RAT RUN GERALD SEYMOUR

by Gerald Seymour

  The club on the Reeperbahn - across the wide street from the dour brick-built police station - was sandwiched between an Italian restaurant and a shop, now closed, that sold sex aids. The club advertised itself in neon as providing a bar, dancing girls and kino booths for single or multiple occupancy. Timo Rahman had acquired the club nine years before. The last conscious act of its previous owner, a Russian from the Dnieper region, had been to sign away the deeds in the belief that the transfer would save his life: with the ink not dry on the paper, he had been clubbed, then dragged out and thrown into the boot of his own car. It had been driven to the quayside by the Fish Market. As the effect of the clubbing had worn off he had kicked frantically at the tomb he was in as the car had been manhandled forward and had toppled into the oiled water. The club now provided some four per cent of the annual turnover of the Rahman empire.

  'You will enjoy the show, Ricky,' he said.

  He treated the mouseboy as an honoured guest. The best table, the best view of the girls on the stage, the best service. He was an attentive host. As a cosmetic blonde danced, and her implanted bosom bounced, he explained the history of the Reeperbahn street, the quarter where rope was made for the docks and the rigging of sail-powered trading ships, but the mouseboy was distant from him, seemed not to hear him and fidgeted with the stem of his glass. When the girl, naked now, finished her dance and stood full-frontal to accept the applause, he smiled with warmth.

  'I am told by Enver that you have bars at home, Ricky, in London. But I think they are different from those in Hamburg. Let me show you what we offer.'

  He had raised an eyebrow, the merest gesture. The manager hovered close to him and passed a padded envelope to the Bear.

  'The speciality of the club, Ricky, is in the kino booths

  - explicit videos ...' In his own tongue he murmured a question to his manager, heard out the reply and turned again to the mouseboy. 'Many customers are satisfied sufficiently to return here, perhaps each year. The one I would like to show you is being watched by a party of factory workers, from Essen, where they make toothpaste. They are always satisfied and come each March.

  We should see what they are enjoying.'

  He led. Ricky Capel followed, and a pace behind was the Bear with the envelope.

  They crossed the bar and he held back a curtain.

  They were in a corridor lined by doorways in which were set small glass windows. He heard the baying laughter, as his guest would have, of the factory workers from Essen.

  He took his guest to the far door of the corridor, the source of the laughter.

  Timo Rahman peered through the window in the door. He saw a dozen men, in jeans and casual shirts, some balding and some grey-haired, some standing and some hunched forward on chairs, all of them, as they rocked in laughter, gazing at the wide screen on the far wall. The good boy, his best nephew, Enver had said the video was high quality, and the sound.

  'Here, Ricky, look and enjoy.'

  Because the Bear was behind him, pressed against him, his guest was nudged forward, pushed close enough for his nose and eyes to be against the glass.

  Where he stood, Timo could see the screen. He saw Ricky Capel flush, his eyes widen. Around them, in the corridor, was a cacophony of laughter from the booth and the ever louder grunting from the girl on the screen. She rode her man. The man's head rolled, swayed, and he seemed to cry out but the noise of his little yell was drowned by the girl's grunts. He saw the curse slip from Ricky Capel's lips, but soundless.

  More of the factory workers from Essen stood and now they clapped in the rhythm of the girl's down thrusts and some, bent with laughter, grunted with her, as she did. The Bear's weight was against Ricky Capel and he could not have extricated himself from the viewing window had he tried to. On the screen, in a crescendo, she thrust down and he thrust up, and now the grunting overwhelmed the laughter and the clapping - then they both sagged. She rolled off him and there was a long, collective gasp of disappointment from the audience, like a moan. She moved from the camera's view, and the mouseboy was left on the bed and in the moment before his stiffness fled him, he reached up - a kid at a football game who has scored a goal - and punched the air. The factory workers beat their hands together above their heads as if they were on the terraces of a stadium, and the screen went black.

  Timo led them back up the corridor, but he paused at the curtain. He took the envelope from the Bear and held it in front of his guest. He let him read the address. The envelope was large enough to take a video cassette and he had written on it: Mrs Joanne Capel, 9 Bevin Close, London SE, England. Beside him, Ricky Capel panted and the colour had gone from his face, as if he was about to vomit.

  'I think, Ricky, we do not have a problem.'

  'No, Mr Rahman, we don'-t.'

  'I think, Ricky, it is unnecessary for that envelope to go in the post.'

  'Yes, Mr Rahman, I'll take him.'

  'I think, Ricky, that always I knew I could depend on you.'

  'That's right, Mr Rahman.' A small low voice with its character hacked from it.

  They went back into the bar where another girl danced, where Timo took the envelope from the Bear and used the strength of his hands to rip it to many pieces.

  'You sure about this, Dad?'

  'Not happy, son, but sure on it.'

  He turned the key, kick-started the diesel. The planking of the wheel-house of the Anneliese Royal throbbed with the motion, and the roar was in Harry Rogers's ears. Billy watched him for a moment, then turned and pushed young Paul outside. They had done better time up from the west than he'd anticipated, had hammered in the car up the motorway and there was - without anything to spare - enough of the previous tide to get them out of the east-coast harbour.

  He saw below him, from the side window, his son and grandson working with the ropes, one on the quayside loosening them and one furling them on the deck.

  Annie had said, on the step as he had left home, that just once - once in his life - he should have told his nephew, Ricky Capel, where to jump off, and she'd said, and meant it, that she'd break his back if anything happened to the boy, Paul - which was bloody daft, because if anything happened to the boy, out in those seas they were sailing into, then it was short odds it would happen to all of them.

  The ropes were done and Harry edged them away from the quay, going in reverse. He throttled up power and black smoke spewed behind. When they'd climbed on board, the assistant harbourmaster had braved the wind and rain and come down from the sanctuary he shared with the coastguard and Customs people. Probably bored out of his mind because no other boat was putting to sea that night. Harry had blustered that mortgage repayments on the Anneliese Royal didn't wait on the weather, and had parried him with bullshit about being in place when the storm blew itself out. Good hunting, he'd been told, and the assistant harbourmaster had run for shelter.

  They moved towards the end of the groyne, where the light flashed.

  He could see, from the wheel-house, the big plate-glass window and could make out the small shapes of the assistant harbourmaster, the duty coastguard and the Customs woman, who was doing the night shift. They'd all have had their binoculars up, but Harry didn't see that because the rain ran rivers on the wheel-house. Ricky Capel had called him again and had given him co-ordinates for the German coast, but had sounded sort of distant and had said, 'It's not a hundred per cent, Harry. It may not happen. Just as likely you'll get a cancel from me. A good chance of a cancel, but you get moving. Don't tell the world where you're headed. If it's a cancel I'll call you on the mobile and turn you back. It'll probably be that, a cancel.' But the cancel call hadn't come.

  The old boys, eighty years before, going to sea in a beam trawler under sail power and taking on a force nine or ten - fifty-knot wind speed - had had a saying:

  'Grumble you may, but go you must.' He thought of them, weather hardened, and of the boat that would be his one day, which they had gone to sea in. She passed the end of the groyne,
where a solitary lunatic watched his fishing-rod, and left the safety of the harbour. Waves slashed against the Anneliese Royal, lifted and dropped her.

  'My chief waited for you, Mr Gaunt, but he's gone now. Has a dinner this evening with Home Office fat cats - I don't reckon wild horses would have pulled him off that. For my chief, a dinner with them is like a call to the Sepulchre. He asked me to hang on and see you, see how we can help. So, I'm what you've g o t . . .

  Sorry about that.'

  'I'm grateful to you, Detective Sergeant. I hope I haven't mucked up your evening.'

  'You haven't - and please call me Tony.'

  'Fine, Tony. Could we set some ground rules?

  Official Secrets Act, no notes taken, conversation that didn't happen - you know the game. I don't want the party line, just want it straight, the way it is, and don't ask me why I requested this meeting. The subject of my interest is Ricky Capel.'

  'Aged thirty-four, married to Joanne, one son, lives at nine Bevin Close, that's south London on the east side.'

  They were in a chief superintendent's office with beech panelling, pastel slat blinds and photographs from courses of sitting and standing participants; there was a picture of the office resident in uniform and shaking the hand of the grinning prime minister. Among the photographs there were shields presented by Texan, Jordanian and Brazilian police forces - and the room was scrupulously tidy. Gaunt wondered balefully if, as a visitor, he should have removed his shoes before entering. What was a refreshing relief, the detective sergeant had pushed aside the leather-tipped blotter and the crystal ink-stand, and had planted his backside on the desk.

  Immaculate as always in his suit and waistcoat, with his tie over the collar button, Gaunt could recognize a worker ant. A damned tired one . . . He liked such men.

  'I'm assuming there are a hundred places you'd rather be than here, and I'll try not to waste your time.

  What is the single most important thing about Ricky Capel?'

  'That he's never been nicked.'

  'He's a big player. Why has he never been arrested and charged?'

  'Cunning, not educated, intelligent but clever.

  Doesn't overreach himself.'

  'As easy as that?'

  'A guy who's never been nicked, each year he gets to be more careful, cuts down on the risk factor.'

  'But you target him?'

  The detective sergeant snorted, almost derision.

  Gaunt liked that near streak of contempt for his question. It was not the right place for him to pace and intimidate, so he leaned back in the visitor's chair, swung his feet on to the desk and rested them beside the baggy flop of the policeman's jacket. He thought it would show a welcome disrespect for the high and mighty whose office it was.

  'How does he walk round you?'

  'Because we're in the quick-fix world. Focus groups and think-tanks rule us, and they say that targets must be met, must be. We have a slop of money coming in here at Criminal Intelligence, and there's budgets for Crime Squad and the organized-crime people at the Yard. Best way to justify the cash is to get results, achieve those bloody targets. What you don't do - and it's my chief's Bible - is think long-term. Resources are allocated at targets where results can be guaranteed.

  Then my chief can go down the Home Office, take a dinner and spiel out the statistics of success. To go after a clever, cunning bastard - Ricky Capel - takes cash, manpower, commitment, with no promise of getting the handcuffs on him. He's doing very nicely, it's what he'd tell you . . . There's all sorts of wars being fought at the moment and I reckon we're losing the lot of them. My war, people-trafficking for vice and the importation of narcotics, is going down the plug-hole and fast. Not that my chief would tell you, but we got it wrong and we're losing. Is that out of order?'

  'I wouldn't say so, Tony.' He asked with effortless casualness, well practised, 'What business would take Ricky Capel to Hamburg?'

  He saw the policeman's eyes flash, and the rhythm with which he slapped his heels against the front of his chief's desk was cut.

  'You're well informed, Mr Gaunt.'

  'Why would he be there?'

  'You know about Albanians?'

  Gaunt said easily, 'I cast an eye over matters Albanian from time to time.'

  'The big hook-up is with Timo Rahman, godfather of that city, supplier of the heroin that Capel brings in.

  I don't know the route used but Rahman is the source.

  The link goes back a long way, right back to Capel's grandfather. I read that in the file. The grandfather, that's Percy Capel, did time in the war in Albania and worked with a gang led by Rahman's father. That's where you'd find what the link is. Percy's an old thief and lives next door to Capel... not that he'd give you the time of day.'

  'No, I don't suppose he would.' He knew more, and it gave him little pleasure, than the policeman - could have told him about a boat supposedly coming to an island off the Frisian coast of Germany, but that would have meant sharing. It was Gaunt's habit to leech blood, a one-way trade. He lifted his shoes off the table and glanced, with slight ostentation, at his watch, as if he had consumed enough of the

  detective's time. 'I much appreciate you staying on and meeting me.'

  'What I'm saying to you, Mr Gaunt, is that Capel's supping with the devil, but for both of them it's a mistake.'

  'How's that?'

  'We've learned it. The Albanians suck a man dry when he thinks they're just partners, then move in and ditch him. The other side, Capel isn't in Rahman's league of skills and on anything big he would be the weak leg.'

  'An interesting observation. I'll let you get on home.

  Been grand meeting you.'

  But the man was not finished, and gushed, 'I tell you, Mr Gaunt, it pisses me off that we're losing, that Capel and his like are winning. We've the courts and the legislation and the prisons, but we're not filling them. I could take you to an estate, not much more than a mile from here, where there's addicts and pushers who sell to them, and dealers, where there's old ladies who live behind barricades and in fear. I don't suppose that's in your remit, Mr Gaunt, old ladies getting their arm broken for what's in a purse.'

  It seared in Gaunt's mind. He recalled the long signal sent him by Polly Wilkins that detailed hours spent in the Planten und Blumen garden and what a man had told her. It fell into place. A man had tried to claw back his life by climbing a pyramid. He offered no sign of it, and stood.

  'Very helpful you've been, Tony. A last chore for you. Please, see if there's anything in the Capel file that might equate with a rat run - you know, a round-the-houses short-cut as an importation route

  - any trace to a b o a t . . . Oh, if I ever wanted to go to that estate - probably very close to where I work - and meet a pensioner who was mugged for her purse, who would I go to see, and where?'

  A slip of paper was taken from the chief's desk notepad, and the accompanying silver-coated pencil, inscribed 'To a Valued Colleague From the Police Academy, Toronto', scribbled something. Gaunt pocketed it without reading what had been written.

  He never showed enthusiasm for information given.

  Going down in the lift and out into the evening, he realized that he had spent an hour with a policeman who was so embittered by defeat that he had pulled the marionette strings of a broken man and given the poor beggar purpose - quite bizarre, but life was ever thus. He reflected: a man with purpose in his step could always be found useful work.

  He lay full length on a platform bench.

  Police had come to him a half-hour before and towered over him. They'd had pistols, handcuffs, gas and batons on their belts, but he had shown them his passport and his onward train ticket. The man had grimaced contempt, the woman had sniffed, and they had left him. A train came through, pulling half a hundred, Malachy's best guess, wagons of chemicals.

  He was awake, had been since the police had checked him. When the wagons had rumbled away into the night, a silence fell round him and the station's life died.
He had reached Rotenburg. He must wait, chilled and damp, another hour for a night service that would take him - via Bremen, Oldenburg and Emden - to the coast.

  Off the coast was an island, but he did not know what he would find there, or if he would find anything.

  He sat on his bed and a blanket shrouded his shoulders.

  The nightmare had worked in the mind of Oskar Netzer. If he lay on his bed, he would sleep because of his age and his tiredness. If he slept he dreamed, and the nightmares chased relentlessly after him. He saw men loosen the noose round a frail neck, take down a child's corpse and put the noose on another.

  The blanket gave him sparse warmth. Always at the last, the picture in his mind was of his uncle Rolf, who had helped to drive the children, their carers and guards, their doctor and the ropes to the cellar where hooks were set in the ceiling. Because that blood ran in him, he was part of the evil. He had come to the island of Baltrum, with his wife, to find peace but it escaped him. The blood in his veins was contaminated. He threw off the blanket and stood up heavily. The joints of his legs - as if he was cursed -

  ached at the movement, and he went to his living room. Respite, if it were to be found, would be in the bundles of planning applications that littered his table, and the drawings of a proposed new sewage works.

  Only by fighting each change that came to the paradise, Baltrum, could Oskar Netzer exorcize the guilt that ran in his blood. He pored over applications and the proposal... Anything and any person who was new to the island and threatened it must be fought root and branch - as Lutherans had said three centuries before - without compromise. The light, from a low-wattage bulb with no shade, beamed down on him as he scanned typescripts and drawings, and was saved from sleep.

  He had many names, discarded, and in the morning he would have a new one. In the morning he would be given the passport and documents for Social Security.

  He had the name given him at birth - Anwar.