Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 2

A dull old life was a lorry driver’s. Andy Knight had done two delivery runs of pallets loaded with concrete blocks, and he had refilled with fuel. He shared his time now between a mug of sugared coffee and a cloth with which he cleaned his mirrors. His phone pinged.

The company he worked for took pride in its appearance. It had a good name locally, and seemed to attract worthwhile contracts. The winter grit and dirt from the roads was hosed off the vehicles each dawn before the fleet went to work. There were no flaws on the paintwork. It was a tradition in the yard that its people were as well turned out as the cabs in which they spent their days. Andy wore laundered overalls and an anorak with the company logo on his chest, and was supposed to have a reasonable haircut, and to be cheerful and helpful towards customers… not hard for him. To drive for this company was to have work that, putting it with a tinge of exaggeration, a ‘guy would kill for’. If they had advertised his position then likely they’d have been deluged with applications. The vacancy had not gone on general release. Word had reached Andy, not his problem to consider the detail of it, that a job was going begging, might be worth applying for, like yesterday and not tomorrow, and he had slapped in his paperwork. At the interview he had not asked how his name might have reached them, and they had seemed uninterested in where he had worked before, but his clean licence was looked at closely, and the chief executive and the fleet manager had taken time to explain how the business ticked, what was expected. It was as if his pedigree was already established, or a guarantee given, and the important bit was when he was taken down from the office and given up to a hard-eyed little runt of a guy with a shaven head, and he had climbed up into a cab. It was the bit that might have mattered most… He had driven big lorries before, had always used his driving skill as an employment incentive when he had needed new work. There had been no banter or conversation. A satnav had been switched on for him, and a route marked out, and they were off, dragging a loaded trailer, for two and a half hours. They had gone beyond Ramsbottom, almost into Rawtenstall, and Andy had reckoned he had driven faultlessly, but he’d not been praised. The delivery had been made, prefabricated wall sections for community housing, and they’d taken tea and a sandwich on the site, then the satnav was switched off and he’d had to navigate his own route back. He had pulled into the yard and his escort had jumped out, not a backward glance, and had gone into the office. Must have been a clean bill of health because he’d kicked his heels for fifteen minutes, then been called inside. A secretary had brought in the contract and he had not read it but signed with a flourish… Always a difficult moment, and a fraction of a hesitation, long enough to consider who he was that day and month and year. He’d started the next week. Again, his phone chimed.

The remaining drivers, seven or eight of them, pretty much left Andy alone. Not quite suspicious, but wary. Could have been that they had picked up the signs, well telegraphed, that the newcomer was fast tracked in, without explanation. Not hostility, but caution. Most of them went together, with Veronica who ran the office, down to the Black Lion along the road on a Friday evening after the shifts finished and had a drink, not more than two, before heading home. Andy did not. A warm pub, a drink, the end of a week, and chat flowing was when histories were expected, anecdotes, experiences shared. Always an excuse made and he’d go home alone.

He checked his phone. Hi, Did you run it at them, a break? Hope so. The Hall tonite, usual time xxx. The slow smile slipped on to his face. That was Zed, the undergraduate studying Social Sciences, and with a string of good exam grades to her name, and not bothering to suggest that he might have something else on his mind that evening, and would pass her up. Taken for granted, but he was only a lorry driver: a sweet boy, fun to be with, and she in debt to him and big time, but not her equal. And the slow smile went wry, and he could remember her kissing the night before, and her enthusiasm. He went on polishing the mirrors until the view in them was without blemish, and he saw them. Saw them quite clearly, both IC4 on the ethnic register, and they made a poor fist of looking casual.

They were joined by the Somali lad who worked in the company canteen where they did the big breakfasts and the lunches, and kept up the supply of tea and coffee. The Somali boy was friendly enough, and seemed to wear a grin most times, and could not have been more helpful in tidying tables. Others said that his history – where he had been, what had happened to him, how he had escaped a civil war – was a terrifying story. The drivers liked him. There were two guys opposite the gate, on the far side of the road. The Somali boy greeted them, and there were hugs, and then conversations, and the boy was shown a phone screen. Might have been a photograph, reasonable assumption. Andy was finishing his mirrors and needn’t have gone on but did so because it gave him the chance to stay where he was, face their way and have a purpose for it. The boy made a little gesture, not as anyone else would have noticed. Andy thought he was identified, a rule was run over him. Two guys there, at the gate, and looking to check out a friend – IC1 Caucasian male – of Zeinab, who was categorised as Identity Code IC4 Asian female. A meeting of cultures, young people stepping over a line, and their associates would want to know who he was and do an eyeball on him. He saw the Somali boy almost flinch as if he realised that he had gone too far, like a favour had been called in and pressure applied. The guys stayed watching him as he finished with the mirror. Predictable… could have been her cousins, or her neighbours, and there would be anxiety about any relationship that a girl from Dewsbury had formed with a lorry driver in the Manchester suburbs, or could have been other friends of hers, other associates. He thought they might have taken more pictures with their phones, and both stared across the width of the road and through the gate and past the security shed and into the yard… and were gone.

She’d kissed well the night before, not with much experience, but fresh, fruity. He replied to the text, said he’d be there when she wanted him. Why? He smiled his private smile, then, satisfied his vehicle was as well maintained as any of them, went to get his next delivery docket from the office.

It was wrapped carefully.

Two men did it. They did not concern themselves with dismantling it, had only detached the magazine. The overall length was a little short of a metre, and the weight of the package would be under five kilogrammes. There would be three magazines, each filled with 25 rounds, near to capacity. Although the two men, working in a warehouse on the southern outskirts of the port of Misrata, on the coast of Libya, had examined the weapon, had noted its age and the poor state of the woodwork, and the discoloration where paint had long since weathered off the metal, they fulfilled their instructions. It was only one weapon, and it came from a store that reached high inside the building’s walls. Crates of the AK range, in every state of maintenance, awaiting sale.

They used layers of bubble-wrap plastic sheeting. In many places the weapon, and the magazines which were of the same vintage, had been dropped and chipped, were scraped with coarse scars, almost obliterating the stamped serial number of which only a part was visible – 16751 – but the men would do as they had been told because the alternative was unwelcome. They were dependent on the patronage of a warlord. Because the warlord smiled on them, they could put food on the table where the wives and children fed. If the warlord had thought his instructions were ignored then they might well be shot, and their wives would either starve or perhaps go to prostitution down by the docks. They wrapped it well. Last to slip from their sight was the battered wooden stock. That it had lasted so long, their estimate was 60 years, was extraordinary, and there were notches cut in a line, and one deep groove where grime and rot had set in and weakened it. Around the bubble-wrap went adhesive tape, metres of it. In English, because they had been told that their native Arabic was not accepted, the younger and better educated of them wrote a single word: ‘Tooth’. He knew that a tooth was in the jaw, was used to chew with, but why the package containing a vintage weapon such as the AK-47 should have that written on it he had no idea.

Outside, two pick-ups waited. Neither of the men had actually fired the rifle. It had to be assumed that it would function satisfactorily. Its value might well have been as low as $50. A newer weapon, and the warehouse was heavy with them, might sell in Europe for $350, maybe as much as $500. This one was Russian, almost an original off the production line, almost a piece for a museum – except that in the circumstances of Libya that day there were no functioning museums, and everything of value that had been lodged in them during the times of the fallen dictator, Gadaffi, the dead tyrant, had been stolen. The worst weapons, imitations, were the Chinese copies, but they could be provided in better condition than this old specimen. They did not argue or debate, were thankful to have food on their plates each evening.

The two men, happy with their work, drove the pick-ups down to the dockside area. Going the length of Tripoli Street they navigated the heaps of rubble from destroyed buildings, and the rusting tank carcases, and burned-out cars, and went faster along the stretches where bullet-pocked walls seemed about to topple. An old freighter was tied up, but pungent smoke surged from a stubbed funnel. In the pick-ups were antiquities, also well wrapped, which had come from museums or been chipped from sites farther north. They were loaded by trolley. Last on board was the package containing the weapon, just the one, old and with a history. The Roman and Greek artefacts would stay on deck during the voyage to the west, but the rifle was taken below and stowed under the captain’s bunk. It would be gone in an hour.

Neither of the men had an idea of why they had been ordered to choose a worthless relic from the store, nor where it would go, nor why it had importance.

‘I suppose this means it’s just about kicking off,’ Gough said.

Pegs answered him, ‘Usually plays around a bit, nothing much happening, then starts being serious.’

‘All seemed rather routine.’

‘I doubt you believed that – but certainly beginning to stampede.’

He took a last look at the boy’s face. Not pretty. A pathologist would have said to within an hour or two how long little Tommy the Tout had been in the water, but the deterioration was always fast. The eyes had no life and the lips no colour and the arms seemed awkward and barely attached. The main weight of the corpse was in a bed of drooping reeds at the side of the canal. They’d walked past it, Pegs leading and him following and not passing any comment that could have been overheard. The identification came through the North West Counter Terrorist people at their Manchester office, and he’d have been flagged up because of missing two scheduled meetings. Neither Gough nor Pegs would have wanted it broadcast off the rooftops that this guy. Tommy the Tout, was important enough to have brought big players up from London. The operation was at an indeterminate stage, budget not fixed, aims not cemented in, targets vague, and both the visitors thought the least put about was best. It was good of them to have left him in the water for this length of time, and there were crime scene tapes blocking off most of the towpath to the position on the canal, outside of Manchester, now used only by narrow boats and tourists. He nodded, a tiny gesture but one of the detectives picked it up, and it gave permission for them to fish him out.

Gough said, ‘You get into a comfort zone. You think you know what you’re at, and what’s the prospect for the next day and the next week. Start to relax. You don’t really know who you’re dealing with and what the stakes are, and where it’s taking you. Never been any different, but still gives you a jolt.’

‘Quite a big jolt, Gough, and one that sends a message.’

‘I think I am aware of that, the staying safe bit.’

‘This is just a fucking horrible place, Gough.’

Which it was. Farther down from where the people in the frogmen gear were going into the water, was an island of snagged plastic bin bags, and around them were supermarket trolleys. He thought it would have taken some expert navigation from the canal cruiser people to have come through the blockages. Gough had only met little Tommy the Tout the once, no names and no introductions, and in the hour before he’d watched through a one-way mirror as the kid was given his marching orders by the Counter Terrorist detectives. Eager, anxious to please, not what Gough liked to see. He had felt little confidence but had not the clout to get the kid pulled back. They were seldom straightforward…

Investigations tended to have various masters, and most times he just hoped they’d not snag each other like crossed over fishing lines – not that there would be much in this polluted waterway for anglers. A heron flew past, languid and ignoring them and moving away from them with a silent wing beat.

‘What do you reckon?’

She answered him, ‘I reckon we get the fuck out, and the word is it’s all narcotics and vendettas.’

He’d leave that to her… It might have been wind in the branches above the towpath, and it might have been a glob of water that fell from a dead leaf and landed on his shoulder. Gough was an old stager, had been around too long in the company of sudden death. He flicked irritably at his coat. One good memory, when he had been raw and on the steep learning curve, and the threat was from the Irish and not these home-grown jihadis. His first attachment to the Branch in Belfast, and there had been an ‘own goal’ call out for a bit of old oak woodland near to Dungannon in the Tyrone rolling country. The device had exploded as the courier carried it from the hide among the trees, down a path and towards his vehicle on the Armagh road. Something had landed on Gough’s shoulder and he had flicked at it, and seen it fall to the ground and it still showed a bright pinkish colour. A piece of gristle, or might have been ligament. He’d looked up. Caught among the branches were small body parts. A couple of the local Branch boys had watched him, looked for a reaction to prove that a newcomer from ‘over the water’ was soft. He’d ignored it, the bit of meat that landed on him, had given them no satisfaction: it was a long time, a big part of Gough’s life, that he had been checking out premature killings. He had not been ‘soft’ then, but years had rolled, and now he cared more about the people who worked for him, not those they tracked. He was an old warrior, and roughened by the times, and had seen pretty much everything and had all the T-shirts folded away in a wardrobe drawer, had been everywhere that the kids regarded as a battlefield. But he cared more now about his own, owed it to them.

She had no authority. Pegs was a bottle-washer in his office. She had no rank, but instead of status had a personality that was difficult to deny. She was lecturing. ‘As you know, offered himself up, but we rated him as a fantasist. Not on our payroll. Best to let it be known, if anything needs shoving into the local news-sheet, he was caught up in a little bit of turf war between druggie groups. Why are we here if he was of no value to us – just happened to be in the area, other business… what I’ve given you would be a good line to follow. Nice to have met you boys.’

He thought she’d bought time. Did not need much of it, more than a week, less than a fortnight, and the pace had picked up. They had come up fast, leaving London before dawn, and some of the way they’d had a bike out in front of them and clearing the way. She’d drive back, and slower. They settled in their seats.

Gough said, ‘A death makes it a serious business. He was lucky to have died before they did the heavy work on him. I think we’d have had the alarms by now if he’d known anything, if he talked. I’d put it down to him pushing too fast, gone careless. We’re not just talking about pissing off for a weekend and leaving the tomatoes in the greenhouse with no water. If they’ll kill then they’re close enough to kicking off… What do they want, Pegs, want most?’

She’d left the canal behind her. ‘Same as what they always want – what makes a big noise, big shout, a big bang. What else?’

October 1956

Upper windows were open and milk bottles cascaded down from them.

They smashed on the upper armour of a tank and on the cobbles of the street. The bottles held no milk but had been filled with clear liquid – petrol fuel – and in the bottles’ necks were stuffed rags, already lit. The conscript, holding his rifle across his chest, and petrified, was 30 or 40 metres behind the tank, but his sergeant – leading them – was close. The fuel made spears of orange fire as it scattered with the flying glass shards, and came too fast for a man to avoid. The sergeant was engulfed. The conscript watched, rooted. The NCO, hated by the conscript and many others of this platoon, screamed in pain. None of the young soldiers hurried forward to help him. They would have seen his face and the agony of it, and he would have sucked air down into his lungs and drawn the flames into his throat, deep into his chest tissue, and skin from his face would soon start to peel, and his uniform caught and made him a torch before his legs gave under him. Soon, the spasms became rarer, and in moments the body was still. Another man was on fire in the hatch of the tank and then he was ejected from the turret, chucked out because he blocked the escape of the crew, the gunner and the driver.

An officer, pistol drawn, tried to rally them. They had been told the day before, by women in the crowds, that the bottles filled with petrol and with a lit fuse were known among the Budapest people as ‘Molotov Cocktails’, named after their own foreign minister in Moscow. The conscript did not understand: yesterday they had fought against the townspeople of a friendly Socialist ally, who should have garlanded them with flowers; instead they had tried to kill them, and brutally. Much that he did not understand: a week before they had set out by train from their barracks in eastern Ukraine and then the commissars had lectured them that there had been an act of aggression from the Fascists of the North Atlantic Treaty nations, and that they would be coming to the help of comrades and friends. He had not yet fired his rifle, the weapon that had the thin chip in the stock, and that carried as its last five digits the serial number of 16751. Nothing had prepared the conscript for the reality of combat. They had formed up at the far end of a long street, and advanced behind three tanks, and had been told that their target was the headquarters of the ‘criminal gangs’ who had taken refuge close to a cinema. The street had become narrower and the first tank had been disabled, and there was firing from side streets… The first tank had most likely suffered engine failure, the second was attacked by a swarming mass of men. The crowd that clambered up on the superstructure had then tipped gasoline through every opening or vent, they could locate. Even against the noise of explosions and the revving of the engine, the conscript could hear the screams of these condemned men. They had practised infantry manoeuvre in support of armour and had been praised for their dedication, and had imagined themselves a formidable army, and had known nothing. It was a harsh lesson confronting them, and they were far from home.

Near to the conscript, a soldier broke ranks and started to run, and was shot by his officer. No warning, no cry for him to stop and retake his place. A raised and aimed pistol, a single shot, and a figure going down and then prone. The conscript had known this boy since their basic training. Had messed together, survived the sergeant together, and joked and drank and been punished together, and the boy was dead, shot by their own officer. A roar of voices broke from a side street on the right of the main boulevard… Not élite enemy troops from America or Great Britain, and not from the Nazis in Germany, but men and women in casual clothes, and some were too old to run fast, and the women had their skirts hitched high on their thighs so they could sprint quicker. Their faces were contorted with hatred. They carried firearms, more bottles, and some had butchers’ knives, and they came and screamed for blood.

The conscript wavered. To go back he would have to step over or jump across the body of his friend. Going forward, he’d be under the smoke pall from the burning tank. Already the mob was climbing over them. To stay still would be to put himself in the way of the crowd surging towards him. He would go back.

The pistol was aimed at him.

He fired.

It was 248 days since that weapon had moved down a production line, had fallen from the belt and suffered a chipped stock, had been stamped with a serial number, had been shipped out. It had fired 7.62 × 39 grain bullets on target ranges and on exercise, but never been aimed at a man to maim or kill. There would have been a moment when the officer’s face flared with astonishment as he realised the intention of the conscript a few metres in front of him. The rifle was at the shoulder of the young man, tight against his shoulder and collar-bone. The sights were set for close range, best for street fighting at 100 metres, the instructor had said, and had called the setting Battle Sight Zero. Beyond the V and the needle was the dun-coloured mass of the officer’s tunic, and the pistol aim wobbled then settled, and it was beaten to the punch. The conscript had fired first, and the officer’s look of astonishment changed to one of bewilderment, and the body slid as if hit across the upper chest with a pickaxe handle. Bright in the sunlight of that autumn morning, the cartridge case was ejected and it flew in a little arc and then bounced, and rolled among the cobbles. The rifle, the newest version of the AK-47, dropped from the conscript’s limp fingers and fell on to the street. The gesture of the conscript who had shot dead his own officer was not recognised by the crowd descending on him. He was to be shot, and stabbed and beaten with clubs and his body would be stripped bare of every item of possible value, and when the army retreated in poor order his body would be left in full view. The rifle, of course, was scooped up, a prize of value.

A small issue. When the rifle landed on the cobble-stones, the stock’s weight came down on to the hardened rim of the ejected cartridge case. No rhyme, no reason, just chance. The impact, close to where the splinter had detached, dug out a slight chip in the wooden stock: it might have looked like a gouged tick where the rifle’s owner had marked the first kill that the weapon had achieved. A youth had it now.

The youth was an apprentice in a tractor-building factory on the northern outskirts of the Hungarian capital. He fired half a dozen shots at the retreating military, was pleased with himself for taking the necessary moment to go though the trooper’s backpack. He’d found three more filled magazines, which he pocketed. He felt glowing pride.

Farther back along the street, near to the Corvin cinema, the youth, with his new trophy of war and a swagger in his step, came across a furious shoving and heaving knot of men and women, and was drawn to it. Intelligent? Perhaps not. Understandable? Definitely. Some in the crowd had old Sten guns, and others had target rifles, and a few more were equipped with shotguns suitable for killing vermin on the farms ringing Buda-Pest. Because he carried a new weapon of war, the youth was pushed to the front. When the crowd closed around him, behind him, the youth saw hard up against a wall the cowering figure of a man who wore the uniform of the AVH, the security police. The man cringed. The man expected no mercy. The mob ruled. The man uttered no words as if he had realised that to speak was pointless, wasted breath. The youth knew the basics of weapons; everyone who had been to Pioneer camps as a teenager had seen rifles stripped down and reassembled and had been told of the need for vigilance in defence of a Socialist society. The youth was edged forward by the press of the crowd. He could see a notch cut on the stock of the rifle, as if a killing had already been claimed. He shot the security policeman. The crowd around him cheered, and the man was looted before the last shake of his body and the last cough of his breath.

He was photographed. Holding a small Leica camera was a bearded middle-aged man, and on his jacket was a ‘Press’ sticker and an accreditation for one of the prestigious New York magazines. The youth was not intelligent and struck a pose; behind him, propped against the wall, was the body of the security policeman, violated. And the photographer slipped away. The youth walked proudly towards the cinema, the makeshift command point, anxious to show what he had acquired, and borrowed a pocket knife and made another gouge in the stock, a second tick. And he was confident and held his enemy’s weapon as a symbol of his power, and thought himself invincible.

Zeinab toyed with the research needed for an essay, took notes, was far away, and barely noticed the quiet of the library. She had no friends there, none of the other girls slipped alongside her for a quick conversation, or to share a problem.

She was involved at a depth where the sun no longer shone but did not regard herself as ensnared. The two boys had been cousins. Not close cousins, but the blood link had existed. She was a teenager, sixteen years old, and thought herself too tall, too long-legged and awkward, and pained with shyness when she had first met them. They had come with their family from Batley, had moved into Savile Town across the Calder river, and she had been hurrying back from school, lugging her bag full of books, and the car had pulled up alongside her. That was the first time… They must have known who she was, or come looking for her, and they had laughed and joked with her, had put her at ease: it had seemed a liberty with the disciplines of life that she had lingered on a pavement and talked with two boys. They had driven away. That was the first time… The blood link for her family and theirs came from the Pakistan city of Quetta.

The atmosphere in the library, supposedly where study and learning flourished, seemed of little importance to her. A tutor might recognise that she had struggled with the workload during the last two semesters but was hardly going to risk playing the ‘race card’, and threaten her with the big boot. She did what she had to, the minimum… Other matters concerned her, but failed to frighten her.

Not often, and not regularly, it could have been once a month, or every six weeks, she would be walking back from school, a bright pupil and from whom great things were expected, and a clucking approval from her parents, and the car would ease up beside her, and the window would come down. How was she? How was she doing? Bold talk that rubbished Dewsbury; they laughed at the humbleness of the area that was Savile Town, and how nothing ever happened there… The last time she had seen them, these vague cousins, it had been raining and the wind was whipping at the hem of her ankle-length clothing, and the car had stopped and the back door was opened. From behind her veil she had watched their faces, and most of the laughter was lost, and nervousness had played on their faces. She had thought then that she might have been one of the very few who knew that they would be gone within a week, taking a rucksack, and going out from Leeds/Bradford, changing flights anywhere in Europe, then the leg into Turkish territory, and the scramble over the frontier. The older of them, only for a moment, had held her hand, blinked, had done a sort of sheepish goodbye, and the younger had taken the same hand and had brushed his lips across it. Incredible… and she was out of the car, and running down the street, through the rain, buffeted by the wind, and had shut herself in her bedroom.

She despised the subject and the words on the pages in front of her had no meaning.

Not quite ‘nothing’ happened in Dewsbury… three of the boys who had gone down on to the underground trains in London had come from Dewsbury. A teenager had been arrested and charged with terror offences, and been convicted. Two more boys had disappeared from Savile Town and one had driven a vehicle at the enemy and then detonated a bomb, and the other was missing, assumed dead. Not nearly ‘nothing’. It had been on the local radio. Two boys from that part of Yorkshire were reported killed in the defence of Raqqa, the caliphate city. Their home was raided by police. Zeinab had thought it a cruelty, and without justification, but the street where they had lived had been cordoned, and families evacuated, and their parents taken away, and a bomb team had gone through the house, grotesque in huge kit. She had bridled in anger. They had been gone nearly two years, by then. Would they have left a live explosive device in the home of their mother and father? She had thought the high visibility search was to inflict fear on the community. As if ownership of the street and their homes were was confiscated, taken from them, and they might, all of those who lived there, have been declared ‘pariahs’, all intimidated and scared and humiliated, and she believed that was the intention. Other homes had been raided, those of the friends of the boys’ parents. Not hers. Perhaps because the connection between the families was not proven on the computers, the police detectives did not visit her house and interrogate her parents. She thought often of those boys. Walked home in sunshine and rain and found herself straining to hear the note of that car’s engine on the road behind her, and the scrape of the window and the casual way in which she was greeted; almost, still, she could smell the smoke from their cigarettes. No funeral, no repatriated bodies, no confirmation of what had happened to them.

In the Students’ Union buildings, across a piazza from where she played at studying, were notice-boards that advertised seminars against radicalism. Kids were urged to report attempts to recruit them to extremism… and life had gone on in Savile Town on the south west side of Dewsbury, and the cousins seemed forgotten and were no longer talked of: Zeinab did not forget.

There was a cemetery out of town and across the Calder river. A part of the cemetery was given over to a muslim burial area. A stone wall separated the cemetery from the Heckmondwike Road. Zeinab had taken to going in darkness with a handful of flowers and reaching over the wall and leaving them on the grass. A mowing team came each week and trimmed the grass but she noticed that her flowers, if still in bloom, were always left there… It might have been that she was followed, certainly she would have been watched. There were people who looked for recruits, for sympathisers, for activists, for supporters… It could have been, before they went on their journey, that the cousins had mentioned her name and that it had been stored in a memory. She left the flowers and would look across the darkness of the cemetery, and she had not forgotten the cousins and an anger had grown in her.

She had been approached. First term at university. She had worn correct dress then, but not the full face veil. Two boys, one materialising on her right and one on her left, engaging her, and using the names of the cousins. Support had been teased from her. Not at one meeting, not at two or three; these boys were patient and respectful, never sought to hurry her. She would launch into monologues of resentment because of the deaths of the boys, and the value of their ‘martyrdom’, and their bravery… step by small step. They were not her friends but were associates, and showed a road ahead. Then, the big step.

No more dressing to advertise her modesty. All consigned to a cupboard in her room in the Hall. Down to second-hand clothing shops, and buying cheap, worn jeans, making the rips in the knees, and loose fitting T-shirts and sweaters and fleece tops, and a toggle hat from which her hair fell. She was no longer the dutiful daughter of her parents. And there was reason for it. Of course, there were spies on the campus. Of course inside the university buildings, watchers scrutinised any person thought to demonstrate faith in ‘strikeback’ or belief in the armed struggle. She was one of the few and had thrown aside the constraints of her upbringing, another girl hardly worth noticing. The boys had nurtured her, as if there would be, ultimately, at a time of their choosing, a use for her…

She had been walking, then was scrambling, now was running… the boys, Krait and Scorpion, had shown her the body. She had seen the face. Dead lips and a dead tongue between them and dead eyes above them, and fingers that were splayed out but held nothing, and she understood for the first time the stakes of the hidden world she had joined, understood also what happened to an informer, the lowest of the worst… she was running and the wind might have caught her hair, dragged it out behind her, as had happened when she had walked on a moor with him, and the boys had said that there was a purpose to them being together.

Unremarkable, an open-air conversation. ‘You are sure about him?’

She was sure.

A young woman huddled against the weather and clutching her pile of books and talking with two young men, unnoticed. ‘You could travel in two days or three?’

She would travel when they needed her to.

‘He will do it?’

Their question, her answer. He would do what she told him to do.

‘You are so sure?’

Not an issue. She was certain of it. He would do as she told him, and she had laughed lightly, had left the boys, had gone in search of a place in the library. She would have liked then to have been able to lean across the stone wall on the Heckmondwike Road, above where she laid her flowers, feel the night cold on her face and tell her cousins what she was tasked to do and imagine them nodding in admiration.

The city of Marseille… more than two and a half millennia ago, Greek traders had arrived here from an Ionian town in Turkey, had established a trading post, had quickly discovered a perfect climate for the cultivation of vines and olives. They developed an extraordinary depth of culture, moved inland but also established trading routes by sailing west out into the Atlantic and then south along the coastline of continental Africa. Next to exploit the safe anchorage of the harbour were the Roman colonists. Later, under Julius Caesar, veteran legionaries were awarded plots of land as reward for loyal service. Next to come were the barbarians, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, and after them Arab armies sailing north across the Mediterranean. And then there was chaos and a breakdown in authority and Marseille was overrun by pirates. There were famines and plagues and disasters for centuries until papal power subjugated the unruly territory. Then prosperity, then absolute monarchy, then the construction of two of the finest fortresses in Europe – the Bas-Fort Saint-Nicolas and the Fort Saint-Jean, and the building of cathedrals to the glory of God, and fine public buildings. Marseille became the second city of France, but one that always showed a pithy, bitter, stubborn attitude to any form of subjugation from distant Paris. History, ancient and modern, drips from the civic buildings along with hedonistic streaks of rebellion. A visitor can stroll along bustling boulevards, always staying aware and keeping a firm grip on a bag and the zip fastened on a pocket with a wallet or purse, can visit magnificient museums, can take excursions to a coastline of amazing beauty, can eat well, feel a sense of anarchic freedom, can slip inside the dark quiet beauty of the Cathédrale de la Major and speak a few words of contemplation and feel purged and at peace. Those are a collection of aspects of Marseille.

The marksman had a target in his sights. The rifle was mounted with a telescopic sight and gave him a good, sharp view of the kid. He was entitled to shoot because his target sauntered along the walkway between the apartment towers, north of Marseille, and openly displayed a weapon, a Kalashnikov, and an hour earlier, had blasted shots into the air over a team of undercover detectives who were arresting a small-time dealer, a charbonneur. The low-life, peddling hashish, had wriggled free and run. The detectives had done the same, got the hell away, and the marksman had been called out. The marksman was known as Samson.

Samson was the name awarded him by many and tolerated by his commander, Major Valery. The name was abroad in the unit, Groupe d’Intervention de Police Nationale, among those level in rank with him and those recently recruited and far junior. He had chosen a position where he had elevation and could look down into the estate, and he followed the kid. The magnification on the scope was powerful enough for him to check how much of his cigarette was smoked, and how badly his face was affected by a dermatological complaint. There was a bullet in the breech and his safety catch was off, but he had his finger loose against the outside of the trigger guard… Samson was also the name given to him by a new generation of tricoteuses who would have spotted a single rifle and GIPN sharpshooter and his position behind the bench, and would have recognised the build of his body and the distinctive naval blue of the balaclava that he always wore. He was watched, and with an uncanny and prescient sense of impending drama, women of middle to older age would come out on to the little balconies of their apartments and would wait, would look, would watch for the target the marksman, Samson, had chosen: best if he was unaware, always better entertainment if the target stayed in ignorance.

Below Samson, away to his left, was the sea. It was a cool January day and the wind blew hard from across the mountains to the south, then whisked over the Mediterranean waves, and the washing on the short lines between the buildings billowed and surged. Big cargo ships nudged away from the Marseille docks, and a few trampers lurched in the swell as they came the other way and sought safe anchorage. He was entitled to shoot. His superiors would not have intervened and forbidden him to draw a bead and loose off a round. Police officers going about their work had been obstructed and rounds fired, and that was reason enough for retaliation. It was hard policing in this housing project, La Castellane, and the restraints that would have been required in Lille or Lyons, Orléans or Paris, were not thought obligatory in Marseille’s outer suburbs.

The kid was probably high on skunk from Morocco. He meandered and took no care to hide himself, and sometimes the barrel of the Kalashnikov trailed in the dirt. Could have been that the kid had lost his love of life and no longer cared if he was held in the cross-hairs, might have wanted it that way because of the stupefaction of a narcotic. Samson saw a woman advance towards the kid. She was well swaddled against the cold, and slipped twice on the mud. He could just hear her voice. Samson spoke little of the Arabic that was the pigeon language in the project. Her words, carried by the wind, were littered with abuse and anger. He’d had his aim on the target for at least four minutes now. At any moment in that time he could have slid a finger inside the guard, adjusted the aim, tightened his view of the chest and made those small but necessary calculations concerning wind strengths coming between the buildings, and fired. He would not have been criticised, certainly not by Major Valery, nor by any of his colleagues in the GIPN team – but he had not. She strode up to him. It was good theatre. Other kids had now formed a horseshoe around the Kalashnikov kid and they would be presented with a decent show, and the tricoteuses would be short-changed. She reached him. Samson could not decide whether she was the mother or the grandmother. Whichever, she packed a punch. She hit the kid. While she had belted him, while she stood her ground as he reeled, her insults flowed freely, Then she grabbed him by the ear. The spectators laughed, jeered. The women on the balconies would have looked across the open ground, beyond the feeder road, and almost to the commercial park, and would have checked the bench and the marksman there who wore a balaclava, and would have seen him stand, clear his weapon, turn his back. The woman held the kid’s ear and yanked him away and the Kalashnikov was dropped. She had saved his life, if it were a life worth saving. It might have been that the life had less value than the Kalashnikov left in the dirt, and in that housing project its price would not be more than 350 euros. A man came forward, picked up the weapon, was gone.

He walked back to the roadside lay-by where the trucks were parked. It would have been justifiable for him to fire but he had chosen not to. He had been given the name of Samson, taken from that of Charles-Henri Samson, because on separate occasions he had killed three men in the last five years. No other marksman in the GIPN force located in Marseille had killed more than once. Charles-Henri Samson had been first among equals as the official executioner in the years of the Terror, had become a celebrity after supervising the death by guillotine of both King Louis and Queen Marie-Antoinette. He would have said that he never fired for a trophy, only when it was necessary… The kid was lucky, except that he’d get a proper hiding from his mother, or grandmother. He emptied his weapon then put the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG – killing range of 600 metres – back into its carrying case… Tomorrow would be another day, and he was seldom impatient.

The city of Marseille had recently been reshaped as, post World War Two, an empire collapsed. France needed to find accommodation, and in a hurry, for the white settlers fleeing the colonies of north Africa–Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria – after blood-leaching wars of independence. The city fathers built ‘projects’ in an arc around the northern suburbs of old Marseille, shoebox apartments in constricted developments, and a time bomb of criminality was born. There had been older and more weathered organised crime gangs, led by such heroes of the city’s folklore as Francis ‘the Belgian’ Vanverberghe or Paul Carbone and François Spirito, and Tony Zimbert and Jacky ‘Mad Jacky’ Imbert, and Jean-Jé Colonna, and Farid ‘the Roaster’ Berrahma. Respected and feared, and then gone, swept aside by a new force. The old whites had evacuated the projects, and where they had lived now became a dumping ground for the masses of north African immigrants, those from the Maghreb, who descended – some would have said as a locust swarm – and built a life, and milked the system. Previously, the gangsters had marketed heroin, now the trade switched to the various forms of hashish flooding the housing estates. Some small organisations based around a filthy, daubed stairwell could pull in as much as 50,000 euros each day, many scratched a living at 15,000 euros taken every 24 hours. Turf wars achieved a new state of ruthlessness, and the weapon of choice for settling disputes, real or imagined, had become the AK-47 assault rifle: made in the former Soviet Union, modern Russia, China, Serbia, Bulgaria, Egypt or… pretty much anywhere. Sub-editors throughout Europe had fun with headines. Bodies pile up in gangland Marseille drugs war and In the deprived city of Marseille the French national spirit is nowhere to be seen and Marseille pupils forced to dodge drug gangs’ bullets and Marseille: Europe’s most dangerous place to be young.

The estates are near no-go areas for the police, and drug dealing is run with sophisticated and military precision, and life is cheap. A police officer would say that it was difficult to identify the worst of the project estates, but in the top echelon – as feared as any and with justification – he would rate La Castellane, out on the northern road leading to the airport. For that status La Castellane holds a formidable reputation, is awash with hard drugs, with weapons, and with killers.

‘Marseille? Sorry, Zed, why do we want to go to Marseille?’

A hesitation, a roll of the eyes, then… ‘Family business. Something I have to do.’

‘Going when?’

‘In a couple of days.’

‘It’s that urgent?’

‘Something I have to do.’

They were on a bench in the park near to his depot. She had come out to him, and he was still in his work clothing, the uniform of the haulage driver. The rain had stopped, and snow was not threatening, but there was a cold cut to the wind. A solitary woman walked a toy dog on another path, and ignored them. He’d looked around to see if the boys who had quizzed the Somali from the canteen had showed up, but had not seen them.

‘For how long?’

‘Two days or three.’

‘And we’d fly from Manchester, and…’

‘No, you would drive. Yes, drive there and drive back.’

He could have said that it would hardly be three days of choice if he were to drive – what would it be, close to 1000 miles each way? – and look at a French resort city off season and walk around a bit. Most times when she spoke to him it was with the confidence that she was a young woman from an intellectual grade higher than himself, but this was difficult for her. Refuse? No. He would show hesitation, gently question what she intended, but would accept. Would do what she asked – as if he were besotted, smitten. She would buy into it because she was an innocent.

‘You want me to drive?’

‘You drive, you are a good driver.’

‘It’s a fair question, Zed, would I be going as your friend or as your driver?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Do we go so as we are together, sitting in a car most of the time, or because you don’t know anyone else who would – for whatever reason – drive you?’

He had pushed her, might as well have given her a punch in the stomach. She pushed herself up off the bench. He thought they were poker players, bluffing, each seeking to exploit the other, neither knowing how far to take it. ‘I ask you. If you do not want to, do not. I don’t order you. I offer the chance. Don’t. If you don’t want to, Andy, then don’t.’

‘What do you know about Marseille, Zed, am I permitted to ask that?’

‘Have read a guidebook? No. Have I researched the place? No. But, I have to go.’

‘Just, what I heard, it’s a tough city.’

‘What do you say?’

His heart pounded because success nestled close, within reach, but he played the necessary game and acted hesitant. ‘I heard it’s a hard city… and I don’t have the sort of money that…’

‘You drive, I pay the bills.’ She said it decisively, a toss of the head, a small matter.

‘The family business? Take much of your time?’

‘It would be a chance for us. Not too much time.’

‘I’d like that. A few days, you and me, that would be good.’

‘You can fix it with your work?’

‘Think so… and you, you can take the time off, you don’t have lectures, a tutorial?’

‘Of course, I can.’

‘I’ll get it sorted in the morning.’

‘You and me, just you and me.’

‘And the family business won’t take too much of your time?’

‘My problem, Andy, not your problem.’

Settled. She had a good hold of him and kissed him hard, as she had before, and her tongue went inside his mouth and roved behind his teeth, and she seemed to have enthusiasm for it. Most of the time it was Andy Knight who did the lying, and had told lies that were smaller and lies that were bigger when he was Phil Williams and when he was Norm Clarke. He was paid to lie, not particularly well paid, but adequately. He eased clear.

‘If that’s what you’d like, Zed. Us, together, down across France and to Marseille and a few days there, and I give you room for your business, the family stuff, and then we head on back. It’s a long drive but at this time of year the roads won’t be heavy. Brilliant… it’ll be good.’

Not much light reached them from the edge of the park and the street lamps around a kids’ play area. It was enough. He saw that she was smiling. Like a cat with cream, a whole bowl of it. He thought he had done well, struck a good balance.

He had tried to ask what was natural, what he had the right to be told, but not have her on her feet and flouncing away. He put a hand on her arm. She took the side of his head, then pulled off her glove, then her fingers ran down the skin of his throat. Time for her to do the flirt bit. He thought it did not come easy to her. Her other hand was inside his anorak, and wouldn’t have been able to get closer because of the raised zip on his company overalls. He gave her a kiss, not passionate, more like a friend. Another kiss that sealed it, and her hand came out from under his anorak. They had both done, Andy Knight reckoned, a plausible job of deceit. He told her that he would get one of the guys at the depot to run the rule over his car to be certain it was right and ready for such a fierce run, and he’d be in the manager’s office first thing in the morning to nail down the time off… He knew next to nothing of Marseille except that it had deep roots in organised crime, a tough gangster scene that was run by north African ethnic migrants, that it was not a clever place to mess, to play games. He was pleased with how the session on the bench had gone, enough to forget that his backside was cold and wet and his hip joints stiff, and thought he had done the innocent bit as far as was necessary, then had done the guy who was obsessed with her. She was a good-looking girl, pleasant to look at and nearly pleasant to be with, and he wondered how far she would take him… He hoped he did not egg it, but thought she’d appreciate hearing it. Not the first time and wouldn’t be the last. He thought she was being nurtured for great things, a big moment, and there would be boys round her who pushed her forward, and he didn’t think she’d have the savvy for suspicion, not be as clear on risk as the boys behind her.

‘I just want to say, Zed, that we may have met up in daft circumstances, but I’m really pleased that I had the chance to meet you, get to know you. Really pleased because you are important. More important than anyone has been.’