17

Neither of them had spoken to him. The guy who had come into the park, found him by the statue heads and walked him to the apartment, was in the passenger seat. He had been with him when he had chosen the Jericho. He was still in the suit, his tie not loosened, not a hair out of place. The driver was the same size and dressed in the same way. They’d talked among themselves, quietly, in their own language but had not addressed Robbie.

It was a BMW, a black sports utility with tinted windows. Robbie assumed it was armour-plated, the boss-man’s wheels, his personal driver and personal muscle. They had been, for the last half-hour, on side roads, with deep potholes that had made it lurch – not that he would have slept. When they had stopped at a fuel station, his door had been opened and the muscle had pointed to a lit sign at the side of the building – the toilets. When he’d come back he’d been given a bread roll, spiced ham and a bottle of Coke. He’d thanked them, and they hadn’t responded. There had been heavy traffic, tankers, and lorries with trailers on the main highway, but the road they used now was deserted. They made good speed, and on bends the headlights speared across fields of high-growing corn, miles of it.

The last place they had been through – he’d seen the name – was Marinci. A one-drag place with a crossroads in the middle and a church, a shop. Few lights and none of them bright. They had come to a road bridge and Robbie had seen the signs in an overgrown field, a white skull and crossbones on a red base. They bumped hard going over it and he was still wondering what the sign meant when the vehicle swung hard left, didn’t follow the pointer to Bogdanovci. There was a new nameplate but it came too fast for him. He thought it was near to the end of the journey.

The road they went on was narrower. Further to his left, and sometimes picked up in the lights, there was a high tree-line, as there had been at the bridge, and the surface was poorer. There was a dull glow of lights ahead.

They came into the village. If he leaned forward he could see the satnav screen built into the front panels. Now the cursor closed on the red arrow that would be ‘end of the road’, the destination. A man had stepped forward from the shadows and was caught in the headlights. He was supported by a crutch and his right trouser leg was folded short at the knee. A woman followed him and Robbie saw a face with no emotion. Her arms were folded across her chest. The driver braked.

Words were spoken. Robbie Cairns couldn’t understand them. His door was opened.

He stepped out, ground his fingernails into his palms. Did that to regain his concentration. Who am I, what am I? He was Robbie Cairns from Rotherhithe. He was top man. He had taken a contract, had been head-hunted – was big, important. ‘This it, then?’ he said. ‘This where we’re going?’

He took a couple of paces forward. The man on the crutch didn’t move towards him and the woman kept her arms tight across her chest. He realised that the driver had kept the engine ticking over, and now the muscle slammed the door at the back, gave a sharp wave towards the darkness, then was back in his own seat and closing his door. The BMW did a three-pointer, backed on to the grass in front of a house and spun. Its lights were in Robbie’s face, and he blinked. Then all he saw were the tail-lights going away – fast.

‘For fuck’s sake, don’t you wait?’ he shouted after them. ‘Don’t you take me back? Where the fuck am I?’

The brightness out of his eyes, Robbie Cairns saw the faces of those who’d waited for him. They were on a veranda, with a dulled interior behind them. Then he saw the chrome of the coffee machines at the back and the poster adverts for Coke and Fanta. There were metal tables and lightweight chairs, all taken. Eyes peered at him. Where it had started? Did they own the contract? Had they hired him? Better clarity on the faces, and most were men’s but a few were women’s. Only one was young and smooth-skinned. Robbie held tight to the Charlton Athletic bag, and in it was the tool of his trade: not a fucking hammer or a plumber’s wrench or a spirit level or pliers or a spanner, but a Jericho handgun. He was in the back end of nowhere.

‘Right. So what happens?’ he called, defiant. ‘What happens now that I’m here?’

He heard the scrape of the chairs, then the hissed breathing of those with smokers’ chests. There was the flash of a match as a cigarette was lit and the faces seemed old, worn and weathered. They made a circle about him. They moved, he moved.

The young one said, ‘They think you are shit. They have been told they wasted money in buying you. They believe, now that Gillot is coming, they could do the job for which they paid you. They say that this is when they see whether you are shit or whether you will earn their money. They are veterans of war. The money paid to you was from loans advanced against disability pensions. They are poor people. If you fail again they will kill you and they will kill Gillot, and they will bury the two of you together. It is not far that we have to walk.’

He was alone. The young one had slipped away from his side and seemed, seamlessly, to rejoin the cordon ring around Robbie. They had only the moon’s light to guide them. They left the village and went by a high wall. There was a gate in it and above the gate, in silhouette, a cross. He assumed it to be a cemetery. Would they bury him there or in the fucking fields that closed in on them, big crops rising to above their heads? They walked, men, women and Robbie Cairns, in the watery light, along a path that led through the cornfields and, far ahead, an owl screamed.

She wrote her message, finished it, revised it, was satisfied and read it back for a last time.

To:

Dermot, Team Leader Alpha.

From:

Penny Laing.

Location:

Vukovar, Croatia.

Subject:

Harvey Gillot.

Message: I find no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Harvey Gillot, arms dealer, in connection with alleged sale of weapons to a village community near Vukovar. The events of 1991 remain confused and few opinions can be considered objective; also the passage of time has dulled memories. The only individuals other than Gillot who were party to a deal – if, indeed, there was one – were killed that autumn and neither left a written record. I recommend that I observe matters here for the next twenty-four hours, in accordance with Gold Group requirements, then pull out and return to London. Regards etc.

She pressed Send.

The bar beckoned. She’d noted that refugees from HMRC turned to alcohol when a career went turnip, the same when a police officer realised his job might be crap, and she had seen it with a diplomat at the embassy in Kinshasa who had lost faith in finding anything worth nailing a flag to.

The thought of hunting down Harvey Gillot, turning up at his door at dawn and the guys having the battering ram to break it down, a dog barking, a woman screaming and the power of stripping away dignity, had thrilled her. The experience of lying under a teenage boy, or on him, letting his tongue and fingers roam free, had been as brilliant as anything she had known. They were gone. Sod it. Nothing special about her, not blessed, and drink beckoned.

She snapped off the laptop and let it power down, touched her hair, applied a light coat of lipstick, switched off the light, locked the door and went down the hotel’s stairs. Penny Laing heard, ‘I fancy I see another recruit. This rate, if we’re to stay exclusive, we’ll need to blackball a few…’

*

He saw her look at him, wouldn’t have known who she was, had not the hippie-style girl, little Miss Megs, murmured the name and then a limited biographical sketch – God, her, from Revenue and Customs, Alpha team and hunting bloody Gillot. Penny Laing. Be standing room only to watch the bastard show himself… Benjie grinned. He ruled. He had before they’d adjourned to eat, when he had taken the central chair at the long table in the dining room, Bill Anders on one side of him and the truculently amusing Steyn on the other. Back in the bar, he still held his audience, enjoyed himself and kept the staff busy. Arbuthnot thought her a woman in need of humouring – she looked as though she had just walked into a bloody great brick wall.

‘Don’t think we’re going to have room for many more. I understand you’re Miss Laing. Please, join us. Come along, and I’ll take your application for membership.’

He would have appeared – he knew it and rejoiced – a buffoon who had drunk too much, but he had extracted from each of them everything concerning their presence at the ground-floor bar of the Lav Hotel in Vukovar, which was in the far northwest of eastern Slavonia. A glass was brought for her, local wine was poured – she wasn’t offered a choice and didn’t seem to resent it. He thought she looked ready to do damage to the bottle and to anyone who interrupted, contradicted, challenged her.

Did she know everybody? She shrugged.

Did she know Miss Megs Behan, campaigner extraordinary against the evils of the arms trade and representing Planet Protection? Did she know Detective Sergeant Mark Roscoe of the Metropolitan Police, a firearms officer without a weapon and an investigator without authority? Did she know Professor William Anders, forensic pathologist from California, and did she know Dr Daniel Steyn, general practitioner, dabbler in psychology and resident in this town? And himself? ‘I’m Benjie Arbuthnot, long put out to grass. I just happened to be passing through these parts and was able to give a lift in a hire car to… Cheers, Miss Laing.’

Could have been Aussie lager on a hot day, barely tickled her throat, and the waiter was back with the bottle. He sensed the enormity of her failure.

‘I understand that Harvey Gillot is the cement that binds us and what happens tomorrow. I have all these excellent people signed up, Miss Laing, for membership of the Vulture Club. Probably we’ll have a tie designed for Sergeant Roscoe and myself, Bill and Daniel, and maybe a square silk scarf for you and Miss Behan. Does that appeal?’

There was chemistry now, and volatility. The links were known to him: Roscoe, Behan, Laing, Anders and Steyn. All were tied to Harvey Gillot, who had been not only his asset but something more than a friend.

‘I thought the Vulture Club, with an emblem of the griffon type, would be appropriate. You see, Miss Laing, the vultures hang around and wait for a corpse to feed from. They don’t have much of a life if there are no corpses available. They spend a fair part of their lives sitting perched, or flying high, waiting for a killing. I think they have a sense that tells them where to be, when to be there, what sort of dish might get served up. Fascinating, isn’t it, to be waiting and watching for a death so that one is on hand while the meal is still warm? You must give me your address, Miss Laing, so that when we’re back in London I can send you a scarf. When they’re really hungry and the corpse is big enough, they get right inside the carcass, and feed there… We don’t need that. We all had an excellent dinner. Well, that’s enough about that. So, welcome, Miss Laing, to the Vulture Club and I’ll consider your subscription paid.’

He took her hand, shook it with a certain formality, then gave her the floor.

Another bottle was brought.

She knew them all and he was the only stranger among them. She said that two attempts had already been made on the life of Harvey Gillot, that he had survived an attack that morning because he had worn a bulletproof vest, that a final attack was planned for the morning and… Benjie Arbuthnot saw in her eyes that his image of a griffon vulture perched in a dead tree or wheeling high on the thermals had struck home.

‘It’ll be a good show,’ he said. ‘Better than a hanging or a stoning in Iran because of the unpredictability.’ He chuckled, thought he knifed them. He chaired the club and had the right to: his responsibility was the greatest of all. He laughed again, brayed.

The voice came from far back in the lobby. Last time he’d heard the man there had been a stammering whine in it. Not now. ‘Good evening… You have a reservation for me. The name is Gillot. Harvey Gillot. Just one night. No, thank you, I don’t need help with any bags. Please can I book a call for six?’

Benjie Arbuthnot did not twist in his seat and stare. Opposite him, Megs Behan – God, there was fire, rank animosity, a blaze of enmity – stiffened. He said, ‘Slowing down, are we? Can’t have that. In the rulebook the Vulture Club keeps going all night before a killing and a feed.’

He clapped his hands above his head and the waiter scurried to him.

When he came away from the desk, his key in one hand, plastic bag in the other, a town map squashed under his arm, he saw the waiter going to a group. No eye contact, but he recognised Roscoe. Didn’t remember meeting the taller and smarter-dressed of the women but, of course, he hadn’t forgotten the maniac, the obsessive, the crusader with the bullhorn. There were two older men, who peered at him as if captivated by his appearance. And he saw Benjie Arbuthnot – recognisable, unforgettable from years back – make a half-turn in his chair, and reach up to scribble on the receipt pad that the waiter had brought with the bottle. Couldn’t have said that he’d expected him to be there. The big man was obviously holding court and in control. He grimaced and left the desk.

He gave no sign of recognition to Arbuthnot, nor was rewarded with one. So, all of them in place and a few other camp followers tucked in for company. He thought, across the bar space and the lobby, that Roscoe tried to ‘touch’ him. He gave nothing back. And no response to Megs Behan, the bullhorn woman, but there was hostility in her and triumphalism. None of them could have said he had gone towards them with arrogance or something craven. To go to the stairs he needed to turn his back on the group. Good move, brilliant. He went slowly, took time with each step. They would all have seen the drilled holes in the jacket, over his spine. He recalled that he had been told he couldn’t sit around, make funeral arrangements and check his will. He went up the stairs. He’d been told he’d be a fugitive for the rest of his days unless he travelled. He came out on to the first-floor corridor. The alternative was looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days He checked the rooms’ numbers and kept walking. The instruction had been that he should face and confront it. He found the door, put in the key and turned the lock. He thought a promise had been kept. He had asked Benjie Arbuthnot where he would be. Not too far behind you, for my sins, there and thereabouts. One promise made and another kept. He closed the door behind him. The only one he would trust was Benjie Arbuthnot, no one else. He didn’t know if, in the morning, he would be pickled and hung-over or sober and clear-headed – there was no one else he could trust.

The curtains were open and the moon’s wash flecked the river. The ripples – from its current – made silver threads. In a direct line from his window to the river, a land spit divided the marina of pleasure boats from the tributary that flowed into the Danube, and at its end was the white cross of carved stone. Maybe it had been a private quarrel. Maybe he had no business there. Maybe the wrong was too great for penance. He dumped his jacket on the chair, stripped off his shirt and threw it over the jacket. The holes looked big and black. He slipped the Velcro straps and shrugged out of the vest, letting it fall at his feet. He thought it had done him well, had brought him there. His body ran with sweat from the day in the train, the walk in the city and the ride to the town. He slipped out of his underwear and kicked off his shoes and socks.

He flopped on to the bed. He didn’t know where else he should have been. He hardly knew the place. From the taxi’s windows, he had seen a high water tower, with holes in its brickwork, and a few collapsed homes, but had gained no sense of life here nineteen years before, nor had wanted to.

Near to midnight. A small breeze came through the window, touched the curtain drapes and played on his skin.

He shivered. They showed contempt for him. He had been brought to where the cross was, rough wood planks, nailed together, no craftsmanship. Beads on strings, chains, ID cards and football pennant flags hung from it, and photographs in sealed frames that might have been waterproof. It had been made clear to him that this was where he should wait. He had subsided onto the ground, recently ploughed. He still sat there, had not moved except to shiver.

It was not the cold that made Robbie Cairns shiver. He was near the tree-line and could hear running water, the swirl of a slow-moving river rounding snagged tree-trunks. The shivering was from what else he heard – not the river: the owls shrieked. It had started with one, which had been joined by a throatier bird, then a third. One had flown past him, low and big and silent, and had been within a few feet of him. He’d flinched and flung up his arms to cover his face. The fox had come near.

There had been a Scouts group at school in Rotherhithe, and the Cubs had met in a hall one evening a week. Twice a year for the Scouts and once for the Cubs, they went camping somewhere in Kent. He’d never gone near it, hadn’t envied the few who’d joined. He hadn’t slept outside, under the skies, clear or cloudy, in his life. When he was young and his dad wasn’t away, they had gone to a guest house on the south coast or to a caravan – depended on the family’s finances. He hadn’t liked the caravan and undressing where his brother, his dad or mum or Leanne might see him.

The fox had come within six feet of him, closer than the owl had flown, had been wary.

Robbie Cairns quivered. He was frightened. A stalking fox and a swooping owl were beyond his experience.

He could look back on the last days, hours, and recognise that the fear had been in him – to different degrees – since he had come out of the bedroom and seen her with the questions in her eyes and the Baikal pistol in her hands. He had been free of it only for those moments when he had been on a step to a high-rise apartment block, a whistle had sounded and the target had come.

What was left to him? Respect. He didn’t think he would ever walk again along Albion Street, Lower Road, Gunwale Street or Needleman Street, wouldn’t see again where Brindle had been shot by the hitman, where George Francis had been dropped or where… He wanted to be left with respect. They’d say in the pubs of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey and Southwark that Robbie Cairns had been a top man, had been chosen for a top job, with all the international links – big stuff for a big man. He’d followed his target half across the world and had done what he was paid for and- Didn’t imagine the end. Just did the talk in the streets he knew, and the respect he had earned there. He shivered… And Leanne would walk tall and be pointed out as his sister and she’d have pride in him because of respect. Nothing would stop the shivering, and then the fucking fox moved again. He thought of Leanne, clung to her.

She said to the detective, ‘That’s it, all the dates. That’s what he’s done.’ She pushed the paper across the table. A denunciation in her girlish uneducated handwriting.

‘Thank you, Leanne. Very sensible.’

‘He hurt a woman, didn’t he? Strangled her. He should be taken out to Epping and hung in a tree, slow so he’ll dance.’

Late on, past midnight, moths floundered against the cafe’s dimmed lights and the principals of the village determined the day ahead. They knew where Gillot would come from and where he would walk to, and expected that on the way he would attempt to smooth-talk them or bluster, because that was what the woman had told Simun. They knew where the hired man would be, had left him there.

To be decided: where they would be. Some sat, some stood, some paced in the street below the veranda. All would have recognised that the village faced a huge moment. Mladen was the leader but there were no bureaucrats to rubber-stamp what he told them. Each suggestion he made faced contradiction, dispute, argument, and he would let Maria’s opinions counter Tomislav’s. He would hear the grated complaints of the Widow, while Petar claimed that the spilled blood in the cornfield, his son’s, gave him precedence and…

Simun brought his father a bundle of paper – the order forms from the cafe’s wholesale supplier – and Petar tossed him a stubbed pencil. He wrote the words boldly: Kukuruzni Put. He drew sharp strokes, fast sketch lines, recalled old memories. The winding path of the river, the Vuka, and the village of Luza, which he did with a squiggle of house shapes. They had come off the street below the veranda, and the Widow, Maria and Petar’s wife had chairs at the table Mladen used. The rest crowded close to him, hemmed him in. His boy gave him a red-ink ballpoint.

The route was drawn. The Cornfield Road lived again, for all of them.

She said where she would be. Would she be able to walk that distance back? She demanded it. On the paper, Mladen drew a tiny square to mark the position of the sixty-five-year-old Wehrmacht bunker, the place where the track began, and wrote the name of Zoran’s widow. He drew the route, its angled turns and where it went close to the trees that had hidden the snipers – Andrija said he would be there – and past the house with no roof, where Maria would be. Tomislav chose a place close to her. The line went to the north of the scribbled shapes that were homes in Bogdanovci, indefensible once the village had been overwhelmed, and he found a place for Petar, who would be with his wife, and wrote their names. He took for himself the place where the hired man had been left, where the cross was planted. When the village principals had been allocated their places, he allowed others who pressed close to him to say where they wanted to be. Some jostled him, jogging his writing.

Memories were stirred.

On the map, at either side of the red line, Mladen wrote the names in pencil, made an avenue. He spoke gravely. The places awarded were to be held. There should be no stampede in pursuit of the man. He should be followed until he reached the place where the Widow’s husband, Petar and Tomislav’s sons and Andrija’s cousin had waited, where they had died and had been buried. Then it was work for the hired man. A query was raised, and a growled wave of approval followed it: why did they need the hired man, an outsider? He answered that complications might follow, that investigations would inevitably be started, that consequences might include arrest and trial, that payment had been made and that it was cleaner thus.

He looked around him. There was one man only from whom the leader would accept advice. Where was Josip? He searched the shadowed faces for the one-time fraudster with connections in the dark corners of organised crime and saw him, far back and against the counter. The face was impassive and the eyes showed neither support nor criticism… as if Josip disowned himself.

They shuffled off into the night.

Like him, many would go into their homes or down their gardens to sheds, or into bushes where a pavement slab was almost obscured and bring out or dig up the clothing they would wear and what they would carry.

Walking with Simun, Mladen could reflect that his planning for the morning would give the village what it craved: a spectacle. It was necessary for a leader to satisfy such cravings, but he couldn’t comprehend why Gillot would come.

She thought him undeserving of charity and herself without mercy. She was tipsy, but she could take a line on the carpet’s pattern and walk straight along the corridor. When she had left the group, she had gone past the desk and had asked Mr Gillot’s room number. She had been given it, and then had gone to her room.

What she would do was uncertain. That she would do something was not.

First thing, a hard knock on the door, repeated twice. She stood her ground and listened, heard a muffled voice: who was there? Megs Behan ‘was there’. What did Miss Behan want? To talk with him, to see him.

A clearer voice: what did she want to talk about?

‘About you, Mr Gillot, to see how you’re facing up to what’ll happen in the morning.’

She supposed the threat was implicit that she would stand four square in the hotel’s corridor, shout slogans, as she had outside the house on the Isle of Portland, and wake every guest not still in the bar. She had the slogans clear in her mind and the alcohol had loosened any inhibitions: she would bawl them – well, he was going to be killed in the morning and she had no compunction about making the last night of his life awful. She gathered her breath, readied herself, and the door opened. No warning, hadn’t heard a footstep. Just a sheet round him.

Almost a smile. A gesture: she should come in. Definitely a smile. She stared into it. The smile was on his lips, but also in his eyes, and it mesmerised her. There was half-light in the room from the moon. The sheet was loose and she couldn’t say how secure it was on his hips. Tried to sound casual: ‘Just wanted to know how you were. You know, because of what’s happening in the morning. They’ll kill you – no talk – just kill you. No fucking about. What I thought, Mr Gillot, was…’

She paused – gave him the opportunity to rail at her. Nothing.

‘What I thought was this. How many men, women and children, in Africa, the Middle East, Central America, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are going to die tomorrow having been killed by weapons that you supplied?’

Still the smile. No answer.

‘Come on, Mr Gillot, have a sporting guess. How many tomorrow? How many the same day that they kill you for cheating?’

‘A drink, Miss Behan?’

The sheet was lower at his waist, less secure, and he moved across to a cabinet, opened the door, revealed the built-in fridge and bent down.

She said, ‘I suppose the defence of people like you is, “If I don’t sell the guns someone else will.” That’s pathetic. Or are you going to say, “It’s not guns that kill but the people handling them”? It’s got mould on it. How about “I never do anything outside the law and I pay my taxes”?’

‘With ice or water, both or straight?’

‘Don’t you try and divert-’

‘Simple enough question.’

‘It’s a disgusting trade and anyone with half a degree of honesty and decency would acknowledge…’ She had barely realised it. The drink was in her hand. She thought that if he took another step the sheet would fall to the carpet, but he sat on the end of the bed. She hovered above him and launched in again: ‘But it’s not often that the biter’s bitten, and it’s you looking at the end of a barrel.’

She swigged, felt the whisky raw in her throat. She edged towards him as if that would help her dominate and destroy. ‘And maybe there’ll be a second, two seconds, when you’re in the same place as all the victims of those guns you sold, knowing what it is to be-’

She tripped. The Scotch flew up, the glass tipped in her hand and she was half on the bed. She saw what she’d stumbled on: a dark mass. He reached forward, picked it up and he held it where the silver moonlight came through the window. He said it was his vest. He pointed at the black blotches and said a handgun had fired twice at short range: without it he would at worst have been dead and at best a quadriplegic.

‘You lived. What of those who did not, killed by your guns? Any answers?’

The sheet was off him. He took the glass from her, crouched once more in front of the cabinet, tossed another miniature into the bin and gave it back to her. He sat on the bed and didn’t cover himself.

‘Have you seen what your profits achieve? Have you actually been to war yourself? Or do you just hide in luxury hotels and-’

‘Never. I’ve never heard a shot fired for real, except at me. Otherwise weapons are a commodity for me, Miss Behan.’

‘That is disgraceful, disgusting and…’ She hesitated, didn’t know what else would insult him.

‘I buy and sell, and most of those I sell to – ordinary people, not governments and army generals – are pretty grateful for what they get.’

‘Just despicable.’ That was the word. She was irked because he sat still and naked on the bed, in shadow, and didn’t respond. She drank, and wondered how it was to wear a vest and have two shots fired into your back.

‘I’ve never been in a battle. Sorry and all that.’ The smile broke through again, broad and almost affectionate. ‘You have, I’m sure, been in more battles, fights, conflicts, low-intensity stuff, insurgencies, border skirmishes than I’ve had hot dinners. You wouldn’t lecture me on the evils of arms dealing if you hadn’t known warfare at first hand.’

‘Utterly irrelevant.’

‘This isn’t some sort of interrogation, Miss Behan. You can decline to answer and keep your fingernails. I’ll try again.’

She flushed – might have been the sight of his body, or the Scotch. ‘You’re serving up bullshit, clever crap.’

‘You good on freedom, Miss Behan?’

‘What does that mean? More bull and crap?’

‘Freedom. You could say that I deal in freedom, Miss Behan.’ His head was down and his voice was soft.

‘That is ridiculous.’

‘Ever had a Guevara T-shirt?’

Doubtful, not knowing where it led, and brittle. ‘Once.’

‘And wore it until it fell apart, washing-machine fatigue. Great face, Che Guevara, great symbol. A “freedom fighter”, Miss Behan, heroically standing against Fascist dictatorships and military juntas, great guy. What did he fight with, Miss Behan? Might have been a toothbrush, might have been a hammer from a hardware shop, might have been a Scout’s knife… or it might have been the weapons that he was sold, likely at cut price, via the Cuban government.’

‘You can’t say that.’ She didn’t know what he could or couldn’t say. The whisky burned in her. Beyond the window the river ran silver, and the stone cross was proud, clean and brightly lit. And the smile on his face was for her.

‘The mujahideen in Afghanistan were fighting Soviet occupation and tyranny, and I was arming them. I’ve had gear brought on the backs of mules through the Chechen mountains from Georgia because people wanted the “freedom” you take for granted. In your book, I suppose there are good guns and bad guns, justifiable bullets and murderous bullets. I don’t make such judgements. I don’t have a check list and tick off boxes because the newspapers, and your organisation, tell me that one side in each conflict is good and the other bad. The majority of the trading I do is in the interests and aims of HMG. Her Majesty’s Government uses taxpayers’ money to shift firepower around where it’s needed in the furtherance of policy. Didn’t you know that?’

She bridled. ‘You’re confusing me.’

‘Not difficult. I don’t think you’ve ever been to war. I think you’re just a keen paper-pusher, but I think also you’re too old to be messing with jargon, posters and placards. I think you know small things only, because from big things comes doubt.’

She finished the glass.

She stepped over the vest on the carpet and was close to him. He made no effort to cover himself. She thought she recognised fatigue, but the smile came through and lit his face. Of course, his responses were rubbish and insulting to her intelligence. Of course – without the Scotch – she could have stood her corner and argued him to the floor. What derailed her certainties was that he seemed so indifferent to her attacks and so relaxed in his answers. He didn’t fight her. And an image came into her mind. The man in her picture had dark hair, most likely dyed, and a warrior’s moustache. He wore a heavy black overcoat against the night cold, and was pushed forward by masked men until the noose came into the phone’s lens, voices were raised and abused him. That New Year’s Eve she had been in a Hackney pub, tanking with friends before a party. The television had blared the insults thrown at the fallen president as he was pushed on to the scaffold. She had choked at the sight of it and had looked away from the execution of Saddam Hussein. She had thought the transmission obscene and – frankly – it had buggered up for her the supposed night of celebration. The deposed dictator had not cringed, had not shown fear. She felt, then, ashamed. The idea of an argument on the evils of the international arms trade with a man who would die in the morning seemed to her to degrade… She could have argued and won, but… He would be bloodied, broken, battered, dead before the sun was high.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘I expect I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Behan. It’s what I’m aiming towards.’

She didn’t understand, and didn’t know how to react. She could turn and head sharply for the door, slam it after her. She could sit on the bed beside him and talk the politics of universal disarmament. She could stand by the window and wait for the sunrise… Or she could have another drink, roll a cigarette and do the vigil.

She thought, then, that he slept.

She fetched red wine, vodka, gin and a tin of tonic, went back to the bed, took one side of it – careful not to wake him – and settled without touching him. She pondered which bottle she should open first as she made the cigarette and lit it.

They would kill him in the morning. Before they did so he wouldn’t beg or plead. She supposed it would be a release from the burden of being condemned. The drink slipped down well and he slept cleanly, his breath regular. She knew what time the phone would ring with the call, but thought dawn would be with her first.

It was still dark when the party broke up and the last stragglers headed for bed.

Back-slaps and minor hugging from William Anders for Benjie Arbuthnot.

Roscoe watched. He thought their embrace ostentatious and that they shouldn’t have behaved as if this was an alumnae reunion, but their talk had been heavy with nostalgia – where they had been, whom they had known, which warlord had slaughtered what community, and where the Soviets had fouled up. He thought the occasion had merited some solemnity. He had been told why the forensic pathologist was on site, but the matter of Arbuthnot’s appearance had not been dealt with. He couldn’t imagine what brought a retired spook to the backwater of Vukovar, but his time would come.

And Anders’s side-kick, Dan Steyn, had left an hour earlier in a pretty awful state – Roscoe had seen his headlights traverse the bar windows. He’d liked him, and thought the man gave a decent appraisal of the town and its atrocity, but it had been black-edged and without optimism.

The woman from Revenue and Customs had been late leaving them, but little Megs Behan had gone early. He rather envied her common sense in heading for bed before the others had hit the heavy drinking. Funny old world, but he reckoned Megs Behan was the pick of the bunch. She had a cause and made sacrifices for its integrity. He’d liked her; all that irked him was her blatant satisfaction at having booked a seat for the morning’s show. He had, almost, admired her one-woman stand at the house. Mark Roscoe would have claimed he could recognise a fraud at fifty paces and the honest people who had principles worth sticking with. He rated Megs Behan in that slot.

He didn’t know about Revenue and Customs. He had found her monosyllabic in her answers on the detail of the village, unhelpful. There was, obvious to him, some disaster in her recent past but he had neither time nor the inclination to probe and… He stood to shake Anders’s hand after the clinch had been broken, and wished the man well for whatever sleep was still available.

He refilled his glass with flat mineral water from a bottle. It was three hours, minimum, since he had drunk wine, and he thought Benjie Arbuthnot had shown similar abstinence, and done it cleverly: others’ glasses filled and him passing the bottle round but not topping his own.

They were alone.

Roscoe wondered how long it would be before a woman came round with a vacuum-cleaner and how long before the waiter, asleep on his arms at the bar, would shudder and wake. Roscoe was good at missing sleep, could survive on cat-naps, but he admired the older man’s stamina.

‘Should I know, Mr Arbuthnot, why you’re in Vukovar? I mean, all the crap about the Vulture Club, and the grandstanding, doesn’t tell me why a has-been from Spooksville is here.’ He had hoped that provocative rudeness would rile. It didn’t.

‘Tying loose ends.’ A shrug, a grin, a gesture of the hands that was a pro-consul’s bogus helplessness.

‘I’ve heard that before from you – it’s garbage. What should I assume?’

‘Sergeant, assume what you wish.’

‘For reasons best known to himself, Harvey Gillot will walk the Cornfield Road this morning. Will you be alongside him?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Then… when he welshed on the deal and the men who waited for him lost their lives, were you with him?’

‘Beyond your remit, Sergeant.’

‘Is he your stalking horse? Should you be doing the walking?’

‘This isn’t an interview room, Sergeant.’

Roscoe, for want of something better, mocked, ‘Will you walk in front of him and do something heroic?’

‘No.’

‘Not the man of the hour? Does “tying loose ends” not mean intervention?’

‘Listen to me for a few moments, Sergeant. My wife knows a girl who used to work – a Zoological Society grant kept her alive – on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Her expertise was with cheetahs. Wonderful animals in their natural habitat – can do a sprint of up to three hundred yards at seventy miles an hour. Magnificent. Plenty of them there but that doesn’t make their survival certain, they’re vulnerable. Lions come and eat their young. The girl my wife knows used to sit in her Land Rover and follow them. The adults would sprawl on the roof above her – tough if she had a call of nature – and the young ones had the names of chocolate bars, Dairy Milk or Fruit and Nut, which the girl used to dream of. But no matter how attached to them she felt, she lived by a rule that couldn’t be circumvented. She couldn’t intervene. She might have followed the life of a female cat through conception, gestation, birth of her cubs, then the upbringing of the little ones, them being taught to hunt, kill and survive, but the lion pride comes close and the young ones are doomed. She cannot charge the pride with her Land Rover or blast on the horn, she must sit and watch the massacre. It’s a rule in any jungle, any wilderness, that events must be permitted to take their course. Harvey Gillot looks after himself.’

‘Not good enough for me.’

‘Has to be, Sergeant.’

‘I have no jurisdiction here, no police liaison, no back-up and no weapon.’

‘Correct on all counts.’

‘But I do have a duty of care.’

‘Jargon, Sergeant, from a bit after my time.’

‘What I’m saying, Mr Arbuthnot, is that I’m obliged – and wouldn’t have it otherwise – to show as much care, because this is a duty, towards a reptile character as I would towards an upright citizen. We don’t differentiate between saints and sinners.’

‘He’s a sinner, a reptile?’

‘Arms dealer – could be, for all I care, a crystal-meth dealer involved in a territory fight. If the silly bastard had done as he was told and -’

‘And bolted, dug a pit and squatted in it.’

‘- and had listened to advice, taken the help offered him… instead I’m in this godforsaken hole – and I have a duty of care when he walks. Why is he going to do it?’

‘I suppose he has something in his mind about “facing up” or “confronting” his problems. It’ll sit well with duty of care, Sergeant.’

The packet must have been wedged down in Benjie’s chair. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and slightly larger than a paperback book. He gave it to Roscoe, and for the first time the detective felt almost shy. He had his fingers under the Sellotape and was about to rip it open.

‘I wouldn’t. Do it later – tomorrow. Don’t forget it. Bring it. I’ll be leaving at about six forty-five, if you’d like a lift. Courtesy of the Vulture Club, a membership perk.’

Roscoe watched as Arbuthnot stood up and walked straight, might have been on a parade-ground, heading for the stairs. What did he know about the morning? Not enough. What did he know about the man to whom he owed a duty of care? Too little.

He crawled off the bed, silent.

Gillot didn’t use the bathroom but dressed. He wrote a note and propped it on the dressing-table. He opened the door and eased it shut behind him. The dawn came slowly and made a mist over the river. The town was buried in silence.

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