The children were now in bed.
His wife had spent the evening preparing for tomorrow’s classes, but was now upstairs, undressed, in bed, reading. First he turned off all the lights on the ground floor. Then he would sit a full fifteen minutes in darkness and would listen to the sounds of the street: then he would check the pictures from the discreetly sited cameras that covered the front and rear of the property. Then he would go upstairs, his pistol in his hand, would change into his pyjama, would go to his side of the bed. The pistol and his mobile phone would be placed on the table, next to the lamp.
He could not have accurately measured the threat to himself – or to those he loved. The Major, of course, was reasonably trained in the art of personal survival. He could shoot straight, could be effective in unarmed combat, could use a baton and strike an enemy’s shoulder close to the neck, disable with the intensity of the pain. What he could not do was be present for the school day to protect his wife, now concentrating on her book – nor safeguard his children, one sleeping quietly and one with a hacking winter cough. He assumed a real and clear-cut threat existed. He might not know the names of all those men who sat in the rotten core of the city’s commerce and who had reason to hate him. His defiance of their power and influence was fostered in his refusal to accept bribes, arrangements that would benefit him . . . there had been another attempt to suborn him that evening. So blatant. A Mercedes car parked outside L’Évêché, a message sent inside from the outer gate telling him that he would learn something to his advantage if he came out of the building and spoke to the driver. He had come. Through the opened window of the costly black saloon had been offered a tightly wrapped package. It might have contained 20,000 euro, might have been 30,000, might have been a long lens image of his children in the playground, of his wife returning from the weekly shop, bags around her feet as she fished in a pocket for the key. He had seemed to reach for the package, as if accepting it, and it had been released, but he had not grabbed it. It had fallen in the dirt. He had turned, walked away, and the courier would have had to leave his car, walk round it, pick up the padded envelope, return it whence it came. He would have made those enemies angry, and the ones in the Town Hall, and the councillors and those in positions of patronage, and the gangsters when he took them off the street.
He would climb the stairs. He would go to the bed and lay the pistol and the mobile phone beside the lamp. The weapon would be armed, the safety engaged. The bell on the phone would be turned low . . . He barely thought of the English detective team, trying to do a job for which the necessary budget was not available. He turned out the light. He slept lightly. He liked to have the pistol close, and needed to have the phone beside it.
The room was clean. The bed was covered with a white sheet and a floral duvet. A print on the wall showed a view of the vieux port. Outside, a radio played New Orleans jazz. A wardrobe covered half of the wall between the door and the bathroom. An easy chair was lodged by the window that looked on to the square below. The curtain was drawn but thin, and the snap of the wind penetrated the open window and fluttered the material. On another wall was an Impressionist’s view of Les Calanques, steep white stone cliffs that were brutally sharp and the sea beneath the rocks was gentle. A forgettable room, suitable for those anxious to hurry on with their lives.
A strip of light shone at the bottom of the bathroom door.
They’d had a café supper, meat and salad, ice-cream and coffee.
Andy Knight – a temporary name with a personality easily altered to suit necessities – sat on the bed. Little said at supper and neither of them drinking alcohol. Total inevitability recognised. Not much of a room and a noisy bed which would not inhibit them. He had opened his bag, pondered what to take out, gone for clean socks and a clean shirt, and a wash bag. Had cleaned his teeth, had undressed, was on the bed, naked, waiting . . . she had gone to the bathroom and had carried a nightdress with her.
He supposed the problem was solved. It had not arisen when he had taken on other legends. She’d washed and the plumbing reacted with a gurgling in the pipes. The toilet flushed, then the taps ran again . . . He could tell himself that it was what they both wanted. He saw the stern face of the Detective Chief Inspector, and the contempt at the mouth of the civilian woman, and the hypocrisy was rank because both, so obviously from their body language, did hard humping. Relationships between officers on a team was as frowned upon as sex by an Undercover with a target . . . they were Gough and Pegs. He had no name, had glanced at her passport and seen that she used a phoney one with the actual photograph but a different identity.
He had been an ‘action’ man, had walked as a volunteer into a ‘heart of danger’, had been admired, praised for his ‘dedication’, might have been a combat hero but for the camouflaged hole burrowed out by a buck rabbit on the common above Lympstone, but understood little of women, had never known a long, serious bond, something that might have a future.
The door opened. she switched off the light. She wore the nightdress, and the curves of her body were well shown by it . . . He thought her more nervous than he was.
One problem settled, another rose to take its place.
Would he . . .? Would he turn her in . . .? She sat beside him, then reached across him and the bare skin of her arm brushed his chest. Would he? Probably would. Would she do her double damnedest to kill him if she knew the truth of his loyalties? Probably would . . . They were touching, like young lovers, clinging to the vestiges of innocence: were able to do that because the lies lived strong and well.
Turn her in, shop her, tout on her? What loyalty, after doing it on a noisy bed above the square by the street market in central Marseille, was she owed? Did affection exist? Questions and issues rampaged. Lust or love, or just eating what was piled on the plate and in front of him? The last thing he saw clearly on her face was shyness. Her hand was on the stem of the bedside light and it wriggled to find the switch. It clicked. She was a shadow, barely lit by the lamp in the square, filtering through the curtains.
He would not choose when the arrest squad came for her. He might be there and might not. He could be bundled aside as the guys spilled out of a convoy of cars and covered her with aimed firearms . . . could have been eased away from her and then would see her taken down and weapons a few feet from her head on the flickering image of a video recording. She would be in shock, near to wetting herself, perhaps not realising at that moment that the heavy goods driver she had taken in her arms and . . . in trauma when she did know. Not screaming, but quiet, crushed and huddled. His call. For him to decide. She was close to him, warm against him. Would he turn her in, after this and when the assignment dictated it, betray her – and walk away, and have a beer at the pub and blow a kiss at the girls who pulled the pints, and take time somewhere at the end of a far track where the demons could not travel, nor trouble him, and go back to work with another name and another target and Rag and Bone ditched? Would he? And have a hug and a squeeze from Prunella in the office? Would he consign her to HMP Holloway, maximum security? She covered his mouth, kissed him . . . Of course he would turn her in. Of course.
Chapter 13
They were together, warm, damp, holding each other tight, bodies locked.
The bed shouted for something to be done about the springs. Andy had pain in his back from the scratches her nails had made on his skin, open wounds, like he had been whipped.
It was a sacking offence: an appearance before a disciplinary tribunal, a predictable outcome . . . some grave-faced guy or an angry woman chairing the hearing. No sympathy, no talk about ‘how difficult it must be for you people, in the circumstances of close proximity, to keep your zipper fastened and your dick hidden away’, no leeway for a caution and a rap on the knuckles. Out, gone, dumped on the street.
It had started slowly, as if both were frightened, coming from opposite horizons. He broke each and every regulation laid down by the SC&O10 bosses. Never discussed with Gough and his woman, nev
er defined how the relationship should play out, and studiously ignored once the trigger had come – him meant to be driving her to the south of France. Had he raised it then, an answer might have been, ‘If that happens we’ll give advice, but not dealing with a hypothetical, better just kick that can down the street until we have to confront it . . . use your judgement.’ She drove the old cart and horse through the culture wall of her parents, then of her cause – neither Krait nor Scorpion would have factored it into their decision that she was reliable on the mission as a courier. Had begun with the sensation, both of them, that they tasted forbidden fruit. Her first time? Of course. She could have shouted, that bloody obvious. It had come to that stage, do it or get off the pot, and he was shown that him and her, that bed, was calculated. Yes, she had gone into a chemist in Avignon and he had stayed outside, had not followed her because she had waved him away, and then she must have bought the small pack of condoms. Could have been 5 euros for that size of pack. They had blundered towards the first start.
Not the first time for Andy, or any of the alternate identities he’d assumed. But not done many times. A girl in Exmouth, down the road from the Lympstone barracks, seemed to have enough of an itch to want it from any recruit needing a trip to adulthood: fast, perfunctory, in the back of a car. A girl in the town where his parents lived, name and address exorcised from his mind, and pretty much everybody of his age knew her. A leaving dance at school, and some of the kids had left bottles, alcohol, under the shrubs closest to the gym hall, and she could barely stand, nor him, and both had confided dread afterwards, no protection. Another girl in the office, used to do the opposite shift to Prunella . . . All in common with one aim: get it, have the T-shirt, forget it . . . he would not forget her, his Zed.
She had started to writhe and him to grunt, and sweat sheened them . . . He had wanted to shout it into each room of each floor of the hotel, then little squeals from her . . . He would go before the hearing, she would be taken into an interview room off the cell block, and she would spill out the detail of the liaison, be encouraged into graphic detail, and the end-game would have her brief declaiming in court, between theatrical questions delivered with a tone of manufactured disgust. He was the man, and older. He was an experienced officer. At best she was ignorant of the criminal conspiracy in which she was involved, at worst she had been encouraged deeper into the plotting, used as a crude Trojan horse. She was a simple girl, without sexual experience, and the seduction was little more than ‘entrapment’. Were the undercover officer’s superiors responsible for encouraging him to step outside the parameters of his duty? Did he act without authority? A judge would send the jury out, hear submissions, call them back in, refer to irregularities and dismiss the charges, and would write a note of complaint to the Crown Prosecution Service for their handling of Crown v Zeinab . . . Out on his neck, disgraced. She would walk free but would be despised in her own community, deplored for providing rich pickings for the popular press, dismissed by the university, after spending months locked up. It was that big, for each of them, what they did.
She nibbled at his ear. He sucked and bit at the moist skin of her throat.
The wind fluttered the curtains, and a bin was blown on the square, and noisy gangs of youths were returning through the old part of the city as the clubs closed . . . she screamed. He called out, pushed a last time, accepted that it was an animal instinct that gave him the last strength left to him. A shuddering, an end to a career . . . something so unprofessional that it shocked him. Her hold on him loosened. He subsided, rolled away from underneath her.
What would he say in court? Deny it. A defence fabrication. His word against hers. An experienced officer against a dangerous and motivated terrorist, an easy choice for a jury: there would be files full of evidence of her proven lies. Deny it, wash his hands of her. Where had he slept? ‘On the floor, sir.’
Another couple, below, had started up. He chuckled . . . Heard the rhythm of the springs. Had to laugh. She asked him why, little panted gasps breaking up the question. He said it was because of them, they led the way, maybe now half the street would get going, like it was with the Mexican Wave. But they had been the first – and said also what he thought of her . . . Might have meant it.
‘Zed, hope you listen to me, hope you believe what I say . . . you are fantastic. You are the best.’
Enough light came into the room for him to see her skin, and the shape of her when he eased back, gazed at her. The bedding had slipped. She did not cover herself, as if he had snatched away any modesty, had given herself. The great almond eyes gazed up at him . . . nothing like this in his life before . . . he could remember how it had been at the start. Him doing the Galahad stuff, riding to the rescue. Handing out a sustained beating to the ‘thugs’ who had attacked her. All play-acting, and her buying into the sham. The pendant, usually hidden and private only to them, hung from its chain, nestled in the cleft; a small stone that reflected the limited light, and he had charged for it on his expenses sheet, filled in each month, and it had not been queried. ‘Cheap at the bloody price – bit skinflint’, the woman would have said as she shuffled the paperwork and what few scrawled bills he could include.
She took his hand. Held it softly. Pulled it towards her. Laid it on the hair, gazed at him, gave trust. It was, he might have said if challenged, ‘in defence of the state’, but his mind stayed silent.
It had been, for Zeinab, a supreme moment.
She did not know how it might have been bettered . . . not if she had followed any pathway laid down for her by her mother and father, and gone from the little house and the little street and taken the PIA flight to Karachi and Islamabad, and the feeder to Quetta. Met the boy who was to be her husband, seen her parents haggle with his parents, endured an arranged match, gone through it, been fucked that night and hard because that was how his brothers and uncles would have urged him to be. ‘Dominate, set a tone . . .’ Fucked hard, oblivious to how she felt, and no protection. Nor if she had gone with a boy at the university – with drink or without drink – or a boy from her own culture, and him wanting a notch to scratch on a table in his room, or on a bedpost, hurried and fumbled. No chance of it being better if it had been Krait or Scorpion, or either of the men she had met in London, had done it with her in a car, on the backseat and her across whichever of them and pretending to be expert, and it hurting, and it being fast . . . The girls on the corridors of the Hall of Residence spoke of it usually as too quick, coming too soon for the men, not coming at all for them, and sometimes it was a reward they expected for buying dinner, for getting the cinema tickets, for the club entry fee. Like none of those. His hand moved, was gentle, explored again where it had been before. She took off what he wore, replaced it . . . she could not see her precious nightdress, bought to impress, chucked off the bed and on to the floor.
There would be a cottage, hidden away, remote, where sea birds shouted and the sea ripped at the base of the cliffs, and he would be there and a fire’s flames would flicker over the skin of her body and his chest, his legs . . . she would need that, to be hidden. When Krait or Scorpion, or whoever it was decided should have the rifle, that responsibility, and walk into the shopping mall, cocked the weapon, aimed it, fired with it, she would need to be far from the place . . . unless it were she who was chosen. And felt his fingers stroke the skin, and tangle nails in the hair, and ease again across her. Already she had been made a woman, was fulfilled. She pushed him back, was above him, and the pendant fell between her breasts. She lowered herself. Was supreme and had power.
Her phone fidgeted on the table at her side of the bed. He did not see it, did not respond as it shook.
It was good again, better than the first time. He was a useful boy, she thought she had chosen him well. They matched the other couple. The two beds made an orchestra. And she hurried him, tried to tire him, pushed for him to be faster, then to explode, then to sag in exhaustion, would need him to sleep. He called out her name, as if that
proved his love . . . useful and well chosen, and his expertise growing, and her now – the first night – controlling. Then he would sleep.
As the fishing boat slowed, so the rolling increased and the pitch became – to Hamid – more awful. He had already been sick more times in the last hours than in the whole of his life. First he had been able to get to the side and vomit over it, and allow the spray to blister against his cheeks. Then he’d thrown up on the deck, and the last time his anorak was splattered with thin liquid, all that his stomach still held.
The boy moved cat-like behind his father. He was offloading fenders, putting them over the side of the small craft and then lashing the attached ropes to hooks. Hamid had only in the last few seconds understood why. In spite of the wind and white crests there was only faint cloud out and abroad that night. Traces of milky moonlight and views of star formations, not that Hamid knew one constellation from another. Now a section of the skies had lost those light pricks and there was a high wall close to them. He heard the shouts and, above the crash of waves around him, realised that a cargo ship – no low portholes as there would be on a cruise boat or a roll on/off ferry – was manoeuvring close to them. The captain shouted close to him, above the pitch of the waves, that he was trying to find a location where they might be able to use the sides of the boat as shelter. The wall towered over him, then they struck the hull, just above the waterline, and Hamid was thrown back, tossed away across the deck. He had lost feeling in his shoulder where the impact had been, but was revived by the water on his face. If the fisherman and his son had noted his collapse they showed no sign. The side of the fishing boat thudded against the freighter. Yells from above and responding shouts from the wheelhouse. A hatch opened, level with the soaked roof of the wheelhouse.
Battle Sight Zero Page 31
