Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  – except that breaking the man was the only road sign posted to him as a way back for his pride.

  After he had crossed the square and had started out down a wide street, he understood why the woman in the tourist kiosk had curled her lip when he had insisted on a cheap room. So little money had been given him that he must husband it. She had sent him to where rooms were inexpensive, on the Steindamm.

  He passed shops that sold sex videos and sex gear, and by cafes where Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians or Afghans lounged on plastic chairs, and by doorways where hookers – young and old, heavy-hipped and skeletal thin – waited, smoked and eyed him. He saw the sign for rooms to rent. He stopped.

  A woman, African, stared at him. Her chest bulged in a halter-top and her thighs were bare below the short, tight skirt. She sucked at her cigarette, then blew the smoke at him but the wind snatched it away.

  He smiled, but shook his head. The recruits in Basic Training had talked sex – talked sex, described sex, gloried in sex. Had sat around the TV while the videos played sex, had boasted sex. Malachy Kitchen's first sex had been with a girl from a farm, in a barn, on the edge of the Devon village where his parents had moved to. Second sex had been with a corporal's wife, and he'd washed for a week afterwards, had scrubbed himself and prayed there wouldn't be a rash to show for it. Third sex had been with a girl at the end of a ball at the Royal Military Academy: he hadn't known her name, had been half-cut and it had been under a tree across the grass from the Old Building. Fourth sex had been with Roz. He gestured, he hoped politely, to the prostitute from Africa that he wanted to pass by her and she moved aside with reluctance. He went inside and there was a man at the counter, small, wiry, with plastered hair, and he asked in the correct German, as taught him, for a room.

  'For one hour or for two hours?'

  He shook his head.

  'For a half-day?'

  He said he wanted a room to stay in, and sleep in – alone.

  'For how many nights?'

  Malachy was about to say that he did not know, but that seemed inadequate. For three nights. He was given a price. No haggling, no dispute. The key was handed to him, and then, as an afterthought, a residents' book was opened on the counter and a pen pushed forward.

  He thought of giving the name Ricky Capel, and the address Bevin Close. He shook his head, heaved the black plastic sack on to his shoulder and started to climb the stairs. On the first landing, in one of the rooms that would have been hired for an hour or two he heard a bed's springs whine. On the second landing a man came by him still pulling up his zip. He was wondering how long it would be before the African girl took a client to the first or second floor. He went on up.

  The room allocated to Malachy was bare but for a bed, a basin and a faded print of a mountain scene. He crossed a worn rug over linoleum and dropped his sack.

  He was there because of what had been said to him, and said of him – none of it yet wiped.

  14 January 2004

  'Is it a crisis? That's what I'm asking.'

  'Way outside my loop of experience. What I can tell you, he's not a mark on him.'

  'I've got a gunshot wound, a PI category, and a road-traffic accident casualty – and a Jock with a scorpion sting.

  Where in that does Kitchen figure?'

  'For God's sake,'Fergal said, 'I'm the adjutant. You're the MO. You want my judgement – pretty far down, propping up the heap, I'd say

  … From what they said at Bravo, maybe a bit lower than propping it up.'

  The medical officer was bent over the trolley. The gunshot victim was dosed with morphine. It was an ugly wound, but a challenge for him. He had to stabilize the man before he could be shipped out by helicopter. Not much else he could do. What struck him, as he probed to get the worst of the detritus from the wound – fragments of the bullet, fragments of the camouflage trouser material – was the consummate bravery of the young guy. Not a whimper, not a scream, not a shout. Trust in his watering eyes… A damn good soldier. And alongside him, flat out on the second trolley and waiting patiently for his turn, was the casualty from the road-traffic accident. Oh, God – and there was the I Corps captain, who stood remote from them in the doorway and had not spoken since Fergal had brought him to the aid post.

  'What's the latest on that bloody chopper – or are the blue jobs on a day off?'

  The adjutant peered over his shoulder. 'You wouldn't think so much stuff could get in there… Extraordinary.

  They had a dust storm back at Brigade, but the RAF are up now. The chopper's ETA is just down from thirty minutes.

  Is that going to be time enough?'

  The medical officer growled, 'Have to be, won't it? For both of them.'

  As a captain, the MO had the qualifications of a general-duties doctor. He had trained at medical school in London and had then thought that any future was better than an inner-city practice so he'd joined the army and been posted to the Scottish regiment. The work gave him swagger and was not demanding. Back in the UK, at the regiment's barracks, he spent his time patching up injuries from training and sports. In Iraq, his duties varied between extremes: from gunshot wounds to the complicated childbirth problems of local women. He was accepted: his skills were admired from Sunray down to the youngest soldier, and he revelled in it.

  With minute tweezers he lifted clear threads of cotton cloth matted in the blood. He stood to his full height. 'Not much more I can do.'

  'There's a surgical team on the chopper,' the adjutant said.

  He asked his orderly to cover the gunshot wound, then peeled off the gloves and went to the basin. Disinfectant soap and water. He sluiced his hands together, and when he looked up he saw the man, Mai Kitchen, still in the doorway, still silent. He turned to Fergal. 'What's the story about him?'

  'Varnished or unvarnished?'

  'Plain bloody truth will be good enough.'

  The adjutant hesitated. 'It's all hearsay, of course.'

  'Don't fuck me about, what's being said?' He dried his hands with vigour and went to the second trolley, the road-traffic accident. He was worried now – this patient might be a more serious casualty than the gunshot wound.

  He boomed, 'Spit it out.'

  While he worked, the medical officer listened.

  'It's pretty unpleasant… Here goes. He went on patrol yesterday, familiarization with the ground before a lift this morning. He was in place to assist with interrogation and screening of prisoners. The patrol was hit. Two or three rifle positions and an RPG was fired. He was somewhere near the back of the stick when it started. What I'm hearing from Bravo's people is that Kitchen did a runner.'

  'You are joking? What -just flipped out and left them?'

  'There, and then not there. Gone. The corporal thinks he's been hit. Goes back – puts the whole section at risk, but Jocks don't leave a man who's down – and retraces the ground covered in the ambush site. He's nowhere to be found. Hits the panic button. Then they find his helmet in the street – and his flak-jacket. Bravo's gearing up for a major search-and-rescue operation, loading the Warriors, the full works. Then he's found. He's walking back to Bravo, but without his weapon. Two questions, natural enough.

  What happened? Where's his weapon? No answer. Not a word out of him. Up at Bravo, they say he's yellow.'

  'Christ Almighty – you serious?'

  'Personally, I couldn't stand him. So, does he classify as a medical case?'

  'Well, he doesn't get to slide under white sheets, if that's what you mean. I don't call him a patient. This is a patient.'

  His fingers moved with extreme gentleness over the ribcage of the casualty. He yearned to hear the thudding of an approaching helicopter's rotors. Sandwiched, long ago, into courses on the treatment of gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries and debridement infection caused by clothing fibres and lead particles, there had been a bare hour on the recognition of what the lecturer had called 'battle shock'.

  The medical officer had been with commanders and seco
nds-in-command, and none had taken seriously what they were told.

  He looked up. Maybe anger caught him. Maybe the growing pallor on the casualty's face frightened him. Maybe the helicopter would be delayed too long. He shouted at the man in the doorway: 'Don't just bloody stand there like a spare part. Move yourself Do something. There's a mop. Orderly, give him a mop and bucket. Give him a broom to sweep with. Clean the place.'

  When the time came, when the two Jocks on their trolleys were wheeled out from the aid post, the man – Kitchen – still, with mechanical movements, swabbed the floor with the mop and squeezed it out into the bucket.

  Later, the medical officer walked briskly back with the adjutant, his pistol bouncing against his thigh, and said,

  'I'm not taking responsibility for him. Sunray'll have to see him. He's not mine. Yellow's not a colour I fancy. Kitchen's nothing to do with me.'

  Benji met Charlie and together they sipped coffee.

  'So, he's up and away, Ricky is.'

  'Did he tell you, Benji, what for?'

  'Told me, big surprise, nothing.'

  'You happy, Benji, with nothing?'

  'I tell you why it's nothing – because he doesn't know nothing. He didn't tell me why he was going to Hamburg because he didn't know. I'm straight with you. He got the call and he jumped – and I don't like it. The Albanians are bad news. Does he listen? Does he hell… You heard me, I've told him. I told him two years back' and a year back and six months back that he shouldn't be in bed with those people. Does he listen?'

  'You told him, Benji, and I heard.'

  'Doesn't listen to us, but listens to them. I take him to the airport. I think he's going to talk plans. He talks about his brat's football. Not till we're there, going through the tunnel into the airport, does he start chattering about the big guy he's going to meet. What worries me, they'll eat him.'

  'Worry you bad, Benji?'

  'They don't share, the Albanians, they don't do equals. All co-operation until they're ready. They get inside you, a worm in your gut, and the worm bloody kills you when they're ready. Everybody had a share of Soho and King's Cross till they were ready. Now nobody's in Soho or King's Cross except them. Right now, he thinks he's the big number and Timo Rahman wants to share with him.'

  'You thinking of bugging out, Benji?'

  'Be great. I got enough put away, you have – Davey has… Where to? Nobody bugs out. Sort of on a rope, aren't we? And the rope's got a bloody knot on your ankle and mine. That shit-face, little Enver, he's at the airport door to meet us. He's out of the car and the shit-face takes his bag, like he's Ricky's bloody porter, and they're off and gone. I'd trust the shit-face as far as I could kick him, wouldn't let him carry my bag. You just get that feeling, don't you, when it's all going to finish in grief?'

  'You heard, Benji, what Davey said. Petrol.'

  'On the dosser's clothes in Bevin Close, the stink of petrol. I heard what Davey said. And petrol done George Wright's place… I don't know what's happening – used to, but I don't now. He went off all trusting, Ricky did, with his bag carried for him, and what I'm thinking about is the claws stuck in him – and I didn't tell him, and I never do and you don't

  – and grief.'

  'No, Mr Capel, he is not in the hotel. I am sorry. I have paged him and he is not in the restaurants or in the bar. You heard yourself the paging announcement for Mr Enver Rahman, and he has not come. He is not here.'

  He sagged. He gazed at the tall, leggy woman behind the desk, who wore the hotel's uniform, its logo sewn over a shallow breast. Nothing that had happened was what he had expected. No answers when he had pumped on the flight as to what business he would be doing with Timo Rahman; questions brushed aside like he was a kid and talking too much and would find out when elders, betters, decided. No chauffeur at the airport to meet them, but Enver had gone to Avis who had held a car for them. No explanations as they had driven into the city. The hotel was a tower of glass and concrete, not in the city centre, and they'd come past gardens to get there; the sort of hotel that did conferences, twenty-six floors of it. He'd checked in. Enver had said that he had phone calls to make and they'd meet up later, had to do the arrangements. No suite for him, no flowers, no bowl of fruit: just an ordinary room. He'd kicked his shoes off and lain on the bed because the one easy chair was dead hard, and he'd flicked the zapper and the channels were all German except one that was American news. Who gave a fuck for American news?

  Not Ricky Capel… And he'd waited… and waited some more. .. had waited for the phone to ring and it had not. Maybe he'd dozed off on the bed. Then he'd woken, had worked the phone buttons and called down, had asked to be connected to the room of Enver Rahman, and a dumb cow had told him there was no gentleman of that name resident in the hotel, and she'd checked, and she'd repeated it. It was like he'd been dumped. He'd just assumed that Enver was booking in after he'd gone to the elevator. It wasn't respect. The disrespect was on the plane, was a hire car, was a hotel that was shit, was him being abandoned and Enver bugging out. What wound up Ricky Capel tightest was disrespect. He believed nothing, nobody.

  He strode away from the desk, went to the swing doors, pushed them open violently, didn't care that they battered into the back of a man manoeuvring his bags inside, and walked out into the forecourt. He could see where Enver had parked the green VW

  Passat that had been his lift from the airport. There was a BMW 5 series, black, where the Passat had been.

  He strode back inside and anger pounded in his head

  … All disrespect. There was a family now at the desk, in tracksuits: that sort of hotel, short breaks, cut rate, for bloody families. He pushed past them and imposed himself in front of her.

  He demanded that she look for any message left him. She left the desk and walked elegantly away, but slowly – he reckoned that deliberate, like she thought he was shit. He turned and saw the faces of the family, kids and adults, all staring sourly at him, like they thought the same of him as she did. She returned, a folded sheet of notepaper between her fingers. He snatched it.

  No smile on her face, but she pissed on him. 'You can read German, Mr Capel?'

  He felt the blood run in his face.

  'Would you like me to translate for you, Mr Capel?'

  He nodded.

  'It says, "Ricky, you will be collected later. Have a good stay in Hamburg, Enver." That is all.'

  'What's it mean, later?' He was Ricky Capel. He was big. He ran an area of south-east London. He was He blurted, 'What does that mean?'

  The skinny bitch said, 'I think, Mr Capel, it means that you will be collected later.'

  He stood on a great dyke and gazed out at the sea. The Bear had stayed in the car, on the road on the land side of the barrier built to hold back flood tides. Timo Rahman knew about the life throb of cities and the demands of men for the titillation of the shows provided by his clubs and the requirement of the young for heroin, cocaine and pills, which he sold, but he knew nothing of the coast and its wildness.

  The tang of the salt was in his nose, and the wind ripped at his hair and tugged his coat tight against his chest and flapped it away from his legs, and there was the spit of rain in it. He stared out over the white crests of the waves and watched seabirds ride on them in the shelter of inlets. He had looked at the motoring-book map in the car, had searched for a place on the coast where there were fewest roads, had seen the line of islands and had made his decision. It would be here that the man would be brought, then shipped to the island and taken on board the trawler. Because he had no knowledge of the sea, it seemed to Timo Rahman to be a simple matter.

  If he braced himself against the wind's power, held his hand across his forehead to divert the rain and squinted, he could make out the faint line that was the island's shore facing him. It was remote, isolated.

  Always Timo Rahman went with the instinct that his gut gave him. .. From his car, before they had driven along the road behind the dyke, he had watched the ferry go, with f
ewer passengers on it than he had fingers on his hands.

  He had seen what he needed to see. He turned away. Beyond the road and the Mercedes, a solitary tractor ploughed a field of dark earth, and further back, shielded by trees, was a farm with brick out-buildings, and on that horizon, inland, were the towering wind turbines that turned briskly. Mud splattered his trousers at the ankles and smeared his shoes as he went down the dyke's slope, and reached the Bear.

  He asked if there had been a call but the Bear shook his head.

  Timo Rahman said quietly, 'He will come, I have no doubt of it, and it is from here that we will send him on.'

  Malachy left them his key and went out into the afternoon light. Time to kill till darkness. He cut down towards the Hafen City of modern-built apartments on reclaimed land, then left behind the two big church spires, like markers for him, and found the pavement that led him west along the Elbe. He would walk the whole way. Walking was best for soaking up the atmosphere of a city never visited before: time spent walking, his mentor at Chicksands had said, was never time wasted. He had no plan, only the determination that he would manufacture one when the evening came, when he was in place. He walked well, with brisk purpose, and his only stop was at the Landungsbrucken where he parsimoniously pecked coins from his pocket and bought himself a burger and an ice-cream. There was no weapon for self-defence or attack in his pocket, but he was without fear: nothing worse could be done to him than had been.

  He was home for lunch. One night in every three weeks on his roster, Tony Johnson did a thirty-hour shift, worked through the night, then came home for a meal and sleep. He was dead beat.

  'You actually did that – God, I can't believe it.'

  He had no secrets from her. While she cooked, he had sat at the table, with the coffee mug in his hands, which shook, and told her what he had done.

  'You bought his ticket, you gave him money, you sent him to Hamburg? I find it hard to credit.'

  He hung his head, then lifted the mug, both hands, and slurped the coffee.

  'Have you any idea of what you've done? To him?'