14

It was, Harvey Gillot accepted, an eccentric route to take. He had come to Paris, had walked from Gare du Nord to Gare de l’Est.

He had eaten at a fast-food joint, something tasteless but filling, and had drunk mineral water, ignoring the wines. He had sat on a bench among a small army of young American backpackers. There had been police on the station concourse but also patrols of armed troops, who carried low-slung automatic weapons. He had taken, in effect, a fugitive’s route. The onward ticket had been waiting for him at a booth, he had paid cash for it, and it was as though a link had been broken in a chain. He was used to it, practised it with frequency, skill, and would have wagered good money that the bastard with the balaclava and the wasps couldn’t have had his eyes on a trail or his nose on a scent. He thought himself free but maintained basic security procedures, which were second nature. He had not done the courses, but knew enough people who had, and had done middle-man negotiation for former army officers to lecture heads of state on personal protection. He had stayed outside the conversations of the Americans around him and would barely have been noticed as he sat among their massive bags

… but the troops with their assault rifles stirred the memory of the attack and of the contract.

Panic had swept through the backpackers. Harvey Gillot didn’t know where it had come from but word said that the couchettes were double booked and that late arrivals might have to sit up through the night. Big bloody deal – bigger for the Americans than for the refugee who travelled on a ‘penance’ and didn’t know what it was. When the train was called, there had been a stampede and he had been carried with it. And the panic? A false alarm. He had his own cubicle, and in the morning a cold breakfast would be brought to him, with coffee. He didn’t take off his jacket or shrug out of his shirt until the night sleeper for Munich had cleared the station.

He hoped he would sleep, wasn’t sure that he would.

Always useful, Harvey Gillot reckoned, to have a topic of conversation, analysis, if sleep came hard. He had chosen the potential in armoured cars. He lay on his back, the curtains drawn, and rocked with the motion. He pondered on sales-pitch talk: ballistic integrity, durability, quality control, and on the Mercedes Benz range of saloons and SUVs, price tags of a quarter of a million euros for starters, their suitability for the streets of Baghdad, Moscow or Shanghai. What a package, what value, and there was the Jaguar range… He didn’t see fields of ripened corn and sunflowers or the great river against which a town had been trapped, squeezed and devastated when a village on the only path into it had been defeated.

He walked into Departures. He didn’t turn and wave to Vern, and hadn’t reached into the front passenger seat of the car to kiss Leanne. They had taken him to the airport, pulled up at the drop-off bay and he had been out of the car, had slammed the door and walked.

Nervous. Apprehensive. The great turmoil of the concourse buffeted against him. He headed inside and gazed at the flickering boards. He hadn’t been back to move her. She would still be on the bed – colder and paler. He hadn’t settled on an alibi. It was in the bloodstream of the Cairns family that care should be taken to destroy technical evidence and to line up a witness who would put them at another location – pub, club, restaurant – at the time that mattered. He had done nothing after the clean-up because he had been summoned to his grandfather’s flat. He could have turned round, walked out and headed for… There was nowhere else. Couldn’t go to the flat because the bed was taken, and the hands of the woman who lay on it were frozen, she was silent and her skin was white, except for the bruising. He had nowhere to go, no other life to lead.

One thing was clear: he would be on that flight. Time and money had been invested in him, two contact numbers were in his pocket, and he shouldn’t ‘fuckin’ think of coming back till it’s done’. Enough for him to be nervous and apprehensive.

And more.

Robbie Cairns, feared hitman and taker of big-money contracts, had travelled outside his country only once before. Three years ago he had been on a week’s trip to Marbella with his mother and sister because there was talk of investing in a villa a little along the coast at Puerto Banus. He had hated it – had been burned by the sun, then had peeled like a bloody snake. He had not been abroad since because he’d had no call to and because money in the Cairns household was tight. The big heist that would pay for luxury vacations was always the next one.

Like a little boy lost, he scanned the board and cursed his sister for not coming in to show him where he should go. Then he saw it. Probably his eyes had gone over that part of the board a half-dozen times – Munich on the board, a Lufthansa flight and its number. It would be the last flight of the day, and there was a surge of businessmen and -women who had shoulder bags that held computers. Robbie Cairns had only a football kitbag, small and scratched, given him by his father fifteen years back. He didn’t play football – might have taken out a guy who’d tripped him. The bag was black, with red piping, and had the club’s crest of a fist gripping an upright sword. He thought his father had probably been given it, free, in a pub. It would have been easy enough to get to see Charlton – down Evelyn Street from Rotherhithe to the top end of Greenwich Park, over the Blackwall Tunnel road, then another mile, wouldn’t have taken more than a half-hour – but it would have bored him, and he had no friend to go with. In his bag were spare socks, a razor and a soap dish, two sets of underwear, a shirt and a pair of faded jeans.

He showed his passport. The guy flicked through the empty pages, then wiped it over a light set into his desk. That made more of the nerves and more of the apprehension. He was given back the passport, no smile or thanks, and the eyeline had already moved behind him. He knew that his Barbie hadn’t been found.

There were other kids at school who had shown signs of brutality; they had been slapped down in front of the council’s psychiatrists. Robbie Cairns was not among them. There was a kid, an eleven-year-old, who had crucified a cat, nailed it to a fence. There was a girl, aged seven, who used to stay beside a bush, a pretty one that attracted butterflies; she had caught them and pulled their wings off. Nothing abnormal about Robbie Cairns. He had never felt the need to hurt, just went about his work, took the money and slipped what he had seen and done to the back of his mind.

Couldn’t now.

She was cold and silent, but she gnawed and nagged in his head, like a rat would… but she hadn’t been found.

A group of women sat in a corner of a lounge bar near Theatreland. They had seen Les Miserables – not for the first time – and were having a drink before going off in their different directions. What they had in common was that they worked in Fragrances at a department store. Also shared was their irritation that one of their regulars was not present, had kept them hanging about in the theatre foyer almost until the curtain rose, had wasted a seat that someone would have filled, had behaved so out of character.

‘She’d better have good explanation.’

‘If she was sick or something, there’s telephones.’

‘And there was staff training this morning… it’s not like Barbara.’

‘She lives in one of those new places by Canada Water, I saw it on some pension stuff we both had. I’m coming from Catford so I’ll catch the earlier bus and check on her. As you say, it’s not like Barbara.’

They had time for one more round and talked of the wonders of the show, which they knew almost line by line – and next morning, Melody, who specialised in eau de toilette, would break her bus journey in Canada Water.

‘I want to go, simple as that.’

‘If you didn’t know it, Megs, I’m talking to a select committee in the morning. If you also didn’t know it, Members of Parliament have not only influence but also dosh to dole out. I’m here tonight as a reflection of the importance of the morning’s session.’

The windows were open and the breeze was up, shivering over the papers spread in front of him. The window had to be open so that his cigarette smoke drifted outside and the smell was erased before dawn.

‘Sorry and all that, but I need to go.’

‘I’m only here, at this godforsaken hour, because of tomorrow. I’m not here to hand out travel vouchers and petty cash. First “want”, now “need” – you push your luck, Megs.’

‘I ask for very little.’

What hurt most, she liked him, might have fancied him, but he had a girlfriend – a teacher in a comprehensive – and was touchingly loyal to her. They were the oldest two in Information and Support, earned a pittance, though more than any of the younger others. But he was Megs’s senior and demanded that she remember it.

‘You are, undeniably, an important and valued member of our team.’

‘I can do a cheap flight, maybe via Astana or-’

‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s the capital of Kazakhstan – or I’ll go via Anchorage, whichever is cheaper to reach Croatia.’

She had been joking, but there was too much paper on his desk and his humour was stifled. ‘Is there nothing else, Megs, that would more valuably employ you? I mean, sleeping in police cars and driving a rural community half insane with a loudspeaker isn’t winning hearts and minds. Please, leave me alone. It’ll seem better in the morning.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Believe me, Megs, that should have been “it” five minutes ago. Look, a field trip such as you propose would have to go before the finance people, maybe a board member, for sanction. I have neither the time nor the inclination. Go away.’

‘Sod you.’ Was that offensive? Would a bloody great argument help her cause?

He was smiling at her, had the look of a man who longed to get his teeth into forbidden fruit, but wouldn’t grope. ‘I’m sure you’ve been told often enough that you’re prettiest when you’re angry and it’s true. We love you-’

‘It’s “no”?’

‘Bullseye. No money for an airfare and no subsistence. You’ve failed to explain to me what Harvey Gillot is going to do in some village west of Vukovar, how his visit, and your presence there, will enrich our work. Christ, he didn’t sell. We vilify arms brokers for selling. Are we saying, Megs, and getting ourselves into an acrobat’s contortions, that we condemn Harvey Gillot because he did not flog weapons to a Croat community when to have done so was in defiance of an enforceable Security Council embargo? Megs, it’s late, I’m tired, I have a bloody mountain to climb before I’m due at the Palace of Fun, Truth and Hope. Go home.’

‘And if I said I was resigning?’ It would have sounded like a big card played, but she was grinning.

Maybe he didn’t notice the grin, or was too tired to care. ‘These are difficult times and we’re crunched to the bone, looking at every possible economy measure. You don’t give us easy options.’

‘I won’t be in tomorrow.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘Probably refuelling at Astana or Anchorage, and likely sitting on the wing at take-off. I’m using days in lieu.’

‘Goodnight, Megs, and close the door after you.’

She went out. The end of the world? Well, there was an account. She had promised herself she wouldn’t chip into her aunt’s bequest. It seemed important enough to break rules to be there, but she couldn’t explain why. She just had to go. She had to see how it played out. In part, she was responsible for the chaos now sitting in Harvey Gillot’s lap. Didn’t mean she was sorry for what she’d done, but perhaps she had a stake in it, like she wanted to see a horse run when she’d cleared her purse to back it. Sympathy? Of course not.

She closed the door, went to her cubicle and started to surf for flights and deals.

‘You’ll need something for your head. It’ll be up in the nineties there.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘The linen or the straw?’

‘I think the straw is more suitable.’

It was a ritual played out between Benjie and Deirdre Arbuthnot. She always supervised his laying out of clothing and necessary items before they were packed into his scarred leather travelling bag. The bag had history, had been beside him in circumstances of luxury and extreme hardship. He couldn’t have imagined being away without its reassuring presence at the foot of a bed or beside a sleeping-bag. The label, hanging by a frayed strap to the handle, named him as ‘Benjamin C. Arbuthnot, Consultant Engineer’. There had probably been a team working for a week on the Service pay-roll specifically to discover what employment cover gave the greatest protection in the field. He had never met a suspicious official, when working in covert mode, who had thought it necessary to quiz him on dam building or bridge construction. The straw hat went on the bed in the spare room beside his washbag and pyjamas, the socks and underwear.

‘You’ll want some good shoes.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘The pair you had in Spain.’

‘I think they’ll be suitable, yes.’

He had worn them last year in Spain, walking a little and watching for eagles, oxpeckers and vultures in the Parque Nacional de Donana, but had broken them in, new, in the Hindu Kush foothills when the mujahideen had been supplied with the wretched Blowpipes. Each time he wore them and brought them home, he’d clean and polish them, then insert the shoe trees; they had kept their shape since the days he had spent with the perspiring Solly Lieberman and the young Harvey Gillot. He felt linked to the past.

‘It’s all about policy. You can’t have strategy if you don’t have a policy aim,’ he said, almost wistfully.

‘Of course, Benjie… I’m concerned about the mosquito repellent. Four years beyond the sell-by date.’

‘Worked in that park, will work again. Men such as Lieberman, and little men such as Gillot, only survive because of policy requirements.’

‘You have to decide which jacket to take. The cotton is probably best.’

‘Right, the cream one. That sort of person isn’t going to exist, let alone prosper, unless it suits the policy aims of those at the top table. Pretty much every deal that’s done has an assumed advantage to us, or Solly and little Gillot would have been stamped on at birth. People at Revenue and Customs don’t understand the requirements of policy.’

‘Will four shirts be enough? It’s only two or three days, isn’t it? Four shirts, two slacks…’

She ticked off items, collected the clothing from drawers and wardrobes and spread it beside the bag. He could reflect that, under a ferocious exterior, she cared for his safety. She could have echoed what he’d said about policy. He needed – in his mind and, perhaps, his soul – to justify the events that had taken place many years before on the quayside at Rijeka. Advice given, only advice. His own business done, he had driven hard for Ljubljana through torrential rain that his wipers had barely coped with. He had managed a late flight out. And Gillot in recent years? Had heard along the extended communication lines so prized by the Service that other officers had been able to use him to advantage before he had slipped under the radar. Didn’t mean that afterwards little Gillot had been a loose cannon, a rogue, whatever, but that he didn’t fill a useful slot in the policy requirements of the day.

She folded the items briskly and packed. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to take your library book – you’ve gone quiet, Benjie. Not an attack of the dreaded ethics, I hope?’

‘I was reflecting on the creed of “deniability”.’

She laughed, a little growled chuckle, and touched his arm briefly. ‘I think that we’ve thought of about everything.’

‘Thank you. “Deniability” was always the key, agreed? Hardly worth doing if we’d had to own up and be in the public’s glare. It suited us so much better to have those damn missiles on Jordanian soil than shoved up-country in Croatia to some battlefield where the result was already determined. It was the equivalent of throwing good money after bad… but it was grand to get the stuff to Aqaba and no one the wiser on our involvement. Ethics? I’ll admit to short spasms of feeling responsible for what Denys called a Blowback, but more important will be the theatre. You with me, dear?’

‘Are you taking your pen?’

‘Of course… I fancy it will be spectacular.’

He closed the bag, buckled it and carried it, with the straw hat, out of the room. He took them downstairs and put them on an old chair close to the front door, covenient for carrying to the Land Rover in the morning and her driving him to the train station.

She called from the landing. ‘A whisky, I think, Benjie. You’ll be a voyeur, won’t you? Not going to clash with any scant sense of morality?’

He laughed with her. ‘Bugger the morals. I’m banking on a fine show.’

‘And, of course, you’ll play the universal idiot, and do it well.’

‘They’re the clothes I’m comfortable in.’

At the Gold Group meeting there was little enthusiasm for extending the session further into the late evening.

‘Bizarre circumstances, agreed, but not entirely unwelcome.’ From SCD10, Surveillance: ‘I would have to say, Ma’am, that we were not happy with declining an invitation to mount the sort of job that was required. Just don’t have the people. If we were to have put in a covert rural observation point, we would have had to pull a very expert team off secondment to Box 500 or to one of the narcotics scenes, important, down on the south coast. We’re singing and dancing if the Tango’s done a runner.’

From CO19, Firearms: ‘We, too, have Box 500 commitments, but the whole VIP scene is a killer in resources. We have an obligation to the target to protect him, however obstinate and daft he wants to be. Him going gives us a chance to reassess – and hope he keeps moving and doesn’t turn round.’

From SCD11, Intelligence: ‘We don’t have a line on the identity of the guy who took the contract. It’ll sneak out – always does – but at this moment I have no idea who this village bought.’

From SCD7, the inspector: ‘I have Mark Roscoe back from the coast. He knows the Tango better than anyone… Yes, I am concerned about our duty-of-care obligations. My suggestion, while the Tango plods across Europe, we put Roscoe on a flight first thing in the morning. He can liaise in Zagreb, then go on to Vukovar. What he’ll do there I don’t know, but it’ll give our shoulder-blades some cover.’

From HMRC, a line manager: ‘We have there, already in place, Penny Laing and she’ll be able to brief Roscoe. She’s an experienced, highly capable operative and-’

The inspector flared, ‘My man, Roscoe, is quite capable of crossing a road on his own and will not need his hand held.’

The line manager said evenly, ‘I wouldn’t want heavy police boots blundering over the sensitive ground that our investigator is looking at.’

Time for Phoebe Bermingham to call a halt, and she did. It had always astonished her that separate departments went on to a war footing when co-operation was called for. The concept of a detective from the Flying Squad working with an investigator from HM Revenue and Customs was obviously built on shifting sands.

‘I’m sure they’ll do very well together and create complete harmony in their professional relationship. The Tango’s gone and we should be thankful – whatever happens to him is to be laid squarely at his own door. Safe home, gentlemen.’ She shuffled her papers together, pushed back her chair. It was an afterthought and she had forgotten herself sufficiently for a puzzled frown to gouge her forehead. ‘I cannot imagine what he thinks he can achieve – and it’s all so long ago. I mean, do I look back to what happened in my life nineteen years ago and allow the past to dictate my present? Aren’t memories fogged by time? It’s Europe, the twenty-first century, and blood vendettas should be consigned to history classes. Is nothing ever forgotten?’

‘No, Ma’am,’ the Intelligence man said softly. ‘Never forgotten and never forgiven. He’ll probably get the top of his head blown off.’

Simun touched her arm to attract her attention, then pointed. ‘You see, Penny, no wedding ring. And there was no ring on the finger of Maria, the wife of Andrija, and my mother had no ring when she was buried. She has no ring, no gold chain with a crucifix, or any earrings. Everything she had went into the bag that was taken by Harvey Gillot.’

‘Yes.’

It was late. She had been brought to a farmhouse. She was sitting at the kitchen table, hewn wood, and the chair was old, its legs uneven. She had been offered, and had taken, a glass of tap water. The eyes of the woman opposite never left Penny’s face. She could see where the house had been rebuilt. The beams were exposed, some charred, and the walls were not plastered. In one there was a big hole, like a bite from an apple, filled with different bricks and newer mortar.

‘He went to the bank and took out a loan for five thousand euros. That was his share for the payment on the contract.’

‘Yes.’

‘Their boy went to the place where the Malyutkas were to be delivered. The delivery was not made and their boy was identified by his size and the scraps of his clothing that remained. His testicles were in his mouth. They will not speak of the siege and the death of their son.’

She had been told that in the days between the loss of their son and the collapse of the village’s defences, their home had taken a direct hit from a tank shell. If the Malyutka missiles had arrived the tank would have been destroyed. Simun had said that their son’s room was sealed now, the window bricked up. The wife had been in the kitchen: if she had not been close to the table and able to crawl under it as the floors above collapsed, she would have died too. She had been unhurt except that her hearing had gone. She lived in silence. They were separated, Simun had told Penny. Her company was the quiet and his was the anger at what had been done to them. The focus, now, of the anger was Harvey Gillot – and it was as if a man crouched by a fire, blew on its embers and flames reared.

‘He farms a hundred hectares that he owns and another hundred and fifty that he rents. He could be rich, but is not. All the money that the farm makes goes to the association for the support of war veterans. He is a pauper. Look at his clothes, how she dresses. He is a fine farmer, but is now in his sixty-eighth year. Soon he will drop and his farm will be sold, maybe to businessmen in Zagreb or to expatriates living in America. For now he stays close to his son’s room. His son should have farmed this land and lived here. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

She was looking at her hands on the rough table and imagining the woman under it, the dust cascading with the beams and bricks, when her mobile rang. She answered it brusquely, was given a name, asked for it to be repeated, then spoke it aloud: ‘Mark Roscoe, sergeant, SCD7.’ She remembered him, sharp and abrasive. She had called him ‘patronising’ and had thought him stereotypical of the average specialised-unit policeman: he would have thought the sun shone from his backside and the rest of the world was second rate. She was given a travel itinerary, and rang off. Simun queried, but she shook her head and stood.

They went outside into the night.

She sensed, then, that time was short, that a world created for her in this village, with its history, would imminently fracture.

She thought that the son – who would now have been in his late thirties, with a wife and a clutch of kids – would have gone with a village girl to the barn behind the house where the winter fodder was stored. Perhaps the boy with her might have been there with a new generation of village girls. Penny Laing thought herself absorbed into the life of the village; the Alpha team and her bed-sit were almost blown away. They went towards the darkened hulk of the barn and she could hear animals – maybe pigs, goats, heifers – and a truth smacked across her face.

Had Harvey Gillot broken the law of his own country, flown in the teeth of a Security Council resolution, and supplied Malyutka missiles to this community, there would now be a statue in his honour in front of the church, and a street or the cafe would bear his name. She thought of the great and the good in Whitehall, and the Alpha team who made their policy decisions. They had not been here, had seen nothing and were ignorant. But Harvey Gillot had failed on the deal and was condemned.

They climbed bales. She helped him to strip, and felt the prickly warmth of hay against her skin. He had brought his own condom and was shy when he gave it to her. She split the packet and rolled it on to him, then arched, took him and felt a liberation – a cord cut, a link broken. She had never before belonged – not even with her naval man – and she clung to him. He cried out to his animal audience, gasped and sagged. She held him, clung tight. Into his ear, kissing him, she whispered, ‘When he comes here…’

‘Who?’

‘When Gillot comes here…’

‘Yes?’

‘… will he be killed?’

The boy slipped wetly out of her. ‘Why not? If he comes here, of course he will be killed.’

The train had halted and was lodged in a siding. He didn’t know how far they had travelled, but he estimated from the time that they were outside Cologne. The long-distance trains, travelling overnight, needed places to park so that they would arrive at their destination after the world had woken.

He lay on his back. Earlier he had washed and scraped off the sweat of the previous day. He hadn’t really slept, but the project was still forward in his mind: armoured cars, the big new market area. Could be Mercedes – he had a smattering of German, enough to ingratiate himself with the sales force of this particular specification, which was important because he would be looking for exclusivity in the territory agreed and also for decent profit margins. Could be Jaguar.

There wasn’t much in price between the German and British vehicles, both around a quarter of a million euros, and he could hear his patter: A bargain, actually. Only thing that comes cheaper than this vehicle is a funeral – yours. Some customers would look for a German product on principle, and others had to have British-made. Of the Jaguar, his line might be: At a quarter of a million, it’s a snip. I predict it’ll be the preferred transport for heads of state, business leaders, celebrities, the Diplomatic Corps. Such fine lines… He buried himself, through that night, in the thicknesses of armour-plating systems, the depth of bulletproof-glass windows, the cost of run-flat tyres, a global after-sales service to check the continuing effectiveness of Kevlar plates, the armour-driving training course for a big man’s chauffeur.

There was a low throb of air-conditioning.

He did not think – whether for Mercedes or Jaguar – that prospective buyers would be Russian. He would look for the fringe markets, where he was better known – Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova or Belarus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In their literature Jaguar said: Dealing with real security risks in our everyday lives is becoming commonplace. Too right.

He felt strangely better for being alone, anonymous, tucked away in a sleeper carriage, safer than if he had been behind the wheel of a massive car that was low on the road from the weight of its armour plating.

The bed shook, the carriage rocked and the glasses above the wash-basin rattled. The train edged forward. He felt relaxed, not frightened.

The aircraft had come down fast, had hit hard, and the landing had shaken Robbie Cairns.

It had taken him almost half an hour to find the right platform for the train into the city, and the journey then was another forty-five minutes. He had emerged at the Hauptbahnhof where he had followed his instructions and rung the first number on the contact list. He was supposed to be the cool guy, fazed by nothing, but his hands had been shaking when he had dialled the number in a phone booth and waited while it warbled. It had been answered, and Robbie had blurted English words. Then he had heard an aloof, distant voice, accented, that – thank Christ – he understood.

He had thought of her, had done all through the flight, on the train into Munich and at the station, on the concourse and at the call booth. Had thought she would be colder, paler… He was told what he should do.

The taxi driver grinned at him lewdly as he gave the address.

He was driven away from the main streets, not far from the station, and into darker roads. The destination was a bar. A doorman stepped forward, waved Robbie towards the entrance and settled with the driver. He was led inside. Music blasted and there was a girl on a stage, but they went past her, past empty chairs and tables. The girl danced but still had clothes on. Robbie did not go to strip or lap clubs and kept his eyes on the tired carpet. They went to an office.

Two men were inside.

He was asked for identification and showed his passport. They looked at the photograph, then at him, and a light was tilted to shine full in his face. He was asked the date of his mother’s birthday. He gave it. One of the men stood and the other sat in a desk chair of upholstered leather, trays of invoices and receipts in front of him. A drawer in the desk was unlocked, pulled open and a cardboard box taken out. The top was lifted. Robbie knew the Walther PPK. The butt had a black plastic inlay, while the barrel and mechanism were dull grey. The weapon rested easily in his hand. He looked first at the safety lever, then cleared the breech, hearing the smooth sound of metal on metal, which told him the weapon was well-maintained. Satisfied it was empty, he aimed at a photo of a girl on the wall, pulled the trigger and learned the degree of squeezed force required.

Robbie Cairns noted the camera. It was high in a corner. The lens would have been the size of his little-finger nail and was aimed downwards. It would have covered him from the moment he came through the door. He realised no one would ask him to sign for the gun. There was a television screen beside the desk and the girl who danced on the stage was now naked. The hair on her head was blonde, but black below her belly, as Barbie’s was.

The man at the desk said it was a Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell and the calibre was 7.65mm. The magazine held seven rounds and the range was… He didn’t need to know the range, the calibre or the size of the magazine. It would be close, and it would be what the police called ‘double tap’.

He was given two magazines, then a silencer attachment.

The camera eyed him. He couldn’t escape it. He thought himself stripped. They had achieved power over him and he didn’t know who owned a tape that could convict him. He wanted to be gone.

He was not asked for payment. He assumed, down the line of whatever conveyor-belt now operated behind him, they’d take a cut from the second payments, due on delivery of a body. He had no doubt that when the train came in the next morning and Harvey Gillot walked down the platform, he would be close and would fire the double tap – the first shot to the body, the second to the head – and that he would earn what was still outstanding.

She was in his mind and he couldn’t scratch her out.

He took the pistol, the magazines and the silencer. He asked for a taxi to be called.

Did he want to drink in the club and watch the show? He did not.

He preferred to wait on the pavement for the taxi, and the night settled on him.

‘I wouldn’t.’ Daniel Steyn had a grin on his face, more mischief than malice.

‘I’m packed, the bags are inside the door and the cab’s booked. In the morning I check out.’ It was a game, William Anders realised, and he must play it out.

‘Just that if it was me I wouldn’t.’

‘I have, Daniel, a lecture the day after tomorrow in Stockholm, and then I’m committed to a four-day seminar in Helsinki. It would take a powerful argument to enthuse me to scrub what’s been in place for six months.’

‘I wouldn’t leave here, not now.’

It was supposed to have been a farewell drink, the end of the day, and the little party for the professor – given by those he had worked with on the Ovcara site – was over and his hosts had dispersed. The quack, Daniel Steyn, had stayed up late, driven over to the hotel, and they’d worked over a few malts. Anders had planned, Steyn knew, to be gone before eight and would be on an early flight out of Osijek for a German hub, Frankfurt or Berlin, and then… Steyn had a network of informants. A call had come. He was not an intelligence officer or a police source. Over the years he had recognised that knowledge was power, which he needed if he wanted to stay in decaying, forgotten Vukovar to do good work in psychotherapy. He needed power over the local politicians who would dearly have liked him silenced because he spoke truths. The town and its community were a monument to failure: reconciliation between Serb and Croat was at lip-service level, there was addiction to drink and antidepressants, and the treatment of combat trauma was underfunded and inadequate. Without the knowledge that gave him power, Daniel Steyn would have been forced, years back, out of the town. That he remained was a tribute to his dedication and his mental filing cabinet of informants’ tales. His parent charity was as susceptible as others to cut-backs but he had lowered his standard of living, and he lingered. He knew also that Anders – bombastic, domineering and furthering a personality cult – was a good, kindly man, who bought the meals and paid for the drinks. Probably a small box of Scotch would be delivered to his door the day after Anders had gone.

‘Late at night, Daniel, and I’ve shipped a fair bit of juice. Can we quit spoiling what’s left of the evening? Tell me.’

‘There was a hit attempt that failed.’

‘History.’

‘The latest I have is that Harvey Gillot – on whose head you facilitated the dropping of a contract – is currently en route to Vukovar.’

‘That is a goddamn joke – why? Is that the original death wish? Do we have a kind of suicide factory like the place in Zurich? Why would he do that? Why not dig a hole, climb into it and stay down?’

‘Could be an attempt to confront what he did. The big gesture.’

‘And you reckon it’ll be played out in public.’

‘Not the sort of matter where there’s a privacy clause attached.’

‘I quit my flight?’

‘I wouldn’t be leaving. I can offer you – my connections, my sources – a seat in the grand circle.’

‘Am I sure I want to be there? I don’t queue outside Huntsville gaol to watch lethal injections. Be a lynch job, wouldn’t it? Not sure that-’

‘You set it in motion, Bill, and that’s why you’ll be there.’

They didn’t get round immediately to the matter of cancellations. Quite a number there would be: a taxi, the two flights, a little white lie, or a big black one, to the organisers of a forensic-pathology gathering in the Swedish capital and the seminar in Finland. Steyn could see he had set a cat among the canaries, and that his friend was weighing options. He knew which way the balance would go. William Anders, professor of the science of digging up long-buried bodies, was a prime mover in the efforts to kill the British-born arms trader. He’d stay.

The lovers came back, slipped through the door off the patio. Daniel Steyn nudged his friend, whose jealousy had become a deal more acute. There was straw on the girl’s back and in her hair.

Anders said, ‘It’s because of what they put in the water. I might just take up your offer of the seat.’

Another day, another start. Dawn broke over a sleeping hotel where a boy lay in a young woman’s arms and the first light reflected off the river and fell on them.

The same sunlight spread easily over fields of corn, and a farmer was already up, checking his crop and the sunflowers. He decided that within the next week he would begin the harvest. He saw a fox edge past him and stay close to the riverbank, but he didn’t know if it was the vixen still hunting her buried cubs or if a new life had reached that territory on the Vuka river.

The same light came into the rooms where a former electrician stirred and where a man who might have fired an anti-armour wire-guided missile slept alone because his wife had gone nineteen years before. It lay on a man who had been a brilliant sniper and now had only one leg, and on the man who was divorced from the inner clan because he had run from his home as the war had come closer.

The day would start when the storks screamed on their nests, flapped and took off to forage, but until then there was quiet.

And the same sunlight pierced a dull window and fell on the whitened face of a woman lying on a bed… and light, also, was reflected up from the metal roofing of a fifteen-carriage sleeper train that was south of Ulm, north of Augsburg, and heading, slow and noisy, towards Munich.

He finished his coffee and there was a knock on his door. He was fully dressed or he would not have called for the attendant to enter. He was given back his passport and slipped a tip to the man. Gratitude was expressed and it was hoped he would have a pleasant day. He was told the train would reach its destination in seven minutes.

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