Rat Run

Chapter Three

He woke. It was already past eleven o'clock.

The banging on his door drummed into his head. If it had not been for the sound Malachy would have slept on. He dragged himself off the bed.

It had been a sleep he had not known for months, for a year. No dreams and no nightmares. No images squirming in his mind.

The banging persisted. He shouted out that he was coming, but his voice was faint from a dried-out throat and the banging did not stop. He pulled on his trousers that he had dumped last night on the carpet when he had fallen, collapsed, on to the bed.

'Yes, I'm coming. For God's sake, I'm coming!'

Out of the bedroom, he walked past the table. There was the mat on which he put his plate, the little plastic containers for salt and pepper, a mug he'd left there from which he'd drunk instant coffee – and the sheet of paper. He snatched it up and buried it in his pocket.

He went towards the door.

Last night, back from the parking bays under the block, he had read, again and again, what had been passed to him through the car's window. He had sipped the coffee and told himself he would sleep on it, not decide anything till the morning. He would not commit himself till the morning; he did not have to… his decision. It had been the best night's sleep he could remember. But nobody owned him.

'I'm coming.'

He unlocked the door and dragged down the bolt.

He paused, seemed to suck air down into his body. He could not remember when last his door had been banged on but, then, he could barely remember when he had last slept a whole long night and been free of the demons.

Dawn was there.

'I went to see her,' she said.

'Yes.'

'Are you not concerned for her?'

'Of course I'm concerned for her.'

'You want to know how she is?'

'I'd like to.'

'I thought you would be there. I thought you would have visited her. She had Tony early before he went to work, then me when I have finished. I thought you would be there… but I look at you, and I see you were asleep.'

'I thought I'd go later on,' he said weakly.

'She does not sleep. She has the pain in her head and the pain in her arm, both are severe. Worst is the pain in her soul. Do you understand me?'

His voice was limp. 'Please, explain to me.'

'A policeman came yesterday afternoon and gave her a victim number. He asked her if she could describe her attackers. It was dark so she could not.

The policeman said there was a camera covering the stairwell, but it did not have film in it. There are many cameras for show, but few with film in them. It hurts her that no one will be punished. I am sorry that you did not travel to see her.'

'I slept in late, didn't mean to.'

He thought his excuses demeaned him to the tall African woman, elderly, but still cleaning ministry offices and staircases, and thought she regarded him with contempt. Probably working through her mind were the snippets of his history that she knew. Had once been a gentleman, like the men with individual offices that she rose early to clean. Had been disgraced and had collapsed. Had been a vagrant living rough, like the vagrants who had stolen from her Millie.

'Don't you go tiring yourself, Mr Malachy. You go back to bed. Not good for a young man to exhaust himself. In three days she will be coming out, when they have done the pin in her arm. I apologize, Mr Malachy, for disturbing you.'

She was gone, away with her dignity.

He closed the door.

He pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket.

Three names. Not the names of vagrants but of members of the High Fly Boys who strutted the Amersham. He studied them, then took a pencil stub and began to write down, hesitantly at first, then feverishly, what he would need to buy.

13 January 2004

Baz was the section's star. Had to be one, and it was him.

The way he was going he was close to being the platoon's star. The company commander always noticed him and he'd heard he was listed for his first stripe, and he'd get it within the next fortnight. Baz was the best shot in the platoon, and when other Jocks in the section couldn't reassemble an SM80 or a GPMG after cleaning, it was to Baz they turned.

Back at the depot, east of Inverness, Baz played right central stopper in the battalion soccer team. As a member of HQ platoon of the company, Iraq suited Baz as well as a good glove fitted a hand.

He listened to the briefing. Baz didn't rate the corporal.

He himself could have done the job better, blindfolded and with an arm behind his back. Because he didn't rate him, he hardly listened as the corporal, reading off notes, told them what route they would take, on foot, out of Bravo. Two and a half hours of showing the presence. Baz, like every other Jock at the police station, knew a lift was coming the following morning, and that the patrol was going out that afternoon to give the impression that everything was normal, quiet, routine; a break in the patrolling pattern might sound a warning to those in the identified buildings who were to be lifted.

Baz always liked to speak up, to show he was alert.

'Excuse, Corp, aren't we short of an interpreter?'

'Behind you. Mr Kitchen's coming with us.'

He turned. Baz hadn't seen the officer, must have reached the briefing when the gats and the gimpy were being checked and armed. The officer was standing with Sergeant McQueen. He'd seen him arrive when the resupply convoy had come in from Battalion in the morning. Talk round the HQ platoon was that he was a desk driver, from Intelligence, and it had been overheard in the mess by a Jock doing officers' breakfasts that he was an Eternal Flame -

'never went out'. Though he was alongside old Queenie, Baz was struck by his aloneness, like he didn't fit and knew it, seemed remote from them. A good-sized man, but his uniform was clean as if it was straight out of the dhobi line, his boots hadn't dirt on them, and his webbing was looser than it should have been. His flak jacket was not fastened across his chest, he had no cam-cream on his cheeks and forehead, and he held an SM80 as if it wasn't part of him.

'Does he do worm-speak, Corporal?'

'He reads Arabic writing and speaks Arabic lingo. He'll do any interpreting we need – and you'll watch his back, Baz.'

'Be a pleasure, Corporal. Don't like his face, though.' Baz spat into his cupped hands, then crouched, scooped sand into his palms, then went the two strides to the officer.

'Don't mind me, sir, but you've no cam-cream. This'll do.'

He wiped the mess, spittle and sand on to the officer's cheeks, forehead and chin, smeared it good and hard right up to the rim of his helmet, which was askew, like he wasn't used to wearing one. He could sense the nervousness, like this was a new experience for a Rupert.. . All young officers were Ruperts, all Ruperts were fair game. There was a little wave of laughter behind him from the section, then old Queenie slapped his hand down.

'Just trying to help – that's much better, sir.'

They didn't have to be told what they might face when they were out in the village: it might be a scrum of cheerful, screaming kids, offers of God-awful sweet coffee from the stalls, an RPG round or a burst of automatic – might be a welcome or might be a full-blown ambush. Not knowing was what made it good for Baz.

'Right, let's move.'The corporal was on his way. Baz was not surprised that the company commander and the platoon commander hadn't come out to hear the briefing and see them go. They'd have been working on the planning of the morning lift, heads down over the maps of the locations and where the block forces would be to stop the bastards legging it. At the weapons pit, a square metre of sand between three walls of sandbags, they armed the rifles and the gimpy, the machine-gun. He didn't hear the scrape of the mechanism behind him. Baz could always muster a nice smile. Didn't have to say anything. He smiled well as he took the officer's rifle, worked the bullet into the breech, checked the safety was on, murmured that they always had one up the spout when on patrol. He saw the blush on the officer's face – bloody Rupert, useless Rupert. The blush showed up through the smears of sand and spittle. All of the section's faces, everyone at Bravo's, was sunburned or tanned dark, but this man drove a desk and never went out. There ivas a whisper of thanks, barely heard, and Baz's smile was sweeter: he was in control, like he always wanted to be.

There was banter among them, a few cracks as they tracked along the embankment towards the village. Then joke time finished. They looked for freshly moved sand at the side of the road, where a bomb might be buried, and they looked for control wires. Baz was back-marker and in front of him the officer's shoulders heaved up and then sagged, like he was breathing hard. In Iraq, nothing frightened Baz

– he was a star. Now, coming to the village's first buildings, he knew the officer was not battle-trained, and it amused him.

Nine in the section, plus the officer. Two sticks of five on each side of the one street and far up in front of them was the square.

He sensed it, and the corporal would have done. All of them would have sensed that that afternoon the place was bad. No grins or little waves from the shop-keepers, the bin-liners – the women head to toe in black – were scurrying to get clear of their approach, and there weren't kids mobbing them for sweets. Most days, in the village, the atmosphere was good; a few days it was bad. If it was bad, he would get to shoot; if he fired he would slot. Baz was the best shot in the headquarters platoon, but the place not to be, in action, was back-marker. He ran forward, loped half a dozen strides. He was at the officer's shoulder, saw the way the rifle was held with white knuckles.

'Do Tail-end Charlie. Watch me, do as I do. Keep my arse safe. Don't lose me.'

He was past the officer. The section was strung out on either side of the street and had started to make the short, fast surges that the sergeants who had done Belfast taught them. He watched for the corporal's hand signals, when to move and when to be in a doorway.

A steel shutter slammed down. The last stretch of the street, into the square, emptied. Baz knew it: the shutter going down was the sign.

Two shots. None of the Jocks down. A single shot. All of the Jocks sprinting. The instructors called it 'doing hard targets'. Run, take cover, search for enemy, run again, making it hard for the bastards to get a target. He saw, just before the forward Jocks of the section reached the square, the corporal's hand signal jagging to the left where a street came in at right angles to the main drag. They were all sprinting. More than half of the Jocks were already gone into the street off to the left. He would have looked behind him, checked for the officer, but he saw the bad guy, saw him clean, clear – bearded, in a robe, ammunition pouches on webbing on his chest, AK in his hand. Baz had the rifle up, was controlling his breathing, trying to find the bastard in his magnifying sight – and he could smell behind him, filtered through the shutters, the scent of fresh-baked bread.

There was a thunderclap of noise behind him. He recognized it. Rocket-propelled grenade. He looked up fast, high, saw the impact point a dozen feet over him, between two windows, and glass came down. He didn't look for the officer but shouted for him to move himself He had the bad guy again in the sight. One shot, aimed. Ice cool. Like it was the practice range. Breath controlled, the trigger squeezed.

Baz saw the white robe lift up and the AK rifle seemed to be thrown aside. Then the target was lost behind the mass of deserted stalls.

'I slotted him. I got a hit,' Baz yelled. He felt the pride.

Then he was charging for the street corner. Two more single shots came. In and out of doorways, the section stampeded along the street, spread far apart. He was back-marker. Tail-end Charlie was his place. Baz was always last man in the section on patrol because he was the best… He thought, for a brief moment, of the officer. Would have got past him, running, when Baz was aiming and preparing to fire – a hell of a shot, two hundred yards, definite no less – and he forgot him. All sprinting, until they had doubled round the back of the mosque and had reached the school gates. They were crouched against the wall of the school and the corporal darted back to him. No more gunfire, but a siren sounded urgently, back in the square's area.

The corporal reached him. 'You all right, Baz?'

'I'm all right – he isn't. Hear the feckin' ambulance? I slotted one.'

'Where's the Rupert?'

'I slotted him well, saw him go down, had an AK, confirmed kill – up ahead.'

'He's not. Holy cow… jesus. Where's the Rupert?'

'Definite, he wasn't hit. There was an incoming RPG, but way high – by the bread shop – but no small arms incoming. All the small arms was forward.'

'So where the hell's the Rupert? All I bloody need.'

'I'm not his bloody nanny. I wasn't pushing him in a goddam pram. I got a kill. He's not hurt, the Rupert, because there were no shots that could have hit him. I tell you what I got. I got a marksman and dropped him… How do I feckin' know where he is?'

Baz heard the corporal on the radio, and the staccato response that the section should work their way back, use the route they'd taken. There was a shortage of manpower at HQ, but they were trying to put together a response, and at the end: For God's sake, how have you lost him?' They left the school and came back round the rear of the mosque, then along the narrow street they'd used to get clear of the ambush and on to the main route into the square. The ambulance came past them, the back door flapping open to show the feet on the stretcher. Baz caught a glimpse of the blood staining the robe. They checked doorways and alleys, behind and under cars. Then the lead Jock yelled out and crouched in a gutter beside a dropped helmet.

A hundred yards on the flak jacket was lying in a heap of goat shit.

When they saw him, he was on the embankment.

He was shambling back towards Bravo's HQ and behind him was a gang of small children. The jeering laughter of the kids came back to them, and Baz saw that some, the boldest, ran to within a few yards of him and threw stones at him, trying to hit his bare head, but missed. And Baz saw the hands, hanging loose, not holding a personal weapon.

He heard the corporal mutter, 'The idiot, he's lost his gat.'

They ran to him, heaving for breath, and the feckin'sun beat down on them. Baz's mind worked hard, where he had been and what he had said. He would have died for his section, gone to his Maker for his platoon – not for an outsider. They reached him as a personnel carrier came in a dust storm from the gates of Bravo. He seemed to stare straight ahead and there was no recognition in his eyes for those who gathered round him, and no response to the corporal's repeated and ever more frantic questioning. Was he OK?

What had happened to him? Where was his weapon? He just walked on.

Baz took the moment. 'He couldn't feckin' hack it, Corporal. He ran. He dumped us and ran. He chucked his helmet and his jacket, and his gat. That's yellow, Corporal.

He's a feckin' coward. Couldn't do the business. He legged it. Look, there's not a mark on him… A feckin' piece of wet shit – what he is, look at him, is a lurker or a skiver. A bloody coward, that's what he is.'

If it had been the same van, still the green one, Muhammad Iyad would not have noticed it. They had eaten bread, salad and goat's cheese, and later he would pack, in good time for them to be ready to move as soon as the car pulled up at the street door.

Before that he would sleep, so that for the journey through the night he would be alert, his senses sharpened by rest. It was not the same van.

It was smaller, black-painted and newer. When he stood at the far side of the window, under the eaves of the building, he could just see the top of the no-parking sign covered with sacking held by twine. His mind turned on the problem… Kostecna, in the oldest part of the city, churned with traffic. It was forbidden to park on Kostecna. Permission might have been given for one vehicle, perhaps, to park while urgent work was done in a building. There was no sign of work. No artisans came with equipment to and from the van. Muhammad Iyad had a mind that bred suspicion. The position of the van was perfect: the view, except that it had no windows, from the centre of its side, gave direct access to a watcher down the alley. He heard a belch behind him, then a murmured question: what did he see?

Not taking his eyes from the window, Muhammad Iyad asked to be passed his binoculars, a pocket pair, from his black bag. He held out his hand behind him, and when the binoculars touched his fingers he snatched them. With them at his eyes, whipping at the focus he began minutely, inch by inch, to examine the sleek, shiny side of the van. For a moment he was not aware, as he strained to find what he searched for, that the man, Abu Khaled, was behind him and had wriggled against the wall to look over his shoulder, see what he saw. Suspicion had kept him alive. In Sana'a, Riyadh, Amman or Damascus, if it were not believed he could be captured he would have been shot on sight. He would not be captured, never would be. A little hiss of anger slipped his lips because the traffic on Kostecna had log-jammed and a high lorry obscured his view. His eyeline had been on the indentation in the van's side where plate sheeting could have been removed to make way for windows.

There was rare sunlight that afternoon in Prague and it fell on the van, highlighting the indent. He squirmed to better his position.

The lorry moved on. His gaze moved over the paintwork, then slipped back to the indentation.

The breath of the man was in his ear. He would have sighed his satisfaction. He saw the machine-worked hole, the size of a single Yemeni riyal coin or one Syrian lira, drilled but not punched in the way a . 45-calibre bullet would have done. He had found it.

With almost savage strength, Muhammad Iyad propelled the man away from him. He heard Abu Khaled stumble back, trip, fall to the floor, and then his oath.

He stepped back from the window, saw the man he guarded lying on his back and scrabbling with his hands and feet to stand. Sweat was clinging to him. In all the days and nights they had been in Prague, Abu Khaled had never been out of the third-floor apartment. It had been his cell. The mark of his importance was that he should never leave the building, for fear of being identified by a camera or a security official.

Five nights and most of six days he had been shut away from sight – now the alley and the street door were watched. Sweat clung to the bodyguard because he remembered her words, passed to him: 'Gift received. Love, gratitude and always my prayers.'

Quietly, matter of fact – because panic was never his

– Muhammad Iyad said, 'We are watched. They have observation on us.'

'Did you get it?'

'I did.'

She had heard the rattle of the camera's shutter. He eased the camera down from the aperture. It was on his lap and she strained forward to see the screen. The images flickered.

'What do you think happened up there?' Polly asked.

'First he was looking down the street, then he had binoculars. I think he was studying us. Then another man came – look, there is the second man, difficult to identify. Then movement, and both are gone.'

'It's a bastard, isn't it?'

'Any show-out, Polly, is a bastard.'

'I think, Ludvik, that we should back off.'

He raised his eyebrows high. 'Because you want to piss, or you do not like Czech cigarettes, or because we have shown out?'

She punched his arm. Polly Wilkins shared the interior of the black van with Ludvik, who was middle-ranking, mid-thirties, middle ambition and opinions, in the Bezpecostni-Informacni Sluzba. He fancied her. No way was she going to get herself involved in a relationship, on the rebound, with a Czech counter-intelligence officer, even if she had been dumped by email. And this was not a place for a relationship to flourish. She was desperate to pee but there was no bucket in the van. No bucket, but a mountain of squashed-out cigarette butts between their feet. Relationships had not been on her mind since she had received Dominic's new year email.

'I think we should get out. Leave them undecided, not sure.'

'You are the boss, the representative of the expert in such procedures.' He seemed to laugh at her.

As well he might. Polly Wilkins was big on Iraq, could have bored to gold-medal standard on weapons-of-mass-destruction evaluation, but was now on a fast learning curve on the Czech Republic, people-trafficking across porous borders, Albanian criminality and al-Qaeda movement. There weren't enough hours in the day, or the night, to satisfy the steepness of the curve – which was good, meant Dominic's bloody email, the hurtful bastard, from Buenos Aires was getting to be history. She reckoned Ludvik laughed at her because he thought she was wet behind the ears and knew precious little of nothing about stake-outs and surveillance, and what would happen next.

'And I want the pix printed up.'

He wriggled into the front. She looked back a last time, through the hole, at the upper window and a dishcloth now hung from it, as if to dry – but there was rain in the wind. He drove away fast, leaving her to fall about in the back and cling to the camera. She told him about the dishcloth and he swore. Down Kostecna he was shouting into the microphone of his headset.

God! Did the daft, dumb, sweet boy never look at the traffic in front of him? He had turned to her, teeth shining as he grinned. 'That'll be the signal. People who would never, pain of death, use a phone. A signal that they are threatened. We have the squad readied, we'll go tonight. You want to watch, Polly, want to be there?'

'Thank you.'

More than rubbernecking on a storm squad going in, watching from long distance, she wanted to get her hands on the prints off the digital camera, wanted them on the airwaves to Gaunt. She'd had his signal that he was taking charge. He was, almost, a parent to her. At the end of Kostecna, half on the pavement, were two more closed vans, like the green one they had used and the black one, and she assumed that that was where the storm squad waited. It would be a coup, a triumph for him.

She had time to get a download of the pictures, get to the embassy and secure communications, send the signals, then be back to grandstand the storm squad.

She giggled. She thought of Gloria bringing in her signal, with the good close-up photograph of the man with the shopping, and the long-lens image of two men at the window. She could imagine old Gaunt's shoes jerking off his table as he hunched to read what she had sent.

'Why do you laugh?' Ludvik called from the front.

'Classified/ she said, mock-haughtily. 'UK Eyes Only.'

The shoes, brightly burnished, swung from his desk and tipped a file on to the floor. Gaunt leaned forward and peered down at the photographs. Little gasps of pleasure slipped from his lips. He had a magnifying-glass out of the drawer by his knees, and bent lower so that his head was close to the top pictures, black and white, blown up to plate size.

Without ceremony, Gloria retrieved the file from the carpet. He asked her, not looking up, if she would be so kind as to cancel dinner that night with the deputy director general – a merciful relief but the excuse was cast iron – and to ring Roman Archaeology (Fourth Century) at the British Museum and postpone with apologies his lunch date for the next day. The second set of photographs was more problematic: a face at the end of a telephoto image, grained and difficult, and the same face half masked by a pair of pocket binoculars, then a second face behind it but in shadow and indistinct.

Almost with reluctance, as if it were a distraction, he reached for his telephone. He dialled internally, was connected to the assistant deputy director's aide and asked – steel in his voice, not for negotiation – for an appointment, soonest, like in five minutes. Gloria hovered. Would she, please, signal Wilco with his congratulations and thanks.

Tie straightened, waistcoat fastened, jacket on, files scooped up and tucked under his arm, he headed for the top floor and the ADD's eyrie.

The assistant deputy director was Gilbert. His office was at the start of the corridor leading from the lift.

Promotion, for which Gilbert strove, would take him further down the corridor and ultimately to the double doors and the suite of rooms at the end.

Gilbert had survived the earthquake that had destroyed careers in Weapons of Mass Destruction.

He had presided over the dismantling of the desk and the shuffling away to side eddies of the victims. He was always guiltily awkward in Frederick Gaunt's company. Yet Gaunt's approach to him was one of magnanimity and scrupulous deference, with the intention of exacerbating the guilt.

'It is Muhammad Iyad, that is confirmed.

Muhammad Iyad is a bodyguard, a minder. He watches the backs of principals and moves them in safety. That he set up this flawed chain of messages to get a gift to his wife, and then to hear back from her of its safe arrival is – and with your experience you'll know this better than me – quite extraordinary. In the past he has escorted high-value targets into and out of Afghanistan, into and out of Saudi Arabia, et cetera, et cetera… You know all that, of course you do. Now – and it is a present from heaven to us – we have him in Prague. I venture, and I'd appreciate your opinion on this, that he is currently bringing an HVT into western Europe. I would hazard that such a high-value target, an individual of such importance that Muhammad Iyad has been given responsibility for him, would be a co-ordinator, not a foot-soldier or a bomb-layer, not even a recruiter. What I think we're looking at – and I hope you'll feel able to confirm my thought – is an Albanian-organized rat run for al-Qaeda. Isn't that the phrase all the suburbanites bitch about? Use of side-streets, alleys, lanes for the school run. In this case, the rat run avoids all but the remotest border crossings, only goes where there is least scrutiny. Anyone being brought through, with that degree of effort, can only be an HVT. I guess that we're looking at a co-ordinator. There's a face here.. . '

He shuffled the photographs on the ADD's desk, then laid on top of them the sequence showing the minder with the binoculars and the blurred, indistinct image of the partially hidden face behind.

'I suggest that there is our co-ordinator, and – if you agree – I'd like to run it through the boffins. This evening, our friendly Czech sisters will arrest Iyad and this unidentified man, and Polly Wilkins will be on hand to fight our corner. They're bottled up – the BIS are only waiting for darkness. It should be quite a coup, Gilbert. You'll smell – deservedly – of roses.

You'll be toasted in Langley – the Americans are outside the loop at the moment – when we care to announce it, with trumpets.'

He was going out carrying his files, was at the door.

'May I say, Freddie, that I much admire your attitude – you know, to life, so very professional.'

'Thank you. Kind words are always appreciated.'

A blurt. 'I was very sad at what happened to you. I moved mountains to block it but was overruled from on high. It wasn't me.. . '

'Never thought it was, Gilbert. I'm grateful for your friendship. A co-ordinator will be a good catch, and he'll be all yours.'

He strode off down the corridor towards the lift. It was said throughout the lower floors of Vauxhall Bridge Cross that the assistant deputy director had saved himself only by an excess of brown-nosed diligence – but it made Frederick Gaunt happier to hear the cretin squirm. But true happiness would be the capture of a co-ordinator and the breaking of a rat run.

He stood naked in front of the wardrobe and sang to himself a song of the mountains, a fighting man's song. His fingers ran over the material of the suit jackets hanging in front of him. His voice reached a crescendo as he made his choice. There were ten suits from which Timo Rahman could select the one he would wear, and twenty ironed and folded shirts were in the wardrobe drawers; on the rail inside the left door were forty ties. At his father's knee he had first learned the words of the song and the lilt of its tune.

The suit he took from its hanger was expensive but not ostentatiously priced in the shop overlooking the waters and the needle fountain of the Inner Alster.

The shirt had been bought for him by Alicia in the Monckebergstrasse, where she liked to go, where the Bear accompanied her. The tie had been a present from the girls for his last birthday, his fifty-third. What he would wear that evening had quiet class, he thought, but would not have cost as much as what would be worn by any of the three men who would entertain him for the concert and then for business over a late dinner. They were bankers: they could show the finery and demonstrate the wealth of their profession… Timo Rahman, and it was the basic rule of his life, never courted attention. The mirror, on the right door of the wardrobe, as his song died from its peak, reflected his body. In the flesh at the side of his chest was a puckered, still angry scar, the width of a pencil, the result of a. 22-calibre bullet. On his muscled belly, near his navel, was a second scar, five centimetres in length, where a knife had slashed but had not penetrated the stomach wall. That evening the bankers would see neither the bullet nor the knife wound. They were from many years back. It was eighteen years since Timo Rahman had left his father, left the mountains north of Lake Shkodra, and had been one more Albanian making the trek to the German city of Hamburg in search of success. He had found it. The evidence of it was that he would be the guest of three bankers for a concert at the City Hall and would be taken to the Fischerhaus, a private room, for dinner, where they would scrabble for his investment cash. The days when he had fought were long past. Success was his.

Timo Rahman was the pate of Hamburg. At police headquarters, far out to the north of the city at Bruno-Georges-Platz 1, they would refuse to accept the presence of a godfather in the city. But he ruled it: the city was his.

As he dressed, the girls came to him, brought by their mother. They chattered to him of their day at school, in Blankenese, and what they would be doing the next day. They could have walked to school from the villa, but that argument was long over. They did not walk the five hundred metres to the school with their friends: they were driven by the Bear. It was his rule, and beyond dispute. Their mother, Alicia, knew it but the girls did not. A man of Timo Rahman's prominence in the world of organized crime had many enemies. They drove to school, and the Bear was always armed – and the pistol, listed as being for target practice, was legally held.

The girls had holidayed in Albania, his country and Alicia's, but they would grow up as Germans and would know nothing of the source of their loving father's wealth. They chattered about school outings, sports events and music lessons. He was straightening his tie, listening to them and indulging them, and he turned.

Both the girls had their backs to the picture on the dressing-room wall.

They never noticed it now, had not spoken of it since they were small.

He looked past them, listening to them but without attention. Timo Rahman could have bought any painting in any gallery in the city of Hamburg. Financially, no work of art, oils or watercolour, was beyond him.

On the wall behind the girls, in his dressing room, was the picture of which he was most proud. Once black and white, now sepia-tinted, with little tears at the sides and a line across it diagonally where it had once been crudely folded, it had written on it in faded writing in the English language: 'For Mehmet Rahman, A worthy comrade in arms and a most loyal friend, Affectionately, Hugo Anstruther. (Lake Shkodra, April 1945)'. It showed a hillside and a cave and in the foreground was a smoking fire with a cooking tin on it. Three men sat cross-legged near the fire.

Anstruther was the tallest, head and shoulders above Mehmet, Timo's father, and the squat, cheerful little man who was Percy Capel. Behind, nearer to the cave's entrance, were five of his father's followers, all draped with ammunition belts and proudly displaying the weapons dropped for them. On the day of his father's burial, near to that cave, his mother had given Timo Rahman the picture from his father's bedroom.

It was still in the plastic frame, bought in Shkodra fifty years before. It was an icon for him, and his daughters never spoke of it, as if the privilege of youth in Blankenese, in the villa up the dead-end private road, in Hamburg, had erased any interest in it.

Each time he sang that song he thought of his father and gazed at the valued photograph. And the link lived on… but he had no time that evening to reflect on it.

Timo Rahman kissed the girls, told Alicia – not that it was her business – he would be late back.

The Bear, who would have died for him, drove him into the city.

'No, no, don't turn your back on me. I want to know.

How did you twist him?'

She was Tony Johnson's wife. Every senior officer at the National Crime Squad said she had had a better future than him, would at least have made inspector and might have gone as high as commander. But she'd jacked it in and now worked in an antiques shop and said it had taken years off her, getting out.

'Come on, come on. Spit it out.'

When he had come back last night she had been asleep, and had still been asleep when he had gone to work that morning. He'd done the day, then a crash conference had been called without notice in the evening on his specialist work area, organized-immigration crime. He hadn't had the car with him, and a points failure had held up the trains. They were in bed and he was desperate for sleep… No way he could treat her as Need To Know; if she hadn't packed it in he'd have been calling her 'ma'am' by now. She knew everything he did about the life and times of Malachy Kitchen. He told her what he'd said in the parking area.

'You never had a mate who fell through a roof and did his spine.'

He shrugged.

'You've never told me you'd been to Stoke

Mandeville hospital – have you?'

He shook his head.

'You invented the whole bloody thing – right?'

He nodded.

'Is he up for it? They're vicious little creatures. What is it they're called? Yes, right scumbags and you told me – the High Fly Boys. They'll be fine for a start. Can he do the business?'

He kissed her, reached over and switched off the light on her side, then swung himself away from her.

'All right, I haven't seen Millie and you have. But this is heavy stuff. I only hope you're comfortable with i t… '

The High Fly Boys ruled that corner of the estate.

Their territory was blocks eight, nine, ten and eleven.

The Rough Track Boys had different ground, over towards the Old Kent Road, and the Young Walworth Boys had the blocks on the west side of the

Amersham. The High Fly Boys kept to their own patch, which had fair pickings, and if there were no sales they could smash in a car window for its radio, or run keys down its side, then demand cash for its future protection, or break any sheet of glass that was not reinforced with mesh, or jostle a mother with her pram. The police never caught them. No one on the estate ever dared to inform on them. They ran free.

They pushed wraps of brown. They bought from the Amersham's main dealer, sold on to the vagrants, took their share and strutted the streets, alleys and walkways of the part of the estate that was theirs.

Their uniform, shoplifted or gained by threats from a store manager who didn't need hassle, was a sleek leisure suit, Adidas or Nike trainers that were top of the range, gold chains, and they talked a code patois that coppers couldn't crack. Each, in the High Fly Boys, had his own tag.

Danny Morris's was Cisco. He was mixed race, from a one-night stand between a white American USAF technician and his West Indian mother. He led the High Fly Boys. He rode a?550 mountain bike, stolen. If there was war he had access to a pistol, hired by the twenty-four hours. If it was normal he carried a switchblade knife. He had no fear of what police or the courts could do to him. He could barely read, but knew the telephone number of a solicitor, and understood enough arithmetic to work out his cut from what he sold. He knew by heart all of the regulations governing stop-and-search by police officers, all of the custody legislation. A probation officer had once told him he was 'arrogant and in denial of your unacceptable behaviour', and he had spat in the man's face. He was eighteen years old and had no comprehension of the next week's horizon. He took a pitch, each evening, near the door of the Pensioners' Association and waited for instructions from the dealer on the night's trading.

Already there, his bike against the wall, was Leroy Gates. Leroy's tag was Younger Cisco. His ethnic mix was Italian father, whereabouts unknown, and West Indian mother. He was sixteen, could neither read nor write, and stammered when stressed. Excluded from mainstream education at fourteen, after four suspensions, he was classified in a confidential social-services report as 'effectively outside parental and institutional control and… locked in a culture of despair, he refuses to believe that worthwhile opportunities other than petty criminality are open to him'.

His angelic face and sad eyes were hidden by a ski mask when he thieved. He was the hard one of the gang.

Last to the corner by the Pensioners' Association doorway, shuttered and locked, was Wilbur Sansom, aged fifteen, with the tag Younger Younger Cisco in the identifying style of the gangs roaming the estate. It was probable, from the colour of his skin and the structure of his face bones, that he was of north African and Arabic origin; it was not known. At a few weeks old, he had been dumped in a telephone box in Deptford, then fostered. For the courts, and in the past for school registers, he had the family name of the proxy parents, Sansom; his first name had been allocated to him by a nurse at the hospital he had been brought to from the telephone box. He was a disappointment to teachers, foster-parents, police and social workers. Younger Younger Cisco – he would not answer to anything else – could read well and write with a strong hand. A child psychiatrist had rated him as having above average intelligence. He was slight in build, and seemingly unthreatening, so the Sansoms had given him a mobile phone for his fourteenth birthday, so that he would feel more secure when he was crossing the estate to and from school or the youth club.

The Rough Track Boys had beaten him more than was necessary to steal his phone. It had been replaced by his foster-parents, but within a week he had come home, mouth bleeding, without the second phone, courtesy of the Young Walworth Boys. He had offered himself to Cisco's gang for protection. As a visible member of the High Fly Boys he was no longer a target for violence. He never went to school, was known to the police, had collected four court cautions and was threatened next with an Antisocial Behaviour Order. He cared nothing. With his gang he was safe. His value to Cisco and Younger Cisco was simple. He could read the instructions written on cigarette paper by the dealer for pick-ups and drop-offs; he was their eyes.

Later, as the night closed down on the Amersham, they would move to a black hole in a fence behind which block eight's big rubbish containers were stored, and shadowy figures would flit towards them

– the vagrants they despised, clutching money and ready to buy. Everyone who wanted wraps and craved brown knew where to find them. For the three teenagers it was a night the same as any other, and cold rain spattered the shoulders of their leisure suits as they waited for the early buyers.

It was like the first steps on an ice-covered pond.

Malachy laid out in front of him what he had bought: rope from the hardware shop on Walworth Road and a penknife to cut it, parcel-binding tape from the stationer's in the side-street off the market, and a plastic toy from a stall. He also had the clothes from the bin-liner that had been under the bed.

He checked the purchases and the clothing, as he had before. It might have been kit and weapons for an exercise on Salisbury Plain, the Northumbrian moors or a patrol in a sprawling Iraqi village. He went through each stage of the plan that had fastened in his mind.

He could rely on what he had seen done.

He had been at the depot for recruits, a week short of the end of fifty-six days' Basic Training. Before he had left home, his father had told him, 'You're pig stupid to have gone this route. I wash my hands of you. All I can say is, remember that a lion pride rejects a weak cub. Drop short of your platoon's standards and the rest of them will be merciless. The private soldier turns into a ruthless thug when punished collectively for the failure of one of their number… but it's your choice.' He'd gone. No letters from the retired brigadier, and none written to him or to Malachy's mother. One recruit was useless – should have gone for premature voluntary release – but hadn't quit. That recruit had been half dragged and half carried, in full kit, on the half-mile road run. He had been covered-for when he had lost his beret. His final act had been the making of his barrack-room bed: wrinkles in the hospital corners of the blanket.

An officer doing the inspection with the platoon sergeant had commented on it snidely. After escorting the officer out of the barracks room, the sergeant had come back and gone nose to nose with that recruit and had bollocked him with a spittle-dense volley of obscenities, then barked the punishment: the sergeant had been shown up in front of the officer and had gone for the top-heavy punishment, collective. The platoon was 'confined to barracks' for five days, with extra duties and doubled inspections. Malachy had stood at the back, not spoken, not intervened and had not taken part when the platoon took its revenge on that recruit. In flat thirteen, on block nine of the Amersham, he remembered the revenge of the platoon.

It was what he would replicate, but he did not know whether it was for Millie Johnson's bruised face and broken arm or for himself.

When he had checked each item he would take with him for the third or fourth time, the rope had been cut into lengths and the plastic toy was out of its packaging, Malachy stripped off the clothes that had been bought for him at the charity shop. The trousers in the bin-liner stank, as did the shirt and socks. He dressed in the vagrant's clothes he had worn in the underpass at Elephant and Castle when he had begged, drunk, and slept. He put on his head the rolled-up woollen hat that had been pulled down over his face, with eye slits and a mouth hole, on the nights when it was cold enough for a pond to freeze.

Last out of the sack were the old shoes, and he slipped them on.

He locked the door behind him and went off along the walkway, paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, ground his nails into his palms, as if that would strengthen him, and joined the night's shadows moving on the Amersham.