6

A rap on the table indicated she was ready. Mark Roscoe didn’t know her, and his detective inspector said that Phoebe Bermingham, rank of chief superintendent and uniform, was a novice – or, from behind his hand, a ‘virgin’ – at playing Gold Commander. She, ‘Ma’am’, was at the head of the table, Roscoe and his boss at the far end, and between them were representatives from Surveillance, and Firearms, and Intelligence. Hers was the only uniform on show. Roscoe had been late: Chrissie had come back from work at three that morning, had woken him and wanted to talk. He’d hardly slept till five and then had missed his wake-up call. It had been a stampede to get into Scotland Yard by seven thirty, and he was dressed badly, half shaven, his hair a mess. He had missed the croissants and coffee, and his boss had given him a foul look. Surveillance wore a suit and Firearms was smart-casual. He had a pain in his head and… She chaired briskly and he thought a paper must have been written on the conduct of a Gold Group meeting.

Did the intelligence have provenance?

If the spooks had been invited, they hadn’t shown. Most likely they hadn’t been invited because it was certain they wouldn’t attend. There was a knock on the door and a young woman half fell through it. She looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else and had a pillar-box blush as she stammered a name. Penny something. Revenue and Customs, Alpha team. Grovelling. A bus not turning up. Had walked two miles. She had a file under her arm, heavy. She dropped into the chair between Firearms and Roscoe’s boss.

Ma’am did it all again. Wasn’t pleased. Started at the beginning. Should the intelligence be believed?

Same answer. Couldn’t say, and the people who could had stayed away.

Moved on. Who was Harvey Gillot?

Roscoe’s boss said he’d been through criminal records and had drawn the big blank, except that the joker dealt in arms. Legitimate? A shrug, didn’t know. A silence. Ma’am looked at the young woman, Penny something, and gestured to her with a well-sharpened pencil.

And Penny something, in Roscoe’s opinion, gave it a good fist. ‘He’s one of the top ten independent arms dealers in the UK. To stay legal, the arms dealer, or broker, must remain inside the strictures of the Military List – it governs what weapons may be sent to which countries. Where transactions are authorised he must provide an end-user certificate that lists the items being sold, their origin and destination. Our rationale is that we don’t want our enemy in the field to be well armed, particularly if we have made those arms and sold them. So, export permission wouldn’t be given for sale to – say – Somalia, North Korea, Burma. Harvery Gillot is a big player and a target of ours. Can I summarise? We don’t want weapons bought in Minsk, shipped to a Baltic port, then transported to the Gulf, moved on to Karachi, then into the Tribal Territories and finally to Helmand where they kill a nineteen-year-old lance corporal from Leeds. All these characters in the top ten stay on the right side of legislation until a mouthwatering deal drops into their lap. Then they break the law. As I said, Harvey Gillot is a target of ours. As yet we don’t have the dirt.’

What was the significance of Croatia? Ma’am asked.

His boss queried whether they’d had a war there, maybe twenty years back, but Surveillance said that was Bosnia. His boss countered that there had been war-crimes stuff there, but Firearms chipped in that the war crime was at Srebrenica and also in Bosnia. Roscoe remembered Torvill and Dean and the Bolero music, the gold medal for skating at a Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

Penny something coughed sharply as if to kill the blundering. She said quietly, with authority, ‘There was a United Nations embargo on the selling of weapons to all parties when Yugoslavia broke up. Under a resolution passed in September ’ninety-one it was illegal to supply Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia with weapons, and it was ignored. There was a feeding frenzy for the sale of weapons. The dealers, brokers, never had it so good. We have no record on our files of Gillot being involved.’

Was Gillot in place and selling at that time? Ma’am questioned.

‘According to our records he was taken on to the staff of an old-time dealer, Solly Lieberman, in 1984. Lieberman died in Russia in 1990, and we understand that the business and goodwill were passed to Gillot without cost. He has been on his own since then. If he was in Croatia in 1991 it would have been one of his early ventures as an independent, at only twenty-eight.’

Would she, Ma’am requested, paint a picture?

‘Well, I’ve never met him, so this is all third hand. Very clever, and verges on cunning. I’m not talking intellectual, academic. At heart, he’s a salesman – that’s his driving force. Doing deals, pushing the limits, winning through – all those matter to him. He would be cautious, suspicious, and expect us to be targeting him. Formidable, I’d say. Something else. Self-sufficient. Lives on the Isle of Portland and I have no perception of social life there, but he will stay clear of commitments, involvements, and will most certainly not want it spread about that he sells tanks, hand grenades or landmines. If it were known, he would be a pariah in the community so he’d make certain it wasn’t. But I’d expect him to be charming – sort of goes with the territory. But the business is loathsome.’

Ma’am looked at her, a stiletto glance, then launched: ‘We don’t often have the luxury of choosing who we consider worth protecting and who we don’t. Anyone, be they a convicted and released paedophile or a drugs-trafficker who has reneged on a deal with his supplier, is entitled to an efficient service. We will be mindful in this case, as in every case, of the “duty of care” owed to Mr Gillot, and his human rights as laid down by statute. We are not here to approve or disapprove of his commercial activities. We are here to prevent the very considerable crime of murder being committed and him becoming a target for a murderer.’

Didn’t they know what was required of them? Roscoe and his boss did. Firearms would know it, chapter and verse. Surveillance lived inside the restrictions imposed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the hoops to be jumped through before his people could do covert or intrusive surveillance on a suspect. The young woman, Penny something, had frowned at the mention of ‘duty of care’ owed to the Tango and had grimaced at ‘human rights’. Roscoe thought she’d done well, and might just have been the only one at the table who, given a blank map of the European coastlines, had a fair idea of where Croatia figured on it. He remembered.

They broke, and more coffee was brought in.

Roscoe offered the young woman a biscuit from the plate. ‘Not myself this morning. God, you told me last night… The Beatles, Penny – you’re Penny Laing. I thought you did well, and that Ma’am was impressed.’

‘Are you patronising me?’

He blinked. ‘Don’t think so, not intended.’

‘Seemed in here that no one had much of a clue what happened south of Bognor and the Channel.’

‘Right, fine. Anyway, have a nice day. Remember to send me a postcard next time you get south of Bognor.’

‘Actually, I’m hoping I’ll get a long way south. I’ll be suggesting to my team leader that we go out to Croatia, find out what Gillot was at – because it’ll be sanctions-busting and a criminal offence. Then there’s a good chance of us putting together a case, charging him.’

‘Well, let’s hope nothing inconvenient gets in the way, like him being shot first. Just a thought – don’t arms-traffickers have links with the spooks? Is that a stereotype? Aren’t they arm in arm, sort of big-brotherly protection for the trafficker, and deciding where the business is done?’

The answer was almost spat: ‘They may indeed be in bed and sweaty, but it won’t help him. They cut lesser mortals adrift, make a better job than Pilate at washing off responsibility. We go after them because we know the law is the law, and isn’t chucked out of the window for the spies’ convenience.’

Roscoe blinked again, but harder. She was a bloody crusader. God protect him from crusaders and those who made the world a better place and… He was so tired, and he had the drive in front of him. He slipped away.

‘You’ll not take me wrong, Robbie.’

‘I’m hearing you, Granddad, hearing what you say.’

It was a conversation they had not had before. He had always admired his grandfather and liked him. He knew him better – trusted him more – than he did his father.

‘You’ll not take offence?’

‘Do I ever?’

They walked along Albion Street, past the terrace of shops, fast-food outlets, the launderette and the betting shop. Across the other side was the library – no lie, Robbie Cairns had not been inside it for more than ten years – and up the road from it was the Norwegian church and the seamen’s mission. The only time he’d been inside a church in the last twelve years was for the funeral of his uncle Albert, shipped home for the last time from HMP Pentonville following a coronary. They walked on the street because the chance of being covered by an audio bug was minimal. They talked – the unrepentant veteran thief and his grandson who was a killer for hire – from the side of their mouths so that if the cameras were on them there would be nothing for the lip-reader to learn. Never before had Granddad Cairns talked to him like this, and done it awkward.

‘What I’m saying, Robbie… it’s for Lenny Grewcock, a big man… as big as any we know.’

‘Are you telling me not to cock it up?’

‘Well, you know…’

He saw his grandfather squirm. Granddad Cairns didn’t approve – as Robbie knew – of violence. He went pale at the sight of blood and had nearly fainted only a few weeks back when a bus, going along Lower Road – at the end of Albion Street – had hit a cat. Robbie didn’t expect advice about the work he took on once the payment had been agreed. He had no worries about spilled blood and didn’t welcome what was close to interference, but it was his grandfather… He had never ‘cocked it up’ and he bridled. ‘You look after your side, and I’ll do mine.’

‘I just wanted to say that-’

‘Say it once more, Granddad, then don’t say it again.’

‘Because of who it’s for… Lenny Grewcock. A good friend and a bloody awful enemy. Please, just tell me it’ll be your best effort.’

‘When wasn’t it?’

His grandfather shrugged and lines cut the tired old face. Robbie always produced ‘a best effort’: it was why he was wanted and hired. The fee to be paid was ten thousand sterling and there would be extras on top. He had a name and a location, but nothing more. Robbie didn’t know why this man had been marked out. A teacher at the school in Rotherhithe had once read a story to them and quietened the whole class with it. A guy called Billy Bones had been given – by a blind old beggar – a black spot, which meant he was condemned. All the class had liked that story, boys and girls, and it had the hope of treasure in it, but Robbie had enjoyed best the part where the sheet of paper with a black spot was put into Billy Bones’s hand and he had known he was marked for death. He didn’t know what Harvey Gillot had done that had put the paper with the spot into his hand. Didn’t matter whether he knew or not. Ten thousand pounds was on the table, with extras.

‘When’ll you go?’

‘When I’m ready, Granddad.’

‘You do understand?’

‘Could you let it go, Granddad? Could you wrap it?’ Now there was an edge in his voice and he saw the old man shrink from him. It was almost as if his grandfather was afraid of him. Robbie slipped an arm loosely on the old man’s shoulders, squeezed and felt no flesh. Then he had turned and was gone. Didn’t know where to go: Leanne was having her hair done, Vern was down at the arches where the little lock-up garages were and vehicles had their identity changed, and Barbie was on in-house training in the store. He wandered up Swan Street, drifted until he came to the river and found a bench close to a statue of a man and a boy, something to do with ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ but he didn’t know who they were or what they’d done, and he had a view of London Bridge. He liked it… sort of reassuring, and he had that feeling of being where he belonged, on his own ground. Truth was, Robbie was restless, near to pissed off, because his grandfather had gone so far as to suggest that he might cock it up. He never had, never would.

The price for the man who would kill, Josip said, was ten thousand euros. He shifted clumsily from foot to foot. Tomislav’s opinion was encouraging but of little importance set against Mladen’s decision. The word of the village’s leader had greater significance than any other man or woman’s.

Mladen sniffed. ‘Ten thousand euros for the man we hire. Why do you tell me we must raise twenty thousand?’

They were on the veranda of the cafe in the heart of the village, near to the half-rebuilt church. Down the road, Josip could see that Tomislav sat alone on his porch, his dog on his lap. He could hear the drone of Petar’s tractor from the field behind the church. Beyond Tomislav there was a splutter as Andrija started the motor of a petrol-driven mower. Everyone knew that Andrija’s wife had nearly broken his finger when she had prised it out of the grenade’s ring.

Josip said that a man in London would take a cut of their money for finding the one who would shoot… and the man in London had been contacted by another in Hamburg. The Hamburg connection was from Poland, had originated in Greece, and the link to Athens was from Serbs who had come to Ilok, but future arrangements and payments would be through Zagreb for convenience and secrecy. All of them, Josip told Mladen, required payment for the introductions they had made. Mladen had little affection for Josip, who had not stayed and fought. He knew that he himself could not have found a man to carry out a contract.

‘How do we raise twenty thousand euros?’

Josip said that the veterans could take loans from the bank. ‘They would give us loans to pay for it?’

Josip said that the veterans had the best pensions so loans would be available.

Mladen turned away, scraping his chair on the boards. He could not now back off. He would not dare to face the Widow, Maria, Andrija’s wife, and tell them that too much money was wanted. He had the largest pension, with the best disability supplement, and would pay the most. Neither could he have told his son, Simun, that the price of revenge was too great.

‘Get me more coffee.’

He would not have admitted to any form of entrapment in the past. Later, perhaps in an hour, Petar would return to his yard with his tractor and would walk down to the cafe. Tomislav would come, listen and not contribute, and Andrija’s mower would fall silent and he would be there.

His coffee was brought. Mladen said at what time he was prepared to go to Vukovar, and Josip left him. He and his comrades talked of the skirmishes when the village’s defences had held, but they had never spoken of the last hours, when the line had been holed. Then, those who had the strength took to the rotted corn and attempted to crawl through the enemy to Nustar. He was now, in his fiftieth year, a big man with a bulging gut that many of the village women considered magnificent, and a shock of silver hair. He could exert authority through his physique and with the ability of his eyes to pierce an opponent’s resolve. The story of his son’s survival was legendary in the village.

With the snow of winter still on the ground, the baby had been conceived. His wife’s belly had been huge when the road into the village had been cut and she had refused – as many did – to use the Cornfield Road. The baby, Simun, was born in the crypt under the church. The mother needed medical intervention, could not have it. Neither could she have drugs to kill infection: there were none. Mladen’s wife had been buried in the night, few there because the Cetniks had probed the lines. They had charged twice and been driven back.

On the last evening, when it was obvious to all that the village would be overrun at dawn, Mladen had gone down the steps under the church. He had taken Simun from the makeshift cradle and swaddled him against the cold. He had wrapped the bundle in a camouflage tunic and had made a carry-cot with ropes and canvas. None would go with him into the corn: the baby would cry and the Cetniks would find them. He had gone alone.

The inner security door opened and a youngish man came into the room. He held out a hand. ‘Mr Gillot, thank you for coming. I’m DS Roscoe, Mark Roscoe. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.’

He had been waiting ten minutes, almost eleven, and Roscoe would have known it because it was almost eleven minutes since the desk had telephoned to announce his arrival. At least he wasn’t asked if he’d been comfortable: the leatherette of the bench was holed and had no cushion, the flooring was scuffed, the sun burned against the outer window and the graffiti on the walls had been scrubbed unsuccessfully. Not the entrance that would be used by county councillors coming to visit senior officers, or chums from Rotary, but where those on bail clocked in. Harvey Gillot was confused.

‘If you could please follow me, Mr Gillot.’

They went down a corridor. Gillot had had little to do with police stations, dealt with the military at bases and the ministry, but had never supplied the police forces with gear. Neither had he been investigated nor entered a station to lodge a complaint. There was a bustle in the offices with open doors off the corridor but he sensed that people eyed him as if word of his visit was already abroad. He had dressed, as if for a business meeting, in a suit, quiet and severe, with a soft blue shirt and a conservative blue-base tie. He had brushed his hair carefully in the car. He reckoned Roscoe ten years younger than himself, same height but two and a half stone lighter and without flab. Hair not done, jacket creased, and the shirt had the look of second-day use. The tie did not co-ordinate with the jacket, the shirt or the face, and was loosened at the neck. Gillot hadn’t slept badly, had been on the other side of the bed from his wife, but the sergeant might have slept on the floor or not slept at all. They went into an interview room.

Did he want tea or coffee? He shook his head. Water? Declined.

The chair offered him had metal tubing and a canvas seat. Between them was a table and on it a folder and a couple of biros. The window was barred and the ceiling light had mesh over it.

Gillot smiled gently. ‘So that there are no misunderstandings, the timing of this meeting is at your convenience, not mine.’

‘And I’m grateful, Mr Gillot, for your co-operation. I hope the inconvenience is not too great – but there are things best not said on the phone. Just some things to get straight first…’ A sheet of paper was taken from the file. It looked, upside-down to Gillot, like a form of the type filled in for membership of a golf club or an insurance policy. ‘You are Harvey Gillot, of Lulworth View, Portland?’ He nodded. He entered the information in a scrawl of biro. And, yes, his wife was Josie and Fiona was his daughter. His date of birth was written in, and its place.

The young man looked up. ‘Your blood group? Do you know it, Mr Gillot?’

The biro was poised. He thought the question was designed to shock him. He didn’t gulp, hid it.

It was a cheap old trick, but it usually gained the target’s attention. Roscoe reckoned it was class of Gillot not to react: no wet tongue slid over dry lips, and the eyes didn’t drop.

‘My blood group is AB positive.’

‘Thank you.’ He tried a smile, didn’t do it well. ‘You’re an arms trader by occupation, Mr Gillot?’

‘I do buy and sell. Is there a problem with that?’

‘Not as far as I’m concerned. As long as everything’s legal. Right, getting to the point. Have you worked in Croatia?’

He was a good detective. Superiors told Mark Roscoe he was quality. If he hadn’t been, he would never have made it to the Flying Squad and then to the covert crowd he was with. He recognised that the question he posed had set the mind of Harvey Gillot spinning, flywheel speed. A flicker of eyelids, a short intake of breath, a little tightening of the shoulders. If he had taken to boxing he would have called it a good left jab – not a hook but a jab that had landed. ‘I’ve never sold weapons, munitions, to a Croatian client. May I ask the relevance of that question?’

‘Not done business there, correct? But been there?’

Another pause, fractional. ‘I was there briefly, but it was a long time ago. Nineteen years. Don’t ask me details. Tell you what, Mr Roscoe, can you say where you were in November 1991 and be exact?’ The charm flashed. The sort of smile that would have sold a mobile phone that wasn’t needed, a new carpet or car – maybe an artillery howitzer.

‘No way. I have a memory like a sieve. I was thirteen and worrying, no doubt, about blackheads.’ He chuckled. ‘So, we have this right. You were in Croatia around November 1991, but didn’t do business there. You were not an arms dealer trading with the Croats when the existence of the new state was under threat. Is that a fair summary?’

‘May I ask again, Mr Roscoe, what is the relevance?’

Not arrogant, not bullshitting him. Roscoe read the caution in the question. ‘With your answers, and of course I accept them, I have a confusion.’

‘A “confusion”?’

Roscoe took a deep breath, but when he spoke it was without theatre. ‘You’re an arms dealer, Mr Gillot, but you haven’t worked in Croatia and haven’t done business there. We get information from many sources. What I’m currently holding is information from the Security Service, but they are – in this case – merely the messenger. We assume the information, I suppose I should call it intelligence, originated from Vauxhall Bridge Cross. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d expect you to know all about them.’

A tightening of the jaw muscles, a narrowing of the eyes, and the tongue was on the lips, going right to left, but composure didn’t slip. Roscoe assumed that an arms dealer would be to VBX what a chis was to him: a packet of fags – use them, finish them, throw away the packet.

And he did it as a high-street bank manager might have explained that a customer was a little overdrawn – not a repossession matter, not going to bring in the bailiffs. ‘It’s quite hard to put it together, Mr Gillot, because you have no business connection with Croatia… Sources available to Vauxhall Bridge Cross have come through with information that a contract has been taken out on your life. Can’t sugar that one. A hitman – vulgar phrase but the one we use – is, if the reports are to be believed, under contract or will be imminently.’

No answer, but Roscoe thought a sweat bead was forming on the forehead just below the hairline, and there might be another. He’d give it to the guy: eleven out of ten for control. Impressive.

‘We’re not flush with information. Well, scraps from the table. The contract has been taken out by what is described to us as a “community”. It is also indicated that the carrying out of the contract is still probably in the planning stage. What “community” means, I really don’t know but…’ He let his voice tail away. What had he expected from the man whose trade Penny Laing had described as ‘loathsome’? He’d probably thought there would be shock, some bluster, and a patter about ‘there must be some mistake’. There was not. Tell a man that a gang of people on the other side of Europe had hired a hitman and imply that he’s going to come up close with a Luger, a Walther, a Mauser or a Baikal, and it was fair to expect panic and hyper-ventilation but there was silence across the table. Gillot seemed to tilt his head back as if that would help him think better and recall his memory.

With a flick of a smile Gillot said quietly, almost a whisper, ‘You call it a “community” but it’s a village. The contract will have been taken by a village.’

‘Where?’

Roscoe thought Gillot talked like a sleep-walker.

‘I never went there, but I was told it was close to a town called Vukovar. There is, I suppose, between the people there and me, what might be called an issue.’

They had paused for a few moments on the open square, with marble slabs that ran on the west side by the Vuka river, close to where it flowed into the Danube. There was a statue near to them of the dead President Franjo Tudjman – some said he was the founder of the new, free, independent Croatia, and others claimed he was the traitor who had sacrificed Vukovar, its defenders, and the people of the villages on the Cornfield Road. They huddled around Mladen. Josip insinuated himself into the huddle and told them what they should say and how much they should ask for. The group broke apart.

Andrija, with Maria beside him, went to the Banco Popolare on Strossmeyer.

Tomislav, holding his dog on its string, walked inside the Slavonska Banka next to the ruin of the Grand Hotel.

Petar, accompanied by his deaf wife, went past the armed security guard and into the Croatia Banka.

Mladen had Simun at his shoulder as they pushed through the swing doors of the Privredna Banka Zagreb.

And flitting between them, the broker of the deals, Josip, was advising, prompting and reassuring. They were all veterans and could show their disability allowance cards. All had the security of their pensions for heroism and service in the struggle to liberate their country. The pensions were collateral against a loan they might want to take out. In each bank, a manager asked to what purpose the loan would be put. Andrija wished to purchase a ticket to Australia to visit cousins. Tomislav wanted to buy a motor car with an automatic gearbox. Petar wished to hire builders who would construct for him and his handicapped wife a new kitchen. Mladen and his son had the chance to invest in a picture gallery in Osijek where his own work could be sold and that of other veterans of the war of independence. For such men, in Vukovar, there would be little bureaucratic delay. Papers were produced, the numbers from pension books and disability forms noted, signatures recorded. Each was loaned the kuna equivalent of five thousand euros. A total of twenty thousand euros was guaranteed. It had been done as Josip said it should be.

Mladen led them back towards the car park beside the bus station for their journey home as the light failed and the gaunt corners of buildings still unrepaired from shellfire cut the evening sky.

He left through the same door. Roscoe had shaken his hand, a strong grip. He walked quickly to his car, back erect. He thought they would be watching him from vantage-points and might even have changed windows to see him go to the far side of the car park. Who loved an arms dealer? Nobody. Nobody Loves Us and We Don’t Care: an anthem of the backers of a Polish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, the chant of an east London football team’s supporters. It applied also to the brokers of weapons. They would want, from the upper windows of the Weymouth police station, to see his shoulders droop. He reached his car, flashed the zapper, got in, belted up and drove away. He didn’t give them a backward glance. He headed for the main road that would take him back to the causeway and across it. Then he would climb high on to his refuge island.

How long had he been waiting? A hell of a long time. Too damn long.

His home would be empty except for the dog. Daughter at school, and Josie had said she would be in London all day. She had gone early and would be back in the evening, laden with Regent Street bags. He would be there on his own: he could reflect on a meeting at the docks in Rijeka and a bagful of junk that had been dumped a long time ago.

The detective, civil enough, blunt, not pussying around, had asked: ‘The issue between you and this village, Mr Gillot, would it be enough for them to want you dead nearly twenty years later? To pay to have you dead?’

He’d shrugged. It was slow going out of Weymouth behind towed caravans, and he sensed that tempers were fraying around him. Heh, you think it’s hell to be stuck in traffic for a few minutes? he thought. He was an ‘alone’ man, didn’t want to share and didn’t need to. He was a pariah. Clear as neat gin that the detective was weighing what he said and trying in his head to work out a threat assessment. Roscoe had told him he would be heading back to London and that there would be another meeting of the Gold Group. Afterwards, the best advice on offer would be given. A caravan and a taxi had shunted. No injuries, just argument.

He had only asked two questions. First, he had almost grinned, how much would it cost to have him slotted? ‘Depends who they go for,’ the detective had answered. ‘Digging deep in their piggy-banks, they’ll be looking to put ten K euros in a top man’s hand. If they’re doing economy class it might be as little as two K, but whether he’s an expert with a reputation or cut price and on the climb, he’s also going to be listing expenses, and there’ll be middle men looking for a cut. Depends what sort of village it is, how wealthy.’

He had asked, second, where the village would find the man. ‘Not a Croat, not a chance,’ Roscoe had answered. He’d thought the detective appreciated the chance to show off a little expertise. ‘A big cocaine dealer was taken out in Liverpool and all the newspaper talk was of foreign assassins flying in and out, but the hitman had to wait in a doorway opposite a gym where the target worked out. Can’t be a foreigner – voice and clothes would be a giveaway. If it’s true, the village, the people there, have to get a line into what’s available for hire in UK.’

‘I’ll hear from you,’ he’d said.

‘You’ll hear from me, Mr Gillot, when I’ve talked with colleagues. We’re able to put things in place quite quickly. It’s what we do,’ Roscoe had said, and had passed him a business card with a mobile number pencilled on the back. ‘Any time, use it.’ Then the handshake, and then he’d walked.

Harvey Gillot, wondering what he would find, drove home.

A team had arrived that would work for one week of that summer month with the professor. They were students of forensic anthropology from a department of the University of Vienna, and came with their scalpels, brushes, trowels, folders of aerial photographs and ground-probing radar gear. They brought tents, too, and a mobile cookhouse, and seemed to think themselves blessed to spend a week with William Anders. They had made a base camp behind a line of trees that shielded them from the memorial to the victims of Ovcara.

‘No community here is more guilty than another,’ Steyn said.

Anders could have kicked him into his car and told him to drive back to Vukovar. It was, for Anders, one of the pleasures of his life that he came each year – in the heat of summer – to search for the remaining sixty who had been butchered near to the storage sheds of the collective farm and buried away from the main pit where the two hundred cadavers had been recovered. It gave him, this annual reunion, a sense of purpose that rewarded him after many of the real shit places he went: Mexico and the work of the drug cartels was bad now, and there was heavy work in central Africa still, but the search for the last grave at Ovcara, the company of the Austrian students and their lecturers, was a boost to his ego and seemed worthwhile.

Steyn said, ‘Blame a Serb and he’ll talk to you of what happened at Jasenovac camp in 1942. Brzica, a guard, won a bet among his colleagues and slit the throats of one thousand three hundred and sixty prisoners with a short-bladed knife in one day. He was a Croat.’

The Vukovar water tower was in the far distance, on the skyline, with the last light on it, and the students threw long shadows as they finished the day’s work. That evening Anders would drink a bottle of Ilok wine and sit with them. There was a woman lecturer among them who

… He knew all the stories and case histories that Daniel Steyn recycled each year but he didn’t begrudge him the chance of an ear to bend. The statistics of Jasenovac were disputed among partisan historians: maybe a half-million Serbs died there at Croatian hands, and maybe it was no more than sixty thousand. And Steyn would tell him that Serb Orthodox priests were hurled over cliffs to die on the rocks below, and the people of Glina were herded into a church, the doors barricaded and the building fired.

‘I’m saying, Bill, that brutality and evil are not a prerogative of one side. There’s equal blame, equal guilt.’

For the last two hours of the day’s work, Steyn had been sitting in long grass, watching them. He had only interrupted the quiet when they packed up for the day. Anders thought the doctor poor company, but a peddler of truths and therefore not to be dismissed.

‘There’s no sense of reconciliation, Daniel?’

He heard the snort of derision. ‘Can’t be reconciliation. Croats won’t apologise for what they did alongside the Nazis, and Serbs won’t for what they did here. Nothing’s forgiven, forgotten.’

‘Should we care?’

‘If we don’t, no other bastard will.’ Steyn laughed, Anders joined him, and they went to the food tent for the first beer of the evening. The sun dipped on fine rich countryside, on fields that showed good crops of corn and sunflowers, and where the grapes ripened well. Behind Anders’ back there were trees and behind them the site of a mass grave. There were times here when he struggled to find logic. And he couldn’t explain the travelling belt on which the cycle of killing moved, at slow speed but with a treadmill’s inevitability… as if there was a demand for it, insatiable.

There were inter-Service rivalries – that was why the young woman, Penny Laing, from the Alpha team of Revenue and Customs had been so scratchy after the police-dominated Gold Group meeting – but they were minor when set against the cold shoulders on offer from one police force to another. Roscoe recognised the antipathy, and would have been blind and deaf if he hadn’t.

Well, they were yokels down here, peasants and cousin-daters, so they resented the arrival of a detective sergeant from a specialist crowd up in the smoke. The coffee offered him had been foul, the water was warm in the bottle he’d been given and the room they’d made available was below the ranking of ‘nothing special’. He thought it was out-of-order treatment. He’d been handed a slip of paper as he’d stood in the lobby to watch Gillot, his Tango, drive away. A local honcho wanted to see him.

He was expected to debrief the locals on his intelligence, the probability or possibility of an attack on their territory. He answered questions with studied vagueness that verged on insubordination. Couldn’t do anything else. Didn’t know, did he? Mark Roscoe was afloat, but in deep water. He did not know whether the threat to Harvey Gillot was probable or possible, or merely a concoction of half-truths, whispers and rumours. The local big man had silver on his epaulettes and an air-conditioned office that enabled him to sit in full regalia at his desk. He had looked pretty damn pissed off when he was told that the risk assessment had not yet been completed.

He had spoken to Harvey Gillot of a man who was ‘expert, with a reputation’ or ‘cheap and on the climb’.

Roscoe quit the police station, a modern eyesore that left, he thought, a footprint of ugliness on the town. In his car, on the way to the main road and then the link to the motorway, he thought what a goddamn backwater this was. It came, like a kick in the shin, that it was the sort of place where Harvey Gillot, with an unresolved issue from long ago, would choose to live. Roscoe would have said the odds stacked against him were pretty manageable if the contract was underfunded. Different if it was backed with money to burn. The dump they had retrieved from beside a fireplace, in a cupboard and under the flooring, had been low grade. The hit in the Tottenham area – no witnesses, a targeted man who would have been aware of the risk, killed without that three seconds of suspicion – had been high grade. His team didn’t get to hear about high-grade people, only reached the crime scene in time to pick up the bodies.

‘Of course no one used it, Megs. Cop on.’ She had in front of her the morning’s broadsheets and tabloids, and had gutted each one for coverage of her press release. She had flipped channels between TV breakfast shows and had half listened to radio news stations. She had found, seen, heard no reference to her work. It had taken nearly three months to prepare. There were photographs of kids dead on dirt roads and more kids holding AKs and RPGs, but the name of Planet Protection was nowhere. She had rung a friend – sweet man and bent as a corkscrew – who had always been good with her material. ‘Not even one fucking paragraph. For Christ’s sake, Giles, not one.’

‘I did what I could. No one in Editorial wanted to suck it.’

‘Did you shout and stamp?’

‘Megs, I pushed as hard as I could. What I’m saying, it needed some balls. No balls and no spice means no coverage. Are you going to hate me, Megs?’

‘Might just cut your tongue out.’

‘My features editor said there was nothing new from the last Amnesty release, and the news editor said your statistics didn’t count too much against the “mood of the day”. The editor said – this is the evening meeting – that people in the UK today have their own problems, like bankruptcy, being out of work and losing their homes. Megs, you want coverage, you’ve got to spice it up and give us some balls – balls. Are you listening to me?’

‘Hearing you. Look, it’s been a pretty foul day for me. Want to take me for a meal tonight?’

A pause… He wasn’t exactly jumping. Then, ‘Really sorry, Megs, but I’m on an extra roster tonight. Can’t do it.’

He had average expenses for a hack. Usually when she invited herself they managed a trattoria, and mended the world over pasta and a litre of plonk. She’d let her hand rest on his thigh under the table. In spite of his orientation he didn’t seem to mind, and they were good mates. She could have done with a meal, a freebie, and there was damn all in her purse. ‘Are you telling me my research is boring? Would that be an apt description of me, my work?’

He surged. ‘Megs, I love you and I admire you – your enthusiasm and dedication. What you’re doing, campaigning against the international arms trade, is pretty near the lowest level of everybody’s priorities. Dealers are nasty people, merchants of death, bad people, traffickers in misery – but where? Not at the end of my street, not in my factory and not in my office. You have to liven your act up, Megs, then come back to me. Sorry I can’t do a meal tonight. Take care.’

The phone went dead in her ear. She swept up the day’s papers, cleared them off her desk, carried them to the big black bag that hung from a hook and dumped them. She felt fucking miserable, as if she’d been kicked.

Then Megs Behan dug in her cabinet and tugged out a file: Harvey Gillot.

She looked for a photograph. A devil in a good suit. A monster in a laundered shirt. It was a two-year-old image, and there was no smile as he passed the protest line, as if the people behind the crash barrier and the police cordon didn’t exist. Where would she find the spice, the balls?

‘You said, Dermot, that we needed results for Alpha team to survive.’ Penny Laing stood with her feet apart, arms akimbo.

‘Something like that.’

‘I’ll do it verbatim. You said: “We are a natural target for budget slicing. To survive we need collars felt, court cases convened and sentences passed.”’

‘And if that’s what I said-’

‘The passing of years doesn’t diminish the guilt of criminality.’

‘Correct.’

‘There was, in Croatia, a desperate need for weapons or independence would go down the drain. There was a UN embargo on selling weapons to the country and it was a dealer’s free-for-all, Christmas come early. The town of Vukovar was on the rack, and a deal to sell weapons at that time would have been illegal – an offence – and could be prosecuted. Dermot, if we believe that pillock Roscoe, we have to accept that Harvey Gillot was there and intending to trade. It’s where to start.’

‘Vukovar is “where to start”? You’re suggesting?’

‘We go there, build a case. Have to start in Vukovar or, to be more exact, a village outside it. We need it, Dermot.’

‘You’re talking about haemorrhaging the team’s budget. I have to decide whether the time and effort are worthwhile, the cost and-’

‘The cost is minimal.’

‘But there’s the time and the effort.’

‘It’ll be worthwhile or we sink, Dermot. Are we serious people or do we just shuffle paper? He’s a good target, as good as any. We need to push our investigation into Gillot’s past, dig there with a bloody pickaxe. We can keep the expense to a minimum. Come on, Dermot, go for it.’

‘A successful prosecution – I won’t argue, we need that.’ He tilted back his chair, and would have been aware that the others in the team, nine of them, had abandoned their screens to watch him. Penny thought he liked an audience. His hands came up, palms together – in prayer pose. His words were now slightly muffled, but still distinct. ‘Contracts to kill, in my experience, arise when a debt is not paid, an agreement is broken, one party reneges. Each gangland killing in Manchester, Glasgow, London or down on the Costa is less about territory and more about retribution for a deal not honoured. I venture that Harvey Gillot is believed by the people of this village to have broken a deal. I suppose we have to hope that the hitman – if he exists – moves at a steady, snail-like pace towards the target, and that we might just gather enough evidence to warrant an arrest. Brilliant.’

Penny Laing basked. She imagined a beleaguered garrison, a dependence on weapons coming through, the resupply of ammunition, a deal done and… She had seen, on field trips out of Kinshasa, the aftermath of combat.

Her team leader let his eyes float over the others around the big central table. He would have been weighing whose work was important and whose could go on to a back-burner. He gestured. ‘Asif, would you please go with Penny? First thing tomorrow… Yes, I know the problem, but it’ll be less than a week away. Make arrangements, please, Penny, to turn over the embers of that village. Skewer him, please. Skewer Harvey Gillot.’

He sat in an easy chair. A table light in the hall and the porch lights were on, but in the living room he preferred darkness and the curtains were open at the picture windows. Harvey Gillot nursed a cut-class tumbler that had been refilled twice. He could see out over the east shoreline of the island.

Much of his life passed through his mind. There was moonlight on the sea and enough wind for tiny white scrapes to be whipped up. The dog slept near his feet. Below him the waves rippled on the rocks at either side of the narrow Church Ope Cove, but he couldn’t see them. Away to his left, just visible, was the ruined tower of Rufus Castle. Shards of light fell on old scaffolding. Childhood? Hardly worth thinking about. Only kid in the road who had won entry to the Royal Grammar School. Shunned by most in his class because his Stoughton accent clashed with those from Merrow, Shalford or Wonersh. Didn’t embrace the middle-class attitudes of the herd, but also rejected the pride, obstinacy, of his father’s blue-collar roots: the post office supervisor who wore a tie and a white shirt to work after twenty years’ service. No hobbies. Where had he been happiest? Happiness, as he had known it, was in a cafe near the gates of the barracks. Squaddies came there and tolerated a twelve-year-old sitting near them, hanging on their words about weapons they test-fired. He’d read the Jane’s books on infantry weapons and armoured vehicles and was a walking encyclopedia on military gear. The squaddies had tolerated him enough to take him to one of the Aldershot ranges to watch live firing. That experience had been the thrill of his life. It had been a hell of a bad day when the barracks had closed, the soldiers had left and the cafe had shut its door.

Had wanted work, not college. His first boss was Ray Bridge, who had chided him for lack of ambition in not furthering his education. That had been a week before he was sent with the catalogue of office gear to Solly Lieberman’s place. More thoughts drifted. There was a ferry, white-painted, the moon’s light latching on to it, ploughing at pace towards Weymouth, its cabins and passenger rooms ablaze with colour. Four months afterwards he had ditched his job selling stationery. He had sent Ray Bridge a postcard from Peshawar, North West Frontier, up in the hills from the Pakistan capital, Islamabad. Dear Ray, Thought you would like to know that I am getting on well. Many opportunities here for selling, but not much demand for stationery. All best wishes, Harvey (Herbert) Gillot. Had chuckled when he had posted it in the lobby of Green’s Hotel, and now managed a croak-laugh as he sipped his drink and watched the ferry glide on. Doubted that Ray Bridge – who would now be knocking on eighty if his toes hadn’t curled – would have equated ambition with a contract taken out.

In Peshawar, with Solly Lieberman, he had learned how to move on Blowpipe ground-to-air missiles and get them into the hands of the hairy bastards, our best friends of the day, who were fighting the Russians, our best enemies of the day. Some were bought by Saudis, others by Pakistani intelligence people, and more had been neither bought nor sold but were the property of Benjie Arbuthnot, who was deniable, a station officer, God incarnate, the possessor of the biggest short-wave radio Harvey Gillot had ever seen and limitless supplies of Black Bush. Solly Lieberman had organised the traffic of those MANPADS so that the big man had clean hands. The money was good and it was irrelevant that the man-portable air defence system of the Blowpipe was next to useless, that the mujahideen couldn’t score hits with it – they were hardly going to when, two years earlier, the guys down in the South Atlantic had let off ninety and achieved two strikes, one of which was a friendly. He’d never seen a man drink what Benjie Arbuthnot put away. And Harvey Gillot was being paid good money. He carried Solly Lieberman’s bags and ran his laundry for him – and might just have wiped his butt if he’d been asked to. Those had been the start of the good days.

Yes, it had been his intention to tell Josie that evening about a problem, what he had told the policeman was an issue. Couldn’t.

There had been a message on the answerphone. She’d be late. There was a supper dish in the freezer and it would microwave. No explanation of where she was, why she was out late, who, if anyone, she was with. Would he see that the horse had its nutrients? He had no close friend on the Isle of Portland, no one to sit with and pour a share of the Scotch or Irish. Harvey Gillot was not well-read. He knew nothing of Thomas More and his fate half a millennium before, but he knew of the words that that saintly man had written in the year before his execution at the hands of an axeman. Perhaps the intelligence was flawed. Perhaps there was no contract, and no hitman had been hired. Perhaps no shadows wavered beyond the throw of the porch lights. More had written: A drowning man will catch at straws. He filled his glass again. The wind had come up and whipped the branches. He heard the clatter of a plant pot falling outside on the patio and rolling.

He expected he would need to refill the glass a third or a fourth time, rare for him. He listened for, but didn’t hear, the crunch of her car’s tyres on the gravel of the drive and cursed her for not being there.

Harvey Gillot could remember it all so well. He understood why a contract was taken and a man would be paid to kill. He didn’t know if he would sleep.

Загрузка...