Safe from Harm

by RJ Bailey

  ‘Look, fellas, I’m sorry, but believe you me, it wasn’t me who squealed. I won, remember?’

  The tightening around Bojan’s mouth suggested such reminders weren’t going to help my case.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I asked.

  Roman gave a wolfish grin.

  ‘First off, our severance pay.’

  ‘Your . . . you want money? This is a shakedown?’ I was trembling now, with genuine outrage. I even flexed against the strap, which I knew was a waste of effort, although given time I reckoned I could work it up or down and free my arms. I suspected I didn’t have that much time, though.

  ‘Just the money Asparov gave you,’ said Mitval.

  ‘Gave me. Not you.’

  Mitval frowned at this. ‘Nevertheless, we would like it back.’

  Back? It didn’t belong to them in the first place. But then, I didn’t feel it was rightfully mine, either.

  ‘I no longer have it,’ I said. ‘It was too much cash to leave lying around.’ Especially with a daughter with Indonesia on her mind.

  ‘So where is it?’ Mitval asked.

  ‘In a strongroom. In a secure location. I wasn’t going to leave it with the cornflakes, was I? But I can get it. There was no need for this charade. I don’t care if you have it. To be honest, I’d rather have a dose of chlamydia than keep it.’

  Ain’t that the truth.

  Bojan and Mitval exchanged glances. Something seemed to pass between them, because both men nodded in agreement.

  The Serb prodded me with an iron bar of a finger. ‘Tell us how to get it.’

  ‘You see, we have to start new ventures now you have lost us our livelihood. We need capital,’ said Mitval, as if he were making a pitch on Dragons’ Den. ‘And that is our money, really.’

  ‘The man I have given it to won’t just hand it over to anyone who pitches up. I’ll have to be there.’ And preferably alive. ‘Take this off me and I’ll come along with you. Then I’ll hand the money over. I’ll just have to make some calls first.’

  ‘No calls,’ said Bojan. It broached no argument.

  ‘OK,’ I said. I could worry about Mrs Sharif later. I just hoped Ben wouldn’t ask too many questions when I turned up at his office with this circus of chimps in tow and told him I needed to make a withdrawal. ‘The sooner we get started, the better.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Bojan, looking questioningly at Mitval. Again, a non-verbal exchange passed between the two men. Some decision was made. Mitval nodded. ‘OK. Leave her able to walk and speak. I’ll be in the van.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  After the front entrance of the church had creaked shut and slammed with an ominous thud, there was a moment of silence when nobody moved. Least of all me. I was holding my breath, trying to anticipate what was coming next. It didn’t need too much imagination. Then Bojan and Roman disappeared from my sight. I heard a sound like reluctant nails squeaking out of wood and the scraping of furniture. Bojan began speaking and I wished he hadn’t.

  ‘Vuk and I were in the Drina. You know how the people in The Hague are always saying rape is a war crime? They are right. A terrible war crime. What they always forget is it’s pretty good fun, too.’ He giggled at that. ‘Vuk here was our go-to guy for that sort of thing. Jesus, the man has a dick like a . . . what’s that snake?’

  ‘An anaconda,’ said Roman/Vuk helpfully.

  ‘Yeah, like an anaconda. It could fuck you or squeeze you to death. Ain’t that right, Vuk?’

  I heard a soft ‘oh shucks, this old thing’ chuckle which, under other circumstances, might have been self-deprecating. It sent a ripple of cold fear down my spine. Paul, who had served in the Balkans, had told me about the Drina and the systematic rape of Bosniak women.

  ‘But, you know, Vuk misses those days. Don’t you, Vuk? So we thought, yeah, let’s try some of his greatest hits.’

  They reappeared carrying a large, once highly polished table that was now scuffed and stained. They set it to one side and between them plucked me out of the chair and pushed me face down onto the surface. They swung my legs up. My heart was banging against my ribs with enough force to resonate through the wood. I kept running down my options to suppress the panic I knew was building. It didn’t take long. It was a short list.

  I seemed to have run out of snappy comments, which is just as well as I’d run out of saliva, too.

  Vuk crouched down so his face was level with mine. As he spoke I got a waft of sewer-like periodontal disease. Once smelled, never forgotten. My father had it in spades. It was just one of the many, many things I disliked about him. ‘So, what we thought was, we start with a fuck in the arse. Eh?’

  I felt Bojan gather my skirt either side of the vent in the back and tug. The seam split open.

  ‘But you are probably used to that. I thought maybe we could try rimming. You know that?’ He gave a little smile. ‘Don’t worry, I perfumed my ring for you specially.’

  When he laughed it was like the smell from a garbage chute wafting over me. I was torn between hawking the liquid surging up from my stomach into his face and suggesting that he probably says that to all his girls. In the end, I said nothing. I had to modify my response. Non-compliance but non-resistant too. And I had to forget the smart-assed comments. I had to let all the tension go from my muscles, hope they’d grow bored. This was going to hurt and humiliate in equal measure. Of course it could all be hot air, a particularly foetid sort, coming from that mouth. Just a bit of psychological torture. Maybe he had no intention of shoving his spotty arse in my face. Maybe.

  ‘Now, missie, we are going to cut the strap. Better if you can move your hands. I like my balls squeezed. And a little tromboning, always good for me. But if you fight . . .’ He held something in front of my eyes. It took a moment for me to focus. Two six-inch nails. The sound that had reminded me of nails being pulled from wood was just that. He showed me the claw hammer he had used to extract them. ‘We shall nail your hands to the table. Understand?’ When I didn’t reply he touched my cheekbone with the cold face of the hammer. ‘Understand, missie?’

  I nodded and he straightened and his mouth began to distort into a grin, before he twisted away with a scream, leaving a miasma of blood and bone behind.

  Only then did I hear the sound of the gunshot.

  I didn’t hesitate, I rolled off the table, bracing myself as I slammed into the floor, raising a cloud of dust and grit that filled my nose and eyes. I blindly shuffled myself so I was beneath the table. Another gunshot, booming high up into the once-holy roof space.

  I blinked and snorted to try and get my senses back. When I could keep my eyes open I saw Vuk, slumped down to his knees and swaying. The bottom of his face was unspeakably grisly and glistening, like a freshly painted war-wound by Francis Bacon. His mandible made a clacking sound as the ruined jaw moved up and down.

  Vuk’s eyes were filled with fluid, weeping down his cheeks and he was staring at me with . . . what? It looked like he was pleading for something. I managed to swivel on my hip, bring my left leg up and I kicked him as hard as I could in his chest. An animal-like noise came from deep in his throat as he careered back into the chair I had recently vacated and lay still, blood pooling around his head.

  There came the rolling burp of a weapon on automatic fire and the whine of a ricochet and a tinkle of broken glass. The boom of a large calibre pistol followed, close enough to hurt my ears, and then a silence – if you could call the humming in my head silence – descended on the church.

  I watched the legs of a newcomer take unhurried strides towards me, the sneakers on his feet making almost no noise. The face that appeared was etched with concern. ‘You hurt?’

  ‘Bruised,’ was all I could manage. I didn’t trust my voice. In truth, I didn’t trust myself not to burst into tears.

  ‘Good.’ He produced a pocket knife and sliced through the restraining strap. Immediately a bloom of pins and needles began to play over my arms. The binding had been tighter tha
n I thought.

  ‘Just hold on, we’ll get you out of here. My guv’nor wants a word.’

  As he leaned in to help me out, I thought that maybe I’d been a bit too cruel about his haircut. It didn’t look at all like he had a turd on his head.

  I’m not a brave person. Not particularly. It’s just that the army and my training taught me a few tricks to keep things together under pressure. Sure, all that stuff about compartmentalising the panic, about not allowing the fug of terror to cloud your senses, I can do that. But it was always like going into a metabolic overdraft. Sooner or later there was a reckoning. That was why I didn’t mind having to hold the coffee cup with two hands to stop it shaking.

  We were outside a Costa coffee shop, not far from the church. I had on a borrowed coat, to cover the rip in my skirt. Opposite me was the ‘guv’nor’ who had introduced himself as Russell Swincoe. He was early- to mid-forties I guessed, with a rather bland, forgettable face that would run to jowly soon. He had on what looked like brand-new dark denim jeans and a waxed cotton jacket of some vintage. He didn’t look – or speak, given his public-school accent – like the man who had just ordered one of his people to blow the face off a Serb. But I was glad he had.

  ‘Who the hell are you guys?’ I asked. ‘And why have you been following me?’

  He stirred a sugar into his black coffee. ‘First things first. Do you need to be checked out by a doctor?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, the cavalry got there just in time.’ All I had, apart from the shakes, was a wasp buzzing in one ear thanks to my proximity to the weapons discharging, but that would pass. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Our pleasure.’

  ‘Except you’re not the cavalry, are you? Who are you exactly?’ I repeated.

  He looked at his watch. ‘You still have time to keep your appointment with Mrs Sharif and her daughter.’

  ‘Hold on. How did—?’

  He rode roughshod over my question. ‘You’ll need to clean up a little. We have your handbag, by the way. But I can get you some replacement clothes down here within . . . fifteen minutes. Or run you home.’

  ‘Home would be good.’ I had never spoken four truer words.

  ‘Finish your coffee. Lawrence will drive you.’

  Lawrence was the polite young man, one of those who had rescued me. The driver with that turd-like hairstyle I found myself quite liking now.

  ‘How are you going to explain the gunfire in the church?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s a film production,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

  He was right. That was not my concern. I had other questions.

  ‘Will Vuk live?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Not especially. Just curious.’

  ‘He will, but from the look of him, he’ll not be chewing many steaks. I think he has a life of soft fruits in front of him.’

  ‘With what he has behind him, that’s no bad thing.’

  ‘True. But they aren’t the sort of people you should upset, you know.’

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. I had had no intention of upsetting them. I didn’t even want their poxy money.

  ‘And Bojan?’ I asked.

  ‘The other Serbian? We lost him, I’m afraid, but he has one of Lawrence’s nine-millimetre bullets in him somewhere and probably a lot of glass. We have the man from the van.’

  ‘Mitval. What’ll happen to him?’ I asked. ‘He wasn’t the worst of them, you know.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s all a matter of degree. As he has been implicated in importation of Afghani heroin before now, I do believe he will be shipped back to Mother Russia.’

  ‘You believe?’

  ‘I think I can guarantee it.’ There was a self-satisfied twinkle in his eye as he said it.

  ‘OK, so you guys are authorised to use firearms. And you can whistle up ambulances and ship out people with serious gunshot wounds without bringing out choppers and SCO19. And phony film crews appear to be on speed dial. But you’re not cops.’

  A raise of the eyebrows was all I got and a little dimple in one of his slightly over-fleshy cheeks.

  ‘And you seem to know a lot about me. And the people who took me. And you are keen to get me back to the Sharifs.’

  ‘Very keen. It is imperative to us you get back to work.’

  ‘That’s very touching.’

  ‘We have our reasons. Mainly because we had our own person ready to go and work for the Sharifs.’

  I remember the conversation with Mr Sharif, about a nice Muslim girl who almost got the job. ‘Miss Gill.’

  A smile. ‘The same.’

  ‘Own person? What does that mean?’

  ‘We wanted someone inside that house we could trust.’

  ‘We’ was beginning to annoy me now. ‘I think she overplayed the Muslim card. Mr Sharif might not have liked anyone too judgemental.’

  His nose wrinkled a little, as if a fly had just flown up his nostril. ‘Perhaps.’

  I could feel my insides slowly giving up their quivering. ‘Look, are you going to tell me who you are and what is going on or are you going to play the enigmatic Englishman?’

  ‘Oh, I rather like that role.’

  ‘I’ve never cared for it, Mr Swincoe, if that’s your real name.’

  ‘It is. For reasons I will explain, we need to get a person inside the Sharif household. One of our own. To be our eyes and ears. We thought we had it covered with this PPO lark, making sure there were no other applicants, but then you breezed in from left field . . .’

  ‘Why do you need someone in there?’

  That bounced right off him. ‘Then we realised we had a stroke of good fortune with you.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  Another twinkle in the eyes as he smiled. ‘Well, you’re family, near as damn it.’

  I drained my coffee. I would have to be leaving if I was going to make it to Highgate and act as if a kidnapping and a near-rape hadn’t happened. Oh, and get a grovelling apology to Nina. ‘I don’t like cryptic crosswords, either. Can you just say what you mean?’

  He sighed, almost petulantly, as if I wasn’t playing the game properly. ‘We are the Security Service.’ He took out his wallet and showed me an impressive set of credentials, and then slid a much plainer business card – name and number only – across the table. I palmed it. ‘Or MI5 if you prefer.’

  It didn’t come as a massive shock, given what I had just witnessed. It had to be the Security Service or the Met’s SO15 or SCO19 to run around with all that firepower. ‘If I’m your family, you are a very distant relative to me.’

  He rattled his spoon in his cup, put it in the saucer and knocked back the coffee. ‘Well, not really. I know you think that your husband worked for the British Nuclear Constabulary. That’s not entirely true. For the past three years he had been seconded to us. The Security Service. You see, your Paul was what you might call a spook.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I killed a man once.

  Well, half a man, strictly speaking. Zero point five of a human life. Oh, I probably killed more than that. In a firefight you loose off high-velocity rounds at unseen assailants and you hope that one of them might have hit home and silenced the gunmen and gunwomen.

  But this one guy, he was up close and, as they say, very personal.

  He was on base, one of the local interpreters, the ones who were meant to be anonymous. I knew him as Latif, but I doubt that was his real name. Because, of course, his own countrymen might blow his head off or worse if they knew he was helping us.

  Latif was around twenty-five, maybe a little older, good-looking, tall and aristocratic, with very good English. We had conversed on no more than half a dozen occasions, but I found him charming and easygoing, with a nice line in cynical, black humour that fitted in well with the squaddies’ own.

  I had just left my billet and was strolling towards the Medical Supply Stores – this was shortly after my encounter with Freddie and the R
upert and I still needed to top up my field medi-pack, which was running low on some items – when I saw him coming towards me, his gait slightly off.

  That’s all it was. He usually walked like he was Omar Sharif or Yul Brynner or one of those old movie stars – proud and a touch arrogant, with an almost feline grace. But this time he was on jelly legs.

  It was hot and dusty in the compound as always. Another low-flying helicopter, a Lynx this time, had kicked up a grit storm, causing shouts of abuse from the soldiers in the open. I was beginning to think it was a game those chopper boys liked to play.

  There was the usual racket, of bored conversation, heated arguments, a bit of jokey banter and the hiss of power washes and air lines as vehicles were cleaned off. I heard the familiar laugh of Captain Charles, as dry as the desert air. As I passed Latif, under the relentless glare of the sun, our eyes locked. I can’t say what I saw there. Maybe there was nothing to see. But just as our shoulders almost brushed, he pulled down the cloth covering his face and said one word.

  Run.

  I slowed and turned. I could feel the sun burning my neck and the sweat forming under my breasts and arms. Yet here he was wearing a heavy chapan – basically a loose kaftan – over his salwar kameez tunic and trousers. He had to be roasting in all those layers.

  Run? Why?

  I watched as he threw off the chapan and for a moment it seemed to stand on its own, as if the invisible man were inside, but as it collapsed I saw the light glint off the battered magazine of the AK-47 Short he was carrying.

  Ahead of him, a group of six or seven men, sitting in the shade, were writing letters or reading books. They hadn’t looked up. Nobody had noticed him, not yet. All you need is a ‘not yet’ for an AK to do its work.

  ‘Latif!’ I shouted.

  He didn’t seem to hear.

  The gun came up so slowly, I wondered if Latif was willing what happened next to come about. Hoping he didn’t have to carry out this atrocity. That someone would stop him . . .

  Look, when you have a man in front of you, part of his body torn open, blood soaking into the jaundiced earth, you don’t have time to fumble or hesitate. Your fingers can undo buckles and straps of a medi-pack pretty damned quickly if you just concentrate. When they need to, my fingers can fly. Right then, they needed to move faster than they ever had.