Home Front

by Thomas Waugh

  “You know that you’re chasing windmills, James? And I cannot be your Sancho Panza. You won’t be able to take them all on. What’s your mission here?”

  “I just need to take two of them on. What’s my mission? To keep drugs off my street. Just my street. I’ve no ambition to take on the world because I don’t much care for the world. I’m no Napoleon. I have no wish to fight my Austerlitz or become Emperor. I’m not looking for some Josephine,” Marshal explained.

  I’m just looking for some Grace.

  “No, but you are looking for trouble. I’ve seen this before. I had an associate – friend – Michael Devlin. Like you, he was a former Para. He thought that to find some peace, he needed to go to war. Life shouldn’t be a crusade. Out of a warped sense of justice, or honour, he took on one job too many. Things will unravel if you fire off too many shots. One round will inevitably go astray – no matter how accomplished a marksman you are.”

  Porter’s expression grew uncharacteristically pained as he thought about Devlin. The person who was worth saving couldn’t be saved.

  Violet’s ears pricked up on hearing her former master’s name and she emitted a small whimper.

  “I’m not Michael Devlin,” Marshal asserted, putting the gun case in his bag. His phone vibrated, with an email reply from the Marylebone Rifle and Pistol Club. He declined to mention that he had once met Devlin.

  “Michael had a code. It helped to turn him into an outstanding soldier. But it also helped turn him into a corpse too. He made a promise to his late wife that kept him lonely. I often think to myself I could have somehow intervened. There is no such thing as fate. Or perhaps there is. The older I get, the more I realise how little I know. And that I can’t fix everything. But I know that, sooner or later, no good will come from you taking the law into your own hands. People are always asking me for a favour. But I would like to ask you a favour, James. Walk away from this, while you still can. I could still arrange for you to leave the country. Or I could also ask Grace if she still could use a driver. I can pay you. Victoria says that Grace has grown fond of you. You may have grown fond of her too. I’d even be happy to release you from your promise.”

  “I still have to get back,” Marshal steadfastly remarked. He was anxious to leave. Force the issue. He feared that if he stayed another hour, he might end up staying another week or more. Grace couldn’t be Calypso and prevent him from returning to the capital. For all of London’s dark, satanic mills it was still home.

  Marshal zipped-up his jacket in his suit bag. He wondered if it was the most suitable garment to conceal his shoulder holster and Glock. He also wondered whether the inside pocket was deep enough to carry his suppressor.

  Porter gazed, or frowned, disapprovingly at a penny-sized fleck of mud on the toe of his polished shoe.

  “Out, damned spot,” he murmured, as he retrieved a handkerchief and wiped away the offending stain. Porter then frowned disapprovingly at the besmirched white handkerchief.

  Grace and Marshal offered each other suitable pleasantries after he put his bags in the boot of the Jaguar. They offered one another fonder and more meaningful looks, when they couldn’t be seen by each other. Marshal promised once more that he would see Grace at the launch of the bookshop. She didn’t put much stock in his word, however. Men lie, as sure as night follows day. Marshal considered how Grace would have secured a glamorous suitor by the time of the party. Or she might be too busy with her new home and business to spare any time for him. He would still attend the party, as he had given his word, even if it was for five minutes.

  Ships that pass in the night.

  Fair weather always comes to an end. A murky slab of cloud tiled the horizon, as if a gargantuan foot were about to stamp on the earth. Rain fell like shotgun pellets, in a flash shower, as Marshal drove along the motorway. Lightning licked the sky behind him and then in front of him. The baritone thunder drowned out the sound of the music in the car. But Marshal turned up the volume, as defiant as a Spartan.

  Foul weather comes to an end too, though it may not always seem that way. The storm abated, as Marshal came into the capital. He drove through Hammersmith, Earl’s Court, Victoria, Vauxhall. London has everything and nothing to offer. It’s shiny, yet soulless, he lamented. The streets were not paved with gold, but some may be studded with zircon. There was so much to sigh about. The wind seemed to moan in sympathy. He felt bereft, but not altogether unbowed. Like normal. He thought about the Albanians and his knuckles grew white, like teeth, as he tightly gripped the steering wheel. He chewed the skin on the inside of his cheek. But the welcome sound of the pupils laughing and playing at the school gave him heart. He’d soon be back in his flat, cradling a cigarette and whisky tumbler. Marshal nodded to a couple of neighbours as he retrieved his bags from the boot of the car. He was conscious of keeping an eye out for anyone suspicious, who might observe him entering his block. He didn’t see anyone.

  But they saw him.

  19.

  Bisha and Bashkim had turned around the corner, in a bottle-green Toyota with tinted windows, just as Marshal was entering his block. His attention was focussed on pulling the wheels of his travel case up the step. Bisha only caught a glimpse of the Englishman, but a glimpse was all he needed of the man who had hung in his mind’s eye over the past couple of days like a wanted poster. The skeevy Albanian’s pulse quickened and his nose twitched, like a rat smelling food. He bared his teeth, like a Jack Russell about to attack. But Bisha’s desire to take matters into his own hands and confront the Englishman was checked by his fear of Baruti. As much as he had inwardly cursed the kryetar’s name over the past couple of days, for ordering him to endlessly drive around the streets of the area, his strategy had reaped the necessary rewards. As usual, Baruti had been right. Bashkim grunted on spying the Englishman, his cheeks swollen from munching on a chicken tikka wrap.

  Bisha immediately sent a text message to his superior:

  “We found him. He lives on the street where he attacked us.”

  A message came back, as quick as a counter-punch.

  “I know where you are. Do not engage. Just keep watch, from a distance. Even if he sees you, do not approach the target. I will be with you soon.”

  The Albanian was sitting at a table in The High Life. Viktor Baruti permitted himself a smile, as he finished his plate of carpaccio beef and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a linen napkin. A wave of pleasure, almost sexual, rippled through him. They’d found the Englishman. His fate was sealed.

  But what should be his fate? The Albanian felt like a gourmet, with an a la carte menu placed in front of him. He had the power to pardon or punish the stranger, who had transgressed. Baruti recalled the fate of Sean Dyke, a Glaswegian restauranteur and drug dealer who had tortured and murdered one of Baruti’s lieutenants. Dyke had first beaten the young Albanian, with a rolling pin, before pouring hot chip fat over his face. In retribution, Baruti found an abandoned warehouse – at which to beat Dyke with a mallet, breaking his kneecaps and several ribs. Baruti watched, without wincing, as the hot chip fat melted his victim’s skin. The Scotsman writhed in agony so much he nearly ripped out one of the arms of the chair he was tied to. The hissing sound resembled a gas leak. His eyeballs sizzled. His face looked like something out of a horror movie. The smell was unwholesome and unholy. Putrid. The gruesome screams didn’t last too long as Dyke lost consciousness. Baruti’s intention had been to torture the Glaswegian for longer, but he had a meeting to attend. So, he put a bullet in his enemy’s head, to put him out of his misery. Before commencing to torture Dyke, however, Baruti forced him to watch as his twenty-year-old son was beaten and disfigured in the same fashion he would be. The Albanian considered whether the Englishman should suffer similar justice. An eye for an eye. They could abduct the stranger and meter out the same injuries that he had inflicted upon Bisha and Bashkim. Baruti wondered if the Englishman had a son or brother he could abduct. Lessons must be learned. Something would be wrong with the wo
rld, like cutlery placed at an angle, if the call for justice remained unanswered. Baruti received a further text message from Bisha, mentioning that their target had been carrying a travel suitcase. It appeared he had been away on a trip, perhaps with a girlfriend. Baruti was not averse to finding and capturing her. Punishing her. Executing her.

  But the Albanian would reserve judgement for now. He wanted to assess the threat of the Englishman first. Was he working alone? What was the extent of his training and contacts? Could he be recruited? Baruti decided to hold off informing his krye about having located their mystery man. He wanted to provide firm intelligence, rather than speculate.

  The enforcer was usually loath not to finish a meal, but he cancelled his tiramisu dessert and left his coffee half drunk. Baruti did not want to waste any more time in confronting the Englishman. He checked the location of Bisha and Bashkim on the app on his phone. They were still on Iliffe Street. His intention was to just talk with the Englishman, but as Baruti got up from the table he drew his pistol and chambered a round. Just in case.

  Marshal poured himself a large vodka and lemonade, with crushed ice, when he returned home. He slumped onto the sofa and slept. He was woken by the noise coming from Crampton school as parents collected their children. Marshal felt a sudden urge to check his phone after stirring, hoping to find a message from Grace.

  “Hello stranger,” the text said. But it was from Tamara.

  Marshal didn’t reply. He knew that he would always be a stranger to the estate agent, even if he spent a lifetime with her. But it wouldn’t be like that with Grace, he realised. He had been a lapsed boyfriend, as well as lapsed Catholic, over the years. He couldn’t give himself, even if he had anything to give. But he wouldn’t be like that with Grace. Yet Marshal was tempted to contact the fun, attractive woman reaching out to him. She could help him forget about Grace and the Albanians, help him fight off boredom. Dinner, with sex for dessert, would prove enjoyable. But, ultimately, Tamara would be a cause rather than a solution to his boredom.

  He thought about the way Grace’s glossy hair brushed against her smooth, supple shoulders. The adorable way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed. When she read a book, her eyebrows would subtly shift, becoming more articulate than most people with a wide vocabulary. Marshal thought how his mother would have approved of Grace. She would say that she was kind. He wryly smiled to himself, as he recalled the previous evening. Not the party, but their drinks with Bob and Lily Arnold. He didn’t have to pretend too much to play the part of the enamoured fiancé, he realised.

  “How did you meet?” Lily asked Marshal. He took a sip of his drink and replied:

  “I was staying with some friends. Grace was flying in from New York and she had arranged to stay at the house too. I was walking across the garden when her car pulled up. She was wearing jeans, white pumps and a purple top. She wore her hair down. I remember the scene like it was yesterday, or the day before. I’m not sure how much she even noticed me. Certainly, she had the good sense and taste not to like me. But we spent some time together and gave each other the benefit of the doubt. And God knows how many doubts she must have had about me.”

  “He conducted a war of attrition,” Grace enjoined. “Which, thankfully, he won. He kept making me laugh, being decent and quoting poetry. I did my best not to like him, but fortunately, my best wasn’t good enough.”

  Her eyes were lit up, like muzzle flashes, with humour and something else as she spoke. They shared a look – moment – which only deepened Bob and Lily’s belief that the couple were smitten with one another.

  He showered. Marshal closed his eyes and imagined the hot water burning away his second skin, so all that was left was just the hardened soldier beneath. Yet all that seemed to be left was a longing for Grace. He turned the tap to allow the cold water to numb him. Numb the longing.

  When he finished showering, Marshal attended to his online purchases, picking them up from his neighbour, and turned on the television. Watching the news, listening to detestable politicians pretend to care about a vainglorious world, was akin to eating dead sea fruit. Nothing nourished him. He turned it off. “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” But was Democritus not just spouting an opinion? Life could be more than just a collection of atoms and empty space. Faith could be real, as sure as night follows day.

  Life could be God, love and Grace. Could be. Should be… We are where we are.

  Marshal needed some air. And a drink. He decided to head down to the local pub, The Manor of Walworth, which had a beer garden. Whether through forgetfulness or choice he left his gun at home. He liked the pub. Even when it first opened, it had a lived-in feel. The wooden floor was slightly uneven. The décor included an old grandfather clock and dusty chandeliers, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the nineteen seventies. A photograph of the Queen hung by the bar. He wasn’t sure whether the pictures had been acquired as a job lot, or specially selected, but portraits of Admiral Cochrane, Palmerston and Christina Rossetti decorated the walls. They sold Courvoisier and bacon flavoured Taytos crisps. They hosted a monthly pub quiz – which Marshal had won on his own on more than one occasion.

  Bisha and Bashkim followed the Englishman on foot. The noose was closing around his neck. Each carried a blade, tucked inside the back of their tracksuit bottoms. Their blood was up, like hounds who had locked onto a scent. The Albanians didn’t have to follow the stranger far. Within a few minutes, they watched as Marshal entered the public house. Thankfully, the building had only one entrance/exit. Bisha sent a message to Baruti to update the kryetar on his location.

  Baruti ordered an associate to drive him to The Manor of Walworth. He was familiar enough with the area to know that there was a police station located around the corner from the venue. The driver searched in vain for a parking space. Baruti thought about who he could pay in the Albanian Government to secure a set of diplomatic plates. The bribe would be costly, but worth it. Timesaving.

  He got out of the car on the Walworth Road. The enforcer adjusted his cuffs and swept his hair back. He felt more excited than nervous, in relation to meeting the Englishman – like a teen about to experience a blind date. The encounter could go a variety of ways, he conceded. From killing the vigilante, to offering him employment.

  Baruti first met with Bisha and Bashkim. They were sitting on a bench across the road from the pub, half concealed behind a bus stop. He stood over them, with his back to the sun. They squinted as they looked up at their superior. His expression was neutral, inscrutable. As hard as obsidian.

  “The kafir is still in there,” Bisha remarked, disdainfully. Not that the Albanian had ever been a devout Muslim. He loved beer, pork – and the last time he had visited a mosque he had been suffering from teenage acne. The Albanian could also quote more lines from the Fast and the Furious movies than he could from the Koran. “He’s dressed in jeans, a polo shirt and white trainers.”

  “I’ll find him. You can remain here. I am just intending to talk to him. I will text you when to bring the car around,” Baruti said, his voice staccato. Bullet-like.

  The black-clad enforcer walked across the road in a smooth and purposeful gait, like a sheriff about to enter a tavern and eject the town drunk. His gun knocked gently against his ribs, beneath his suit jacket. The coins in his pocket clinked against his housekeys, resembling the sound of spurs.

  20.

  Baruti spied Marshal through the window. He was sitting out in the beer garden, alone, with a pint in front of him. The Albanian ordered a black coffee. He quickly surveyed the scene. For CCTV (which there wasn’t any), entrances/exits and any possible associates of his target. His senses were on high alert. His body was cocked, like a trigger.

  A ruddy-faced drunk was standing at the bar. The bags under his eyes were so large that they could have carried the empties from the night before. A crumpled copy of The Racing Post sat in front of him, along with a betting slip with three names scrawle
d on it: Fountain Pen Blues, Comus, Ambushed. He thought the latter was an omen. Not that he believed in omens. The only higher power in Viktor Baruti’s life was Viktor Baruti. An old soldier, wearing some service medals on his jacket, having come from a memorial dinner, sat in another corner, with a ten-thousand-yard stare on his crinkled face. Without fuss or fanfare, the former Para had paid for a couple of drinks to be left in the pump for the veteran, when he entered earlier.

  Marshal stretched his arms out and arched his back. His neck muscles were wound tighter than a Scottish Jew, or anyone who would take offence at such a comment, the soldier joked to himself. Marshal let the sun massage him, melt away the icy knots beneath his skin. The wound in his shoulder began to throb too, conscious that he hadn’t felt a single twinge or tightening during his time away from London.

  He sat at a one-piece wooden bench and table set on the grass. Half a dozen other tables sat either side of a concrete path. A few sparrows darted overhead, their birdsong often drowned out by the sound of trains clattering across a bridge, which ran along the back of the pub. But the scene was still peaceful, restorative.

  For some reason, his thoughts turned to Michael Devlin. His story was shrouded in mystery. Not even Porter had been able to entirely understand him. Marshal had met Devlin at a charity event one evening, many years ago. They peeled away from the party to smoke a cigarette. Marshal liked the former squaddie. He had an unapologetic dry sense of humour. They spoke about their time in Helmand (they were at first guarded but then candid about their activities there). They also spoke about their favourite Graham Greene novels and the anti-climax of civilian life. “The term may be an oxymoron,” Marshal joked. Devlin was still married back then. Happily married, he asserted.

  “I know, I used to think being happily married was a paradox too,” Devlin added. “I was lucky. I met the right woman.”