He had settled into the rhythm of the train. There would have been, any other day, the sense that his time was wasted, that he should have flown. Not today. Harvey Gillot was satisfied with his smooth, slow progress through the Austrian mountains, the vistas exposed to him, castles and valleys and little communities on hillsides, surrounded by sloping meadows.
He could acknowledge the failure.
As he had frittered each hour, he had promised himself that when the next one started, he would begin the process of examining prospects, options… what he would do, why he would do it, when he would do it and where he would make the gesture that had brought him this far. Difficult to find answers when the train rolled, rocked, almost made a lullaby sound, the windows were sealed and the air-conditioning was set for comfort. The effect was soporific: he could have snoozed, could have forgotten his destination.
Hours slipping away and distance covered. He spoke to no one, not even the polite ticket attendant, and when he went through to the restaurant carriage he ordered with his finger, jabbing at the menu. He remained aloof and alone, as if he was not a part of the life and times of any other person on the train.
No man, woman or child was the same as Harvey Gillot. He could have gone to any high-street bookie in England and put a hundred pounds and his shirt on the bet, with good odds, that no other passenger on the EuroCity Mimara express was under sentence of death from a community that had taken out a contract. If that shirt had been put with the cash stake there would have been two neat bullet holes in the back to prove his case. He could have gone into any Square Mile casino, put a thousand in notes and one dented vest on the table, and wagered that no one on the great train could share with him: ‘Know how you feel, Harvey. In the same boat.’ So he kept his silence, ignored the slow pace of life around him and failed to answer the questions posed by his presence on the train.
He had forgotten now about deals, the buying and selling of weapons, ammunition and communications equipment. He no longer considered whether the Mercedes or the Jaguar was better value as an armoured car. Harvey Gillot sat in his seat, the sun beating against the tinted window, in the bulletproof vest and the holed shirt. If he came through this, if… He had not done games at school unless he had been subject to a three-line whip, and it was only by an accident that he had once strayed into a sports pavilion and seen faded shirts in display cases, worn by kids who had been picked for a national schoolboys’ rugby team and donated them… If he was still standing, walking, hadn’t had his head holed, his guts torn open, his lungs sliced and his bones splintered, he would take that shirt, a sort of soft lavender blue, to one of those trophy places off Piccadilly and ask for a case of polished wood to be made with a velvet background and his shirt pinned inside so that the bullet holes were on view. He’d have a little silver plaque screwed to the woodwork: Herbert (Harvey) Gillot, pupil 1974-80, later arms dealer and survivor. Might take the thing, swathed in bubble-wrap, down there himself and dump it at the head teacher’s door so that the cocky little buggers, who thought a rugger pitch was big-time, could marvel at it and wonder where the blood was. But he didn’t know whether the old boy would return to the Royal Grammar School. Then again there might be another message on the little strip of silver, Herbert (Harvey) Gillot, pupil 1974-80, later arms dealer and loser, and there would be blood on the shirt, which would make it more interesting. He had no music to listen to, he had read the magazine and the Herald Tribune, and he never did crosswords or brain teasers.
He could gaze through the window, see the sights and rush past people who waited at level crossings, worked in fields, were in cars on country roads or waited on platforms where there was no stop, and know that nothing and nobody was relevant to him. He was separated from them and had a rendezvous to keep.
Did it hurt?
Might find out, and might not.
He didn’t know if it would hurt to be shot.
Might learn and might not. He was more frightened of the pain than of the black emptiness, supposed, of death. The option had been to live in the hole, to shudder at each shadow moving, each footfall behind his back, and never be free of it. Some things were clear in his mind. He wasn’t going to hide for the rest of his days. He would try to offload the issue of the cornfields. He would beg and plead. If the hair shirt had to be worn then it was for costume necessities, and if he had to show ‘penance’ it would be laid on with thick greasepaint. He was good on the big picture but, as a man had once said, the devil was in the detail. This was the only way he could think of to rid himself of the problem.
The train carried him on, and its wheels made a drumbeat, relentless, as they went over the joins in each section of rail, as if the end of the journey was inescapable.
A bus dropped him close to the railway station. The sun beat down on him, but he didn’t notice it. The girls walking past him were slim, wearing halter tops and shorts, but he didn’t see them. He went inside the station and found a phone booth.
Robbie Cairns had the scrap of paper in front of him. The number he had rung in Munich was scratched out. He dialled the one that remained and waited, dragging air into his lungs when he was answered. He gave his name and said where he was. He was told, English language, crisp and accented, that he should come out of the station, cross the road, go into the park, and where he should stand.
He walked. He was never alone in Rotherhithe. Anywhere between Albion Street and the disused docks of Canada Water he felt comfortable – not alone. No one would have caught his eye and smiled at him. It was his familiarity with the fabric of the place that meant he didn’t feel isolated there. Almost, he yearned to hear voices. Not the bloody automatic ones at the airport in Germany, not women’s voices barking at him in talk he didn’t understand. Like a hole in him he couldn’t fill – no Leanne, no Granddad Cairns, no Vern, whom he’d always treated as wet shit but who now he would have grovelled for, and no Barbie… It might be that the hole was Barbie, not to be called back. He walked the length of a path with lawns and trees flanking it. The buildings beyond were old and fine, had been renovated and had flowers on the balconies. He walked because he had been instructed to. If a wasp had not gone up his nose, if Barbie was on her bloody counter, and if the fucking target hadn’t worn a vest, he would have told anyone where they should meet him.
Robbie Cairns didn’t know how he might find a friend.
He was in gardens now. Carved heads sat on squares of stone or pillars. He couldn’t have named a famous sculpture or sculptor. Birds sang from the trees.
So alone.
There was a narrow inner pathway between the mown grass and the hoed beds, and he walked round it. The first time: would they have found her? The second time: would she be on a slab in the mortuary at Guy’s? The third time: would the paper trail have dug up that the apartment where she lived was in the name of Robert Cairns? The fourth time: because of her was he now subject to a manhunt? The fifth time: because of her, was he now fucked, finished… and isolated?
‘It is Mr Cairns? Yes?’
He turned, saw a heavy-built man who wore a suit, had good hair and a tie. He thought himself tired and dirty. He nodded, could hardly speak.
The stranger – a friend – said, ‘Follow me, please, Mr Cairns.’
The journalist, Ivo, gathered his papers into his laptop bag, picked up his son, little more than a babe in arms, and kissed the small, almost hairless head, then hugged his wife.
‘You’ll be all right? You’ll be careful?’
Always, at these times, she asked the same questions when he went to work and always he gave the same answers.
‘I’ll be all right, and I’ll be careful.’
Better than her, he knew of the bombs, the shootings and the beatings that had targeted the Zagreb media, who didn’t write about the breast implants of wannabe movie stars, the girlfriends of TV game-show presenters or the Croatian footballers playing abroad but specialised in investigative reporting. He knew of the danger associated with exposing corruption in the political elite and the scale of organised crime in the capital city. Twice he had received a single bullet through the post at his magazine’s offices. The police, the special unit the prime minister had created, had assured him that discreet undercover protection would watch over him. He knew of no other life.
He said at what time he’d be home. They would eat together because he couldn’t afford restaurant meals – he couldn’t resign, go elsewhere, because no openings existed to a writer familiar only with corruption and criminality. A last kiss and a last hug at the door. Ivo went to work, a busy day because that evening the weekly magazine went to print. Twice he looked behind him and neither time did he see anything that threatened or evidence of ‘discreet’ police protection.
It was a good landing and they were quickly off. Mark Roscoe presumed that the speed of disembarkation was due to lack of traffic. No other plane just in or about to get up and go. He paused at the top of the steps. The sun came up off the apron and reflected into his face and he blinked, almost blinded. He groped for the dark glasses in his shoulder bag and squinted around him. A new airport, no passengers to speak of and no visible trade. He assumed some government from old Europe – or the IMF, the OECD or the World Bank – had dumped down a packet of cash, regarding an airport at Osijek as a valid investment. It was shiny new, like a shoe that had yet to be scuffed. There had been a map on the plane, in the pouch in front of him, and without it he would have had trouble in working out where he was.
He walked into the arrivals hall. His ignorance was like a blister on his heel, and he cursed quietly that he hadn’t made time to learn about the region, and Vukovar, which was down the road from here, the river and… Megs Behan was close behind him. He had told her Harvey Gillot’s travel plans but the breaking of an official confidence had seemed a small matter on an overnight vigil outside a high gate on the Dorset coast. Fun being with her there. Here, it was different. He turned. She was shuffling towards him – shuffling because her footwear was lightweight holiday gear. A floral print skirt flowed from her hips, the cheesecloth blouse was thick enough to hide what lay beneath. The hair was a mess. He thought her a great-looking woman and about as different from his Chrissie as chalk was from… The older man was behind her and came slowly, as if his feet, knees or hips gave him trouble – he had no idea why two minuscule nips of whisky had been planted on him, just enough to savour and enjoy a taste. Right, ‘there’ was not ‘here’, and he had not expected that Megs Behan would buy the ticket. Her presence undercut his professionalism a little. He let her reach him.
‘I just wanted you to know, Miss Behan, that this is a serious investigation. We’re at a difficult stage in the inquiry. Any degree of interference would be regarded with…’ She had that gaze, mirth and a degree of – like him being pompous was a let-down. He ploughed on: ‘What happened in England – completely different picture to now. I want to stress, most important, that I won’t tolerate any stunts you may be considering. Try anything and I’ll get the locals to throw the book at you. A Croat cell is rather less friendly than one in West End Central. As I go about my business, I don’t want to see or hear you.’
He cringed at his tone. Chrissie would have yawned. The woman, Megs Behan, looked at him and winked – bloody winked – so that half of one side of her face was crinkled, then stepped aside to permit him to go before her to the immigration check.
He showed his passport. No smile. He assumed that the tanks had advanced this close to the city of Osijek. He had never seen one on the move, only in newspaper photographs, on television or in a cinema. He had been thirteen when the tanks might have come this close and he remembered nothing of it. His father hadn’t talked about it and there had been no mention of it at school. It would have been worse in Vukovar of which, then, he had known nothing. That ignorance, Roscoe reckoned, had made him pompous. He was given his passport and waved through.
A man advanced on him, balding, in a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, drill khaki slacks and burnished shoes – had to be embassy.
Could place him, but not the old beggar who had given him the whisky. Turned once, fast, and raked the queue of passengers behind. He saw Megs Behan and the old guy, their desultory conversation, and couldn’t make the links.
A hand was held out. Another man stood a dozen paces behind the embassy guy. ‘Mark Roscoe?’
‘Yes.’
He was given a name, didn’t catch it, then a card was offered, but his attention was on the one who had held back and watched.
An envelope was produced from a briefcase and handed to him. It had come through, he was told, on secure communications. He should open it. He saw a face, plate or portrait size, of a teenager photographed in a police station, then the same face but in marginally different levels of artificial light. The back of the second picture carried the stamp of Feltham Young Offenders. There was an email printout. He read: Hi Mark. We believe contract for our Tango given to Robert (Robbie) Cairns of Rotherhithe. He is also wanted for questioning re murder of woman, believed mistress, found strangled in Cairns’s property. Talk soon. Cheers, Guv’nor.
Life had a kick-back: no more crap about where tanks might have been or about him being the complete new-age prig. Real stuff, real talk.
He shook the hand. ‘Thanks very much for coming this far, appreciated… The local police – when do I get to liaise?’
A slow, tired grin. ‘Welcome, Mr Roscoe, to eastern Slavonia.’
Confused: ‘I’m sorry, I came to liaise with local forces and to…’
‘Let’s go and have a cup of coffee, Mr Roscoe.’
It was explained. The coffee was passable. He, Mark Roscoe, was coming into the territory of the famous few. ‘It’s where the defence in 1991 was epic. It’s where untrained and inexperienced men and women of the war, which enabled a free state to be born, fought and died. At any level of public life in Croatia it is political suicide to take on the veterans of Vukovar. They are sacred. A man, as I understand from my brief, cheated a village of just about its entire wealth, and for nearly twenty years remained anonymous to the living. He has now been identified, has a contract on his life. For reasons beyond my comprehension that individual is now travelling here. God knows what his intentions are. The police locally will not protect him, or co-operate with you. Are you following me, Mr Roscoe? If he intended to make a somewhat melodramatic gesture behind a cordon of policemen and be safe in their protection, he has made a total error of judgement. He is on his own, should he be daft enough to come here, and there will be no shield to hide behind. I would also remind you, Mr Roscoe, that you have no jurisdiction on this territory. To believe otherwise would be to invite comprehensive embarrassment to yourself, me, my colleagues and our government. Well, as you understand, I’m sure, it’s a long drive back to Zagreb and I’d like to get on. Good luck to you, Mr Roscoe. A final thing – if this man Gillot should show up, I wouldn’t stand too close to him. Life still comes quite cheap here.’
The diplomat grimaced and shrugged, as if imparting disappointing news was a necessary role of his life, then backed away. He stopped beside the other man who had shadowed them when they met, and Roscoe realised that the whisky dispenser from the aircraft was with them and seemed to share a joke, and that Megs Behan was close to them.
*
‘He was on the job, going at it hammer and tongs, and the Hereford Gun Club charged in through the front door and up the stairs, and the joker went out from under her, over the windowsill and straight into the air. He landed in the garden, and she was left there, gagging for it, and a dwarf Glaswegian corporal who’d reached the bedroom said in his best vernacular Serbo-Croat, “Madam, would you like the benefit of any help I can give in finishing off what that shit-face started?” She chucked a chamber pot at him and knocked him stone cold. Wonderful days.’
‘Hard place, Fo a, Mr Arbuthnot. Still is.’
‘Just a little memory of good times. The joker, for going out of the window, did the medial ligaments of his right knee, was given twenty-two years at The Hague, a war criminal. The corporal had concussion for a week. Anyway, time to press on.’
It was almost done by sleight of hand, not up to a magician’s or conjuror’s standards but expert enough as a brush contact in Sokolniki Park to have been missed at thirty paces by an FSB tail. The package came from the other man’s pocket, was never fully visible and dipped, like a relay baton, into Benjie’s hand, then was sunk into his leather bag. The man who gave him the package was the station officer from Zagreb, an uncle by marriage to Alastair Watson, and old links lingered. The ‘joker’ with the bust knee had been a major in the Yugoslav National Army, a regular, and indicted for the killing of Muslim villagers during the ethnic cleansings around Srebrenica and Gorazde. He had been tracked down to the hateful small town of Fo a where he would have believed himself safe until the Reaper called, but had been wrong. He wouldn’t have known that an intelligence officer with an impressive pedigree was in Bosnia-Herzegovina, looking to round off a career with trumpets and triumphs. Benjie didn’t know whether Megs Behan understood a word of it.
‘I don’t think there’s much else I can do for you, Mr Arbuthnot.’
‘Already it’s more than I’d dreamed possible. And you say Bill Anders is in town? Excellent. We can drink wine, eat dinner, and I’ll hear about dissections and autopsies on rotten meat.’ Perhaps he had played the buffoon, his supreme art, long enough. His voice dropped. ‘It’s because he was an asset, a useful one.’
Quietly said, ‘Not a problem.’
The voice boomed again: ‘I’ll tell Alastair I met you, couldn’t get sense, that you were drunk as a marquis – I’ll tell him.’
Soft spoken: ‘What you asked for and what I’ve given you were authorised at VBX. I have to hope there won’t be disappointment. Go carefully.’
Chuckled laughter, handshakes, and they were gone. Benjie Arbuthnot had been a big enough figure in the Service to warrant a little attention when he requested it. That a station officer had driven to Osijek, a little more than a hundred and thirty miles each way, and had delivered a package was proof of the esteem in which he was held – and his ability to play the bombastic idiot was undiminished. With the idiot there could be an old-world charm, consideration for others. A matchbox was attached to the package with Sellotape and he removed it, pocketed it separately.
He advanced on the detective. ‘I gather from Miss Behan that you’re headed for Vukovar. I’ve a hire car booked. Can I offer you a lift? The name’s Benjie. It’ll take about half an hour.’ He liked to organise. When he organised, he controlled.
Megs Behan didn’t consider herself a fool, thought herself sharp enough to realise that Benjie Arbuthnot had a razor mind, and decided he probably gathered up people like her and the detective. It would have been a habit. She fancied also that she could recognise a lie or an evasion.
He drove well, but near the centre of the road. He seemed to have confidence in overtaking lorries, tankers, and took no hassle from blind bends. She didn’t share it and twice, from the back, she’d let out a sharp gasp.
Roscoe had asked, ‘Where did you learn speed driving, Mr Arbuthnot? Fairly limited opportunities, I’d have thought. Police, military, anti-hijack course?’
A lie. ‘Nowhere, actually. Just sort of comes naturally. Foot down on an open road.’
And then Roscoe had asked, ‘So what brings you to Vukovar, Mr Arbuthnot?’
An evasion, a sweet smile: ‘Oh, just some loose ends in an old man’s life that need tying before the curtain call.’
They passed mile upon mile of fields where the corn stood tall and the sunflowers had ripened. She thought that lies and evasions killed the art of conversation, and wondered where in Harvey Gillot’s life this man had walked and whether he had been central to it. How near was it to this road that a village had come together to pass a death sentence?
He was unlike any of the other men of the village that Penny Laing had met. He waved Simun away, as if the boy was a dog to be put back into a kennel. He had said his name was Josip. He had a pudgy face, but it showed humanity. He was shaven but wore a frayed cotton shirt with a disintegrating collar and appeared to be uncared for. He gestured that she should follow him. She looked back but the boy had already turned. Simun lit a cigarette and his face gave no indication of annoyance that she had been taken from him. She gritted her teeth and scurried after Josip.
He didn’t have the same worn, scarred tiredness in his eyes, or the lines acid-etched around the mouth or scrawniness at his throat. She had seen the scars on Simun’s father’s body, and had stared at the folded trouser leg at Andrija’s knee. Then there was Tomislav’s shrine, and she had been in the kitchen where Petar and his wife lived but couldn’t speak to each other. There was a light in this one’s face.
‘I am not one of the heroes, Miss Laing. I am not of the Three Hundred and was not at the pass at Thermopylae. I ran away.’ It was good English, fluent, idiomatic, and a little sad mischief played in the eyes.
‘About as late as possible, I loaded a car and went with my wife and our children. I left my dog behind. I am ashamed of that, leaving my dog. Not everyone, I promise you, Miss Laing, was a hero.’
He led, she followed. They went up a path that was overgrown, the weeds and grass brushing against her knees. Branches bounced off him and against her; she used her arms to protect her face.
‘We have made an industry of playing victim. The defence itself was truly heroic and I cannot comprehend how men and women survived so many days in such hell. I could not have. In Zagreb, where I had fled with my wife and children, there were occasional snatches of film – black-and-white, soft focus – of the battle around Vukovar, long-lens pictures from far across the fields. We saw only smoke rising in the distance and climbing through the rain. How men and women stayed alive, and sane, I do not know… except that I was in the gaol in Zagreb afterwards – you should know it was for fraud, not violence, nothing sexual. I am respectable – and it was not easy… but it was nothing compared to the existence here and what happened afterwards, the men in the corn, the women taken anywhere that a Serb could drop his pants and not get his arse wet in the rain. It was awful, and myths were born.’
She could see a building ahead, walls that had once been white, and realised then that among the grass and nettles, the thistles and cow parsley were felled gravestones, but they had been toppled as if vengeance had been wreaked on them. The building had a roof of nailed-down corrugated sheets, and graffiti on the lower walls. The door at the back of the porch hung crazily.
‘Only the Croats were victims? How far back should I take you, Miss Laing? They do not speak often here of the “excesses” of the Croat regime, the Ustase, in the Second World War, the massacres at the concentration camp of Jasenovac, the burning of villagers inside their churches and the throwing of Orthodox priests over cliffs… and they do not speak often of the early stirrings of the Croatian state in that spring and summer of the Homeland War, the creation of two tiers, the second and lower for Serbs. It does not justify what happened here, in Vukovar or at Ovcara – but no one is only a victim. You should know that, Miss Laing.’
They went inside what had been a church. Enough light came from broken windows and gaps in the roofing. She listened but her eyes wandered. Should she feel superior? She doubted it: churches and chapels had been firebombed across Northern Ireland when the poison there, as here, had burst out. It was only a matter of degree. The painting on the wall to her left was faded but she recognised a white horse rearing, a man astride with a plunging sword, a dragon snarling. Penny Laing had not expected to be in this shadowland and find a symbol of her England: St George was busy dragon-slaying.
‘The Croat police came into Serb houses and looked for the young men. If they did not find them they shot dead their fathers, grandfathers and uncles. It happened, but is not in the stories of the victims. Here, nobody comes. A few of us have in the past brought building materials and paint and made this interior respectable so that we are not ashamed. We come only at night. The icons were looted, the murals are past repair and the roof does not keep out the winter. No Serb lives here and has need of a church. No one wishes for a reconciliation and no lessons from conflict are learned.’
Who was she to stand in judgement? A village broken, shells and mortars falling, snipers at work, the dead not properly buried and the wounded without morphine in a cellar, yet the church of the enemy was clean and polished and, of course, it had been broken into, trashed. She would have done it herself. She had few certainties to lean on. They went out into the light. He looked at her, seemed to decide whether or not she was worth sharing with – and shrugged.
‘The ultimate claim for the cult of the victim is that the delivery of the Malyutkas would have saved the village, perhaps the town as well. It is a myth. I did research when I came back here. The Malyutka has a minimum range of half a kilometre, too far. It is not effective below five hundred metres. It is very slow and the controller must guide its flight with a joy-stick – his signal travelling on an unravelling wire. If he is fired on and flinches, he loses control. The manual says that a controller of a Malyutka must, to be proficient, have achieved more than two thousand simulated firings, then fifty more every week to maintain his skill. We had one man who knew a little of the weapon, and no one else who had ever handled one. It was for nothing. There could have been a hundred Malyutka missiles and the defence here would still have failed. There was exhaustion, hunger, and too many wounded with no drugs. The myths grew flesh and the legends added skin. I tell you truths, but no one in the village would hear them.’
He stopped, took her hand and held it. He bit his lip and breathed hard.
‘I should tell you also, Miss Laing, that it was I who set in motion the process for the killing of the arms dealer. I made the contacts and paid over the money given me. In this small matter I take responsibility.’
The birds sang close to them and a shadow flicked over his face. She looked up in time to see the wide wingspan of a stork. There was coolness in the shade of the trees, and wild flowers grew among the weeds. She needed certainties but she had few left to support her.
‘And you should, Miss Laing, take responsibility.’
He let her hand fall. It hung against her thigh. She wanted to run and could not.
‘Each word of your pillow talk, your privileged information from London that you gave to the boy – when you loved him and thought he loved you – went to Harvey Gillot’s killer, into that chain of communication from the village to him. He knew today to be at Munich station – almost, Miss Laing, you told him yourself – and he fired twice. The dealer was blessed, and still does not join the angels. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. He will come here, and the killer too, because you were told of Gillot’s journey and whispered it in the sweat of loving to the boy. We are told everything. We are told you are a good fuck, Miss Laing, but that you are noisy. You, too, have responsibility.’
‘What will I do?’ A small voice, a husk, and no certainties left. She swayed.
‘Is there anywhere with no myths and no legends? Have you heard of such a place?’ He laughed, in sadness.
She walked away from him, quickened her stride. At the end of the path she found the boy, smoking. She passed him, ignoring him. She went to where her car was parked. She had been ignorant and was devastated. She did not know herself.
Ignorance. Granddad Cairns sat on a hard chair in a dreary interview room at the back of Rotherhithe police station. A window, barred, faced on to a car park and a high wall. He had been enough times in that station, in that room, on that chair but had never felt stripped naked – what ignorance did. A policeman said, ‘He’s looking at a charge of murder – not the attempted murder of Harvey Gillot on the Isle of Portland but the actual murder of an innocent young woman who is – was – not a part of the criminality your family feeds on. Her only guilt, as we understand it, was to associate – God knows why – with a very cruel psychopath, your grandson. We can do you with obstruction, probably aiding and abetting, maybe with perverting, and if we’re on a bonus we might get into the area of conspiracy. You’d die inside, Mr Cairns. The alternative – let’s use language you understand, Mr Cairns – is to grass on Robbie: what he’s done in the past, what else we can nail to him, everything, full and frank. When you think about it, remember that from your dick has come a quite horrible creature.’
He had been ignorant of his grandson. Never had a Cairns hurt a woman. Never had a Cairns as much as smacked a woman. He’d done a jewellery shop in Surbiton, 1958, snatched some trays, and a woman had started bawling and blubbering. Two days later flowers had been delivered to her. No one in the Cairns family had ever hurt a woman.
He was left alone. By now, he reckoned, in another room on the same floor of the building, the same stuff would be fed into the ear of Leanne. Loyal as they came, the only one who liked the little bastard, Robbie. But a woman had been strangled. His granddaughter would have been as ignorant as himself, and Vern, who had done a runner, successful. He thought of Jerry, banged up but hearing fast enough of what the kid had done. He, too, would have been in ignorance.
It was not about thieving, not about working, not about dealing and fencing. It was about the bastard’s hands round the throat of a woman. He had never grassed in his life – the disgrace of it, grassing, would kill him if nothing else did and he’d be marked by it every day of his life in the Albion Estate.
He murmured at the ceiling light, ‘Do me a favour, kid. Get yourself slotted.’
He sat on a settee. Only the low rumble of traffic from the street far below drifted into the room through the opened balcony windows to break the quiet. Robbie had been offered coffee, had declined, and had been shown a bottle of water, an ice bucket and a glass beside a plate of biscuits. He had been told that the man he should see was unavoidably detained on urgent business, that he should call if there was anything he wanted, and the door had been closed.
He sat on the settee and ignored the water and the biscuits. There was a tray on the low table.
He ignored also the view through the open window, which looked out on to the square he had walked through and the statue of the guy with the spear on the horse.
Robbie didn’t like to touch the guns on the tray, but all had tags attached to them on which was written their make. There was a Zastava 9mm Parabellum and, beside it, a Ruger P-85. Then a Browning, High Power, the ‘Vigilante’ model. Last in the line was the IMI Jericho 941. They had been laid out with care and made the form of a cross with the barrel tips together. A filled magazine nestled alongside each. He assumed he would be offered whichever he chose. It would be between the American-made Ruger, which appeared heavy and solid, and the Israeli-manufactured Jericho, but he wouldn’t be certain until he had touched them, let each lie in his hand. The room was furnished with quality. His grandmother would have gawped at the weight of the curtains, the comfort of the chairs and the polished age of the furniture, while his mother would have gaped in disbelief. Looking at it heightened the sense of isolation, as if he had no business to be there, so far from the Albion Estate and Clack Street, SE16, a world away. He didn’t know how he could belong… or how, ever again, he could return to Rotherhithe.
It would be good if he had the chance to test-fire, as he had with the Baikal.
Then footsteps. The door handle turning. Looked like a fucking banker from the Gherkin building on the Thames.
‘Mr Cairns, welcome. You have been looked after. I hope you have everything you needed. I apologise for asking you to wait.’
He thought it all bullshit.
The journalist, Ivo, typed at his keyboard.
A girl, a trainee, brought coffee for him.
He had a source in the National Office for Suppressing Corruption and Organised Crime who had supplied a grainy surveillance photograph of a meeting between a minister and a big-time player. He had pictures of the former inner-city school that had been sold low; authorisation had been given for forty luxury apartments to be built on the site. He had another photograph, from a Paris agency, that showed a horse-race winner being led towards an enclosure, with the minister’s wife and the criminal’s mistress in the background. His story was authenticated and could not be killed for any reason other than the self-censorship of survival. His editor paced close to his shoulder and the stress mounted. For fuck’s sake, it was the material the magazine existed for.
The coffee cooled and beside it a sandwich curled. His fingers danced on the keys. In front of him, a little to the side of his screen, was the photograph he treasured of his wife and baby, but he had no time, as he typed, to linger on them.
And the mood of the room changed – same curtains, same furniture, same sunlight, same people, but everything had changed.
He had the Jericho, and said it was good to hold, not as heavy as the Ruger. The Zastava was not as easy in his hand. He would go with the Jericho.
The man – full of bullshit – who had been late, smiled warmth. Not an old yob and not a middle-aged thug, but well-turned-out and his appearance ratcheted the discomfort that Robbie Cairns felt. He reckoned his armpits would smell in the heat and maybe his crotch did. Clothes crumpled, creased, as if he’d been pulled in off the street or maybe from sleeping under the arches.
He wanted to please and tried to look grateful. He said again that the Israeli one would be good.
There had been difficulties. He was not asked but told.
There had been. Robbie Cairns did not deny it.
A smooth, gentle voice, but the threat lay in it: there had been failures, twice.
There had been, not disputed.
Money had been paid, and doubts now existed.
He accepted that, but would earn what he had been paid.
The sun had gone and the mood had swung, and there was an edge to the smooth voice, the suggestion that he was rubbish, his reputation built on sand – he should be tested.
Nothing wrong with him.
The voice was not raised: he should be tested to see if he knew how to handle a weapon and how to fire.
He did, honest, not a problem.
And tested to see if he had a killer’s nerve, or if he had it once but had lost it.
His nerve was good, he swore it.
He heard low laughter behind him, turned sharply. He had not known that three men and a woman were in the room, lined against the wall beside the door. The sweat ran down his neck and his back, trapped at the waist by the trousers and belt. The laughter was not with him but at him.
Robbie Cairns understood. He was a toy to them and they made sport of him.
The man said, ‘We must wait. Then you will show us, Mr Cairns, whether the nerve holds or is lost, whether you can still earn what you have been paid.’
The tray was taken out and the room emptied. He was, again, alone.
He wanted a beer, then a shower, and he came into the hotel’s bar. A day used up, a schedule further damaged, and he hankered after the action that had caused him to cancel and rearrange his itinerary. The day had not been wasted. Four hundred metres east of the massacre site, further away from the Ovcara agricultural sheds, they had discovered three more cadavers. Could have been half a dozen reasons why those bodies had not gone into the deep pit dug for the two hundred they’d slaughtered. Always liked a beer after excavating a body and before the shower.
And he saw them. A hippie-type woman, another who was more formal and had her head down, a man in a suit, and the old beggar himself, the Lion of Fo a, who was holding court with bottles and glasses.
The smile split his face. He called across the bar. ‘Heh, Arbuthnot, what brings a has-been spook to these parts? Let me guess, it-’
‘My God, the purveyor of fine meats himself. Still well hung, Anders? I’m guessing you’re going to sign up as a probationer candidate for the Vulture Club that I chair, free membership. Good to see you.’
‘You’re still full of shit, Arbuthnot – and, I assume, are still pulling strings. Wouldn’t be right here without you.’
They hugged. The shower was put on hold, introductions were made and, for new recruits, the Vulture Club would be explained.
The editor told him it was good. The journalist, Ivo, knew that this edition would sell, and that powerful men would find cause to curse his name when they read his copy. The editor slapped his back.
No reason for him to stay longer and wait for the first editions to come off the presses. He preferred to be with his wife, eating at his own table.
He realised the importance of what he had written. His country was a democracy, sought entry into the European Union, and was dogged by the ravage of corruption and organised crime. It was bankrupted by the global downturn and needed – a hole in the head – to be regarded as a haven for gangsters and fraudsters. He sensed the nervousness around him – because of the enmity of influential men: the whole office was aware of the cover, dominated by the single word, Corruption. He rang his wife, told her he was leaving and would be home in half an hour.
Out on the street, under sparse pavement lights, he looked warily in each direction, then stepped out.
He saw the figure first as a shadow. A whistle followed from far down the street. The shadow disintegrated under a light, became a man. Not an old man but young and walking purposefully, not running.
From behind, Robbie Cairns’s arm was squeezed, light steps edged away from him and he was – again – alone.
In front of Robbie was the street that the man would cross, then a parking area for the high-rise block. Behind him, where his guide had stood, had spotted for him and squeezed his arm, was the entrance to the block, the lobby area and the lifts.
He took the Jericho from his inside pocket. They had told him when he had signified his choice that the weapon was considered by many to have an equal only in the Glock, and they had patronised him with congratulations. It was all shit, and he had nowhere to turn.
Nothing had been said of the man who approached, one hand in a pocket and the other holding a cigarette. He had no name, no occupation, and Robbie had not been told why this man was condemned… and he was condemned, or Robbie might as well turn the bloody thing on himself, shove the barrel into his own mouth, feel the gouge of the sight against the ridges above his tongue and pull the fucking trigger – not just squeeze it, as he did when he needed accuracy, but yank it down. No other way, and there hadn’t been since the wasp had gone into his nose. He cocked it.
The man came to the road, hesitated. Predictable – natural to look to the right before stepping off a pavement and to the left. But he did not look either way for traffic, but instead twisted, half turned and glanced behind him. He would have seen a deserted road and thought that danger didn’t exist. The man crossed the road.
The gun was in his hand, cocked, and the safety was off. A 9mm shell was in the breech and he knew nothing of the man who came towards him and maybe would look ahead and try to strip darkness and cover from the angled corners of the entrance into the block and did not. There was a shout. Not a warning. Robbie didn’t understand the words, knew they were a greeting. Who called to him with love? Barbie – he’d forbidden it – never leaned from an open window, showed herself and blew him a kiss. It was a welcome from above and the man no longer looked for movement in dark corners. He thought himself home, secure. Robbie took one step forward and the man hardly seemed to see him.
Robbie fired, did a double tap. It was a killing to perfection. Both shots to the head and life extinguished by the time the body had fallen to the pavement.
He was going away briskly when the screaming started above and behind him. He didn’t run. He thought he ruled again and that the past was gone. Robbie Cairns reckoned he had done well, had proved himself.
Lights came on all around him and men moved slowly, frightened, towards the block’s entrance and he walked as if nothing had happened that involved him. He went to the corner of the block and ahead of him a car’s lights flashed recognition.
He came off the train. There was noise around him and Harvey Gillot heard the garish accent of the north of Ireland – a couple of dozen from the Province were on the platform, yelling their presence, and he saw their football scarves. ‘Power to you,’ he murmured. He heard sirens wailing. He had the strap of his bag over his shoulder and walked well, though stiffly, past the food outlets, then out into the evening and on to Zagreb’s streets.
The football people went another way and he lost them.
Then, it had been raining and there had been sleet in the air. He had walked from the smart hotel, a great cavern from a century before, gone out through the swing door and hitched up his collapsible umbrella – the doorman had been solicitous about its effectiveness against those elements. It was a damn good hotel and had once been home – a sleeping place and an interrogation unit – to the Gestapo. It was to his left and he thought it had been cleaned but the lines hadn’t changed. He struggled to remember what route he had taken that night. There was a straight street with hotels and embassies, boutiques, closed, with subdued lighting on women’s clothing, a restaurant and… He came to the square where a soldier rode a horse and waved a sword, fountains played, trams rumbled and more memories stirred. Twice he looked behind him, and checked for a tail, but didn’t see one… Had there been one, had he been in a box of six men and women, had he been tracked by motorcycles, he wouldn’t have been surprised. There was a dark street at the end of which there was a sculpture of great blackened marble balls, fused, but Harvey Gillot didn’t know that he had walked past the doorway of an intelligence agency and that each step he took was followed. There was a small square, paved with bricks, where a full-size figure in darkened bronze leaned against a pissoir, and a little beyond a bookshop, still open.
He went inside. He had no business buying books in Croatian. Perhaps it was to talk that he crossed the threshold – but the buds of memory ripened again: he had been here. A man greeted him and a cigarette hung loose from the upper lip. Harvey Gillot told the man he had been at the shop in 1991, and there was a smile. English spoken. He had been here, Harvey Gillot said, at the time of Vukovar, and the man’s smile was wiped. ‘It is a dark corner. We believe there was a treason. Vukovar was sold. It was the deal that was done.’ He was sure he remembered the shop and pausing at its window, rain sluicing on to his umbrella. He climbed higher and reached, as he had then, the cathedral. A wider square and a Christ figure that was floodlit, high on a plinth, and fountains. He had stood on a slab in front of the cathedral and killed three minutes or four, had allowed the quiet of the place to play round him. Now, that evening, he walked into the gift shop beside the doorway and a nun greeted him, would have recognised his Englishness and told him firmly she was about to close. He said that he had been there in 1991, at the time of the battle for Vukovar. She was tiny. He might have snapped her apart with two hands, broken her. ‘It could have been stopped. The West could and should have. They were betrayed, and the government did nothing. It was allowed to fall and the people were allowed to die. It was deceit.’ The nun was no more than five feet tall and waved him away with an imperious gesture. Harvey Gillot couldn’t have said why he had spoken the name of Vukovar to strangers or what he had hoped to learn.
He knew he was close and old memories returned. The flower, fruit and vegetable markets had closed and the last of the stall-holders were washing down the slabs under their pitches, but that night the rain had done it for them. He saw the cafe-bar in the side-street.
There was a brighter light shining from it than there had been on a November night, and tables and chairs were outside. He was drawn there, a bloody moth.
He was confused. The counter had been ripped out, replaced. Stained wood had given way to plastic and chrome. An old man had been behind the counter, guarding bottles, glasses and a display cabinet of tired sandwiches. Now two girls were there, hanging out, with bright lipstick and heavy eye-shadow, and the coffee machines were new. He went inside and asked for coffee. Did he want latte or cappuccino? If they had been born then, they would have been carried in arms. There was bright light, bright music from America, and bright-faced girls looked at him with a growing impatience. Latte, cappuccino or, perhaps, mocca from Yemen? He cited the privilege of the customer, changed his mind and asked for a beer. He was given no choice: a Budweiser bottle was opened and passed to him.
He drank it from the neck, as he had that night, and then a neat Scotch. The man, Zoran, a schoolteacher, had hollow legs. He had worn once-decent grey slacks that had no shape and were mud-spattered, and a foul, filthy shirt, a tie, a sweater with earth smears, an overcoat and muddy shoes. He had thought then that the man had dressed to impress: he had come from the conflict zone and sought to keep up appearances. He was unshaven and his eyes were hollow, sunken, but had rare life in them.
Drank beers and chasers. Talked about the deal and shook hands on it. A plastic bag was passed, then set down on the vinyl flooring, worn almost through, by his feet. What was in the bag? ‘Everything we have.’
Enough to pay for fifty Malyutka kits? ‘It has to be enough. We have no more to give.’
How was it, where he had come from? ‘We survive, we exist… With the Malyutkas we will survive better, exist longer.’
Subject closed. He had drunk with an educated, middle-aged man, who had walked through a cornfield with a plastic bag, but had no war stories, no derring-do crap… How many times, with Solly Lieberman, had he sat across a table or perched on bar stools and listened to men telling hero-tales and thinking the world should stop and listen. What did the guy want to talk about? A Wembley win for Tottenham Hotspur in the spring, how they would do under the new owner, and… They talked about football and Harvey Gillot knew nothing about it and didn’t like to tell the man that football bored him. They had drunk some more, then gone over for a last time, slower because of the drink, the arrangements for ferrying the gear across the cornfields and into the village.
One Budweiser and a couple of whiskies, then out on to the cobbled street.
Then he had held the plastic bag. The man, Zoran, had caught his face in two hands, kissed him on each cheek and was gone. He had seen the man pause near a streetlight and turn to wave, the rain cascading off his face. Then he had lost sight of him.
It was a bright night, a good piece of the moon showing, and the stars were up and clear. He was glad he had climbed the hill and found the bar, and he started off down the same street as he’d used that night, on which the schoolteacher had walked away. His chin shook and his cheeks were wet, as they had been then, when it had rained.
He went to find a taxi and negotiate a price.