Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 5

Out of the suburbs and on to the motorway, Andy Knight drove south.

Not how it was supposed to be. Zed should have been beside him. The radio on quietly, and her dozing and him driving with speed and care, and maybe her head drifting on to his shoulder. As a Level One he was not used to delegating the decision making; circumstances rarely permitted it. There had been control officers when he was down in the west country on the animal business who he had liked and thought conscientious, less so those handling him during the Swindon time, with the druggies, but could not be accused of shirking responsibility. Not then, not now, no one to toss the problem at.

He was separated from her. Object of the exercise was to keep close and keep her sweet, and listen and be trusted – look stupid, absorb. She had broken clear of him. He had needed to decide, straight up, how to respond. No opportunity to talk it over, get a second opinion from the old guy, Gough, and the younger woman, Pegs. Shared decision taking didn’t go with the job. She was apart from him, and he had not thought it possible to lambast her for messing with him. He’d tell them all in good time, in London, what had gone wrong with the mission, codename Rag and Bone. But expect no help. He drove, alone, and his morale sagged, and he was supposed to be able to kick ‘doubt’ out of his path, but she was not with him, which represented failure.

Alongside failure, in his opinion, went error and close behind error was the one that mattered; mistake. Errors could usually be sorted, not so with mistakes which carried a higher level of hazard, usually – in his trade – lethal.

The difficulty with a mistake, which was what they went over again and again to the point of making him want to scream, was the instructors’ insistence that most times the Undercover did not recognise it. A slip of the tongue, a confusion over the detail of the legend, something dropped that might refer to a parent, an experience in prison or in school, or where a family holiday had been, or seeing a guy last year – ‘good guy, good old boy’ – except that he had coughed it two years back, and not realising and no one reacting. Always, the Undercover was the intruder in the group, the last one to join and having to run fast with enthusiasm to catch up, be accepted, and being too helpful and too eager, and nothing too much trouble: they were, of course, the animal people or the druggies or the jihadis, dosed to the eyebrows with stories of infiltration. Hard if the mistake was not known, and the Undercover would try to be getting on with life while unaware that the rug could be ripped from under him, any damn moment, that he was watched and listened to, that the way in which he was cut out of sensitive talk was done with skill. If he did not know then there would be no trip to a car park or a motorway hotel or any of the rendezvous points where he could meet his command, the control, and demand out. How would it be… They’d ask . . . Was he sure? Certain? Could it not be put off, quitting, for a few more days? So near to pulling off the big haul, such a shame to abort now, don’t you think? Big strain, could be wrong in the assessment? They’d say ‘Have another drink, Andy – Have a refill there, Norm – Can we top that up, Phil – Wouldn’t it be best to sleep on it, not do anything precipitous?’ They did not let them walk away without a fight, might even get round to suggesting the Undercover ponder on the resources that had been swallowed by Rag and Bone, and might play the big card about lives on the line, people walking the streets, the great law-abiding unwashed going about their business and deserving, expecting, protection. But there was always a mistake… He realised that he had started to meander, had twice changed lanes, twice failed to use the indicator, and there were blue lights behind him. He was in the central lane, and they were coming fast track. That would be the fuck-up, then foul-up, pulled over and a boot-faced policewoman, one of the hard brigade and no ID card to conveniently pull out and wave so that he was sent on his way, was sir, a hero from the front line of some bloody war. The car came at speed, and the noise of the siren filled the VW Polo, it would get in front and then do the indicator bit and push him to the slow lane, then to the hard shoulder, and all so bloody inconvenient… The mistake he had made was to think vulnerability and so be careless on the road and lane hopping, and concentration down and a civic-minded driver would have been on his mobile and reporting him, and… the police, keeping up the pace went past him. He saw the flash of the indicators and ahead was a new Jaguar. It could have been that the cop car with the feldwebel in it had a bad thing with Jaguars… End of panic, but all about a mistake and what came from a mistake.

He used his mobile, called her. Heard it ring out, needed to speak. Her answer, sharp, querying what he wanted. He did the play-acting, the deception.

‘Just wanted to talk.’

‘We did, didn’t we, a bit ago? We talked.’

‘Needed to hear you.’

‘What are you saying, Andy?’

‘Wanted to hear your voice, just that.’

‘Hear my voice, and what should it be saying?’

‘Something about our holiday… would be good.’

‘Telling it to you, Andy, our holiday – together – will be fantastic. I hand in my essay, and we’re clear. Our holiday, and it’ll be brilliant, and…’

‘Just good to hear you, where are you?’

‘Just coming out of the library.’

‘You finished it?’

‘You know what they say, Andy – well, perhaps, you don’t – they say that an essay is never finished, only abandoned. It’s what the tutors say. Not finished, but nearly.’

‘It’s going to be good when we’re there, really good.’

‘Course it is, Andy.’

‘I’m halfway down.’

‘Sorry, what do you mean?’

‘I am halfway down the M6, the motorway, the car’s going great… Zed, you know what, know how it is?’

‘What should I know?’

‘I am missing you, Zed. Missing you big time.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Missing you and the feel of you, and hearing you, and us together, and I am on this goddamn motorway, and going away from you. Zed, missing you bad.’

A small voice, and he had to strain to hear it. ‘And missing you, Andy, promise.’

‘Where are you? Going to have something to eat?’

Zed said, ‘Just out of the library. Might grab something at the Kentucky.’

She lied easily. The library at the university was on the other side of the Pennine moorlands. She was in Savile Town, across the Calder river from the main part of Dewsbury. It had been a visit home, and she wore the clothing that her parents imagined she wore each day, every day at Manchester Metropolitan.

A facile question. ‘Are you going to stop, have something?’

‘Might do, might not.’

‘I miss you, Andy.’

And heard his laugh, tinny on the phone speaker. ‘God, didn’t know if you were going to get round to saying it, Zed.’

‘You’ll be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘It matters to me, you being fine.’

‘Look after yourself.’

‘I will, and don’t work all night.’

‘Won’t – we’ll speak later.’

‘Will do – love, Zed, love.’

The call went dead on her. The four-letter word. He had used it. Hadn’t before, as if he were too shy of it, or maybe had felt her beyond his reach – race, intellect, education, She hadn’t spoken the word, love, not to Andy Knight, not to any boy at the university, certainly not to anybody in the Savile Town area. He’d meant it, the call had dripped sincerity. She did not regard it as a complication, more a register of her success in recruiting his emotions: they gave her a car ride out of Marseille with a secreted package and a run through Customs on the way home, and she might have gone for a blouse rather than a T-shirt and left some buttons undone, and the pendant would be on show and nestling in the cleft, and she might have a hand on his shoulder, and the relationship would be on display, open to all-comers to see it and there would be a lift of eyebrows and they’d be waved into a green channel. How far would she go with him…? She was walking briskly. Didn’t know, could not say. She thought him so easy to deceive, she could almost pity him. Almost… She had come to Dewsbury to see her parents. Not necessary to see them, not inside the routine she kept, but because she was going away. Would be with him, close to him, perhaps needing to feed off his ignorance and take strength from him – would sleep with him? Might, might just… well, expected to.

What could go wrong? Anything could go wrong. Foreign country, foreign crime group, foreign deceit, foreign police. Could happen, arrested, handcuffs and face down on a pavement, could happen. Or a shout, or running, or a lump hammer blow on her back and the pavement rushing up and weakness spilling, and never heard the sound of the shot. Not that it would but… it could. Had been to see her parents. How was it at the university? How was her work? How were her marks? How were her job prospects? Talk, of course, of marriages arranged by parents in their wisdom; nice, dutiful girls married to Pakistani boys in that country of donkey shit and smells and poverty, and a life shut away behind a screen. All that was usual, and she had done her time with them, and had hurried away. She would meet the guys later and they would drive her from the station in Manchester to her Hall of Residence, and alone in her room she would pack. Clean clothes, wash bag, a nightdress – what a bride might have bought for a wedding night.

She could not have said why she had agreed to buy it, his money and his insistence, did not own anything else like it, but felt the slight weight of the pendant on her skin as she marched fiercely along the pavement and towards the main road that led to the bridge and then the train station. She had nothing else like that, had never been given a present of that sort from outside her immediate family. Her confusions seemed to tug tighter. Traffic passed her and her back would have been lit, and she would have seemed the dutiful and obedient daughter of her mother and father… If she were taken, handcuffed, and led out through a front door smashed by a ram, her parents would be left to a life of confusion and disgrace. Neighbours would gather and gossip. Her mother would weep and her father curse, and the street would arrive at the front door, what remained of it, to console. It did not matter to her… what was important, signally so, was the cheerfulness and the smiles and the laughter, and the determination, of the cousins who had left to fight – as she would, in her way. She crossed the bridge. The super stores were still open, and she turned past the bus station. Then she would walk up the hill, to the station, then take the train to her university city, but after she had been in the lavatories to change her clothing.

Confused, but not frightened. There was no essay to finish. When she was back she would pack her bag, and the new silky nightdress bought on impulse.

The only narcotic known to Tooth was his addiction to varied forms of criminality.

He sat on his terrace, a rug over his legs, and sipped at a fruit juice and looked across at the Ile d’If, the Count of Monte Cristo’s gaol, and the gaunt outline of battlements and defensive walls above the fabled dungeons… Fruit juice because he no longer drank alcohol: no drugs, no liquor.

Two schedules concerned him. When the Margarethe would arrive close enough to the coastline east of Marseille, out at sea but off the Calanques park where the narrow inlets were. A fishing boat would be in place and would take delivery of a package. One at first, but a trade that would grow with success… When his friend from the north of England would fly in, when they would be together to laugh and joke and decry the passing of the ‘old days’, the ‘good old days’. He felt rippling pleasure as he lounged on an upholstered bench and the wind off the water tickled in his beard, tilted his inevitable cap… Tooth had not retired. Many dreamed of that end to a successful career, but would be disappointed. Those who no longer worked at business, at deals, at trading, however much down in the market place, were dead. They demonstrated weakness, no longer enjoyed protection. It could have been the burden of his age, now in his 72nd year, had he allowed it: he did not, and the proof was the slow limping journey of an old freighter out in the Mediterranean sea, and the imminent flight to Marseille of his friend.

He was a careful man… methodical, and with the ability to examine propositions put to him, dissect the risk area, and reject or accept. It was why he did not drink alcohol, certainly why he would never addle his mind with the hashish so readily available in the city. Careful since his youth. Tooth had been the tearaway kid, looked after by his sisters after the early death of his father and while his mother took in laundry, went out to clean, slaved to feed them. He had had no fear, no hesitation in striking back if challenged.

A bright dawn, the first sunlight, the start of a September day, had changed him. An execution before five o’clock. A use for the guillotine in the yard of the Baumettes gaol, not far from where Tooth now lived. A rapist and murderer of a former girlfriend, Hamida Djanboudi, had been taken out of his cell, had been walked across a blanket-covered path, minimising the sound of his footfall, had been taken to the machine after a final Gitane and a final half glass of brandy. But every one of the thousand plus prisoners had listened, strained to hear, had noted the dulled impact of the falling blade. Forty-two years before but decisions taken: Tooth would never go back to prison, would never have a brain too confused to weigh options, would always protect his back, move with a snake’s caution. Others would run risks, not him, and he had survived, and he smiled to himself in the frail warmth of the sunlight… There were many investigators living in good homes in the 8th district who would discreetly duck a cap to him if they passed on the pavement, because he had nurtured their retirement with bribery, had successfully corrupted. It was about trust. He thought he lived in a replica of paradise.

He trusted, strange for him, the young man he had met in the park off the Boulevard Charles Livon; trusted him because he believed in the fate, as described to him without a moment of hesitation, of anyone who broke the bounds of discipline. Tooth did not do it himself, exact punishment, but knew plenty of men who would. Trust, and he did not expect to be proven wrong.

It was done with a formality. Done without noise or drama, done with a protocol. Done with inevitability.

The bell did not work. Hamid, kingpin of that stairwell, a little emperor in the world of trading good-quality hashish from Morocco knocked on the door of the fifth-floor apartment. Not a heavy knock, not one that threatened to remove the door from its hinges. He waited. Behind him, at a distance back along the communal walkway from the stairs were the sightseers, like the tourists who gathered at the quayside of the vieux port, who were the strong-arm muscle that he needed as watchers and dealers and couriers, but not required now. His younger brother, Karym, was with them. The mob would not be required, and he carried no weapon.

He was patient. He heard the rustling of feet across the floor beyond the thin wood of the door. A TV played inside. There was a spy hole and he assumed it would be used. A voice called out inside, the mother’s. He would have been inspected, his identity confirmed. There would have been time enough for her to lift her phone, call 112 and demand immediate response from the Police Nationale, possible. But not a single patrol car would be tasked to go and evaluate a problem. Entry into La Castellane would take planning, commitment, probably the deployment of a hundred officers. She, the mother, would have known that. The stink from the walkway of urine and decayed food and rubbish filtered in his nostrils. He would not be kept waiting long. The mother was a nourrice, unemployable at her age, and reliant on the small income he paid her for keeping weapons or cash, or pouches of hashish, safe and hidden. She called out again, quite a firm voice. A bolt was drawn, a chain was loosed, a key was turned. He had not expected he would have to force his way inside. She opened the door. He smiled at her, without warmth, but as if it were correct to acknowledge a woman who he employed, and who had not given him – as far as he knew – cause for complaint. Her face was frosted, and her eyes were wide and she did not blink, did not look away from him. She called again.

The boy appeared, came from a room off the hallway.

There was no gesture to the boy. Nothing said. The mother held her son for a moment, then released him. The boy shook. Some mothers might have clung tight to her son, held him with a desperate strength, cried out so that the whole block knew her agony. Not this mother. She might have thought he was condemned, might have thought that her boy would be beaten, roughed up, then returned. The boy could barely walk. He did not try to run back inside the apartment, take refuge in his bedroom. He came out and stepped, swaying at weak knees, on to the walkway. Then the boy wet himself… the door closed behind him. They heard the key being turned and the chain replaced, and the bolt pushed across. Hamid took the boy’s ear, easy to reach under his close-cut hair, this was a teenager who had regarded himself as a rising star, who had spent money on his appearance, but now had messed himself. A trail was left behind him and along the walkway. He might have been too terrified to fight, and his step was leaden, and the hold on his ear was merciless. They walked towards the youths.

Hamid knew the boundaries of his power. On this walkway and its stairs, and at the well at the bottom, his authority was total. With the small bearded man, knowing his reputation, he would not have considered taking a liberty: no action, no word, that might offer offence. The group parted. A day before, it was safe to assume, the boy would have been cocky, brimming cheek and mischief, and now his trousers were stained and he left the mark, warm, dribbling, behind him, and his mother would now be slumped at her table, head in hands, alone, convulsed in tears. It would teach the boys who followed them down the stairs, hushed and not daring to be heard, a further lesson in the need for discipline, and they would appreciate the show when it was done. A barbecue was always well attended, was popular among the teenagers who followed a leader, and a leader’s money.

They went outside, past the overflowing rubbish bins that the corporation had not collected that week, or the previous one, or the one before, citing ‘problems of access’. Likely they were holding out for bonus payments if they came inside La Castellane or any of the other nearby projects. The sun was dropping and darkness would soon envelop the close buildings. His hand now rested loosely on the boy’s shoulder. The bladder would have been emptied and the boy was firmly pushed forward if he slowed. With darkness came the customers. With the customers came the banknotes, new and old, frayed or virgin. The project’s life relied on the sale of hashish, and scores depended on the patronage of men such as the brother of Karym. All of the chouffes and the rabbatteurs and the charbonneurs and the nourrices were paid, had families they supported. The government did not come with hand-out cash, nor the corporation in the arrondissement, nor the bureaucracy in the Town Hall on the Quai du Port. All were paid well in excess of the listed poverty line. The project depended on hashish and the quality of the entrepreneurs selling it… All of the boys who followed saw themselves as coming figures, had ambition – but kept their distance and none had made eye contact. None would speak up, none would defend. He went to another block. The boy was handed over to new gaolers. An astute move: it meant that the credit for the coming barbecue was spread, meant also that the matter could be put to rest for a few hours, leave him free to start trading when the night descended on the poorly lit buildings.

The boy had gone, a door had closed on him. He whistled, and his young brother – the cripple who was Karym – ran forward. He said what was wanted.

Karym carried the rifle.

Not obviously, not as the boy had done, not as an idiot would.

It was wrapped in a blanket and tucked under his strong arm. He had been sent by his brother back to Hamid’s personal apartment – a palace of modern furniture and drapes and a kitchen like those on TV – and had collected the weapon from under the bed. There had been, he noted, two small hand grenades in a half-open drawer and a pistol was protruding from under the pillow, and was loaded, and on a dressing-table was a can of pepper-spray. In the apartment, Karym shared with his sister there were no weapons. When he had retrieved the rifle from under the bed, he had sat on the mattress and had laid out the pieces of the weapon on the floor at his feet, had done it by touch and had learned its history of origin, then had put it together again, barely looking as the parts went back into place. Karym regretted that he had no friend with whom to share his obsession. Not his sister. Not his mother when she came from Cassis, the town where she lived and worked, and she would scream and rail that her family were vermin because of Hamid’s notoriety. If the obsession had involved the fans of the Marseille football team then he could have shared. Not that the kids would go to the Stade Vélodrome to watch Olympique because that was on the far side of the city, away down the Prado road and distant from familiar territory, but there were boys who knew everything about the team, the players, the tactics… all tedious to young Karym. The weapon, the AK-47, the design of Mikhail Kalashnikov, was principal in his life. Nothing mattered as much as taking any opportunity to soak up information on the rifle, and to handle one… This one was crap. It would have come off the production line of the Zastava factory at Kragujevac in the Serbian state. They called it the Zastava M70, a poorly produced copy of the Kalashnikov. They came to Marseille from the Balkans by road or via a great loop which took them to Spain and then another overland route. Frequently they were intercepted and the hauls were large and the prisons bulged with the couriers… but it was, to young Karym, still a Kalashnikov. He walked through the project. It was said – Karym had read it in a magazine – that there were still six million assault rifles privately owned in the Balkan countries, illegal and hidden, and any family that was suffering hardship would take the rifle to a dealer, haggle over it, get a poor price, sell it. It gave Karym pride to know that the projects of northern Marseille were the principal destination for the trade – other than the terror groups circling Belgium and the French capital, but terror was outside all aspects of Karym’s interest and experience… and, Zastava made the ammunition. It was a clean weapon, might never have been out of its shipping wrapping, previously stored in a warehouse, then put up for sale like it was a used car, ‘one careful owner’, then bought by his brother. Maybe his brother had paid $150, or could have been less because the market belonged to the buyers.

Carrying the rifle, the boy who had messed with it – now likely to be trussed and in a bunker below a block – was gone from Karym’s mind.

It was the freedom weapon. It was the rifle chosen by men and women who believed in seductive wars of liberation, and it was easily available to them. A child of ten could learn to strip and assemble, could kill with it… not Karym, who had the liability of his weakened arm. And had never fired one. They had made, he’d read, one hundred million of them, and he had never fired one, aimed down the V sight and the needle set at Battle Sight Zero, not one of the one hundred million – was worse, far more pain to him than the absence of a girl in his life. His brother waiting for him in the shadows, saw him, emerged.

Kids watched. He thought them the pilot fish that swam close to a shark. If the shark fed, ripped at the flesh of a seal or a swimmer then there was debris in the water, meat or gristle, which they’d scavenge… but they’d swim where the power was. If his brother fell then the kids would desert him, as they had deserted the boy taken from his mother. His brother took the weapon.

And was gone. Nothing shared. He was not an actor, only a witness – not a player but part of the audience. He did not complain. He had no affection for his brother, and none was shown him, but each was of use to the other. Karym’s brother was a protector, and Karym was a useful courier, errand runner.

Karym took his place again, among the other watchers at the entrance to the project. He sensed a growing anticipation around him because a barbecue was planned, but he did not know when, nor where. When questions were asked of him, he merely shrugged, would not admit ignorance. But the mood was there, around him, like jungle creatures sniffing blood, and the first customers were coming to the checkpoint and would be escorted by boys to the payment and distribution points. Blood, to the boys of the La Castellane project, had a clear and distinctive scent.

The binoculars were passed between them, backwards and forwards.

‘What do you read?’

‘Read something, cannot say.’

Major Valery held the binoculars, high-powered but with a fine cloth mesh over the lenses so that reflection from street-lights did not flash back off them. He wore black overalls, a black balaclava hid his face, and the belt and pistol holster at his waist were black. It was a place he came to once a week or once a fortnight, and it had been found by his companion. There were few evenings when the Major was home, off the Rue d’Orient, near to the hospitals and the city cemetery, and far from the 15th arrondissement, when the offices at L’Évêché emptied. The district of Verduron, the project of La Castellane, was at the heart of his responsibility, but he had many, was worked to the bone. He had come from the northern city of Lille, civilisation, had been transferred to Marseille with promises of fast-track promotion after the corruption scandal involving the Brigade anti-criminalité. A section of investigators and their infrastructure had been proven to be on the take, doing it big time, for tens of thousands of euros. He trusted few whom he worked with, but one man in particular was marked out, in the Major’s mind, as having uncompromising, granite-hard integrity. They hunted together, were often a pair. He thought his companion could not be bought, therefore had the greatest value, and was a proven killer. He passed the binoculars to the sergeant, to the one they called Samson. A grim name, perhaps appropriate, and neither wanted nor disowned. It was their habit to come to a vantage-point above any of the projects, where a decent view was possible, where a secure hiding place was available.

‘Difficult to assess, but a tension.’

‘Unusual, more kids hanging on corners, and older people safe in their buildings.’

‘A priest spoke of a mother’s visit to him, came to him because she believed he would have greater influence than an imam. A boy in trouble, a dealer, whatever – we can do nothing. It is a tough place, toughest for those who have to live there.’

‘There is an atmosphere, something builds,’ Samson murmured.

It was not necessary for them to be there, beyond the duty call, and neither would have shared the results of their surveillance with others, gave no confidences. The Major was known to have been brought to Marseille to restore a degree of integrity in the Brigade, and the Sergeant’s identity had been leaked and he, his blue balaclava, his given name and the marksman’s rifle, had become known.

‘I had a call – not your concern but I took a call. Very grand, the Metropolitan Police from England, Scotland Yard, a voice that seemed to regard me as a hotel concierge, and they have an Undercover coming through: no detail, no explanation, just the suggestion that I make a backup team available. Not through the usual channels, but direct and circumventing them to save time. I come here, look at that place, at La Castellane, at the customers coming for purchase of hashish, all criminal and illegal, and I relax… I could have broken the phone, Samson, indeed I could.’

‘You told them to go fuck…’

‘Sort it when they come, time then… Samson, what do you see?’

The marksman said that his own quiet time in an evening, while his wife cooked or made clothes, or ironed her uniform for the next day’s inner city policing, was to watch the nature films on the TV. He spoke of hyenas in an African reserve, gathering because a big predator was closing in on a kill, and if the hyenas were alerted then so also would the vultures. They could smell, the hyenas could, Samson said, when a death was imminent, and the vultures watched through every hour of daylight. He thought it was like that, a world of hyenas and vultures and the near-dead, in the project.

A mirthless chuckle from the Major. ‘And the kids there are the hyenas, or the vultures?’

Samson said softly, ‘Nearly, not quite. The kids enjoy the spectacle of the killing. The hyena kills to eat or to clear the scraps left… it is a small difference.’

They would give it another half an hour then leave as quietly and as unseen as they had come, and they would go to their homes across the city, far from here, from the scent of blood. More customers came and business was brisk that evening.

And another difference, the hyenas in there, among the blocks and patrolling the walkways and entrances, were better armed than the men and women of the GIPN, had greater fire-power… not a place to go short-handed, without good reason.

October 1970

An open sewer ran past the entrance to the building. Old sacking, still marked with the stencilled initials of UNHCR, hung from nails hammered into the beam that crossed the entrance. It rained on the camp; the good weather of the early autumn had gone. Low cloud covered the hills to the east, towards the Syrian border. The building was home to a family that had once owned a villa and an apple orchard and olive groves near to the town of Acre: but Acre was now inside Israeli territory and this was a family that had fled, wisely or unwisely, 22 years earlier. The family was extended – grandparents, parents, and children. And instead of the fine villa and sweet shaded gardens and a smallholding, they lived in a construction put together with a hammer and a liberal supply of nails.

The shot was fired.

The roof was made from rusted corrugated iron sections, as if they had been found on a rubbish heap and brought specially to this camp for Palestinian refugees. The walls were plywood and nailed to the frames of pallets. Two windows were covered with clear cellophane which was stained, darkened and hard to see through. The roof leaked when it rained, the walls gave no protection against the cold of winter, and in that part of Lebanon there would be snow. The mud in front of the entrance was slippery and clinging. The family possessed little except their memories and stories of the past, and the cooking pots that the women used when the camp authorities issued food supplies. There was no work, they had no income, were dependent on subsistence aid. A gift had come their way a month before, but it did not help to heat or feed the family. The eldest grandson had been accepted into the fedayeen group that ran the camp. He was fifteen, conceited, proud that he had been given an AK-47 assault rifle as a mark of his acceptance into the training cadre. Many men in the camp carried weapons. But that day the grandson had left the weapon behind when he had gone for cigarettes.

After the single shot came the scream.

It was a hideous sound, that of an old woman pierced by sudden anguish. The sound split apart the sacking rags at the entrance of the building. Neighbours gathered. Those walking either side of the ditch that ran in the centre of the path, that carried raw waste and stank, hesitated and ducked down or scurried for cover. First out was a kid, a boy, five or six years old, thin and emaciated as were so many children in the camp. He was screaming that he did not know it was loaded, was only showing it… and already he had been kicked hard in the back and belted across his face. He ran, bent double in pain, tears on his face. Next came a mother, clutching her youngest daughter, three years old perhaps. The blood already stained her clothing. The small girl’s face was unmarked and a sort of peace had settled there, but her chest was ripped open, and her back was punctured. Her only movement came from the mother’s violent shaking as if to force back to life some movement of the heart or lungs. Next out, thrusting aside the sacking, was the grandmother. The keening scream came from deep in her throat and she carried the AK-47 rifle by the tip of the barrel, her fist clamped on it just below the fore-sight. She threw it, in a high looping arc. She damned it, in full voice.

On that grey afternoon with low cloud hovering above the jerry-built roofing and the air dirtied by the smoke from internal fires and cooking oil, little was clear, except… anyone who watched the rifle’s gentle twisting flight would have seen that the stock was scarred with a dark gouge where a wood splinter had long been detached, and there were scratches near to it. The eldest grandson had used the rifle to kill a handful of goats, the feral ones that the herdsman could not control. He had added more notches.

A boy reached up, another teenager grabbed the rifle, tucked it against his chest, and sprinted clear.

The weapon with the serial number’s last digits of 16751, now in its fifteenth year, had found a new owner, a new home. A child was dead. The camp was a place of misery but life would soon move on, and a burial would close down a small window of grief.

Beth packed for him.

‘How long you going for? If you can’t tell me, God’s name, how do I know what to put in?’

She had a fair point, gave her that with good grace. It irked Crab to have to tell her that he did not know when he would be leaving for Marseille because he had not yet received the necessary from his good friend, Tooth. Nor did he know how many nights he’d need to be there, not yet told. But he felt, whichever day of the next week he was flying, rare pleasure. Would be with his confidant, his equal… That mattered. There were old men in the Manchester area who had fallen on hard times after their last stretch in Strangeways, and they hung around pubs and cheap coffee and breakfast bars, and if they’d seen him, well turned out and looking after himself, he’d either get a beggar’s fist on his coat, or a foul rant of jealousy. Hardly any had made it to old age and still had good banks looking after their cash, and intelligent accountants who kept down the tax bill. So few people that he could talk to… he’d be on a lounger in the sunshine, a weak gin in his hand, watching ships sail towards the container port – half of them carrying Moroccan or Tunisian or Algerian skunk, and it would be good talk, without envy or acrimony. A simple little deal was in place, and he and his friend were far enough removed from the action to be clean. The money was peanuts, but a deal was a deal, business was business. He’d feel good there, like when he was young and a big player.

‘Just enough for three or four days. Quiet stuff, what doesn’t stand out. Some of the class stuff, where I’m going.’

‘I simply don’t think that will be possible.’

‘Well, it has to be, that’s the way we see it.’

Down the motorway, across the city, into the Vauxhall building but not going upstairs where the offices were. Carrying his grip and the sack, he’d been escorted to an interview room where there were hard chairs, a formica-covered table, a water dispenser, and a fluorescent ceiling light. Andy had stood, now paced. The woman, Pegs, was by the door, leaning against the jamb, but the man, Gough, sat on a chair and nursed a plastic cup.

Andy said, ‘Of course it’s the best option, but things don’t work that way.’

Gough said evenly, ‘Not saying it will be piece of cake, but it is what’s required.’

‘It’s the easiest way to foul up.’

‘Clever boy like you, always able to find a way.’

Generally the raw edge for running an undercover involved reporting back. It had already been agreed that Andy Knight would not be wired. They were saying that he would be required to call in, use a mobile, each day, each evening, make a schedule and stick to it: he was saying that was a straitjacket and sucked. He was tired and the drive had been hard. Supposed to be a professional lorry driver but it was different squashed down low in a VW Polo, hemmed in by big trucks, the light in his eyes, and unfamiliar with London streets. The atmosphere was bad from the start.

‘I call when I can call, how it has to be.’

‘We’re sliding off the wavelength, Andy. I’m saying what will happen.’

‘I am about what is practical and what is wishful. I call when I can… is there something else? Can we move on?’

‘It is all about contact. The whole thing. We cannot watch you, but there has to be a steady link… Can I put it more bluntly?’

‘Put what?’

He was tired and hungry had not been offered as much as a sandwich. None of the usual talk about what a hero he was and how well he’d done, and how pleased they were, going well. Not said… It was small, should not have been a point of issue. They wanted him tied to a schedule, he declined. They wanted control; he wanted a degree of freedom, to be his own boss, make his own decisions: call when it was possible and not manufacture a moment of opportunity. What could be put bluntly?

‘Where we’re looking from, Andy, we have this perspective. She’s floated off, you’ve lost her. Separate travel. An arrangement to meet at a car park in the town of Avignon, very pleasant place and with a shortened bridge, and a Pope’s palace, but a flimsy rendezvous. Not going well, is it, Andy? Needs tightening up.’

‘It’s the way things play out, nothing I can do.’

‘And it’s all vague and all loose. I’m not suggesting, Andy, that you’re a cannon broken free and careering around the gun-deck, but she needs reining in. Thought you would have done. You don’t just swan off into the sunset. You report and report often, and we act on your reports. What problem do you have with that?’

He hardly knew them. Not a case of them picking him, or him accepting the invitation. They were top of the acquisition list, and he was the guy who was available, and Prunella did the operational transfers for them, those on Level One at Specialist Crime and Operations 10. Was not supposed to like them or dislike them. There had been a stilted conversation and he’d gone off to create his own legend and that had taken months because this was a business not done at Grand Prix speed, and then there had been the ‘set-up’ on the street, and then four months since he had brought her, Zed, the flowers in her Hall of Residence. Slow and meticulous and careful, as it should be if mistakes were not to creep up on his back. And he was here and walking the width of the room and his temper was rising: he wondered if they had yet done a Risk Assessment… the dispute was about something so simple. He had to say, ‘Look, guys, I’m hearing you and I guarantee that I will call through – any time day or night – when I can. Top of my priority list. Will call. Each time I go for a leak I will call you.’ Could have said it, had not, had blustered and all the body language was resentment, as if something unreasonable were asked of him. The man, Gough, could have smiled, reached out and grabbed his passing sleeve, could have said, ‘Your best shot, Andy, is way good enough for me.’ Had not, and the woman by the door wore a sour face and twice had glanced at her watch, just one of those sessions that hadn’t worked out.

Andy Knight said, voice quiet, ‘Always difficult, I’m sure you’ll agree, for those who have never done something to put themselves in the place of the guys who eat it, live it, sleep it. If you had done it, you would know that it’s the equivalent of running up a Jolly Roger flag, skull and crossbones, signals immediate danger, they say something important and the outsider – not quite trusted, not yet on the real inside track, straightaway needs to go and piss, and if anyone follows him to the lavatory they’ll hear his voice whispering, or hear the bloody keys going on his phone… my life on the line – not yours – and I call in when I am good, when I am ready, not on a schedule.’

A smile from Gough, probably not intended but patronising. ‘Not the time for this. Leave it for when the psychologist does the de-pressurising, get it out of your system then. Don’t think we are blind to the strain you exist under. It was an observation that you have lost your target, that we have felt the need to put a surveillance detail on her, the full works, costs a bomb, and done it because she waved you goodbye. Where are we? We are at you meeting her in a bloody car park in Avignon. Except, she calls the shots and that was not in the game plan.’

‘It’s where we are.’

‘Not a good place.’

‘It’s about Kalashnikovs?’

‘Our estimate, what they want most. You to drive one, two, three, what we assume. Different issue if they have Kalashnikovs on the street… Another thing for the blunt bit, we have major resources invested in this, have emptied out the piggy bank and gambled on the lady and you up close with her, and being taken into a whole network, and learning of people way up the chain. When we move we cauterise an entire set-up, take them off the street. Not just her, and low-level dross. She takes you there… Except, you are not with her, are not close… And, I run this shit shower – please, do not forget that. Please, do not.’

The voice had not risen but the speech had slowed as if for emphasis, and Andy saw that the woman grimaced momentarily as if that had been an unexpected speech from Gough, pithy and to the point. All for nothing… tired, hungry, nervous, and led inexorably into a spat. Trouble was, clocks were never turned back. Could not start again.

Andy shrugged, nothing else to say. He picked up his grip, left the sack in the corner, might catch up with it sometime, and might not. She gave him a slip of paper, an address. Gough did not look up, did not wish him luck. They did not know his name, where he was from, who had been important in his life: was not sure he knew. He left them.

Gough said, ‘He’s gone native.’

Pegs said, ‘He needed a good kicking, you gave him a soft one, should have been harder. Suppose it happens to them all, going native.’

He’d gone, and they’d heard the security guard wish him a good evening, and the outer door had swung shut, and there had been a few footsteps, then quiet.

Gough still sat at the table. ‘God, and I sympathise, but there has to be a command structure, and he has to understand it. We employ him, we direct him, we task him. The whole business falls apart if we let him just slide away, outside our direction.’

‘I think you gave it him, but only one barrel. Could have been two, should have been.’

Gough remembered what a psychologist had told him, about Undercovers. ‘Has to have a high motivation for law enforcement, but that’s not enough on its own. More vital is an obsessive personality and a need to win. Must be a winner.’ They had missed the last schedule where Andy Knight was supposed to see the psychologist, a routine visit, for an assessment, how he was standing up to the stress levels induced by continuous deceit. Such meetings were supposed to be regular but were often casualties, and no one seemed that concerned when the date had slipped. The psychologist had talked to them about the signs that raised a red flag: pulse rate up, fast and staccato speech, a bit of breathlessness, normally punctual and ordered but running late, anxieties about personal safety, short and uncontrolled temper. Standard stuff. He’d thought the psychologist to be a sensible woman, and she’d talked them through what the Undercover should be. The ability to blend, go unnoticed in a crowd. Not be easy to know, keep a reserve. Won’t be noisy in a pub, not an extrovert. Suspicion of those he meets will dominate his character. It had seemed a game, not any longer. Might have been, the sea change in attitude for Gough, when they’d been shown the body in the water and a rather second-rate, or third-level, source had been submerged, marks on the face, still the signs of terror frozen in the eyes. Not a game any longer.

‘What’s to be done?’

‘Nothing,’ Pegs answered. ‘Nothing to be done.’

A career detective, more than 30 years served and able to claim full pension rights, Gough stayed on for want of making the ultimate decision on his domestic life. He shared a small home of pale London brick with his wife, Clare: polite, separate, parallel lives and no children to complicate, and they did not embarrass each other. He spoke with the remnants of the Scots accent coming from the west, along the winding road from Inverary to Loch Awe. Once he was a renowned thief taker, then had been in the Branch, now was a tracker of jihadis, but anonymous, never appeared in open court or stood in the witness box. Pegs was a decade younger, and her former husband was on the road and sold printer inks, and the one daughter lived in the east of the country with a guy who hadn’t fathered her two children. Both daughter and current partner she described as ‘a waste of space’. What was her fault? Nothing. She’d never accept blame. She was the product of an expensive school in south Oxfordshire, came from money, but had turned her back on it and swore and cursed and drank, and the focus of her life was working alongside Gough. They were both comfortably certain that their physical relationship, stretching beyond work matters, was unknown in the building off Wyvill Road. In fact, it was an open secret, and their efforts at discretion caused amusement. The unremitting burden of anxiety, afflicting both – and many hundreds of others working for the Security Service and the Counter-Terrorist Units – was the hackneyed old adage of needing to be lucky every time, and the opposition needing to be lucky just the once. They worked desperate hours, were afraid to relax their guard because luck might then evade them. He would wear, day in and day out, except in the two months of high summer, heavy corduroy trousers, a lightly checked shirt, with a tie, and a sports jacket, and she would be in a white blouse and a black trouser suit and the minimum of jewellery. His hair had thinned, was grey, and hers was highlighted and worn short. They disagreed on nothing of importance, but he bounced at her and usually she’d claim the final word.

‘Should I have said that, him gone “native”, was that out of order?’

‘He picked a fight, a fight about nothing.’

‘Should he be there, Pegs? Or should he be pulled?’

‘Can’t do that. No… no… can’t.’

‘All laid down. Duty of care, pages of it in the manual. Down to us.’

‘That is bollocks, Gough. Pull him out, just ridiculous.’

‘What I said, duty of care… what is my responsibility?’

‘That is a heap of shite. Can’t go now. He has to see it through. Marseille is a crap place. He has to be there… Imagine it. About tea-time, Gough, on a Sunday, leading up to a holiday, and big crowds out, and they start interrupting programmes, and your mobile’s gone crazy and mine. Someone will have a snapshot on a phone: in black, carrying a Kalash, lifting it up, calm as you like, and dropping another poor whimpering bastard. They hit lucky and we didn’t, and the numbers start stacking up and he’d hardly be into the second magazine, and armed response is stuck in traffic… You’d tell them at the inquiry that you had a guy inside them, a Level One, but you pulled him because he seemed to be carrying the pressure poorly, and you reckoned that was your duty of care, seemed a bit flat and grumpy: tell that to them. You’d swing in the fucking wind, Gough. You’d hang and swing, and deserve to.’

‘Yes, heard. For the greater good of the greater number. That is where we are?’

‘He’ll be fine. Have to be – yes? – fine. And have to hang on to the girl. Must.’

Back from Dewsbury, Zeinab was in her Hall of Residence room.

She had seen a boy from her floor in the reception area, and two of the girls in the corridor, and had walked past all three, had spoken to none of them. Inside her room, untidy but bare of personality, she had seen that her desk remained, of course, covered with the notes for the essay she was supposed to be busy with. They played no part in her life… nor did her parents, or anything and anyone else in Savile Town across the Calder from Dewsbury – except that it had been the home of her cousins – nor did her tutors. She belonged to none of the student societies, played no sports, and her work suffered which was, to her, irrelevant. Important to Zeinab were the shopping mall in central Manchester, or one of those on the outskirts of Leeds, or in Sheffield. Important, more so, were the two guys who had again met her at the train station and had driven her close to the Residence, then dropped her. She had been told when she would be travelling, and by what route. One had smelled of fast food, and the other of old sweat dried on his body, and she felt no affection for either, but they facilitated her though did not seem to give her respect. Most important to her, Zed, was Andy. The first boy, the only boy, who had sought her out, been a protector, then had come back to her. One bunch of flowers only, and she had treasured them and been to a florist to get a ‘potion’ to put in the water of the vase that she had been loaned by the housekeeper and had only thrown them out when they had drooped. She could picture in detail, like a film slowed, his rush to help her, and the strength of the blows that he had landed against the three thugs who were after her bag. The violence of the response lived with her… and he had gone after the one who had wrested away her bag, had retrieved it. Could recall also the joy she had felt when she had kicked the one against the wall, had hurt her foot but a small price.

Other than what they called themselves, she had no names for the guys who had met her, driven her – who had shown her the body of the potential informer in the boot of the car – and handled her. One was Krait. In the Quetta region, where her family originated from before the migration to Dewsbury, a Krait was a common and highly venomous snake, with a diet of other smaller snakes and mice. The second was Scorpion. Around Quetta there was a trade in the reptile which made it a valued creature – a good and healthy scorpion was worth $50,000 because its venom could be regularly squeezed from its stinger, bottled and sent to European pharmaceutical laboratories, highly prized… Her guy, Krait, she thought well capable of devouring his own, and the proof had been in the trunk of the car… Her guy, Scorpion, seemed overtly deadly, a killer, but had the greater value through care and skill and an ability to read their mutual enemy. She had been told when they would leave. A text would be sent that night to her tutor, saying she needed more time for her essay; she would not be chased because of fear of ethnic harassment. The bag would be packed, and the sales tag taken off the new nightdress.

Zeinab would sleep a few hours before her alarm woke her… He made her laugh, was devoted, was more than useful, the boy she imagined in bed with her, and she held a pillow close, spoke his name in the silence of the room – but most important, Andy Knight was useful, otherwise he’d have had no place in her life.

He was booked in a hostel south of the river. The woman in Vauxhall had fixed it. He walked there, went down deserted streets, and only occasionally was lit by vehicle lights. A rucksack was hooked on a shoulder. Once he heard the great chime of a church clock behind him. At the hostel, £20 a night per person, and the place was favoured by European back-packers. He was offered a multiple occupancy room – could have slept with three strangers. Pegs had told him what name to use at the desk. Must have been a longstanding deal that she had with the place. He would be alone in the room. It would have been the type of anonymous doss-house that Specialist Crime and Operations 10 favoured when one of their people surfaced for a debrief, for a night. There were voices but reasonably quiet, respectful of others. He found the room. Three iron beds, folded sheets and a duvet, a picture of the Queen on a wall and nothing else, and a doorway to a shower and toilet which made the room top-dollar.

He dumped his grip.

Flopped on the bed, did not bother to make it. Kicked off his footwear, dragged down his socks, shoved the bedding aside, lay in the darkness.

It was a job. It paid every month and the cash went into an account that was in the name he had been born under, and the workload as Phil Williams and Norm Clarke and Andy Knight had been heavy enough to prevent him from using it. No opportunity to spend outside the make-believe life of legends he constructed. It was a job where the psychologists spoke earnestly of burn-out, but the time to quit was never dangled, not while a mission ran. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling and a little light came from outside and split the thin curtains not quite drawn together… when the stress mounted, at night, he’d dream of the past. Before the dreaming would be the anxiety, growing, of a mistake made.

He kept his eyes open, had no wish to dream. Saw her face: a strong chin and a powerful jaw and a nose that did not hide, and eyes that could pierce, and the flow of her hair. If he watched her face he would find comfort, and that would calm him, then he would sleep.

If he slept, he would dream.