Zeinab would sleep a few hours before her alarm woke her . . . He made her laugh, was devoted, was more than useful, the boy she imagined in bed with her, and she held a pillow close, spoke his name in the silence of the room – but most important, Andy Knight was useful, otherwise he’d have had no place in her life.
He was booked in a hostel south of the river. The woman in Vauxhall had fixed it. He walked there, went down deserted streets, and only occasionally was lit by vehicle lights. A rucksack was hooked on a shoulder. Once he heard the great chime of a church clock behind him. At the hostel, £20 a night per person, and the place was favoured by European back-packers. He was offered a multiple occupancy room – could have slept with three strangers. Pegs had told him what name to use at the desk. Must have been a longstanding deal that she had with the place. He would be alone in the room. It would have been the type of anonymous doss-house that Specialist Crime and Operations 10 favoured when one of their people surfaced for a debrief, for a night. There were voices but reasonably quiet, respectful of others. He found the room. Three iron beds, folded sheets and a duvet, a picture of the Queen on a wall and nothing else, and a doorway to a shower and toilet which made the room top-dollar.
He dumped his grip.
Flopped on the bed, did not bother to make it. Kicked off his footwear, dragged down his socks, shoved the bedding aside, lay in the darkness.
It was a job. It paid every month and the cash went into an account that was in the name he had been born under, and the workload as Phil Williams and Norm Clarke and Andy Knight had been heavy enough to prevent him from using it. No opportunity to spend outside the make-believe life of legends he constructed. It was a job where the psychologists spoke earnestly of burn-out, but the time to quit was never dangled, not while a mission ran. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling and a little light came from outside and split the thin curtains not quite drawn together . . . when the stress mounted, at night, he’d dream of the past. Before the dreaming would be the anxiety, growing, of a mistake made.
He kept his eyes open, had no wish to dream. Saw her face: a strong chin and a powerful jaw and a nose that did not hide, and eyes that could pierce, and the flow of her hair. If he watched her face he would find comfort, and that would calm him, then he would sleep.
If he slept, he would dream.
Chapter 6
‘Phil, would you come in here.’ Always a mistake, going to sleep, failing to stay awake. Memory time, vivid.
‘Yeah, just finishing up.’
‘No, Phil. Now, Phil. Not after the fucking washing up.’
The door off the kitchen was open. All the rest were in the communal room in the front of the house, terraced and in an old quarter of the west country town of Plymouth, and by a miracle of fortune the street had avoided the local blitz. Phil had been washing up the plates from their lunch. Most were vegetarians, and the meal was a pizza without meat, but the vegans amongst them had just nibbled salads . . . the lettuce leaves had been rinsed under a cold tap but a spider had hunkered down and survived the sluicing and had ended up on its way into the mouth of one of the girls, then had fallen off the leaf and dropped on to a slice of tomato. Was she going to squash it, kill it, cull the poor bloody spider? No. She had picked it up in a tissue, handled with delicacy, had taken it to the back door, had put the spider into an over-grown flower-bed, and had come back to resume her meal . . . He might have giggled. Not a fun laugh, but something closer to a sneer: the girl was pathetic, didn’t everyone see that? He was washing up. There were times in the day when Phil needed to be away from them, have his own space.
One of the guys was in the doorway, and barked at him.
‘Leave that. Get in here.’
‘Yes, coming, yes.’
Buying time, and drying his hands, and pulling the plug in the sink, and his mind had started to sprint because of the tone. Not a request that he might care to join them when he had finished. A demand. Phil was not the newest to be accepted; there was a blonde girl with big glasses and short hair who had come after him but she’d joined after reaching Plymouth from west of Birmingham where her group had been decimated by arrests. Phil was the last ‘outsider’ to join them, starting at the bottom with leaflet hand-outs, and manning the table with flyers on the evils and cruelties of animal experiments in laboratories. Not something that could be hurried and he must have been at it a full year – which was a hell of a commitment for SC&O10 before he was let into the house: might have been that the auburn-haired girl fancied him, might have smoothed the way. That was a half year back, but he was one of them in name, not a part of them. The rest, except for the Birmingham girl, were the founding fathers and mothers of the group. Still, some of the guys would stop talking if he came into the room, or would slide papers away. He left the kitchen, went into the communal room. The atmosphere cut. Worse than sneering when a girl took the trouble to save the life of a spider and give it a new home among the weeds in the flower-bed. Some looked at him and some dropped their heads so as not to meet his eyes. Two of the guys were standing and one slipped behind him and had guardianship of the door. There was a rug on the floor, threadbare, the pattern faded, and he was waved to the centre of it. They were still on a high, had been to a kennels two nights before, had let loose a pack of young beagles, the favoured breed for the laboratories, and the little blighters had headed off into the woods. Pointless, ridiculous, and they’d be half starved by now but . . . perhaps better than being close up to a hypodermic. Anyway . . . that was good. Next up was an address in the Portsmouth area where a scientist lived with his family, and he did research in a laboratory and was going to get the full focus of a visit, and they were at the planning stage.
Phil stood in the centre of the room.
Sarcasm. ‘Hope this isn’t inconvenient, Phil, dragging you off the chores.’
Shrill. ‘Just a few things we’re not understanding, Phil.’
Hectoring. ‘’Cos you don’t fit, Phil. Don’t seem right.’
Cold as ice. ‘Some questions, Phil, that need answering.’
The bloody obvious. ‘We’d be upset, Phil, if you weren’t what you said – were a stooge, a plant. Bad times would follow us getting upset.’
He had a car parked down the road. The car had a clapped-out engine and the requisite three different makes of tyres, and the engine was shit, and put down a smokescreen on any cold morning, and it had a dash cupboard. Deep in the dash, behind an old manual, and stuff about the insurance, was what seemed to be a discarded pocket radio, out of date and out of fashion. It could still do broadcasting, could also do an alarm call. Press two of the buttons for pre-set stations and the signal was sent. State of the art technology. And, a two-mile radius for the pick-up. It would sound out in the Hampton Street police station. They were supposed to come running. The alarm meant curtains for the infiltration, also meant that he – Phil Williams – was in danger of a bad experience. Would they come? How fast? Mob-handed? Didn’t really matter because it was in the car, and the car was down the road, and the alarm in the dash had been there since they’d been out to the beagle puppy farm. He always drove. He was the one with the car, was also the one with a job as an Amazon delivery driver. He drove and that way the group were supposed to become dependent on him. The signal would go to Hampton Street and then to a particular annexe office off the CID section, had to be picked up by one of the people – not many of them – who knew there was an Undercover doing the animal group. He did not say anything. Phil tried to look confused, a bit stupid and astonished that they came at him this way, no warning and from the big blue.
‘Things that don’t fit.’
‘Too eager. Always there. Nothing too much trouble.’
‘You come in off the street and you’re a best friend.’
‘You might be a cop, Phil. We can’t just put a cop out through the door, Phil.’
‘You thought it very funny, Phil, when Bethany saved the spider’s life, took care of
it. I am telling you flat, Phil, that if the spider had been a cop it would have had each leg pulled off it, then would have gone in the flower-bed – dead.’
Whoever he was, whatever his name, he had left home as a pretty straightforward kid, a bag on his shoulder and Mum and Dad quiet, not making speeches. He had gone, had joined up which was not easy, the failure rate was high. He was a Royal Marine, had done all the stuff. Was in a high state of physical fitness. Could do rope and balance work. Could do speed marching, and speed scrambling over rough ground. Could do assault courses and could do the 30-mile march on Dartmoor with his feet raw and blistered but inside the eight hours and with a pack on his back, and had endurance. Some of the NCOs had suggested he might go for officer training, and a captain had said he should apply for Special Forces. All glamour, and all massaging the ego . . . the rabbit had intervened. It was the rabbit’s fault. There were eight of them in the room. There was a bay window at the front and he would have to go through the glass. He heard the quiet click behind him as a key was turned. If he made a run that would be the same as saying, ‘Fair and square, well done, guys, bright of you’. Admitted. Like bending over and confessing. They would pummel him first, then it would get to be a frenzy, and he had been gone from the Marines long enough for his strength to have dissipated, and he had the injury from the rabbit’s digging, and the aggression was diluted. He had heard them talking about what the future would be for the scientist when they paid the visit, late at night. They’d all be on him, and scratching each other for the chance to punch, kick, bite.
‘Great cover, Phil, the job. We don’t know where you are, don’t see who you meet.’
‘No background to you, Phil. Nothing spelled out. Where were you before coming to us, and what other group did you work with? Are we the only ones, a late convert?’
‘Spit it, Phil, your version.’
‘Good answers, Phil, or it gets bad, and bad hurts.’
He thought the girls would be worst, would do the big damage. He looked for a friend, found none. He did not know whether he had ‘cop’ written on him in big letters across his forehead.
The questions started. Following fast on each other. Hard to think, register. Pummelling him with questions, and waiting for the slip-up, the mistake. Not knowing how he would make it out.
Lying on the hostel bed, tossing, but asleep and unable to wake.
The guys picked her up.
The one Zeinab knew as Scorpion drove. The one who called himself Krait sat beside him. She had the back seat with her bag.
The text to the tutor had been sent: she had to be away, family business, the essay was delayed; a perfunctory apology, it would be completed when she was back. Dark, a spit of rain: foul and dispiriting. She was not greeted as a friend, nor as an equal. When it was Andy who met her, he’d be out of his car and round the side, seeing her coming towards him across a pavement, and he’d open the door for her and see her settled in, like she was special. Perhaps to them she was not remarkable, not pretty, not able, not a part of the team, just a convenience. To the tutor she was not remarkable. Perhaps he had a kid at home who was crying, who had woken him, and his mood might have been soured by the messages he found on his phone. The tutor was not supposed to have read the feeble excuse until she was well clear and had given her phone to the guys, had it replaced. Not remarkable and not greatly valued.
Dear Zeinab, Regret your essay is delayed and hope the family business is both pressing and soon dealt with. Just a formal thought – if your course work is anything to go by then your interest in that aspect of your degree course is only partial in my estimation. If you are not interested you could always give up your place, not be a version of a ‘bed-blocker’. I note your recent offerings to me have been satisfactory at best, poor at worst. Some people, we find, are not well suited to the rigours of university education and move on towards other directions. Enjoy your ‘business’, and we should talk on your return and when your essay is delivered. Best, Leo (Tutor, Social Sciences, Met Manchester). Like a kick in the teeth, what Andy had done to the attacker on the pavement. She had read it, had not deleted it; had tried to juggle and was failing. They went fast, on an empty road, towards the outskirts of the city.
Was failing to keep up with her work, was increasingly drawn into the world of Krait and Scorpion, spent more time with Andy and the sealing of a relationship on which a plan now depended . . . could not do it, keep the necessary balls in the air. She did not tell them. Three times she had read the message, which seemed a politely phrased call that she should quit, go home to Savile Town, be the little girl who fell short and was not the clever bitch she had thought herself. The guys would have cursed her for removing a brick in the construction of the plan. Her parents would have shouted abuse at her for tarnishing their reputation, first in the family to go to university – first in the street to go to university – and it would have been boasted of at any opportunity. She sat and bottled it. She was drawn in, assumed it was like quicksand. Each step and sinking deeper. Zeinab could remember the heady times when she had first been recruited, in love with the memory of two cousins, dead, could remember every shop window with the careful displays from the last visit to the shopping mall – and the images and the blood – and could recall an old longing to be a part of that army . . . Turning towards her, Krait – whose venom was fatal – eyed her in the light of oncoming traffic, and clicked his tongue for her attention.
‘It is about security.’
‘Yes.’
‘You understand what is the alternative to security?’
‘Always I am careful.’
‘The alternative?’
‘To be arrested.’
‘It is not, Zeinab, just to be arrested. It is to sit in a prison cell for ten years or twenty years. I assume the boredom of it is suffocating. You achieve nothing, make nothing change. To be arrested is to have failed, and you are arrested because you have ignored security. Or, Zeinab, you may be dead. If they arrest you, or me, or . . . They will come with guns. They would like to kill you. Who complains if they shoot you? No one complains. Perhaps it is better to be killed than to exist in a cell. If you attack them and are shot then they have to buy your life dearly and the cause is served. If they shoot you when they arrest you, and say your hand went to a pocket and they feared for their lives, then everything about you is wasted. It matters to us, Zeinab, security. Always you must have suspicion.’
‘Yes.’
They hit an outer road, left the city.
Karym watched.
The kid was brought for the barbecue.
A car had been chosen, an old Citroen, with bald tyres and scrapes on the paintwork. The car was owned by a man whose eyesight was failing and who had been told by the clinic that he should no longer drive. The car was in a convenient place, not too near any occupied building. The car was not chosen because it was spare to the old man’s needs, but because it suited.
Karym had no role in the barbecue. He had seen several. The first he had witnessed had been when he was fourteen years old. He remembered it clearly: a barbecue in any of the projects was not quickly forgotten, lessons were usually well learned. His brother had organised it as a response to an infringement of discipline. The smell had lingered in Karym’s clothes for days. He understood. Everyone in the project understood that discipline was integral in any project, would be enforced. The kid might have thought that he was to be brought out for a public beating, perhaps with an iron angle bar, perhaps with a baseball bat or pickaxe handle. Or he might have thought, possibly hoped, that he was being taken to an area of wasteland to be thrown down among the shit and the weeds and then a pistol fired into his kneecap which would mean hospital for a month and a limp for a lifetime. If he were lucky, Karym thought, then he would not have considered the prospect of a barbecue awaiting him. It was a refinement of his brother that Hamid, himself, did not bring the kid from the building where he had been held most of the night. The job was given to the
kid’s associates. In La Castellane loyalties switched fast.
Karym imagined the kid’s mother sitting on a chair in her kitchen waiting for news of her son and hoping that she would learn before first light of a beating or a pistol shot and hear the cry of an ambulance siren; she would not have considered calling the police, not earlier and not now. With the night’s trade over and the project quiet, there was little movement except for the flitting shadows that skirted the buildings, hugged the walls, barely visible, and the kid was led towards the Citroen. A progression made in silence, and the kid cooperated and did not scream and did not fight, did not resist, and might still have hoped. The bad moment would have been when the little procession came to the last corner to be rounded before reaching the car. Quickly, and with expert efficiency by a youth who hoped to take a favoured position in the organisation of Karym’s brother, a tightly folded cloth was hooked up over the kid’s head, allowed to fall below his nose, pulled taut and past the kid’s teeth and into his mouth, gagging him. Round the corner, where the wind buffeted the alleyways of the project, would be the vomit-making stench of spilled gasoline. Now the kid reacted. No baseball bat, no pickaxe handle, no pistol noisily cocked, but the stink of the slopped fuel. A crowd was there – not the old people, but some of the younger women who would have put off their bedtime to come out for the show. They were the ones who knew the colour of the balaclava worn by the policeman who had the name of the executioner of more than two centuries before, and they had elbowed their way to vantage-points, had a clear view. Most of the watchers, joined now by Karym, were the teenagers who had no work other than in the evenings when they supervised aspects of the hashish trade. The smell of the gasoline would have been in the kid’s nose.
Battle Sight Zero Page 15
