Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  ‘You know him well enough – how would he take a rough-and-tumble with them? Round here there was once a fist fight between two of the volunteers – the old days – about which of them should fire the bullet that killed a tout . . . How would he stand up to a beating, miss, burns and the full works? Another time, again in the old days but little’s changed, they turned on the hob rings on a cooker and got the tout’s trousers and pants off. When the rings were glowing, they sat him on them . . . Most don’t last long. Might already be over.’

  She nearly tripped over Hugo Woolmer’s legs as she went outside. She threw away the barely smoked cigarette and was sick against a tree. He’d been staying in a hotel in London and had been with the cigarette people the night before. They’d needed to do the briefing early, and she’d knocked on his door. He’d unlocked it – must have come straight from the shower: a towel was knotted at his waist and she’d seen his skin. Nothing special – a few birthmarks, some straggly hair, no burns, no contusions from a club. His fingertips had been intact. The leaves at the base of the tree were saturated with her vomit.

  Brennie Murphy didn’t know. He should have known.

  The men on the mountain looked to him for decisions on tactics and strategy, and for his guidance on targets in the mid-Ulster and Lurgan areas. He had good antennae and understood weakness in the enemy. Some had turned their back on the struggle, and the television each night carried clips of former fighters who now chuckled with the people they had tried to kill. It was as if the old colleagues of Brennie Murphy now pissed on him. He wouldn’t compromise, take government grants, become a paid stooge and call himself a community officer: the armed struggle, for him, was alive. With so few engaged in – as they called it – ‘keeping the fire lit’, it was inevitable that the attention of the police and Five would be intense, worse than anything he had known when he was young. The attacks on what remained active of the Organisation were based on the technical excellence of the surveillance systems and also the infiltration of their cells by paid informers. Did he trust this man? Should he trust him?

  The man sat on the chair. He did not quiz them, argue with them or cringe. Men Brennie Murphy knew, who he might have believed were taking twenty, fifty, a hundred pounds a week would have come here and shown terror. The switching on of the drill would have brought a stain to their crotches, and they’d have pleaded their innocence too hard.

  He and Malachy were in the hallway. They could see the man through the open door into the back bedroom. He asked, ‘Do you believe him or not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s promised the shipment.’

  ‘He’s promised to bring it to a point in Europe. Then we get it home.’

  ‘We need it.’

  ‘The weapons bring the kids to us, not to the collaborators.’

  ‘It’s against every instinct in my body.’

  ‘And mine.’

  ‘But you must have the weapons.’

  ‘Must have them, Brennie, or we’re nothing.’

  Brennie Murphy’s nostrils flared. It wasn’t strange, he told the kids, that a man of his age could harbour such hatred. More than anything in his life he dreaded abandoning the memory of the many who had died, old comrades. He prayed he would die before weakness pushed him towards compromise. The dead didn’t deserve it. ‘You’d have to go to test-fire – all of that,’ he said. ‘So’s we’re not skinned.’

  ‘If I have to.’

  Brennie took his arm. ‘You do.’

  They went back inside.

  He sat on the chair, could have killed for a cigarette, but he wasn’t offered one. Smoke came through from the hall where the two of them spoke in low voices.

  He had realised that the room with the awful wallpaper would be easy to turn into a torture chamber. The makeover would be straightforward. He didn’t doubt that in the kitchen or the main bedroom there was a roll of plastic sheeting, which would go over the carpet and a Stanley knife would cut it. The blood, if they used the drill, would be spread low but they might use more plastic sheeting to cover the walls, pinned up near the ceiling. How did he feel? Not great. What could he do? Not much. Who’d give a damn? Not many. The two main men, the older one and the younger – the minders were ‘soldiers’ and of no relevance – wore no face masks. So they didn’t mind if he saw their faces. He studied them so that he could remember them and, in time, go through the books of activists’ photographs and identify them. It meant, even to a man far less bright and without his survival instincts, that either he had passed their tests or failed. Failure meant death.

  Quick? No.

  Possible to appeal to their better natures? Inappropriate.

  Time to front up.

  They’d stand over him and look down into his face. The younger man would likely smack him and blood would spill from his nose. Then he’d hear the drill start up. Others would be tying him to the chair and he’d hear the plastic being unwound. Before they put the gag in he’d yell for paper and a pencil. Whatever they wanted they could have. He’d name them all, starting with Matthew, the recruiter: a sly, cold bastard and he’d never known his surname.

  He knew the full name of the team leader. He shouldn’t have, but a mobile had rung in the man’s pocket during a meal one summer evening on the Thames – their treat. It had been answered, ‘Hugo Woolmer.’ They could have that name. A few revolutions of the drill tip and Hugo Woolmer was theirs.

  The girl was Gabrielle Davies. Another time, she’d been rooting in a purse for a credit card to pay at Starbucks and he’d seen her Service card, just a glimpse of her name. She’d noticed him looking and had flushed at her lapse. Woolmer had called her Gaby when they’d walked in Windsor Great Park. She’d bailed out of a trattoria with a train to catch in Birmingham and the waiter had called that the taxi for ‘Davies’ was outside. They could have her too. She was nice, pretty, a striver, different from the tossers and their women, but she’d go on the paper if the drill started up. Would he keep his mouth shut to protect Queen and country? Dream on. If the drill started up, he’d want the paper and the pencil. He hoped that, afterwards, they’d make it quick.

  The one with the bent nose spoke. He met the man’s eyes, as a prisoner did in the Central Criminal Court when the jury came back, and tried to read the verdict in the foreman’s posture. The sweat was cold on his neck. He’d give them all the names they wanted if the drill started up.

  ‘We want to get on with the business, get it moving and in place. A cup of tea would go down well. Milk and sugar?’

  A call was made. The handset had not been used before. Numbers and seemingly random letters were routed off the island to a second mobile on the UK mainland. The code incorporated was sufficient to move it through a consulate in central Italy to a trade mission in the Danish capital, then to its destination. Its journey ended at a villa in a Croatian town close to the German border.

  Such arrangements were in place only for a man of considerable importance to the regime ruling his country: only a long-standing, trusted friend of such a man could access the transfer of the signal. It was well disguised and would confuse the computers of a hostile intelligence organisation.

  Theirs was a peculiar relationship. Timofey Simonov and Nikolai Denisov lived together in a hundred-year-old house built on three floors and covered attractively with variegated ivy. It was set back a few metres from the prestigious street, Krale Jiriho, and was halfway up the hill. It commanded majestic views over the spa town. The houses on that road were the most expensive in the town, which had the most inflated property prices within the Czech Republic. They were within easy walking distance of the town centre and its promenade, with the better boutiques. It was also near to the Orthodox church of St Peter and St Paul and that day the sun shone, making brilliant reflections on its gold-plated roof. Equally convenient were the dry cleaner’s, the mini-mart and the restaurants, where the menus were in Cyrillic. It was a town of affluence, and the reputations of many who had
arrived from St Petersburg, Moscow and Volgograd meant that the criminals who preyed on the wealthy had long ago realised that this town was best ignored. It was, anecdotally, the safest in the country, perhaps in the whole of central Europe. Big men, in their trade, lived securely ‘under the radar’, and walked securely at night on the pristine streets. Although the town was best known for its industry of health care, first publicised after a visit by Peter the Great, the most secretive residents bothered little with lymphatic drainage and hydro-colonotherapy. They ran empires producing vast revenues, and their assets were measured in hundreds of millions of American dollars or euros.

  Kicking off his boots at the back entrance, shielded from public view by a high fence, Timofey Simonov crouched, grinning, to pet his dogs. He had walked his Weimaraner bitches on the wooded hillside behind the villa and now they licked his cheeks. He had been, far back, a captain in the GRU, military intelligence, with the motto ‘Greatness of Motherland in Your Glorious Deeds’. A slip of paper was passed to him. The man who had brought the message was five years older; Nikolai Denisov had been promoted in his extreme youth to brigadier. Simonov had been little more than a clerk and paper-pusher in the section of the general’s staff Denisov had headed. But the days when they had served the officer leading the Central Command of the Soviet forces confronting those of the North Atlantic Treaty were in the far past. The former captain now employed the former brigadier as driver, close-protection bodyguard, housekeeper and minder of secrets. The relationship was kept from public view, known only to a few.

  He straightened. The message had been decoded. The smile spread. ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘He has confirmed the list of items required.’

  ‘It’ll be good to see him.’

  ‘He’s your friend but . . .’ He handed back the paper and began towelling the dogs. ‘. . . is it wise to help on a deal that’s worth so little?’

  ‘It’s where they’re going. I’d provide a bow and arrow if that was what they wanted. And he’s my friend, however small the trade.’

  Three days had slipped past since his friend had made his first approach. He had known the man for fourteen years when he himself had been at the bottom of the heap and hadn’t known where his next meal would come from. An Englishman had helped him on his way. The friend’s fortunes had now slipped, but the request had come with a list, and he knew where any consignment would be unpacked. A friend was a friend for life. Other concerns: a former bureaucrat who had worked in the finance ministry auditing tax and Customs revenues, had ‘blown a whistle’ and was talking to Swiss investigators, about confidential accounts in Swiss banks. The official was junior but his head and memory sticks were stuffed with detail. He had ‘betrayed’ his country, had embarrassed the ruling élite, and was all but dead: Timofey Simonov had been awarded the contract for the killing. Other concerns: Timofey still had ‘commercial interests’ in the city of Yekaterinburg; a hood there had climbed too high and had burned two kiosks by the river from which dealers operated and paid small sums that ended in Timofey’s accounts. As with the official, death would send a message to others who contemplated similar actions. The smile split his face. ‘It will be fantastic to see my friend.’

  He hugged the dogs and sent them to their baskets, then slipped on his shoes. His man, who had been the brightest star on the general’s staff, would take the boots outside and wash off the mud, then make coffee.

  He was told who would travel and when they would fly. The bent nose, behind the front door, gave a final warning. ‘We have your face, your wife’s and your kid’s. We have your home. If you scam on us, we’ll come for you. You can’t hide from us.’

  In reply, Ralph Exton stretched out his hand. The bent nose took it and a close, cold grip crushed his fist. It surprised him that a man with so little meat on him was so strong. He gave a smile from his repertoire that indicated quiet confidence and trust. When his hand was freed, he offered it to the younger man. No response. He pocketed it and pretended not to notice the refusal. He said, as if it were a small matter, that a float for travel costs should be paid into the Guernsey account he used for cigarette dealings. Then the men who had brought him up the hill hurried him down the path, past the broken gate and across the road to the van. Some of the slope above him was clear, but the cloud was still low over the bungalow.

  He was pushed, not violently but without ceremony, into the back of the van. He saw the shovel, the pickaxe and plastic bags. They would have stood over him and made him dig the pit, then pushed him aside and done it faster themselves. He had heard that they always took the shoes from a man they were about to kill – as if that mattered when the pistol was cocked beside his ear. They drove fast, swerving round the bends and potholes.

  The driver braked. The door was opened and he crawled out. The damp mist seemed to cling to his cheeks and he blinked. The door behind him was slammed and the van was gone. He walked through the mud at the field’s gate and fumbled for the key in his pocket. He tried many times to slot it into the lock but his hand was shaking. Eventually inside, he had the same problem with the ignition. His legs were rigid, the muscles cramped.

  He drove out of the field, went into the fog and through it. He was panting and sweating. In the bungalow his confidence had been pure theatre and nerves now overwhelmed him. He went from one side of the lane to the other, past houses he barely registered. A girl swung her handlebars to avoid him and ended up sprawling. He didn’t care. His heart was pounding.

  He murmured, ‘Fuck me. Just another day in the office. Fuck me.’

  And he laughed.

  ‘Fuck me. What a way to spend a Sunday morning.’

  She was behind him. Gaby Davies jabbed her left knee into the back of Hugo Woolmer’s lower thigh, propelling him down the aisle towards their allocated seats.

  They went past the agent – white-faced, holding a small antique hip flask – and she didn’t acknowledge him. When they came to their row, she grabbed Hugo Woolmer’s collar, swivelled him and flung him into the seat beside the window. He seemed still in shock. She eased down beside him and leaned over him to fasten his seatbelt.

  She hissed: ‘You won’t walk off this aircraft if you embarrass me again. You’ll need to be carried.’

  North of the bassin Saint-Pierre, where the wind rattled the masts and riggings of pleasure yachts and launches, and above the central streets of the city of Caen, a man used a sponge to clean a minibus. The logo on the side of the fifteen-seater vehicle was ‘Sword Tours’. A thin, pale man, stubble on his cheeks, dungarees clinging to him, he worked with almost passionate commitment to get the paintwork glistening. A bell chimed from the church beside the Abbaye des Dames for the late Sunday-morning celebration of Mass. Worshippers hurried past but acknowledged him – he was, indeed, after so many years, almost one of them. His hair was spiky and grey-flecked, but his eyes were keen. When the bucket was empty, he turned towards an old house in a terrace, and shouted, ‘Dusty! Bucket’s empty. I need more water.’

  He knew what they’d be doing – it was always the same on a Sunday morning.

  They were the clients. Clients always followed a routine on the eve of the trip. They’d be getting the computer’s weather predictions for the Channel coast of France for the coming week, or filling in the baggage labels supplied by Sword Tours. The clothing would be laid out, and they’d ponder over their rainproof gear in case the forecasters were wrong. They would all have, in a travel pouch, the itinerary Sword Tours would follow: Dunkirk, Dieppe, the key places where the paratroopers had landed, and the gliders, Sword, Juno, Gold and Omaha beaches, and Falaise, with the closing of the Gap. Most of those clients would have had a friend’s recommendation – ‘Can’t praise him highly enough. He knows his stuff. You won’t find better than Danny Curnow. He lives those places, breathes them.’ That Sunday, as every Sunday, clients would be preparing to head for a rendezvous in the morning. It was so difficult to decide what to take.

  Dusty brought
the bucket. ‘That the last, Danny?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘There’s a sandwich in the kitchen.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Dusty watched him, lingered. Danny said softly, ‘Problem, Dusty?’

  ‘No.’

  Dusty left him to finish. Danny Curnow understood. They had history together, almost thirty years now, from when he was Desperate. For the last sixteen they had been in an historic Normandy town. The moment that bound them was when he had walked out of Gough, a spent vessel, with his officer’s shout in his ear for him to turn round, but he had kept on down Barrack Street and then had heard the footfall behind him. Dusty had followed him. They’d gone to the bus station and taken the coach together. Technically it was desertion, but they’d kept going and had finished up here. He knew that the older man was lonely when Danny was away. He had Lisette and Christine to look after him, good food and a warm bed, but he missed the company of his one-time sergeant, the man he’d shared ditches with.

  Danny used the last of the water, paused to admire his work, then turned and walked down the hill, heading for his home. It was the right place for Danny Curnow to be because of his nerves and his memories.

  Chapter 2

  A stalker? A sad little man who followed a woman and hid in shadows? Perhaps, but that would have been a view of himself that Daniel Curnow couldn’t accept. He was a creature of routine, set patterns ingrained in him. It was Sunday, and the worshippers had cleared the abbaye, and the church of St Gilles – with the grave in the centre of the nave of Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror. Danny had eaten his sandwich in the kitchen, left the minibus parked on the kerb and gone to the bar he patronised. Routine governed him. In the Dickens bar he would drink, on a Sunday, one small glass of local beer, exchange a few inconsequential pleasantries with the patron, catch up on Caen news with a paper, smoke two cigarettes and be on his way. He wouldn’t stalk a woman in the town where he lived, but as the afternoon drifted by he would be driving north-east on the fast road a little back from the coastline. The woman was at Honfleur, around halfway to his destination. It was what he did every Sunday, summer and winter.