The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  Suzie said, ‘Doesn’t look as though he’s as rational as he might be, boss.’

  Bill killed the car’s engine and flashed the lock. He was first over the gates. Roscoe gave Suzie a boost; he made his hands into a stirrup and shoved. Then he scrabbled for a grip, clung to the top, sweated, panted and went over. He landed hard, the breath knocked out of him. Good thing about the holster he wore: the Glock stayed firm inside.

  The front door was open and the dog came out, only a Labrador and not a threat, but it ran at them and barked. Roscoe reckoned they’d find one of three things. She would be in the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom or the living room and her blood would be on the walls and the carpet, and he’d be huddled in a corner, trembling. She would be dead and he would be in the garage with the engine running and the pipe over the exhaust, or slumped with two empty bottles – painkillers and Scotch. She wouldn’t be there, and he’d be struggling with the broadsheet crossword.

  There was no blood on the dog’s coat or paws.

  Suzie said, ‘He doesn’t have a shotgun licence, but he does have a firearms one. It’s on the record.’

  ‘What’s covered by the firearms?’ Bill demanded.

  Suzie grinned, and her Glock was out of her bag. It seemed too big in her hand. ‘He has a deactivated AK-74 and had a usable AK-47. He also has an RPG-7 launcher, but not the grenade to fire from it, and there’s a Lee Enfield Mark 4 rifle, a collector’s piece. He has a handgun too, but I can’t remember what make. I suppose I should have told you up-front, but it didn’t seem important. There’ll be guns in the house. He’s an arms dealer, right?’

  ‘Does he have ammunition?’ Roscoe asked.

  She said he had permission for limited stocks for the Kalashnikov and the Lee Enfield, but had never applied to hold any. Meant nothing. Maybe he had ten rounds, or five, or maybe one and it was in a breech. Enough? Enough for the three of them. The Glocks were drawn, armed. Couldn’t estimate what degree of lunacy they’d confront. No more humour. Not even ‘Did you hear about the condemned guy who was taken into the room where the electric chair was and he said, “Are you people sure that thing’s safe?”’ It always made him laugh – but not now. Bill first, then Suzie through the front door, the dog with her, bounding about like it was a goddamn game, and Roscoe at the back.

  Through the hall: no body, no blood.

  Into the kitchen: no body, no blood, but the dog pawed at a big cupboard door. Opened it. No body, no blood, but a see-through plastic bucket two-thirds full of dried dog food. Suzie pulled it out, lifted off the lid and kicked it over. Roscoe saw on the table the two spent cartridge cases and the voice on the phone had blurted that two shots were fired. Dog behind them, eating off the floor, they did the rush tactic. One to each doorway, and two covering, then one entering, one in the doorway and one in a ‘ready’ position with the Glock held high and two-handed.

  The bedroom was empty. The bed was made, the counterpane smoothed, but all the wardrobe doors were wide open and the drawers were on the carpet, stripped bare – but no body, no blood, no empty bottles, pills or whisky.

  Roscoe heard the voice. Too faint at first to identify or to hear what was said. The three gathered at the door of a room that was at the back and led off the dining area. All three, all straining.

  ‘… No, I’m assured the end user isn’t a problem. The UK has good relations with them. Frankly, we can ship stuff into Oman with no difficulty. It’s only communications gear. I’m talking about what’ll fit on to three pallets, and it’ll be under a total of five hundred kilos. What are we looking at if I get delivery to Ostend? Does the price dip if I get delivery to you at Bratislava? Look, friend, I’m trying to push the business your way. You’re saying, then, that Bratislava isn’t as convenient as Ostend? … Ostend it is then, usual rates. Which are you using? That TriStar or the Antonov? … The Antonov still gets into the skies? … Bloody amazing … Yes, I’m fine. Everything’s rosy, and thanks, it’s a pleasure to do business.’

  Roscoe called Gillot’s name and gave his own.

  The door was opened.

  He would have seen the guns and the postures. The dog must have cleaned up what had been tipped from the bucket and it came from behind them, fast. It cannoned into Bill’s legs and he was jolted towards Suzie. Roscoe laughed – just for a moment, then stifled it.

  He was brusque. Where was Mrs Gillot?

  ‘Gone, quit, took the gardener with her.’

  Why were Mrs Gillot’s clothes scattered outside the gates?

  ‘She said she’d come back and get the rest of her stuff and that’ll make it easier for her.’

  The laughter he’d stifled was about a hoary anecdote that had run the length of his crowd, Royal and Diplomatic Protection, Special Branch, Firearms in London and most of the provincial forces that supplied protection officers to politicians: a minister had had a West Country constituency, and the sniffer dog had run through the man’s home to check for explosives. It had jumped on the bed and crapped on the duvet. It had been shut back in the van while the team had hustled to the nearest launderette. Always made him laugh, but not for sharing with a Tango.

  By dumping her stuff on a public highway, was he not making an exhibition of himself? ‘Not that fussed – good enough for you?’

  What were his plans in view of the attack? ‘To reject the advice you’re about to trot out, stay put and consider options.’

  Rising impatience and anger. Would he show them the location of the attack? ‘Yes.’

  They went out into the sunshine. Roscoe saw that Gillot was limping – he had eased his feet gingerly into old sandals. Both Bill and Suzie went into a practised routine in which she was at the front and he behind. Roscoe had slipped in alongside the Tango. They approached the gates and a smile, almost a sneer, was on Gillot’s face. Suzie asked, not taking her eyes off the shrubs, the gates and the top of the wall, whether he had taken out any of his weapons from whatever secure store he kept them in. He replied easily that he had not, and threw questions back at her. Did she know that the AK-74 was deactivated? Did she know also that the AK-47 was not deactivated because it had actually been run over, in the Panshir Valley, by the tracks of a Soviet main battle tank? And the RPG-7 launcher had a half-bucket of Sinai sand in its tube, had rusted through and would kill anyone who tried to use it. Last, did she know that the Lee Enfield Mark 4 had been buried in a shell blast in the bocage battle of Normandy in 1944 and not dug up until the skeleton was recovered in 1998? It would need more than engineering oil to free up its working parts. There was a Luger pistol, from the Great War, and the barrel had been drilled. It didn’t work and she should check why her paperwork did not provide the up-to-date situation with the near-historic weapons. They were kept under the living room in a safe mini-bunker, reached by a trapdoor and hidden from view by the carpet.

  A bit of fear would have helped Gillot’s cause, Roscoe reckoned. The last three cases he had done for his small wing of SCD7 had involved safeguarding an Albanian brothel owner, a cocaine dealer in west London and, most recently, a scrap-metal king who had minded the prime proceeds from a jewellery heist at Heathrow for ten years until the guys who had done the heist, and done time, wanted the sparkle back. All involving lowlife, all with a sense of humour and a degree of dignity, and all with respect for the job Roscoe had tried to do. The Albanian was now back in Pristina with his nephews and cousins and had dispersed his assets; he had offered the team the chance to meet some ‘nice clean girls and young’, and had sent a postcard via New Scotland Yard. The dealer had wisely returned to Jamaica, and the scrap-metal king had gone quiet, perhaps had been encouraged to find what he had minded. In the three cases there had been congratulations from on high, men had faced conspiracy-to-murder charges, advice had been taken and shots not fired.

  They were under the castle’s walls. Suzie said that the English Heritage website stated it had been built in the eleventh century, then fought over, repaired and strengthened over the next
five hundred years. More important, there was a place where the weathered stone had been hacked away. Roscoe bent down while the others maintained a guard. He found the bullet, squashed and almost unrecognisable except to a trained eye, which lay at the side of the path. Further down, Gillot indicated where he had been as the second shot was fired and pointed to the gap in the undergrowth where the rotting apples and wasps were. They did the alignments and saw the mark on a branch where sap oozed and a bullet had lodged.

  Roscoe noted the prettiness of the place and the beauty of the sea’s colours. Easy to imagine murder on the streets round the King’s Cross brothels, in the dealer’s estate territory or under the mountains of scrapped vehicles in the yard, but not here. Walkers came past and must have wondered why a man who was unshaven and sweat-streaked was with two well-turned-out younger men and an attractive girl, and why the two men wore jackets in the heat and the girl carried a big bag.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ Gillot asked.

  Roscoe said they had.

  ‘I shouldn’t have been left alive. If that’s the best they could dig out, they paid for a bum.’

  Roscoe said he supposed killing wasn’t an exact science.

  ‘I was helpless, half down, had flipflops on – then nothing. He didn’t follow me. A wasp fazed him.’

  Roscoe said, drily, that he imagined even contract killers had the occasional bad day at work.

  ‘You taking this seriously?’

  He was, and tried to muster some sincerity.

  They were walking back up the hill, the sea behind them, the sun hard on their heads.

  A salesman’s smile cracked Gillot’s face. ‘Crap, he was.’

  ‘If you say so, Mr Gillot.’

  They were at the front gate. Gillot walked through the clothing, as if it wasn’t there. A family had come down the lane, laden with beach kit and little fishing rods, and stepped through the mess. Bill and Suzie started to pick up and fold the clothing as best they could, then stacked it in the cases. Gillot didn’t help. He said he was not open to advice, was not going to run, was staying in his home.

  Roscoe shrugged.

  Gillot opened the gates, and the dog leaped at him with enthusiasm. ‘I doubt he’ll be back.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ Roscoe snapped. ‘He won’t have moved till he had confirmation that the money had been paid. He has to be back. It’s your privilege to reject advice.’

  ‘I suppose you think I was just lucky—’

  Roscoe interrupted: ‘A man once said, “You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.” That was after he had failed to kill the prime minister. It’s a mantra of ours, Mr Gillot. We think it’s hard to be lucky all the time when he only has to be lucky once.’

  He was alone, stretched out in a chair, the one he always sat in. Vern had dropped him off, and there had been a curl of contempt at his elder brother’s mouth that he hadn’t seen before. Another time, Robbie would have made a punchbag of Vern’s face. Another time, he would have telephoned the extension on the counter where Barbie was and demanded that she make an excuse and get back to Rotherhithe.

  He felt exhausted, and had not before. On each occasion that he had fired at a man and seen him crumple, he had known only calm satisfaction. Then the feelings of power had gushed. Now he had fired and a man hadn’t crumpled. There was no calm satisfaction and no … It played, as if it was on a loop, in his mind and he couldn’t escape it. A man walking, a dog running, wasps around him, the man stumbling, the shot fired and hitting a stone wall. A man down, the shot lined up, the wasps in the face mask and the shot gone high. A flipflop thrown at him. The man running … Hadn’t missed before – had once shot at twice that distance and done two hits, head and upper chest. He didn’t know why he hadn’t run down the track after the target – and the target was barefoot, the track rough stone – caught him and killed him. He remembered when a steer had broken out of a wagon transporting animals to a slaughterhouse, had kicked out of the tail flap when it stopped at the lights on Jamaica Road. They hadn’t just let the thing go, but had gone after it and killed it with a rifle shot. The eleven-year-old Robbie Cairns had seen it all.

  And with the images were the words spoken by his grandfather on the telephone. His eyes were tight shut and the sunlight didn’t penetrate. He held the pistol in his hand, couldn’t stop the trembling. Maybe, for failing, they would put him in the concrete while he was still alive, and it would come up over his knees, his gut, his chest and his head. He held the pistol tight, his knuckles white and— He heard the key in the door, slipped the weapon into his waist band and covered the bulge with his shirt tail.

  A light kiss – how was he? Fine.

  A little hug – had his day been good? Yes.

  Where had he been? Just around, nowhere special.

  Fingers on his face, gentle – would he like some tea? He would.

  She had dumped her bag, was in the kitchen. She never asked why he didn’t make tea for himself if he wanted it. And, she didn’t question how he spent his time. And the fingers had made a little pattern on his cheeks, the hands had held his shoulders when she’d hugged him and, almost, he could taste the kiss she had put on his lips. It was important to him, more important than he could tell her. He peeled off the clothes he had worn under the overalls that morning, and put the Baikal pistol under a cushion on the chair he always used.

  She was at the kitchen door. ‘You smell, Robbie – mind me saying that? No offence.’

  ‘Want you to wash these.’

  He didn’t pick up the T-shirt, the trousers, the vest, underpants and socks, let her. When he was naked she didn’t touch him. She bent and gathered up the clothes. ‘What was it I smelt, Robbie?’

  ‘I spilled some lighter fuel on my arm. Maybe I’ll take a shower.’

  She went back to the kitchen and he heard her load the washing-machine. Then it rumbled and the kettle whistled. She knew nothing. He’d wait for the tea, then take the shower. Uppermost in his mind were the people who had paid for his failure and how they’d be.

  ‘Why, in London, should you be interested now in us and our village?’ The boy, Simun, translated the question put by his father.

  Penny Laing answered him: ‘There were regulations in place, British laws, and we believe that Harvey Gillot conspired to breach them. We have a strict policy in our country for the suppression of illegal trading in weapons and ammunition. Harvey Gillot is a target of the agency I work for, and we wish to build a picture of his operations, so we begin here.’

  Penny had often spoken through a third party and understood the pace she should set and the gaps she should leave. They walked on the main road through the village, leaving the café behind them. In front she could see the church, the crossroads, the shop and little else. If she had been a holidaymaker, driving between two points, she would have gone through it in half a minute and registered nothing.

  The man, Mladen, waved an arm expansively. ‘You would have wanted us all dead.’

  ‘A question or an opinion? I haven’t said I wanted you all dead.’

  The boy’s voice was quiet in her ear. ‘You wanted us dead. There was a United Nations embargo on weapons. Your government was an architect of it. It decided what was best for people in Croatia. It made decisions on whether we should survive or whether we should be butchered and go to hidden graves. If you had succeeded in the embargo, my village and I would not be here.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’ She was flushed, but not by the sun – the cream had been smeared on her arms, neck, forehead and cheeks. People didn’t challenge her work in chasing down arms dealers, searching out crevices in their activities, exploiting them and bringing them to court.

  ‘You are intelligent. Of course you follow me. There, look there …’ His thin arm reached out and the long fingers, bright with artist’s oil colours, jabbed to their right. Between two homes, with flowers in window-boxes, there was a low, squat concrete shape, an entry-hole gaping in it
s side. His son translated. ‘That was the command post. It was where Zoran, our schoolteacher, led the defence of our village and I was beside him. We defended the village with rifles, grenades and a few bombs for the antitank launcher, the RPG, most of those items bought in Hungary by Zoran before the fighting. We had very little from the police because Vukovar, and Vinkovci, was more important. Marinci and Bogdanovci were like us. We defended ourselves and we kept open the Cornfield Road. After Zoran was dead, I directed the defence from that bunker. Harvey Gillot would have been a criminal to you, but to us he was an angel. But the weapons did not come.’

  ‘It was thought at the time that—’

  ‘You knew, Miss Penny, what was best for us. You were very clever people and we were only simple peasants. You knew it was best for us not to have the weapons that would keep back the Cetniks. I think, perhaps, you thought it best for our homes and our land to be given to the Cetniks, and for us to go quietly to refugee camps and not to make a bad smell in the sophistication of Europe. There, Miss Penny, you see the church.’

  The walls were concrete blocks and panels. The tower beside the porch at the front was as high as the roof, but the metal spikes that would reinforce poured concrete protruded upwards. She was still stung by the blunt sarcasm with which she had been put down. Should she ask why the church was still being rebuilt some nineteen years after the siege of the village and twelve after its liberation? She let it ride. What he had said had hurt but the translation was in the flat monotone interpreters always used. Simun had not allowed emotion to affect his tone or the message he gave, but his fingers had been soft on her skin and …