HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  It was sensible of him to leave the inner hallway for the latrine and the Communications room. If he had stayed then it would have been remarked that he had not prayed. It was hard for him to pray because the words of the Qur'an held no place in his mind. He had no time that early morning because his mind was filled with the vision of armour-piercing missiles and a Transit van and the man who had been named by Matthew Furniss.

  He would enjoy his meetings with Mr Eshraq. He thought that he might enjoy conversing with Charlie Eshraq more than he had enjoyed talking to Matthew Furniss.

  * * *

  The clock was striking in the hall.

  And the dog was restless, and sometimes there was the heavy scratching at the kitchen door, and sometimes there was the clamour of the animal shaking the big link chain on its throat. The dog wouldn't sleep, not while there were still people moving in the house and voices.

  Mattie heard the clock.

  The light was in his eyes. He was on the sofa and they had stripped his shoes off and they had heaved his feet, too, on to the sofa. His tie was off, and the shirt buttons were undone down to his navel. He could see nothing but the light. The light was directed from a few feet so that it shone directly into his face.

  It was a long time since they had hit him, kicked him, but the light was in his face and the Major was behind him and holding his head so that he could not look away from the light, and the bastard Henry fucking Carter was behind the light.

  Questions . . . the soft and gentle drip of questions. Always the questions, and so bloody tired . . . so hellishly tired. And the hands were on his head, and the light was in his eyes, and the questions dripped at his mind.

  "Past all our bedtimes, Mattie. Just what you told them . . . ?"

  "A young man's life, Mattie, that's what we're talking about. So, what did you tell them . . . ?"

  "Nobody's going to blame you, Mattie, not if you come clean. What did you tell them . . . ?"

  "All that barbarian stuff, that's over, Mattie, no more call for that, and you're with friends now. What did you tell them . . . ?"

  Too tired to think, and too tired to speak, and his eyes burned in the light.

  "I don't remember. I really don't remember."

  "Got to remember, Mattie, because there is a life hanging on you remembering what you told them . . . "

  * * *

  *

  Park watched the peace of Charlie Eshraq's sleep.

  He wondered how it would be, to live with love. He was alone and he was without love. He was without Parrish, and Token, and Harlech, and Corinthian. He was without Ann.

  He was away from what he knew. What he knew was behind him, back at the Lane. What he knew had been stripped from him on the nineteenth floor of Century House.

  He did not know how to find love.

  He thought that going to Bogota was a journey to escape from love . . .

  There was the sharp bleep of the alarm on Eshraq's wrist.

  He watched as Eshraq stirred, then shook himself. Eshraq was rubbing hard at his eyes, and then sliding from his bed and going to the window. The curtain was dragged back.

  There was a grey wash of early light in the room. Eshraq stretched.

  "Pretty good morning to be starting a journey."

  There was a glass of Scotch and water beside him. The Major sat on the sofa beside him. Henry was at the window. He had his ear cocked and he stared outside, and probably he was listening to the first shouted songs of the blackbirds.

  It was the third Scotch that had been given to Mattie, and each had less water than before.

  The Major had his arm, shirt-sleeved, loosely around Mattie's shoulder.

  The Major smiled into Mattie's face.

  "You know where you're going, Mattie, in a few hours?

  You know where you'll be by lunch time? Do you know, Mattie?"

  The slurred response. "I want to see a doctor, I want to go to bed and sleep, and then I want to go home."

  "A magistrate's court, Mattie."

  "Bollocks."

  "The charge will be conspiracy to import heroin."

  "Don't be so fucking silly, Major. It's too late at night for games."

  "Charlie ran heroin. Heroin subsidized him. You ran Charlie. You're going down, old boy, going down for a long time."

  And the arm was round his shoulder, and Mattie was trying to push himself up from the sofa and away from the calm of the voice in his ear, and he hadn't a prayer, hadn't the strength.

  "Nothing to do with me."

  "Fifteen years you'll get. Very hard years, Mattie."

  "Not me."

  "You'll be in with the queers and the con artists and the GBH lads, in with them for fifteen years. It's all sewn up, Mattie. How's Mrs Furniss going to cope with that? Is she going to traipse up to the Scrubs every first Tuesday in the month? And your daughters. I doubt they'll come more than once or twice."

  "I don't know anything about heroin, nothing, not at all."

  "Ask the magistrate to believe you, Mattie . . . Ask him to believe that you didn't know how Charlie Eshraq, more or less a son to you, funded himself. . . and ask Mrs Furniss to believe that you didn't know. It'll break her, Mattie, you being inside. Think on it."

  "It's just not true."

  "She won't have a friend in the world. Have to sell up at Bibury, of course. Couldn't face the neighbours, could she?

  Your neighbours'll be a bit foul, Mattie, the jokers in your cell, they have their pride and heroin they don't like."

  "It's a lie, I know nothing about heroin."

  "It's all been a lie, Mattie. It starts with the lie that you didn't name Charlie Eshraq . . . Did Eshraq fuck your daughters?"

  The pause, the silence. Henry had turned. Henry looked at his watch, grimaced. The Major nodded, like he thought that he was nearly dry, close to home.

  "Mattie, Charlie Eshraq was running heroin out of Iran when he was fucking your daughters. Do you reckon heroin came with the service, Mattie?"

  "It's not, tell me that's not true."

  There was the first shrill call of the birds.

  "It's what I hear."

  "God . . . "

  "Pushed heroin to your daughters, Eshraq did."

  "The truth ; . . . ? "

  "It's you I want the truth from."

  "Charlie gave that filthy stuff to my girls?"

  "You've just had bad luck, Mattie, a long run of terrible luck."

  There were tears running down Mattie's cheeks, and the hands that held the glass shook. The Major had raised his head and Henry could see his eyebrows aloft.

  Carter said, from the window, "You named him, Mattie?"

  "It wasn't my fault."

  "No, Mattie, it wasn't. And nobody will hold it against you."

  Henry came to the sofa. He had his notepad in his hand.

  He wrote a single sentence and he put a pencil in Mattie's hand, and he watched the scrawled signature made. He buffeted off the hall table on his way to the telephone and there was pandemonium in the kitchen.

  The Major was at the door of the lounge, on his way out.

  It did not seem necessary for them to shake hands. Henry went back into the lounge. He went to Mattie. He took his arm and hoisted him, unsteady, to his feet.

  "Can I go home?"

  "I think that's a good idea . . . I'll drive you myself."

  "Tell me that it wasn't true."

  "Of course not, Mattie. It was an unforgivable trick. I am so very sorry."

  Dawn was coming, and at first sight the day looked promising.

  21

  He was looking down from the window and into the yard.

  There was a kid, ten or eleven years old, scrubbing at the windscreen, and Eshraq was hunched down by the front radiator screen and he already had the Turkish registration off and he was holding the Iranian plate in place while he screwed it tight. There were lights in the kitchens that backed on to the yard, and they threw shadows into the yard.

&n
bsp; He was dressed and he was shaved when the telephone bell rang in the room. He was zipping shut his bag, and he had his passport and his wallet on the bed beside him, and the ticket for the flight back to Istanbul. The telephone in the room had not rung since they had arrived in Dogubeyezit.

  Below him, Eshraq had the front plate secure, and was moving to the rear of the Transit. He was moving easily and casual in old jeans and trainer shoes and a service blue cotton shirt. And the telephone was still ringing.

  He picked it up. He heard the clicking of big distance connections. He heard a small voice and far away.

  "Is that room 12?"

  "This is room 1 2 . "

  "Is that David Park?"

  "Park speaking."

  "I want to speak to Charlie."

  "He's not here."

  "Bugger . . . I've been cut off twice on your switchboard.

  Can you get him?"

  "Take me a bit of time."

  "And we'll get cut again, God. Name's Terence, I met him in Ankara."

  He remembered the Genclik park. He had been 400 yards back, and Eshraq and the man had walked, and there had been a tail. He remembered it very clearly. He could picture Terence. Terence was pale skin, almost anaemic, with fair hair and a missing chin, and he looked to have come from a good school.

  "If you give me the message I'll pass it."

  "You can reach him?"

  "If you give me the message I can reach him."

  "The telephones in this country are bloody awful . . . You guarantee he gets my message?"

  "I'll pass it."

  "This is an open line."

  "That's stating the obvious."

  "He's not to go . . . That is a categorical instruction from my people. He is not to approach the border. He is compromised, can't say more than that. He is to return to Ankara.

  Do you understand the message?"

  "Understood."

  "Most grateful to you."

  "For nothing."

  "I might see you in Ankara - and many thanks for your help."

  He replaced the telephone. He went back to the window.

  The rear plate was in place and the kid was scrubbing dust off the Transit's headlights. There had been the tail in Istanbul, and the tail in Ankara. He assumed they had been better in Dogubeyezit, because he had not been certain of the men on the tail, not certain as he had been in Aksaray and the Genclik park. He was a long time at the window. There were many images in the mind of David Park. There was, in his mind, Leroy Winston Manvers back in the corner of the cell, and he was at safe haven in Jamaica. There was the wife of Matthew Furniss at the door of a cottage in the country, and her husband was the guarantor of a heroin trafficker, and he was on safe wicket back in the United Kingdom. There was Charlie Eshraq sitting on the bonnet of a Sierra saloon and mocking him, and he was on safe passage out. There were images of Ann and wet towels on the bathroom floor, and images of the supercilious creature who had done the big put down at Foreign and Commonwealth, and images of Bill Parrish stuck in an ante-room outside the office of the power and the glory at Century. He knew what was right and he knew what was wrong. He had to know. Right and wrong were the core of his life. He moved around the room. He checked each drawer of the chest and each shelf of the cupboard, and he frisked the bathroom. He made sure that they had left nothing behind. He slung on his jacket and put his passport and his airline ticket into the inner pocket with his wallet, and he threw his grip bag over his shoulder.

  You will satisfy yourself that he has indeed travelled back into Iran.

  At the Reception he paid for the room. They had made out a joint bill, and he paid it. He folded the receipt carefully and put it into his wallet. He didn't give the porter a tip, because he couldn't claim on tips, and anyway he preferred to carry his own bag. He put his bag in the small hire car, locked it away from sight. He went back inside the hotel and took a side door beside the staircase, and then the corridor that led into the yard at the back. The tail doors of the Transit were open and David could see the drums of electrical flex piled to the roof and stacked tight.

  "What kept you?"

  He started. He hadn't seen Eshraq at the front of the Transit, he'd lost him. He was looking at the drums and he was wondering how successfully they hid the wooden crates.

  "Just clearing up the room."

  "Did I hear our phone go?"

  "Front desk, confirming we were leaving today. Probably thought you were running out on them."

  He saw the big smile on Eshraq's face. "I suppose you paid."

  "Yes, I paid."

  He saw the big smile and the big buoyancy of young Eshraq.

  Park didn't smile, himself, often, and it was rarer for him to know happiness. And Eshraq was smiling and he looked as though he had found true happiness.

  And the big smile split.

  "You hate me - yes?"

  "Time you went for the border."

  "Your problem, you're too serious."

  "Because I've a plane to catch."

  "And you'll do my letter?"

  "It'll be posted."

  "What I'm doing - don't you think it's worth doing?"

  "Thinking about you makes me tired."

  "Don't I get a goodbye and a kiss."

  "Good luck, Charlie, brilliant luck."

  He said that he would see Eshraq in front of the hotel. He walked back through, and out of the front doors. As he pushed them open he heard the farewell greeting from the Reception Clerk, and he didn't turn. He unlocked the car, and when he was inside he wound down the windows to dissipate the heat.

  Keys into the ignition. It was slow starting, he thought that the plugs needed cleaning. There was the blast of the horn behind him. The Transit came past him. He didn't think that he would see Eshraq's face again. He thought that the last that he would see of Charlie Eshraq was a grin and a wave.

  He pulled out into the traffic. By the time that he had found a space there were two lorries between himself and the Transit.

  A wide and straight and pot-holed bone shaker of a road. Two lorries ahead of him he could see the Transit. He drove slowly. As far as he could see ahead there was the column of commercial vehicles heading for the Customs post.

  Mattie stood in the hallway.

  He could hear their voices. It was typical of Harriet that she should have walked back to the front gate with Henry Carter. She had that inbred politeness, it was a part of her.

  Sweet scents in his nostrils. He could smell the polish on the walnut hall table. He could smell the cut chrysanthemums that were in the vase on the shelf of the window beside the front door. Sweet sounds in his ears. He could hear the passage of the honey searching bees in the foxgloves that lined the path between the house and the front gate, and he could hear the whine of the flies against the panes, and he could hear the purring of his cat as it brushed against his legs.

  The car left.

  She came back inside. She closed the front door. She latched the door and made him safe from all that had happened to him. She came to stand against him and her arms were loosely around his waist. She kissed his cheek.

  "You need a jolly good shave, Mattie."

  "I expect I do."

  "What a dear man, that Carter."

  "I suppose he is."

  "He spoke so well of you, how you'd come through it all."

  "Did he, darling?"

  "And he said that you needed looking after. What would you like most, Mattie, most and first?"

  "I'd like to sit outside in the garden, and I'd like The Times, and I'd like a mug of coffee with hot milk."

  "He said it was pretty rotten where you'd been."

  "We'll talk about it, but not yet."

  "He said they're all talking about it at Century, your escape

  . . . Such a nice man, he said they were all talking about what they call 'Dolphin's Run'."

  "I'll go and sit in the garden."

  The sun was hardly up. There was still dew on t
he grass.

  He heard the first tractor of the day moving off to cut silage.

  * • •

  The road was quite straight and it ran bisecting a wide green valley. To his left was Ararat, magnificent in the sunlight. To his right was the lower summit of Tenduruk Dag. There were grazing sheep alongside the road, and when they were clear of the town they passed the folly palace of Ishak Pasha. He glanced at it. The building was above the road, dominating.

  He had read in the guide book that a Kurdish chieftain in the last century had wanted the finest palace in the wide world, and he had had an Armenian architect design it and build it.

  And when it was completed then the chieftain had had the Armenian architect's hands cut off, so that he could never design another that was as fine . . . Rough old world, Mr Armenian architect. . . Rough old world, Mr Charlie Eshraq.

  Far ahead, where the haze of the shimmered heat had begun to settle, he could see the flat-roofed buildings of the Turkish Customs building, and he could just make out the blood red of the Turkish flag.

  Amongst the fields stretching to the foothills of Ararat that was to his left and Tenduruk Dag that was to his right, he could see the brilliant scarlet oases of poppies. Where the poppy flowers were, that was a good place for the burying of Charlie Eshraq.

  He eased down through the gears.

  The Turkish Customs post was one old building of two stories and a sprawl of newer, more temporary, buildings. A wind lifted the flag. There were troops there, pretty lackadaisi-cal bunch, too, and there was a Customs official in the centre of the road who seemed to stop, briefly, each lorry, speak to the driver, then wave it on. On the other side of the road was the queue of vehicles travelling the other way, coming out from Iran, stopped and waiting for clearance. No delays for the lorries going into Iran. The Transit was two lorry lengths ahead of him. And the going was slower. One hand on the wheel, and his thumb was inches from the horn. One hand on the gear stick, and his fingers were inches from the arm that could have flashed his lights.

  The Transit was stationary.