The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘I seem to remember, from schooldays, that John the Baptist – at the behest of a dancing girl – had his head chopped off and served up on a salad plate … and I don’t do penance.’

  ‘I’m saying you have to go there and sort out your goddamn problem, because the alternative is the hole in the ground and looking over your shoulder. Face it and confront it.’

  ‘Is that for real?’

  ‘For real. You don’t have a rucksack of options.’

  ‘Where would you be?’

  ‘Not too far behind you, for my sins, there and thereabouts. How was it last night?’

  ‘Pretty bloody.’

  It would have been the horse, but the outside security lights had been on for most of the time. The beast had moved through the shrubs, wheezing, and there had been its hoofs on the patio, and the dog had been restless. He’d hardly slept. Big in his head, awake or dozing, were the balaclava and the dark shape of the gun, the aim as it tried to lock.

  ‘And it will be as bad, as bloody, or worse. You have to face it.’

  ‘And confront it. I’ll just …’ Harvey paused. His mind was deadened and he couldn’t summon the clarity to think and decide. He still held the phone to his ear but his attention was on the sea, the expanse of it. Typical, he thought, from what he remembered of Arbuthnot, that there was no interruption, no nagging for him to speak. He didn’t know what would be there or who. He did know that life as a fugitive was not acceptable. There was a man he’d met at British Aerospace whose wife had had terminal cancer. She’d been offered the big treatments, had reflected and declined. She had died sooner but with her own hair and without the pain of the chemo sessions. Face it and confront it.

  ‘I don’t know how it will be,’ Harvey Gillot said, into the phone.

  ‘Time enough to find out.’

  He said he would try to start out that night, and was now stumbling over the words. The enormity of it hit him, and Benjie Arbuthnot was muttering on a bad line about Blowback, and Gillot had as little idea of what that meant as he did about ‘penance’, but he saw a head, taken off at the neck, on a salver with lettuce, cucumber and tomato. The gate bell rang. He ended the call.

  ‘How did it play?’ Deirdre asked.

  ‘Will do what he was told – advised to do.’

  She gazed quizzically at her husband – she had been thought by those who knew her as a Service wife to be devoid of sentiment. ‘Are you killing him?’

  ‘I might be – I don’t know. I hope I’m giving him life.’

  The arrival of the delivery van and the opening of the gates would have woken the woman outside, shaken her, and she stood with the bullhorn raised.

  The package was handed to Gillot. He checked the identity, was satisfied, and wrote his name with the stylus offered him. He saw that Roscoe was close behind. The detective had the flushed look that came from tiredness and his trousers were creased, but he had shaved. The deliveryman walked away, and Gillot thought he must have been puzzled to be greeted by an armed police check and a lone demonstrator. He thought that they would have kept a battery razor in the car, and the girl detective would have a spare pair of knickers at the bottom of the bag under the Glock.

  He was asked if he could identify the package’s contents, and told Roscoe he had ordered a bulletproof vest. He didn’t mention the sprays. He expected it and was rewarded. A dry smile from Roscoe – arid as the desert in Saudi. The woman was shrieking, same hymn book, same slogans. Through the gate and up the lane, Gillot saw Denton, the neighbour. The man stood in a dressing-gown and made a theatrical pose of holding his hands over his ears. Gillot thought that others would be behind their kitchen doors or their front window curtains, listening to the din she made and taking in her message. He left the package by the front door, walked towards the gates and saw the other two detectives clamber fast from the car. He went past them, past the woman, trying to ignore the noise, and up to Denton. ‘I just wanted to thank you—’

  A snort. ‘I’m hardly about to express gratitude to you – that noise, half last night and now again. It’s intolerable, it’s—’

  ‘I wanted to thank you because I think you saved my life.’

  ‘Did I?’

  He had never been into Denton’s house. Denton had never been invited into Gillot’s. He smiled sweetly, the salesman’s smile. ‘You dumped your rotten apples beside the track and couldn’t be bothered to compost them yourself. I’m so pleased you were too lazy to dispose of them properly. If you ever used the track, which you don’t, you’d know wasps have nested alongside a good food source. A man stood there yesterday morning with the intention of shooting me dead. Sadly for him, happily for me, he disturbed the nest and as he aimed and fired, a couple of those horrible things were crawling round the slits of his mask. Indirectly, Denton, you saved my life. Well done, and thank you.’

  He kept the smile locked on his face, the sincere one he saved for signing contracts and flattering ministry people. Was he taking the piss? Was there a word of truth in what he’d said?

  ‘That woman kept Georgina and me up half the night, calls you an “arms dealer”. Is that true?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘True, then. We never knew. We didn’t know that a man in that trade lived beside us. In our church we’ve collected for the victims of conflict in central Africa and others caught up in wars that are virtually sponsored for the financial gain of individual arms dealers. Have you no shame?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘I see that Mrs Gillot has understandably had enough of married life under the same roof as you and gone. What you’ve done with her clothing is a disgrace.’

  He didn’t do the old routine about ‘if I don’t then someone else will’ or ‘everything I sell is quite legally handled’ or ‘I pay my taxes just like you do’ or ‘I bring the chance of freedom to many oppressed people who have the right to lift off the yoke of dictatorship and can only do it by putting their lives on the line and fighting’. He turned his back.

  The bullhorn barked behind him. He was stained with ‘children’s blood’, a ‘trader in misery’, a ‘killer of babies’ and a ‘dealer in murder’. He wondered if she, too, had clean knickers to slip on, and if she did not, would the detective have an extra pair to loan her?

  At the gates, Gillot told Roscoe of his plans for the day. First a walk with the dog, then to Weymouth, then to a school, then … He saw astonishment crease Roscoe’s face. ‘I was about to think, Mr Gillot, that you were going to do something – forgive me – sensible.’

  ‘Wrong again.’

  ‘And something rational.’

  ‘Doomed to disappointment.’

  He heaved the package inside and saw that the horse had now destroyed the prize display, the bedding plants that had to be watered every twenty-four hours and were Nigel’s pride and joy. He kicked the door shut and went to feed the dog.

  News travelled.

  Roscoe called his boss – had him dragged from the shower – and told him what he’d learned.

  The boss messaged the co-ordinator of Gold Group.

  Some on their way to work, some still at home, some already at their desks: all learned what Harvey Gillot had said to Mark Roscoe. Some would shake their heads in astonishment, others would ejaculate an obscenity at his idiocy, a few would hear it in silence and feel relief at the potential to lose a problem. The line manager of the Alpha Team was among those the co-ordinator rang.

  He tapped out the numbers for a call to an encrypted mobile.

  *

  Penny Laing reached across him, allowed a breast to brush his face – a nipple against his lips – grinned, then lifted her mobile. She depressed a key and listened. The grin was wiped. The boy wriggled into a position where he could nip her, but she swatted him. He must have caught her mood because he lay back on the pillow. She made a silent gesture, prodded him and pointed to the bedside fitment where a hotel pad and pencil lay. He passed them.

  She had t
he pencil poised over the paper. He giggled and she reached out her free hand to stifle the sound. That, almost, assured him of his momentary power over her and he wriggled some more, was almost under her, pushing at her legs, parting them, then would have seen the panic on her face and came out from under her. He took the free hand and laid it on his belly.

  What to do? Her line manager was at home, about to leave for the Alpha-team office. She left her fingers where they were and worked the nails into the hair. They would sack her if they knew. She could fight it and have the detail of her stand with a lover barely out of school laid out before a tribunal, or she could go quietly and have a career blown. It had been good. She listened and wrote one word on the pad – Gillot – and asked the obvious question: why? Had she known about a failed hit? Of course not. Her line manager told her of a shooting, a murder attempt, close to the Tango’s home, then the Road to Damascus business and the decision – as relayed to a police protection team – to travel. She expressed astonishment at news of the attack, gulped at news of the journey, and the boy’s hand wandered over the equivalent part of her stomach … so good.

  Penny Laing didn’t tell her line manager that the previous evening she had skipped supper, had stripped naked, showered, had been with a boy on her hotel bed – and the first of the two condoms she always kept in the zipped pouch of her bag had just gone on him when his mobile had rung and the stroking, teasing, kissing had been on hold while he had answered the call from his father. He had been told, had rung off. She had opened herself wide for him – hadn’t for months, not since a frigate had sailed from Portsmouth dockyard – and he had whispered it in her ear, then thrust.

  Was she achieving anything? She let her teeth grate. Her line manager waited for an answer. Her hand was around the boy and his finger was inside her, and her breathing was harder to control and … She said she believed she was moving towards better understanding of the events of November 1991. She was asked to report more fully within an hour, by which time her line manager would be safely off his train and in his cubicle alongside the Alpha work area. She ended the call. They squirmed together – and she stopped him. Two condoms, ribbed, already flushed down the toilet and she had no more. She wondered if he would sulk. He pushed her head down so that her lips went over his chest and ribcage, the hard stomach and into the hair and … So good. Had he learned this from a peasant girl, a teenager, or from a widow or divorcee with experience? She should have felt at least ten years older than him, control and domination, and did not. When they had finished and she had gone to the bathroom, rinsed her mouth, brushed her teeth and lost the taste of him, she said that Gillot was travelling to Vukovar.

  Incredulity spread on the young face with the perfect skin.

  He went limp and was off the bed, picking up his scattered clothing and starting to dress. Penny Laing watched him and thought she grasped the enormity of the step she had taken.

  He always had breakfast. None of the subordinates who had ever worked under the direction of William Anders on a gravesite could claim to have seen him vomit what he had eaten. Some starved themselves before work, whether it was at excavation stage or merely the search with the geophysics for the tell-tale signs of disturbed soil. He ate heartily. Rolls, coffee, a cake, and an omelette filled with chopped ham. He saw his driver and waved, then wiped his mouth and saw the couple … almost furtive, not having the cover of dusk that had aided their discretion the previous evening. They came past him. If the woman, the English Customs officer, had recognised him, she gave no sign of it. He chuckled. He sat at the side of the patio and had a good view of them in profile, and would have liked Daniel to be beside him for a psychologist’s pitch on a relationship that would be, for her, fraught with danger.

  William Anders knew plenty of the culture of law enforcement, had worked with the men and women engaged in it often enough to understand what made them tick. He had heard it expressed frequently that friendships and relationships should be tribal, that straying outside the reservation was neither clever nor satisfactory. God, what a boring fart he was becoming. The woman had the look of a well-bedded female, and her head was ducked – but even so she had the defiance streak daubed large. The boy? Well, he shambled beside her, would be going home, no doubt, to a Scout knife and would carve a notch on his bedpost. Next time he met up with Daniel he would put ‘battlefield romance’ on the agenda.

  He admitted it to himself, came clean: he was struggling to contain raw jealousy. She was a fine-looking woman and strode ahead of the boy – who now had a mobile phone at his face – to unlock a little hire car. She would have thought it, Anders reckoned, an uncomplicated fling. He doubted that. What had been the pillow talk? Always was pillow talk … He watched them go, then went to meet his driver, who would take him for another day’s digging and searching. He believed in what he did, thought the past should not be permitted to fade from sight. It was accountable, as men were, for a lifetime and not for a day. No time limit on retribution, should be handed out whenever – as long as it damn well took.

  At his home in the village Josip answered a call from Simun. He wrote rapidly, took down an itinerary. He felt like a swimmer failing in open seas until a rope was thrown. He – who was listened to but unloved – had created the idea and sent the principals of the village to the banks. Money had been withdrawn and perhaps had been squandered. He ended the call, lit a cigarette, poured more coffee and reached again for his phone.

  Josip called Zagreb. He spoke respectfully to a man who lived in an apartment that overlooked the Trg Kalija Tomislava. Through the trees the man would have had a view of the statue of a nineteenth-century king, all powerful in his time, as was this man today.

  The tentacles from Zagreb flexed, reached out, and a call was made to a man of influence in Warsaw, who spoke to an associate in the German port city of Hamburg. Through the tentacles, news was passed that Harvey Gillot, on whom a contract was taken and a man hired to enforce it, would travel from London to a town on the Danube, Vukovar.

  From the Blankenese suburb of Hamburg, where another man of authority and wealth oversaw an empire, a message was sent in partial coding to Lenny Grewcock, who took a health-dominated breakfast in a north London hotel.

  Grewcock said, ‘The little bastard’s lucky to get a chance, and he’ll take it. If he doesn’t, his family’s history and he’s set in hardening concrete. He took the money.’ There was talk between them of the importance of Munich in this matter, but also of a fall-back further down the journey’s line, then chat about the weather. Eventually, before he returned to his yoghurt and cereal, Lenny Grewcock made a last call and the chain was complete.

  All done fast, and done because men had trusted each other’s judgement and recommended. The last call, forging the link, was to the grandfather of Robbie Cairns.

  Through the night, he had watched over her. He had laid her on the bed and removed some of her outer clothing, as if that might make her more comfortable. Then he had pulled up a chair, the one on which he usually laid his trousers, shirt and underwear when he went to bed with her. He had held Barbie’s hand. At first it had been warm, but the flesh against his had cooled. Only when it had chilled had Robbie Cairns laid it beside her leg. The dawn had come up and light had pierced the half-drawn curtains. Then Robbie had seen the pallor of her face, the cheeks, the angry colours, distorted red weals and purple bruising at her throat. There were no scratch marks on his face. She had not fought him.

  He had come into the room and she had been sitting on the settee with the pistol in both hands, the barrel pointing at the ceiling, the trigger guard below her fingers. She had seemed bemused – almost in shock – by what she had found. The questions had come with persistence and her voice had grown louder with each of his refusals to answer. Why was it there? What did he have a pistol for? It smelt – when had it been fired? If it had been fired, who had it been fired at?

  Robbie could have lied, could have said it wasn’t a big deal and shrugged i
t off – minding it for a friend, getting rid of it in the morning. Could have said he was doing a friend a favour, a short-term one. He hadn’t lied and hadn’t answered. He had reached out his hands, intending to take it from her, but she had shoved it behind her back, and his hands had kept coming. She had said, ‘I don’t ask questions, God’s truth I don’t, but this is too far. How am I supposed to turn my back on a loaded pistol that’s been fired – and you’ve that stink on you, petrol? I read the papers, Robbie, so I know that petrol’s used to block gunfire traces on skin. I thought you might have been a bit … well, a bit dodgy, but not guns. I’m going. Sorry and all that. First thing, Robbie, I’m going to Lower Road. I’m going to the police and …’

  He’d thought she meant it. It would have been for her a five-or six-minute walk down the road and past the station, past the old dock offices that were now a training centre, then the left into Lower Road and past the pub, be up the steps and at the front inquiry desk. He’d thought she meant it because her voice wasn’t raised.

  His hands had gone forward to her throat. He wasn’t sure – then, now – if he closed his fingers to stop her going to the police station in the morning or just to stop the flow of what she said. She might have kicked, might have tried to bite his hands, didn’t use her nails. As if she didn’t want to save herself, or didn’t want to hurt him. It had taken three or four minutes – would have been longer if she’d fought him …

  He had killed men but always with pistol shots. He had never knifed or manually strangled someone. He had never slapped, kicked or punched a woman. He had thought in the night, as she had gone colder and the marks on her throat did not dull, that Leanne would turn her back on him, Vern would spit at him, his dad would strike him and his grandfather would raise devils against him.

  The phone in his pocket had rung. It had been a long night and the quiet was broken now by the traffic on the roundabout at the bottom of Needleman Street and at the top of Surrey Quays Road. He had answered the phone, listened, cut the call. He went about his business. Took trouble to wipe down the surfaces and use damp cloths with the stuff she had to wash the basin, the toilet, the sink and the cooker. He did it in the knowledge that his DNA would linger. He didn’t know where he could go to gain an alibi – for that he needed a friend. He left the curtains as they had been through the night, but light settled on her face. It couldn’t quieten her throat’s colours.