The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  Near to midnight. A small breeze came through the window, touched the curtain drapes and played on his skin.

  He shivered. They showed contempt for him. He had been brought to where the cross was, rough wood planks, nailed together, no craftsmanship. Beads on strings, chains, ID cards and football pennant flags hung from it, and photographs in sealed frames that might have been waterproof. It had been made clear to him that this was where he should wait. He had subsided onto the ground, recently ploughed. He still sat there, had not moved except to shiver.

  It was not the cold that made Robbie Cairns shiver. He was near the tree-line and could hear running water, the swirl of a slow-moving river rounding snagged tree-trunks. The shivering was from what else he heard – not the river: the owls shrieked. It had started with one, which had been joined by a throatier bird, then a third. One had flown past him, low and big and silent, and had been within a few feet of him. He’d flinched and flung up his arms to cover his face. The fox had come near.

  There had been a Scouts group at school in Rotherhithe, and the Cubs had met in a hall one evening a week. Twice a year for the Scouts and once for the Cubs, they went camping somewhere in Kent. He’d never gone near it, hadn’t envied the few who’d joined. He hadn’t slept outside, under the skies, clear or cloudy, in his life. When he was young and his dad wasn’t away, they had gone to a guest house on the south coast or to a caravan – depended on the family’s finances. He hadn’t liked the caravan and undressing where his brother, his dad or mum or Leanne might see him.

  The fox had come within six feet of him, closer than the owl had flown, had been wary.

  Robbie Cairns quivered. He was frightened. A stalking fox and a swooping owl were beyond his experience.

  He could look back on the last days, hours, and recognise that the fear had been in him – to different degrees – since he had come out of the bedroom and seen her with the questions in her eyes and the Baikal pistol in her hands. He had been free of it only for those moments when he had been on a step to a high-rise apartment block, a whistle had sounded and the target had come.

  What was left to him? Respect. He didn’t think he would ever walk again along Albion Street, Lower Road, Gunwale Street or Needleman Street, wouldn’t see again where Brindle had been shot by the hitman, where George Francis had been dropped or where … He wanted to be left with respect. They’d say in the pubs of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey and Southwark that Robbie Cairns had been a top man, had been chosen for a top job, with all the international links – big stuff for a big man. He’d followed his target half across the world and had done what he was paid for and— Didn’t imagine the end. Just did the talk in the streets he knew, and the respect he had earned there. He shivered … And Leanne would walk tall and be pointed out as his sister and she’d have pride in him because of respect. Nothing would stop the shivering, and then the fucking fox moved again. He thought of Leanne, clung to her.

  She said to the detective, ‘That’s it, all the dates. That’s what he’s done.’ She pushed the paper across the table. A denunciation in her girlish uneducated handwriting.

  ‘Thank you, Leanne. Very sensible.’

  ‘He hurt a woman, didn’t he? Strangled her. He should be taken out to Epping and hung in a tree, slow so he’ll dance.’

  Late on, past midnight, moths floundered against the café’s dimmed lights and the principals of the village determined the day ahead. They knew where Gillot would come from and where he would walk to, and expected that on the way he would attempt to smooth-talk them or bluster, because that was what the woman had told Simun. They knew where the hired man would be, had left him there.

  To be decided: where they would be. Some sat, some stood, some paced in the street below the veranda. All would have recognised that the village faced a huge moment. Mladen was the leader but there were no bureaucrats to rubber-stamp what he told them. Each suggestion he made faced contradiction, dispute, argument, and he would let Maria’s opinions counter Tomislav’s. He would hear the grated complaints of the Widow, while Petar claimed that the spilled blood in the cornfield, his son’s, gave him precedence and …

  Simun brought his father a bundle of paper – the order forms from the café’s wholesale supplier – and Petar tossed him a stubbed pencil. He wrote the words boldly: Kukuruzni Put. He drew sharp strokes, fast sketch lines, recalled old memories. The winding path of the river, the Vuka, and the village of Luza, which he did with a squiggle of house shapes. They had come off the street below the veranda, and the Widow, Maria and Petar’s wife had chairs at the table Mladen used. The rest crowded close to him, hemmed him in. His boy gave him a red-ink ballpoint.

  The route was drawn. The Cornfield Road lived again, for all of them.

  She said where she would be. Would she be able to walk that distance back? She demanded it. On the paper, Mladen drew a tiny square to mark the position of the sixty-five-year-old Wehrmacht bunker, the place where the track began, and wrote the name of Zoran’s widow. He drew the route, its angled turns and where it went close to the trees that had hidden the snipers – Andrija said he would be there – and past the house with no roof, where Maria would be. Tomislav chose a place close to her. The line went to the north of the scribbled shapes that were homes in Bogdanovci, indefensible once the village had been overwhelmed, and he found a place for Petar, who would be with his wife, and wrote their names. He took for himself the place where the hired man had been left, where the cross was planted. When the village principals had been allocated their places, he allowed others who pressed close to him to say where they wanted to be. Some jostled him, jogging his writing.

  Memories were stirred.

  On the map, at either side of the red line, Mladen wrote the names in pencil, made an avenue. He spoke gravely. The places awarded were to be held. There should be no stampede in pursuit of the man. He should be followed until he reached the place where the Widow’s husband, Petar and Tomislav’s sons and Andrija’s cousin had waited, where they had died and had been buried. Then it was work for the hired man. A query was raised, and a growled wave of approval followed it: why did they need the hired man, an outsider? He answered that complications might follow, that investigations would inevitably be started, that consequences might include arrest and trial, that payment had been made and that it was cleaner thus.

  He looked around him. There was one man only from whom the leader would accept advice. Where was Josip? He searched the shadowed faces for the one-time fraudster with connections in the dark corners of organised crime and saw him, far back and against the counter. The face was impassive and the eyes showed neither support nor criticism … as if Josip disowned himself.

  They shuffled off into the night.

  Like him, many would go into their homes or down their gardens to sheds, or into bushes where a pavement slab was almost obscured and bring out or dig up the clothing they would wear and what they would carry.

  Walking with Simun, Mladen could reflect that his planning for the morning would give the village what it craved: a spectacle. It was necessary for a leader to satisfy such cravings, but he couldn’t comprehend why Gillot would come.

  She thought him undeserving of charity and herself without mercy. She was tipsy, but she could take a line on the carpet’s pattern and walk straight along the corridor. When she had left the group, she had gone past the desk and had asked Mr Gillot’s room number. She had been given it, and then had gone to her room.

  What she would do was uncertain. That she would do something was not.

  First thing, a hard knock on the door, repeated twice. She stood her ground and listened, heard a muffled voice: who was there? Megs Behan ‘was there’. What did Miss Behan want? To talk with him, to see him.

  A clearer voice: what did she want to talk about?

  ‘About you, Mr Gillot, to see how you’re facing up to what’ll happen in the morning.’

  She supposed the threat was implicit that she would stand four square
in the hotel’s corridor, shout slogans, as she had outside the house on the Isle of Portland, and wake every guest not still in the bar. She had the slogans clear in her mind and the alcohol had loosened any inhibitions: she would bawl them – well, he was going to be killed in the morning and she had no compunction about making the last night of his life awful. She gathered her breath, readied herself, and the door opened. No warning, hadn’t heard a footstep. Just a sheet round him.

  Almost a smile. A gesture: she should come in. Definitely a smile. She stared into it. The smile was on his lips, but also in his eyes, and it mesmerised her. There was half-light in the room from the moon. The sheet was loose and she couldn’t say how secure it was on his hips. Tried to sound casual: ‘Just wanted to know how you were. You know, because of what’s happening in the morning. They’ll kill you – no talk – just kill you. No fucking about. What I thought, Mr Gillot, was …’

  She paused – gave him the opportunity to rail at her. Nothing.

  ‘What I thought was this. How many men, women and children, in Africa, the Middle East, Central America, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are going to die tomorrow having been killed by weapons that you supplied?’

  Still the smile. No answer.

  ‘Come on, Mr Gillot, have a sporting guess. How many tomorrow? How many the same day that they kill you for cheating?’

  ‘A drink, Miss Behan?’

  The sheet was lower at his waist, less secure, and he moved across to a cabinet, opened the door, revealed the built-in fridge and bent down.

  She said, ‘I suppose the defence of people like you is, “If I don’t sell the guns someone else will.” That’s pathetic. Or are you going to say, “It’s not guns that kill but the people handling them”? It’s got mould on it. How about “I never do anything outside the law and I pay my taxes”?’

  ‘With ice or water, both or straight?’

  ‘Don’t you try and divert—’

  ‘Simple enough question.’

  ‘It’s a disgusting trade and anyone with half a degree of honesty and decency would acknowledge …’ She had barely realised it. The drink was in her hand. She thought that if he took another step the sheet would fall to the carpet, but he sat on the end of the bed. She hovered above him and launched in again: ‘But it’s not often that the biter’s bitten, and it’s you looking at the end of a barrel.’

  She swigged, felt the whisky raw in her throat. She edged towards him as if that would help her dominate and destroy. ‘And maybe there’ll be a second, two seconds, when you’re in the same place as all the victims of those guns you sold, knowing what it is to be—’

  She tripped. The Scotch flew up, the glass tipped in her hand and she was half on the bed. She saw what she’d stumbled on: a dark mass. He reached forward, picked it up and he held it where the silver moonlight came through the window. He said it was his vest. He pointed at the black blotches and said a handgun had fired twice at short range: without it he would at worst have been dead and at best a quadriplegic.

  ‘You lived. What of those who did not, killed by your guns? Any answers?’

  The sheet was off him. He took the glass from her, crouched once more in front of the cabinet, tossed another miniature into the bin and gave it back to her. He sat on the bed and didn’t cover himself.

  ‘Have you seen what your profits achieve? Have you actually been to war yourself? Or do you just hide in luxury hotels and—’

  ‘Never. I’ve never heard a shot fired for real, except at me. Otherwise weapons are a commodity for me, Miss Behan.’

  ‘That is disgraceful, disgusting and …’ She hesitated, didn’t know what else would insult him.

  ‘I buy and sell, and most of those I sell to – ordinary people, not governments and army generals – are pretty grateful for what they get.’

  ‘Just despicable.’ That was the word. She was irked because he sat still and naked on the bed, in shadow, and didn’t respond. She drank, and wondered how it was to wear a vest and have two shots fired into your back.

  ‘I’ve never been in a battle. Sorry and all that.’ The smile broke through again, broad and almost affectionate. ‘You have, I’m sure, been in more battles, fights, conflicts, low-intensity stuff, insurgencies, border skirmishes than I’ve had hot dinners. You wouldn’t lecture me on the evils of arms dealing if you hadn’t known warfare at first hand.’

  ‘Utterly irrelevant.’

  ‘This isn’t some sort of interrogation, Miss Behan. You can decline to answer and keep your fingernails. I’ll try again.’

  She flushed – might have been the sight of his body, or the Scotch. ‘You’re serving up bullshit, clever crap.’

  ‘You good on freedom, Miss Behan?’

  ‘What does that mean? More bull and crap?’

  ‘Freedom. You could say that I deal in freedom, Miss Behan.’ His head was down and his voice was soft.

  ‘That is ridiculous.’

  ‘Ever had a Guevara T-shirt?’

  Doubtful, not knowing where it led, and brittle. ‘Once.’

  ‘And wore it until it fell apart, washing-machine fatigue. Great face, Che Guevara, great symbol. A “freedom fighter”, Miss Behan, heroically standing against Fascist dictatorships and military juntas, great guy. What did he fight with, Miss Behan? Might have been a toothbrush, might have been a hammer from a hardware shop, might have been a Scout’s knife … or it might have been the weapons that he was sold, likely at cut price, via the Cuban government.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’ She didn’t know what he could or couldn’t say. The whisky burned in her. Beyond the window the river ran silver, and the stone cross was proud, clean and brightly lit. And the smile on his face was for her.

  ‘The mujahideen in Afghanistan were fighting Soviet occupation and tyranny, and I was arming them. I’ve had gear brought on the backs of mules through the Chechen mountains from Georgia because people wanted the “freedom” you take for granted. In your book, I suppose there are good guns and bad guns, justifiable bullets and murderous bullets. I don’t make such judgements. I don’t have a check list and tick off boxes because the newspapers, and your organisation, tell me that one side in each conflict is good and the other bad. The majority of the trading I do is in the interests and aims of HMG. Her Majesty’s Government uses taxpayers’ money to shift firepower around where it’s needed in the furtherance of policy. Didn’t you know that?’

  She bridled. ‘You’re confusing me.’

  ‘Not difficult. I don’t think you’ve ever been to war. I think you’re just a keen paper-pusher, but I think also you’re too old to be messing with jargon, posters and placards. I think you know small things only, because from big things comes doubt.’

  She finished the glass.

  She stepped over the vest on the carpet and was close to him. He made no effort to cover himself. She thought she recognised fatigue, but the smile came through and lit his face. Of course, his responses were rubbish and insulting to her intelligence. Of course – without the Scotch – she could have stood her corner and argued him to the floor. What derailed her certainties was that he seemed so indifferent to her attacks and so relaxed in his answers. He didn’t fight her. And an image came into her mind. The man in her picture had dark hair, most likely dyed, and a warrior’s moustache. He wore a heavy black overcoat against the night cold, and was pushed forward by masked men until the noose came into the phone’s lens, voices were raised and abused him. That New Year’s Eve she had been in a Hackney pub, tanking with friends before a party. The television had blared the insults thrown at the fallen president as he was pushed on to the scaffold. She had choked at the sight of it and had looked away from the execution of Saddam Hussein. She had thought the transmission obscene and – frankly – it had buggered up for her the supposed night of celebration. The deposed dictator had not cringed, had not shown fear. She felt, then, ashamed. The idea of an argument on the evils of the international arms trade with a man who would die in t
he morning seemed to her to degrade … She could have argued and won, but … He would be bloodied, broken, battered, dead before the sun was high.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘I expect I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Behan. It’s what I’m aiming towards.’

  She didn’t understand, and didn’t know how to react. She could turn and head sharply for the door, slam it after her. She could sit on the bed beside him and talk the politics of universal disarmament. She could stand by the window and wait for the sunrise … Or she could have another drink, roll a cigarette and do the vigil.

  She thought, then, that he slept.

  She fetched red wine, vodka, gin and a tin of tonic, went back to the bed, took one side of it – careful not to wake him – and settled without touching him. She pondered which bottle she should open first as she made the cigarette and lit it.

  They would kill him in the morning. Before they did so he wouldn’t beg or plead. She supposed it would be a release from the burden of being condemned. The drink slipped down well and he slept cleanly, his breath regular. She knew what time the phone would ring with the call, but thought dawn would be with her first.

  It was still dark when the party broke up and the last stragglers headed for bed.

  Back-slaps and minor hugging from William Anders for Benjie Arbuthnot.

  Roscoe watched. He thought their embrace ostentatious and that they shouldn’t have behaved as if this was an alumnae reunion, but their talk had been heavy with nostalgia – where they had been, whom they had known, which warlord had slaughtered what community, and where the Soviets had fouled up. He thought the occasion had merited some solemnity. He had been told why the forensic pathologist was on site, but the matter of Arbuthnot’s appearance had not been dealt with. He couldn’t imagine what brought a retired spook to the backwater of Vukovar, but his time would come.