Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  The buildings, what remained of a concentration camp, seemed isolated. Malachy went faster, struggled to lengthen his step, and his shoes stamped out on the road's Tarmac. He wondered who came here, and why. Were there still lessons for learning?

  Hallucinations delved in his mind. Did men in vertical striped pyjama suits, which hung on fleshless bodies, watch the tramp of a lone figure on the road?

  Did he smell the smoke that curled from a high brick chimney? Did he hear the trap of a gallows sprung, and the rattle of shots? If he could have run he would have. He did not have it in his limbs to hurry and the sights and sounds of the fantasy played in him till he was far beyond the shadows of the place.

  Malachy Kitchen lived. Ghosts had died there – starved and died, fallen from exhaustion at a work site and died, had been dragged to a noose and had died, or had been forced down to kneel in a grave pit and had died. He saw no self-pity and heard no cry for mercy.

  He lived.

  Far away, behind his back, was the evening glow of a city with orange light bouncing off low clouds, where men searched for him.

  At the end of the road was the Elbe river and a bridge. Across it was a bus shelter where two elderly ladies waited. They eyed him with acute suspicion.

  The stubble was on his face, his clothes hung wet on his body, his breath came in pants and he sagged down on to a seat beside them. They shifted from him as far as was possible and held their handbags tight in their gloved fists. He thought of the young woman who, to save him, had kissed his mouth, and he thought of the last young woman he had tried to kiss: she had turned away from him, flinched from him.

  He asked them where the bus went. They were in their best as if they had visited family or friends. The bus went to Seevetal.

  Was there a railway station at Seevetal? They showed no willingness to engage in conversation with the vagrant who shared their shelter. There was a railway station there.

  Where did the trains go to from Seevetal? They sniffed in unison, as if he disgusted them – to Hamburg, Rotenburg and Bremen.

  Malachy's head dropped. The tiredness came in waves across him. He thought of two young women.

  One had turned her face from him, one had kissed him and he dreamed… The sharp jab of a bony elbow woke him, and he walked behind them to board the bus. In his mind was only pain and the sight of the one young woman, his wife.

  ***

  25 January 2004

  'For God's sake, don't you understand anything? No way was I going to traipse down to Brize Norton. What did you think I was going to do? Hold up a bloody banner on the apron, "Welcome Home to My Hero"? Don't you know what you've done to me?'

  The doorbell rang.

  He might at least have shown some fight, but he played what they called him, 'a gutless bastard', and denied nothing. Just said, each and every time, that he didn't know what had happened. In denial: that was what her father had said on the phone when Roz had called him an hour ago, denying it because he couldn't face what he'd done – and her father had said he was right behind his girl for not meeting the aircraft in from Basra.

  The doorbell rang again, as if this time a finger was on the button and staying there… It was now eight days, on the corps's calendar in the kitchen, since 'it' had happened, whatever it was, and six days since the gossip mill in Alamein Drive had produced the whisper. He'd come home the afternoon before, like a rat running, with a train warrant and a taxi from Bedford station. He'd tried to kiss her when he'd dumped his bag down – no bloody chance.

  Explanations were what she'd demanded, but all she'd had was the whimper that he didn't know what had happened, like that was supposed to be enough for her.

  The bloody bell kept ringing.

  It had all been explained to her in the secretariat, while he'd been on the train and coming home. Resignation would be best, and then a quiet departure – no future. The papers would be sent round. God, there were some hateful bitches in Alamein Drive! So she'd entertained a couple of guys – what was the big deal? Just Jerry and Algy, and maybe they'd stayed till late, or was it early? Didn't half the bitches entertain a friend when the husband was away? If he'd fought, Roz could have believed him. All that last evening, she had followed him round the house and demanded to know if it were true: was he, her husband, a

  'gutless bastard'? Doors slamming behind him, he'd retreated, but she'd followed. Through the kitchen, the dining room, the sitting room, out into the garden where the whole bloody world of Alamein Drive would hear her yelled question, but not the answer. She'd slept in her bed; he'd used the sitting-room sofa. She'd shopped that morning, every curtain in Alamein Drive twitching as she'd gone to the car, and twitching again when she'd come back and offloaded the plastic bags – like it was she who had done it.

  'Right bloody entertaining for me, my husband called a coward. I don't suppose you thought of that.'

  Maybe if he'd hit her it would have been better. He was slumped at the kitchen table and he winced each time she attacked. She spun.

  She crossed the hall. Roz's dad, retired sergeant – a man who had spent the best part of his service in ditches in Ireland knowing that if a farmer's dog located him it was down to a Browning 9mm automatic to stop him being bloody tortured, then slotted, by the Provos – her dad had said on the phone that her room was all shipshape at home for her, that she should ditch the useless bastard.

  The padre, who doubled as the welfare officer – and wanted everyone to call him Luke – was at the door.

  She said curtly, 'Yes, Luke, good to see you. Before you ask, is it convenient? No.'

  The old fart had papers in his hands, shuffled them in his fingers. 7 brought these round, and I wanted to know how he was.'

  She did it mock-brightly, a little flutter in her voice. 'He's fine. Nothing wrong with him. Quite himself- why shouldn't he be? Sort of everyday thing, isn't it, being labelled as a runner, a cop-out, a coward? He's in good shape.'

  'I'm very sorry.'

  'I doubt you're half as sorry as me.'

  'He'll have to go. No choice but to resign his commission.

  It's not something you can come back from. I wish it were.'

  'Marked with it, yes.'

  'It could be said, Mrs Kitchen, that a little too much revelry went on here in his absence. Frankly, that's what I heard from Major Arnold. He was quite distressed but thought he ought to tell me. If Mal had heard about them, your visitors, then that might account for a poor performance in a combat situation.'

  'He would only have heard such lies, Luke, if bloody nosy sods had passed them on. Is that right?'

  Only over her dead body was the padre entering her home. Roz stood square in the doorway. A woman, nearly opposite, had found a reason to visit her wheelie dustbin.

  Another woman, down the drive, had come out of her home with a brush and started sweeping her path. Be a bloody shame when their entertainment ended, but she'd be gone before the next day broke. He was flushed and had a twitch at the side of his chin. He rubbed a mole there with the hand holding the papers.

  'I have to say, Mrs Kitchen, that I was monumentally disappointed to hear of this. I thought Mai a first-class officer – but, we are all subject to errors of judgement when assessing colleagues. Actually, I appreciate your dis-comfort. It's not easy for any of us when a man falls short of expected standards. Wearing my welfare hat, I've brought his resignation form, which has already been counter-signed by the colonel, so he'll need to do that. There's an AFO 1700 that I am formally delivering – it requires this married-quarter to be vacated within ninety-three days, but better sooner rather than up to the deadline. It's a wretched shame, Mrs Kitchen – trouble is that you cannot go back on life and patch up mistakes. It goes without saying that it would be better for all concerned if Mai stayed away from the mess.'

  She snatched the papers from him. 'I'll tell him.'

  'Excuse me, Mrs Kitchen. What I've said to you has been one-on-one – not for repeating. I wouldn't want-'
/>
  'Wouldn't want to join the back-s tabbers,' she spat at him savagely. 'No, there's enough of them already. You'd have to be in the queue. Don't lose sleep over it, Luke, because you'd be behind me in the line.'

  Roz turned away.

  The padre's parting shot had a worried whine in it: 'He'll need a deal of love, and some care.'

  'He won't get that from me.' She kicked the door shut behind her.

  He was standing three paces from her in the sitting-room doorway. So, he had learned what she thought of him. So, he had heard what was his future. Not her fault. None of it was Roz Kitchen's fault. He took the papers from her, not a word, and scrawled his signature, and she slumped, buried her head and wept. She heard the stamp of those damn great heavy shoes on the stairs, then the sounds of him moving in the bedroom. She heard him call for a taxi to be at the main gate in an hour. She felt no love, and doubted he would find it anywhere.

  She had written her signal, interminably long but everything that she had been told, and had transmitted it. Then she had flopped on to the camp-bed.

  Polly Wilkins slept, dreamless.

  She was curled on the top blanket and below her the sounds of the consulate and its business went unheard.

  The phone woke her. She started up, did not know where she was. Darkness had gathered in the room, the wind heaved at the tiles and the rain pounded against the one small window. She groped towards the phone, banged her shin on the desk edge and swore.

  'Yes – who is it?'

  'Polly?' She heard Gaunt's voice sharp in her ear.

  'Yes, me.'

  'Polly, I sing your praises. To that venal idiot aloft upstairs, I said this morning I had complete faith in you. He wanted Berlin on the road to Hamburg double damn fast. I declined that offer. Were you asleep?'

  'Yes, afraid I was.'

  'Would you say, Polly, that I was always honest with you?'

  She sighed deep. 'Spit it out, Mr Gaunt.'

  There was a pause. She heard the silence on the line.

  She wondered if he was tilted back in his chair, if he had straightened his tie first, and she waited to be punched.

  'I'd say, Polly, that you fucked up… A bit harsh? I don't think so. Yes, that's being honest.'

  'In what way did I fuck up, Mr Gaunt?' she asked, control in her voice, which suppressed her winded fury.

  'Simple enough, my dear. Put with greater politeness, there's a boring old saying, "Can't see the wood for the trees." You heard a story, an extraordinary one, and then you rejected its relevance. You were told about drugs importation and said to yourself, "That's off my bailiwick," and discarded it. You could not see, in my humble opinion, the wood for the trees. Your man's laudable, but useless, obsession with the narcotics trade is the trees but you missed a sight of the wood. Hear me. A boat, a remote shoreline, a collection… It was laid in your lap. It was the information that I was confident enough you'd find. It was why I backed you.'

  She let the air seep from her lungs and hiss between her teeth. 'Yes, Mr Gaunt, I fucked up.'

  'Get there.'

  'Do I have the cavalry?'

  'I rather think not – better to keep it close… Oh, yes. What's he like, the Crusader?'

  'Rather sweet.' For a moment, to the intimacy of the phone, she giggled – then cut it. 'But damaged, quite badly damaged,' she said, with sincerity

  'And capable?'

  'Have to be, wouldn't he? Or he wouldn't have come this far.'

  'He should be a bellwether to you – a sheep that leads and others follow, know what I mean? That island, Polly, is where you should be.'

  The phone purred in her ear.

  The van in the driveway had a logo of an antenna on its side and below, in printed paintwork, the slogan

  'Better Satellite TV Reception Throughout Your Residence'. Two men carried boxes of equipment into the travel agent's home.

  He said to his wife, 'I don't know what it's for, but they have me by the balls and if they twist it will hurt.'

  'The Rahmans are only new rich, unimportant to us,' his wife said.

  They stood in the hall, their children dismissed to their bedrooms, and watched the boxes taken past them, up the stairs and left on the landing. The two men came down again, went outside and returned with a collapsible ladder and tools. The loft hatch in the ceiling above the landing was opened, and they manoeuvred the boxes through the gap.

  He said, 'They are from the organized-crime unit – they would make bad enemies, the worst.'

  'The Rahmans are Albanians. We owe them nothing.'

  Later, one of the men came down, went again to the van and returned with two galvanized buckets. The travel agent asked him why they were needed. He was told, matter-of-fact, that two roof tiles would be moved. From one hole there would be a view for the camera lens down on to the back garden of the adjacent home, from the other there would be a view of the drive at the next-door house and the front door under the porch. When rain dripped down between the shifted tiles, the buckets would catch it. He noted, and she did, that neither man had wiped his feet on the inside mat, and that the dirt from their shoes had made a track up the stair carpet. He did not complain, nor did she. Because they have me by the balls and if they twist it will hurt, neither dared to protest at the mess tramped into their home.

  She held his arm. 'What would happen to us if Rahman knew what we have agreed to?'

  'I thought of him as a businessman who had done well – but he is the target of the organized-crime unit.'

  Any man in the city who read, daily, the Hamburger Abendblatt was familiar with the blood vendettas and feuds of the Albanians and the viciousness of their response when crossed. 'I don't know what would happen to us,' he lied.

  Later the men came down the stairs with their empty boxes and their ladder, and one said that if the equipment worked satisfactorily they would be back within two weeks to change the batteries. The travel agent's wife now found halting courage. What about the buckets? If it rained, and the forecast said it would, for the next several days, who would empty the buckets when they were full and overflowed?

  But the men shrugged in disinterest. They went out into the evening and left their trail of dirt behind them. There was the crunch of tyres on the drive. The act of betrayal of a neighbour was marked by the roar of a vacuum-cleaner on the carpets of the hall, stairs and landing, and above the replaced hatch in the roof, two lenses beamed down on the Rahman house.

  The club on the Reeperbahn – across the wide street from the dour brick-built police station – was sandwiched between an Italian restaurant and a shop, now closed, that sold sex aids. The club advertised itself in neon as providing a bar, dancing girls and kino booths for single or multiple occupancy. Timo Rahman had acquired the club nine years before. The last conscious act of its previous owner, a Russian from the Dnieper region, had been to sign away the deeds in the belief that the transfer would save his life: with the ink not dry on the paper, he had been clubbed, then dragged out and thrown into the boot of his own car. It had been driven to the quayside by the Fish Market. As the effect of the clubbing had worn off he had kicked frantically at the tomb he was in as the car had been manhandled forward and had toppled into the oiled water. The club now provided some four per cent of the annual turnover of the Rahman empire.

  'You will enjoy the show, Ricky,' he said.

  He treated the mouseboy as an honoured guest. The best table, the best view of the girls on the stage, the best service. He was an attentive host. As a cosmetic blonde danced, and her implanted bosom bounced, he explained the history of the Reeperbahn street, the quarter where rope was made for the docks and the rigging of sail-powered trading ships, but the mouseboy was distant from him, seemed not to hear him and fidgeted with the stem of his glass. When the girl, naked now, finished her dance and stood full-frontal to accept the applause, he smiled with warmth.

  'I am told by Enver that you have bars at home, Ricky, in London. But I think they are different from
those in Hamburg. Let me show you what we offer.'

  He had raised an eyebrow, the merest gesture. The manager hovered close to him and passed a padded envelope to the Bear.

  'The speciality of the club, Ricky, is in the kino booths

  – explicit videos…' In his own tongue he murmured a question to his manager, heard out the reply and turned again to the mouseboy. 'Many customers are satisfied sufficiently to return here, perhaps each year. The one I would like to show you is being watched by a party of factory workers, from Essen, where they make toothpaste. They are always satisfied and come each March.

  We should see what they are enjoying.'

  He led. Ricky Capel followed, and a pace behind was the Bear with the envelope.

  They crossed the bar and he held back a curtain.

  They were in a corridor lined by doorways in which were set small glass windows. He heard the baying laughter, as his guest would have, of the factory workers from Essen.

  He took his guest to the far door of the corridor, the source of the laughter.

  Timo Rahman peered through the window in the door. He saw a dozen men, in jeans and casual shirts, some balding and some grey-haired, some standing and some hunched forward on chairs, all of them, as they rocked in laughter, gazing at the wide screen on the far wall. The good boy, his best nephew, Enver had said the video was high quality, and the sound.

  'Here, Ricky, look and enjoy.'

  Because the Bear was behind him, pressed against him, his guest was nudged forward, pushed close enough for his nose and eyes to be against the glass.

  Where he stood, Timo could see the screen. He saw Ricky Capel flush, his eyes widen. Around them, in the corridor, was a cacophony of laughter from the booth and the ever louder grunting from the girl on the screen. She rode her man. The man's head rolled, swayed, and he seemed to cry out but the noise of his little yell was drowned by the girl's grunts. He saw the curse slip from Ricky Capel's lips, but soundless.

  More of the factory workers from Essen stood and now they clapped in the rhythm of the girl's down thrusts and some, bent with laughter, grunted with her, as she did. The Bear's weight was against Ricky Capel and he could not have extricated himself from the viewing window had he tried to. On the screen, in a crescendo, she thrust down and he thrust up, and now the grunting overwhelmed the laughter and the clapping – then they both sagged. She rolled off him and there was a long, collective gasp of disappointment from the audience, like a moan. She moved from the camera's view, and the mouseboy was left on the bed and in the moment before his stiffness fled him, he reached up – a kid at a football game who has scored a goal – and punched the air. The factory workers beat their hands together above their heads as if they were on the terraces of a stadium, and the screen went black.