The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  The birds sang close to them and a shadow flicked over his face. She looked up in time to see the wide wingspan of a stork. There was coolness in the shade of the trees, and wild flowers grew among the weeds. She needed certainties but she had few left to support her.

  ‘And you should, Miss Laing, take responsibility.’

  He let her hand fall. It hung against her thigh. She wanted to run and could not.

  ‘Each word of your pillow talk, your privileged information from London that you gave to the boy – when you loved him and thought he loved you – went to Harvey Gillot’s killer, into that chain of communication from the village to him. He knew today to be at Munich station – almost, Miss Laing, you told him yourself – and he fired twice. The dealer was blessed, and still does not join the angels. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. He will come here, and the killer too, because you were told of Gillot’s journey and whispered it in the sweat of loving to the boy. We are told everything. We are told you are a good fuck, Miss Laing, but that you are noisy. You, too, have responsibility.’

  ‘What will I do?’ A small voice, a husk, and no certainties left. She swayed.

  ‘Is there anywhere with no myths and no legends? Have you heard of such a place?’ He laughed, in sadness.

  She walked away from him, quickened her stride. At the end of the path she found the boy, smoking. She passed him, ignoring him. She went to where her car was parked. She had been ignorant and was devastated. She did not know herself.

  Ignorance. Granddad Cairns sat on a hard chair in a dreary interview room at the back of Rotherhithe police station. A window, barred, faced on to a car park and a high wall. He had been enough times in that station, in that room, on that chair but had never felt stripped naked – what ignorance did. A policeman said, ‘He’s looking at a charge of murder – not the attempted murder of Harvey Gillot on the Isle of Portland but the actual murder of an innocent young woman who is – was – not a part of the criminality your family feeds on. Her only guilt, as we understand it, was to associate – God knows why – with a very cruel psychopath, your grandson. We can do you with obstruction, probably aiding and abetting, maybe with perverting, and if we’re on a bonus we might get into the area of conspiracy. You’d die inside, Mr Cairns. The alternative – let’s use language you understand, Mr Cairns – is to grass on Robbie: what he’s done in the past, what else we can nail to him, everything, full and frank. When you think about it, remember that from your dick has come a quite horrible creature.’

  He had been ignorant of his grandson. Never had a Cairns hurt a woman. Never had a Cairns as much as smacked a woman. He’d done a jewellery shop in Surbiton, 1958, snatched some trays, and a woman had started bawling and blubbering. Two days later flowers had been delivered to her. No one in the Cairns family had ever hurt a woman.

  He was left alone. By now, he reckoned, in another room on the same floor of the building, the same stuff would be fed into the ear of Leanne. Loyal as they came, the only one who liked the little bastard, Robbie. But a woman had been strangled. His granddaughter would have been as ignorant as himself, and Vern, who had done a runner, successful. He thought of Jerry, banged up but hearing fast enough of what the kid had done. He, too, would have been in ignorance.

  It was not about thieving, not about working, not about dealing and fencing. It was about the bastard’s hands round the throat of a woman. He had never grassed in his life – the disgrace of it, grassing, would kill him if nothing else did and he’d be marked by it every day of his life in the Albion Estate.

  He murmured at the ceiling light, ‘Do me a favour, kid. Get yourself slotted.’

  He sat on a settee. Only the low rumble of traffic from the street far below drifted into the room through the opened balcony windows to break the quiet. Robbie had been offered coffee, had declined, and had been shown a bottle of water, an ice bucket and a glass beside a plate of biscuits. He had been told that the man he should see was unavoidably detained on urgent business, that he should call if there was anything he wanted, and the door had been closed.

  He sat on the settee and ignored the water and the biscuits. There was a tray on the low table.

  He ignored also the view through the open window, which looked out on to the square he had walked through and the statue of the guy with the spear on the horse.

  Robbie didn’t like to touch the guns on the tray, but all had tags attached to them on which was written their make. There was a Zastava 9mm Parabellum and, beside it, a Ruger P-85. Then a Browning, High Power, the ‘Vigilante’ model. Last in the line was the IMI Jericho 941. They had been laid out with care and made the form of a cross with the barrel tips together. A filled magazine nestled alongside each. He assumed he would be offered whichever he chose. It would be between the American-made Ruger, which appeared heavy and solid, and the Israeli-manufactured Jericho, but he wouldn’t be certain until he had touched them, let each lie in his hand. The room was furnished with quality. His grandmother would have gawped at the weight of the curtains, the comfort of the chairs and the polished age of the furniture, while his mother would have gaped in disbelief. Looking at it heightened the sense of isolation, as if he had no business to be there, so far from the Albion Estate and Clack Street, SE16, a world away. He didn’t know how he could belong … or how, ever again, he could return to Rotherhithe.

  It would be good if he had the chance to test-fire, as he had with the Baikal.

  Then footsteps. The door handle turning. Looked like a fucking banker from the Gherkin building on the Thames.

  ‘Mr Cairns, welcome. You have been looked after. I hope you have everything you needed. I apologise for asking you to wait.’

  He thought it all bullshit.

  The journalist, Ivo, typed at his keyboard.

  A girl, a trainee, brought coffee for him.

  He had a source in the National Office for Suppressing Corruption and Organised Crime who had supplied a grainy surveillance photograph of a meeting between a minister and a big-time player. He had pictures of the former inner-city school that had been sold low; authorisation had been given for forty luxury apartments to be built on the site. He had another photograph, from a Paris agency, that showed a horse-race winner being led towards an enclosure, with the minister’s wife and the criminal’s mistress in the background. His story was authenticated and could not be killed for any reason other than the self-censorship of survival. His editor paced close to his shoulder and the stress mounted. For fuck’s sake, it was the material the magazine existed for.

  The coffee cooled and beside it a sandwich curled. His fingers danced on the keys. In front of him, a little to the side of his screen, was the photograph he treasured of his wife and baby, but he had no time, as he typed, to linger on them.

  And the mood of the room changed – same curtains, same furniture, same sunlight, same people, but everything had changed.

  He had the Jericho, and said it was good to hold, not as heavy as the Ruger. The Zastava was not as easy in his hand. He would go with the Jericho.

  The man – full of bullshit – who had been late, smiled warmth. Not an old yob and not a middle-aged thug, but well-turned-out and his appearance ratcheted the discomfort that Robbie Cairns felt. He reckoned his armpits would smell in the heat and maybe his crotch did. Clothes crumpled, creased, as if he’d been pulled in off the street or maybe from sleeping under the arches.

  He wanted to please and tried to look grateful. He said again that the Israeli one would be good.

  There had been difficulties. He was not asked but told.

  There had been. Robbie Cairns did not deny it.

  A smooth, gentle voice, but the threat lay in it: there had been failures, twice.

  There had been, not disputed.

  Money had been paid, and doubts now existed.

  He accepted that, but would earn what he had been paid.

  The sun had gone and the mood had swung, and there was an edge to the smooth voice, the sugge
stion that he was rubbish, his reputation built on sand – he should be tested.

  Nothing wrong with him.

  The voice was not raised: he should be tested to see if he knew how to handle a weapon and how to fire.

  He did, honest, not a problem.

  And tested to see if he had a killer’s nerve, or if he had it once but had lost it.

  His nerve was good, he swore it.

  He heard low laughter behind him, turned sharply. He had not known that three men and a woman were in the room, lined against the wall beside the door. The sweat ran down his neck and his back, trapped at the waist by the trousers and belt. The laughter was not with him but at him.

  Robbie Cairns understood. He was a toy to them and they made sport of him.

  The man said, ‘We must wait. Then you will show us, Mr Cairns, whether the nerve holds or is lost, whether you can still earn what you have been paid.’

  The tray was taken out and the room emptied. He was, again, alone.

  He wanted a beer, then a shower, and he came into the hotel’s bar. A day used up, a schedule further damaged, and he hankered after the action that had caused him to cancel and rearrange his itinerary. The day had not been wasted. Four hundred metres east of the massacre site, further away from the Ovcara agricultural sheds, they had discovered three more cadavers. Could have been half a dozen reasons why those bodies had not gone into the deep pit dug for the two hundred they’d slaughtered. Always liked a beer after excavating a body and before the shower.

  And he saw them. A hippie-type woman, another who was more formal and had her head down, a man in a suit, and the old beggar himself, the Lion of Foa, who was holding court with bottles and glasses.

  The smile split his face. He called across the bar. ‘Heh, Arbuthnot, what brings a has-been spook to these parts? Let me guess, it—’

  ‘My God, the purveyor of fine meats himself. Still well hung, Anders? I’m guessing you’re going to sign up as a probationer candidate for the Vulture Club that I chair, free membership. Good to see you.’

  ‘You’re still full of shit, Arbuthnot – and, I assume, are still pulling strings. Wouldn’t be right here without you.’

  They hugged. The shower was put on hold, introductions were made and, for new recruits, the Vulture Club would be explained.

  The editor told him it was good. The journalist, Ivo, knew that this edition would sell, and that powerful men would find cause to curse his name when they read his copy. The editor slapped his back.

  No reason for him to stay longer and wait for the first editions to come off the presses. He preferred to be with his wife, eating at his own table.

  He realised the importance of what he had written. His country was a democracy, sought entry into the European Union, and was dogged by the ravage of corruption and organised crime. It was bankrupted by the global downturn and needed – a hole in the head – to be regarded as a haven for gangsters and fraudsters. He sensed the nervousness around him – because of the enmity of influential men: the whole office was aware of the cover, dominated by the single word, Corruption. He rang his wife, told her he was leaving and would be home in half an hour.

  Out on the street, under sparse pavement lights, he looked warily in each direction, then stepped out.

  He saw the figure first as a shadow. A whistle followed from far down the street. The shadow disintegrated under a light, became a man. Not an old man but young and walking purposefully, not running.

  From behind, Robbie Cairns’s arm was squeezed, light steps edged away from him and he was – again – alone.

  In front of Robbie was the street that the man would cross, then a parking area for the high-rise block. Behind him, where his guide had stood, had spotted for him and squeezed his arm, was the entrance to the block, the lobby area and the lifts.

  He took the Jericho from his inside pocket. They had told him when he had signified his choice that the weapon was considered by many to have an equal only in the Glock, and they had patronised him with congratulations. It was all shit, and he had nowhere to turn.

  Nothing had been said of the man who approached, one hand in a pocket and the other holding a cigarette. He had no name, no occupation, and Robbie had not been told why this man was condemned … and he was condemned, or Robbie might as well turn the bloody thing on himself, shove the barrel into his own mouth, feel the gouge of the sight against the ridges above his tongue and pull the fucking trigger – not just squeeze it, as he did when he needed accuracy, but yank it down. No other way, and there hadn’t been since the wasp had gone into his nose. He cocked it.

  The man came to the road, hesitated. Predictable – natural to look to the right before stepping off a pavement and to the left. But he did not look either way for traffic, but instead twisted, half turned and glanced behind him. He would have seen a deserted road and thought that danger didn’t exist. The man crossed the road.

  The gun was in his hand, cocked, and the safety was off. A 9mm shell was in the breech and he knew nothing of the man who came towards him and maybe would look ahead and try to strip darkness and cover from the angled corners of the entrance into the block and did not. There was a shout. Not a warning. Robbie didn’t understand the words, knew they were a greeting. Who called to him with love? Barbie – he’d forbidden it – never leaned from an open window, showed herself and blew him a kiss. It was a welcome from above and the man no longer looked for movement in dark corners. He thought himself home, secure. Robbie took one step forward and the man hardly seemed to see him.

  Robbie fired, did a double tap. It was a killing to perfection. Both shots to the head and life extinguished by the time the body had fallen to the pavement.

  He was going away briskly when the screaming started above and behind him. He didn’t run. He thought he ruled again and that the past was gone. Robbie Cairns reckoned he had done well, had proved himself.

  Lights came on all around him and men moved slowly, frightened, towards the block’s entrance and he walked as if nothing had happened that involved him. He went to the corner of the block and ahead of him a car’s lights flashed recognition.

  He came off the train. There was noise around him and Harvey Gillot heard the garish accent of the north of Ireland – a couple of dozen from the Province were on the platform, yelling their presence, and he saw their football scarves. ‘Power to you,’ he murmured. He heard sirens wailing. He had the strap of his bag over his shoulder and walked well, though stiffly, past the food outlets, then out into the evening and on to Zagreb’s streets.

  The football people went another way and he lost them.

  Then, it had been raining and there had been sleet in the air. He had walked from the smart hotel, a great cavern from a century before, gone out through the swing door and hitched up his collapsible umbrella – the doorman had been solicitous about its effectiveness against those elements. It was a damn good hotel and had once been home – a sleeping place and an interrogation unit – to the Gestapo. It was to his left and he thought it had been cleaned but the lines hadn’t changed. He struggled to remember what route he had taken that night. There was a straight street with hotels and embassies, boutiques, closed, with subdued lighting on women’s clothing, a restaurant and … He came to the square where a soldier rode a horse and waved a sword, fountains played, trams rumbled and more memories stirred. Twice he looked behind him, and checked for a tail, but didn’t see one … Had there been one, had he been in a box of six men and women, had he been tracked by motorcycles, he wouldn’t have been surprised. There was a dark street at the end of which there was a sculpture of great blackened marble balls, fused, but Harvey Gillot didn’t know that he had walked past the doorway of an intelligence agency and that each step he took was followed. There was a small square, paved with bricks, where a full-size figure in darkened bronze leaned against a pissoir, and a little beyond a bookshop, still open.

  He went inside. He had no business buying books in Croatian. Perhaps it wa
s to talk that he crossed the threshold – but the buds of memory ripened again: he had been here. A man greeted him and a cigarette hung loose from the upper lip. Harvey Gillot told the man he had been at the shop in 1991, and there was a smile. English spoken. He had been here, Harvey Gillot said, at the time of Vukovar, and the man’s smile was wiped. ‘It is a dark corner. We believe there was a treason. Vukovar was sold. It was the deal that was done.’ He was sure he remembered the shop and pausing at its window, rain sluicing on to his umbrella. He climbed higher and reached, as he had then, the cathedral. A wider square and a Christ figure that was floodlit, high on a plinth, and fountains. He had stood on a slab in front of the cathedral and killed three minutes or four, had allowed the quiet of the place to play round him. Now, that evening, he walked into the gift shop beside the doorway and a nun greeted him, would have recognised his Englishness and told him firmly she was about to close. He said that he had been there in 1991, at the time of the battle for Vukovar. She was tiny. He might have snapped her apart with two hands, broken her. ‘It could have been stopped. The West could and should have. They were betrayed, and the government did nothing. It was allowed to fall and the people were allowed to die. It was deceit.’ The nun was no more than five feet tall and waved him away with an imperious gesture. Harvey Gillot couldn’t have said why he had spoken the name of Vukovar to strangers or what he had hoped to learn.

  He knew he was close and old memories returned. The flower, fruit and vegetable markets had closed and the last of the stall-holders were washing down the slabs under their pitches, but that night the rain had done it for them. He saw the café-bar in the side-street.

  There was a brighter light shining from it than there had been on a November night, and tables and chairs were outside. He was drawn there, a bloody moth.

  He was confused. The counter had been ripped out, replaced. Stained wood had given way to plastic and chrome. An old man had been behind the counter, guarding bottles, glasses and a display cabinet of tired sandwiches. Now two girls were there, hanging out, with bright lipstick and heavy eye-shadow, and the coffee machines were new. He went inside and asked for coffee. Did he want latte or cappuccino? If they had been born then, they would have been carried in arms. There was bright light, bright music from America, and bright-faced girls looked at him with a growing impatience. Latte, cappuccino or, perhaps, mocca from Yemen? He cited the privilege of the customer, changed his mind and asked for a beer. He was given no choice: a Budweiser bottle was opened and passed to him.