He said, ‘Well, let’s hope, love, that the bloody boat turns up.’
The bell rang. His nephew often called round. Mikey hated him, Myrtle said he was poison – but Tommy King had done the deal to bring the stuff out of Maracaibo on the Atlantic coast of Venezuela; Mikey had spat the introduction through gritted teeth. And the deal was money. With money it might be possible to bin the papers from the medical school at Alicante. Then there wouldn’t be a load of kids, bloody foreigners, staring at them – stark bollock bare – on a slab in a lecture hall. They knew, Mikey and Myrtle, that Tommy’d had an Irishman killed, which had made waves, attracted attention and was just bloody stupid. Mikey set the smile on his face and went to open the door.
She had not come out, had left Jonno to prowl the boundaries. Posie had not been outside since she’d gone in with a bundle of wet clothes covering her while the water dripped from her hair. He hadn’t argued, had given her space. They had about cleared the fridge, found some old bottles of wine on a rack, had read vintage magazines and glanced at books. He’d learned about the RAF and its veterans’ association, and she had leafed through dog-eared copies of Country Life and the Lady. He’d allowed her to go to bed on her own in the master bedroom and she’d seemed asleep when he’d come in.
In the morning, after what he considered a bloody grim night, he’d gone into the garden and learned the ground. The sun was climbing. She’d made him coffee.
Jonno said, ‘I was a miserable prat, getting here. All changed now, won’t happen again. Party time, sort of, starts now. We’ll get the car going. God knows how, but we will. Then we’ll hit town. It’s going to be all right. Believe me.’
She lifted her head and he kissed her.
5
Jonno swore. Not that he liked bad language. He’d walk out of a pub if a loudmouth was yapping obscenities.
His mother said he was a good driver. He didn’t have a car in London – didn’t need one. When he took Posie out of town, they’d hire one for a weekend – go dutch on it, but he’d drive – and if it was a long journey and late, or a dawn start, she would often sleep. He could pilot a car, head it down the road and do useful parking in narrow spaces, but he wasn’t a mechanic. The car’s engine had refused stubbornly to fire. He faced disaster. He couldn’t fulfil his promise.
Behind him, in the garage doorway, was Posie, legs apart, arms folded, with a halo of sunlight around her. A scowl ruined her face. Jonno had checked the petrol and the oil, which were good, so the difficulty was likely the battery.
It would have been better if she’d helped. She didn’t because she’d made a friend. The collar round the cat’s throat gave his name as Thomas. He was thin and bony, tortoiseshell and small, but had a big purr. He had found her and they had bonded. She held him comfortably and watched Jonno.
He didn’t know what she might have done but she could have done something, not just stood there. She might have helped by saying she didn’t want to go out in the car, that they could walk down the hill, two miles, then get a bus, do some shopping and lug the bags back on the bus – or splash out on a taxi. She didn’t. The car was maybe fifteen years old, an Austin but with Spanish plates so he couldn’t date it exactly. It was clean, had a nearly new sunhat tossed on the back seat and there was a shopping list in the footwell of the front passenger sear. He thought it might not have been used for a month, but it hadn’t been abandoned. He knew about push starts. Jonno released the handbrake and started to push.
When he had the car half out of the garage he stopped. It was hot and he was sweating. Posie stood cool and clean, watching. The cat glowered at him, as if he was a rival.
Jonno swore again, silently, then said, ‘I’m going to put it in gear. I want you in it, foot on the clutch. I’ll push, then let the clutch out quick with the ignition turned on. I think that’s how you do it.’
She came slowly, didn’t hurry. She put the cat down carefully. Jonno bit his tongue, kept silent. He went to the boot and started to push. The bloody thing moved. He was getting the speed up and shouted at her. There was the choke, the shudder and a half-cough. It failed. He reckoned they could have two more goes before they reached the closed front gate.
They tried again.
And failed. He pushed it once more – and they screwed it once more.
‘We’ll do it again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we want to get the bloody car started – why else?’
‘No need to shout, Jonno – I’m not deaf.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’
‘And the more you shout, the less you’ll be able to push.’
He buttoned his lip, breathed hard and gathered his strength. She raised her hand to show she was ready.
He bellowed, let out a yell, and pushed. He had the car moving, its speed increasing, when he slipped and fell on his face in the gravel. The car shuddered. The cat watched him, contemptuous. The car juddered to a halt near the gates. Posie climbed out, showed a bucketful of leg, and locked the door – as if the vehicle was in Ealing Broadway not in a garden a bloody mile from civilisation. She came to him, reached down and let him heave himself up using her hand as a lever. Jonno thought he might throw up.
She had a headache. There would have been one glass, or two, too many.
She had not reached her bed so Winnie Monks had slept on the sofa. Small mercy – the bottle had been on the low table that was covered with yesterday’s newspapers. The glass had been wedged between her legs so the dregs had not spilled. The alarm had woken her. By the time she’d reached the bathroom the pain had started. She’d stripped and indulged in a half-minute of self-loathing, then showered, dried and dressed.
A horn had sounded in the street. The car was waiting for her. It was not yet six, but another day in the life of Winnie Monks had started. She didn’t know what it would be like, as a mature woman, to wake in a bed and have the warmth of a similarly mature man beside her.
It was raining, a gentle pattering on the pavement as she’d hurried to the car, and Kenny was shrouded in a mackintosh as he’d held the back door open. Xavier had wriggled across the back seat to make room for her. They’d hammered for Heathrow.
By the time they’d reached the Pyrenees the rain had given way to storm turbulence. The captain’s advice had been for passengers to stay in their seats and keep their belts fastened. She hadn’t talked on the flight but had done her face – round the eyes, tricky when they were the teeth of the wind. Xavier had been on her right, holding the bag that contained the gear, and Kenny on the left, holding the mirror for her. It was not a great job, but it would do. It was years since Winnie Monks had done her face in front of a mirror and really cared about the effect she created: she had done it for an inspector from Special Branch, a corporate lawyer in the City, who had seemed worth the effort for a week . . ., and for a boy in Sarajevo. Each time she thought of him a little smile cracked her face. It was so long ago, too bloody long . . . a lifetime before Damian Fenby had spent time on her sofa. Xavier had said she looked ‘great’, and Kenny had said she looked ‘brilliant’ – and she’d realised that a button on her jacket was only held by a single thread. She’d spent the descent to the airport with a cotton reel that did not match and a needle, and had made a good enough temporary repair. Xavier had said no one would notice and Kenny remarked that the colour was pretty similar. She felt good with them – with any of her Graveyard Team.
The storm was to the north but there was a fierce cross-wind as they came down. There was a collective sigh in the cabin as the engines went into reverse and the plane started to slow. Kenny and Xavier had wives, children and homes in the suburbs. Both had such loyalty to her – along with the rest of the Graveyard Team – that it humbled her. She reckoned the wives must have accepted that she was almost a part of their marriages.
‘Up and running, Boss,’ Xavier said. ‘Another day, another dollar.’
Kenny asked quietly, ‘You good, Boss?’
‘Ready to give the world a kicking.’
To set up a working visit through ‘the approved channels’ would have taken a week of explanations. Winnie Monks had travelled light, with an overnight bag in the bin above her seat. Her handbag contained her cosmetics and a folder with the photograph of Pavel Ivanov that had been brought back from The Hague and the aerial view of a property. She led them off the aircraft.
As she always did at this sort of moment, Winnie Monks felt excited and the adrenalin pumped in her. She took long strides that stretched the hem of her skirt, which rode up. It was as if, with her two guys, she was marching into combat. She reckoned that, in spite of the kind words, she looked a wreck and her handiwork was smudged. She was followed by two nondescript middle-aged men. Winnie Monks could not have said how many thousand troops and airmen were currently deployed in fucking Afghanistan, but she would have argued that the sum of what they achieved was of a lesser importance to the nation’s well-being than an operation targeting organised-crime big cats. She would have said that although big cats tended to slink away if threatened, they would stand and fight if cornered, and would kill to preserve their freedom.
They were not met, but a text from Caro gave a name and a rendezvous point.
Without fanfare, or official cars, they arrived and went for a Metro train.
The Latvian policeman told an Italian from the interior ministry, ‘There is a statistic that our director quotes to Europol’s visitors. He uses the figures to emphasise the importance of organised crime against the threat from terrorism. Round numbers. When the aircraft were flown into the towers in New York, the death toll was three thousand. In the same year, 2001, thirty thousand men, women and children, inside that country, died from narcotics-related illnesses, gang wars and overdosing. Counter-terrorism operations attract the limelight and resources while the lives of millions across the spectrum of society are blighted by the toxic levels of violent crime. Organised crime manufactures a tyranny that intimidates so many. It moves child prostitutes from the East, and weapons to conflict areas. It degrades trust in officials and— We are here. He is our prime counterfeit-money expert. I’ll collect you in an hour.’
He was Dawson’s man. An increment to the senior of the two Services, he did the little jobs around Madrid and across the Iberian peninsula that Dawson passed him.
It made a reasonable living, usually in banknotes filched from the petty-cash supply in Dawson’s outer office at the embassy. He also had the pension from twenty-two years in the RAF, with an intelligence speciality, and had spent time at the Gibraltar base. He had met his future wife there, Spanish. She worked in a commercial secretary’s team. He was employed on superior errand work for Dawson of the Secret Intelligence Service and liked to believe that he successfully ‘tied up the few loose ends that had been left hanging free’. He had gone south from Madrid on the 06.35 train, had been in Málaga at nine, had picked up a car at the station and been comfortably in Marbella by ten o’clock. Then he had found a small bar on the northern side of the town, close to the bus station. He had been under the mountain, able to see the upper walls and roof of a villa perched high above him. He had appeared to be one of the many tourists who studied the high ground through binoculars in the distant hope of spotting a vulture or an eagle on that desolate, almost sheer slope. He had established the location of the Villa del Aguila, and had headed into town.
Dawson had said to him, ‘The best chance for what they want is a holiday place that’s locked up for the winter, the owners safely back in Hamburg, Dublin or Manchester.’
At the building in the heart of the old town, laid out with the narrow streets favoured by a Moorish conqueror a millennium before, he had used reliable bullshit, and a UK embassy pass, to get a sight of both property ownerships and the electoral roll. The name of Ivanov was there, and two more names that he assumed to be of Balkan origin, men and women, for a single property. A second name, Spanish, denoted residence but no vote, which meant a second, third or fourth home.
At the third name he allowed himself a slight grin. He wrote: Flt Lt Geoffrey Walsh (Ret’d), Frances Walsh. They had the vote.
He was not a man to rush at fences before he had evaluated them. It would have been easy enough for him to get the phone number of the property, the Villa Paraiso and ring it, but for such a man there was a fount of information. He called the Royal British Legion, a home address, and was told to phone the Pub Deco where the weekly meeting was being held. He could have gone in person, a few minutes’ walk, but the fewer names and faces left behind him the better. He asked the barman who’d picked up the call for any of the Legion’s officers. It was close to Remembrance Day, so he put on a clipped military voice, and introduced himself as from the military attaché’s office at the embassy; he was checking on the well-being of listed ex-servicemen resident in Spain.
‘Geoffrey Walsh – from up the hill – and Frances? Actually, they’re Geoff and Fran to us. You won’t find him at Villa Paraiso, sorry about that. Just gone to the UK to have his hip done. Last year it was a hell of an effort for him to do the parade and for Fran to be out in the town with her collecting box, both well into their eighties, you know. He was a fast jet pilot and . . . I think they do these things pretty quick, but he’ll be gone two weeks . . . You’ve some forms for him to check? . . . Just put them in the post . . . Anyone house sitting? Don’t know . . . Been a pleasure to help. What did you say your name was?’
He rang off.
Dawson’s man sent a text, encrypted: Next to Eagle House is Paradise House, common boundary. Paradise is home of Flt Lt Geoffrey Walsh, RAF ret’d pilot, now in 80s and wife, Frances. Paradise empty for next two weeks as Walsh has hip replacement in London. Considering location, I suggest a limited recce – without preparation – to be unwise and unfeasible.
The Tractor sent his boys. Alex drove a Mercedes to the front gate of Villa Paraiso, and Marko shouldered it open. The young man came down the drive – would have heard the gates scream. It was what anyone would do for a neighbour.
He stood back. He had his boys help because he liked the old couple who lived beside him and respected them. They had a dogged determination to survive and maintain their stoic independence. The old man, bent now, had piloted fighter jets at speeds twice that of sound and that, too, he admired. Also, there was a simple courtesy about them that he welcomed.
The young man said his name was Jonno and gushed thanks.
The last time he had seen the veteran flier had been twelve days back – the cameras about his own gates had registered him and he’d been tottering under the weight of a parcel as he had croaked something into the microphone in the stonework. Ivanov hadn’t known where Marko was, and Alex had taken the women shopping, so he’d gone to the gate himself. It would have seemed idiotic to believe the old man was a threat. He had taken the parcel, something Marko’s wife had ordered online for the kitchen, and they had talked about the operation. The old man had said they might get someone to live in their home while they were in the UK.
Ivanov had made an offer when he had arrived in Marbella to purchase their property, but had been refused. That was when he had learned of the flier’s defiance, and it had made him laugh. In another world, Pavel Ivanov would either have gone to the Villa Paraiso with a can of petrol and burned it down or would have broken through the gate with a bulldozer and flattened it, then bought the site for nothing. Burning and bulldozing were behind him. Occasionally, rarely, old features of his life reappeared. A ship was sailing across the Atlantic and he had a major shareholding in its cargo. A man would come in the next several days to visit him, and he cursed that – as if an old debt had been called in. Ivanov intended to wait until one of them died – the flier or his wife – then renew his offer for the property. He was a changed man, with cleaned money and legitimate investments. Old times were, almost, buried. It was natural that he would bring Alex and Marko to help the young man, Jonno, start the car.
The bonnets were l
ifted, leads were hooked up, the engines started.
He was thanked again.
When one of them died he would buy the property and level it. Then he would be able to expand the land he owned and push the security cameras, the walls and the wire further back from the Villa del Aguila. He would have better protection. He had been in the gaols of the old regime and the street gangs. He had fought and shown no fear, had killed and shown no hesitation – but his money was clean, and his life had changed. He enjoyed the meetings with Rafael when the lawyer bounced ideas for placing his cash, and he enjoyed the attention of the woman in the old town who organised investment. His stomach was larger than at any other time in his life and he was almost strangled by the tedium of his safety.
He accepted the young man’s thanks.
He walked back up the slope of his own drive towards his villa. In the morning it would be even quieter because the wives of Marko and Alex, and the children, were returning to Belgrade. Without the little voices the villa would be as still as a cemetery.
He had seemed a pleasant young man, Jonno, but he had not seen the girl. Alex and Marko had spoken of her – they had been cruel about her, and their women had cackled. He went into his office and wondered when he would hear that the Major was coming and would visit. He could not refuse it.
She had been washing clothes in the machine, but heard the voices when she went out to hang them in the sun. Then she heard the engines running.
They were about to leave.
She saw the Austin with a shining Mercedes in front of it, and the linking cables.
They stopped to stare at her. The tongue of the shorter one played provocatively across his lips, and the hands of the taller one came together and flexed, highlighting the muscles of his arms. The taller one had a metal object at his waist – supposed to be covered by the T-shirt. When he straightened to gaze at her it rode up enough for her to glimpse the handle of a gun.
The Outsiders Page 11
