The Outsiders

by Gerald Seymour

He stood up and walked towards the window, past a low armchair, dropping his handkerchief on the way. He bent to pick it up. It was hard to get down that low and he wheezed. He scooped up the handkerchief and the little plastic badge, no more than three-eighths of an inch across, which had been almost hidden under the chair. It was the badge his nephew wore. It had been given to Tommy King two years previously, when the little bastard still had money. The doormen at a nightclub on the beach between Estepona and San Pedro de Alcantara recognised it as having been given to a favoured customer. The place was now closed and the owner in gaol for dealing narcotics. He straightened. One of the men now had car keys in his hand, and they smiled – patronising bastards.

  ‘Are you telling me that my nephew, my Tommy, wasn’t here yesterday or the day before? You telling me that?’

  ‘He was not here. I regret your visit was wasted. Good day. Please, any further communication, go to my lawyer, to Rafael.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Mr Ivanov. My nephew was here. How do I know? Because of this. It’s a badge he wore. He had it a week before the bar that dished them out was closed. He was here and it fell off and went under the chair.’

  Pity Izzy wasn’t there to see him, and Myrtle.

  Mikey Fanning was a man of impulse, always had been. He’d decide on which jewellery-shop window they would do or which wages van. He had not yet done any analysis of consequences, outcomes, endgames, but he had seen the badge and picked it up. He was a creature of the moment. They stared at him. All three had fixed him with a cold gaze, but he reckoned this was his finest hour because he had nailed them.

  ‘You’ve lied to me, Mr Ivanov.’

  Those who knew Mikey Fanning well would have described him as sharp, cunning, but short of intelligence. He had not noted that the three men facing him, one jangling the car keys, wore a uniform of jeans and heavy shoes, black shirts, leather coats and shades – like bloody gangsters. He felt good, and the exhaustion of flogging up the hill was gone

  The dog took off: it raced towards the chipper – and leaped. It caught a rat and shook it. The rat hung limp and the dog dropped it.

  His finest hour. ‘A lie is a lie, Mr Ivanov. He was here.’

  He watched the Russian. He saw puzzlement spread across the man’s face and thought himself clever. He didn’t notice that the other two had drifted away from his field of vision. He thought they’d see a man of substance challenging them and would seek to buy him off.

  He pushed: ‘You lied to me.’

  A man came to where the Major, Grigoriy and Ruslan sat. He said the boat would come soon. They would go when it was dark, and take cigarettes. The weather would be better then.

  A launch was tied up at the pier pontoon. It rose and fell with the waves, its sides crashing against the tyres slung from the posts. None of them talked. They were men of combat, used to the surges of adrenalin that drove them forward. They had realised the crossing would be shit at best, hell at worst. They waited.

  Sparky didn’t watch. Neither did Posie.

  Snapper said, ‘In London, of course, I’d intervene – not that it would do him any good – but I’m not in London.’

  Loy said, ‘In London we’d call the cavalry.’

  The chain saw had started. The engine had come alive with only the third pull.

  Jonno saw the old man who had thanked him with a squeezed hand for a lift up the hill. He didn’t know whether the man was unconscious, had lost all movement through acute fear or was dead. Sparky was behind him and worked assiduously at his task. He did not look up. Posie had moved away from Loy and was beside Sparky, pushing against him, but he didn’t acknowledge her.

  Sparky stripped the thing, took it apart. Jonno wondered how – if – he would be able to put it together again. He had brought a cloth from the bathroom to clean it.

  Snapper did the commentary in a level voice: ‘I’m thinking he’s already dead, Loy – he’s not struggling like the other one did. One has a hold of him, one’s with the saw, and the other is lifting up and holding some sort of sheet close to the lower part of the trunk and upper legs. It’ll be a screen for the detritus of the wound. Without it there’d be blood, muscle and bone splinters halfway across the garden. There it goes, the chain saw. I think he’s dead, so this is a gesture, not an act of barbarism, but we’ll see.’

  The shutter clicked. It was not on automatic but there would be a portfolio of images.

  Jonno looked round. Posie’s hands were over her ears but she’d have heard Snapper’s clear voice. Sparky had the weapon together again, perfect, as it had been. The finger closed on the trigger bar and the mechanism clicked. Sparky caught his eye, then checked the bullets and loaded them into the magazines.

  ‘It’s what they do. They cut the legs off. Russians, Albanians, Colombians and Irish – it’s the same message, same language. ‘‘You can’t run from me.’’ An old favourite. Usually they’ll leave the legs where they’ll be found, and dispose of the rest of the body.’

  Loy said, ‘I’ve all that down, Snapper. Pictures good?’

  ‘Fine. I reckon they’re the last I’ll take. Four things. First, we have no mandate of legitimacy. Second, the rug’s out from under our feet, and no action will be taken if we identify our target. Three, we’re up alongside as horrible a group of psychos as I’ve witnessed, with a pea-shooter as back-up. Four, the pea-shooter is not a protection weapon. It’s for assassination, which makes you and me, Loy, accessory to murder, should it be used, which is a long way beyond any remit of mine. In the morning, we’re out.’

  Loy said, ‘I’m not disagreeing.’

  Jonno watched. Two plastic bags were brought from the villa. The body went into one. The legs went into the other. He saw the socks his passenger had worn and the brightly polished shoes. The material, perhaps an old curtain, was folded tightly, then thrust into the bag with the body. Both bags were knotted. The Russian walked back to the house, leaving the haulage to his Serbs.

  He knew what Posie would do. He knew what he himself would do.

  15

  It had a metronome’s rhythm. He had learned the sounds. There was the hiss of indrawn breath, the pause, the click of the action, then the sigh.

  Jonno imagined that the marksman found his target, settled on it and made the decisions about who lived, who died, and took aim. Then he filled his lungs, took his finger off the guard and squeezed the trigger. As he exhaled, he whistled. A car went down the drive of the Villa del Aguila. Jonno lay on his bed.

  The killing ground was outside the bedroom door. The marksman’s firing position was the bottom stair.

  Jonno had had pasta with butter and grated cheese. He had washed his bowl and gone to the bedroom. They’d been in the kitchen before him and Loy had been last out, grinning, as he took the big tray upstairs with whatever Posie had cooked for them. She’d come down. He’d heard her ask Sparky if he could make room for her to pass, then go into the kitchen and stack what she’d brought down in the sink. She’d used the bathroom and gone to the spare room. The door had closed. The space beside him was so damned empty.

  He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. A couple of mosquitoes tracked above him. He thought that the man outside his door, with the rifle at his shoulder, was tortured.

  The door opened above Sparky – every sound in the house was clear, as was the barking of the dog behind the wall, the command shouted at it from the patio. He could see the colours of the slabs as they had brought the old man across them. Jonno hadn’t wondered why he was coming up the hill on foot, in a suit that was too small at the waist . . . Confusion racked him. How much of what had happened was his responsibility? He didn’t know.

  No one to tell him.

  A light footfall on the stairs. ‘Move over, Sparky.’ Loy sounded chirpy. ‘Don’t bloody shoot me. Thanks.’

  Loy might have put his hand on the rail and hopped past Sparky.

  ‘You all right, Sparky?’

  Jonno imagined the eye at the sight ape
rture, the cheek on the butt. Maybe a nod.

  ‘They took the old guy out to dump him. Can I give you some advice, Sparky? Follow what Snapper says. Wise old bird. If he says we quit, then that’s what we do. Go with Snapper. We do our job and we get paid and we don’t get agitated by those who can’t say, “Here today, gone tomorrow.” She’s not our boss. I doubt she’s yours. I reckon your loyalty is to the foreman in Parks and Gardens, and ours is to our chief in SCD11. Snapper’ll look after you. And I’m sure he’d like your company – know what I mean?’

  Sparky went heavily up the stairs and Jonno thought he heard a murmured ‘Good, man,’ but he wasn’t sure. It was not the bathroom door that was eased open: its hinges didn’t squeal – but those on the door to the spare room did.

  Jonno heard the shushed giggle and buried his head in his pillow.

  He held the sack as if it were a shopping bag. Pavel Ivanov was the Tractor and some of the older or middle-aged men who lived in the tower blocks of St Petersburg would remember him – with affection or loathing, but always with respect. Three days before, he’d have said that the man they remembered was gone, and it would have been true. He had reverted now, acknowledged it.

  Marko was at the villa with mops, cloths and buckets of warm water with detergent. He would clean every room in which the old fool had been and lift each piece of furniture to check under it. He had driven Alex. The boot of the Mercedes had been loaded, with towels and a sheet to protect the interior from contamination with the bags. He had gone along small roads into the suburbs of Fuengirola, had turned into a sprawling urbanisation and found a hire car parked outside a terraced holiday let. Alex had opened its door and pushed it down a hill while Ivanov had pumped the footbrake to control the speed. Then, out of earshot, Alex had wired the engine. They had gone up on to the Sierra de Mijas, towards Coin, and had found a deserted quarry.

  They had torched the hire car.

  They had stayed long enough to see that the fire caught well. In the Mercedes, they had driven away from the high ground, which was often used for the disposal of bodies, renowned for it when fights for territory involved British, Irish and Colombians.

  On the Playa de la Campana, Ivanov carried the second bag down to the shore line and opened it. He let the two severed legs, with the socks and shoes still on the feet, fall out. They would be found in the morning. The surf thundered and the wind hacked at them on the open beach. He could not have said to whom he sent a message, but it felt good and seemed necessary. The old man had called him a liar, an insult he could not ignore. He had then suggested Ivanov’s silence might be bought. Alex had garrotted him in the Spanish way. They left the legs on the sand and the moon’s thin light caught the whitened skin of the old man’s shins.

  Alex drove back.

  It was obvious to Pavel Ivanov that he had revisited an old world. They headed for Marbella. He would have confessed, had he a confidant, that his life as a laundered businessman was likely to be over. The businessman he had aped did not feed impertinent young men into chippers or instruct his minders to take a chain saw to an old fool who believed extortion was a quick route to wealth. It was as if he had taken a narcotic, which had reactivated an old addiction. There was a McDonald’s off the road and they pulled in. They bought three large burgers and fries, then drove on.

  It was unlikely that the police or the fire brigade would turn out for a torched car, and equally unlikely that anyone would be walking on the beach with a dog in the dark. The gulls would have a full feed before the legs were discovered. Alex drove fast back to the villa, unwilling to let the burgers grow cold.

  Xavier spoke to Winnie.

  ‘For fuck’s sake – you know what time it is?’

  ‘Yes, Boss.’

  His voice had held an edge that quietened her.

  ‘Spit.’

  She had been asleep, but now her light was on and she was scrabbling for a pencil and paper.

  ‘You comfortable, Boss?’

  Usually Winnie Monks enjoyed Xavier’s dry dispassion. ‘Do me a favour, get on with it.’

  ‘The package went through as we expected. The young guy who took it off me was clever, aware. He could have showed out because his neighbour was shopping on the street, but he was bright enough not to foul up.’

  ‘You didn’t ring at this God-forgotten hour to tell me that?’

  ‘No. The package contents were seen, which caused a shock wave on top of the turbulence about the extradition call. It was starting to heap up. It was going nowhere, then a weapon was introduced. It gets worse.’

  ‘I’m a big girl.’

  ‘An old guy visited the target. We’d had the chipper before. They killed him, then took his legs off with a chain saw in the garden. It’s a triple shock. Got me, Boss? Another killing on the doorstep.’

  ‘Give it to me, no saccharine.’

  ‘The Snapper team’s pulling out.’

  She hesitated. Her mind churned. God, she missed Dawson – missed having him beside her and his bloody calm. ‘What’s with Sparky?’

  ‘Unclear, Boss.’

  ‘You know what I’m thinking about.’

  ‘I saw the photographs. I know what was done to a colleague. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Thanks for fuck-all, but thank you.’

  ‘It’ll be clearer in the morning. Good night, Boss.’

  She cut the call. Winnie Monks did not do tears or frustration. She went to the window, heaved it open, lit a cigarillo and gazed out over the cemetery. She wondered, now, if it had all been for nothing. She began to dress.

  It was predictable that Dottie would hear her.

  None of them spoke.

  They were waved forward. The Major had nothing to say to the warrant officer, who had nothing to say to the master sergeant.

  Days ago it had seemed a decent idea to go across the strait to Europe. Not that evening. They went down the beach, crossed a strip of dry sand and stepped over the rubbish thrown up by the waves. The Major knew the strait was thirteen kilometres across at the narrowest point, that the current and wind were easterly. The Gecko had told him. The boat waiting for them was low in the water with the weight of the cigarettes. They had watched as the boxes were loaded and seen how the craft bucked, how difficult it was to negotiate the pontoon.

  It might end for them in a lost speedboat. Their bodies might float for a while, sink and resurface. In the Lubyanka they’d need to find another team to do the dirty jobs – to shift the money out of the apparatchiks’ wall safes and into foreign banks. He doubted his wife would shed tears when the phone call came from Moscow. The wind carved at the skin on his scalp, and his coat, zipped tight, billowed. Once, he stumbled and clutched at Grigoriy’s shoulder. Weakness.

  On the walk over the beach and on to the swaying pontoon, the Major thought himself too old. A torch guided him – without it he might have gone over the edge. It led him to the boat. The two big outboards, 150 horse-power each, were turning over and he could smell slopped fuel. A hand reached up for him and he was on the low deck. They had been told, hours before, that it was a good night to cross because the weather would interfere with the radar of the British at Gibraltar and of the Spaniards on the hill above the Tarifa ferry port.

  The master sergeant was on a hard bench seat, no padding, and the warrant officer was between two mountains of boxes. The mooring ropes were thrown off. The bow lifted and cannoned into an onrushing wave. Spray splattered them. When the engines hit full power the noise deafened him.

  They went beyond the headland against the force of a gale.

  The lighthouse lamp threw the beam that rafted over them. The wind came hard off the water and the two women were huddled close.

  They had left the base, passing a monument to Sikorski, the Polish patriot of the Second World War – he’d been lost in a plane crash over which controversy still hung. There was a garden under a rock face and Dottie angled the vehicle so that the area beyond the railings was lit. Two sailors
who had been wounded at Trafalgar had been brought ashore for treatment but had died and were buried there. Dottie knew the batteries and the barracks, and that the banks were discreet with money. It was past three a.m. when they had driven past the mosque with the tall minaret – Dottie said it had been built with money given by the Saudi royal family. They had driven to a point beyond the white-painted, stubby lighthouse.

  Dottie said that eighty thousand ships used the Strait of Gibraltar every year. They did some mental arithmetic to liven their minds: 219, from super-tankers to coastal rust buckets, in a day, so nine would pass in the next hour.

  Winnie Monks swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘What’s to be done?’

  ‘I had an uncle, died a couple of years ago. He had a favourite mug for his tea. It had a slogan, Second World War, Make Do and Mend.’

  ‘Is that an answer?’

  ‘Best you’ll get, Boss.’

  She had been slipping into the Slough of Despond, where Christian had been in Pilgrim’s Progress. She had started to count the moving lights that traversed in front of her, east to west and the other way – red, green and white. Would she hit the mean figure or fall short? Dottie had lifted her. She was no longer in control. She must rely on those she had chosen. Snapper and Loy were dead in the water, and the eraser would take them off her lists. Xavier? He was one of hers. He wouldn’t get on a flight and leave with questions to be answered. Sparky? She thought she’d thrown him a rope. It didn’t cross her mind that she might be criticised for abusing trust.

  ‘I’d thought they’d stay, Snapper and Loy, and spot for Sparky. My mistake – one of a growing fucking number.’

  ‘Not their fight, Boss.’

  She gazed at the water and, when the moon came from between hurrying clouds, she saw the white wave crests, which belted the rocks below.

  ‘They won’t come in a ferry to Algeciras or Tarifa, or in a gin-palace yacht. They wouldn’t risk a light aircraft because the airfields are monitored. It’s a smuggling route.’