13

The peal of the alarm clock was followed by a jabbing elbow that broke into Benjie Arbuthnot’s sleep. Deirdre said, ‘You’ve a call to make.’

Would he argue with her at thirty-one minutes past six in the morning? Would he request tea first? ‘Yes, dear, of course.’

‘And don’t prattle. Tell him straight.’

He crawled from the bed, slipped on an old dressing-gown – cotton, light, bought at a street market in Buenos Aires when he’d been building bridges in the mid-eighties – and shuffled out of the bedroom. Early sunlight streamed through the windows of the old gamekeeper’s lodge to which he was now, in retirement, banished: his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren lived in the big house and farmed the land. It was a long time since he had stood on the quayside of a harbour in Croatia as a freighter had edged closer to shore. Responsibility? He had always fought, tooth and claw, to avoid the suffocation of it. But he had had a bad night, and Deirdre would have recognised it, so he was pushed from his bed and sent to clear his – very slight – conscience.

He had the number in his study. Not quite a trophy room, but there were photographs on the walls of the young Benjie in a sports team at school, another of his class at the Royal Military Academy, and a couple of him in camouflage fatigues with his troop and their Ferret scout cars on the inner German border and in south Armagh, more of Deirdre and himself in the Argentinian capital, in Damascus and Peshawar, but little that gave an indication of life after the cavalry. Did he do ‘responsibility’? Barely. A small photograph hung discreetly, almost out of sight behind the curtains. The Swiss had made an excellent 20mm rapid-fire anti-aircraft weapon – the Oerlikon – and it had been thought useful in the early 1970s to get a few down to the Sultanate of Oman without the stigma of overt UK association. A tried and trusted conduit had been used. He stood beside Solly Lieberman. The former cavalry officer and the former invasion-landing-barge crewman, the muscled and well-proportioned Briton with the near-emaciated American. The photograph had been taken by Deirdre at the factory gate in Zurich and ‘Stop faffing about and get on with it,’ she shouted, from above.

Responsibility? The word was a stranger to him. Benjie Arbuthnot had employed many assets, and some would have died after interrogation and torture, by hanging or firing squad. Most would now have drifted into old age and eked out their remaining years. Some would have been handed on to new station officers and remained active. Now he would be hard put to name the majority, but Solly Lieberman had a place of honour in his memory. He had been at the funeral, interdenominational and sparing with religion, had stood at the back and slipped out before Harvey Gillot, the lady who ran the office, a bank manager, a solicitor, an accountant and a landlord had made their way down the chapel’s aisle. What had he admired most? The sheer brass and anarchy of little Solly and the… Harvey Gillot had had Solly Lieberman’s accolade. Old habits died hard. He unlocked a drawer at his desk. Opened, it showed a shoebox full of mobile phones – pay-as-you-go and disposable. Flat battery, of course. He plugged one into the mains, then dialled. When it had been used, it would be thrown into the depths of the lake in front of the big house and allowed to settle into thick silt.

‘Me here. No names, friend.’

‘What sort of bloody time is this?’

‘It’s a fine morning, and late enough.’

‘I thought you’d call me last night.’

‘Been fretting?’

‘Yes, and I’m entitled to.’

‘How are you on taking advice?’

‘I have good days and bad. Three police outside the gates are offering me advice wrapped with ribbons that I’m declining. To them, I’m obstinate, stubborn, an imbecile, and they’re probably right. From you, I’m open to advice.’

He was already dressed, yesterday’s clothes, and had washed but not shaved. The house, empty but for the dog, had seemed a cold, desolate place during the night… Did he want her back? It was empty and sad. He held the phone to his ear, stood in the living room and watched the horse.

‘I take it as read that you won’t be crawling into a hole, hiding there.’

‘No.’

‘And can’t wait around at home, do the funeral arrangements and check the will.’

‘The police say they’ll withdraw protection this evening.’

‘And what do you say?’

‘I’m working on it.’

‘Ready for advice?’

The horse grazed the lawn, not that the gardener’s mower had left much for it to feed on. The geranium beds were wrecked, and it had tugged at the low branches of some shrubs. There were a couple of mini-mountains of its business on the patio, and the neatness outside was history.

‘Not going to gild it.’

‘I doubt you ever did.’ Harvey Gillot thought his irony was wasted.

‘You have to face up.’

‘How?’

‘You have to confront it.’

‘Where do I “face up” and “confront it”?’

‘There – has to be.’

‘What do I do “there”?’

‘Sorry, I don’t know. But if you don’t go there, you’ll be a fugitive for the rest of your days. I’m not big on religion, and doubt you are, but bits stick from childhood. St John the Baptist said, “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.” The big word repentance, a gesture… from Matthew three, verse eight. Are you with me?’

‘I seem to remember, from schooldays, that John the Baptist – at the behest of a dancing girl – had his head chopped off and served up on a salad plate… and I don’t do penance.’

‘I’m saying you have to go there and sort out your goddamn problem, because the alternative is the hole in the ground and looking over your shoulder. Face it and confront it.’

‘Is that for real?’

‘For real. You don’t have a rucksack of options.’

‘Where would you be?’

‘Not too far behind you, for my sins, there and thereabouts. How was it last night?’

‘Pretty bloody.’

It would have been the horse, but the outside security lights had been on for most of the time. The beast had moved through the shrubs, wheezing, and there had been its hoofs on the patio, and the dog had been restless. He’d hardly slept. Big in his head, awake or dozing, were the balaclava and the dark shape of the gun, the aim as it tried to lock.

‘And it will be as bad, as bloody, or worse. You have to face it.’

‘And confront it. I’ll just…’ Harvey paused. His mind was deadened and he couldn’t summon the clarity to think and decide. He still held the phone to his ear but his attention was on the sea, the expanse of it. Typical, he thought, from what he remembered of Arbuthnot, that there was no interruption, no nagging for him to speak. He didn’t know what would be there or who. He did know that life as a fugitive was not acceptable. There was a man he’d met at British Aerospace whose wife had had terminal cancer. She’d been offered the big treatments, had reflected and declined. She had died sooner but with her own hair and without the pain of the chemo sessions. Face it and confront it.

‘I don’t know how it will be,’ Harvey Gillot said, into the phone.

‘Time enough to find out.’

He said he would try to start out that night, and was now stumbling over the words. The enormity of it hit him, and Benjie Arbuthnot was muttering on a bad line about Blowback, and Gillot had as little idea of what that meant as he did about ‘penance’, but he saw a head, taken off at the neck, on a salver with lettuce, cucumber and tomato. The gate bell rang. He ended the call.

‘How did it play?’ Deirdre asked.

‘Will do what he was told – advised to do.’

She gazed quizzically at her husband – she had been thought by those who knew her as a Service wife to be devoid of sentiment. ‘Are you killing him?’

‘I might be – I don’t know. I hope I’m giving him life.’

The arrival of the delivery van and the opening of the gates would have woken the woman outside, shaken her, and she stood with the bullhorn raised.

The package was handed to Gillot. He checked the identity, was satisfied, and wrote his name with the stylus offered him. He saw that Roscoe was close behind. The detective had the flushed look that came from tiredness and his trousers were creased, but he had shaved. The deliveryman walked away, and Gillot thought he must have been puzzled to be greeted by an armed police check and a lone demonstrator. He thought that they would have kept a battery razor in the car, and the girl detective would have a spare pair of knickers at the bottom of the bag under the Glock.

He was asked if he could identify the package’s contents, and told Roscoe he had ordered a bulletproof vest. He didn’t mention the sprays. He expected it and was rewarded. A dry smile from Roscoe – arid as the desert in Saudi. The woman was shrieking, same hymn book, same slogans. Through the gate and up the lane, Gillot saw Denton, the neighbour. The man stood in a dressing-gown and made a theatrical pose of holding his hands over his ears. Gillot thought that others would be behind their kitchen doors or their front window curtains, listening to the din she made and taking in her message. He left the package by the front door, walked towards the gates and saw the other two detectives clamber fast from the car. He went past them, past the woman, trying to ignore the noise, and up to Denton. ‘I just wanted to thank you-’

A snort. ‘I’m hardly about to express gratitude to you – that noise, half last night and now again. It’s intolerable, it’s-’

‘I wanted to thank you because I think you saved my life.’

‘Did I?’

He had never been into Denton’s house. Denton had never been invited into Gillot’s. He smiled sweetly, the salesman’s smile. ‘You dumped your rotten apples beside the track and couldn’t be bothered to compost them yourself. I’m so pleased you were too lazy to dispose of them properly. If you ever used the track, which you don’t, you’d know wasps have nested alongside a good food source. A man stood there yesterday morning with the intention of shooting me dead. Sadly for him, happily for me, he disturbed the nest and as he aimed and fired, a couple of those horrible things were crawling round the slits of his mask. Indirectly, Denton, you saved my life. Well done, and thank you.’

He kept the smile locked on his face, the sincere one he saved for signing contracts and flattering ministry people. Was he taking the piss? Was there a word of truth in what he’d said?

‘That woman kept Georgina and me up half the night, calls you an “arms dealer”. Is that true?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘True, then. We never knew. We didn’t know that a man in that trade lived beside us. In our church we’ve collected for the victims of conflict in central Africa and others caught up in wars that are virtually sponsored for the financial gain of individual arms dealers. Have you no shame?’

‘Very little.’

‘I see that Mrs Gillot has understandably had enough of married life under the same roof as you and gone. What you’ve done with her clothing is a disgrace.’

He didn’t do the old routine about ‘if I don’t then someone else will’ or ‘everything I sell is quite legally handled’ or ‘I pay my taxes just like you do’ or ‘I bring the chance of freedom to many oppressed people who have the right to lift off the yoke of dictatorship and can only do it by putting their lives on the line and fighting’. He turned his back.

The bullhorn barked behind him. He was stained with ‘children’s blood’, a ‘trader in misery’, a ‘killer of babies’ and a ‘dealer in murder’. He wondered if she, too, had clean knickers to slip on, and if she did not, would the detective have an extra pair to loan her?

At the gates, Gillot told Roscoe of his plans for the day. First a walk with the dog, then to Weymouth, then to a school, then… He saw astonishment crease Roscoe’s face. ‘I was about to think, Mr Gillot, that you were going to do something – forgive me – sensible.’

‘Wrong again.’

‘And something rational.’

‘Doomed to disappointment.’

He heaved the package inside and saw that the horse had now destroyed the prize display, the bedding plants that had to be watered every twenty-four hours and were Nigel’s pride and joy. He kicked the door shut and went to feed the dog.

News travelled.

Roscoe called his boss – had him dragged from the shower – and told him what he’d learned.

The boss messaged the co-ordinator of Gold Group.

Some on their way to work, some still at home, some already at their desks: all learned what Harvey Gillot had said to Mark Roscoe. Some would shake their heads in astonishment, others would ejaculate an obscenity at his idiocy, a few would hear it in silence and feel relief at the potential to lose a problem. The line manager of the Alpha Team was among those the co-ordinator rang.

He tapped out the numbers for a call to an encrypted mobile.

*

Penny Laing reached across him, allowed a breast to brush his face – a nipple against his lips – grinned, then lifted her mobile. She depressed a key and listened. The grin was wiped. The boy wriggled into a position where he could nip her, but she swatted him. He must have caught her mood because he lay back on the pillow. She made a silent gesture, prodded him and pointed to the bedside fitment where a hotel pad and pencil lay. He passed them.

She had the pencil poised over the paper. He giggled and she reached out her free hand to stifle the sound. That, almost, assured him of his momentary power over her and he wriggled some more, was almost under her, pushing at her legs, parting them, then would have seen the panic on her face and came out from under her. He took the free hand and laid it on his belly.

What to do? Her line manager was at home, about to leave for the Alpha-team office. She left her fingers where they were and worked the nails into the hair. They would sack her if they knew. She could fight it and have the detail of her stand with a lover barely out of school laid out before a tribunal, or she could go quietly and have a career blown. It had been good. She listened and wrote one word on the pad – Gillot – and asked the obvious question: why? Had she known about a failed hit? Of course not. Her line manager told her of a shooting, a murder attempt, close to the Tango’s home, then the Road to Damascus business and the decision – as relayed to a police protection team – to travel. She expressed astonishment at news of the attack, gulped at news of the journey, and the boy’s hand wandered over the equivalent part of her stomach… so good.

Penny Laing didn’t tell her line manager that the previous evening she had skipped supper, had stripped naked, showered, had been with a boy on her hotel bed – and the first of the two condoms she always kept in the zipped pouch of her bag had just gone on him when his mobile had rung and the stroking, teasing, kissing had been on hold while he had answered the call from his father. He had been told, had rung off. She had opened herself wide for him – hadn’t for months, not since a frigate had sailed from Portsmouth dockyard – and he had whispered it in her ear, then thrust.

Was she achieving anything? She let her teeth grate. Her line manager waited for an answer. Her hand was around the boy and his finger was inside her, and her breathing was harder to control and… She said she believed she was moving towards better understanding of the events of November 1991. She was asked to report more fully within an hour, by which time her line manager would be safely off his train and in his cubicle alongside the Alpha work area. She ended the call. They squirmed together – and she stopped him. Two condoms, ribbed, already flushed down the toilet and she had no more. She wondered if he would sulk. He pushed her head down so that her lips went over his chest and ribcage, the hard stomach and into the hair and… So good. Had he learned this from a peasant girl, a teenager, or from a widow or divorcee with experience? She should have felt at least ten years older than him, control and domination, and did not. When they had finished and she had gone to the bathroom, rinsed her mouth, brushed her teeth and lost the taste of him, she said that Gillot was travelling to Vukovar.

Incredulity spread on the young face with the perfect skin.

He went limp and was off the bed, picking up his scattered clothing and starting to dress. Penny Laing watched him and thought she grasped the enormity of the step she had taken.

He always had breakfast. None of the subordinates who had ever worked under the direction of William Anders on a gravesite could claim to have seen him vomit what he had eaten. Some starved themselves before work, whether it was at excavation stage or merely the search with the geophysics for the tell-tale signs of disturbed soil. He ate heartily. Rolls, coffee, a cake, and an omelette filled with chopped ham. He saw his driver and waved, then wiped his mouth and saw the couple… almost furtive, not having the cover of dusk that had aided their discretion the previous evening. They came past him. If the woman, the English Customs officer, had recognised him, she gave no sign of it. He chuckled. He sat at the side of the patio and had a good view of them in profile, and would have liked Daniel to be beside him for a psychologist’s pitch on a relationship that would be, for her, fraught with danger.

William Anders knew plenty of the culture of law enforcement, had worked with the men and women engaged in it often enough to understand what made them tick. He had heard it expressed frequently that friendships and relationships should be tribal, that straying outside the reservation was neither clever nor satisfactory. God, what a boring fart he was becoming. The woman had the look of a well-bedded female, and her head was ducked – but even so she had the defiance streak daubed large. The boy? Well, he shambled beside her, would be going home, no doubt, to a Scout knife and would carve a notch on his bedpost. Next time he met up with Daniel he would put ‘battlefield romance’ on the agenda.

He admitted it to himself, came clean: he was struggling to contain raw jealousy. She was a fine-looking woman and strode ahead of the boy – who now had a mobile phone at his face – to unlock a little hire car. She would have thought it, Anders reckoned, an uncomplicated fling. He doubted that. What had been the pillow talk? Always was pillow talk… He watched them go, then went to meet his driver, who would take him for another day’s digging and searching. He believed in what he did, thought the past should not be permitted to fade from sight. It was accountable, as men were, for a lifetime and not for a day. No time limit on retribution, should be handed out whenever – as long as it damn well took.

At his home in the village Josip answered a call from Simun. He wrote rapidly, took down an itinerary. He felt like a swimmer failing in open seas until a rope was thrown. He – who was listened to but unloved – had created the idea and sent the principals of the village to the banks. Money had been withdrawn and perhaps had been squandered. He ended the call, lit a cigarette, poured more coffee and reached again for his phone.

Josip called Zagreb. He spoke respectfully to a man who lived in an apartment that overlooked the Trg Kalija Tomislava. Through the trees the man would have had a view of the statue of a nineteenth-century king, all powerful in his time, as was this man today.

The tentacles from Zagreb flexed, reached out, and a call was made to a man of influence in Warsaw, who spoke to an associate in the German port city of Hamburg. Through the tentacles, news was passed that Harvey Gillot, on whom a contract was taken and a man hired to enforce it, would travel from London to a town on the Danube, Vukovar.

From the Blankenese suburb of Hamburg, where another man of authority and wealth oversaw an empire, a message was sent in partial coding to Lenny Grewcock, who took a health-dominated breakfast in a north London hotel.

Grewcock said, ‘The little bastard’s lucky to get a chance, and he’ll take it. If he doesn’t, his family’s history and he’s set in hardening concrete. He took the money.’ There was talk between them of the importance of Munich in this matter, but also of a fall-back further down the journey’s line, then chat about the weather. Eventually, before he returned to his yoghurt and cereal, Lenny Grewcock made a last call and the chain was complete.

All done fast, and done because men had trusted each other’s judgement and recommended. The last call, forging the link, was to the grandfather of Robbie Cairns.

Through the night, he had watched over her. He had laid her on the bed and removed some of her outer clothing, as if that might make her more comfortable. Then he had pulled up a chair, the one on which he usually laid his trousers, shirt and underwear when he went to bed with her. He had held Barbie’s hand. At first it had been warm, but the flesh against his had cooled. Only when it had chilled had Robbie Cairns laid it beside her leg. The dawn had come up and light had pierced the half-drawn curtains. Then Robbie had seen the pallor of her face, the cheeks, the angry colours, distorted red weals and purple bruising at her throat. There were no scratch marks on his face. She had not fought him.

He had come into the room and she had been sitting on the settee with the pistol in both hands, the barrel pointing at the ceiling, the trigger guard below her fingers. She had seemed bemused – almost in shock – by what she had found. The questions had come with persistence and her voice had grown louder with each of his refusals to answer. Why was it there? What did he have a pistol for? It smelt – when had it been fired? If it had been fired, who had it been fired at?

Robbie could have lied, could have said it wasn’t a big deal and shrugged it off – minding it for a friend, getting rid of it in the morning. Could have said he was doing a friend a favour, a short-term one. He hadn’t lied and hadn’t answered. He had reached out his hands, intending to take it from her, but she had shoved it behind her back, and his hands had kept coming. She had said, ‘I don’t ask questions, God’s truth I don’t, but this is too far. How am I supposed to turn my back on a loaded pistol that’s been fired – and you’ve that stink on you, petrol? I read the papers, Robbie, so I know that petrol’s used to block gunfire traces on skin. I thought you might have been a bit… well, a bit dodgy, but not guns. I’m going. Sorry and all that. First thing, Robbie, I’m going to Lower Road. I’m going to the police and…’

He’d thought she meant it. It would have been for her a five-or six-minute walk down the road and past the station, past the old dock offices that were now a training centre, then the left into Lower Road and past the pub, be up the steps and at the front inquiry desk. He’d thought she meant it because her voice wasn’t raised.

His hands had gone forward to her throat. He wasn’t sure – then, now – if he closed his fingers to stop her going to the police station in the morning or just to stop the flow of what she said. She might have kicked, might have tried to bite his hands, didn’t use her nails. As if she didn’t want to save herself, or didn’t want to hurt him. It had taken three or four minutes – would have been longer if she’d fought him…

He had killed men but always with pistol shots. He had never knifed or manually strangled someone. He had never slapped, kicked or punched a woman. He had thought in the night, as she had gone colder and the marks on her throat did not dull, that Leanne would turn her back on him, Vern would spit at him, his dad would strike him and his grandfather would raise devils against him.

The phone in his pocket had rung. It had been a long night and the quiet was broken now by the traffic on the roundabout at the bottom of Needleman Street and at the top of Surrey Quays Road. He had answered the phone, listened, cut the call. He went about his business. Took trouble to wipe down the surfaces and use damp cloths with the stuff she had to wash the basin, the toilet, the sink and the cooker. He did it in the knowledge that his DNA would linger. He didn’t know where he could go to gain an alibi – for that he needed a friend. He left the curtains as they had been through the night, but light settled on her face. It couldn’t quieten her throat’s colours.

The pistol went into his pocket, and he closed the front door behind him, walked from the block and headed for the Albion Estate.

Behind him the front door was open. He looked once at the horse – it was still foraging among the garden plants – and waved the dog back towards the house. They had been for a walk together. Almost ‘together’. Roscoe had been a couple of paces behind Gillot and the dog and Bill had been another twenty-five paces back; there were uniforms now at the lane’s approach to the house. He had thought it a pretty walk – not taxing enough for himself and Chrissie, but there had been stretches where the low cliffs, coves and narrow beaches had been good to look at. Twice – as the kestrels had hovered over cropped grass – he had had to give himself a mental kicking and remember what his work was. No threat on any horizon. Suzie, in the night when they had done the stag together, had had her laptop open and talked to him about the history of the island from what she’d read. So Roscoe knew which ships from previous centuries had been wrecked on those reefs and on the pebble beach, how many had drowned and which quarries had supplied the clean white stone for the cemeteries in Flanders’ fields. Away to his right, as they had walked towards the lighthouse, he had seen the former naval research base where Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee had stolen secrets, and he knew the histories of the various lighthouses, the first one erected close to three hundred years before. They had walked to a great overhanging stone at the extremity of the Bill, the Pulpit Rock.

Almost at the house, Gillot had turned and made a hand gesture as if to summon Roscoe to his side. Roscoe had to bite his well-chewed lower lip to stop himself erupting in protest or ignoring the bastard. He had been told the Tango’s movements for the day, and had thought them imbecile when there would have been a three-hour flight direct into Osijek. The word ‘penance’ had been used, with a loose grin, and some sort of gibberish about a ‘blowback’, but that hadn’t concerned him. He had written the itinerary in his notepad, then waved Bill forward. The big fellow had jogged to his shoulder and they had done the tandem thing. Roscoe had called in, had given the times and the connections; they would go straight into the lap of the Gold Group co-ordinator.

When they came round the corner, the woman had started up. Quite a good soul, actually – nice, funny, warm. She’d spent part of the night with Suzie in the car, stretched out on the back seat – practically a hanging offence, as far as Metropolitan Police Service regulations went. He had no quarrel with her – none of them did – and she’d made them laugh with good anecdotes of protest lines. They’d done a trade-off: Megs Behan would have part of the back seat, and she’d close down on the slogans so they could doze. And she was up Harvey Giliot’s nose – no call to pick a quarrel with her. He knew the saying, might have been Arabic or Chinese, that went ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

The door was open behind him. He was called back on the mobile and was given his instructions. He was too tired to bitch and said what time he thought they’d be in London. He went to Megs Behan and she lowered her bullhorn. He’d thought, from the last blast – not that it mattered now – that the battery was flattening.

Mark Roscoe committed a worse offence than allowing an unauthorised civilian to snooze in the car, but the discipline culture had never burrowed into his guts. He told her where Gillot was travelling to and saw her face lighten. He didn’t tell her the schedule.

Then he waited.

Harvey Gillot wolfed another chocolate biscuit. He had removed the hard drives from his computers in the office, had made the bed neatly in the spare room where he had slept, had left the carpet rolled back in the principal bedroom so that it was easy to see the floor safe was open and empty, had poured some dog meal into the tin bowl, then had hitched up the rucksack of his clothes and what little he would journey with. There was a mirror in the hallway and he checked himself. Clean clothes, the dirty ones dumped in the bin, good shoes for offroad walking. He was well-shaven, no cuts, his hair was combed and he had dabbed on a little aftershave. Larger, of course, heavier in the chest and the upper stomach. A few who were familiar with him would have thought Harvey Gillot had binged – maybe food, maybe alcohol, maybe steroids. He wore a blue shirt, a silk tie and a lightweight jacket.

In his mind was the list of things he had to do: the dog, the travel agent, the solicitor, the school… and the text. He sent it. A last look at the mirror. Was satisfied, lifting the dog’s lead down from the hook, when the call came.

Charles, the sales manager, how was he? ‘Doing very nicely, thank you. All looks pretty sunny from where I stand. What can I do for you, Charles?’

Did he remember what they had talked about? ‘Remember it very well, Charles. You about to tell me that the tailgate on the lorry wasn’t fastened properly?’

Did he not know of the global ravages of the credit crunch? Cancellations, had he not heard of them? ‘I think I’d be interested – at a decent price.’

Charles told him. ‘We might have to do a bit better than that, Charles. Difficult times and all that.’

They haggled. The sales manager flogging military communications equipment, suitable for a brigade-sized force in the field and with total encryption, came down two per cent, and Harvey Gillot came up one per cent. It was a nice little deal. He could put out of his mind the dog, the travel agent, the solicitor and the school, and focus on brokering. Already his head was filled with the possibilities of where that equipment would be wanted – where conflict was about to flare, where there was money and demand. He did a little dance, a few steps, then called the dog.

He waved to the horse. He thought the garden was too destroyed to be repaired for the rest of the summer. The lawn would have been in better shape if it hadn’t been for the automatic sprinkler system fitted the previous year: it had softened the grass table so the hoof indentations were deeper. The flowerbeds were buggered and… It was a vigorous wave for the horse.

He took the Audi out of the garage, drove up to the gates and zapped them, then went out into the lane. Some coats and a couple of dresses would have gone under the wheels. Gillot didn’t acknowledge his onlookers. The woman with the bullhorn wasn’t there but the three detectives were close to their car, the engine running and the doors open. He left his own turning over and walked back to the dog, closed the gates on the horse, then crouched down and ruffled the fur at the dog’s collar. He said some quiet things and got his ear washed by the tongue that had been scooping up shit on the walk. He walked the dog, on the lead, to Denton’s house, pretty as a postcard with climbing roses, opened the gate to the front path, pushed the dog in, dropped the food bag beside it and bawled, towards an open window, that Josie would be along soon. He had gone before the door opened.

He drove away. He fiddled with the dashboard, turned up the air-conditioning but was still sweating. Who loved him? Nobody. Who was his friend? Nobody. There was a bus stop on the far side of the road to the museum and the woman was there – quite attractive if she did something about herself. He didn’t wave and didn’t consider offering her a lift. Roscoe and his people were behind him and further back a marked police car. Good riddance, they’d be thinking – saying. Good riddance to bad rubbish. A teacher way back at the grammar school had told the class it was from Dickens. Ahead of him, immediately, was the travel shop, the lawyer’s place, Fee’s school and then… the unknown. Harvey Gillot had a good feeling. He always had it when he believed he had control of a sort, but didn’t know where Destiny would take him. He went past the top point of the island and the mainland vista stretched to far horizons. If he didn’t come back would anyone care? No.

She swore.

A bad morning, illusions broken, woken from a dream. Romance fled, not even lust remained. Swore loudly, and repeated it. With her suitcases, she had gone to the big hotel on the high point of the island and had endured a rotten night.

The Dentons were at the little wicket gate on the lane and had her dog on a lead. In front of her were the gates to her home and the debris he’d left.

She swore louder.

Nobody there. An empty lane. The lead was loosed, the dog freed. She opened the gates. Many justifications for her curses. The gardener hadn’t offered to drive her back that morning and she fancied he would be looking for fresh employment to fill the hours he had spent at Lulworth View, indoors and out. The clothing on the gate and on the lane, with tyre marks, was an act of crude vandalism. The horse came to her across the drive and she felt tears well. She had seen the state of her beloved, and expensive, garden.

A little regret, which fuelled curses. Too long on her own in the isolation of the island, and no one to know but the retired – the traders she met had never had the guts to get off the place and find a life. She was too bored, too cut off from his work because he no longer seemed to need her support, and too lonely – hadn’t even been proper sex on the side. Had been garden-work sweat that Nigel had washed off in the shower, more was the pity, just a bit of touching and fondling, a quick dart inside and her saying she was on the pill and him recoiling at the mention of it. He’d gone soft on her – afterwards, not during – and followed her round with eyes that longed like the dog’s did when its food was due. Hadn’t even done it properly.

The telephone rang as she crossed the drive, but had stopped as she came through the door. She didn’t care.

Good reason for the oaths, curses, when she was inside. Josie went to the bedroom, where the open wardrobe doors mocked her. The carpet was turned back at a corner and the safe box had its lid off. Empty – the necklace he’d bought her in Riyadh after his first Saudi contract following the wedding, the ring from Jakarta that had celebrated a deal for a paramilitary police weapons update, the bracelet with the emeralds that had been the best thing in a Hanoi shop, amber from Lithuania, jade from Thailand and the gold chain from Johannesburg when he’d sold a pile of junk to the Mozambicans and… All of it had been bought by him and all of it had been given to her, sometimes in gift boxes with wrapping and ribbon, passed across a candlelit table, sometimes coming off a dawn flight and her still in bed, a neighbour taking Fee to nursery school before they moved and the wrapping stripped off as fast as his clothes… All gone. The bastard. There had always been cash there: dollars and euros and sterling. Empty. She took the ring off her finger, dropped it into the safe and put the lid back but didn’t fasten the lock, then kicked the carpet into place.

She went to the other safe, in his office, opened it with the combination and saw that her passport was there, not his, the insurance policies and his will. The computers had been opened and she assumed the hard drives were gone.

At the gates, when she was collecting armfuls of her clothes, the Dentons came close, and she was told of armed police officers who had maintained a vigil on her home through the night and more police who had been at the top of the lane. She was told also of the inconvenience caused by a woman with a megaphone who had kept them awake till the small hours. The couple felt betrayed, they said, hadn’t known her husband dealt in arms. She stomped away with another armful of clothes, said not a word of apology or remorse, just bloody well ignored them.

Josie Gillot thought her life had been destroyed, as her husband’s had.

When she had cleared the gate, had picked up the coats and dresses, she swore some more and took the boxes of carriage clocks, ornaments and glassware back across the drive and into the house. Next she had to return the horse to its field… but before that a drink or three. Not mid-morning and ice cubes tinkled on crystal. Nobody helped her. The bastard – she didn’t know what he was doing or where he was, and didn’t care to.

He had been turned away. He had arrived at the school – had thought he was doing his daughter a favour – and gone down empty corridors, hearing the chirp of young voices from behind closed classroom doors. As he had reached the headmistress’ suite, a bell had clamoured. He had been made to wait, not offered coffee or a biscuit. ‘Your wife, Mr Gillot, came last night, saw Fiona and briefed us on the irregular situation in your life currently. She expressed an opinion that you were capable of quite irrational actions, so my colleagues and I have decided it better that you do not see your daughter. Please leave, Mr Gillot.’ He had been aware then of the male PE teacher in a tracksuit at the open door. Did he want to be grabbed and put in a headlock?

He had driven away. There had been girls limbering up for netball, tennis or athletics on a distant playing-field but he could not, as he drove, recognise his daughter among them. The escort car picked him up at the outer gates and tailed him back into town.

The dutiful father had done his best. He had the tickets from the travel agent, and the envelope – given reluctantly and signed for in triplicate – from the solicitor, the senior partner. The suspicious beggar had asked if this had Mrs Gillot’s approval, then had stepped into an adjoining office and made a call that had not been answered. He had the tickets and the envelope, and what had been in the safe was in a plastic bag at his feet. He would have broiled if not for the air-conditioner.

The car followed him into town.

He parked at the station, in the short-stay bays. He didn’t know if he would be back, so the prospect of his car running up a bill and getting clamped or towed away seemed unimportant. He boarded the train. They didn’t come with him.

Before the train reached Poole, its schedule was dislocated. The announcement said there had been ‘an incident’ on the line, and the guard coming through the carriage during the half-hour delay said, ‘A guy topped himself off a bridge, jumped in front of a train on the down line.’ Sort of put things into perspective, Harvey thought. When the train started up and they inched forward at a place where the line ran through a cutting he found himself thinking about the village, where he had never been and what it had been like a long time ago.

She had been told the man’s name was Andrija, and then Simun whispered that he was ‘disturbed’: in the last week he had attempted to kill himself by lying on a hand grenade, but his wife had taken it from him.

Penny Laing had been given a stool to perch on, the boy sat cross-legged on the veranda and the woman, introduced as Maria, stood behind her husband and held the back of his solid chair. She was without expression, and wore shapeless drab grey and brown clothing. He had a wooden hospital crutch and propped it between his knees.

He talked, and his wife never interrupted or prompted. Simun translated. Penny learned of the raising of the payment that had been given to Harvey Gillot, how the wife had refused to accept excuses, and she imagined the woman gliding in darkness through the village as shells exploded and there were skirmishes at the defence lines. Then, in a bunker or a cellar under a house or below the flagstones of the Catholic church, she had filled a bag with bagatelle ornaments, low-quality gold, rubbish jewellery and the deeds of properties that had no value. Everything that went into the bag was of the highest importance to those who gave it.

They did not know, in the village, the name of the dealer whom the schoolteacher had met in Zagreb, but Zoran had come back and reported a meeting ‘most satisfactory’ with a person of honour and integrity. The night they went to collect the weapons, they had thought they would meet the man of honour and integrity, maybe linger long enough with him for a cigarette, the glow shielded. There would have been the embrace of brothers, cheeks kissed, and he would have gone on his way as they ferried the missiles towards the village. Andrija’s cousin had come from Vinkovci, had not been pressured to fight but had done so – he was a lion. In the village they had heard, as they waited for the shadows dragging the cart and the pram from the corn, the sudden concentration of explosions, the rattle of the machine-gun.

Penny Laing wondered if the greater hatred was directed at Harvey Gillot, who had taken their possessions and welshed on a deal, or on the paramilitaries Simun called ‘Cetniks’, who had killed the four and had ultimately overrun the village.

The translation went on. Andrija was skilled as a sniper. He would have fired his Dragunov rifle to drive the enemy into bunkers and into armoured vehicles. Tomislav would have used the Malyutka missiles the village had bought. A Malyutka would destroy a personnel carrier, which might have fifteen Cetniks inside it. If the missiles had come, they would have held the village: it was said with certainty. She felt now that she was merely an intruder – and couldn’t read the boy well enough to know whether or not he still respected her.

No missiles, ammunition exhausted, and in the final hours Andrija had left his wife with the wounded in the crypt under the church, and gone into the corn. He had been twenty-three and his wife two years older. It was estimated he had killed twenty Cetniks during the siege, and had he been caught in the corn he would have died a slow death. On the second day, walking, crawling, alone, he had detonated an anti-personnel mine that had shattered his leg, virtually severing it. He had used a shirt sleeve to tie a tourniquet, then dragged himself on his stomach the last two kilometres, the limb pulled along after him by a thin weave of muscle, ligament and skin. His wife, Maria, had been taken from the church by the Cetniks and raped repeatedly. Before, she had had fine long black hair but by the second month in the refugee camp after repatriation it had turned grey and she had had it cut short. Simun said they had not had sex since they had been reunited. She would not have permitted it and he would not have wanted it.

Penny felt washed out and exhausted by what was said. Almost timidly, she asked a question. What did Harvey Gillot mean to Andrija?

He said, through Simun, that he had not had the will to live since he had recovered in the hospital ward because he was crippled. Life had so little meaning for him that he had refused to go for fitting and training in the use of prosthetic limbs. Now he wished to survive long enough to hear it announced by Mladen – on the cafe veranda – that Harvey Gillot had been killed. His wife was suddenly animated, nodded vigorously, and Penny saw savage beauty – as if a shadow had lifted.

‘Would you thank them, please, and tell them of my gratitude? What will happen to Harvey Gillot should he come here?’

She could see it in their eyes. No answer was necessary. The same death that had awaited Andrija if he’d been captured in the corn, slow and hard.

He was met at the terminal. He had not known it but he reckoned then that he had been tailed off the train from the coast and shadowed across London. An officer, plainclothes, introduced himself as Mark Roscoe’s senior. He decided the sergeant had snitched on him because there was dislike at the man’s mouth and in the eyes. The others were uniform and carried machine pistols. He was escorted through the checks and past Immigration, people staring at him because of the company he kept. Nobody spoke. Other than the first exchange at the introduction, the inspector did not have a word for him. He sat down in the coffee section, didn’t have long to wait because of his late arrival, and Roscoe’s chief stood, arms folded, a few paces away while the guns patrolled. He had coffee and a cake, then bought a newspaper. When the departure was called he hitched up his rucksack, walked to the travelator, the platform, and the allocated carriage. Harvey Gillot didn’t look back, and he thought they’d stay until the train had pulled away.

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