The Outsiders

by Gerald Seymour

  The Major listened and Pavel Ivanov talked.

  ‘I’m a free man here. I don’t walk in fear. I have no enemies along the coast. I live my life and no one interferes. I pay tax. My friend organises it so that I don’t pay a great tax, but I contribute. I’m not frightened of my own shadow.’

  The lawyer drove. They were coming down from the high ground and he could see Gibraltar and the hazed coastline of north Africa. The wind seemed to have dropped. He saw small villages, tidy and ordered, where livestock browsed and grazed. The window was down enough for the clean air to play on his face. He had no spare flesh on his body, and neither did Grigoriy nor Ruslan.

  ‘I have a fine home. I have money that I believe is secure, in cash, bonds and equities. I have property in Spain, in the tourism belt, in the African coastal resorts, in Brazil and the Caribbean. It is washed money and secure. I had an incident this week and dealt with it. There is nothing that could arouse the interest of either the local police or the national squads. And – through my friend Rafael – I have arrangements with local officers and we contribute towards charities involving them. We live discreetly but openly.’

  The Major thought the Tractor was overweight but not obese. His stomach was comfortable and the shirt buttons tugged in their holes. He compared the size of the Serbs with his own men. A different life, a different world. Attractive? It might be considered so.

  ‘But it comes at a price. I’ve cut links. I had relatives in Perm. I’m not saying I want to see them, or that I want to know where my mother is, or to trace my father. I had boyhood friends – they may be in the army, addicts on the streets, dead, married well, in a gulag camp and rotting, I don’t know. I don’t go back. There are consulates for Russians in Madrid and Barcelona and I haven’t registered with either. There’s a Russian community here, but I don’t mix. There are churches for our Orthodox faith, but I don’t visit them. I have distanced myself, cut the ties. It’s not possible to be a resident here and to retain links with our country . . . but I drink Russian beer.’

  In his mind the Major saw sodden fields on which the first snow was about to fall and the leaden grey skies of winter in Pskov. Sunshine clung to the slopes that slipped by the car.

  ‘It was not a half-measure. I made a total break. I would say that we didn’t welcome your first communication. You said you were coming and I wanted to refuse you. You are the first prominent person I have met for four years. Perhaps I’ve allowed too much to pass me by.’

  The road was steeper, the bends more acute, and the Major thought the view down to the coast was outstanding. There were no vistas in Pskov that he valued. Could he live here? He twisted it in his mind.

  ‘We live openly and without fear. How openly? The children of Marko and Alex go to school here. We have no social life, but we’re not in hiding. We don’t feel threatened.’

  The Six man stood a little back from the grave, dug freshly in the sand of the Cimitière Le Kasr. He gave his address.

  ‘I’m sorry, my friend, but I don’t even know your name. I do know that you chose to work alongside our Services and to strike a heavy blow against the forces of organised crime. In life and death you are respected.’

  He went unheard. The speech bubbled in his mind but his tongue only moistened his lips in the suffocating heat. The wind blew off the sea and across the dunes; sand stung his face. He didn’t know the name but had been told the nationality. Minimal research had shown him that Georgia was a Christian country. He had persuaded a priest from the one Catholic church, they called it a cathedral, in Nouakchott to conduct the service.

  ‘In our Services we don’t forget those who put their lives on the line. We honour them. We honour you, my friend. What role you have played in winding up a tentacle of an organised-crime group, I can’t say. We will make certain that your life wasn’t wasted. That’s the least we owe you.’

  There was the priest, likely half French, with a reedy voice, two grave-diggers, the driver of the van that had brought the misshapen corpse from the mortuary, a uniformed police sergeant and himself. It wasn’t sentiment that had brought the Six man back to the Mauretanian capital but he was interested to see whether a Russian would show, any big-shouldered bastard with wraparound shades, tattoos and a shaven skull. None had, but he could combine the burial with meeting the new Agency man in the American compound. The sand fell from the priest’s fingers onto the crude surface of the plywood box in the hole. The Six man stepped forward and picked up his own handful. There was not a blade of green anywhere, only sand, stones and wooden posts. He scattered it, and murmured, ‘I hope it was worth it, my friend. I hope enough people appreciated what you did and acted on what you told them. It would be a shame if they didn’t.’

  The sun lit the cemetery in front of her, and the runway beyond it. Winnie Monks made what would be her last call from the Rock. She spoke briefly with Caro Watson: what time the flight would leave, the transport they would need. ‘About as far as it can go. Time to call closure. I’ll be in tomorrow and talk you through it. Of course it wasn’t for nothing. There’ll be a time and a place. Now switch me.’

  She waited, kicking the radiator. Below the point where her toe hit the ironwork there was a small heap of paint flakes.

  She greeted her chief, told him of her movements. ‘Yes . . . I’m fully aware this is a retreat. I’m not dressing it up. I think you were kept in the loop and are, therefore, aware that our best efforts to pull him in, arrest and extradite him, were balked. I regret the summary departure of the surveillance team. Xavier went with them. The way it was laid out was fine while there was back-up for the main man. He needed the surveillance to stiffen him. They chickened. No one’s holding his hand now. Am I in tears? No. Am I kicking the furniture? And some. The main man’ll be on his way home – rats and sinking ships, all that crap. I’m leaving because – sadly – it’s over.’

  She listened, kicked the radiator again.

  ‘I’m assuming he’s trekking along after them, going to the airport. No, I have no communications linking him to me. It was an unforeseeable situation and my contact was via Xavier and with the photographer – who, by the by, may travel with a reputation but won’t work with me again . . . I’m not in a position to talk to him. It’s not anyone’s fault, just the way fortune fell . . . For fuck’s sake, listen to me. It didn’t work out, and I have to live with that . . . I’ll see you tomorrow . . . Sorry. Did I catch you right? The whole story? Was that the question? . . . Enough, Chief, for now. Stay safe.’

  She rang off.

  And hesitated. Winnie Monks did not know at that moment whether to shout or scream, or kick the radiator hard enough to bring it off the wall. Or whether she should sit in a corner and sulk. All of those around her looked to her for leadership. She couldn’t offer anything. Kenny and Dottie didn’t meet her eye. It was like a dream had died.

  She said, ‘I’d hoped to leave here with trumpets playing, not in bloody sackcloth.’

  ‘Who is she? The woman in the photograph, does she own you?’

  The head stayed motionless and there was no response, but the hands shook.

  ‘Are you here because of her?’ The shadows were longer, the air cooler and in the garden the dog slept.

  ‘They’ve all gone, the ones who ought to be here and backing you. Was it her instruction that you stayed?’ He strained to hear the sounds of an approaching car.

  ‘Did she send you the rifle because she knew you were her lap-dog?’ He supposed he wanted an endorsement. It was their mission – he was signed up for it. If he had volunteered for an office sales gathering at a weekend, or a brainstorming session staying late on a mid-week evening, Jonno would have expected a pep-talk at the start, a wind-up oration. He was told nothing.

  ‘Have you considered that when he comes you might bottle out? Do you wonder if you’re sick? Does she manipulate you? Sparky, is this what you want?’

  No answer.

  ‘Christ, Sparky. I stayed. No one else d
id. They all walked over you, like you were useless. I listened. I heard what the target had done and I signed up for it. Don’t I get thanked?’

  The gulls wheeled high and called. The dog moved, might have been chilled because the sun was off the garden now. Its walk set off the arc lights on the back of the villa and made the shadows stronger, flatter.

  They waited.

  The ammunition and the weapon were in a brown-paper bag of the sort that a fruit and vegetable stall used, strong enough for a kilo of apples and another of potatoes. It wouldn’t fall apart under the weight of three magazines – ‘What you off to do, Izzy? Start a bloody war?’ – and a Jericho 941, from Israeli Weapons Industries in a northern suburb of Tel Aviv. The pistol had been spoken well of after trials in a European police shooting contest, and twice every year Izzy went with its owner up into the hills and loosed off a dozen rounds – ‘Even an old man should keep his hand in.’ It was only seven inches long and weighed two and a half pounds. It comforted him to know that the handgun had been manufactured in Israel, built by Jewish production-line workers – like a gift from a distant corner of family. He brought it back to his apartment.

  What Izzy Jacobs liked about Myrtle Fanning – had long admired – was her stoicism in the face of adversity. She had endured a marriage to Mikey Fanning – whom Izzy thought of as a brother but who had been wasteful, now a failure, poor with money and a shell of his old self. He had never heard Myrtle Fanning complain or resort to self pity. She took what life threw at her and shrugged it away. He had never declared himself. Before he had met his own wife, Izzy had fenced Mikey’s nicked goods and wished Myrtle’s smile had settled on him. After Beryl’s death, alone in the environs of San Pedro, a little of him had hoped that illness would make a widow of Myrtle. She never whined. She was brusque, fierce and strong.

  He let himself in and put the paper bag on the kitchen table.

  Myrtle told him she had switched on the TV. On the television there had been pictures from a beach down the coast, near Fuengirola: a police officer had been carrying a bin-bag with the same reverence as if she’d been carting the waste from an abattoir. There were, the TV reported, severed legs in the bag and an officer reckoned a criminal gang war was being fought out.

  She said, dry eyes, controlled, ‘Later they freshened up the report. They put some shoes on the TV. They were Mikey’s best, what he always wore at funerals. Then they said that a car had been found burned out in a quarry up beyond Fuengirola on the Sierra de Mijas, and there was a body in it. They said the body had no legs. I switched the TV off.’

  If she had been any other woman, Izzy Jacobs would have put an arm around her, and reckoned he risked having tears stain the cream cotton jacket he wore most days. He said he would put the kettle on and went towards the kitchen. He thought a cup of tea was called for, with a splash of Scotch it, but no hugging. There would be no tears. She followed him. He filled the kettle, put it on. He knew his kitchen was a palace compared to hers, and his apartment was double the size. He heard paper rustle.

  He did not look round. ‘Take care, Myrtle.’

  ‘They were always around the house when I was a kid. My dad, brothers, uncles and cousins all had firearms practice out on Rainham marshes. I can handle a shooter. Can you, Izzy?’

  He poured water into the pot, two bags when one would have done. He let his mind drift back fifty-six years, to when he had been nineteen and a conscript in the Service Corps. He was smart, his hair Brylcreemed, and his driving skills were excellent. He had been a colonel’s driver in Egypt and had worn a service revolver on his webbing belt. It was a Webley Mark lV, firing .38 bullets, and he’d used it on the range when the colonel had practice shooting. He’d been a chosen man and had done good deals because that was his talent. His colonel had eaten and drunk better than any contemporary in Ismailia. He’d loved the feel of the thing on his upper webbing, the weight of it and the pressure of the holster.

  He said, ‘Enough experience to get by.’

  He filled a mug for her and stirred in two sugars. He imagined her fighting for space in the kitchen of a terraced home in south-east London, down by Peckham railway station, scrabbling to get the weapons out of the hands of the young bucks and into her own fists. She aimed it at the window.

  Izzy Jacobs said, ‘He was my best friend, Mikey was. If no one else will go after those bastards, I will. I’d swing for him.’

  Her first half-turn on her heel had been on the far side of the gate. Snapper had grabbed her arm. He’d been on one side of her, Loy on the other, and the man who’d driven them from Marbella bus station was close behind her. His knees nudged the back of her thighs.

  ‘Just get your bloody passport out,’ Snapper mouthed.

  ‘Best do as he says,’ added Loy. ‘Have it ready.’

  Posie hadn’t taken the passport from her bag. At the desk she’d shrugged clear of their hands and used her heel to kick the third man’s shin.

  ‘They don’t want you,’ Snapper hissed.

  ‘They’ll slam the door in your face,’ Loy spat. ‘You’ve burned your bridges.’

  Snapper again: ‘Burned your boats.’

  The man behind her said, ‘No going back, that’s ‘‘burned your boats’’. Fourteen hundred years ago, a Moor invaded this coast of Spain and brought twelve thousand troops ashore and ordered all their boats to be destroyed so there was no way of retreating.’

  The queue had built behind them. Impatience surged.

  Snapper had said sourly, ‘Please yourself. See if we care.’

  ‘Your call, Posie,’ Loy had said. ‘Not our shout.’

  She’d gone.

  One had shouted after her but she had not known which, and a flight was called. She’d had her backpack looped on her shoulders and had gone to the bus place. Within twenty minutes the coach had pulled up and she’d paid for the one-way journey back along the A7 highway.

  She supposed it was a sort of madness.

  There were stories in the papers, the tabloids, and on the news bulletins of people doing daft things, and being unable to explain themselves. She’d heard that sort of playing dumb called ‘riding the wind’. The wind was the coach that speared along the road, going west towards the door of the Villa Paraiso that might be slammed in her face, and might not.

  Nerves gripped her.

  She climbed down off the coach.

  He might not even open the door to her, let alone slam it in her face. And the rifle would be there, the magazines loaded in it. That was the degree of the madness. It had captured Jonno and now her.

  She walked up the hill, felt the cool of evening and shivered.

  It was over. The liaison officer from the RAF detachment still lingering in the Crown Colony had raised his eyebrows when she told him what she wanted, had stamped on the brake and had helped clear their gear from the Land Rover. They were dropped by the Shell garage. There were perfunctory handshakes and the officer said, with ill-disguised irony, ‘Hope it went well . . . whatever it was.’

  Winnie led, Kenny and Dottie trailing after her on the narrow pavement.

  Three members of an Irish bomb team had died there, but there was no room for them in Winnie Monks’s mind. She would have been in her first year at university at the time; and politics, economics and international relations didn’t go with blood on the ground. She wanted to walk and taste the last of the Rock, which loomed behind her. The RAF cleaners would no doubt bitch that there had been smoking inside the building. She knew it was over. Behind her, they talked. Might have thought she wouldn’t hear, or that it didn’t matter if she did.

  Kenny spoke of the backlog there would be in clearing the expenses claims he dealt with, which would be piled in his in-tray the next Monday morning. Dottie, then, would have gone back to A Branch to the rosters, the days-in-lieu and the requests from team leaders for foot-surveillance people. Kenny wondered if Caro Watson had already returned to the deputy director’s outer office. Dottie thought it likely that Xa
vier would have accumulated time off and would not be called into the Yard, and his liaison job, before the weekend.

  They talked easily. The wheels on the trolley Kenny was pulling needed oil, which was mentioned, as was the awesome light on the rockface. They wondered whether the flight out would be on time. Dottie said she believed it was right that they were quitting, and Kenny said it was sensible because nothing remained here for them.

  Winnie didn’t know if anything had ever been there for them. She trudged on and her feet hurt, but it was a last flavour of the place before the death moment. It would be the end of her Graveyard Team, the gatherings in the gardens behind Thames House, the burial of self-perpetuating élitism and the mantra that nobody appreciated them. She had reached the runway. The lights were green for vehicles and pedestrians, and the aircraft had not arrived on schedule. She kept to her brisk stride and ignored the ache in her swollen feet.

  She could have talked to Dawson, but no one else.

  Her Graveyard Team, fashioned when they had investigated organised crime, had been confident they were light years ahead of the Metropolitan Police. That might have been delusional, she reflected. In the corridors of the building where she worked there were corporate notice-boards. Perhaps the Graveyard gang were no more relevant than the Light Operatic Society, the tennis team, or the bloody Pilates crowd, who took over the gym on any early morning, then went sweaty to their desks. She remembered those evenings in the gardens, among the old stones of the graveyard where once the body-snatchers had skulked until night. They’d smoked, drunk coffee, eaten sandwiches and congratulated themselves on their abilities. A delusion. She had said to Kenny, taking the body out of central Budapest and en route to the airport, ‘. . . so arrogant, those fucking people. They think they’re untouchable.’

  He had said, ‘They believe they’re untouchable, Boss, because they aren’t often touched.’ She had raised her voice in the car and made her declaration.