The Untouchable

Chapter Twelve

He heard the knock on the door over the noise of the shower. It was the time the laundry usually came back. He shouted from the bathroom that he would be a moment. He was towelling himself dry. He could have asked the maid to leave the laundry outside the door, but he'd also given her his shoes for cleaning, and he wanted to thank her and tip her when she returned them. Mister fastened one towel around his waist and looped a second over his shoulders, picked up loose change from the desk and went to the door. I le opened it and reached out his hand with the fist of coins.

'I surprise you… ' She rolled her eyes. 'I apologize.'

'Miss Holberg – I thought you were the maid.' He blushed.

'Forgive me.'

He saw the sparkle in her face, its cleanness, and the fun in her. 'I'm not in a state to receive a distinguished visitor.'

'It is wrong of me not to have telephoned from Reception. I did not because I am devious, and I thought it would provide you with an opportunity to refuse me.'

She said that the next morning the VIP visitors would go to the village of Visnjica. It was a one-hour drive from the city. She would be honoured if he would agree to accompany her. She understood that he was shy of personal publicity and that she both respected and admired this. His name would not be given to the visitors or to the villagers, but he would have the opportunity to see for himself the value of his generosity in bringing the Bosnia with Love lorry to Sarajevo. It was to be an important day for her and it would be further fulfilled if he would accompany her – assuming, of course, that he did not have more important business in the city. She hoped very much that he could accept.

'I'd like that,' Mister said. 'I'm flattered. I'm delighted to accept.'

She said she would pick him up in the morning, told him what he should wear – not towels, her laughter gently mocking him – and wished him a good evening.

A minute after she'd gone, the maid brought his laundry and his dried, polished shoes. He whistled as he dressed. It was all compartments. He forgot the Princess, his wife, and in a compartment further recessed in his mind was the man who should have been killed on the grass beside the pavement.

'You no longer have the mentality of a Customs officer.'

'I wonder if I ever had it.'

'You have become a competitor,' the judge said drily.

'I am Joey Cann, the competitor who loses.'

They had brought him to their home. He had helped to push the chair across the bridge and up the steep hill between lines of apartment buddings wrecked by artillery, fire-gutted and covered by a rash of bullet holes. The narrow width of the road would have been the front line. There were no lights above them or in the open windows. They made their way by torch beam, shining it down in front of the chair's wheels so that they did not hit debris and jolt her, and he'd wondered how the judge pushed his daughter up that hill each evening. They had turned into a narrower street and he had seen a heavy concrete mass, what had been the front of the third floor of a block, hanging threateningly over them, but she hadn't looked up at it and neither had the judge. The beam had been aimed at a house. It was half a building, one storey, and half a ruin. A door and a window were intact. The left side of the house had fallen away.

Joey saw the snipped-off rafters, and wallpaper was exposed, still showing a pattern of pink flowers. The beam flickered on to three old pallets covered by a length of sheet metal to make a ramp for the chair.

When the door was opened he had stayed outside and emptied the beer from his bladder. He had gone inside. He had to talk and purge himself.

The room was lit with an oil lamp. The walls were dark with damp stains and cracks ran in the plaster.

There was a cooker attached by a pipe to a liquid-gas barrel, and a sink with clean plates on a draining-board. They had no refrigerator, and no electric fire.

There were worn rugs on bare boards. It was a place of penury. They gave him wine from an opened bottle and he sipped it sparingly because it tasted foul, because he did not need to drink more, because he thought it all they had to offer a guest. She never interrupted her father, but wheeled herself round the table to a cupboard and back, and filled a sandwich for him. He had been given a place on a sofa that was covered by a blanket and propped up by old books.

He thought the judge's need to speak was greater than his own.

The judge sat on a low bed. 'We live, Mr Cann, in an Olympic city. Citius, Altius, Fortius. But there was another motto of the Games. We read about it as we prepared ourselves to welcome the world. In 1908

London was the host. There was a service at your great cathedral, St Paul's, and the Bishop of Pennsylvania was invited to preach to the congre-gation. Sitting there, listening to the bishop, was the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin.

We are told that what de Coubertin heard thrilled him:

"The important thing in the Olympic Games is not so much to have been victorious as to have taken part."

Not every man can win.'

'I have been a loser enough times,' Joey said. He felt the cold around him, but it would have been rude for him, the guest, to shiver or pity himself. Till the summer, he thought, they would live in the house in their coats. 'I call him, I told you, Target One. He has been too many times a winner.'

'Am I a loser?'

Joey said simply, believed it, 'You are a man of dignity, you are not a loser.'

'And Jasmina, with a broken back? She has no mother. She has no carer but me. It is uncertain what is her future when I am dead. Is she a loser?'

'She has self-respect, she is not a loser.'

'May I tell you a story about what obsesses you, Mr Cann, a story of a winner and a loser?'

'I am in your home. You may tell me what you want.'

Jasmina gave him the sandwich. He did not know whether she wanted the story told or not. Her pale cheeks, sunken set eyes and her mouth, no lipstick, were without expression.

'The story has many characters, but at the end of it there was one winner and one loser… '

'Is it the story that is not to be told to a stranger – about blood?'

'That story, Mr Cann. I broke my rule on involvement, and you have told me that because of you my involvement may be known, and I should take precautions. Very frankly, few are possible… You should know why I became involved, helped you.'

'Please.' He strained to listen and to hold concentration against the waves of nausea.

'My wife, Maria, Jasmina's mother, was dead. She had a backroom administration post at the Bosnia Hotel, but when she was killed she was another mother and wife out in the streets and parks, scavenging. It had rained in the morning and she had come to the Jewish cemetery, near to here, to add to the snails she had collected. If you can find enough snails and take them out of their shells, and you can boil water, you can make soup. She was killed by a sniper's bullet. We had been married for twenty-one years. Jasmina was nineteen. My wife, Maria, was buried in the football pitch of the stadium. I could have left the city, but to turn your back on your wife's grave is, I promise you, difficult. I went on with my work as a teacher in law at the university. Jasmina, the only jewel left in my life, was my student. We managed. She had a boyfriend, Mirko, another of my students. A Serb, what we Muslims call a Cetnik. In the war, at first, it was possible for Serb men to remain in Sarajevo, but later it became hard, and soon it was impossible. There was hysteria, they were thought to be spies for the enemy. Jasmina and Mirko were in love, as I and her mother had been. They had pledged to spend their lives together, as we had. I blessed them. I said they should go, escape the madness.

'There was a telephone engineer who, before the war, I defended on a charge of killing while driving.

My defence was successful. He went free. He was a rogue, he should have gone to prison. He said that if he could ever repay me he would. The telephone link from the main PTT building was cut when the fighting started, but the engineer kept one line open to Grbavica. It was possible if you waited, and if you paid, to use the line. First you called and asked the Serb operator to pass a message, for the person you would speak with to come to the sub-exchange in Grbavica at a certain time on a certain day. The day came, the time, you spoke to them. The engineer is now a wealthy man, he does not have to work. Mirko, with my money, made the calls and asked relatives on that side to help him, if he came over, to leave the country. The guarantee was given. But how to go over?

'There was the tunnel at the airport. It was impossible to use it. The military had it, the government, and they rented it to the gangsters – to Caco, Celo and Serif. They paid two thousand DMs an hour to use it.

They brought in sugar, coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, everything for the black market, but between the military and the gangsters there was a stranglehold on the use of the tunnel. I heard there was one other way.

'I went to see Serif. It was an agony to me to go to see such a man. I have to say it was because I loved my child, and she loved her boy. He named the price.

Of course we did not have such money. The price was five thousand American dollars, for him, and three thousand American dollars for the gangsters on the other side. I sold everything I had that was of material and sentimental value, my wife's jewellery, the ring I had given her, and the ring she had given me, even the watch on my wrist that had been my father's, and a loan from relatives, and I mortgaged my pension.

Everything went to pay the thug for Jasmina's and Mirko's freedom.

'I remember the evening. I will never forget it. She took a small sports bag and Mirko had a little ruck-sack. It was all they owned. They had such confidence in a new world, their new life, away from the killing.

When we came near to the bridge I was told to stay back. I kissed them both. I saw Serif. She had the money, all we could raise, and she gave it him, and he seemed to sneer because it was so little to him, and so much to us. I heard him say to her that all the arrangements were made. They went away into the darkness.

They were to cross the Miljacka river at the Vrbanja bridge, it was the no man's land between the front lines. They were desperate, as I was, so we took on trust what we were told. I imagined every stride they took towards the bridge.

'I heard the shots. There were two long bursts of automatic gunfire, as if one for each of them. First it was Serif's men who held me back, then the police came, and they prevented me from going to the bridge. French troops came to the ends of the bridge but they would not go forward because, I heard it a week later, they considered it too dangerous. They were on the bridge, Jasmina and Mirko, through the night. At dawn, a Ukrainian army corporal drove by, and saw them. He walked onto the bridge. The French told him to stop but he refused. The Serbs on the other side told him to go back but he would not.

He brought them back, carried them one under each of his arms. I never learned his name, was never able to thank him. Their lives were saved in the Kosevo hospital. Mirko had stomach wounds, his shoulder was damaged and he cannot run. My Jasmina, my jewel, was paralysed.. . A year afterwards there was another shooting on the Vrbanja bridge, what the foreign pressmen called the Romeo and Juliet shooting when two similar lovers paid to cross, and they both died, were betrayed, but their bodies were on the bridge for many days, exposed to the elements and to the foreign TV. Everybody knows about them, but Jasmina and Mirko were only another statistic of the injured. You will want to know what happened to their romance… Mirko is now in Vienna and has studied to be an architect. We have no jewellery and my pension belongs to the bank.

'I took part, as the bishop said in London that I should. I lost, and Jasmina lost. Yes, Mr Cann, while she was in the hospital, while I did not know whether she would live or die, I went to visit Ismet Mujic -

Serif. He refused to return the money and refused to take responsibility for the betrayal. He said that if I came near him again or made trouble for him he would set his dogs on me, and that he would see to it I never worked again. He had that power. It is the symptom of the loser, you might find it hard to believe it of me, but for nine years I have cultivated a wish to be avenged. There is something in our faith that tells us, one day – however long in the future – the chance of vengeance comes. You walked, in your innocence, through my door. I told you that the man found in the r i v e r… '

'He was murdered,' Joey said, through the last mouthful of the sandwich. 'He was hit, then thrown over the bridge.'

'… was linked to Ismet Mujic – Serif. It was when I thought, for the first time in long years, that I could be the winner… Citius, Altius, Fortius… could run faster than him, jump higher, be stronger – could crush him. I discarded the mentality of a judge.'

'Threw off the uniform.' Joey drained the last of the wine in his glass.

'Became the competitor. Demanded to win.'

'It is very human, it is the way we are.'

'To gain respect for myself.'

'At the expense of charity – it is not a time for mercy.'

'It is a passion to me.'

Joey said, 'We learned about it at school. Shylock, the Jewish money-lender in The Merchant of Venice, said: "The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." 1 promise nothing but my best – that, at the end, it is we who are standing.'

Joey Cann left them, stumbled away down the street. He thought that a father would be helping a crippled daughter to prepare for bed. He fell twice but picked himself up and went on into the night. He was humbled. He crossed the bridge, where she had been shot and the dream had been lost, and headed towards the hotel. He heard his own words and wondered if they were just the beer's brave talk. He wore no uniform, the ID in his wallet he thought was worthless. If he was the loser he would not be left standing, for their sakes.

They ate off bone china. Mister was their honoured guest. His reputation had travelled with him from Green Lanes to Sarajevo.

The villa was on a hillside and faced west over the city. The introductions had been made in front of a blazing log fire. Serif and the men who had sat with him at the negotiations were there: the older man with his superior, announced as a brigadier in the intelligence agency, the younger man showing deference to his uncle, the politician. The villa was the politician's. If it had been damaged by war, repairs had been made: there was no sign of the war, only of the affluence, and the influence. Mister was not interested in the display of wealth, but while the talk eddied around him, he glanced at the photographs on one wall showing the politician, always wearing a quiet suit, meeting visitors to the city on the outside steps of buildings, cocooned in flak jackets and with military helmets on their heads. Serif did not speak but lounged in a carver chair at the end of a long oak table on which bounced reflections from the candles' flames. The politician and the brigadier spoke rarely, and conversation was maintained by the nephew and the junior officer. There was no small-talk. Mister listened, which was his talent, and he watched and learned, which was his skill. While he listened he looked to understand the relationship between Serif and the politician: if Serif were the subordinate he would have spoken, Mister thought. He assumed everything around him, the luxury of the furniture, the drapes, the paintings, the glasses on the table, the food served, came to the politician from Serif. He was told of a meeting that would take place in four or five days, where he would meet partners, and that invitations to them had been sent. He replied with a shrug that if the business were important he had the time to give. And he was told of a problem, and his help was asked, and he said that he was always anxious to help a friend in difficulty. He drank nothing… They would all have known of the death of the Cruncher, and he wondered which of them had sanctioned it, and which of them would suffer.

When they talked of the meeting he smiled at them, and smiled again when they told him of their problem. He thought he was at the top table, a player in the league where he wanted to be. He was alert, on guard, but he felt himself wallowing in self-induced satisfaction. He had arrived where he wanted to be.

The Eagle would be with him for the meeting, and Atkins could solve their problem.

He was treated with due respect, and that was precious to him.

Atkins came into the restaurant, which was empty but for the table where the Eagle sat. 'I thought I was late, but I've beaten him in.'

'Not joining us.'

'Where is he?'

'Been whisked away to dine with the great and the good.' The Eagle grimaced. 'I, thankfully, was not included in the invitation.'

'I thought I was late… Do you fancy something slightly better? There are decent restaurants in Sarajevo.'

'I've already ordered. You go off if you want to.'

But Atkins sat down and a waiter sprinted forward to offer him the menu – the same as the previous night, and the night before that, and

… He chose soup and the schnitzel, as he had the previous night, and the night before… He had been lying on his bed, without the light on, the curtains undrawn, in the gloom, and had been thinking, pondering, about the two or three inches by which he had missed the responsibility for the murder of a Customs officer.

'A good choice, what I'm having,' the Eagle said.

' W e l l… '

'Well what?'

'Who's going to tell him?'

'I don't follow you.'

'Who is going to tell him that it's time we quit?'

A liltle smile flickered on the Eagle's face. 'Quite a big speech.'

Atkins felt a reckless calm. 'Will you tell him?'

'I hadn't planned to.'

'Me? Do you leave it to me, the new boy on the block? We were guilty of attempted murder.'

The Eagle's open hands were up, as if to display the purity of innocence. 'I wasn't, you were. I don't recall driving the vehicle.'

'What's going to be asked of us next? How long are we stuck here? I didn't reckon on kicking my heels. In and out, that's what I thought. Christ knows what's next on his list for us.'

'Then you should tell him you've had enough.'

'Would you back me?' Atkins hissed across the table.

'That is a very difficult question.'

'Are you with me or against me?'

The Eagle's lips pursed, the answer was whispered.

'In principle, with you.'

'Damn you… Not fucking "principle". For me or against?'

'I would have to say that I'm beginning to feel we have overstayed the very limited welcome shown to us. Do I have work in London that would better employ me? Yes. Would I prefer to be at home and eating my dinner quietly? Yes. Would I pick a fight with Mister, rubbish his ideas, at the moment he believes he stands on the threshold of triumph? That poses a difficult question. I know how difficult.'

'Are you always this fucking spineless?'

The Eagle smiled the same sad, tired smile. 'I doubt you've seen him crossed. It is not a pleasant sight. I am told that grown men, confronted with a view of it, are prone to lose control of their bladders. It's fatuous to refer to "spine". I walk out on him, or you do, or we both do, and where do we go? Home? To our loved ones? Back to living our lives without him, and without his money? He has a long arm. Do we live in the company of a battalion of paratroops? You'd be in a gutter, I'd be down on a pavement, in blood, in pain.

He always hurts first, it's the message he likes to send.'

Atkins, not play-acting, said simply, 'I'm frightened.'

'Aren't we all?'

'I'm being sucked down, so are you. Will you back me, support me? A clear answer.'

'There is rarely a right moment to gainsay Mister.

If such a moment arises, yes. That moment is not now. Do you think we can try to enjoy our meal?'

The waiter brought the soup. The vegetables floating in it, carrot and celery, leek and parsnip, had all been sliced into small pieces. Atkins gazed at them and wondered at the sharpness of the knife that had cut them.

The computers had the power to dig into the registrations of births, property sales, electoral rolls, income-tax returns, council-tax lists and telephone numbers. The trace was done by SQG8 and handed to Dougie Gough.

'You can go home now,' Gough said. 'I appreciate you staying on.'

'Home' for SQG8 was a single room in a guest-house behind King's Cross terminus, far from her husband and kids in the Manchester suburbs. He dismissed her because he did not wish his call to be overheard. He trusted nobody, not even those he had picked with his own hand. He never quoted it to a second person, but Dougie Gough lived as a senior investigation officer on the maxim of an Irish judge who had said, in 1790: 'The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.'

John Philpot Curran had spoken for him.

He thought it a reasonable assumption that a young woman in terror would not have run to a work friend or a college colleague, but to her mother.

The track through the computer's records by SQG8 gave him the telephone number of the parents of Jennifer Martin. He waited until the room was empty, then dialled. The message sifting in his mind should not be shared.

'Could I speak to Miss Jennifer Martin, please? I do apologize for disturbing you at this late hour. Is she reluctant to take my call, could you tell her that it is Douglas Gough and that I run the team – Sierra Quebec Golf – for which Joey Cann works. Thank you so much.' He waited. He had had little doubt that Cann would have told his girl something of the back ground to his work on the Packer investigation. All the men and women, senior and junior, on the class A teams used wives, husbands and partners as crutches to lean on. A small voice answered the telephone. His reply purred, was reassuring. 'So good of you to come to the phone – may I call you Jennifer? I may? Thank you. I heard about your pet and I want you to know that I am deeply shocked, and sincerely sympathetic.

Both Joey and I work in a dark corner of our society.

Most of that society ignores the darkness, doesn't feel it's their business to illuminate it, or to get involved.

Go to any multi-screen complex, in any city, and you can guarantee there will be a flashy gangster apology to be seen. Those films portray a glamorous, fraudulent image of the men we target. The films do our society a disservice. The men they depict are not Jack the Lad, they are leeches. They are evil, foul bastards – forgive me if I sound emotional – but Joey will have told you that. I've sent him on a mission that I regard as of critical importance. The measure of his success so far, and the mission is not yet completed, is that Packer has struck back at what he thinks is Joey's weak point. You. I am taking a great liberty in asking it of you – you are not a law-enforcement officer although you are a citizen – but I want you to stay where you are. It's Shropshire, isn't it? I want you to stay there, not break cover, not use the telephone, not contact Joey. I'm asking you to be brave. I think you're up to i t.. . I'm going to give you a telephone number to call it you have any suspicions that you are watched, call it night or day. You're important to me, Jennifer, and I need your co-operation. Can I rely on you?'

She sounded what his wife would call a 'decent girl'. He gave the number of his own mobile phone.

He wished her well.

He switched off the room's lights and the door locked after him. Those who worked with him would not have expected a flicker of sentiment from Dougie Gough. He hadn't wanted a frightened girlfriend's calls to Sarajevo to distract Joey Cann from work in hand. He had not spoken of a murder attempt, or of the withdrawal by the Secret Intelligence Service of one half of Cann's partnership.

He walked along the empty corridor and remembered the picture of Cann, from the video, kicking his heels in an act of bloody-minded defiance against the concrete of the rubbish bin. It was Cann who had said that the weakest link was Mister – Albert William Packer – and he'd liked what he'd heard… He recognized obsession and thought it valuable if channelled, but dangerous if not. He believed, with Cann alongside him, that he stood at the threshold of success.

Was the obsession compulsive enough to hold fast?

He must check its strength. He felt no shame for sweet-talking the young woman, and he would lie again before the night was over.

He lay on his back on his bed, and he thought of Jasmina's face.

He had gone past Maggie's room and the dark strip under the door had told him her light was off, he'd paused and heard her tossing in her bed, and he'd gone to his room.

The note had been on the pillow.

Joey,

My crowd are pulling me out. They, and me, say it's not worth the candle – sorry. You should be with me. It's the 7.15 early bird for Zagreb. There are seats on it. Where were you tonight? I waited up, we should have talked about it. Pride never won anything. I'm leaving at 6.00, on the dot. Be there!

Luv, Maggie.

He thought of her strength, and what she went through, each day, to keep that strength. He was humbled by her. What he would do was for her. He wanted to push her, in her wheelchair, in a park, among flowers, where birds sang, and share her strength.

He would go, for her, wherever the road went, wherever it led.

May 1998

The sun shone on the valley. The scene in front of Dragan Kovac was a picture of beauty. It was impossible for him, looking from the porch of his home, to recall the war. The village of Ljut was behind him and he could not see the wreckage of the houses.

Across the fields and over the river small columns of smoke rose from Vraca, but his eyesight was too weak for him to distinguish which buildings were repaired and which were abandoned as derelict. He saw the carpet blanket of the flowers that were the sign of the coming summer, specks, pockets and expanses of blue, pink, yellow. The sun fell on him and warmed his bones.

He was a meticulous man. As the police sergeant, the core of his life had been based on careful planning and thorough preparation. He had risen early. He had made his bed and swept through the room that doubled for living and sleeping, cleaned it, and then he had carried out the small table from inside and placed it on the stone flags under the porch roof. It would be hot later. He put the table where the porch shade would cover it, and then he brought out two strong wooden chairs and manoeuvred them on the uneven stone so that they were firmly set. He went back in for the chess set and the board, brought them out. He spread the board and laid out the pieces. He always felt a little shimmer of pleasure when he handled them. They had been carved by his father from oak; the legacy passed to him from his father's deathbed, given to him seven months after his father had come home from the Partizans with the festering leg wound from a German machine-gun bullet. He had been twelve years old and he had promised his father that he would value the set. King, queen, bishops, pawns, all were freshly painted each year with linseed and had been for fifty-five years. The largest pieces, those of greatest importance, were twenty centimetres high, those of least worth were ten centimetres. It was a fine set, and it was a worry to him that the future of their ownership was not yet determined.

The grandson of his friend had a good child's face, intelligent, serious. Dragan Kovac had no son of his own, no nephew, no child that he could be certain would respect the chess set. He set out the pieces, then brought an old glass ashtray to the table. It had been on his desk in the police station for more than twenty years and it had disappeared from there on the evening of his retirement. He had his last two remain ing, unbroken, glasses for the brandy. It was all done with exactness and pride. He looked at the river, and already the shimmer of the heat was on it. Each day of the previous week it had dropped and he could finally see the silver speckle of the ford. The old fool would make an easy crossing and they would play their first game of the summer… He'd had a pain in his chest that morning – more an ache than a pain – and it had worried him. He thought he would take the opportunity that day to speak with the old fool, his friend, about the grandchild and about the chess set.

He had no spectacles. It would have been hard for him to read, but he had no books. His eyesight was sufficient for his needs. He did not recognize it but, perversely, his failing vision helped him. He saw that morning only the beauty of the valley, as if the war had passed it by. The track to the ford and beyond it was empty. Was the old fool going to be late? His preparations were dictated by a schedule. He sniffed, smelt the stewing rabbit.

He hurried inside. He stoked more wood into the stove. The stove, like him, was a survivor of the war.

When the Spanish soldiers had brought him back to his house, before they'd left him, they'd cleared bucketfuls of plaster rubble from its top and cleaned the hob. He went twice a week into the almost deserted village of Ljut with his bow saw and took his time to cut wood from fallen rafters, and wheeled it back in a barrow. Last week a soldier had brought an axe and had cut enough logs to supply his cooking needs for a month. The cats ran wild in the village.

They moved in packs among the dried-out ruins. He had studied their hunting habits as if it were a minor paramilitary police operation, had learned where the vats look the rabbits they killed. They were creatures of routine. The eating place, a charnel house of bones, was the tool shed at the back of the church. A cat caught a fine buck rabbit, held it screaming in its jaws, and proudly strutted with it to the shed. He'd waited the previous day in the shed's shadows, heard its death scream and the cat's proud yowl. He'd thrown a stone at the cat, had missed, but the rabbit had been dropped. He had taken it home, skinned and gutted it, and had hung it from a beam above his bed. The rabbit was now in the pot, and the fire burned well in the stove. He had only the potatoes that the Spanish troops brought him and peas from packets to stew with it. It would not be a meal for an emperor, but a meal fit for a true friend, an old fool. He looked at his watch. Husein Bekir was twenty-seven minutes late.

He heard the movement outside, and the bark of the dog. He stood up, gained the stature of a retired police sergeant and went to the door, ready to chide his guest.

It was the daughter, the widow of the criminal, the mother of the child. She had come, she said, to tell him that her father had a chill. She thought he had been out too long, too late, two nights before, with a goat and a sickly kid. It was not serious but her father had taken to his bed. He saw the way she scented, in envy, the stewing rabbit. She was wan-coloured, worried.

Dragan Kovac prided himself on understanding the mentality of men, most certainly the mind of Husein Bekir. He thought it was more about the fields, and the mines that lay in them. There was, perhaps, a chill, but there would also be a reluctance to walk to the ford and wade across it, then to walk up the track past the grazing ground where there were no cattle and the arable ground that had not been ploughed and sown, and past the vineyard where the weeds overwhelmed the vines.

He gave her the steaming pot. He said, and hoped that the message would be carried back, that Husein Bekir should come as soon as he was fit enough, and that he should bring her son, and that together he and his friend should teach the child the mysteries of their game. She nodded.

Dragan Kovac put away the chess pieces, folded the board, and carried the table inside. The sun rose and shimmered on the valley, and the flowers.

'Did I wake you, Joey? Very sorry. It's Gough. Where am I? I am crossing Kingston bridge, then it's Hampton Wick, then it's Teddington and my bed. I've spoken to Jennifer, she's fine, very supportive. I have arranged round-the-clock protection for her, but discreet. She won't see it. Don't worry on her behalf…

I'm sure you were worried but you've no cause to be. I need you there, Joey. I want you on his back. I want him squeezed. What I'm looking for, Joey, is mistakes, big ones, the ones that nail him.'

The black Mercedes dropped Mister at the door of the Holiday Inn. They were on the settee seats of the atrium bar, close to each other. He saw that they had waited up for his return.

He had drunk nothing during the evening, was cold sober. There were beer bottles in front of Atkins and Soft-drink cans on the table in front of the Eagle.

He walked towards them. They stood. He recognized the signs of crisis. He didn't hurry as he approached them, because that would have shown doubt or weakness. When he was close to them he smiled. The Eagle didn't meet his eye, but Atkins was flushed and his fingers tugged and pinched at the hem of his trouser pocket. Mister knew that the difficulty, wherever it lay, was with Atkins. Divide the opposition, then control it. It was what he had learned from childhood.

He grinned at the Eagle. 'All right, then? You didn't have to sit up for me.'

Through a sickly smile, 'Yes, all right, Mister. You had a good evening?'

'An acceptable evening, making bridges we can walk over… What's up, Atkins?'

'We were talking… '

The Eagle shrugged. Message clear. Atkins had been talking and the Eagle had been listening. They were already divided, he knew it.

'What were you talking about, Atkins?'

It came in a torrent. 'About being here. How long are we here? What we're doing here, that was what we were talking about. How long and what… And about attempted murder… '

'I'm listening, Atkins, but you're not making much sense to me. Where's all this leading?'

'Quit. It's time we quit.'

'Do you agree, Eagle, that it's time we quit? No?

Lost your voice? Come on, Eagle, I always listen to you. Anything legal, and I'm all ears. Don't I listen to you, Eagle? Nothing to say?'

He used sharp, staccato, harsh questions to beat on the Eagle. Always worked, always made him cringe.

He could bully the Eagle, like kicking a dog and knowing it always came back to whimper at his heel.

He'd his beaded gaze on the Eagle, unwavering.

He turned in sweetness to Atkins. 'Things are bothering you, my friend. I don't like that. I like things in the open. Take your time.'

Mister hadn't heard it before, a croak in Atkins's voice. They'd have talked it over at dinner, wouldn't they? He twisted on the settee, gave Atkins his full attention and the Eagle was ignored, as if he was of no importance.

'I came to do a job, but you didn't say the job was murder – and those people killed Dubbs. You don't trust that sort, not an inch.'

'The point's made, Atkins. I think I know that – and I don't do job descriptions. You know that. We see an opportunity and we move. We see an obstacle and we dismantle it.'

'I didn't come for this. I want out.'

'Fair's fair. I hear you.'

'It's not my game.'

He reached out. The expression set on his face was of concern. The appearance was of. 1 sympathy, genuine. It was a little gesture, not the thing grown men did, but he reached out his hand, look Atkins's in his, and held it gently.

'Right, it's out of the system. You won't mind if I say something?'

'My mind's made up – I'm quitting.'

'Yes, yes… You see, Atkins, you won't find a man in London who'd call himself bigger than me. I'm top of the heap. I'm the one they look to. Why's that? It's because I have ambition. No backwaters for me. I'm at the top, in the fast lane. How am I there? Because I choose men of quality. Plenty of people want to work for me. Silly to think about it, but if I advertised a position, working for me, then the queue would stretch round the corner. Plenty of people who could organize hardware for me. I'm only interested in the best, got me? The best. Only quality interests me.

Looking for the best, for quality, I asked you to accept my offer of employment… Does everything, always, go to plan? Course it doesn't. It screws up, falls on its face. The reason, most times, it works out is that I have the best men alongside me, quality men – not gorillas, but men of intelligence. I'm not afraid to hold my hands up when I'm wrong. I think I owe you an apology, Atkins. Why? I've taken you for granted. I haven't kept you in the picture. That's remiss of me.

You want out because you don't think you're valued

… You are, sincerely you are. Who was the last person to tell you that you were quality, the best? Your father?'

He held Atkins's hand and his thumb massaged the knuckle. His voice was pitched low and Atkins had to lean forward to hear him. He knew about all the people he employed, and their families. There was a brigadier, retired, down in Wiltshire who had received from the Queen in his soldiering days a Distinguished Service Order and a Military Cross. From what Mister had learned, the brigadier thought worthless the son who had been bumped out of the army in disgrace.

He knew Atkins hadn't been home last Christmas. If he skipped going home at Christmas then it was to save himself from supercilious insult. He held the hand and saw the head shaken glumly.

'It's what I'm telling you, you're quality and the best. I want you beside me. I value you, Atkins.

Everything's going to be all right, I promise. Just a few hiccups, but it'll all work out. Anything you want to say?'

'No, Mister, nothing.'

'No more talk of quitting?'

'None.'

'Well said. Said by a man I can lean on, a man I'd depend on. You want to go and get some sleep. That hand… ' Mister loosed it. '. .. I'd put my life in that hand and know it's safe.'

He watched Atkins shamble away to the lift.

He leaned further across the table. Without warning, with a short-range jab, he punched the Eagle's upper arm, aimed at the flab where it would hurt. He laughed, as if that were his idea of amusement.

'Snivelling little rat… Tell me it wasn't your idea, Eagle, didn't prime him to it. No, no… '

'You did well, Mister,' the Eagle said. 'But, then, you always do.'

He told the Eagle about his dinner, what he'd learned and what he'd agreed to. He said where he would be early in the morning, and where he would be for the day, and what he wanted from the Eagle and Atkins while he was away.

'Seems good to me, Mister.'

They ambled towards the lift and his arm draped over the Eagle's shoulder. 'I reckon we're rolling.'