlebar and the curved shape of the fuel tank, and for a moment was confused by what she saw. Her bone was white and had been cleaned of blood when it had broken through the skin of her thigh and then had pierced the material of her jeans, and still did not think it was deluded to believe she might be able to crawl to the darkness and get clear, escape and fight: be a soldier, be a warrior, be a woman whose name was spoken.

First, she believed it necessary to hit the spotlight, bury its eye on her. And fired at it, and fired another time, and writhed on the ground and tried to change her shooting position so that she was better able to fire more bullets at it. And cried in frustration at her failure, and the pain tightened its grip. One more effort to get the bike off her leg. More shouts, from the medical team, she imagined. More shots, at the eye of light. Firing and feeling the impact at her shoulder.

And… no more shots. A click when she jerked on the trigger. The V and the needle locked on Battle Sight Zero for close quarters combat, but the magazine was emptied. She had seen him change the magazine, take it out and reposition it, but could not remember what he had done, and was wrestling with it, but could not extract it, and turn it over to use the second magazine that was taped, useless, to the emptied one. Struggled and failed, and howled her anger.

‘Are you doing it, are you not doing it?’

He allowed a brief nod of his head.

With a fully armed rifle he had been on the nuclear convoys running from the south of England to the loch in the west of Scotland where the submarine fleet was housed, had ridden shotgun when they took the warheads to be fitted on the missiles. He had been on exercises in the Norwegian tundra, had been on stand-by to fight in Afghanistan but had not made the trip… He had never fired, not for real.

He saw her clearly, both images of her were sharp. His Zed – a target and should have been nothing more – summoning all her strength and seemed able to drag the trapped leg away from underneath, and he heard the sharp scrape of metal as it was worked sideways. She pushed aside the corpse under her body, no longer bothered to shelter it. He saw that the rain had diluted the little tributaries of blood that came from the rider’s head wound. From the hours he had been with the pair of them, in the boy’s bedroom, he might have known them better than any one else. One was a would-be jihadi and one was a drug pusher, and he had no hostility to either, only differing degrees of affection. The boy was dead, killed by an expert marksman, and Zed…? She had started to crawl, like some pitiful insect that was damaged and tried only to get to cover.

Her head rose. He saw the bone. She might have been sixty paces from him. Still clung to the weapon and had dropped the taped together magazines that she could not load. The weapon was useless to her but she held it.

‘Are you there, Andy, are you?’

He had no reply to make.

‘Andy, where are you?’

Again he drew in his breath.

‘I am a song bird, Andy, and have a broken wing.’

His lungs were brimful.

‘But a broken wing does not kill a song bird. Andy, can you hear me?’

His elbow was tapped, the marksman’s finger pointed. At the edge of the light cone the medical team in their high visibility clothing were edging forward and would have an escort in the shadows. He started, very slowly, to let the air hiss away between his teeth.

‘They’ll put me in a cage, Andy. No key. Please…’

He supposed it was owed… no such thing as a free lunch, the guys who did the corruption inquiries always said. He saw her coming off the medical evacuation flight and lifted down on a stretcher, and saw her propped up on crutches in the Central Criminal Court, and alongside her would be the goons who had used, manipulated, her. He saw a judge read out the sentence, big years, and do the same condemnation speech that had seemed suitable for the last time round, and would be as apposite for the next terror case he heard, and saw the manacles and the gates closing on her, and saw the bars on a high cell window. Heard the beat of the feathers, but not the song.

She moved slowly. Quite a simple shot for him. In the magnification of the sight he could see the blood smear on her face, where it had dried close to her left ear.

He murmured, ‘Let’s get this show on the road, Zed.’

Did it well, without snatching. Squeezed and felt the impact against the bone beside his shoulder. Saw her recoil from the impact. Nothing spectacular, not arms thrown up and no squeal, instead something that seemed more like a bullet going into a filled and wet sandbag. Not an heroic passing, but he thought it a decent way to finish their business. No fuss, no drama, and he passed the weapon sideways and it was taken from him. He did not have anything to say… the marksman cleared the weapon, and would have clicked the ‘safety’ into position. He wiped his eyes.

It could have been rainwater in them, or might not have been.

The spotlight was doused. For a few seconds the street was in darkness. Then the coordinated reaction. The street-lights came on. He thought it had been a good shot but twice she had moved, and finally there was a last convulsion… Done and over. The medical team were now coming forward, but they’d been given no worthwhile job to do. He stood. Did not know where to put his hands, so dug them deep down in his pockets.

The marksman pushed himself up, used the vehicle’s fender to get better traction.

‘What do you want to do now, go where?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Where is home?’

‘Sort of varied, gets to change, maybe it’s just where there is a warm beer – and no girls that need killing.’

‘Which is a version of “get the hell out”, to anywhere?’

They drifted towards the shadows where the street-lights did not reach. His cheeks were wet, but it might have been because it was raining even harder.

On the balconies of the project’s tower blocks, any vantage-point overlooking the Boulevard Henri Barnier from La Castellane came the rippling sound of voices, a wind that swept up the remnants of the autumn’s dead leaves, in a whisper.

‘It was Samson… I saw Samson… Samson shot the boy, Karym… saved his life one night, took his life on another, it was Samson… Preserved him, then destroyed him… But there was another man who fired, was slow with it, did a mercy shot… Like a dog has been hit by a car, is finished off to end pain… Samson never showed “mercy”… perhaps the other man is out of love with his work. He was an agent and tracked that girl, but he killed her. Why?… It was a good show, as good as any we have had from Samson… I saw his face, the other man’s face, the stranger’s. Samson would not have… I think the stranger wept…’

Within minutes, ambulances had left with the two bodies, and the Ducati 821 Monster had been recovered and driven off on a flat-bed, and a scenes of crime team was at the point in the road where there were oil stains and spilled blood and they worked quickly, anxious to be finished and gone. Within minutes, the queue for buyers had started to shuffle forward and the entrance to the project was again in the hands of the chouffes, who patted them down and then directed them towards the different stairwells where the charbonneurs waited to sell to them and take their money. And, except for the tidying up of the dregs of the occasion, the life of La Castellane had returned to its own degree of normality.

Pegs asked, as they were ushered towards a car and told their destination was the airport, ‘Did you see him, know where he went, was taken?’

Gough answered her, ‘Not had sight nor sound of him.’

‘We’ll not see any more of him.’

‘Not disagreeing. They get to a point, these rather sad individuals, where they’re not up to taking any further punishment. Plenty was asked of him.’

‘We’ll get a bollocking for this, Gough, mark my words. In my water. They’ll hang us out in the wind. Throw the book our way.’

‘Do you think, Pegs, he went soft on her, or was that just part of the job? Which?’

They took their time in grabbing a last look at the scene, where the rain ran on the street and police hurried to clear away their major incident equipment, and Major Valery paused mid-stride to shake their hands but said nothing, and was gone.

She said, ‘I’m not bleeding in a corner for him, Goughie, but I tell you the sad bit. You could say that he was burned out, was running on empty, would want to wash his hands of it all and get back to doing what “ordinary” people do, and knowing who he was. Except that it doesn’t apply with the type suited for that work. They can’t break the link… Don’t fucking laugh at me, I mean it. I’m sad for him… they don’t know another life. It’s a man-trap on their ankle, teeth tight… As trapped as she was, and nowhere to go.’

They were ushered to a car, heard something about a flight having been delayed, the last of the evening, and they’d catch it.

An hour later… He’d asked it enough times. Crab had demanded to know when the plane would eventually take off. Could not wait to get clear. It was a full three-quarters of an hour since the aircraft had been boarded, but the steps were still in place. He saw a man and a woman brought to the base of the steps by a police vehicle, a brisk farewell, nothing to indicate fondness, and they scampered up the steps. Crab did not know them, not from Adam and not from Eve.

He saw a dowdily dressed man, with thin hair plastered down on the scalp, and the rain had been on his shoulders and his ankles were sodden and his shoes looked to have taken in water.

The woman, behind him, hustled him along the aisle. She was well built, had a strong and angular face, a hatchet jaw, and he thought there was an arrogance about her. Her clothing was similarly sodden and her hair was a mess: he wondered how such people, so obviously low in the chain of importance, could be responsible of keeping a plane on the apron all this time. He had a book of crosswords to tide him over, but had forgotten them, and then his seat shook as the woman held it as she lowered herself down behind Crab, and the man was in a seat across the aisle.

They were talking, fastening their belts, and the girl over the speaker system was apologising for the late take-off – as she bloody should. They had started to taxi.

Crab felt a tug at his shoulder.

He turned, irritation rife, would tell any stranger to keep his fucking hands to himself, and the woman’s voice purred in his ear.

‘Wanted to let you know, sir, that it might have been a mistake to give your name, rank and number – know what I mean – to the check-in. We’ve forwarded them on. North West Counter Terror Unit will enjoy matching them to records and locations. We take this sort of thing very seriously. Conspiracy to facilitate the importation of firearms, notably an AK-47 assault rifle is an offence that the courts seem to view in poor light. Any liaison with a jihadi group, people committed to murder and maim in a crowded place, would – I believe – carry with it a sentence of the utmost severity. I would have to assume that your only motive in this matter was to get your hands on “a nice little earner”. You disgust me, sir, and you will disgust the judge who presides on your case. This flight will be met at Manchester. Enjoy your journey, sir, and you might consider calling a solicitor because you’ll need one.’

The voice so quiet and so reasonable, died on him. He wondered, as his hands shook, how the girl had made out, pretty little thing, and with balls to her, and she’d run well when in flight. The aircraft lifted and started to bump through the low dense cloud.

A day later… They were summoned.

The marching orders were for them to attend Room 308, an inner sanctum, where the angels sang and incense burned. They had arrived at the flat they shared in the small hours, and Pegs had made a cup of tea and Gough had done a load for the washing machine including pretty much all they wore. Then Pegs had made a sandwich, and he’d heaped a pile by the door of all the stuff for the dry cleaners. They had come in late, too knackered to touch each other and had slept like noisy logs, and it might be the last time because the anticipated criticism was liable to be vicious, mostly undeserved, and brutal.

They were awaited. The guy who presided in that room – with his nail bomb scar to declaim his ‘sharp end’ experience – identified a man by the window. A Chief Superintendent, a God figure from the national HQ of Counter Terrorist Command, and there was a tall and willowy woman, no make-up and no jewellery who was from SC&O10. A silence hung. Always was a silence when a hanging was due, so they said. The wound was alive and he’d likely been scratching it. Three Zero Eight kicked off, delivered the verdict on Rag and Bone… Gough was not going to permit a critique lying on the carpet with his feet in the air, and Pegs promised to ‘take no shit from them’. A cough and a throat cleared.

‘We think it went well. We have a very clear understanding of a mission fraught with difficulty. It did not work out as our planning suggested it would, but that in no way lessens the benefits gained by the operation. You handled a difficult diplomatic impasse with skill and sensitivity, and are to be commended. Congratulations, very sincerely meant.’

Pegs had her head forward, as if her hearing was playing up, and Gough stayed inscrutable.

The Chief Superintendent said, ‘We expect a considerable level of success, a large trawl and a network emasculated before getting clear of puberty. I believe them to have been a particularly focused and dangerous group, not least the woman at the heart of the smuggling concept. We add our congratulations to both of you, and for your control, in trying circumstances, minimum resources, of your Undercover. First class – and to be added to the list is the excellent cooperation you received from our French colleagues – pretty rare – and that is down to your winning ways. It was a damned good effort.’

The woman said, ‘You don’t need to know where he is – anything, in fact, about him. The French took him down to Toulon, he spent the night at the airport, had a flight in this morning. I saw him briefly, thought he looked rough. Don’t know yet whether he’ll call it a day. Plenty try to, few succeed. What I am pleased about is that a ring of dangerous young people, carrying huge burdens of hate will be negated… The thought of a flow of automatic assault rifles coming into the UK is too frightful to contemplate… It leaves our people scarred, damaged at the end, but that’s the price that has to be paid, by them – by that boy – not by us.’

Did they want coffee – did not. Did they want to share anecdotes – again, did not.

Back in the office, within ten minutes, they’d their gear together and would go their separate ways, take a good furlough, might bump into each other again after Human Resources had done their worst with new postings, but might not.

A week later… Coordinated arrests were done efficiently and allowed for the two time zones.

At 04.00 Zulu, the sledge cracked open the door of Crab’s mansion in the bacon belt area of Altrincham, while a line of unmarked cars and police vans, all with blue lights rotating, ostentatiously filled the tree-lined avenue. A good show put on for the neighbours and an effort to humiliate him, and he was taken out, handcuffed… Across the range of the Pennine moors a car was stopped and a man who went by the codename of Krait was spread-eagled on the road under cover of automatic weapons and then dragged away, and another – known as Scorpion – was intercepted on his way to a poste restante address… and in the capital city, two men were taken into custody – identified because of the tickets that had not been destroyed as the traveller had been instructed, and they indicated where the documents had been purchased, and by whom, for a journey between UK and Marseille.

And, at 05.00 European time, when a middle-ranking officer, a Major, led a team of specifically chosen detectives, up to the gates of a coastal villa, and used an armoured car to break them down, and an old man – who had once been a legend in the undercurrent life of organised crime in Marseille – was snatched from his bed. One photographer only, from La Provence, was present to record the arrest… Also visited that morning, in the apartments that seemed to belie the meagre pensions paid to former investigators, were men who had done well from association with Tooth, and it was a safe bet that they would soon be in an orderly queue to denounce everyone’s actions, not their own, in the hope of leniency… And Hamid was taken, in bed with a girl, and no crowd had gathered to impede the police, and a brother due to be buried that day when he would be in the interview room, pleading surprise that a deal had not been honoured.

A terse message would be sent within an hour from the Major at L’Évêché to a senior officer working from an address in Wyvill Road, London, SW8: Colleagues, A good day for us (and ‘Samson’ not needed and left in bed), and my appreciation of a fine association. Valery. All considered satisfactory.

And a month later… The mourners were leaving. Not just family but the whole population of the road in which she had lived, and many who had been her contemporaries at school, and a few had journeyed from Manchester Metropolitan to attend. It was unfortunate but inevitable that the procedures for a funeral embodying that faith had been delayed. She should have been buried within a few hours of her death, but there had been many obstacles placed in the way of her parents’ wishes. A French magistrate had not hurried, and details had remained vague as to the exact circumstances of death, and the British authorities had been slow to reveal what information they were in possession of… but arrests, and charges and initial appearances before magistrates, and trial dates set, had brought matters into the public domain. Bluntly, everyone in that street, in the community of Savile Town, had either seen with their own eyes, or knew of, the repeated visits by detectives of the North West Counter Terrorist Unit to the home address, and it was claimed her bedroom had been systematically ripped to pieces. Her father had said, repeatedly, that he refused to believe the allegations made against her, her mother had said that their only daughter was a ‘dutiful and obedient girl, perfect in all ways’. When the body of Zeinab was prepared for burial, having been washed and then bound in white sheets, a shroud, they would have seen the single bullet entry wound, and the exit, in her chest and adjacent to her spine.

Plain clothes police were there, and peeping from behind a stone wall in the dawn gloom was a bright lens catching what light was there. The cemetery area, beyond the precincts of the crematorium, emptied.

A favour was asked of a detective constable, huddled in her overcoat, dying for the first fag of the day. The request was from behind her. She turned.

A single scarlet rose was given her, the petals close and tight. She was asked to take it and place it, and the question was on her tongue: who was he? She saw the gravedigger with his long-handled tool put the first load of earth back into the cavity, and swung on her heel, but he was already walking away and his stride had a purpose, an authority, and she thought his bearing made him one of their own. She did not call out after him, nor did he look back. She shrugged, then went forward.

At the grave, eyed by the workman, she placed the single bloom on the grass surround to the grave, and she wondered how it was that a jihadi gunrunner, dangerous and committed and shot dead, should be remembered in such a tender way by a man she thought could be a police officer.

February 2019

A technician said, ‘I’ve never seen one as old as this, surprised it’s not going to a museum. Look at it, Pierre, see the age of it. More than sixty years old, and still in working order – what a goddam history it would have to tell. How do I know that? The history? Look at the stock, those marks. I think it had many owners… but just a machine and due to be disposed of – and no tears wept… but if the story could have been told then its place in a museum case would be assured. Load it up.’

The machine was new, purchased from the United States, and the system was novel in the annexe to the Ballistics and Armoury division of the Marseille police. In the past it would have been done with an acetylene flame cutter, and before that the task of immobilising a firearm would have been consigned to Claude, a giant with muscles to match his bulk, and he would batter the body of a pistol or rifle to bent pulp with a sledgehammer. But the machine had been purchased and should be used. They put on their protective clothing and faceguards.

‘What I just noticed, it’s last run out was in close quarter fighting, short range. Look at the setting, that’s Battle Sight Zero… It’s an icon, know what I mean?’

There was a procedure almost as formal as that employed when the executioner came with his apparatus to the Baumettes gaol. A photograph was taken of the AK-47, and another of the serial number. The pulveriser was started up. It ground the remnants of its previous job between the blades, and spat them into a bin, and the cutting edges turned. It was to be treated with care and respect.

The machine’s teeth snapped on it. The noise was a rasping wail. It had never ceased to astonish the technician and his assistant that a weapon in the process of being torn apart, its life expiring, always seemed to cry out as if in defiance, a last protest. And the pieces that had been manufactured many years before, and had been on many journeys, dropped as scrap into the bin. The parts would be photographed and what was left of the serial number – 260 16751 – for a bureaucratic record. No lingering, and more to follow and its lethal power destroyed.

And a year later… it was scheduled as an important meeting, but few in the building knew of it. Coffee and biscuits would be available. The room had been electronically swept before the small group, half a dozen men and women, had gathered there. The base used by that unit was inside the police station dealing with the district of Kirkby, out on the east side of the city of Liverpool. It had a busy car park because it shared with the fire brigade, and ambulance teams often parked up there; a quality location for a covert meeting and visitors came and went and the parking lot was secluded and hidden from the main road.

There was high anticipation.

The team were customers. They had needed to make a case, prove that their need was greater than other teams throughout the country. What the customers looked to achieve did not come cheap, was sought after, and they’d had to show a potential result that would affect the material good of the population at large if the prize was awarded to them. They had never met him. In fact knew little of him, except his name…

Their guest was a few minutes late, which annoyed.

They were all senior people and unused to being kept hanging around, expected subordinates to be punctual. All were key personnel in a team that had come together to target a local godfather whose empire prospered from coke, smack, hash and ’phets, and the efforts of east European girls who performed for fierce shifts. To infiltrate such an organisation was regarded as next to impossible for any officer with a background in the city and an accent to match, and offering a legend of childhood in Liverpool. The principals operated from inside a mosaic of links within extended blood and marriage lines. Efforts to recruit from the family, working off the periphery, had bounced back from an inevitable brick wall, a thick one topped with razor wire, even those who were compromised and faced long gaol terms. Truth was, the inner members of the clan exerted more fear and provided greater rewards than the team did, or could. So, they had gone with a begging bowl to London and been hosted by a woman called Prunella, who had given them scant respect, but had – a couple of months back – indicated a possible option.

Not for them to like or dislike.

Not for them to regard the guy as suitable or unsuitable.

And, not in their bailiwick, to suggest how proximity, and trust, from the target family, might be gained.

They did not know where he had been before, what his speciality was – knew fuck all, as the senior man, eyeing his watch, had said four times. But it was agreed there was a pattern with that style of work, and coming off a plot: say ‘never again’, say it was ‘quit time’, walk out and not get a medal, nor a gold clock, nor much in the way of thanks, and head off for ‘nowhere’, somewhere remote and over the horizon, where the big stresses were supposedly absent – and die of boredom, fail to adapt, and come back. What they all did – silly beggars. Safe to assume he’d be no novice. Safe also to assume that he knew of the inherent violence as practised by a typical crime syndicate, made into an art form by this crowd. Nor did they have a file on his previous deployments, successes or failures, nor had they been shown any of the psychologists’ reports.

A knock on the door. Conversations died.

An assistant to the boss stood in the open door, pulled a face, let slip a little grin, then stepped aside.

The man was in overalls, with nearly fresh paint stains on them, and patches at the knees where he might have knelt in engine oil. His hair was reasonably neat, short but not clipped. He had shaved, but the day before. His work boots were scuffed. His eyes were clear, decisive, and did not spare any of them… It was as if tables were turned and roles reversed, and he checked them to see if they suited him. He had a quiet voice and they needed to strain to hear him. He started with an apology which none of them believed genuine.

‘Hello, sorry to be late, traffic was a nightmare, and then parking here was difficult for what I’m driving…’

Several of them, a reflex and because they were supposed to react, were at the window and raising the blinds and would have seen a small delivery lorry, what a self-employed builder – ‘no job too small’ – might have used. A good-looking guy, and with a straightforwardness about him, and an apparent honesty.

‘…Not that names are important to any of us. Good to be with you… for what it’s worth, I’m Sam Peters – I think that’s who I am. Anyway, learning to be Sam Peters.’

He was smiling. It took them a moment to respond, then all of them were laughing, but hollow, and wondering – puzzled – if there was an ignorance about him, and an innocence, as if he might not have appreciated the risk of going against a crime baron and his tribe. Or perhaps not, perhaps just lived a lie and did it well.