The Untouchable

Chapter Nineteen

The low sun gilded the valley. Gold was painted on the hills, and on the bare trees. The lustre fell on the fields and was trapped in the grass and in the dead stems of the thistle and ragwort; it nestled on the vineyard posts and glistened off the wires between them. Brilliant little shimmers of light ruddied the bristly back of a pig that had come out of the trees' cover to snout for food. The softness of the gold was daubed on the fields and the woodlands, and played patterns on the smoke rising from the twin villages.

The smoke turned ochre in the early light as it peeped up from the chimneys and was dispersed. The sun made dazzling reflections in the river where the water ran over shallow stones between the deeper pools.

Joey Cann had watched the dawn come. The valley was laid out in front of him. He rocked with tiredness, and blinked, tried to scrape the confusion from his mind.

If he looked for Mister, he looked into the sun that burned off the frost. He could be patient. The sun would creep higher into the sky and then he would see Mister, would know how the night had gone for him. He sat on the ground with his legs outstretched and reaching to the yellow tape and he propped himself upright on an elbow. The men around him snored quietly and the dog lay close to them. He had thought Mister would have run in the darkness, would have gathered the courage and gone to the river, would have cheated him. Away to his left, he saw a column of pick-ups and ambulances come slowly down the winding track and they stopped near to the village.

He saw an old man come out of the front door of an isolated house further down the track, wearing a uniform greatcoat and a cap of authority and carrying an axe. Across the river, at another house that was separated from its village, children burst through the door and a woman hobbled after them on a crutch.

They went to a man who sat bowed on an old tree log.

The sun rose.

Joey saw Mister and he knew that he was not cheated. Above the field grass, he saw Mister's bent knees, his torn suit jacket, his tie that was askew at his throat, and the hands that held his face, and the hair on his scalp. The smile was at Joey's mouth. He cupped his hands together and his shout broke the peace, seemed lo scatter the gold dust that had fallen on the valley.

'You should have run, Mister, while you had the dark.

Were you too frightened to run?'

He jerked awake. He did not know how long he had slept, or where.

'What stopped you?'

He shook. A shiver rattled him. He was sitting and he thought he was falling. He felt his weight slide, and reached out to steady himself. His hand found the wet grass and the muddied earth, and slipped into the hole. For a moment he could not control its slide. He looked down. He scrabbled for earth, for a grip. His hand was half an inch above the six points of the antenna that would detonate the mine. His muscles were rigid… He knew where he was. He recognized the voice, but could not see Cann. His stomach growled in hunger and his throat was parched. Near to him, teeth scraped on a bone. He stared down at the mine in the little excavated pit and saw the mud smears on the green paint. He put the hand under his armpit, locked it there. In the night the trees around the river's roar had made a dark line. Now, the sun shone through them. He could see each branch and each sprig growing from the trees' trunks. The river was safety, a hundred strides away. Mister had never known fear. He took his hand from his armpit, brushed it against his stomach and felt the pistol in his belt. Then he worked the hand under the seat of his trousers, and pushed himself up. He nearly fell because of the stiffness in his knees. He stood, and started to massage his hips, his knees and his ankles.

When he had worked over the flesh, kneaded the joints and ligaments under the skin, he stood to his full height, made a bow arc of his back and stretched his arms. He would run – maybe he would close his eyes – towards the trees by the river. In his mind he put the boxes in their place. He would run for the river. A track of grey stone led from the river to the village, where he would find a car; he had the PPK

Walther pistol. He readied himself. He thought he would count to ten, and then he would run. He should not have, but he looked at the ground between himself and the river. The carcass of bones was bleached white, was cleaned in the sun, as if fresh paint was on it. Grass grew through the ribcage…

And the voice intruded once more.

'What you have to think of, Mister, is when it's going to happen: your first step or your last step, or one of the middle steps. At the start, at the end, or in between – you don't know, do you? And you don't know whether you'll scream, like the Eagle screamed.'

After he had seen the first skeleton, Mister counted six more. Some were on their backs, some on their sides, and others had just crumpled down as if their knees had given way beneath them and their heads had fallen forward. Two of the white bone hulks were directly between himself and the river.

Three more were to the right, and two were to the left.

There was no pattern to them. Should he run the shortest way loop to the left or right, or zigzag? He gazed out at the bones.

'Go on, Mister, run. Run so I can hear you scream.'

His legs were stiff, dead. He could not take the step.

Mister stopped the count. He was short of the last number. The wind played on the grass that covered the earth, and moved the dead dark weed stems. He heard the cry of crows above him, and the gnawing of the fox's jaws on the leg bone. He was leaden. The light and the warmth were on his face. He stood alone in the field.

'God, you're a disappointment to me, Mister. Is the fear that bad?'

They woke, they separated. The ground hadn't moved for Maggie Bolton, but the chassis of the blue van had.

Three times they'd done it. She'd let Frank do what neither the Polish boy nor the young Arab had been allowed to. She couldn't have said which of the three times was the best, but she'd have been able to hazard which was the worst. She was in her forty-eighth year.

It had been, for her, the first, second and third time – and there would not be another. She doubted that even a kid of fifteen, on heat, would have chosen to lose their virginity in the back of the blue van on a bed of coats and rugs, beside the new bucket. If it had been with any of the men in Vauxhall Bridge Cross – they'd tried hard enough – the bed would at least have cost them two hundred and fifty pounds in a West End hotel. Frank Williams lay against her and his cheek's stubble prickled her breast.

'So, is that what all the fuss is about?'

'You, Maggie, are an amazing screw.'

' I don't think so – you are certainly not.'

He turned away from her. Her back to him, she dressed… It would have been better with Joey. He had smooth hands, and long fingers, but he hadn't offered. She hooked on her bra. The light trickled opaquely through the back windows of the van and she found her knickers on the van's ribbed floor. They were torn – when he'd ripped them off. She wriggled into them, and her tights, and dragged on her jeans.

She wanted to be alone in her bed. She wondered if he'd talk about her to people in whatever bar he drank at, if her name would go on a list.

'Well, go on, get on with it.'

'Get on with what?'

'Look after your prisoner – find out what's going on.'

'You're great, Maggie – don't hurt yourself.'

' I am a middle-aged woman and so desperate for it that I'm the original easy lay. Don't worry, I'm grateful

– you'v cured my curiousity.'

' I thought there might be a future for us.'

'Nothing good comes out of Bosnia – never has, never will. Get rid of them.'

She gestured behind her. Laid on the wheel arch, carefully balanced, were three knotted condoms. She pulled on her blouse and her sweater, then tugged her anorak out from under him. She clicked open the metal-sided box and lifted out the video camera and the collapsed tripod. He was putting on his vest, often washed and a fading dragon rampant on it. She took the mobile phone from the integral battery-charger in the case. His socks, sliding on to his feet, were threadbare at the heels. She hooked the phone's cables to the video. When he had his shoes on he snatched up the condoms, and leaned across to kiss her. Then he went to see to his prisoner, and Maggie took the video camera, the tripod and the mobile telephone out of the van,

She walked a few strides down the track that was hemmed in by yellow tape. She found a vantage-point. She wondered if she would be different when she returned to C'eausescu Towers, whether the people she worked with would recognize it. 'You know what, 1 think that tease bitch finally opened her legs… I reckon she had it, at last.' She set up the tripod then searched for stones inside the tape cordon and wedged them against the tripod's feet. It would have been better, on all three times, if she'd thought of Joey Cann. She screwed the video camera onto the tripod's head. She had never reached Joey Cann. She held the mobile in her hand, stood back to let the wind snag the tripod and the camera, and she was satisfied that the picture would be steady. He wore no uniform, but she could not have discarded hers.. . She would never reach him. On the track, Frank was in animated conversation with the de-mining team, men made grotesque by their plated waistcoats and visored helmets.

The wind brought her the flat tone of the shouted voice.

' I'm thinking the fear's worse, Mister. Each minute that you put it off, the running, will make it harder, Mister. I want to see you run, Mister, and I want to hear you scream.'

She looked over the sunlit valley… Beyond an abandoned vineyard, half-way between the tree-line and the river and far from the yellow tape, in the middle of an expanse of field, Target One stood. The crows circled above him. Near to him was the body of Target Two, and close to it was a blob of colour she could not identify. It was all, to her eyes, so pretty…

Joey had brought her there… so pretty and so cruel.

She would never reach him.

She aimed the camera and dialled the number.

Five men lumbered along the slight gap between the tree-line and the yellow tape. Frank was ahead of them, unencumbered. At the back of the line was a German shepherd dog on a rope leash, bigger than Nasir and older.

When they came close, Joey looked into their eyes.

There was a weariness, a dullness, that matched the slow speed of their approach. They wore overalls of dreary grey and heavy boots, thick shapeless waistcoats with a flap that hung down over their privates, and bulbous helmets with raised visors of unwashed Perspex. They carried thin metal probes and garden shears, and one had a small handsaw. Another had a metal-detector hoisted on his shoulder, and the one who held the dog's rope had a roll of yellow tape under his arm.

Nasir, growling, was taken hy Muhsin back into the trees.

Frank made the introductions.

Joey was asked by the foreman – good English – for his assessment.

Joey scowled. 'Two men, both British citizens, went into the field just before ten o'clock last night. At one minute past ten, a mine was detonated by the fugitive nearest to us Target Two, we call him. He bawled a bit, then he went quiet Alter midnight Target Two started to talk, but target One shot him. Target One is alone. He nearly moved at dawn. He stood and readied himself lo move, but then changed his mind.

He's not moved since he stood.'

He hated saying each word to the foreman. The man came into his space, the others with him, and their dog.

'So,' the foreman said, without enthusiasm, 'we have one cadaver and one uninjured person – that is correct?'

'Correct. What is the density of the mines?'

'We do not know. Mines were laid in the valley over a period ol nearly four years, but it was not a disputed front line. There is not a barrier minefield. Once there would have been a purpose to where they were buried but time and principally rain – will have changed that.

They can be anywhere. There may be ten, a hundred, or five hundred. We have to assume, always, that we must work through a concentration of mines.'

'Do you use the dog?'

' I think not. The dog is too valuable. If the casualty were still alive then there is great pressure on us to go faster. I think we do not use the dog.'

'What do you do?'

'We make a corridor, a metre and a half wide,' the foreman said. 'It is very slow. It is, my estimate, a hundred and thirty metres to him, that is the work of a whole day… The man is a criminal? He shot the man with him, you said that?'

Frank said softly, 'He carries at least one weapon with a full magazine. We have a prisoner. The prisoner said there were two firearms in their vehicle. I have searched the vehicle and there are no firearms in it. However many shots he used for the killing, he has the second firearm, a PPK Walther, with a fully loaded magazine.'

Joey said, 'The man who is dead is a lawyer, wouldn't touch a weapon. Whatever plan you make you should assume that Target One is armed.'

'Do you know about mine clearance?' the foreman asked.

Joey said that he did not.

' It is necessary to be very careful. We concentrate only on the work. We go on our hands and knees and we probe. All our attention is on the ground a few centimetres in front of our bodies. We wear personal protection equipment, but that is of little use to the man who sets off the mine. The second man, or the third, if he is a few metres away, will take the benefit from the clothing. There is a full bomb suit, from Canada, but it weighs thirty kilos, and you cannot work in it, not on your knees. You have in the field a criminal, an armed fugitive… Do you think I should ask my men to crawl towards him – and forget that he is a criminal, armed, a fugitive – and probe for mines and never look at him? I cannot.'

' I'm not criticizing you,' Joey said.

' If he were not armed, if thai were proved, if he gave clear signs that he wished to surrender, then I would reconsider.' The foreman shrugged.

'Should he run, what would be his chance of setting off a mine?' Joey asked.

' It would be in God's hands.'

'He's not broken, not yet,' Joey said. 'He will be.'

They walked away, taking with them their shears, their probes, the metal detector, the roll of yellow tape and their dog. The sun was rising and bathed the valley's fields. They trudged off alongside the tree-line, and Frank was close to the foreman. Joey thought it was how he wanted it to be. He smiled at the four men who were withj him but none caught his gaze.

He sat down The dog, Nasir, came to him. It lay against his leg and his raised knee threw some shade for it. The Sreb Four made a little huddle and sat apart from him. In front of him, caught in the sun's strength, Mister stood and Joey did not see a muscle of his body moving. He would weaken, Joey knew it. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst and the creeping fear of the mines around him would sap Mister. And then Mister would run… He cupped his hands.

'Men were here, Mister, who had the skill to reach you and bring you out, but I told them you were armed and had killed, and who you are. They've decided you're not worth the risk. All that's left to you, Mister, is to run and to hope.'

Midday…

… Judge Delic, having recessed his court till the late afternoon, wheeled Jasmina from the Mercedes to the doorway of a boutique on Ferhadija, tilted the chair over the street step and pushed her inside. They were no longer window-shoppers. She knew the trouser-suit she wanted, black, professional and styled from Milan.

The car was left on the kerb, a no-parking zone, but a black Mercedes would not be interfered with by the police. And up on the hill, over the river, workmen scrambled over and through their home.

… the firemen took the strain on their rope, relied on the grappling hook to hold, and pulled the body on to the steep stone-clad bank of the Miljacka. The water dripped from it as it was beached. Around the ice-white throat of the body was a gold chain. A fireman fingered it and read the inscription on the bar: 'To dearest Enver, with love, Serif'. He wiped his hands on his overalls, and activated his radio.

… Ismet Mujic sat in his apartment, the curtains drawn, the gloom on his face, his world collapsed, and waited for the telephone to ring. And as he waited, he cursed the day that a man from Green Lanes in London had telephoned to urge him to receive strangers anxious to put to him a business proposition.

… Nikki Gornikov slept off his overnight travel in his own Budapest bed, and Marco Tardi dozed in the Rome transit lounge before the Palermo feeder flight was called, and Fuat Selcuk snored in the first-class cabin of the Austrian Airlines flight to Damascus.

Going their different ways, returning to their base camps, they had each pledged that they would – singly or collectively – never deal again with Albert William Packer. He was dead meat, might as well have hung from a butcher's hook.

… Monika Holberg, her desk and computer screen in the Unis building abandoned, walked into the Holiday Inn's atrium, crossed to the reception desk and saw her letter in the pigeon – hole beside the key.

She asked for it to be returned to her. She tore it into small pieces and gave the scraps back to the clerk to be dropped in the rubbish bin behind the desk. As she pushed open the hotel's doors she felt a sense of disaster falling on her. It was the same sense she had known when coming back to her home at Njusford, on the island of Flakstodoya, to be told that her brother had hanged himself in the cattle byre.

… the men and the woman of Sierra Quebec Golf stood around Gough's computer screen on the central desk and stared in tongue-tied astonishment at the image presented to them.

… a detective chief inspector reached for his telephone to make a routine call, and found that his line was dead. He looked up and saw that the immediate open-plan area where he worked on the upper floor of the National Crime Squad's Pimlico offices was deserted. In the moment that the first bead of sweat broke on his neck, he heard the door behind him snap open and there were hands on his shoulder and his collar, and he was lifted from his chair.

… checking his watch to be certain that his call was in tandem with events two floors below, the commander from the National Crime Squad rang the private secretary to the minister. ' I think we are now in a position to share. The rotten apple is out of the bucket.' Then he spoke to the car pool and told his driver at what time they would leave for the Custom House.

… Clarrie Hinds told her daughter to get home and stop moaning, and young Sol closed down the screen on the last computer disk and marvelled at his luck in being chosen, and the Mixer waited for a call to alert him to the return flight so that he could send an Eel to meet it, and around the capital city men who dealt in business and pushed business grumbled at the inconvenience caused by Mister's absence.

… the sun blazed down on the Bunica valley.

It burned his face and his hands. It seared into his eyes as it reflected back from the grass carpet.

Mister knew that he had to stay standing. If he slipped down onto the flattened ground under his shoes, then he would never rise again, would never run. The sweat ran in his hair, over his forehead, into his eyes and made them smart. With the sweat in his eyes, the trees at the riverbanks danced and misted. If he turned, he would see Cann, and the shouts would cut deeper. He tried to keep his gaze ahead of him, on the dark pools of the river and the silver spates separating them. If he looked down, he would see the pit he had excavated, and the mine. Each time the voice taunted him, coldly teasing, tormenting and torturing, the fear was stronger. Mister did not know if he could destroy the fear. Behind him was the fox.

There was no meat left on the Eagle's ankle and shin; its teeth were scraping bare bone. He started to count, but he knew that when he reached ten he would change the target to a hundred, and then to a thousand. He could not kick his feet in front of him and start to run.

The high sun beat on him, and the sweat streamed down him, and the strength dribbled from him.

'It is a duel.'

They had met at the ford. The water over the stones was too high, too fast-flowing for an old man to cross.

'That is stupid talk,' Husein Bekir called back.

'You say it is stupid because you have not read books. Is that because, like an old fool, you cannot read books?'

' I can read.'

Dragan Kovac grimaced smugly. 'Then, perhaps, like an old fool, you have forgotten what you have read, or forgotten what your teacher told you at school. It is in history listen, old fool – there are stories in history about duels. Champions fought in single combat, man against man, to the death or until one submits.'

' It's idiot talk.'

'You never listen I have talked to the foreman of the de-miners. They speak with me because I am a man of experience ami importance. Do they talk to you? It is what lie tells me, the foreman. It is like the time of Ban kulin, or when the Great Khan came from the east, or the time of King Stephen Tvrtko, or when Mehmet arrived from the south and the tyranny of the Muslims began. Disputes were settled in single combat, to the death or to surrender.'

Husein spat onto the ground.

Dragan persisted, 'That is why the foreman has come back here to clear your fields – not that you, an old fool, will ever work them.'

'This spring I will plant my new apple orchard, fifty trees, and I will be here to harvest the first crop… Do you mean it, this shit about single combat?'

' It is what the foreman said.'

' I don't understand that.' Husein shook his head wearily.

'Because you are an old fool and you do not listen.

The foreman is an intelligent man, so he confides in me. A criminal from Britain, Mr Barnaby's country, came to our country, for whatever corrupt reason. He is followed by the British Customs, by our men and the international police. He is in flight from them, and with him is his lawyer. They leave the road and come down the h i l l… '

'Where my son-in-law is dead,' Husein said grimly.

'And go into the field. The lawyer detonates the m i n e… '

' I heard his screaming – like children in hell.'

'… detonates the mine. The criminal shoots him.

Because the criminal has a gun, and has killed, the de-miners will not move to reach him. That pleases the Customs man. He is called Joey

… '

'That is a stupid name,' Husein sneered. 'Like a girl's name.'

'Don't, old fool, interrupt. He is young, is junior, he is nothing. The criminal is a big man. It would not be a contest, single-handed combat, if they were in London. But they are not, they are here – and the criminal is in a minefield and-'

Husein was triumphant. 'Which your people laid, which pollutes my fields.'

'And the minefield makes them equal. Joey taunts him that he is afraid to run across the field, to risk going through the mines. If the criminal does not dare to run, his spirit fails him, then he loses dignity… '

While they bickered, the long-standing friends -

Husein Bekir and Dragan Kovac – gazed out over the fields. Close to them the de-miners worked in their taped corridors, crouched over their probes. Away in the distance, hard for them to distinguish in the sunlight, the single man stood, and around him was the emptiness.

'Who cares about dignity in a minefield? Did Lila?

Did my son-in-law?'

'Did the first foreman? You told him about the fallen post, you sent him to repair it, and he will never walk again… Dignity to a criminal is everything. Go into Mostar, find Tula and Stela, dignity is the only thing they have. If they are humiliated, show fear, plead for mercy then they have nothing. This man, there… He tries lo hold his dignity, and the young man tries to take it from him. The police could shoot him but then he dies with dignity, and happy, and he becomes the legenda. Does he want to be remembered for his dignity, or for his fear that made him surrender? It is subtle, but you would not understand that. At the moment he does not know what to do…

I believe he suffers.'

' I think it is stupid talk.' Again Husein Bekir spat.

'When a man is in a minefield what value is dignity to him?'

The picture on the screen was pastel, rinsed-out colour. Mister, in his suit, stood in a field. In the Custom House room of Sierra Quebec Golf, the team, short of only SQGI2, stood behind Gough. Their workplaces were abandoned, the desks littered with file papers and photographs. Above the only tidied place, where the computer was switched off, was the sign: 'CANN do – WILL do'. The picture in front of Gough enmeshed them, and none had the will to break free from it.

The image was of their Target One.

They all had paper mountains to scale but the work had been pushed aside once the call had come through from Vauxhall Bridge Cross, and SQG8 had been summoned to Gough's computer, had rustled the keys, found the network and had downloaded the picture. Gough wouldn't have been able to because he was weak on the new science, but SQG8 was the wizard. Their work that morning and afternoon should have taken them into the final planning stages of the raids that would sweep into the homes of the Mixer, two of the Cards, the Eel who had driven the lorry, and the warehouse where the truck – Bosnia with Love – was garaged. It was Gough's intention that, when Mister returned, he would find his organization disrupted, under microscopic investigation, and doubt permeating his lieutenants… but the planning work was discarded. The image fascinated them. The camera angle never changed, and the lens never zoomed. It would have been a still frame but for the occasional wheeling swoops of the crows and the bluster of the puff clouds in the wind.

Mister did not move. He did not seem to change his weight from a right-foot bias to a left foot, he did not reach out with his arms to stretch or flex, his hand did not go to his forehead to mop it. The rain pattered on the windows facing into Lower Thames Street, but the shower had no reality for them. The heat of the sun on Mister's head and shoulders were real; they could sense it. Because Gough had lit his pipe, in blatant contravention of the in-house edict, cigarettes were on and SQG4 billowed smoke from a small cigar. The room was fugged. They watched Mister, and each in their minds played with his dilemma and wondered what they would have done, faced with his situation. The shouts, thin and metallic, played over the loudspeakers beside Gough's computer, made them squirm, but they were all addicts.

The door opened. Heads turned briefly. The glances to the intruders betrayed their feelings. The chief investigation officer introduced the commander from the National Crime Squad. There were some among them, and Gough might have led, who would have gone to the walls and abruptly pulled down the sheets on which the cartwheel was chinagraphed, and the plans for the next programme of raids, but the screen held them.

Cork intoned, ' I thought you should know that this afternoon officers of CIB3 entered National Crime Squad offices and arrested a detective chief inspector who was a primary leak source on investigations into the affairs of Albert William Packer. The leak is plugged. I am instructed – yes, instructed – by the appropriate minister of the Crown that we co-operate, share, with the commander and his people, the fruits of our investigation. I am told that, united, we will improve immeasurably on the chance of a successful prosecution of Packer and the dismantling of his empire.'

If he was heard it was not shown; the eyes of the team stayed on the screen.

' I intend initially to second one of SQG to the Crime Squad, and for you to have one of their experienced officers in here, and welcomed. When Packer returns, the full resources of both organizations will be turned on him. Packer, is he on his way back? Do we have a flight?'

Gough pointed to the screen. Reluctantly, SQG3 and SQG9 edged aside and allowed the intruders a small space behind Gough's chair. The CIO and the commander craned forward.

'Good God, isn't that Packer? Where is he?'

'He's in a field, Commander, he's standing in a field,' Gough said, with dry civility. 'He is standing in a field and right now his thoughts are far from buying an airline ticket. The field is in a valley that is about ten miles south-south-east of Mostar.'

'Why? Why is he standing in a field?'

' It's not an ordinary field. It's not sown with parsnips or potatoes. Its crop is mines. He is in a minefield. How does he know he is in the middle of a minefield? He knows because Arbuthnot – the Eagle, our Target Two – stepped on one, and is now deceased. He is caught, trapped, in a minefield, and his little mind is working overtime.'

'What about rescue?' The commander's voice was hoarse. 'Aren't there trained people who can bring him out?'

' It's a long story/ Gough evaded. 'Too long for now

… That's Arbuthnot.'

The commander's chin and the chief investigation officer's jaw were over Gough's shoulders as he showed them the corpse, and they peered at the dark shape in the grass that was slight, insignificant, and diminished by the scale of the fields.

'What's that?' The commander's fingernail replaced Gough's. The point he took was beyond the standing figure and near to the prone shape. Against his nail was a russet blob, unclear.

'Don't know,' Gough said.

'Well, go in on it.'

Gough hesitated, and flushed. 'That's a bit beyond me.'

'Should I ring my granddaughter and have her ferried over?'

SQG8 inserted herself, knelt beside Gough's leg and worked the mouse. She highlighted the russet blob, clicked and zoomed, dragged it closer and clearer.

It was not necessary for Cork to speak. They could all see what he saw. Cork blurted, 'Christ, it's a bloody fox… What's it got? It's got a bone. It's cleaning its bloody teeth on a bone… What's that on the end of the bone? I don't want to believe what I am seeing. It's a shoe. It's Arbuthnot's shoe. The fox has eaten his bloody leg, all except for what's in the shoe… Christ almighty.'

The smoke of the cigarettes and the small cigar, and from Gough's pipe, floated over the screen. The zoom pulled out, then SQG8 took the centre point of Mister's back, and he was pulled, jerked, closer to the watchers. They could see the silver streaks of perspiration at his temples.

The voice came over the speakers. They were pin-drop quiet as they listened.

'Are you going to run, Mister, or are you going to beg for help to come and get you? Let me talk you through the begging. Throw the gun away first, then strip, get off every last stitch, then beg. You're naked and you're begging, and all the world knows you're finished, and a loser… or you run. Those are your options, Mister… Come on. Come on.'

The voice was gone. Light wind bruised the camera's microphone.

'Who is that?' the commander barked.

'His name is Cann, he's SQG12,' Gough said flatly.

'He is our most junior executive officer.'

'It's torture, psychological torture,' Cork snapped.

'What's his problem? He is challenging him to risk his life in a minefield. Packer – as damn near as makes no difference – is in custody, if you've anything to charge him with. What you're doing is obscene. Even Packer has rights. I never sanctioned such behaviour. All I sanctioned was surveillance.'

'Then you didn't know your man,' Gough said. 'What did you want, Mr Cork? Did you want a packaged legal process, or the elimination of our Target One? I thought I knew what you wanted.'

'Get him out. That is an order, Mr Gough. Remove Cann.'

'Easier said… If you hadn't noticed, Mr Cork, that field and that valley and Packer and Cann are a long way from me. But I'll do what I am able.'

'An order, Mr Gough.'

'How many mines do you reckon are there, Mister?'

Frank listened to the pitiless ring of Joey's voice. He thought Mister's shoulders, out in the field, were lower and he wondered whether Mister's knees were near to buckling. Frank had driven into Mostar and dumped his prisoner in a police cell, under IPTF supervision, and then had bought supermarket cold food and water. He had come back to the crest of the hill, then the call on Maggie's phone had driven him down the slope path, with the food and water, past the skeleton of a wretch who had tripped the wire of a PMR2A mine, with the instruction from London. The men had their backs to Joey Cann. He crouched beside them and listened to what he was told as they ate and drank. Frank Williams was a career policeman and he believed in the rigour of law enforcement and in the processes of the criminal code. He listened to Ante, their spokesman, and then to the chipped remarks of Salko, Fahro and Muhsin, who had the dog's leash coiled in his hand. He had seen the monitor picture from the video camera and had heard the mocking shout across the valley. What he had seen and heard made a travesty of justice as he knew it. When they had finished, said what they wanted to, he went and stood behind Joey Cann, brought bread and cheese and an apple and what was left in the water bottle.

The head wasn't turned, the eyes were locked on the back in the dark suit jacket that rose above the hazed heat of the fields.

'Are you listening to me?'

' I'm hearing you.'

' London want you out.'

'Do they?'

'The instruction to be passed to you was made, personally, to me by Douglas Gough acting on behalf of Dennis Cork, chief investigation officer. Not tomorrow or the day after, but now. Out, and quit.'

' Is that what he said?'

'What you're doing is barbaric. Maggie rigged up the video and it's playing over the mobile. They are watching it in London. They know what you're doing and, like me, they are disgusted at your self-serving arrogance. You're going down to his level, Mister's, maybe going lower than him. If you don't believe what I'm telling you, out and quit, then use your mobile and call your Gough. Go on.'

Joey shifted his weight and took the mobile off his belt. He peeled it out of the ragged leather case, flipped off the back flap and took out the battery. The battery went into his breast pocket and the mobile was hooked back on his belt.

Frank spoke, steely quiet: 'Those men behind you, they call you Nasir. They've given you the dog's name

… Muhsin told you that Nasir Oric, defend -r of Srebrenica, their military leader, was a hero. Salko's just told me that when the town fell the people rampaged and looted in the last hours before the Serbs came in, and they found warehouses stacked to the roof with UN-donated food, but it wasn't for free handouts. It was for black-market sale, and that was criminal… Ante tells me that Nasir, who had been pulled out by the government to Tuzla before Srebrenica went under, led a column of a hundred and seventy men who fought through the Serb lines to link with the fighters breaking out, hand-to-hand combat, against the odds, and that was heroic… Fahro tells me that today Nasir Oric is a rich man, not bad for an ex-police bodyguard, with a money-spinning restaurant on the lake at Tuzla and won't talk about the source of the start-up cash.'

'Why do they call me Nasir?'

'Only one side of him was a hero. The other side of him was… a good man and a bad killer. It's the sort of confusion this place breeds, and you've got it bad.

So, I'm telling you now, I want no part of it, nor Maggie, nor them… Do I leave you food? We want no part of what you're doing.'

'He's not eating, so I'm not eating.' Now he turned.

Frank saw the boyish sincerity wreath his face, and the smile. ' I'm going to win, you know. He's the loser, I'm the winner.'

'At what cost?' Frank asked sourly. 'At what bloody cost?'

The smile slipped, the frown was above the big spectacles. 'I've only one favour I need from you.

Please, request of them that the dog stays with me. I'll bring him back to Sarajevo, safe and sound, a promise, but I'd appreciate it if I could keep him. The food and the water'll do for the dog, if there's nothing better.'

It was only a dog. Frank put the request. Only another dog. Frank left with the Sreb Four. Before he went into the depth of the trees, he stopped and looked. Joey fed bread to the dog, then poured water into its mouth. He started to walk, hurrying to catch the men ahead of him, and the sun fell in shards between the trees.

It was a soft call. 'Thank Maggie for what she's done for me – give her my love.'

He was weaker.

The sun was on Mister's back. It was off his face and that brought slight relief. He stood and did not move. He gabbled numbers but they had no sequence, no rhythm, and he had no target number. The numbers were random, the decision was put off. He did not know the time, but the sun's force had come off his face and away from the top of his head and was now on his back.

He was sinking.

The numbers, in hundreds, tens and thousands, cluttered his mind. When he lost them, they slipped away from him. Then he thought of Cann. Between the scrabble of numbers was the sight of Cann's face.

Big spectacles, a wide forehead, curly hair without a comb, a small mouth – the clerk, the paper-pusher of Sierra Quebec Golf. At that age he would be little more than a probationer. The kid stuck leech like to him. Why? Mister could buy policemen and judges and bankers and the civil service and… What was Cann's price? Small change, ten thousand, pocket money, fifteen thousand, enough for a down-paymert on a flat. The Eagle had said: You know what I worry about?

I mean it, lose sleep about? One day you overreach – know what I mean – take a step too far. I worry… Poor old Eagle, good old boy, and right again, always. He could no longer see the trees at the river because the sun bounced on them and his eyes were too tired to focus on them. There was no respect in Cann's voice when he shouted. .. He did not know how much longer he could stand and not move. If he were to be beaten, and to beg, it would be soon.

He was slipping.

He played a game with a man's mind, and with a man's life.

Joey was alone with the dog. He had fed it the bread and cheese, and the apple for pulp crunching, and all of the water that they'd left. He'd heard the murmur of the van's engine as it had driven away from the track, and the pick-ups. Sometimes there were the voices, carried on the wind, of the de-miners working from the track by the river but they were little more than whispers and he could not see them.

He said to the dog, who was named after a hero and a killer, 'Doesn't worry me, Nasir, if I'm going down in the filth with him, and get to fight dirtier than he knows how. He loses, I win. What I want is to have him in my hand and to crush him. He's always won, I've always lost, but not here. You can understand that, Nasir?'

His head shook, the hunger and thirst were worse, and he could not cough up saliva to run over his tongue.

In front of him, out in the sunlight, Mister fell.

Joey croaked his shout, 'Don't cheat me, you bastard. Don't beg, don't cry. Stand up… '

'Stand up, you cheating bastard. I want you running, running among the mines, and I want you screaming.

Get up.'

The sound on the speakers faded and was lost against the traffic on Lower Thames Street; the picture was dying. SQCH said it was the battery going down on the mobile, or the power pack on the camera was exhausted. She remarked that she was surprised the camera and the mobile, abandoned on the vantage-point by Miss Bolton when she had pulled out, as ordered, had lasted so long. All of them in the room stared, without forgiveness, at Dougie Gough.

'Don't say it, you don't have to tell me. I take responsibility. I think they are about to go into what is euphemistically called close-quarters combat. It'll be in the gutter, Gorbals street-fighting. I ask myself, down there, can Cann win – and then, does it matter, other than to Cann, who wins and who loses? God watch for him.'

The last image on the screen, before the snowstorm, was of the fox careering away with the bone, and of the fallen man trying to push himself up.