9

It had been the white-puff smudges on the slopes across the bay, at Lulworth, that had kick-started Harvey Gillot’s brain: the firing grounds used by the army for training artillery gun crews and the tank people. There was a good chance they were using the phosphorous shells he had supplied. He did not supply the ammunition they were using in Afghanistan, but they needed cheap stuff for knocking holes out of the chalk hills leading to the cliffs at Lulworth. The ministry, of course, did not do deals with the new elite of Bucharest, Sofia or Bratislava, or even Moldova and the spivs in Chi in u. At that distance, he couldn’t hear the guns but the impact points were obvious. The ministry bought from anybody who had stockpiles of the correct calibre, and if artillery or armour officers bitched, they’d be told it was what they had and where they were. The good times were over. It had been a useful contract for Harvey Gillot.

He had moped through what remained of the morning, and into the afternoon. Two alternatives jostled for his attention: quit and run, or raise the drawbridge and make a fortress of his home. But the firing had put a third dimension on the table: go into denial – it would never happen – and get back to work.

He started by reactivating a deal that had seemed attractive last year, then withered. Baghdad – where else? It had been a brilliant marketplace in the couple of years after the invasion, then had dribbled fewer opportunities but had seemed, last year, to pick up. The United States flag was being hauled down: they were going. The government, the local people, seemed to want equipping but not just from an American warehouse. He had detail on the computer that he wouldn’t have minded sharing with investigators from an Alpha outfit at Revenue and Customs. The stuff had been joshing around for more than a couple of years, People’s Republic of China small arms and ammunition, and Harvey Gillot knew of three others who were deep into it. The stuff had come out of storage depots in Albania and hadn’t been kept well. It was good business to supply to Baghdad: officialdom tended to give it an automatic stamp and the bulk was signed off by officers and bureaucrats on the take in the Green Zone. It would be a long-dead trail by the time some poor bastard at a roadblock, wearing a police uniform that didn’t fit, found out he’d a jam in his AK or that the percussion cap wouldn’t ignite. Nothing wrong with Harvey Gillot getting a bit of the deal up-and-running again. The dog slept by his feet. He was on the phone.

A friend, reliable and trusted, worked out of Marbella. He was a bit Syrian, a bit Lebanese and a bit German, and he was talking with him. He wouldn’t, himself, go to Baghdad but the agent they all used – whose brother was in the inner clique and whose sister had married into influence – would travel, if the price was right, to Nicosia for contracts and payment details. The Albanians still had plenty, more than the Bulgarians, but Albanian stuff wouldn’t be good enough for a customer such as the Tbilisi government. He had thought – talking and punching keys on his calculator – that denial worked well A bloody door slammed. The main bedroom’s. The dog stirred, then slumped again.

He held his hand loosely over the receiver and shouted, ‘You don’t have to slam doors.’

His friend – in faraway Marbella – asked what the hell had happened and was he all right? He said he was fine, never better, but the energy was draining out of him. Then the front door slammed. This time he didn’t cover the receiver. ‘See if I bloody care!’ Harvey Gillot yelled. ‘I don’t give a-’

In his ear. ‘You sure you’re all right, Harvey?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Maybe another time is better, Harvey. You stay well.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Harvey, I don’t pry into people’s lives. We go back a long way – anything I should know?’

‘Well, since you come to mention it, maybe there is something I can share with you… I’m on a death list. The past came tripping up on me. I wasn’t looking and hadn’t filled any sandbags. Too busy selling every other tosser a crate of Kalashnikovs to look over my shoulder. According to the spooks, a shite-faced bastard has agreed what I’m worth. He may be waiting for it to have cleared into his account, or it’s already through and he’s hunting or sniffing – Christ, I don’t fucking know.’

‘Are you speaking, Harvey? I’m getting something. Is it disturbance on the line? Is there something, friend to friend, you should be telling me?’

‘Not a bed of roses, but nothing I can’t handle.’

‘I watched for you, Harvey, when Solly went… I wouldn’t want to think that you’re not telling me what I…’

‘I’m fine, friend. But I’ll call you back – give me some time.’

He put the phone down on a friend and went to the window. He could see on to the drive, where she was scraping gull mess off the windscreen. They hadn’t spoken a word since the detective had left. When he had gone into the kitchen she had come out, and when he had left the kitchen after a sandwich, she had gone back in. He realised that, getting up to go to the window, he had kicked the dog’s water bowl and a damp stain had spread on the carpet.

‘You don’t have to slam doors,’ he shouted through the glass. ‘You can behave like a fucking adult.’

His wife, his Josie, looked at him. Contempt rippled at her mouth. One of those choice moments, he thought, when she was not going to dignify his insult with a response. She was in the car, had gunned the engine and activated the gates. He wondered where she was going, and whether the gardener figured in her plan. She drove through the gates, which closed behind her.

He sat at his desk again, the dog’s head on his lap, and went back to the costs of small arms, ammunition and RPG rounds. The columns seemed to bounce on the page, meaningless.

A sort of fear, new experience, clung to him. Then he shook his head violently, slapped his hands on his desk – hard enough to hurt – and went back to denial. Couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t.

Now sitting up, intent, Robbie watched from the back window and saw the landscape of the Isle of Portland for the second time. They did the circuit in reverse. Vern drove steadily and allowed other traffic – a few holidaymakers and an occasional delivery van – to pass them. He stayed silent, as Robbie did, and Leanne told them the names of the villages. Down Wide Street, on to Weston Road and through the housing estate – Robbie reckoned the place a dead dump – then into Southwell. Leaving the turn-off to the big hotel, they veered towards the Bill. He said they could stop. Neither his elder brother nor his sister would have demanded tea from the cafe or a visit to the toilets.

They parked. He didn’t want tea or a toilet, and he stayed by the car, leaning against the bodywork, his elbows on the roof, and opened the envelope. It wasn’t strange for him to see Leanne emerge from the toilet at the side of the cafe with the wig in place, and she’d slipped off the yellow cotton cardigan. She always did that. Vern stirred his tea with a plastic stick but didn’t acknowledge her, nor she him, and they were strangers.

He lost sight of her. There was wind on his face and it snatched at the aerial photographs of the house.

A big ship loitered past, far out to sea, hardly seeming to move but was soon lost in a deepening heat haze. He memorised the photographs, then slipped them back into the envelope.

Gulls shrieked above him. It wasn’t said, couldn’t be admitted, but Robbie Cairns depended on the skills of his elder brother and his sister. He needed his brother for the driving, fast, sure and accident-proof, and Leanne for the close-up reconnaissance of a target location. It was warm and the sun came through thickening cloud, burned on the roof, but there was an involuntary shiver in Robbie Cairns’s body. No concrete under his feet, no dense brickwork in his eyeline, just an open sky above him, without chimneys and TV aerials. The shiver was not from the wind blowing against him but his uncertainty at being away from the familiar. Had he known where he was going and what would be the ground, might he have turned down the work? He coughed and spat. Wouldn’t have. He tossed the envelope on to the front passenger seat, Leanne’s.

He could see, beyond the car park, that a hawk had perched on a fence post. Robbie Cairns knew nothing about birds but that one interested him because it had a wickedly sharp, curved beak and he rated it as a killer. It was a fine-looking bird, with intricate markings on its chest. He would remember it – didn’t know what it was called – and describe it to Barbie when he was back in London. He hadn’t told her he’d be away, hadn’t volunteered information about schedules and movements. He’d just slipped away from the flat. He’d tell her about the bird. Then it flew.

Great, fantastic. The bird hovered, dived, disappeared, then rose, and he could see the wriggle of the creature it held. It was back to the fence post, the beak hacking at what it had caught.

Leanne was going back to the toilets.

He didn’t like the wind on his face or the sun on his cheeks. Most of all, he didn’t like the emptiness of the place, the size of the fields and the open road. In his trade, the work he did was always at close quarters. He had never heard of a marksman’s weapon being used, a sniper’s. Might be fine for the military but not for Robbie. Always wanted to be near – almost standing on the target’s toes – and sure of a head shot with a handgun. In his trade there was no call for what the army in Afghanistan called improvised explosive devices – which the Irish had used and the Iraqis. Robbie knew nobody who had the skills to build a bomb that would go into a culvert or be locked by a magnet to a car’s chassis. On the London streets, he could materialise out of a car parked at a kerb or from among pedestrians on a pavement or dancers in a club or from an alleyway’s shadows. It was big money, not to be refused.

Leanne was out of the toilets, wig off, yellow top on, and walked with Vern towards him. She said, ‘There are huts up here. Some are being used today but most aren’t. A guy was telling me they cost up to twenty-five grand. They’re just like a garden shed and you’re not allowed to sleep in them. A chatty guy. Told me which ones were still locked up and wouldn’t be used till the kids come off school, which is still a week away… As good as anywhere, I reckon.’

They left the car park and went back down the road, away from the lighthouse, and towards the target’s home.

She came back, parked the car, closed the gates and let herself in.

He was in his office – she could hear the clatter of the keyboard.

In the bedroom, she changed from slacks and a blouse into a halter-top and shorts, took a book and went to a chair on the covered walkway outside the picture windows that overlooked the patio. Later, when it was cooler and the sun was further round, she would move to the lounger. She didn’t tell him she was back, ask if there had been calls, whether he needed feeding or a drink, or if a gunman had tried to take his life. Josie Gillot didn’t care much whether there had been any calls or whether he wanted something to eat, or whether… It wouldn’t be a detective, one who had made a piss-awful job of disguising his dislike of her husband and his trade, who told her when to leave her home.

It was towards late afternoon that Mark Roscoe hit the button and despatched the beast. He eased himself out of his chair, and Suzie pushed the wheels of hers back towards her own workspace. Bill was already out on the fire escape and would be lighting up. Suzie had typed and Roscoe had dictated. Then he had taken over the keys and done a polish. It had his name under it, and he signed it off. The small matter of the paper trail and the responsibilities that lay with it itched inside him. He wasn’t used to having his professional advice chucked back in his face. He hadn’t reported that the potential target, their Tango, was abusive, foul-mouthed, sneering, or the boast of connections with Defence and Intelligence. To have slagged off Gillot would have laid Roscoe open to charges of insensitivity and possible bullying, and if the paper trail was followed at a later stage – after Gillot was dead in a gutter with a 9mm bullet lodged in his brain – and scapegoats were looked for, he wouldn’t be holding up his hands. When Suzie had moved aside and he had tidied up, it was a brief document, spare of colour, emotion and detail. It said little more than that the offer of advice had been made, that a temporary safe-house would have been available, and the Tango had ‘declined’ the suggestions put to him. The report would go to the Gold Commander, Covert Surveillance, Intelligence, and Firearms, and would have reached the Alpha crowd. Also on the list was the big man with the smart epaulettes at the Weymouth police station.

He stood, stretched, and didn’t know what else he could have done.

They had been, the three of them, pretty subdued when they’d driven away from Gillot’s house.

What else? He couldn’t have said, in contradiction of all orders and laid-down procedures, that he would put up a tent by the front gate and sleep there with his Glock in his hand, or make a bivouac under the kitchen table. Neither could he suggest that Bill and Suzie join him to sleep rough in the car at the end of the lane and beside the museum front door. He couldn’t have put Gillot in handcuffs and his wife in a headlock, then shoved them into the boot and driven them to a hotel at the back end of nowhere, like the Shetlands or the Orkneys.

The itch – coming on worse and needing a scratch – was from feeling he had failed in a basic task. The job had been to get the Tango out of the line of fire: he hadn’t succeeded. There was a good old story – hoary and therefore worth remembering – of a protection officer who had done time with the Viceroy, Mountbatten, in the end days of the Indian Raj. The greys and wrinklies who had done secretary-of-state security details in Belfast, during the choice days, liked to tell it.

Mountbatten, it was said, had announced one morning that he wanted, first thing after breakfast, to visit the bazaar and go walkabout. His man had refused to consider it. The Viceroy, God Almighty on earth, said he was going, no argument, and was again turned down flat. Miffed, Mountbatten had pulled his immense rank and insisted. No: the officer was adamant. He was quizzed, and had answered: ‘Sir, I’m not overly concerned about your safety, but am most concerned with the preservation of my professional reputation.’ Mountbatten had not visited the bazaar to show the flag. It was the area in which Mark Roscoe felt uneasy.

They had left a sullen household. Might have left two people who were scared shitless. When they were going the dog had woken in the kitchen and whined. Probably wanted its food.

His boss had wandered close. ‘You look, Mark, as if you’re carrying the cares of the world.’

He didn’t answer, just handed over a printout of the report.

Roscoe couldn’t have said that he had acquired any degree of affection for Gillot. He didn’t admire or sympathise with his wife. He had found both of them unattractive to deal with… but it had gone beyond neutrality. He disliked Harvey and Josie Gillot because both, in equal amounts, threatened him. Inquiries would be convened, inquests would be launched, and the teams of hindsight merchants would be crawling over him if double-tap time came and Gillot was down, bleeding like a stuck pig. But his boss slipped an arm round his shoulders. ‘Be it on his own head. I don’t see what alternatives were open to you.’

Roscoe didn’t believe a word of the saccharine stuff, but was marginally grateful.

His boss said, ‘We’re needing to be mob-handed in Wandsworth – are you sitting on your hands or are you coming?’

He said he’d come – with Suzie and Bill – and was thankful for a distraction: a jewellery shop in Armoury Way that a chis had said was a target. Might just save him scratching the itch till it bled.

They each had their role. Vern would now be looking for the lie-up where he could stay unobserved with the car. Leanne would have the wig on again, the pullover off, and would be holding the folder that contained the brochures on double-glazing and plastic window-frame opportunities – she was good at chatting on doorsteps. Vern would not be noticed, but Leanne would be remembered as the pretty girl with the dark hair, the glasses and a blouse. Robbie had come down the track that led from the tarmac-surfaced lane and was beside a high wall, the boundary of the target’s property that ran on to block off the location of the ruined castle, an English Heritage site.

There was a gate off the lane. The name beside it was Lulworth View, and next to the sign was a speech grille.

He couldn’t see over the wall into the garden, or the shape of the house. He knew the size of the garden from the aerial pictures but that was different from spying out the ground for himself, second best or third. He went on down the lane, leaving Gillot’s home behind and above him. There was the shell of an old church, and graves, and further down the sea and a stony beach. A couple watched him now from the shore and kids threw stones into the water. He tracked along the sand, following a worn path, and by now they would have lost sight of him behind their windbreak. Another woman watched him, wearing a well-filled swimsuit. He had no towel, no camera, no child in tow: what was his business? He realised he had no reason to be on the beach and didn’t fit any pattern. No streets, no pavements, no alleys, no shadows. He quickened his step and then was gone, among fallen gravestones, and had started to climb again from the far end of the beach. He hadn’t yet seen the house but he had shown himself.

Enough stories of the ‘old days’ tripped off Granddad Cairns’s tongue. Never any point in telling his grandfather that he had heard them before. A favourite was about Leatherslade Farm, near to Aylesbury, out in deep countryside. Granddad Cairns had been twenty-two when the gang had hit the big-time and robbed the Royal Mail train coming south overnight from Scotland. He’d been on remand on a conspiracy-to-burgle charge, and could remember the draught of excitement when news of a two-and-three-quarter-million-pound heist had spread along the corridors of HMP Brixton (Remand), and also – the bit he enjoyed most – the ridicule at the gang’s cock-up. Should have gone straight back to London, to their roots and homes, and stashed the cash in a warehouse or lock-up garage.

Instead they’d holed up at Leatherslade Farm in a remote corner of the countryside, reckoning that they wouldn’t be seen among all the quiet fields and hedgerows, their presence not noted. Wrong. They were down a long lane that wasn’t made up and they’d thought no one in the whole wide world would dream anyone was there. Wrong enough to get thirty years each. It would have been the rope if the driver had pegged a few weeks earlier from the head injuries they’d done him. A man was supposed to come along afterwards and fire the place, but he hadn’t and the fingerprints were over everything and convicted them… That man was thought to be holding up a flyover pillar on the motorway at Chiswick. But, truth was, locals were queuing up to tell the police of goings-on at Leatherslade Farm. Granddad Cairns used to say, finishing up, ‘I hate the countryside. Had my way, I’d cement everywhere that’s green. Go and look over a town house before doing some business there and no one sees anything. Go and look at a country house and half a village has seen you. Cement’s what’s needed.’ Robbie came up a trodden track and now he could look across the gully that ran down to the ruins, the graveyard and the beach.

Through the trees, he could make out most of the house, and the patio, but none of it clearly because of the branches.

Couldn’t see whether there were cameras, or an alarm system.

There was a woman on a lounger at the edge of the patio – he hadn’t seen her before – and then a dog bounded close to her.

He had seen what he needed to: a dog.

By the time he reached the lane again, having cut through a caravan park, he had established that the house didn’t have a back exit on to the path below.

At the top of the lane, opposite the museum, there was a bench and Leanne was sitting on it. She had the wig on, the cardigan off and the brochures under her arm.

She asked him, as they strolled up the hill, how it had gone.

He said it had gone all right.

She said she’d done the rounds and gossiped while two couples had looked at her double-glazing and the plastics. The people in Lulworth View, she was told, weren’t worth a call because ‘they keep to themselves’ and ‘they’ve hardly a word for anyone’, but she tried the speech grille on the gate and a man had answered. She’d explained and he’d said she could shove… He hadn’t finished.

Robbie Cairns said quietly, ‘Doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has a dog.’

‘How did it go?’

She peeled off her rucksack and dropped it. ‘It was pitiful,’ Megs Behan said.

Surprise. ‘How come?’

‘It’s like we were part of the scenery, like we’d be missed if we weren’t there. Another year and the police’ll be giving us biscuits, and DSEi will be sending out a trolley with coffee, tea or hot chocolate. We don’t even embarrass them, let alone get up their noses.’

Puzzlement at a sort of heresy. ‘Not joining the doubters, are you, Megs?’

She gazed at her project manager. She saw his concern. Others in the open-plan area at Planet Protection had their eyes fastened on their screens, but would have been wondering whether sunstroke or her period had caused such a dramatic loss of faith. She was Megs Behan and her commitment was legendary. Others had left to have babies or get work that paid better, and some had gone because their lives had moved on and the dedication had frayed. Not Megs Behan. ‘It was a complete waste of time being there.’

His resolve stiffened. ‘Perhaps you aren’t yourself, Megs. We have to be seen there, we have to…’

‘But we’re not seen. That’s the problem. No photographers. The bloody downturn, and who cares what British factories manufacture as long as the money’s coming in? Weapons of war are fine as long as the cheques don’t bounce. I’ve focused on Harvey Gillot. He didn’t turn up. But, as regards the fair, our response is predictable and therefore goes unreported.’

‘Perhaps you’ve been stretching yourself a bit far.’ He turned away.

She swigged water from the dispenser. ‘What we need is some Shock and plenty of Awe, and we need to beard those people where it hurts them. So, I’ll be wanting a bit from petty cash. I’m going to Gillot’s home. I’ll-’

He spun back. ‘Nothing illegal, Megs.’

‘Outside his door. In his face. Where his family and neighbours see me.’

‘But with dignity.’

‘I’ll humiliate him. Everyone near to where he lives will know what his trade is – dealing in death, brokering what kills children, trafficking in the apparatus of genocide.’ She had no idea what his home was like, where the main gate was, how close other properties were. ‘I want to make him squirm. Press releases and standing docile behind a barrier don’t work any more. So, please, a float from the petty cash.’

There was then an extraordinary moment in the open-plan office. Applause rang out, and cheers. She stood taller.

The project manager said, ‘I like what I hear, Megs, and as usual you’re innovative… but don’t hazard the good name of this organisation. It’s not to be brought into disrepute. We need funds, and funds aren’t attracted by stunts. We’re dependent on areas of government – however much we dislike it – to help us pay our way, and we have beneficiaries who won’t tolerate association with anything vulgar.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ She was grinning, a cat with cream on its whiskers. ‘I’ll flush him out tomorrow and make his life hell.’

*

Looking up from a wad of receipts he was checking against a column of figures – expenditure and inflow – Lenny Grewcock pondered. For a moment his hands came together in front of his mouth and nose, but it was contemplation, not prayer. He knew the name of the target, but not why a community had condemned him. He thought of the young guy, Robbie Cairns, son of Jerry and grandson of the old blagger. How good was Robbie Cairns? As good as his reputation? In it for Lenny Grewcock – not the money, chicken-shit, he was taking from the deal – was the chance of a link to people in Hamburg, who had access to deals across Europe. It was important that he was seen as an efficient, reliable friend. He wondered whether he would hear of the successful result from a phone call and a coded message, from the evening paper or the TV. Already, while he checked the accounts of a club in a side alley off Jermyn Street in the West End, his mind had been ticking over advantages and opportunities that would come his way when the Hamburg end kicked in.

In a workshop, at a lathe that shaped chair legs, Jerry Cairns’s mind was only barely on the work. He knew the name, passed to him on a wisp of cigarette paper, of the target and reckoned that by now his Robbie would be tracking the man, tailing him and lining him up. He would learn of the hit from the television in his cell. He supposed, as he worked the lathe, that to have a son like Robbie – a celebrity at what he did – was the same as having a darts prodigy or a successful TV actor for a kid: a little of the glory spattered on to the father… as the money did, if the boy had done well. And to be under the protection of Lenny Grewcock was a matter of no little consequence. Jerry Cairns had no fondness for his younger son – didn’t tell anyone, never had, not even the boy’s mother, his wife, that he couldn’t abide the boy – his cold eyes. But when he came out of gaol, he’d need a cut of the money his son brought in. He worked on his quota of chair legs and waited to be escorted back to his cell where he could switch on his television and watch news bulletins.

*

He didn’t do it often, but Granddad Cairns savoured sitting at a corner table in the old-world pub by the plaque that said the Pilgrim Fathers had boarded the Mayflower there. His second pint was in front of him, about his limit: his bladder couldn’t take any more. He lived off the money that was slipped him by Robbie. Couldn’t have managed without the help he had from the boy because his life had involved too much gaol time and thieving wasn’t pensionable. He liked this pub, could drop in for an afternoon and be accepted because the lunch trade was gone and the evening trade hadn’t started up. He would hear of Robbie’s hit from Leanne: a fine girl, and she had time for him – she’d call by as soon as they came back from the coast to let him know. If it wasn’t Leanne it would be Vern: he would stand in the doorway, take his grandfather’s shoulders in his hands, incline his head down and whisper, then give him a bit of a squeeze. Robbie wouldn’t come, wouldn’t tell him. Granddad Cairns knew of nobody who liked his younger grandson. Knew plenty who were petrified of the little sod, and some who’d cross the road rather than have to walk past him. There was a poster up outside the Rotherhithe police station that showed the closed doors of the refrigerated bays of a mortuary: one was open with the feet of a body sticking up from a shroud and the caption was ‘Carrying a gun can lead you into the coolest places.’ If his grandson was there, he knew of nobody who’d shed a tear. But he liked the money, needed it. At home he would sit in his chair and wait for Leanne or Vern to come by. Each time the money was better.

The hut was in shadow, there was no movement in those at either side of it and the grass in front of the line was not worn down. All were well shuttered, some had padlocks on the doors and they backed on to a field – maybe the one where he had seen the hawk fly and kill. While Robbie stood back, Vern used a short crowbar to prise open a window. Then they lifted Leanne and eased her through. She was passed the tool and, less than a minute later, after a squeal of tearing wood, the main door sagged open. Using the crowbar inside minimised the visible damage. Now they went through a fast routine: two pairs of plastic gloves each, a shower cap, and the day’s third check that the mobiles were off. Robbie dumped on the floor the bin-liner that held the clothing, and the sack with the hardware, then slumped on to a bench at the back.

What to do?

Nothing.

They had closed the window shutters, and the door, and there was no light inside. Robbie had the bench, Vern stretched out on the floor where a rug covered the linoleum, and Leanne had a chair. She asked Robbie again if there was anything more he needed to see and he said again that he had seen what he needed to see. Puzzled, did he mean the dog? Certain, because he had seen the dog. As if it was his little joke, and they’d be told when he was good and ready, not before. Obvious to Robbie Cairns that the dog was the provider of opportunity, but he didn’t say how, why… He did say that when it was dark he would go out with Vern for fish and chips. Then he dozed.

They waited. It was the first time that any of them, gathered around the tables outside the cafe, could remember that they had not talked of an episode in the defence of the village and its betrayal. Not even Mladen had offered his description of a moment when the line had wavered and he had stabilised it. The one with the keenest memory was Tomislav, but his head was bent low and he offered nothing. Andrija had the same coffee in front of him as he had had an hour before; he had not a drunk a quarter of it. Petar chain-smoked and did not contribute. Simun was sitting away from them; he was permitted to be close but had no part in the stories of war. They waited to be told.

Josip had been there and was now gone. The original chain of contact, he had told them, was now shortened. From London, word of the hit and the death would be sent to Hamburg, and from there it would go to an apartment in Zagreb, to a man of power and influence against whom no charges had been laid in spite of the recent assassination of a prosecutor who had investigated him. Known in the capital city as the Falcon, he would call Josip and give a codeword to mark the completion of retribution. It was agreed that then, word received, the village would come together at the church, would walk in column to the cemetery and flowers would be laid on the graves. The principals would go then to Mladen’s house. The reward for the outlay of twenty thousand euros would be found in a half-dozen bottles of sparkling wine, Double Gold, from Ilok. None around the tables had thanked Josip for what he had organised and probably they would not when he brought the news for which they waited.

A car came by and slowed as it approached the cafe. It was driven by a girl with blonde hair; her complexion had been ruddied by the sun. It braked.

It had been a change of mind, off-the-cuff, which was unusual for Penny Laing. The light had dropped, the countryside had lost lustre and pastel shadows had overwhelmed what had been vivid. She had left Vukovar behind and taken a side road between strip fields of ripened corn. She had gone through Bogdanovci, seen signs ahead for Marinci but had gone to the right and been guided in the failing light by a church tower.

She had come to the village. She could not have said to what purpose – it was too late to see anything, or to wander and soak up atmosphere, or to find someone who would devote an evening to her gratification. The pull of the place had broken though common sense – she should have taken an early night in her room.

There was a crossroads where she stopped. To left, right and ahead, the roads were empty. The church she could see was incomplete and the walls were of concrete blocks that had not yet been rendered. Some homes had lights on behind thin curtaining. She was about to turn and go back to the Vukovar hotel when she saw a cluster of brighter light in front. She drove towards it.

At the edge of the village she saw a group of men sitting on a concrete veranda and braked. She was trained to wade into conversations of substance with strangers. Her job did not permit shyness, and a big question needed answering. She was watched by old eyes. She sensed indifference rather than hostility, but no trace of welcome.

She thought she interrupted. She asked the first question that had to be answered: please, did anyone here speak English? She was stared at. It was a distant dark corner of Europe, and there was little reason why any of these older men should have learned her language. Always a disaster to work through interpreters: investigators loathed working through the uninvolved third party. She smiled with what warmth she could muster and thought she had blundered. She should extricate herself, her first contact screwed. For a moment she regretted that Asif with the pregnant wife was not taking part of the load.

The voice was clear, young and came from the shadows. Tall, well-built, with a mop of uncombed hair, he emerged to answer her question. He said his name was Simun, that he had learned some English at senior school. His smile was friendly. She said what she wanted, didn’t mention Harvey Gillot: the story of the siege of the village. It was agreed. When she drove away it was not the boy, Simun, she remembered with greatest clarity, but the older men, careworn, with dulled eyes, as if experience had dealt harshly with them.

Harvey reached for the phone. He had glanced at his watch and done the equation: what time it was in Marbella. Didn’t think they’d be eating yet. The man there had been the first he had turned to after the death of Solly Lieberman. Harvey Gillot didn’t know whether his own father and mother were physically well, and his ignorance didn’t bother him, but when he’d heard that Solly Lieberman, boss, mentor and father figure, had died, he had gone down in a crumpled mess and wept. Could remember each moment of it.

He’d been at his apartment off the Marylebone Road, fancy, smart, minimalist and affordable because he earned good money from the patronage of Solly Lieberman. He was going out, had a date, half through the door and a telephone was ringing. In the trade nobody answered a phone. Everybody tasted a call through an answer-phone. The woman who did reception at the office was calling from her home, and pretty damn composed: Harvey, my dear, so sorry to call you with this. It’s about Mr Lieberman. Very bad news about him. From Russia, the embassy have come through to me. I think he’d listed me as next-of-kin. An accident. A fatal accident. I’m sure he’ll be in your prayers, Harvey, as he is in mine. Could you be in the office tomorrow? Thank you.

Solly Lieberman had boarded the plane in Sofia and flown east. Then he had travelled, helicopter and four-wheel drive, into the perma-frosted Russian tundra, with a guide and a hunter. His host was the designer of the new generation of 155mm howitzers. They had been on the search for a brown bear, a male, that had terrorised an exploration team of geologists prospecting for a possible platinum mine. They had been camping in bollocks-freezing cold, and on the fourth day they hadn’t found the bear – but it had found Solly Lieberman. He had been swathed in clothing on his way to a call of nature. The bear had been shot but not until it had got tooth and claw into frail old Solly Lieberman. It had been ten feet high, weighed nearby three-quarters of a ton, and had made a bad mess of the sixty-eight-year-old arms broker. Harvey had helped carry the coffin. He didn’t reckon much of Solly Lieberman filled it.

Now was his moment but he’d doubted he could tread in the American’s footprints.

He had been told: You’re privileged to be offered that chance. You owe it to Solly Lieberman, a great man and a great ally, to take in two hands what he offers you. Go for it, as our friend did when he was little more than a kid. He had driven the man from London to Heathrow and seen him on to a flight to Malaga, fifty kilometres from Marbella. He had paid, as the testament stipulated, a token sum for the business and known that the money went to a Jewish charity for the education of the sons of rabbis. Then he had sat in the old man’s chair and had started to follow the footprints.

Ten months later, a phone call from overseas. A familiar, accented voice. A remark about the autumn sunshine in Marbella in contrast to the fogs and mists of London, and an introduction. I don’t want it, Harvey. I want nothing to do with the Balkans. What you should do if you want it is to telephone this man in the defence ministry in… He had been given a number, had called it and a week later had been on a flight to Zagreb.

Now, he lifted the receiver, checked the number in his book and dialled. It was answered.

‘It’s Harvey.’

‘Good to speak. You are fine now?’

‘Everything is good. Sorry about earlier. Now, we were talking in terms of…’ Had been talking earlier in terms of assault rifles and the ammunition to go with them, bulk numbers of RPG-7 grenades with high-explosive or fragmentation warheads. He thought it best to be in total denial, more comforting.

Robbie watched. He had the car door open and through the shop’s window he saw the woman pour vinegar, scatter salt and wrap. Then Vern was reaching into his hip pocket for his wallet. He was aware, always had been. He could see Vern with the three portions of fish and chips, almost ready, and could see, too, the three kids – in the mirror – coming near to the car. He turned away from his brother, who was waiting now for change. Kids like the ones on the Albion Estate and the Osprey Estate… The likes of himself, his sister and elder brother had not been, ever, a part of the gangs. Didn’t need to be. Vern, Leanne and Robbie had been born with authority and had the respect accorded to their name. Their father and grandfather had drilled it into them that authority and respect were not to be abused, that once lost they were hard to reel back. He was in the front passenger seat, his feet were on the pavement and the door was wide open. One of the kids veered off and went round the front of the car, hesitated, pushed up past the front wheel and extended his foot. For a second or so, he was balanced on one leg.

The kid said, ‘You’re blocking us. Close the fuckin’ door.’

The other two laughed. The raised foot rested against the open door.

‘Didn’t you hear me? Close the fuckin’ door.’

What Robbie Cairns had been thinking while he watched Vern collect the fish and chips hadn’t been important. He was now feeling the pressure of the door against his shin and spotted a knife. Kids who thought they ran a street corner – not Rotherhithe but a corner of what Leanne had said was called Weston on the Isle of Portland. A man came down the road, older than Robbie’s father and younger than his grandfather. He had a stout stick in his hand and the streetlamp caught him. He would have seen the kids. He crossed over to the other pavement as the pressure grew on Robbie’s shin. The knife blade was against the wing of the car and started to gouge. Throaty laughter, and Robbie saw the line in the paintwork that the blade scratched.

‘You going to fuckin’ move, wanker, or do I kick the fuckin’ door shut? Come on, shift.’

The blade came close. He saw Vern pocket the change and turn for the shop door. He had a plastic bag with their food in it.

He was Robbie Cairns, one of a dynasty. The face was above him, grinning manically, and the light caught the blade. Kids in Rotherhithe carried knives, scraped the paintwork on cars, had fun – and had the wit to recognise a member of the Cairns family. No one would have kicked the door and scraped the car of a Cairns. He pushed himself up, had to wrench the door away to extricate his leg. He reckoned that the skin on his shin was broken and perhaps there was a blood smear inside his jeans. He was five feet eight or nine – hadn’t been measured since he was in Feltham Young Offenders. Not more than twelve stone, or hadn’t been then. No spare flesh on him. The kid had a knife and a stocky build; he hadn’t looked into Robbie’s eyes.

The knee came into the kid’s groin. As he jack-knifed and subsided, a trainer toe followed where the knee had been and he gasped. The knife flew – lodged in the grass of the verge. More kicks went in. None to the face. The hands that tried to cover and protect the kid were battered aside. Done fast and clean. There was the receding clatter of the other two kids as they ran.

He had stopped before Vern reached him. Didn’t need Vern to tell him he was an idiot to fight in the street – draw attention, get noticed. Not that Vern would have criticised him to his face. His right hand slipped up and the forefinger rested on the left side of his chin, against his lower jaw. The tip could be inserted, just, into a tiny indentation that most would not have noticed and had healed well. A big kid, pervert, had gone after him in the showers at Feltham. When told to leave off he had struck out and his ring had cut Robbie’s face. It was said in the block that night – and he’d heard it was said in the prison officers’ mess – that it was doubtful the big kid would ever make babies, but his face was unmarked. He looked down at a local wannabe hero, and heard him choke, vomit and whimper with pain.

He took the bag with the fish and chips and laid it on his knees as Vern pulled away from the kerb. What would the kid do? Nothing. What had he to show for it? Not a mark on his face or his upper body, and he was hardly going to go down to Accident and Emergency, peel down his boxers and show a nurse that his balls were black and blue.

Should have let the car get a scratch from a blade down the side.

Should have stepped back. Shouldn’t have come to the country and the big open spaces. Robbie didn’t feel good, but he said nothing, gave Vern no explanation. His foot hurt. They’d go for it tomorrow, in the morning, because he had seen the dog.

His supper had been put on the dining-room table. The television played loud in the snug. He had eaten his supper, something from the freezer and the microwave, had loaded the plate into the dishwasher and gone back to his office. When the television had been switched off, the doors had opened and closed, and a light had shone under the main bedroom door. Wherever he went in the house, every room, he was followed by the dog, which stayed close.

When he was ready to put the animal out, Harvey switched off the lights in the living room and eased the patio doors open, making certain he was not silhouetted against anything bright. The silence beat around the walls, no voices, no clatter of a weapon being armed. He heard the sea and thought it restless, almost unforgiving. When the dog came in, he closed the outer doors, locked them and drew the curtains, then went methodically around the house, checking each door and window except those leading out from the main bedroom. Should he have gone into that room, knelt beside the bed, taken Josie’s head in his arms and…? He didn’t. He kicked off his shoes and dropped on to the settee in the living room. Best to be in denial. The dog had settled on the rug near him. Harvey Gillot didn’t know who Samuel Johnson was, but he did knew what he had said: Nothing concentrates one’s mind so much as the realisation that one is going to be hanged in the morning. He lay on his back on the cushions and the dog snored. The wind, from the south and west, beat at the roof. He thought the waves were fiercer against the rocks at either end of the cove and there were all those gravestones down there, broken and toppled. They lay beside the ruins of the church, and the ruins of Rufus Castle were close by. Bloody ruins. He reckoned his mind was concentrated, and not even denial could block out his anxiety about the morning. He didn’t know if he would sleep.

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