The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘And at Vinkovci or Nustar where the crates went on to the Cornfield Road, would the senior commanders have allowed a delivery of such importance to go to this village alone?’

  ‘It would have been a problem, but it was the teacher’s problem.’

  ‘Would they, in fact, have been taken by more senior commanders for more important sections of the defence of Vukovar? My friend, would any of the missiles have reached here?’

  ‘I do not think so. I never thought so … It cannot be said. The teacher promised it would come to us.’

  In his shoulders, Arbuthnot mirrored sadness, and in his voice there was regret. ‘So it was for nothing? Collecting everything of value, sending young men with the teacher to the rendezvous? Believing in the weapons? You are a commander, proven in combat. You know it was for nothing.’

  ‘What I know, sir, and what I will say are not similar.’

  ‘My friend … No, not for me, you have it. Wonderful, yes? The Bushmills whiskey of Northern Ireland.’ The hip flask was again offered, and Arbuthnot again insisted. ‘Quite the best thing to come out of the place … What is happening is nonsense. You were the commander, you are the leader. End it.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘It is barbaric, medieval. It drags you back when you should step forward. Look for the future, not the past. End it.’

  ‘I say to you I cannot.’

  ‘The cry is for leadership.’ It was the last card of the deck. He seemed to slap it down on green baize as if he was with Deirdre in Shropshire and among other dinosaur friends, not here. The shouting was deafening and they came close. The hip flask was rammed back into his hand.

  ‘You are wrong, sir. The cry is for blood. If I do not give them blood I am not the leader. The whiskey is good. Thank you, sir.’

  As the purveyor of a trade where deceit, obfuscation, half-truths, half-lies and deceptions were praised he found rank honesty interesting when it was shown him. Almost deflating. He couldn’t disagree with the man.

  Level with him, not half a dozen feet away, Gillot staggered, seemed to pause, and reached down into the waist of his trousers. He dragged out a lightly filled plastic bag – it would have come from any high-street supermarket – and threw it at Benjie. The old spy scrabbled for it, dropped the flask and had to crouch to pick it up. He saw the engraved skull and the crossed bones, the words from the cap-badge, ‘Or Glory’. He might have said: Fuck all glory here, my old cocker. It might have been Anders who grabbed him, or Steyn, but his eyes had misted. He clutched the plastic bag and was swept along with the herd.

  Had he been recognised? He didn’t know – no greeting had been offered him. He had expected none. He had said that Gillot must face and confront, and he now did so. At a cost.

  *

  They came together. A trip, a push from the side, a knife brandished in his face, and a woman’s spit on his cheek. He lost his balance. Harvey Gillot went down. Darkness closed around him and the brightness of the sun went. So many of them, pressing, shoving, knees jabbed into his chest and elbows. No room for them to swing their fists or use their feet. He tried to curl up, protect his privates and face. The bedlam above him was indistinct … and he heard Roscoe.

  As if Roscoe took control. A little pool of light first. It lit faces and he saw the beards on the men, the gaps of missing teeth, and smelt the breath. He saw the lines at the mouths of old women and the crows’ feet, and Roscoe’s hands had hold of his shirt and the back of his trousers, at the belt. He was lifted. More light came. Was in his eyes. His phone, deep in his pocket, rang its chimes. Might be Charles or Monty or the good guy in Marbella, or his wife and daughter. Might be long-distance international from seaside Bulgaria or Tbilisi – or might be someone who sold armoured saloon cars. Wouldn’t be a salesman from a personal-injury insurance company, peddling.

  He stood. Might have been down for five seconds, no more than ten. The phone stopped.

  Gillot kicked out his right leg to make the first step and go forward. His eyes squinted and were wet. He had taken that first step, then cannoned into a man and damn near bounced back off Roscoe. He tried to pull Roscoe away and hadn’t the strength. Abused him – ‘Don’t want you, don’t need you.’

  Saw, up ahead, the gunman. Near to him a cross was strewn with ornaments and pennants, planted in a ploughed stretch of field. Behind it were green grass and a tree-line. Roscoe had his arm and used his other hand to push men and women back. He sensed, but didn’t turn, Megs Behan behind him, the doctor who had driven him and Benjie Arbuthnot. There were others who meant nothing to him. Roscoe had hold of him, shepherded him and half-shielded him. He didn’t know what he meant, but he shouted, ‘I can do this myself.’

  Almost a sneer: ‘Right now, you can’t even piss on your own.’

  ‘Don’t want, need—’

  ‘You’ve got me.’

  ‘And the great plan, you got that?’

  A hesitation, a pang of uncertainty. ‘Working on it.’

  Which meant – and Harvey Gillot’s dulled mind saw it – that Mark Roscoe, the detective who had come to his home to plead a future life in a safe-house with a panic button beside the bed and been rejected – now had nothing more in his knapsack than the thought of walking in front of him, acting out the part of a fairground coconut. Would he have survived if he’d stayed down on the path and the crowd’s hands and boots had been at him, with the knives and rocks that were about to follow? Probably not. Would he have survived if Roscoe had not pulled him upright? Possibly not. He was now in debt to the detective.

  ‘I owe you nothing.’

  ‘Just keep walking. Walk right on past him.’

  ‘And what do I do?’

  ‘You walk. He’s mine.’

  Robbie Cairns watched them come. Gillot, the target, was at the front, looking like a derelict who slept rough in Southwark Park on the far side of Lower Road. He didn’t think the target could have walked if he hadn’t been held up – by a policeman. The man would have had to spend a couple of hours being made up and costumed to disguise himself. Obvious he was a policeman.

  They were coming closer to him. He stood with his legs a little apart, his weight on his toes, and the sunlight was across him, not in his face. The policeman wore a suit but had been on the ground and was dusty: there was mud on his face, his shirt was messy and his tie askew. The target, Robbie Cairns saw very clearly, tried to free himself from the policeman’s grip and wriggled, was a fucking eel, which rucked up the suit jacket. If a shoulder holster had been worn, Robbie Cairns would have seen it. If there had been a pancake version on the belt, he would have seen it.

  They were fifty or sixty paces from him, and he saw now that the great crowd behind and alongside had thinned and that most of the people, whether they were in fatigues or wore black, had drifted into the corn and trampled it but they gave him space.

  There was a knot – ordinary clothes and ordinary people except one idiot in a straw hat with a bright handkerchief half out of his jacket pocket – of two women and three men, a couple of paces behind the policeman and the target. He had the pistol out of his jacket pocket and had been satisfied with his shooting early that morning of the fox. He could justify it as a test firing and he had almost forgotten the eyes of the animal, the mouth and its tongue.

  The man, the idiot, broke clear of the people who followed and split off into the corn. He had, a moment, a sight of the hat, then lost it, and his eyes were back on the track. They were going to fucking bluff it. Not many did. A few thought they could walk past, as if he wasn’t there, as if the pistol wasn’t aimed at them – not many. He cocked it, and the bullet went up into the breech.

  Robbie Cairns thought that maybe he would have to shoot a policeman, unarmed, and didn’t feel it mattered to him. He had shot a fox and that mattered more, and had strangled his girl with the hands that held the pistol and that mattered most … They came on and walked at him.

  20

  Curious, but he felt a sort o
f calm. Almost as if he was at peace. He smiled.

  He walked better now, no longer fighting against the detective’s hand on his arm. He didn’t try to squirm clear of him. Maybe another twenty steps and they would be close enough for a hired man to shoot. Maybe another twenty steps beyond that and they would be clear of him and out of his range … Forty steps to walk. Best foot forward, Harvey. And when he was clear, he was free. When he was free, it was over … Start of the ‘sunlit uplands’, Harvey boy, new world, a new life, forty steps away. No more looking over his shoulder, chasing shadows, running because the wind hit the roof or a tree cracked above a pavement. What stood in the way of the forty steps was the slight-built man, short and forward on his toes, like a boxer ready to fight. In the way was the gun in his hand. He kept the smile. He recognised the gun as one from the factories of Israeli Military Industries but couldn’t recall whether it was the Desert Eagle or the Jericho 941, which seemed to matter to him. They were fast thoughts, a drowning man’s views of life, and took him through three or four steps.

  Roscoe murmured, ‘You keep walking. I lead and you’re covered by me. Just go on by him.’

  ‘Not your fight.’

  ‘Just fucking douse it.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Time for one more question and time, perhaps, for one more answer.

  ‘Not for you. Don’t go getting an ego surge on that. My badge. My job. Enough?’

  Had to be. The gun came up. Was held in both hands, and the fore-sight wavered, wobbled, then steadied.

  Roscoe had the voice of authority – maybe he needed to piss his pants but he did it with quality. A firm voice, not a shout: ‘I am a police officer, Mr Cairns, from SCD7. You are identified. A warrant is out for your arrest. Lower the gun, Mr Cairns, and accept that further violence is stupid, pointless. I am coming past you, and Mr Gillot is coming with me. It’s over.’

  They kept walking. Harvey Gillot remembered the hammer-crack sound of two shots fired on the track where he took the dog, and the two thudded blows of the bullets hitting the back of the vest at the Hauptbahnhof. He kept the smile in place. ‘What would you buy from me, sir? Any damn thing you want, sir, I can do for you. Best price, and goods of the highest manufacturing skill. Only the best and near to perfection. Discounts available for favoured customers. What’s it to be, sir?’ Harvey Gillot did the smile and realised that Roscoe’s body had edged in front of his, that his knee hit the back of Roscoe’s and that the man was shielding him. Didn’t fight it.

  ‘I’m relying on you, Mr Cairns, to be sensible. You’re a long way from everything you know, and you’re involved in something strange and confusing. Put the gun down. Drop it, then turn and walk. I am unarmed, Mr Cairns. Be careful and be sensible.’

  The barrel had locked.

  He knew what it sounded like, and knew what it felt like when a man wore a vest … He had no vest. Roscoe wore no vest.

  There should have been a curled lip on the hired man’s face and something of cruelty. Should have been the sign of the beast, Harvey Gillot thought, and the man was just so bloody ordinary … he would have walked past him on an airport concourse, on a train platform, on a high-street pavement and not noticed anything other than a sort of dead-beat concentration – like that of a carpenter worrying with a spirit-level or an electrician with a wiring puzzle or a plumber called out when the central heating had failed, trying to do a job well. Just a damn job.

  The barrel had locked and concentration lined the face. No hatred there, and no contempt. He felt, alongside him, that Roscoe had coiled. It was all show and bullshit. He smiled and Roscoe did the boss-man act. He heard nothing around him, no other voices, but a bird cried high above and the wind ruffled the corn and their feet shuffled, and they came on. He could see it very clearly, the tightening on the trigger bar, the whiteness growing on the knuckle … and the thoughts were of a lifetime at the time of drowning.

  A little wizened man in an office, who had survived the carnage on the beaches, being offered a job … the smell of mule shit at the edge of a bazaar and sweet tea in thimble cups, perched on the crates that contained the Blowpipes. Standing in a north London crematorium while a poor soundtrack played the Exodus theme and an unbeliever’s coffin slid jerkily from view … Sitting on a hard chair in a register office beside Josie, holding her hand and feeling blessed … In the rain, on a dock, watching a freighter nudge towards the quayside and hearing the booming voice … dumping a bag of baubles … hustling, going for deals, a man alone … the interview room in a police station … and couldn’t remember when love had last figured in his life. Remembered them all – and then Roscoe went.

  Went like a bloody cat. Pushed off one leg, might have had half a dozen paces to close. All bluff and all bollocks, as if Roscoe had never believed the crap talk he’d given with authority. Went fast, with athleticism. Harvey Gillot had felt the hand wrench off his arm and the detective was launched.

  The hired man reacted.

  Roscoe was struck, mid-air and without balance, by the swinging weight of the pistol – the Desert Eagle or the Jericho 941 – and caught the blow across the side of the face, cheek and chin. Gillot recognised then that Cairns – Mr Cairns – was not crude, ineffective, without talent at the job he did. The response had been so fast, like a cobra’s strike, like he had seen up on the North West Frontier in a village market. Roscoe fell. The arm swung back. Two hands locked.

  So, Harvey Gillot, what the fuck to do?

  Heard sounds now. Heard the moan, semi-conscious, of the detective. Heard oaths and shouts from the men behind and reckoned one voice was that of his ‘chauffeur’ on the morning ride, as dawn came, through the town and to the start point of the Cornfield Road. Heard a gasp from the girl who was Revenue and Customs, and a squeal from little Megs Behan, whom he hadn’t touched, who had slept on his bed and who had blasted him with a bullhorn. He hadn’t heard an oath, grunt, gasp or squeal from Benjie Arbuthnot. He faced the pistol. Roscoe was down, not prone but on hands and knees. He wouldn’t beat any count and wouldn’t stay on any field.

  What the fuck to do? He kept the smile in place.

  He did the smile that might have sold ice to an Inuk in Greenland, or sand to a Bedouin in the Sinai. The bastard was not Inuit or Bedu, and stared through him. Harvey Gillot could see the narrow little eyes over the two sights, the V and the needle. Die well or badly – did it matter?

  One more step. He took it. Quite a good step, and again the silence drenched him. He heard the slither of his own foot, then the heave of the bastard’s breath, as if he would draw it in deep, fill the lungs, then let it out. When he let it out, he would fire … Guys he knew, guys he had a laugh with, guys who bought his stuff, told him that a marksman took in breath, held it, let it seep and fired.

  Silence gone. An explosion in his ears and his head. He saw, a sharp moment, that the gun kicked hard, went up – was coming down fast. A delayed spasm, then the impact against his chest. No pain, but the shock of the impact. His knees buckled. He didn’t want them to fold and was confused, didn’t understand where the strength had gone. One good step, assured and strong, not another, and the ground – a dirt path and squashed corn – rushed to meet him. His eyes never left the gun and the face behind it.

  No reaction from the face.

  The gun had kicked up but now was down, aimed.

  He knew they called it ‘double tap’. Many thoughts, the great irrelevancies of the last macro-seconds of a life. ‘Double tap’ was from British policemen in Shanghai in the 1930s. The aim was on him and the finger whitened as pressure pushed away the blood. He couldn’t have moved or shouted. Harvey Gillot didn’t think it was his choice whether he died well or died badly, couldn’t shift from the aim and had no voice. The breath bubbled in his throat.

  The miserable beggars had allowed him one shot only.

  Small miracle that one had been allowed, packaged in a matchbox. He could get the pen through the metal detectors but not the bullet for it. He had need
ed it to be given him at Osijek airport.

  He had emerged from the corn as the shot was fired, had seen Gillot go down and the detective pistol-whipped so that his mouth bled. His face was discoloured and he was dazed, his orientation gone. He had seen also that the members of his Vulture Club were either hunched at the side of the path or flat on their faces.

  The pen was in his hand. He had twisted it, aimed it along his forefinger and the next finger was against the pocket clip. No one saw him, a damn great wraith that had risen from beneath the corn and his hat was awry and … He remembered everything he had been told. As the contract killer took his final steadying aim, he must have been some four or five feet to the side and out of peripheral vision. He aimed the finger at the little space behind Robbie Cairns’s left ear, which had been identified to him as the ‘mastoid process’. He pressed the trigger down violently, crushed the pen’s clip into the recess. The recoil blistered back down his arm, into his elbow and up to his shoulder. He had been shown what to do, where to aim, on a courtesy tour of the police special-operations training centre outside Jerusalem. The timing of his visit, as a friend and therefore confided in, had seen the early development of tactics to be used against suicide bombers wishing to gain a leg-up to Paradise by detonating themselves inside Israel. There was a ‘critical shot’ opportunity when the bomber approached his target but the policeman, soldier or armed citizen who confronted him, or her, had to consider the nightmare scenario of the explosive belt being controlled by a ‘dead man’s handle’ and that the death spasm would – as a reflex, the principle of the running but decapitated chicken – indent a pressure switch. He could have fired into the lump, the ‘mastoid process’ behind either ear or down the bridge of the nose.