Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  ‘What for?’ She seemed indifferent.

  ‘Using you as a cushion. I don’t usually crash out.’

  There was little light, but he thought a smile might have clipped her mouth. She had brought him dry clothes to increase his effectiveness, not from sympathy. She said, ‘You might not have crashed out years ago when you were working, but now you’re old.’

  He disentangled himself and sat up. She rubbed vigorously at her arm and played another trump. Gaby Davies was hunched forward, arms round her knees. Her voice was quiet – as if she believed in her authority over him. She told him that she had been to the back of the hotel, had looked for exits but there were none. Her impression was that the fire-escape door was padlocked and the targets were still inside. She was at a better angle for him to observe her. He could always tell – easier with a woman than a man. He didn’t need to hear footsteps on the landing or the whine of springs when Dusty went in after Christine. There was nothing in Dusty’s manner at breakfast but Christine always jutted her chin and her cheeks were flushed. It was not for Danny Curnow to pass judgement if a handler shagged an agent. She could do worse or better. He was not an expert on relationships.

  He said, ‘Not my business who you sleep with.’

  She flushed. Her eyes blazed. ‘No.’

  ‘But in the old days it would have been a hanging offence.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion.’

  ‘And the Joe you slept with had you wrapped round his little finger, told you what he wanted you to know and was economical with the rest.’

  ‘Wrong. He’s given me every detail of his relationship with Malachy Riordan.’

  He said quietly, ‘You’ll get a text this afternoon or this evening, something from Matthew Bentinick. I’m not adding anything except that it was necessary to bully some truths from Exton.’

  If she was happy to be bedded by the Joe, good luck to her. Would it last? He didn’t imagine so, but what did he know? Nothing. He felt an ache of loneliness, and couldn’t stifle it. It was good to feel the pistol in his waistband. It was five in the morning and a church clock chimed at the end of the street. It was the start of a day that would begin slowly. The pace would quicken, and he fancied it would end in stampede. He thought her a good kid, but personal happiness was low on the agenda.

  He thanked her for his dry clothes. A dustcart came down the street. He thanked her, again, for letting him sleep, and wondered whether his head had shared a place with Ralph Exton.

  A traveller’s pocket alarm, one sold in an airport lounge, bleeped thinly. It had woken him in the Armagh hotel when he had needed to drive off into the fog for the meeting with the men on the mountain, beyond the reach of back-up. It had sounded in the kitchen at home and had sent him to the airport for a flight to Prague. Ralph Exton groped across the bed. She wasn’t there.

  The other half of the bed was cold. She had not come back with him. Quite brusque. He had been chucked out. He found the alarm, killed it, sagged, and swore.

  His first image of the day was not the rose garden at home, the pub in the village where they served him steak or the sight of two hands – one of them his – clasped together in a handshake, deal done. And it was not the sweet mouth of Gaby Davies, poised over his. What he saw in the moment of waking was the face of the man he knew as ‘Danny’. He feared him. The nightmare: he walked streets in darkness, heard footfalls behind him, then the drill. He felt damp concrete on his ankles and shins.

  A clock struck. There were churches all around Stepanska. One started, others joined in. A chorus played for him. It was past six.

  What could Ralph Exton hope for? Another deal, another shipment of antique furniture from last week’s factory line, or computers in a container from Vietnam that looked good but were short on memory space. Money in small envelopes: no drills, no concrete. He had been threatened and believed the threat. Danny had dead eyes and was to be believed. Danny would kill him.

  The horn blasted loudly enough to reach the dormer window.

  The three magazines Karol Pilar had loaded for his issue pistol were on the kitchen table and his vest was hooked on a chair. He wolfed the sandwich. She watched from the bedroom door, in her nightdress. His Jana would not have suggested that he might ‘take care’, and hadn’t asked what he’d be doing today. She said she’d make another cake for her mother and was glad it had been appreciated.

  As if it were an afterthought, he kissed her cheek.

  He ran down the flights of stairs, the camera bouncing on the lanyard around his neck. The cuts on his face had scabbed and now they itched. All would be done as Mr Bentinick had requested.

  He went out through the building’s front door. In the park, high above the side-street, he was observed by the stern-featured statue of Svatopluk Cˇech – dead more than a century. The writer and poet might not have considered Karol Pilar a suitable neighbour. He ran as the horn sounded again from an unmarked black Transit-style van. He had twice been beaten and his injuries, old and new, were important to him. They steeled his determination. That morning he would cross a line. There would be little future, he thought, in the Prague detective offices for a young officer determined to stand against the flow. He would risk his job. He would not be congratulated. Karol Pilar, among many talents, could play the devious bastard in the face of his office colleagues.

  The back door opened for him. They were all in black. Their weapons were on racks. They drove away. It was past seven. They went west, as they had to.

  A fly crawled on his face. He struggled not to open his eyes. Malachy Riordan had long tracked the fly. It had started on his arm, where the scratches and bite marks were, trekked up and over the bulges of his muscles. It had been round his neck and gone past his mouth. It had crossed his cheeks and been near to his ear. It was the tickling at his nose that broke him. The fuckin’ thing was going into his nostril. He snorted and slapped himself.

  The fly had gone. His fingertips were on his right cheek. The scratches were dry because the blood had been staunched.

  He had been awake long enough, sharing the bed with her. He had stared at the ceiling and had noted each crack in the plaster around the light fitting. Then he had slept. The boys had been killed and it might as well have been at his hand. He opened his eyes and tilted his head. He saw her.

  His fingers lay against the scratches on his cheek that her nails had made. It had been done in the last spasms, with her final strength. The tips of her fingers were bloodied, her nails stuffed with his flesh. He was on the bed beside her. He wore his vest, and his underpants were at his knees. She had lowered them before his hands had flailed at her face. She had undressed for both of them. He had not known how to stop her. Her voice had been a murmur in his ear, supposed to soothe him, and her hands gone where only Bridie’s went. He had felt himself growing, had known the shame and struck her.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t you do it? I won’t hurt you. Doesn’t your wife do this with you? Are you frightened of me, Malachy?’ One blow, hard enough to loosen teeth. He’d seen the scream well in her and had grabbed her throat. The scratch on his cheek was deep and hurt. He squeezed tighter, her writhing on the bed, attempting to dislodge him and biting his forearms. He had gone on squeezing, long after the chance of her screaming had been eliminated. He had not stopped until she was still. He had lain there. He had not touched her, looked at her or covered her with the sheet.

  A long time afterwards, tears wetting his face, he had drifted into sleep.

  Now he saw the death pallor of her cheeks and the blue of her lips. Her tongue was out and twisted clear of her teeth, which had his blood on them. The bruises shocked him. Her throat was mottled with blue, yellow and purple welts. She had her pants on, nothing else. She had not removed them when he had tried to push her away. The fly moved on her: it flew from her chin to her chest, then circled a nipple and went on down.

  He choked.

  Malachy Riordan would be pushed into a cell and
the door would slam. It had happened in the Antrim crime suite, and in the barracks at Dungannon, but then his head had been high and he had been confident that they couldn’t hold him. He had been, then, a great man, Brennie Murphy’s disciple. There would have been police in Dungannon and Armagh who dreaded the thought of a late-night call-out and the risks of a ‘come-on’ bomb – probably terrified by the thought of him, what he could do. His name was strong on the mountain and his wife had the respect of the community. He had not betrayed what others had died for. There would be no respect from the villagers on either side of the Dungannon to Pomeroy road for the killer of a girl, whose red hair was tangled across her face, whose green eyes were staring, and whose mouth, which had been pretty . . . She lay beside him.

  He swung himself off the bed. At the window he parted the curtains and looked down. A vagrant occupied a doorway, a woman with him. He wondered if this was the day when the boys would be buried, or if the police would continue to hold the bodies. He dressed in what warm clothes he had left and bundled the wet garments into a torn laundry bag from the bottom of the wardrobe. He added her clothing to the bundle. Then he saw the small pink package on the floor that held a condom. It went into the bag too. Her handbag was on the chair. He went through it. Makeup, a purse, a passport and the notebook. He read the pages: where they should go and where they would be picked up, dictated to her by the arsehole Russian from the bank. He tore out those pages and looked again at the rest – flight times, bank numbers and expenses incurred. Her handbag went with the laundry.

  At the door, he lifted the Do Not Disturb sign off the handle, opened it, hung it on the outside, closed the door and locked it.

  It was past eight, from the chimes of the clock on the church tower at the top of the street. Far below him, the vagrant and the woman still occupied the doorway of a derelict building. Behind him, muffled, he heard footsteps on the stairs and voices. He sat in a chair and faced the window. The curtain stayed drawn. He couldn’t see her.

  It was a habit, and it amused Timofey Simonov to indulge it. He enjoyed playing the great man, employer and master, when the brigadier’s wife came from Prague. When she arrived by taxi – the amount charged always queried – Simonov would nag and belittle his man. The brigadier would not walk out on him – he could have bet his life on it.

  Nikolai Denisov and his wife, Elena, had looked over the edge of a cliff and felt the vertigo of standing above an abyss. They had known terror when they thought of their prospects and the future.

  He had been on the phone and on his laptop. He had been speaking with bankers and investment managers in Zürich, Nassau and São Paolo, punctuating the calls with shouted questions down the stairs. Dutiful answers had returned to him.

  Denisov would not leave because he and Elena remembered how it had been in Milovice when the empire had collapsed. While Timofey had organised tankers to drain the underground storage tanks and bring fuel to the wire where queues of Czechs extended each night, reports had arrived that the families of military officers had been thrown out on the street. The wives were reduced to prostitution and worked each night in brothels. The husbands would fight for the right to drive a taxi from a popular rank. Their children were sent out each night to scavenge. Fear reigned. He could remember clearly how he had flown back to Ostend in the limping Antonov. He had shown the brigadier the cloth bag with a drawstring, and had tipped out the contents. They had taken the train to Amsterdam and had traded. He had given generously to his man, the former commanding officer, and Nikolai Denisov had kissed his hand. They would not leave him: they owed him the clothes on their backs and the food in their bellies. He would enjoy tomorrow’s dinner. She would have returned to Prague and Denisov would sit outside in the Mercedes and wait for him. In the meantime he would go to the old camp.

  He did not have to go – his man could have done the business – but he never shirked detail. It was oxygen to him. He went into his dressing room.

  Something was gnawing at him. He began to undress, then pulled on the uniform. The television played in the background. It was tuned to a satellite news channel and carried nothing about a killing. His reputation, which was precious to him – it brought work, advantage and reward – was based on his total reliability and every-time success. The newscasts told him nothing and it was past nine. He looked good in the uniform, but anxiety spoiled the moment.

  He often walked. It was freedom for Matthew Bentinick to take a late commuter train to Waterloo, then stride along Lambeth Palace Road, past the Archbishop’s palace and over the bridge. Usually he would collect a coffee from the café in Horseferry Road and would go into Thames House through the side door. Past ten, and acceptable. The freedom came with the escape from his home. He was ashamed of the sense of liberation he felt when he closed the front door behind him and headed for the station. How Rosie survived was beyond his comprehension. That morning he had broken ranks with Service disciplines – disgraceful – and had said to her: ‘This isn’t for quoting but we’re looking at a sort of closure for Mary, a body in the cage. The vile little tradesman who did the shipments to that place is in our sights and we’re closing on him. I’ve a good man there – I’m confident he can do what’s needed. I’ll be late tonight because it’ll be developing. What’s to happen to the wretch? What I told George will suffice for you, my dear. We’ll nail him to the floor. Don’t wait up.’ A kiss on the cheek and he’d left her in the empty house. He had a spring in his stride that morning and the security men in the foyer would have recognised something about him that was almost jaunty. He might as well have shouted that a ‘good one’ was about to happen. The men and women on the bottom rung of the ladder were often the first to know when the Two Imposters that were Triumph or Disaster stalked the corridors. They possessed all the qualities needed to interpret body language. He went in, and wouldn’t leave until it was over. She was a sweet girl and deserved his best efforts. He took the lift.

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘At his desk.’

  It was an aside. She had a phone at her ear and flicked the hold switch. The director general was a perennial sniffer: he liked to come down from the sunlit uplands whenever an operation was close to fulfilment. It was as if he’d have preferred a hot line to the various armouries used by the agencies that did back-up when an arrest was imminent. Had he ever fired a Glock, been on a range, worn the ear baffles and let rip at a target? Jocelyn doubted it. But he had done time on Counter Terrorism, Islamist, and would have known the long nights leading towards the dawn hits when the rams battered down housing-association doors, or batons broke through the front windows of Victorian terrace homes.

  ‘Going smoothly?’

  ‘Well oiled.’

  She flicked the button and went back to her call. It was loose-ends time and the need to get them knitted, to anticipate confusions and set in place the secondary plans that would circumvent chaos: a custody area, a flight with route permissions, the legality of a charge sheet and an issued warrant, deniability and a fog of secrecy on the ground. He backed away. He might or might not call in on Matthew Bentinick. People of any rank in the building rarely pitched up at that door in the corridor and expected to chew the fat and drink coffee. She thought Bentinick had lost his early cheer. Last time she had briefed him, fifteen minutes ago, he had seemed preoccupied, quiet. If it went sour he might not survive the deceit and illegality. Both could be excused by success but condemned, utterly, in failure. And if it went sour then George might be heading out of the front door, ID shredded, never to return.

  She wondered if George knew the man that Matthew Bentinick had dragged out of self-enforced retirement, whether it burdened him . . . and whether the scale of the catch excited him. She had the target on her screen. An interesting face, caution ever present in the eyes. Not a pushover, but the worthwhile ones never were.

  He rocked on his feet. Timofey Simonov had been at the front door, had shrugged on a loose coat to cover his best-dress Soviet-era tunic
and had been called back. The bar at the bottom of the TV screen in the kitchen told him that a man was in police custody in south-west London. An assassination attempt had been blocked. Unconfirmed reports indicated a foiled murder threat on a Russian citizen whose application for political asylum was under consideration. Sources said a high-powered sniper rifle had been recovered. The sum of it was catastrophe.

  He felt the sweat break on his neck. There was nothing Timofey Simonov could do. He turned to his butt for quips and insults, the man he abused. The brigadier looked away. He felt as though a rug had been pulled from under him. He was silent.

  The brigadier said that Elena had made borscht and showed Timofey the flask. There were salami sandwiches and vodka to celebrate the conclusion of the business. Timofey saw the pistol in the shoulder holster when the brigadier’s coat flapped open. Was he losing control? His throat was dry, his mind churned and his legs shook.

  He said they should go. If he was losing control new enemies would circle. He went down the steps to the car. How to recognise an enemy edging closer?

  Daniel Curnow was the name she wrote and, under it, the number and the address. It was a big package, awkward to handle, but the counter staff were helpful. On the back of the parcel she wrote her name and address in Honfleur. She had done this because the strange-mannered but devoted little man called Dusty had diverted a tourist bus to find her among the dunes. It was the painting she had made from that view overlooking the bay of the Somme. It might have been better to keep it for another two or three weeks, and work at it more, but she had not delayed.

  With a certain recklessness she paid for a superior delivery service and was guaranteed that it would be there by noon the next day, Saturday. She could not say whether the investment was good or bad. She hoped it would be worth the effort. There was a saying in the Lofoten islands, passed down generations: Rather suffer for truth than be rewarded for lies. She believed it appropriate. The truth was that he must forsake battlefields and graves; he would lie that he had scaled back his commitment to them. She thought it one of her better pictures. She waited for the return of her card and remembered the few times they had been together, him almost frightened of her, him worshipping her but failing to take the last step and desert the graves. She remembered how it had been – not easy. Far from it. She left the post office, on cours Albert-Manuel, and walked home to the loneliness. Dusty had not known where he had gone or why, but she had sensed his fear. She walked fast and the sun threw her shadow ahead of her, deep and dark, without love and threatening.