The Untouchable

by Gerald Seymour

  '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 an
d 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.'

  Chapter Thirteen

  For Mister the day started well.

  There was a clear sky over him with a dipping quarter-moon. The sun wasn't yet up over the rooftops of the city but a sheen of its coming light slipped into the side-street where he stood. His position, half in the doorway of a steel-shuttered boutique, gave him a useful view of the square and its shrub bushes draped with wind-blown litter, the hotel's steps, the interior foyer and the reception desk.

  He had the timetable of the flights. He had risen early and expected to be rewarded for it. He saw them come into the foyer together, and go to the desk. He understood the way they worked, operated, at the Church.

  They backed off. It was the difference between him and them. There would have been a meeting, and fed into the meeting would have been options - to stay and reinforce or to back off. He felt supreme.

  She carried a lightweight case out of the foyer and down the hotel's steps. The young man, Cann, followed her, loaded with a heavy silvery metal case and a smaller overnight sports bag. She didn't look like anyone from the Church he'd seen before - too petite, too smart - and not police either. She would have been the bug e x p e r t . . . but he'd seen her off. She turned on the pavement and walked towards the far end of the hotel building, Cann trailing behind her.