Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  The Passat remained behind them, and took the same turn away from the fish market. Political friends, men bought with money, told him of the director of the unit that dealt with what they designated organized crime. The pinnacle of the director's police career would be the conviction of Timo Rahman, but he would never reach it.

  The Bear headed for the Reeperbahn. It was where Timo had begun, where he had been knifed. He took the narrow cut through and they were held up behind a tourist bus that paused for photographs of the street with the high wall at its end and the gap through which only pedestrians could go to the brothels. At the police station, high and brickbuilt on the corner of the Reeperbahn, where the detectives had always failed to link him to ownership and 'immoral earnings', the Bear swung right and into the wide street.

  Young, fresh from Albania, he had dismissed the Germans who ran the Reeperbahn, fought them and overwhelmed them. Three or four of those who had been at his side in that little war of guns and knives, all Albanians from the northern mountains, could have sworn evidence and imprisoned him, but they were miqs, relatives by marriage, and would have died rather than be accused of treachery against him.

  Now, increasingly, he was clean. His business activities were distant from the wars on which he had built his empire. The Bear brought him to

  Schauenburgstrasse and the premises of one of the oldest and most respected legal companies in Hamburg. A fellow guest, but arriving by a different doorway off the street, would be a city politician against whom no stigma of corruption existed. In a private room, over lunch, there would be discussion on the development funds necessary for the building of high-quality offices on one of the few bombsites remaining from the Feuersturm; minor investment and major profit in return for development permission being nodded through Planning. Neither the politician nor the lawyer who would chair the discussion, knew of the Canun or of the fis, had little comprehension of the reach of a blood feud and the vicious reprisals that could be brought down on them and their families, but they understood the threat of public disgrace that an appearance in court would bring them and those they loved, and they would not have lasted a sentence of imprisonment in the Fuhlsbuttel gaol. He was safe from them.

  For Timo Rahman the meeting was routine. A matter of greater complexity was nagging in his mind as he took the lift to the upper floor where the lawyer practised hospitality. That matter, the rewards for which were great and the challenge huge, would take him to the western coastline. It excited him because the ground to be covered and the cargo to be delivered were new to him, and the risk to his security was devastating. He shook the lawyer's hand and was ushered inside. What nagged at him was his feeling of certainty that the man he must rely on was a foreigner with no understanding of the loyalties of Timo's people, the grandson of his father's comrade in war, Ricky Capel. The coded name Timo had given him, spoken with contempt, was 'Mouseboy'.

  Rubbish day, and from the window Sharon Capel, matriarch certainly of number eight and probably of all Bevin Close, saw the bin lorry edge into the top of the cul-de-sac. Her own wheelie was outside her front gate, on the pavement, but her daughter-in-law next door received better treatment because the boys came down the side of that house to collect her wheelie, then put it back by the kitchen door. Joanne had that small luxury because nothing that concerned her husband, Ricky, was too much trouble for the bin-boys.

  Sharon had lost track of time. If she had realized how late it was in the morning she would not have been dusting in the front room. She kept the house spotlessly clean because there was little else for her to do. It hadn't always been that way. She had been in Men's Underwear at British Home Stores for most of Ricky's childhood, and spent evenings washing up in a cafe, all the years that Mikey was 'away' doing bird and his share of what had not been retrieved by the Old Bill was running down. Mikey had been in Brixton, Wandsworth and Pentonville too long and too often… and when he was out she had kept up the jobs because the big one that he was going to retire on always fucked up. Mikey had been between release and rearrest on a day when the bin lorry had come into Bevin Close. That same day, Ricky had been a month past his twelfth birthday – and from that day his sisters, Therese and Rachel, had detested him.

  Small wonder that Therese now lived in Australia and didn't write, and Rachel was in Canada and didn't ring. They should have beaten him that day, made a line and queued up to thrash the little sod – but none of them had. He had stood by the door with his fists clenched and no one had dared face him down when the bin lorry had come along Bevin Close.

  It was the day she had realized the nature of her son.

  The cat was a coal-black neutered torn and the family called it Soot. It was worshipped by the girls and however many bloody years Mikey had been inside it always greeted him when he came out, like he was Soot's favourite. The cat was old and could be

  'caught short'. That morning, wheelie-bin day, Soot had been shut inside little Ricky's room – probably an open window downstairs had slammed the door.

  Ricky had gone to his room and found that it had crapped right in the middle of his bed. He'd brought the cat down, holding it helpless by the neck, and before any of them could intervene, he had wrung the cat's neck, then smiled, like it was nothing, and taken it outside the front, where the wheelie was waiting for the bin lorry. He had lifted the lid, dropped the cat inside, then gone straight back upstairs, brought down his bedding and dumped that in the wheelie too. He'd come back in, had stood by the door and had dared them, his grandad and his nan, his mum, dad and sisters, to do something. If he had screamed abuse at them, they would have done 'something'.

  Not like that… calm as anything, a little smile at the side of his mouth and no creases on his face. His eyes

  – Christ, his eyes – had been so bloody cold that they'd terrified her. Not just her: Mikey, who had been a quality get-away driver for wages snatches, and Percy, who had been a one-man crime wave in burglary after his demob. All of them frightened by a boy of twelve because of what was in his eyes.

  She went on with the dusting and cleaning. Because of the money her son gave Mikey, she didn't have to work, didn't have to do anything but keep the house clean and cook his favourite meals, and she doubted he even remembered killing the cat.

  That day there was a harsher atmosphere on the Amersham. Malachy sensed it.

  Not a new dawn, but more a day clouded with uncertainty. He walked.

  Old ladies did not linger to gossip with friends as they would usually have done during the daylight hours, kids were not on the soccer spaces, young mothers stampeded with their prams, and the vagrants had disappeared, as if they were fearful of taking the blame for what had happened.

  He went right round the perimeter of the area that had been, until the early hours of that morning, the territory of the High Fly Boys. He passed doorways of flats that had been deserted since they'd been torched in disputes, past windows that were boarded up because residents had fled, and along the walkways until he reached the steel barricades erected by police to prevent the pushers having free run. He walked by the empty shopfronts and the closed-down daycare centre. Ivanhoe Manners had told him, months before, that more than fifty million pounds for the New Deal for the Community programme had been swallowed by the estate. He could see no evidence of its value. He strode past the never-used garage with parking bay 286. Fear of the unknown blanketed the estate, and it was because of him.

  He did his circuit and when he came back to the main entrance of the stairwell of block nine, he stopped, turned and leaned against the concrete.

  Had he concern for the estate? Did he care about Millie Johnson? Was he now self-obsessed? No answers. The estate was in shock because the order of its life was altered. Millie Johnson, waiting for the anaesthetist, wouldn't have cared, not a damn. Just self-centred crap to make him, Malachy Kitchen, feel better, think he was taking a worthwhile step on the ladder.

  Nothing achieved, nothing changed for the better.

&
nbsp; As self-centred, as self-indulgent as when he had been asked to screen suspects from a lift operation and he had remarked to the battalion's adjutant: 'Be happy to – if your Jocks haven't beaten them all half insensible.' Hadn't told the adjutant, or Cherie who shared the Portakabin with him, of the email that had come in that morning. Not from Roz – he hadn't heard from her for three weeks. The email was from Major Arnold – decent Brian Arnold who might have qualified for the title of kindest old guy at Chicksands.

  Hoped he was well, hoped his work was interesting, hoped he'd fitted in, hoped he would note 'There's a lot of bicycling these days round Alamein Drive. One cycle is most popular. Cheers and good wishes from all of us deskbound warriors, Brian.' It meant, in code, that Roz was the base bicycle: the Chicksands honey-pot was his home, halfway down the left-hand side of Alamein Drive. So self-centred that he had snapped the sarcasm at the adjutant, and so self-indulgent that his mind had been a country away from the village street when the ambush had been sprung and the RPG round had come in close.

  Chapter Five

  Feverishly, Malachy polished.

  Back from his walk, the door locked and bolted behind him, he had gone to his bed, knelt and taken the shoes from the black sack.

  They were his most valuable possession. His mother had said, T know it's all sand and donkey poo down in Basra, dear, but there'll be times when you need to be smart. Your father found that in Aden when he was a sprog subaltern and you were just a star in my eye. You should never be short of a good pair of shoes. I always say that a man's character is judged by his shoes.' Roz hadn't gone with him to Devon for that last lunch before he'd flown from Lyneham to Iraq. She wouldn't have gone if elephants had been dragging her – not after his father had refused to attend his son's wedding to a girl who wasn't 'suitable'. Over sherry before lunch his mother had produced the gift-wrapped parcel with a ribbon round it. When he'd opened the box, the shoes had gleamed at him, and they'd fitted to perfection. He'd gone back with them that night to Alamein Drive and had not shown them to Roz, but he'd worn them on the flight down, and all the days that he was in Brigade before his transfer to the Scottish-based battalion… and he'd worn them when they had flown him out.

  Roz had hovered above him in the bedroom at the quarters. He had packed a rucksack and a suitcase, everything he would need except the helmet, the flak-jacket and the Browning 9mm, which would be issued to him the next evening when he landed. The evening sun had lit the bed. She had stood over him while he had transferred the neat piles of clothing into the rucksack and the case, and had not helped him. He had sensed the attack was coming and had not known what would trigger it. The shoes had. The strings of the sack were fastened. The photograph of her that he loved most – he had taken it at the Colosseum in Rome, the light bright on her hair and on the walls behind her, happiness on her face – in a silver frame that her parents had given them went into the suitcase and he zipped it shut. He had laid out the starched uniform he would wear on the aircraft, and then he had gone to the wardrobe and taken out the box and the shoes. The attack had gone through sarcasm to anger then on to a sneer when she had seen his mother's note and the crosses for kisses. 'Oh, that's nice. Only the best good enough. What did they cost – two fifty? Where did you find two fifty to spend on a pair of shoes? Isn't there anything here that needs two hundred and fifty quid spending on it? Sorry, sorry, a present from Mum. How touching. Be sure to send her a postcard from sunny Basra and tell her you're wearing Mummy's shoes and keeping them nice and shiny.' Her father had retired as a warrant officer (Instructor) at the Royal Military Academy; his father had retired with the rank of brigadier – he'd thought it didn't matter, and had been wrong.

  He polished hard – as hard as he had worked on the boots issued him for Basic Training before his father had pulled strings and opened the gates of Sandhurst for him. Malachy sweated as he rubbed the cloth over the toes and was frenzied at his work.

  When he had left Chicksands, when he had tried to find work as a civilian, he had worn those shoes. His mother had never seen them on him; his mother and father had declined to meet him. And he had worn the shoes when he had taken the train to London, when he had laid out his money on the counter of the off-licence opposite Marylebone station and had bought the two four-packs of Special Brew, then found a bench and had started, for the first time, to drink away the demons. Midnight, with nowhere to go, and he'd ended up with the derelicts – without a blanket and without cardboard – and he'd seen the eyes covet his shoes. He never took them off. If he had taken them off, that night or in the nights of the weeks that followed, they would have gone. In the hostel he had slept with them under his pillow. His watch had gone, a twenty-first birthday present from a godfather, and his wallet, and his money from begging, which had been in a cheap little purse on a bootlace round his neck, with his tags, but his shoes had stayed on his feet.

  Now it was as if Malachy tried to polish away the scars, on the shoes, of his life. With ferocity he burnished the toecaps. They shone – he could see his face in the brogue patterns. More polish. He gripped the left shoe and worked the cloth over it.

  He heard the knock at his door and Dawn's voice called to him.

  He turned the lock and drew down the bolt. She did not look at his face but stared at the shoe. She said distantly, eyes never off the shoe, 'I am going to the hospital. I want to be there when they take Millie to theatre, and then I will stay till she is awake again. It will be late when I come back. I am going to have to walk from Walworth Road, from the bus. Would you, please, meet me from the bus? I would like that.'

  'Of course I will.'

  'There is a cafe by the bus stop. Can we say at eleven o'clock?'

  'Yes.'

  'Am I silly to be frightened of walking in the Amersham that late, even after what happened to the boys?'

  'I don't think so. I'll be at the cafe by the bus stop at eleven o'clock.'

  The siege was over. The firemen's tenders blocked Kostecna, and a lacework of hoses ran down the alley that was too narrow for them to pass. Ladders were thrown up against the building's walls and water dripped. Wisps of smoke filtered up between the tiles where, hours before, there had been flames and billowing black clouds. No more gunfire from under the roof, and the last grenade explosion was a distant memory. It had a finality about it. Hard for Polly Wilkins to recall the excitement of being in the different vans that had kept the street entrance under surveillance, and the frustration of being held back while the storm squad had gone in, and the emotion of seeing the bloodied casualties brought out.

  She was at the alley's entrance, where it joined the street, and from there she could smell the charred roof timbers on which the hoses played. Every five minutes, sometimes less, she demanded of Ludvik when she would be permitted to climb the stairs and see the scene for herself; each time she was offered only a shrug. Of course Ludvik did not know. What had been dramatic in its unpredictability now had a dreary certainty. Polly understood why her station chief, Braithwaite, had gone back to his office and had stayed there. She shivered as the evening's cold settled on her – not that it mattered, but that night there might be one of the year's final frosts. The last time she had phoned Braithwaite to complain about the slowness of the fire crews and the further delays in her getting up the stairs to see where they had made their stand, he had said to her, with annoying plausi-bility, 'You can put a kettle on the stove, turn on the gas and light it, but shouting at the kettle won't make it boil faster.' She detested that sort of banal logic.

  All around her, she heard the cursed protests of residents whose apartments were unaffected by the fire but who were still prevented from returning to their homes. They seemed unable, unwilling, to comprehend the scale of the threat that had settled among them in the top-floor apartment. Bombs, killing, mayhem, catastrophe – the face of al-Qaeda.

  Two men of al-Qaeda were dead – not an arm or a hand or fist of the Organization, little more than the tip of a fingernail.
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  She swore aloud and Ludvik turned sharply to look at her.

  Polly wouldn't explain. So few did. Dominic had not understood. He was Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had a future, and had bought her an engagement ring with a double diamond twist; the wedding had been talked of vaguely for 'some time next year' and they'd lived together at his Battersea flat, not her Wandsworth pad. He had been posted to Buenos Aires. 'You'll like it there, darling, fascinating culture.

  You don't want to hang around that place where they kicked you.' What about him chucking in the FCO and coming out to Prague? 'You're not serious, darling, are you? What? Throw up my career?' Was the work of the Secret Intelligence Service of less importance than tramping a cocktail circuit in Argentina? Two months after she'd arrived in Prague and a month after he'd bedded down in Buenos Aires, the email had come: 'Don't think this is going to work.

  Sorry about that but you made the bed and you'll have to lie on it. Please send the ring, at your convenience, to my parents and they'll know what to do with it. No hard feelings but better to cut and run. I wish you well, Dominic.' The end of the great affair of Polly Wilkins's life… because he didn't understand.

  Only Frederick Gaunt understood. Al-Qaeda, and what it could do – the importance of a co-ordinator – dominated her life, left no room for love… damn it.