He drank it from the neck, as he had that night, and then a neat Scotch. The man, Zoran, a schoolteacher, had hollow legs. He had worn once-decent grey slacks that had no shape and were mud-spattered, and a foul, filthy shirt, a tie, a sweater with earth smears, an overcoat and muddy shoes. He had thought then that the man had dressed to impress: he had come from the conflict zone and sought to keep up appearances. He was unshaven and his eyes were hollow, sunken, but had rare life in them.
Drank beers and chasers. Talked about the deal and shook hands on it. A plastic bag was passed, then set down on the vinyl flooring, worn almost through, by his feet. What was in the bag? ‘Everything we have.’
Enough to pay for fifty Malyutka kits? ‘It has to be enough. We have no more to give.’
How was it, where he had come from? ‘We survive, we exist … With the Malyutkas we will survive better, exist longer.’
Subject closed. He had drunk with an educated, middle-aged man, who had walked through a cornfield with a plastic bag, but had no war stories, no derring-do crap … How many times, with Solly Lieberman, had he sat across a table or perched on bar stools and listened to men telling hero-tales and thinking the world should stop and listen. What did the guy want to talk about? A Wembley win for Tottenham Hotspur in the spring, how they would do under the new owner, and … They talked about football and Harvey Gillot knew nothing about it and didn’t like to tell the man that football bored him. They had drunk some more, then gone over for a last time, slower because of the drink, the arrangements for ferrying the gear across the cornfields and into the village.
One Budweiser and a couple of whiskies, then out on to the cobbled street.
Then he had held the plastic bag. The man, Zoran, had caught his face in two hands, kissed him on each cheek and was gone. He had seen the man pause near a streetlight and turn to wave, the rain cascading off his face. Then he had lost sight of him.
It was a bright night, a good piece of the moon showing, and the stars were up and clear. He was glad he had climbed the hill and found the bar, and he started off down the same street as he’d used that night, on which the schoolteacher had walked away. His chin shook and his cheeks were wet, as they had been then, when it had rained.
He went to find a taxi and negotiate a price.
17
Neither of them had spoken to him. The guy who had come into the park, found him by the statue heads and walked him to the apartment, was in the passenger seat. He had been with him when he had chosen the Jericho. He was still in the suit, his tie not loosened, not a hair out of place. The driver was the same size and dressed in the same way. They’d talked among themselves, quietly, in their own language but had not addressed Robbie.
It was a BMW, a black sports utility with tinted windows. Robbie assumed it was armour-plated, the boss-man’s wheels, his personal driver and personal muscle. They had been, for the last half-hour, on side roads, with deep potholes that had made it lurch – not that he would have slept. When they had stopped at a fuel station, his door had been opened and the muscle had pointed to a lit sign at the side of the building – the toilets. When he’d come back he’d been given a bread roll, spiced ham and a bottle of Coke. He’d thanked them, and they hadn’t responded. There had been heavy traffic, tankers, and lorries with trailers on the main highway, but the road they used now was deserted. They made good speed, and on bends the headlights speared across fields of high-growing corn, miles of it.
The last place they had been through – he’d seen the name – was Marinci. A one-drag place with a crossroads in the middle and a church, a shop. Few lights and none of them bright. They had come to a road bridge and Robbie had seen the signs in an overgrown field, a white skull and crossbones on a red base. They bumped hard going over it and he was still wondering what the sign meant when the vehicle swung hard left, didn’t follow the pointer to Bogdanovci. There was a new nameplate but it came too fast for him. He thought it was near to the end of the journey.
The road they went on was narrower. Further to his left, and sometimes picked up in the lights, there was a high tree-line, as there had been at the bridge, and the surface was poorer. There was a dull glow of lights ahead.
They came into the village. If he leaned forward he could see the satnav screen built into the front panels. Now the cursor closed on the red arrow that would be ‘end of the road’, the destination. A man had stepped forward from the shadows and was caught in the headlights. He was supported by a crutch and his right trouser leg was folded short at the knee. A woman followed him and Robbie saw a face with no emotion. Her arms were folded across her chest. The driver braked.
Words were spoken. Robbie Cairns couldn’t understand them. His door was opened.
He stepped out, ground his fingernails into his palms. Did that to regain his concentration. Who am I, what am I? He was Robbie Cairns from Rotherhithe. He was top man. He had taken a contract, had been head-hunted – was big, important. ‘This it, then?’ he said. ‘This where we’re going?’
He took a couple of paces forward. The man on the crutch didn’t move towards him and the woman kept her arms tight across her chest. He realised that the driver had kept the engine ticking over, and now the muscle slammed the door at the back, gave a sharp wave towards the darkness, then was back in his own seat and closing his door. The BMW did a three-pointer, backed on to the grass in front of a house and spun. Its lights were in Robbie’s face, and he blinked. Then all he saw were the tail-lights going away – fast.
‘For fuck’s sake, don’t you wait?’ he shouted after them. ‘Don’t you take me back? Where the fuck am I?’
The brightness out of his eyes, Robbie Cairns saw the faces of those who’d waited for him. They were on a veranda, with a dulled interior behind them. Then he saw the chrome of the coffee machines at the back and the poster adverts for Coke and Fanta. There were metal tables and lightweight chairs, all taken. Eyes peered at him. Where it had started? Did they own the contract? Had they hired him? Better clarity on the faces, and most were men’s but a few were women’s. Only one was young and smooth-skinned. Robbie held tight to the Charlton Athletic bag, and in it was the tool of his trade: not a fucking hammer or a plumber’s wrench or a spirit level or pliers or a spanner, but a Jericho handgun. He was in the back end of nowhere.
‘Right. So what happens?’ he called, defiant. ‘What happens now that I’m here?’
He heard the scrape of the chairs, then the hissed breathing of those with smokers’ chests. There was the flash of a match as a cigarette was lit and the faces seemed old, worn and weathered. They made a circle about him. They moved, he moved.
The young one said, ‘They think you are shit. They have been told they wasted money in buying you. They believe, now that Gillot is coming, they could do the job for which they paid you. They say that this is when they see whether you are shit or whether you will earn their money. They are veterans of war. The money paid to you was from loans advanced against disability pensions. They are poor people. If you fail again they will kill you and they will kill Gillot, and they will bury the two of you together. It is not far that we have to walk.’
He was alone. The young one had slipped away from his side and seemed, seamlessly, to rejoin the cordon ring around Robbie. They had only the moon’s light to guide them. They left the village and went by a high wall. There was a gate in it and above the gate, in silhouette, a cross. He assumed it to be a cemetery. Would they bury him there or in the fucking fields that closed in on them, big crops rising to above their heads? They walked, men, women and Robbie Cairns, in the watery light, along a path that led through the cornfields and, far ahead, an owl screamed.
She wrote her message, finished it, revised it, was satisfied and read it back for a last time.
To: Dermot, Team Leader Alpha.
From: Penny Laing.
Location: Vukovar, Croatia.
Subject: Harvey Gillot.
Message: I find no evidence of criminal wr
ongdoing on the part of Harvey Gillot, arms dealer, in connection with alleged sale of weapons to a village community near Vukovar. The events of 1991 remain confused and few opinions can be considered objective; also the passage of time has dulled memories. The only individuals other than Gillot who were party to a deal – if, indeed, there was one – were killed that autumn and neither left a written record. I recommend that I observe matters here for the next twenty-four hours, in accordance with Gold Group requirements, then pull out and return to London. Regards etc.
She pressed Send.
The bar beckoned. She’d noted that refugees from HMRC turned to alcohol when a career went turnip, the same when a police officer realised his job might be crap, and she had seen it with a diplomat at the embassy in Kinshasa who had lost faith in finding anything worth nailing a flag to.
The thought of hunting down Harvey Gillot, turning up at his door at dawn and the guys having the battering ram to break it down, a dog barking, a woman screaming and the power of stripping away dignity, had thrilled her. The experience of lying under a teenage boy, or on him, letting his tongue and fingers roam free, had been as brilliant as anything she had known. They were gone. Sod it. Nothing special about her, not blessed, and drink beckoned.
She snapped off the laptop and let it power down, touched her hair, applied a light coat of lipstick, switched off the light, locked the door and went down the hotel’s stairs. Penny Laing heard, ‘I fancy I see another recruit. This rate, if we’re to stay exclusive, we’ll need to blackball a few …’
*
He saw her look at him, wouldn’t have known who she was, had not the hippie-style girl, little Miss Megs, murmured the name and then a limited biographical sketch – God, her, from Revenue and Customs, Alpha team and hunting bloody Gillot. Penny Laing. Be standing room only to watch the bastard show himself … Benjie grinned. He ruled. He had before they’d adjourned to eat, when he had taken the central chair at the long table in the dining room, Bill Anders on one side of him and the truculently amusing Steyn on the other. Back in the bar, he still held his audience, enjoyed himself and kept the staff busy. Arbuthnot thought her a woman in need of humouring – she looked as though she had just walked into a bloody great brick wall.
‘Don’t think we’re going to have room for many more. I understand you’re Miss Laing. Please, join us. Come along, and I’ll take your application for membership.’
He would have appeared – he knew it and rejoiced – a buffoon who had drunk too much, but he had extracted from each of them everything concerning their presence at the ground-floor bar of the Lav Hotel in Vukovar, which was in the far northwest of eastern Slavonia. A glass was brought for her, local wine was poured – she wasn’t offered a choice and didn’t seem to resent it. He thought she looked ready to do damage to the bottle and to anyone who interrupted, contradicted, challenged her.
Did she know everybody? She shrugged.
Did she know Miss Megs Behan, campaigner extraordinary against the evils of the arms trade and representing Planet Protection? Did she know Detective Sergeant Mark Roscoe of the Metropolitan Police, a firearms officer without a weapon and an investigator without authority? Did she know Professor William Anders, forensic pathologist from California, and did she know Dr Daniel Steyn, general practitioner, dabbler in psychology and resident in this town? And himself? ‘I’m Benjie Arbuthnot, long put out to grass. I just happened to be passing through these parts and was able to give a lift in a hire car to … Cheers, Miss Laing.’
Could have been Aussie lager on a hot day, barely tickled her throat, and the waiter was back with the bottle. He sensed the enormity of her failure.
‘I understand that Harvey Gillot is the cement that binds us and what happens tomorrow. I have all these excellent people signed up, Miss Laing, for membership of the Vulture Club. Probably we’ll have a tie designed for Sergeant Roscoe and myself, Bill and Daniel, and maybe a square silk scarf for you and Miss Behan. Does that appeal?’
There was chemistry now, and volatility. The links were known to him: Roscoe, Behan, Laing, Anders and Steyn. All were tied to Harvey Gillot, who had been not only his asset but something more than a friend.
‘I thought the Vulture Club, with an emblem of the griffon type, would be appropriate. You see, Miss Laing, the vultures hang around and wait for a corpse to feed from. They don’t have much of a life if there are no corpses available. They spend a fair part of their lives sitting perched, or flying high, waiting for a killing. I think they have a sense that tells them where to be, when to be there, what sort of dish might get served up. Fascinating, isn’t it, to be waiting and watching for a death so that one is on hand while the meal is still warm? You must give me your address, Miss Laing, so that when we’re back in London I can send you a scarf. When they’re really hungry and the corpse is big enough, they get right inside the carcass, and feed there … We don’t need that. We all had an excellent dinner. Well, that’s enough about that. So, welcome, Miss Laing, to the Vulture Club and I’ll consider your subscription paid.’
He took her hand, shook it with a certain formality, then gave her the floor.
Another bottle was brought.
She knew them all and he was the only stranger among them. She said that two attempts had already been made on the life of Harvey Gillot, that he had survived an attack that morning because he had worn a bulletproof vest, that a final attack was planned for the morning and … Benjie Arbuthnot saw in her eyes that his image of a griffon vulture perched in a dead tree or wheeling high on the thermals had struck home.
‘It’ll be a good show,’ he said. ‘Better than a hanging or a stoning in Iran because of the unpredictability.’ He chuckled, thought he knifed them. He chaired the club and had the right to: his responsibility was the greatest of all. He laughed again, brayed.
The voice came from far back in the lobby. Last time he’d heard the man there had been a stammering whine in it. Not now. ‘Good evening … You have a reservation for me. The name is Gillot. Harvey Gillot. Just one night. No, thank you, I don’t need help with any bags. Please can I book a call for six?’
Benjie Arbuthnot did not twist in his seat and stare. Opposite him, Megs Behan – God, there was fire, rank animosity, a blaze of enmity – stiffened. He said, ‘Slowing down, are we? Can’t have that. In the rulebook the Vulture Club keeps going all night before a killing and a feed.’
He clapped his hands above his head and the waiter scurried to him.
When he came away from the desk, his key in one hand, plastic bag in the other, a town map squashed under his arm, he saw the waiter going to a group. No eye contact, but he recognised Roscoe. Didn’t remember meeting the taller and smarter-dressed of the women but, of course, he hadn’t forgotten the maniac, the obsessive, the crusader with the bullhorn. There were two older men, who peered at him as if captivated by his appearance. And he saw Benjie Arbuthnot – recognisable, unforgettable from years back – make a half-turn in his chair, and reach up to scribble on the receipt pad that the waiter had brought with the bottle. Couldn’t have said that he’d expected him to be there. The big man was obviously holding court and in control. He grimaced and left the desk.
He gave no sign of recognition to Arbuthnot, nor was rewarded with one. So, all of them in place and a few other camp followers tucked in for company. He thought, across the bar space and the lobby, that Roscoe tried to ‘touch’ him. He gave nothing back. And no response to Megs Behan, the bullhorn woman, but there was hostility in her and triumphalism. None of them could have said he had gone towards them with arrogance or something craven. To go to the stairs he needed to turn his back on the group. Good move, brilliant. He went slowly, took time with each step. They would all have seen the drilled holes in the jacket, over his spine. He recalled that he had been told he couldn’t sit around, make funeral arrangements and check his will. He went up the stairs. He’d been told he’d be a fugitive for the rest of his days unless he travelled. He came out on to the fi
rst-floor corridor. The alternative was looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days He checked the rooms’ numbers and kept walking. The instruction had been that he should face and confront it. He found the door, put in the key and turned the lock. He thought a promise had been kept. He had asked Benjie Arbuthnot where he would be. Not too far behind you, for my sins, there and thereabouts. One promise made and another kept. He closed the door behind him. The only one he would trust was Benjie Arbuthnot, no one else. He didn’t know if, in the morning, he would be pickled and hung-over or sober and clear-headed – there was no one else he could trust.
The curtains were open and the moon’s wash flecked the river. The ripples – from its current – made silver threads. In a direct line from his window to the river, a land spit divided the marina of pleasure boats from the tributary that flowed into the Danube, and at its end was the white cross of carved stone. Maybe it had been a private quarrel. Maybe he had no business there. Maybe the wrong was too great for penance. He dumped his jacket on the chair, stripped off his shirt and threw it over the jacket. The holes looked big and black. He slipped the Velcro straps and shrugged out of the vest, letting it fall at his feet. He thought it had done him well, had brought him there. His body ran with sweat from the day in the train, the walk in the city and the ride to the town. He slipped out of his underwear and kicked off his shoes and socks.
He flopped on to the bed. He didn’t know where else he should have been. He hardly knew the place. From the taxi’s windows, he had seen a high water tower, with holes in its brickwork, and a few collapsed homes, but had gained no sense of life here nineteen years before, nor had wanted to.
The Dealer and the Dead Page 40