She had her mobile out of her bag ‘Xavier? Good man. Did I wake you? Sorry. Something I want from you, something else . . .’
He woke when his door opened. He’d found the bottle at the back of a cupboard in the kitchen. Whisky, a cheap brand, about half full. Now it was about empty. So, he’d slept well. He hadn’t heard them moving upstairs or coming down. He pushed himself up.
Snapper stood over him.
He blinked, yawned, then asked, ‘What do you want?’
The whisky had been useful. It had taken him all afternoon and into the evening to speak to a human being at Málaga International. Finally he’d asked for the tickets to be transferred to an immediate flight and been told it would cost an additional 412 euros. Jonno didn’t have that sort of money and it was unlikely that Posie would be able to pay her half. So, they were stuck.
‘We need something from you.’
‘Is that a request or an instruction?’
‘Treat it as a request.’
‘What do you want?’
Snapper said, ‘We need you to drive down to town. There’s a car park on the edge of the gardens opposite the Moors’ walls. You go there, collect a packet and bring it back here. We can’t have it delivered to the door and we aren’t up for going cross-country at the back.’
‘Is it important?’
‘Look, I don’t have to explain anything to you. We need you to go into town and collect what’s given to you.’
‘And if I won’t?’
‘Then we’re back to where we were before. I’m warning you gently that nasty things will keep popping up. I reckoned you had the brains to work that one out. Was I wrong?’
Jonno managed a sweet smile, and mimicked the voice he’d heard the previous afternoon: ‘ “God’s truth – and I don’t care who knows it – I’m wobbling.” I think that’s what was said.’
‘Keep looking over your shoulder is my advice,’ Snapper said, with venom.
‘Just tell me when to get on the road.’
Jonno slipped off the bed and padded past Snapper towards the bathroom. Posie was in the kitchen; he could have told her she was staying for the duration, unless she had 206 euros to spare, but decided to keep it for a choicer moment. A changed man, yes. He didn’t like himself, and didn’t have to, and didn’t care.
14
‘It can overwhelm you, PTSD can. You hate yourself and everyone else.’
Rain whipped the windows and leaves were battered off the trees. Water streamed from the gutters. If Jonno didn’t listen to Sparky he was back on family holidays, in rented cottages near the Devon coast, the rain falling, the wind hammering and board games out on the table. Mostly he listened.
‘I was obsessed with it, and Patsy had been. I stayed with it, and she moved on. Three months later – reporting my progress to the magistrate – I saw her and she had a bloke with her. We didn’t speak and she kept going, but her face had gone scarlet. I hadn’t the right to hold on to her. She’d told me the likely cause was a malfunction of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis – if it’s stressed it makes high levels of cortisol and adrenalin, which produce the flight-or-fight reaction in combat. She said that Swedish troops sent to Bosnia with low salival cortisol levels faced a higher risk of the disorder.’
He would be told when he had to go into town for the meeting. Loy had refreshed the shopping list.
‘If you lose your life you come back in a box and everyone’s respectful and heartbroken. If you lose an arm, a leg, you’re a hero and people want to know you. Trouble comes when there’s nothing on the brain for a scan to fasten on. The military don’t want you so they shuffle you out and pass on the problem to someone in Civilian Land. I was lucky.’
He didn’t know what Posie did up in the roof space, and seldom heard her voice. He had told her that the additional amount for the airfare was beyond him. She’d looked at him as if that were further proof of his inadequacy and had gone upstairs. He’d called after her: ‘But you can always bloody walk or hitch a ride with your friends.’
‘I didn’t have the dog, but I had the garden. It’s St John’s, in a square, surrounded by metal railings, not as good as walls but brilliant for me. Nothing dangerous can get at me – no one can come inside and put IEDs in the flowerbeds. I’m secure there. I’m a paratrooper, the Sunray’s sweetheart, and I kill men . . . but I’m using secateurs to do pruning, digging beds and planting out the bedding for the summer. I’m raking leaves . . .’
He hadn’t seen it but had heard the commentary on a man being fed alive into a chipper’s funnel. He had gone into the garden and wrung an injured cat’s neck to end its pain. Small experiences when set against Sparky’s world.
‘She used to come in and have her smoke. She’s incredible. To all of them, and to me, she’s the Boss. She understands me, takes the trouble to, and I’d do anything she asked of me. She cares about me – the fact that I have a new life, in that garden, is because of her. It motivates me to keep going.’
Why had such a fragile man been sent as protection to Snapper and Loy? Jonno thought it wasn’t his business to ask. He said he had to go and check the fridge. He reckoned that anyone who had found a willing ear would be used to having it snatched away. He went into the kitchen. He could do with some bread, might need a carton of milk. Some sausages would be good, oven chips, beans or peas. The crowd upstairs had now taken two shelves in the fridge and Jonno was left with one. Anything for Posie was kept on their shelf, and she had a couple of cartons of fruit juice.
He made his own list. What had he done in his life? Not a lot. What had Sparky done in his life? Too much.
He was involved with them all. He knew that Snapper wobbled, that Loy was moving on Posie, that Sparky was wrecked, that the Russian and his Serbs killed and hurt bad when they did it . . . knew too much and would forget nothing. He knew about the Boss and a garden . . . and about a packet that had been sent to them.
Winnie watched. There were always binoculars in Kenny’s bag, and he’d brought them to her. They had good magnification and she had a view across the cemetery, over its far wall and on to the runway. She had to twist herself to see where the traffic crossed the tarmac. There was a good flow – morning commuters and shoppers going from the colony into Spain. It was too early for the first flight in from the UK, when the runway was handed over to incoming aircraft.
She’d had a poor sleep after returning to the base at past four. First light would have been more than an hour earlier. There had been no complaint from Kenny at the hours he’d sat outside the hotel, but Dottie had caustically pointed out to her, when she’d finished her call to Xavier, that her blouse buttons were done up out of order. It was true – and a similar experience would do Dottie a mountain of good.
The queue to go through the frontier had built so Dawson would be in low gear, nudging forward. His vehicle had privacy windows, and the distance was too great for her to identify him – and note whether he had benefited more from two and a half hours of sleep than she had. She didn’t see him . . . God, how many years was it since she had walked on a pavement, stopped, spun round and watched a man’s back as he headed round a corner and out of her sight? Chances were that the beggar wouldn’t stop, turn and wave. Chances were that he was already wondering about the next day’s steeplechase meeting at Wincanton. She saw the black Range Rover. Winnie Monks would have denied that she wanted, for reasons of romance, to glimpse the vehicle Dawson drove.
Natural, of course, that she would need to know he had managed an early breakfast, been to the fuel station on Winston Churchill Avenue, filled the tank and was now on his way. The package would be stowed behind him, and a Six man had use of the Range Rover with the modification to allow an X-ray-proof box under the rear bench seat.
She’d talked of ‘closure’ and thought he doubted her.
The Range Rover picked up speed, cleared the runway, and she lost it behind the new terminal building.
She eased away from the window
, gave the binoculars to Kenny, then called Xavier, told him the bird flew and shut the phone. ‘So, it’s launched,’ she observed.
Dottie shrugged. ‘Taking a horse to water doesn’t mean it’ll drink. Know what I mean, Boss? You can put it in his hands, but you can’t guarantee he’ll be up to using it.’
Kenny didn’t look at her. ‘You chose him, Boss, and I won’t question your judgement. He’s flawed, but you’re backing him.’
‘For fuck’s sake, where are you coming from?’ she rounded on them. ‘Could I have called Hereford and asked for a useful marksman who can be spared from other duties and can keep his mouth shut, then tell them he’s going to Spain to commit an illegal act on the territory of a prime ally? Or should I have traipsed round Mayfair to one of those posh little creeps running the day-to-day of a contractor business and requested someone not required in Afghanistan who can aim straight and not boast to his mates that he’s into extra-judicial execution? Instead I pick some miserable fucker out of the gutter and get a bit of bonding under way. Then, out of the clear blue sky I get a break. I have him eating out of my hand. He’s PTSD so no one would believe him. I’m the only bloody friend he has, and he’s unlikely to kick me where it hurts. He won’t turn his back on me. Make a pot of tea, Dottie.’
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘And, Kenny, I’m not proud of what I’ve done.’
‘No, Boss.’
‘Today my mantra is closure. I want closure on this. I’m not prepared to say whether it was a week, a month or a year ago that I decided what happened in Budapest was a millstone round my neck that I’d be lugging round till an act of revenge had been exacted.’
Dottie said, ‘I’d imagine the trouble with revenge, years on, is remembering what provoked it, or how much it mattered.’
Kenny said, ‘I can’t see the surveillance people being there much longer, Boss. Have to hope I’m wrong.’
She snapped back, ‘They’re the Graveyard Team – well, ‘‘associates’’. Of course they’ll be there. They wouldn’t quit on me. No chance.’
He flushed a little. In the team’s old days, it was rare for her to be sharp with them. They would never argue back. Might suggest options when they knew one was her favoured choice, but they wouldn’t piss on her. If there was closure she could consider where it might leave her . . . But there was ground yet to be covered.
Dawson had left the Rock behind him. He had also left grinning receptionists at the hotel’s desk. More recently, in his wake, there were irritated men and women of the Spanish border agency and their Customs officers, who would dearly have liked to direct the Range Rover to a search bay and rummage in it. They were prevented from doing so by the plates.
He assumed it to be a rifle.
Dawson, station officer of Six in the Spanish capital, was engaged in a piece of madness that bore the very strong possibility of destroying his career. He felt lightheaded enough to fill the car with Beethoven. He had mortgaged his career and deposited it between the legs of Winnie Monks. He would not have carried that package for another creature on the planet. The rain had gone, but the road glistened and spray swept over the car. He was beyond San Roque, had bypassed Guadiaro and the turn-off for Manilva was signposted. The Range Rover ate into the kilometres shown for Marbella on the A7 autopista, and he allowed the music to lift him. If she failed him, there would be an internal inquiry during which incredulous men and women of the Service would cudgel him with questions. They’d tell him that what he had attempted had brought Six into disrepute. He had been part of a botched conspiracy.
He had brass in his ears and the thump of the timpani around him. He had worked from London and out of Warsaw, had endured Hanoi and regarded Madrid as purgatory. Now he was comfortable. If she fouled up, the inquiry would condemn him, then cut him loose to face courts and verdicts. No one would stand beside him.
He murmured, ‘All your balls are in the air, Winnie. Question is, can you keep them there? If one ball falls, Winnie, they all will. As we say, on a wing and a prayer.’
Mikey Fanning wore his suit more often than he used to. Because he was old, so were his friends. Those who couldn’t afford repatriation – alive or dead – had funerals, whether they were in one piece or had been chopped about at the University of Alicante. The trousers were a little tight at waist and crotch, and the jacket buttons just fastened. It would do. The shirt looked good and the tie was what a businessman would have worn in London. His shoes shone and he tied the laces neatly.
His hair was slicked down on a scalp much marked by years of sun blisters. He had shaved closely.
Last, he reached for the Rolex.
She pushed forward. It would have been her nerves. It wasn’t like her to show them. He hadn’t seen Myrtle affected by nerves when the Crime Squad had kicked the door in before it was light. Neither had he seen her show stress when a jury found against him at Woolwich or Southwark Crown Court – or even when he was at the Old Bailey. She’d been ice cold when he’d hobbled in through the back door with the bullet wound in his leg. And she had been unfussed when the TV said the Santa Maria was under escort, heading for harbour with marines on board. It unsettled Mikey to have Myrtle nervy.
She went forward as he did and their arms entangled. They were reaching for the Rolex, and both had it, then left it to the other. They dropped it. There were tiles on the bedroom floor. The glass shattered, and the second hand stopped.
Mikey hissed, ‘You clumsy cow—’ And checked himself, ashamed.
He held out his arms and took Myrtle into them. He hugged her. He didn’t like to see her nervous. He said, ‘It’s only a fake. You think Izzy Jacobs would loan me, anyone, a real Rolex?’
It was a tight hug. There had always been a hug, a cuddle and a kiss before he’d gone out through the back door on a job in the old days. He’d have muttered, ‘There’ll be a drink in this for me, love, and likely one for you as well.’ He didn’t say that – it wasn’t appropriate this time. He put on his own watch, the glass battered. It was hard to see the hands and Myrtle said she’d clean up after him.
He told her when he thought he’d be back. He took a deep breath, best foot forward, and checked his pocket for his bus pass. He looked a last time in the mirror and reckoned his appearance as good as it could be.
He was going to beard Pavel Ivanov and find out where Tommy King was, his nephew and a rat and family.
‘And you’ve just the one child, didn’t you say?’
It should have been wrapped up the night before for Caro Watson. She should have been back in her one-bedroom studio south of the river before midnight. She should have been at the house in the evening when there was a better than even chance of finding the parents at home. A shambles, and it was hard for her to disguise her annoyance at the cards dealt her. First, she had missed a train by three minutes at Paddington. Second, she had waited for the next, due to leave twenty-seven minutes later, and it had pulled out on time, then had been stuck for an hour with a points failure. Then they had been clattering through a tunnel on full throttle when some idiot had stepped in front of the engine. That had taken another two hours.
‘Yes, just the one.’
‘I’m from a big family, two brothers and two sisters. I had to fight to survive. What’s he like, being the only one?’
By the time the train had reached Temple Meads it had been too late to flog out to the village where they lived. She’d found a B-and-B, then taken a taxi early. The cover for this sort of exercise was usually a work-and-pensions survey. Hadn’t they been notified? Must be the cuts. The taxi wasn’t coming back for an hour. She’d done the business: what provision they’d made for old age, what were their priority expenditure items. Then the notepad had been ostentatiously folded and put away. The lad’s father had gone to work but the mother was a librarian and had rung in to say she might be late. Caro Watson was not the girl who had allowed an agent to go to a meeting without support. She was not the young woman who’d squeezed a young ma
n in a back-street café near to the docks in Constanta or hectored him outside the toilets at a hotel in Nouakchott. She was unrecognisable as the intelligence officer who had denied responsibility for a cadaver in the icebox of a morgue, which might now be on the way to a pauper’s burial plot behind a Mauretanian rubbish tip. She was solicitous and courteous, the questions were conversational and her family was fictional. She was an able liar, and easily won trust.
The mother said, ‘We love him, of course, but he’s not up to much. He gets by. With more competition at home he might have been different. He had a great deal of attention, was helped along the way, and he coasts. He does what he has to. He has a job and an address, but there’s no sign that he’s ready to take on the world. I’m not saying he’s lazy, it’s just that he doesn’t seem to have horizons he wants to get to. There’s a friend in the village whose daughter is a human-rights lawyer and forever challenging the status quo. She takes the side of any underdog within sight, but Jonno doesn’t get involved. I’ve another friend who has an accountant son and he – we’re told often enough – is going to be top of the heap. It all makes my Jonno seem rather inadequate. He’s just ordinary – but he’s what we have. I’m sorry, my dear, I’m keeping you.’
Caro Watson smiled, thanked her for the coffee and went to the waiting taxi. She thought the amount on the clock justified by what she’d learned. On the front path she complimented the woman on her shrubs, which always left a good impression. It might be what the Boss wanted to read and might be what she didn’t – ordinary.
Sparky watched as Loy answered the call. The light flashed on the receiver, then dulled. Loy seemed confused, then handed it to Snapper. He listened briefly and his forehead furrowed.
‘You don’t want me, then, Boss? . . . Well, Loy wasn’t sure what you wanted . . . Nothing to say to me, Boss? I mean, there are things here that you might want a fuller brief on but . . . Right, Boss, I’ll put him on. Hold, Boss.’
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