by Adam Thorpe
‘You haven’t sold my African art, have you?’
‘Of course not. It’s in boxes upstairs. Ben’s been really helpful.’
‘Ben? I hope he’s not been handling my stuff.’
‘Bob, if you think I can hump it all about on my own, given my back problems … And your study was a complete tip, papers covered in dust.’
‘If he’s been in my study, that’s probably illegal.’
She put on a pained expression. It was then that he reminded himself, heart hammering as it was, that she’d become very skilled at provoking. He decided to split as soon as he could.
‘I’d better check the study, then go,’ he said.
‘We’ve not thrown anything away,’ she reassured him, which made him even crosser. She folded her arms and he was surprised at the sharpness of the elbows against the loose-sleeved sweater; on the other hand, he’d always thought her weak point was their boniness.
‘No, but there are private papers, bank dossiers, letters. And fragile things.’
‘He’s not the type to snoop, for God’s sake. He’s just helping out. I’m on my own.’
‘That was your choice.’
‘Can’t you sit down?’
‘We had a good life, Olivia.’
‘With you away most of the time, me holding the fort?’
‘Someone had to earn the serious money.’
‘You certainly did that,’ she said, nodding slowly and knowingly, making her long coppery earrings shiver. They were new: these days she never wore the big chunky malachite ones he’d brought back from the Congo.
He frowned. ‘Pardon me?’ And could feel the pull of the current, everything heading for Niagara Falls.
‘You certainly did earn the money,’ she said. ‘In every which way.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
She shook her head slowly and looked to the side – a movement which usually went with a faraway air of infinite sadness. Decoded, it meant, Game over. She could go off-signal for an hour afterwards: all day, sometimes.
‘Olivia, I hope you’re not implying something about my job.’
She raised her eyebrows slightly. That’s exactly what she was doing. Never in their whole life together had she implied such a thing. Ben next door was now breaking plates, it sounded like, as if to remind them of his presence. The family plates, purchased from Pratley’s.
‘Since most of the money’s a result of that job,’ he said, only his eyes keeping above the flames, ‘then you’d better return it, if you’re having qualms.’
Of course that was a silly thing to say. She told him to get out of the house. He said what about the pots of wimberry jam, or was that another broken promise? She said he didn’t even deserve the damson (of which she always made too much, with annoying little rock-hard stones that had once broken one of Bob’s fillings).
He insisted on seeing the study – a small room under the eaves with a step down to it.
He went upstairs with both of them yelling, she from the hall, he over his shoulder as he climbed. He expected the door to be locked, somehow, but it wasn’t. Instead, the curtains were drawn.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he shouted.
Everything was boxed up in the gloom, except for the African pieces, which were dotted about looking very resentful and bad-tempered, his favourite mask from Cameroon scowling at him from the top of a Costcutter carton.
What did he expect? That this room in which he’d spent so many years happily working on his accounts, writing letters, calculating nautical miles flown, dreaming of building a biplane (life-size, not a model), would stay intact, like a museum? He didn’t even like museums. They gave him the willies. Then, drawing the curtains for daylight, he noticed a small black bin-liner, stuffed to the gills but still open at the top. Junk from the look of it – the kind of glossy dross that slips out of the newspaper, offering lawnmowers or laser eye ops or whatever – but at some point he must have thought it would be useful. He shouted again and would have sat down but there was nowhere to sit.
This room contained his life. Melodramatic, but it was how he felt. Its total volume was a tiny corner in the average cargo bay; you would hardly have noticed it. This was it. What it all came down to. Over twenty years of marriage. His peak years.
The mask went on scowling at him. He used to plant a cheroot between its serrated teeth – the twins would scream with laughter. He used to light the cheroot, imitate the voice of the mask in a broad cockney. Well, they did like that. They certainly did. He smoked a lot of cheroots back in those days – even in the cockpit, waiting for the ramp agent, his feet up on the instrument panel like a cowboy. He was notorious for that: the ramp agents would tell each other, The guy smokes cheroots in the cockpit – it’s so cool, it’s like a film! Good ol’ McAl bought him a Stetson in Dallas to complete the show, which really wowed them. He was a character: he cheered them up.
He stumbled downstairs to Olivia somewhere behind her crossed arms and Ben furtively having a fag at the open back door. Bob didn’t like furtiveness, so he shouted a bit more and then Ben interrupted him: ‘I told you; I told you it was the wrong thing to do, Liv.’
Bob frowned. ‘Liv? That’s your old name.’
‘Yup,’ she said.
‘Jesus.’
She insisted that the stuff Ben had chucked was ‘literally junk’; Ben started to confirm this gently from the back door; Bob said that his – Ben’s – videos were probably junk but he wouldn’t dream of touching them; Ben objected and stabbed the air in Bob’s direction with his cigarette, then the doorbell went before they could come to physical blows.
They all froze, then Bob said, in a moment of inspiration, ‘That’s OK. I’ll get it. It’s still my house.’
Olivia started to move but Bob moved faster. She was not far behind him in the hall when he opened the door on an attractive young woman in a natty grey suit, holding an attaché case. She beamed at him, sparkly eyed, and said in a sing-song voice, ‘Hello, Mr and Mrs Winrush? It’s Wendy from Perfect Locations. Sorry I’m a bit late.’
‘Bad timing,’ Bob pointed out. ‘We’re having a flaming row. Really sorry to have wasted your time. And it’s Captain Winrush. And this is Liv.’
Wendy was startled, lost her smile. Bob shut the door on her. Olivia said he had no right to do that and made for the door. Bob blocked her like a bouncer, with crossed arms. Olivia asked Ben to intervene, but Ben waved the dishcloth about like a surrender flag, saying he’d rather not. As the gravel signalled that Wendy was heading off, Olivia said, ‘Ben, you’re a wimp.’
‘Yeah? End up getting shot?
Bob frowned. ‘Who says I’m armed?’
‘Your reputation goes before you,’ said Olivia. ‘He’s absolutely right. What you’re doing is totally illegal.’
‘What am I doing?’
‘Carrying a gun around. This isn’t Florida.’
‘Unbelievable,’ said Bob. He would have said more, but his mobile went off. It was David’s number. A text. Despite the circumstances, the first few visible words made Bob scroll down the rest.
‘What’s really unbelievable is that you’re more interested in your mobile than anything else,’ Olivia scoffed.
‘That’s mobiles for you,’ said Ben. ‘My students are just the same.’
Bob held up his hand, as if for quiet.
Olivia gave a snort. ‘Is that an order, Captain Winrush?’
‘He’s gone chalk-white,’ Ben pointed out.
Bob blinked at them, still holding up a hand. The two of them had folded arms, like bouncers. ‘Got to go. Sorry. You’ll be hearing from Jenkins, I suppose, the solicitor.’
He spat gravel and on the sharp bend nearly went into a knot of primary kids coming back to the estate from judo or whatever: Kirsty, Aidan and Lisa – he did recognise them, just. Sophie had babysat two of them when she was about fourteen. He stopped in a services and read the text again, then replied to it thus: ‘A helluva shock. Don’t
do ANYTHING till we talk this evening. I’ll phone u. LOL Dad xx’ He saw his hands were trembling on the Formica. He could do nothing about it. But it could all have been so much worse: he might have skidded into the kids.
He had made a decision, at least. Back in the flat, fuelled with a Scotch, he phoned Al on his busy mobile; he didn’t think the landline would be a good idea. It was on message. He told Al to call him back, urgent.
There was nothing about Sharansky on the net. Not yet. Bob could hardly believe it: the man was the kind of sparking live wire you couldn’t grab, let alone cut. The news should have come as a kind of relief, but Bob had human feelings and behind it loomed a lot of night fog: questions, questions. It might just have been an accident: Polish driving. Lack of motorways. Long, straight, narrow roads where lorries swerved to avoid potholes, especially fun when someone was overtaking the other way. Bob’d had a white-knuckle ride or two in Poland.
He double-checked the chamber of the Makarov and went out to the nearest less-loud pub; wearing through the carpet in the flat was safer, maybe, but did similar damage to his nerves. His son phoned while Bob was absently watching football spread-eagled across a massive flat-screen.
Outside, shivering in the November gusts and choking in the smokers’ downwind pall, Bob listened as David told him that no one knew the details, but it was hit-and-run. Matt Sharansky wasn’t in a car, it seemed, but walking along the road. No info yet on the car that did it, but the area had been quiet.
‘Near the arms factory?’
‘According to Google Earth, about half a mile away.’
‘Near enough. Which way was he walking, away or towards?’
‘We don’t know, Dad. We’re pretty shaken up.’
‘People do get run over, especially in Poland. Was it at night?’
‘Very early in the morning. No one saw it; he was just found on the verge with the right kind of injuries. He was facing the vehicle, they reckon. The police aren’t necessarily treating it as suspicious, though, as it happens quite a lot: drunks and stuff. Our campaign colleagues in Israel are dealing with his computer before Mossad or whoever get to it. They’ll send us the files by email. They’ve got some problem with his computer’s password. Not even his boyfriend knows it.’
‘Boyfriend? Are you sure?’
‘Yeah. A problem, Dad?’
‘Nope. Nope.’
‘And his mobile’s missing.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, that’s a drag. He did a lot of texting, maybe the kind of thing you wouldn’t want enemies to see.’
‘David, can I ask you to voluntarily retire from this operation?’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘I could try really hard over some nosh tomorrow. The Healey could make it by midday. Will you be up? I know you’re on Australian time. Name your restaurant.’
David agreed, almost with alacrity. Anything for a free lunch. ‘By the way, Dad—’
An explosion of laughter from the smokers drowned out the rest of the sentence. Bob asked his son to repeat it.
‘I said, by the way, Dad, whatever did you say to Mum this morning, exactly?’
‘Crikey, that was quick.’
From their teenage years, the twins had been switched off from his professional life. Whenever Bob came back from what Al would call a scrotum-tightening ops and try to tell them about it (emphasising the part of the cargo that had pacifist credentials), their eyes would glaze over or flicker back to the screen. After the SBO, or seriously bad ops, in the Central African Republic, from which he returned physically intact but with his nerves neatly diced, he would wake up from nightmares making a bit of a noise, and that had to be explained away, as did his temporary hand-tremble. But the twins were somewhere else in their heads, dealing with the tricky approach to the big-time airport of adulthood, for which there was no flight plan, evening class, nothing. He concealed it pretty well, took the pills, and Olivia actually did a grand job. She was a natural nurse and confidante, although he’d given her a Cert U version of it all, no worse than the TV news.
It was soon after the SBO, in recovery mode, that he’d tried his hand at being a normal person with the disabled-equipment firm. During the holidays, fifteen-year-old Sophie took to staying out late, driven about by lads who hadn’t yet spotted the difference between Worcestershire lanes and the M1 (probably because they were stoned at the time), while David justified the school fees by being able to grunt in several languages and taking up the drums. They weathered all this together, as parents do; he had gone back to flying, but given up on the jungle strips, or at least avoided places like the Congo or CAR unless it was tarmac plus tower. If he occasionally carried cargo with a brown envelope attached, it was mainly because the plane had been commandeered by the local psychopath in khaki.
Once, getting back from one of these hotter legs into a March downpour that soaked him as he removed his luggage from the boot and ran into the house, he found David slumped in front of his PlayStation on the main telly in the back sitting room, legs stretched out longer than ever.
‘Hi, David. Where’s Mum?’
‘Out shopping wi’ Sophe.’
His son had barely looked up, twiddling his way out of what looked like an SS ambush in a winter pine forest, snow sliding off the branches like lumps of plaster.
Instead of acting all sad and grumpy, Bob slumped down with him, hair dripping, collar wet, and they had a whale of a time on two controls. But the decent father did come down with a heck of a cold.
He thought of that moment now, getting ready for bed: they were in this one together, but it wasn’t a video game. Al hadn’t got back. The journalist’s mobile was missing. Bob reread the text he had sent to that phone. It mentioned the crew by name. When he thought about who might have eliminated Sharansky, he saw a crowd of shadowy figures. Bensoussan was in there, with his knees instead of balls or balls instead of knees, but there were a lot of others, too. The whole lot vaguely looking in his direction.
‘Bob? Got y’ message. Whassup?’
‘Israeli journalist, Al. No longer with us. Hit-and-run in Radom.’
‘Christ. The long arm of Mossad, no doubt. That’s got us out of a pickle.’
‘Ten green bottles, Al.’
‘Och, c’mon. The guy was a meddler. You tried to warn him off, no?’
‘Correct. But the others are carrying on.’
‘What? Carrying on what? Who else have they got?’ Al sounded alarmed.
‘I mean his campaigning mates. The anti-arms lot over here. David’s involved with one of the groups.’
‘Warn him off, skipper.’
‘Al, you sound worried.’
‘Not half as bloody worried as you do!’
Bob took a deep breath. He had made the decision, he should stick to it. It was all for the best. ‘That’s because our Podgorica jaunt is bound to be on Sharansky’s computer. David will read all about it. I don’t want to lose David, like I’m losing Olivia.’
‘Our Podgorica jaunt? Which one?’
‘Anti-personnel mines to Somaliland. Among other nicer stuff.’
‘Your sloppiest landing ever? At Berbera? And just about the longest bloody runway in Africa? That the one?’
‘If you say so, Al. It was very hot and shimmery.’
‘How do you know it’s on this fucker’s computer? Sorry, Jane. I’m moving into my study. We were in the middle of Mad Men, but it’s a DVD. I’m in the study. Now tell me all, Bob.’
Bob did not tell all: he said that he knew Sharansky was writing a piece about the landmine flight; he did not say Sharansky had been blackmailing him with it, forcing him to probe.
‘Wear flares, grow your hair long, swing your beads,’ Al chuckled.
‘You’re about thirty-five years out of date, Al.’
‘What I mean is: everything comes round again, skipper. What else is on that computer?’ he asked airily.
‘Well, the Turkmenbashi flight, obviously. Outbound a
nd inbound. Of great interest to the late man, as you know.’
There was an audible sigh. ‘So he was using the Berbera flight to force you to probe your old loyal crewmate from Fife about the Turkmenbashi caper.’
‘Don’t be crazy, Al.’
There was a short pause in which the flat’s walls seemed to close in on hydraulic pistons. A blackbird was hopping on the wet lawn, pulling worms. Al was always quick in emergencies; it was easy to underestimate his mental agility.
Al said, ‘We were empty on the return. I’ve told you till I’m blue in the face.’
‘Are you blue in the face now?’ said Bob with a smile to it.
‘No, I’m red. Red with fucking resentment. That maybe someone planted a packet of snow on my flight, without my knowledge.’
‘You know what, Al? I talked to Hans Schmitt. Interesting. And Pedro Diez is Mexican.’
‘You mean it might have been them? Bastards.’
‘You don’t always choose your crew. Like siblings. But then, I’m an only child. I think we should meet up. Talk strategy.’
‘What did Schmitt say?’
‘Nothing,’ said Bob. ‘It was the tone. The hesitation. Or maybe it was just a bad line.’
‘Look, I’ve got to go trim the syringa. Jane’s hands are bad today. It comes and goes. She’s being tested for Lyme disease. It’s in fashion.’
‘I thought she had fybromalgia or whatever it’s called,’ said Bob, discreetly tapping ‘MATT SHARANSKY’ into Google.
‘Well now, don’t go busting yourself with sympathy, will you, skipper?’
Reuters, repeated in various newspapers: ‘Israeli journalist dies in hit and run’. So it was true; he now believed it. It was the same when his father died: the brief obituary in the Daily Telegraph made him believe it. The report said nothing he didn’t know, but he knew more than the report. There was no mention of Sharansky’s mission, just that he was in Radom, home of a major weapons factory, ‘investigating illicit arms deals’, and that the police had not ruled out murder.
