The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  There was no second shot. The one bullet available, of .22 calibre, dropped Robbie Cairns. As well it did. No chance was open for another firing.

  Cairns fell, subsided fast. No shock on his face, nothing that betrayed a moment of anxiety. Only the concentration of aiming and focusing on the fallen target, Harvey Gillot, lived with the hired man.

  The path the bullet would take had been amply explained to Benjie Arbuthnot by a dedicated instructor. When might he have needed such expertise? He couldn’t have said, but he had never willingly passed over an opportunity to learn the black-art skills of his chosen profession – how to kill and leave not a single muscle flapping. The bullet would have gone through the ‘mastoid process’ and on into the ‘medulla oblongata’, the brain’s stem, and on impacting into it would have created an ‘instant flaccid paralysis’ – and the instructor had grinned grimly. ‘But I have to hit it, and how big is it? How much would I need Lady Luck?’ It was about the size of half a sausage, and it had been reached through the ear canal and the bullet would have driven along a mass of splintered bone ahead … and it worked. He knew the tactic as explained was successful because no muscular flap – post mortem – tightened on the trigger bar of Cairns’s pistol.

  He slipped the pen back into his pocket.

  Blood oozed from Cairns’s ear, spilled out and ran on to his neck.

  He went forward. At that moment, the only man standing on the Cornfield Road was Benjie Arbuthnot. He towered above the men and women who crouched low.

  Was he in time? He didn’t know. Had his intervention, breaching the rules he had preached, been too late? They were matters beyond his experience. Quite hard, he kicked Roscoe’s ribs. ‘A smack in the face, nothing more. I gave you kit. Can he be saved?’

  ‘Or can he not be saved?’

  He heard Arbuthnot’s voice. Gillot did not know where he lay or why he couldn’t see anything more than distant shadow shapes above him. There was a bark in the voice that demanded attention.

  ‘Come on. Don’t just bloody look at him – do something for him. You had the kit, on your belt, Sergeant, so use it. Steyn, off your knees. So that you all understand, there will be no more shooting. Robbie Cairns is as dead as yesterday’s mutton. God knows who did it, but he’s down and dead. We have to be grateful to someone but I don’t know who. No more shooting, so can we, please, see if Gillot can be saved? Doesn’t look too bright, does he? Worth saving? I think so. He’s been quite useful to the mother country over the years, not exceptional but useful – probably was more sinned against than sinning in the matter of the missile delivery. He’s owed the effort, my opinion. Not that it’s an important opinion, these days.’

  The pain was bad in the ribcage and in his chest, not unbearable but bad. The voice clearest to him in the babble was that of his driver, who had called himself Daniel. The accent was mid-Atlantic and mid-European, unique to the group who had followed him through the corn.

  ‘Give me the analgesic. Morphine, OK. How? I don’t need a vein, just in through the trouser leg. There, that one … Ease it in. Takes a bit but it’ll keep the pain within limits. I appreciate you guys have put time and cash into this joy-ride, coming here to stand on the pavement and watch, but I don’t think we’re into happy endings. Looks grim to me. There’s no exit wound, so a slug’s lodged in there, probably wedged against the backbone, and it’ll have taken rib with it, fragments like shrapnel. About all that’s good is that the bullet entered right side of the chest – left would have been the heart. But I have a collapsed lung, and he’s breathing and there’s air in the cavity that the lung should be filling. Do we have a field dressing? What do we have that’ll block that hole? Get too much air in and its pressure will screw up the veins going into the heart so they twist and get a blockage. Guess you don’t need to know that. Do we not have a field dressing? Yes, Ma’am, the blouse will do – just get it off. Seemed quite a decent sort of guy, but arms brokers can put on a deal of shit when they want to. I suppose he knew what he was doing. Take a look, Bill. I’m not feeling good about it.’

  The pressure built on his chest. The pain was ebbing but he could feel a great weight there and thought hands pressed down on him. There was drowsiness and – just maybe – the need to sleep. The voice was American.

  ‘I reckon you’re right not to feel good about it. Looks to me like you could be losing him. Not my expertise, though. Put him under the earth for a couple of years, then call me. Shit, girls, if I want to make a joke, I make a joke, but don’t damn well pout at me. He’s – almost said “was” – an arms dealer. They come in busloads. They summon up excuses for what they do, sometimes even plausible ones, but society’s better off without them. I won’t be shedding tears, except … except it was gutsy to come here and look them in the face. Just didn’t work out the way he must have hoped it would. Do the form thing and swab him with the potassium permanganate – get some steriliser round it. But, my bet, you’re losing him.’

  A woman’s voice rose above the others, must have been the Customs woman’s, but the need to sleep grew and the pain had drifted. So damn tired.

  ‘He’s sinking, isn’t he? Isn’t that what you say? But he fucked us all up, didn’t he? I’m wrecked, so’s Megs and so’s Mark Roscoe. I wish he’d never come into my life, and the sooner he’s out of it the better I’ll be pleased. How does it end and where? In this damn place that nobody wants to know about. Everything about this thing, and the people involved – me, everyone – is so bloody ordinary. God, look at the colour of him. Megs, giving up your blouse was, big-time, a wasted mercy mission. He wasn’t worth it.’

  He drifted further, warm from the sun, and knew that sleep was near.

  Megs spoke and her voice was clearest. ‘Is that what you all do? Wring your hands, weep to start with and then slag him? Then mutter about “sinking” and bloody “losing” and him “going”? Don’t you do anything? Or should it be “slipped” and “lost” and “gone”? Is he actually breathing now?’

  Very faint, and hardly heard but identified as Roscoe: ‘I failed him. Wasn’t paid to stand in front of him but was obligated to … After all that I failed him and I’ve lost about half of my front teeth. Did no one see who zapped the hire bastard? Well, Gillot was a nothing man and this is a nothing place, so I suppose it’s fair to say that nothing fucking happened. No bright lights, no cameras, no bands and no grandstands. It hurts to have failed.’

  He felt himself lifted, and it was the last Harvey Gillot felt.

  Steyn drove and Gillot was across the back seat, his head in Roscoe’s lap.

  Benjie Arbuthnot bumped off the track, drove past the cemetery gate and headed into the village. In front of the church, he braked, leaned forward and lifted the plastic bag that had been at his feet. He passed it to Megs Behan and suggested where she should leave it. She crossed the road but didn’t turn to face the men and women gathered on the café’s veranda. They gazed at her as if she’d come from a different world and was alien to them – as she was, and as Harvey Gillot had been. Her blouse had gone with Gillot, so her shoulders and chest were covered by a skimpy T-shirt. She wouldn’t have cared if she’d been naked. She hooked the handles of the bag – as Arbuthnot had said she should – over the pointed top of a post in front of the half-completed building. Still they stared at her. None waved or wished her a good journey home. Arbuthnot had said, before they were off the Cornfield Road, that the bag contained some ‘trinkets and baubles’ and some ‘legal documents’, and she imagined he had cleared out his wife’s jewellery boxes – maybe fifty thousand’s worth or even a hundred – and also included the deeds of the house that overlooked the sea with views to die for. She climbed back into the car and seemed to hear each shout of abuse that had been thrown at him and to suffer the blow of each rock, stone or fist. She turned her back on them and asked Arbuthnot where they were heading for. She was told that a brisk drive would bring them to Osijek in time for the flight and the connection to London.


  Roscoe called in from the airport – he’d found a quiet corner of the car park.

  He was finishing his report to the Gold Group’s secretary. ‘I can’t say who shot Robbie Cairns. After I’d gone for him, and he’d belted me and after he’d fired point-blank at Gillot – well, I’ve told you all that – and I’m half out and down, well, there’s a shot and Cairns is slotted. Don’t know where it came from – not sure it matters. If you’re looking for an investigation you’ll be whistling in the dark and get nowhere. I’ve the impression, before dark tonight, that Cairns will have been buried off that path through the cornfields. There’ll be no cross and no shrine, but a minefield warning sign might be plonked on top of him. As I see it, that means we won’t have to endure one of those mawkish bad boys’ funerals, black horses and all that crap. As far as I’m concerned, for officialese, I know nothing, saw nothing and heard nothing. That’s about it. They’re calling us.’

  Roscoe joined the queue at the departure gate. He stood with Megs Behan, Penny Laing, William Anders and the preposterous Benjie Arbuthnot, all members of a club for which he fancied he had life membership.

  Mladen, his son and Tomislav had each shouldered a heavy spade, what they would have used to clear out a blocked ditch, and set off along the Kukuruzni Put to dig a hole. The burning sun was high above them, minimising their shadows. Ahead was the rumble of machinery as Petar started to bring in the harvest and scalp the fields of the corn. For the rest of the summer, autumn, winter and spring, the landscape around the village would have changed. Far behind them, a plastic bag flapped in the light wind from the railings in front of the church, untouched.

  It was the start of a day of fierce sleet, as predicted by the forecaster, and the post van came warily up the drive to the cottage where they lived. They had to be woken by the doorbell because the package required a signature as proof of delivery. Benjie Arbuthnot wished his postman well, offered him a nip against the weather, which was declined, and carried the padded envelope into the kitchen.

  After breakfast, bloody bran, and skimmed milk in the coffee, he attacked it with his scissors and tipped out the contents. He checked them: six ties and four headscarves.

  A flash of mischief from Deirdre: ‘I suppose, Benjie, you’re going to play that silly game of yours.’

  ‘I am indeed.’ The ties went on to one pile on the kitchen table, and the scarves on to another. Between the piles were more padded envelopes, and his notebook of jottings and addresses. He saw his wife’s face screw up in mock-disapproval. ‘What’s the matter with them?’

  ‘Only that they’re hideous. But, then, vultures aren’t wonderfully pretty.’

  ‘Tough, my old darling, because I’ll wear the tie and I hope you’ll wear the scarf, because you’re sort of an ex officio member.’

  ‘So, the daft game can begin.’

  He wore, that morning, because it was balls-breakingly cold in the cottage, a thick sweater and a heavy twill shirt with a curled collar, but he slung the tie round his throat and knotted it loosely. The main body of it hung down across the knitwear and the representation of the vulture was big, bold and pretty bloody ugly. The head was large, grotesque and done in a scarlet stitch over the blue of summer skies. His wife had her scarf on her shoulders so both of the vulture heads were well displayed. The game – daft – was an old favourite of Benjie Arbuthnot. He would meet people at a local drinks evening, in London, on a train or on holiday, chat with them for a few minutes and draw them out, because that was a talent. Afterwards he would play the game of creating lifestyles, histories and a future existence for them. He did it sometimes with dry wit, and others with a fortune-teller’s sadness at predicting pestilence and famine. He could be a conjuror, bewitching children so they didn’t know if they watched sleight-of-hand or true magic. Few who heard his game played out would believe his guarantee that his insights came from imagination, not fact.

  ‘Right. One each for us, no envelope needed. Don’t know about you … I see a Cold War veteran and a man long dispensed with but who – one last time – punched high above his weight, was given favours by younger colleagues and returned a small measure of them, but is now at grass. His usefulness is exhausted beyond the ability to teach his grandson how to shoot and fish. He’s unlikely to be invited by any future director general to take a drink and chew over old times. Took too much and gave back too little … pretty clapped out. But it’s my club, and its attraction is that the membership is made up of ordinary people. No celebrity is allowed to join and we discourage the puddles of light that the high and mighty like to walk in. We were there and we walked the bloody path. We’re blessed, a happy few. I enjoyed the company of that man when he was young and I was still on the road. They were good times, but they’re gone … I never want to hear Gillot’s name again after today.’

  He had addresses and poste restante locations. He would give her each name and she would write on the envelope, then slip inside either a tie or a scarf with Benjie’s visiting card. She wrote Daniel Steyn MD and the name of a shop behind the Ku’damm in Berlin.

  ‘He was involved. To stay in Vukovar he would have needed a profile as low as a lizard’s. He stood up at the end to be counted, and too many loathed him there because of his innate ability to speak truths that were not wanted – reconciliation, rehabilitation. He gave them the excuse to turn a difficult life, his, into an intolerable one. I think he had a cat and I’m assuming that when he’d found a decent billet for it he would have loaded his car and driven away. I imagine he now practises medicine on behalf of immigrant groups on the fringe of the city, earning a pittance and living in poverty. But he wasn’t a Pharisee and didn’t cross to the far side of the road that day. He’ll wear it with pride, but he lost because he moved away from the one place where he believed his work was valuable. Everyone touched by Gillot in this business is scarred by him. A rogue with a smile and he sucked people in, burdened them with involvement. The sole purpose in Steyn’s life was to be in that community, to work damned hard there. Gillot broke it.’

  An envelope was loaded and sealed. The next name she wrote in the bold copperplate hand taught in convent education was Professor William Anders, Department of Forensic Pathology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA. She reached for a tie and her husband’s card.

  ‘A man of importance and stature, used to being heeded. He was confronted with a situation that he had been central to creating but which then had a momentum of its own. He became an ignored nonentity. I believe he will not return in the summer to Vukovar but will permit “pressure of work” in Angola, Rwanda, Congo or Mozambique – anywhere – as an excuse for his absence. That aura of conceit, almost that of the bully, is off him – a plucked cock turkey – and he will never have spoken of the events of that morning in the cornfield. He was a loser, stripped of the certainties of his life. At the very end he was a useless passenger – for him, that means he was, which will have hurt, a major loser. Another – and there are more – who carries the scrapes on his skin of contact with Gillot. A pillar of his life has been snatched away.’

  She pushed that filled, closed envelope across the table and took another, a tie and a card, wrote another name and address – Det. Sgt Mark Roscoe, MPS, Great Victoria Street, London. He seemed far away from her, gazing at a whitened, frozen landscape through the window.

  ‘An epic, almost heroic, loser. A man of great honour and integrity, a foot-soldier with a backpack loaded down by a sense of obligation. He lost out. At first, submitting his reports, he would have been praised for his dedication and his response to the duty-of-care principle. Not for long … The bloody bureaucrats from Health and Safety would then have fastened talons into him. He went far beyond the remit of the job and was way outside the limits of his training – went to the extremes of mission creep. He never liked the target, which made his commitment all the more praiseworthy. Where now? Probably on a burglary squad in Hackney or Hounslow, or doing community liaison in Cricklewood or Camden
. He actually put himself in the way of harm – they won’t have liked that. I would hope he’ll wear our tie and rejoice in the membership, that it won’t serve only to remind him of what he was in terms of his career: a loser. His disaster was the day he was assigned to Gillot. Most officers would not have been within a hundred yards of the target that morning on the Cornfield Road, and their careers would have survived intact. Not an ordinary man, and damaged by Gillot, but perhaps he discovered himself in those fields and is the better for it.’

  They didn’t know the full name. She wrote Mladen, the village’s name and Vukovar, Croatia. Benjie Arbuthnot’s mood lightened.

  ‘He’s an old hooligan – knows how to milk the system to the full – and is also a lion of a man. He, and many like him, fought tooth and claw to save their village and bought time – whether intentionally or not is immaterial. The time could be used to rush weapons into the runt of Croatia – every arms dealer in Europe worth his salt was dealing … except that our illustrious government had a policy of non-supply and worked to prevent such shipments. I was an agent in the fulfilment of that policy … Regardless of our efforts, the state survived on the back of the sacrifices of that village and others, and of that town, and survived on the back of the profits of weapons brokers. He was, and is, a magnificent fighter and his community has an excess of fortitude and courage. I want to think they’ll have moved on. I want to believe that Gillot would have provided the spur, as he walked the Cornfield Road before he was shot, for that community, under Mladen’s leadership, to take a step forward and not always be going back into history or merely sideways. There was something extraordinary and emotive about the walk Gillot did. He faced a problem, confronted it, and made the village do the same, as if he dragged them out of their past and shamed them. I think, under that man’s influence, the village will now go forward. Not “forget” and not “forgive” but live without the aid of alcohol and pills. Of course, Gillot brought with him all the family valuables and the deeds of his home. We left them at the church. Where are they now? The church has cellars, where the wounded were treated, where Mladen’s son was born and where his wife died, and I believe they prised up a flagstone, cleared out some earth and made a space large enough to dump Gillot’s bag, then resealed the stone and would have grouted it in. Maybe, one day, we’ll go together and … He’ll come well out of Gillot. Not many others do. I’d like to take you there, and hope you’ll walk that road with me.’