‘I’ll be back for more of my clothes.’
‘You do that.’ Nothing about needing a removals van for the job. ‘I think you’re doing the right thing, and I’ll make it as easy for you as I possibly can.’
He congratulated himself that his voice sounded so reasonable. She was in her car and zapped the gates. The gardener peered out and up the lane, and he thought of the old stories he used to hear – with Solly Lieberman in Peshawar – about the Soviet boys who had to drive their trucks through the mountain passes from Kabul to Jalalabad and didn’t know where the ambush would be.
‘This is all because of your cheating.’
‘Correct again, as you always were – are …’
She slammed the door.
‘… and will, no doubt, continue to be.’
She wouldn’t have heard. The car and the pick-up enveloped him in exhaust fumes. He didn’t hang around long enough to see whether they made it up the lane, or whether the mujahideen got had them in a blast of RPG fire. She must have done it because the gates closed.
The dog was in the kitchen. Dogs understood. It was under the kitchen table and looked cowed. Harvey realised that the moment the gates had closed he had lost a focus against which to fight. What to do? He paced the length of the house. All the rooms were on the ground floor with the exception of their daughter’s – her daughter’s – bedroom, which was built into the roof and reached by a spiral staircase. He trudged through the kitchen, the dining room, the snug where the TV was, their bedroom – hers – and into his office. On the work surface by the keyboard he saw his pencilled sums of the figures relevant to a contract with the Iraqi police. He did the grand tour once, then went to the kitchen sink, poured water into a glass and swigged it.
So damn quiet.
No sound from his feet on flooring that was parquet, vinyl or carpeted. He had anointed his feet with a salve and wore socks, hoping they would protect the wounds from dirt. He didn’t know now what he should do. He had never told Josie about meeting Arbuthnot on the dockside at Rijeka. It had seemed a minor matter and nothing to concern her. In the early days the marriage had pulsed with love and achievement. It hadn’t seemed necessary to tell her of something small in which he had no pride … The silence weighed around him, and the emptiness.
He thought about the pain of walking, and the pair of 9mm cartridge cases that lay on the kitchen table. They were beside the day’s post, which Josie must have brought in – holiday brochures, a pack from a knitwear company and a telephone bill, everything addressed to her. He couldn’t escape the quiet. Without the pain and the cartridge cases it might not have happened.
She had said she would come back for more of her clothes, and he had said he would make it easy for her. He set off again, new purpose, for the bedroom.
He could recall the man, and had a lock-down picture in his mind of the gun. He knew it had been a Makharov or the Baikal imitation. He had sold Makharovs all over but not the Baikal. The man had seemed small, of almost insignificant build. He had not noticed the eyes behind the slits, or anything particular about the nose that had poked through a hole above the cut for the lips. When he had done business in old Eastern Europe or the Middle East and had negotiated with dealers, there had been bodyguards who floated in shadows, opened car doors and lounged in villa gardens. He would have regarded it as certain that any of them, any of a hundred, would have followed him down the track until he could run no further, then killed him.
If that was what the village had bought, they had not bought well.
‘I don’t think I’m going to enjoy this, Robbie, and I’m bloody sure you aren’t.’
A time had been arranged with his granddaughter for his grandson to stop on the journey back to London and call a phone booth at the bus and Jubilee Line station in Rotherhithe. At his age, Granddad Cairns still had presence, a sharp eye and a jaw that could be set firm. His voice rasped. Two minutes, or three, before the time scheduled for the call, he had looked at the woman in the booth he wanted and had asked her respectfully to terminate her call and vacate it. She’d effed him, then maybe had a second glance at the jaw and eyes of the bowed old man who wanted the phone. She had hung up and gathered her shopping together. Funny thing, as he’d stood and looked at the silent phone, there had been a queue of punters behind him, but none had cared to hassle him. The phone had rung out to the half-minute of the time he’d demanded and he had lifted it.
The voice down the line was subdued and he had to strain to hear it against the voice of the man in the next booth to his.
‘What did you say?’
Better the second time: ‘You weren’t there. You don’t know.’
‘Robbie, I’m not concerned about you standing on a wasp hole, or about a target ducking, or about a wasp up your nose, or about how many you let off that missed. You want to know what I’m concerned about, do you?’
He wouldn’t have said his grandson was lippy. He was a kid who was alone, ran his own life to his own instructions … but he had phoned at almost the exact time he was required to, which told Granddad Cairns a fair amount. Himself, at that age, sent a message from a clapped-out has-been, told what to do and when to do it – with the weight of a foul-up on his back – he would have ignored the demand to make a phone call on schedule.
‘You weren’t there.’ Quiet. ‘You don’t know.’
‘You said that once. Don’t need saying again.’ He had put grit into his tone. The kid was on his way back into London. He wanted the implications of what had happened that morning embedded in him. Wanted it to have swirled round the kid’s head before he reached London. He’d thought his grandson to be the best, had been proud of him, and it hurt to have the faith kicked aside … And it was too big a matter for him to give the kid a soft response. There had been a contract: the contract was fucked. ‘What I’m concerned about … He have a gun? Haven’t heard he did. All I hear is that he threw a flipflop at you, then ran barefoot away from you. Why couldn’t you catch him up? Why didn’t you go after him, finish him?’
‘I just didn’t.’
He would have put his shirt on his grandson. He would have bet his last fag on the kid following it through. Wouldn’t have said he liked him, but had respect for him, and couldn’t have believed that a couple of wasps and a flipflop would screw him up.
‘I’m getting there, Robbie. You failed. Big word, “failed”, not a Cairns word. You’re supposed to be hot and people believed the bullshit. Nobody reckoned that fucking wasps and a flipflop could skewer your reputation … What hurts me? That you didn’t go in after him and finish him, whether it was ugly, messy – but a job done.’
‘Have you finished, Granddad?’
Maybe it was the end of another goddamn era, one of those changes in the Cairns family fortunes that were bloody volcanoes in their lives. Himself, it had been the ‘cleaning up’ of the Metropolitan Police – the end of knocking off wages vans and knowing that the squad cars were safely in the car parks behind the stations. His boy, Jerry, had faced his bloody brick wall when the cameras were introduced. Now you couldn’t blow your nose in London without it being seen, and the spread of the cameras had done for Jerry. For grandfather and father alike the happy days when hip pockets were well-filled and women wore big stones on their fingers were gone. The meal-ticket of today was the kid. In the family money was not saved, but spent when it came in. What Robbie did paid for Granddad Cairns’s groceries and helped with the electricity. Jerry and Dot lived off the kid’s earnings, Vern and Leanne too. It would have been easier for him if Robbie hadn’t rung in at all – near as easy for him if he’d been told to shut his face and bad-mouthed by his grandson. He didn’t understand why the kid had crumpled.
‘People put their faith in you and have been let down. Me and your dad, we’re pissed on. I like to say, in this world you have one chance. You’ve got to hope, kid, that you have two chances. One chance, you failed. Worst is that the money was paid.’
It was
the kernel of what he had to say. Didn’t know why he’d taken so long getting there. He wouldn’t have considered going gentle on the kid because of family. In the world of Granddad Cairns the most important factor was money. Men were paid, men did not deliver, men went into concrete and always had. Might be the flyover at Chiswick, or the foundations of the Dome, or the support towers of the new Olympics site. Money had been paid and lodged in an account, and he knew it because the paper slip from the cash machine had told him so. To be paid and to break faith on a deal was a death sentence, and to have to pay back the money was a humiliation he doubted he’d survive.
‘We were paid, we had their money. I have to tell people you failed. Also, I’m telling them you’re worth a second chance. Get it in your skull. Money was paid and needs earning. If it’s not, you’re in the gutter, Robbie, bleeding bad and—’
The call was cut. Might have been that the kid ran out of money, or that he put the phone down on him.
She sat on a bench, opposite the museum, and the lane in front of her ran down past the terraces of cottages. The gate to the house was out of sight. She could sit there – she was just a pretty young girl out in the sunshine.
She had assumed it was the wife who had left. Blonde, highlighted hair looking a mess through the windscreen, driving fast up the lane and turning on to the road without a glance to right or left. She’d not seen more of her because of the privacy tinting on the rear windows. A pick-up had followed. Leanne Cairns wasn’t a fool. Might have been – as her grandmother, Mum Davies, said – the brightest of the whole tribe. Wasn’t taxed. Leanne could register the scale of the catastrophe that had hit them down that lane. She wondered if by now, without her as a crutch, Robbie had dragged himself together.
She was to watch and not attract notice, and she was to tell him what she saw.
She imagined that by now her grandfather would be hyperventilating at the failure, that a message was on its way to HMP Wandsworth and her father’s cell block. She thought a report on the failure would have reached Lenny Grewcock, and would be homing in on some village in Eastern Europe. That it was Robbie who had failed amazed her. Not her father or her eldest brother: little Robbie.
She knew where he’d be. She wasn’t supposed to but she did. With Vern, she was the only member of the family who was privy to where he’d be – and a fat lot of fucking good it would do him.
She stood up and started walking. She went past the museum, past a group of walkers in shorts and country shirts with ruck-sacks, past small houses with bright window-boxes. She saw the gates and the voice grille and stood rooted. A suitcase came over the gates and split open when it landed, clothes spilling out and— She spun on her heel.
So, his wife had quit on him, hadn’t told him they’d ‘see this through together’. She had done a runner and wasn’t expected back, and Harvey Gillot, with her Robbie, was in the pits.
‘From what you say, Benjie, Blowback is apt.’
‘The trouble with Blowback is that every little man, with the benefit of hindsight, can lob a brickbat.’
‘Stuck in you, as a dose of garlic is?’
‘Don’t get me wrong. I merely offered advice. It was his decision. It’s not me that has Blowback.’
They ate in the dining room at the Special Forces Club, a discreet address in a road behind Harrods. Benjie Arbuthnot liked to support the place as the credit crunch and declining membership squeezed its finances. His guest could have belonged, might yet succumb to arm-twisting, and qualified through his commission in the Royal Marines and secondment to the Special Boat Service. They had met at that god-forsaken hole, the Iraq–Iran border, the old fighting ground of those countries in the 1980s, and twenty years later, Benjie had seen off the assets over the waterways that marked the frontier. They’d gone in RIBs with suppressed engine noise, and had been the responsibility of Denys Foster – Captain, Military Cross, the citation not published. It was an indulgence of Benjie’s to stay in loose contact with younger men: they freshened him, kept his mind alive.
‘Where we were – Iraq et cetera – that was a Blowback.’
‘Of course. We armed the old butcher, fed him intelligence, empowered him and it all blew back in our faces.’
‘And Afghanistan.’
‘Right again. I had a little part in that – fourth-rate ground-to-air kit was shipped in, and my young friend Gillot did what was asked of him. We helped expel the Russians and now we’re up to our necks in that awful place, toasted by the hairy blighters we encouraged.’
Benjie seldom met anyone in the bar these days whom he had known on the road. In the ranks of the SIS, he had served in Pakistan, Syria, Argentina, the Balkans and, of course, had done time as a cantankerous veteran in Iraq. There, he had not tolerated incompetence and had valued the friendship and humanity of the young man now opposite him.
‘You could say, Benjie, “They sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind”. Your Gillot sowed then and reaps now.’
The waitress hovered, and he indicated that they needed more time on the menu, but not on the wine list. A nicotine-stained finger stabbed on a house white, a chardonnay.
‘Book of Hosea, Jerusalem version of the Old Testament, chapter eight, I think verse seven. Yes? In my career – God, I sound pompous – I believe I tried to respond with fairness towards our assets. What do I owe him? Tell me.’
‘What are the police offering?’
‘Told him to hide in a ditch and keep his head down.’
‘Family stiffening his backbone?’
‘I doubt it. He’s a loner. All arms dealers are. They’re pariahs, on no one’s invitation list. Bizarre business, this blowback. The Americans slipped it into the lexicon to highlight the scale of the foul-up when they backed the Shah of Persia and created the monster of modern Iran. It was clever at the time, and they’ve cursed it for thirty years. The unintended consequences of an operation. Harvey Gillot made a fair profit out of that deal – set him on his feet, let him walk tall. Now it’s the ditch and maybe right into a wet culvert. I asked you, what do I owe him?’
‘In his case, put crudely, I’d want my hand held.’
‘Figuratively, literally?’
‘Maybe both – and something more in the way of advice.’
‘Spit it.’
‘He can’t hide for ever. Agreed? Can’t go into a ditch for the rest of his life. With me?’
He waved the waitress forward again. ‘Think so … Thank you. I make an abominable host. Can we order? I always go for chicken, safest, I think … Yes, with you. I hear what you say.’
It was enough to sap the enthusiasm of a convert. Megs Behan had always found those recently ordained into new branches of the clergy – or to the ranks of the anti-nicotine Fascists or the ones making the globe greener – nauseatingly saintly in the degree of their enthusiasm. Herself? The prospect of a trip to the coast had roused in her a rare sense of excitement. She had a giant canvas bag, containing her bullhorn, which was loaded with fresh batteries, and wads of leaflets describing the evils of the arms trade. Her enthusiasm drained away with a points failure west of Winchester. The convert’s loyalty to the cause suffered as she sat in a crowded carriage and watched nothing much happen outside. The coast, and the home of Harvey Gillot who sold weapons that killed innocents, was far away and the points stayed unrepaired. She had wanted to be there by midday – would be lucky now if it was late afternoon.
The battle raging inside her was fought along familiar lines: did she dare to poke her head out of the window and light a cigarette, or lock herself into the toilet and puff into the pan? She did neither, sat on the train and endured. Her mind was a jumble of statistics on weapons and ammunition exported, the destinations they went to, the schedules of flights out of Ostend, the ancient, unserviced aircraft that limped across continents in search of conflict, and men such as Gillot who met cronies and contacts in dark bars and select restaurants. None of them knew her name or what she looked like. He would, though
. Too fucking right, he would. He would see her at his front gate, would hear her anywhere in his home and … Thinking of the blast of the bullhorn was almost better than dragging on a cigarette. A miracle. An answer to the faith of the convert. The carriage lurched. The train crawled forward.
‘Quite pretty, some of them,’ Bill said.
‘Nice choices, good styles,’ Suzie added.
To Mark Roscoe what littered the lane and hung from the top of the gate, the thorn and gorse bushes, looked too pricey to be dumped as rubbish. They were all out of the car, but the engine had been left to idle. They picked their way among skirts, dresses and blouses, summer jackets and tweed ones for winter, outdoor coats for the city and anoraks for the island. There were boots and shoes in most colours, and a quality set of leather suitcases. The cases were not fastened, only partly zipped – some garments still bulged out of them while others had fallen clear.
Suzie said, ‘Looks like she had a full knicker drawer.’
Bill said, ‘Surprised she needed so many. I’d swear there was a washing-machine.’
The knickers made the best show, Roscoe thought. Maybe a slight wind had lifted the thinner ones because some were lodged in the lower branches of a couple of ash trees and on the upper foliage of the gorse. They made a bright display.
Then, sombre.
‘Do you reckon she’s all right, boss?’ Bill asked.
As they picked their way through the clothing there had been gallows humour, which police liked to peddle when they intruded on personal catastrophe. It was the protective armour they had all put on as rookies. It helped them through the worst road-traffic accidents and the deaths in housing-association flats where the cadaver had lain for a month or two and attracted enough maggots to … Roscoe had been a constable for less than a year, working in north London, when he had stood at the rail of a bridge from which a woman had jumped – fifty feet or more – into fast-moving traffic. She was splattered, some tyres had gone over her, and he could have heaved, but a veteran had said, ‘Did you hear about that bloke who went to the lethal-injection thing in the States? They took him into the execution chamber and laid him down and he said, “Never a stunt double around when you want him.” Got it?’ It was a fair question.
The Dealer and the Dead Page 26