Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  Basically, what he's asking me, was a man in his garden because of me? Simple question. I lied, said I didn't know nothing about it. I'd have been dead if I hadn't lied. I'm thinking now – the man whose coat was lost, Rahman'll believe he'd come to meet his wife. Poor cow, but not my problem. You look after yourself, in this world, first and second and third.'

  The cold ached in every joint of his body but he had lost feeling in his feet however hard he rubbed them.

  He did not hear his own voice.

  'What's just amazing, he swallowed it. I hadn't the lie off my lips before I'd reckoned it out. Nobody lies to him, don't dare to. Get caught in a lie to him and he'd take a week to kill you. Sort of making a judgement, isn't it? Get killed in an hour or two for telling the truth… get killed in a week because you lied and got caught out – matter of judgement. I'm telling you because I like you, because I trust you.'

  The weapon was reassembled. Ricky could not have stripped it, cleaned it, put back the parts.

  'We get on that boat, get across the water, and we drop you off, then you're gone. It's like you never existed. My secret and your secret, carried to your grave and mine. I don't hear of you ever again and you don't ever meet up with me. What you do, I thought it was my concern, thought it mattered to me.

  Isn't – doesn't. I'm telling you, honest, when I realized what you did then I told Rahman I wasn't taking you and he twisted my bloody arm, like it was right out the socket… Then he showed you the picture of that girl, bawled you out for what you done to her. Me, I don't have an opinion, not any more. You see, Dean, we're friends – I like you – friends with trust. That's good, us as friends.'

  The weapon was loaded, cocked and laid down.

  Hands slipped to Ricky's feet, peeled off the socks, squeezed the last moisture from them and started to massage his skin, the soles and the insteps, and he felt the first flicker of heat. There was wet at his eyes.

  'Brilliant, Dean. That's just bloody brilliant.'

  'What have I done? Something brutal. What are the consequences of it? Nothing. What am I saying, Malachy? I'm saying this bloody awful place has brought out the bitch in me.'

  He lifted his arm, swung it, hooked it round her shoulder. In front of them was the beach and the surf and the horizon where the sea met the clouds.

  'Don't think, Malachy, that anyone from my crowd will ever thank you. They don't do that. All except one, they're as awful as here is. I'm saying that you have to stand tall for yourself. Got me?'

  She wriggled. She worked her body closer to his and he tightened his grip on her shoulder. Her hair was against his chin.

  'It's what you deserve, to stand tall – whatever it was that happened. You get to a time when you've paid your dues, owe nobody anything.'

  He felt the warmth of her.

  'I want to be there and I want to see it – you standing tall, Malachy.'

  Chapter Eighteen

  The tide had turned to reveal the wide depth of the beach, and the gulls wheeled while searching for washed-up crabs and shells.

  And they ate.

  From the rucksack she had taken a tin of chicken in white sauce, another of rice, and one of peach slices in syrup. They passed the tins between them and scooped with their fingers at the meat, the rice and the peaches, licked the sauce and syrup off themselves.

  Malachy felt the sand grains clog in his throat as he swallowed, and once she coughed hard and spat to clear her mouth. At the bottom of the bag, there was a small, collapsed burner and tablets in a sachet for lighting under it, and a rack the size of a palm for fastening over it, but the wind was too great and the rain too hard for them to try to heat the chicken or the rice – and the smell would have carried on the wind, with smoke that was a signature.

  He made a rhythm for himself. With the binoculars he watched the skyline, where the white caps met the cloud, tracked the lenses over the dunes to the west and to the east, followed the flight of the ducks when they dived to feed, then back to the horizon, the roll of the waves and the clouds' chase. Each time he saw her, lingered on her, he thought she took longer to lick her fingers and nails, then her palm. Her face was pale and her lips; sand crusted her cheeks and settled on her glasses. All of her animation was in her tongue, working meat scraps, fruit, rice, sauce and syrup from her hand, licking and sucking. She sat with her shoulder pressed against his. When he lifted the binoculars, his elbow lurched against her arm. When he dropped them on their neck strap and reached to scoop from the tins, his elbow pressed against her chest and softness beneath the weatherproof coat, but he kept to the rhythm he had constructed and watched the sea, the beach and the dunes.

  The tins were emptied.

  She had her boots and the over-trousers inside the zipped-down sleeping-bag and he felt, through his elbow, the shiver of her body.

  Through the lenses he saw the break of the waves far out and the spray leaping above the surf, but no darker shadow of a boat coming towards land. The gulls, in soft focus, were distorted, closer to him.

  She shook in little convulsions. Malachy had reason to be there, huddled in soft sand and with bent grass stems around him, all that survived in the dunes. He had a purpose and she did not – should not have been there. Hunger took him back to the tin that had contained meat and sauce. For the last traces of it, his elbow against her chest, he pressed his forefinger, grimy and coated with sand, down into the tin and scraped its sides, his nail against the bottom. The skin caught the top edge, serrated with tiny teeth from the ripping out of the lid. Blood ran. No pain, but blood from a small wound spilled on to the can's base. She took his hand in hers, lifted it.

  She gazed at him. Tiredness swelled the rims of her eyes at the limits of the frames of her spectacles, and hair, damp, limp, fell over them, but the eyes had brightness and light. Blood came from his cut and smeared her hand. Not looking away from him, not breaking her gaze, she slipped his finger between her lips and closed round it.

  He felt her suck, swallow, and her tongue moved on the wound.

  There was, at first, sweetness, gentleness – then the tongue brushed his finger with more force and the lips held it tighter.

  She said, muffled, because her mouth held his finger and her tongue took the blood from it and closed the wound, 'I can't think of anything to talk about.'

  The warmth from his finger ran in his hand.

  'We could, if you wanted to, talk about the weather,' she said. 'Is it going to rain much longer? I think it's getting brighter in the west, don't you? The wind's not dropping, is it? Do you want to talk about the weather?'

  Her tongue licked his finger and she swallowed his blood.

  'If you won't talk about the weather, you could talk about damn hypothermia – or you could do something about it.'

  With her free hand she pulled down a little more of the bag's zipper, but she held his finger in her mouth, and she wriggled to the side. He slipped into the bag, pushed into it the old brogue shoes and felt them run against her legs, then against the bag's bottom stitching and heaved his weight against her.

  She grimaced. 'I've never done it like this before – get sand in me and I'll kill you.'

  She reached behind him and dragged up as much of the zip as she could, and they were pressed together.

  He felt the hardness of the pistol barrel gouge at his skin and the angles of the binoculars; he took his finger from her mouth and kissed her. He held her head, and her eyes did not close – as if the moment were too vital to go unseen – and his lips found hers and he tasted her breath and his own blood. He remembered what she had said to him, on a bench in a park of spring flowers: Do it like you mean it… Don't get any bloody ideas. He had done as he was told. It had not entered his mind that she had kissed him, under the blossom and watched by the search party, from affection. She squirmed in the bag.

  'God, aren't you going to help? Do I have to do it all?'

  There were zips and eyelets, buttons, belts and hooks, and they writhed together to fr
ee themselves.

  He did not think it was love… but need.

  'I don't have one, don't suppose you do – not to worry, not that time of the month. I can feel that bloody sand.'

  The need was bred on emptiness, Malachy recognized it. The void of his life and a corresponding chasm in hers. Each of them with an unspoken loneliness burdening them. He felt her skin, its coldness, had his hands under her waterproof coat, her sweater and blouse, and his fingers moved with wonderment, as if privilege was given him, and she caught the hand where the wound had been and forced it lower. Their loneliness made it desperate. He heard the zipper of the bag torn open as he came across her. They clung to each other, and she stroked him and he buried himself in her, and then the motion calmed. She moaned. She bucked under him. It was as he had never known it before. She cried out, piercing, as the gulls did over them and he felt the ecstasy of it… It was for need, hers and his, and they fell apart. She had said: Do it like you mean it. He had, and he cradled her head. He thought it took them nowhere.

  He crawled out of the bag. She swivelled on to her side and her back was to him. He did up the zips and buttons, reefed in his belt. He did not know of any future, only that emptiness must be filled. He lifted the binoculars, scanned and tracked.

  'What can you see?'

  He said, 'Only the waves and the clouds and the birds – but they'll come, I know i t… Thank you.'

  'Crazy, isn't it? You being my friend, me not being your enemy. Mad, isn't it? If you saw me where you come from, whatever place it is, I'd be your enemy – and if you'd just pitched up in Bevin Close I wouldn't be your friend. But we're here.'

  The voice dripped in his ear.

  'Your thing is killing people… What's mine? I'm not bloody proud -1 do heroin from Afghanistan, and cocaine from Venezuela… Dean, have you been in Afghanistan? Sorry, sorry, not for me to ask. Forget that. We're friends and we don't ask, don't need to know. I often wonder what Afghanistan's like. It comes on the TV but that shows you nothing, just ruins and old tanks and kids without shoes and women who cover themselves. I tell you, straight up, I've made big money out of Afghanistan, five times the money I make out of Venezuela. I'm not hating you because you kill people, and you're not judging me for what I do.'

  The voice rambled, incoherent. He let him talk. He understood most of what Ricky Capel said, and he tolerated it. He took help where he could find it, and when the usefulness of the help was finished he discarded it. He had put the fool's socks against the skin of his crotch and let them dry out against his body warmth, and then he had peeled them on to the feet he had massaged, then put the shoes back on the idiot's feet, pulled the laces tight and knotted them for him. It was critical to him to have the imbecile's help.

  The voice droned.

  He remembered Iyad, the true friend, who had given up his life that time could be bought, a proven fighter who never bragged. On their journey there had been long hours between them of valued silence.

  'You must be thinking, Dean – natural you would – can Ricky Capel keep his mouth shut? You have no worries. Back home, we got police and they don't get a sniff on me. Up where I am, and I reckon I'm big enough, we have the spies that are supposed to go after high-value targets – they got bugs and tracker sensors and cameras so bloody small you can't see them. What they haven't got is me. Why? Because I'm sharper than them. They've never had me… Never been charged. All of that lot queuing up, after me because I'm a high-value target, and they haven't ever been able to lay a charge against me. I was in once, three years back, and was held for forty-eight hours, and a good half of that was in the interview room. I never said nothing. Four sessions, maybe six hours each. I took an eyeline on the floor and one on the ceiling, one on the table, one on the door. I said nothing, never spoke, but had a different eyeline each time. You should have seen them, Dean, and they were going fucking spare, believe it… You can rely on it, I don't talk, and I don't reckon you would – it's why we're friends, can depend on each other.'

  In his mind, irritated by the voice, he recalled codenames given him and addresses too sensitive to be written down, and the words of the Book that he would use and the responses that would be made.

  'You want to know anything, Dean, about sensors and bugs, cameras and audio, or phones – me, I never use them – then I'm your man to ask. I got a guy, clever little sod, and I pay him well, and he's ahead of their game – better than the spies. I know everything they put against me and how to block it. Didn't have an education but I'm not stupid – you've seen that. I aim to stay safe and anyone who's my friend will stay safe. It's why we've got the boat coming. An old trawler flogging around the fishing banks and putting in to port often enough for it to be familiar, clever that.

  You're all right with me.'

  He thought of the places he had been – while the voice nagged at him – and of the young men and the young woman, all martyrs, whom he had sent out on the road to Paradise, and their cheerfulness to him and their gratitude that they were chosen, and he had been long gone from Taba, Cairo and Riyadh when their pictures were put in newspapers with the images of what they had done.

  'What I like about you, Dean, is that you show respect for me. And I'm telling you, it's two-way. I don't mean respect because I'm a big man. Most who give me respect back home, it's because they're frightened of me. Men I do business with, most of them, they give me respect because of fear. I'm not afraid of you, you're not afraid of me, but there's respect because we're equals and friends. Right now, when I get back there's a matter of respect – it's disrespect – to be sorted. That old bastard, Rahman, he didn't give me it, and he has a nephew, a flash little prick, and he's ready for a lesson in respect. Off the boat and I'll be working on i t… I got my cousins, I got people who watch my back, and will watch it when I sort out disrespect…'

  He suggested, softly and soothing, that it might be the right time to make the radio link with the boat, and reached out, took a cold hand and squeezed it in reassurance – because he was the equal of Ricky Capel, his friend – and felt no guilt at the deceit.

  'If you didn't know it, the weather out here is foul,'

  Harry shouted at the microphone. The trawler shook, then cascaded into the trough. Walls of water climbed higher than the wheel-house windows, then hit a solid, ungiving mass, and the Anneliese Royal seemed to stop. 'About as foul as I've known it.'

  For a moment she was dead in the sea and lurched to port. He clung, white-knuckled hands, to the wheel, and for endless seconds she seemed to go over, then the stabilizers dragged her upright. But at the limit of the trough a wave made a cliff face and she collided with it. He heard the boy, his grandson, cry out behind him in stark fear. Now Harry saw nothing beyond the windows as sheets of spray covered them, and rivers of the damn stuff would be sluicing on to the decks, weighing her down, and he could hear the roar of the weather and the engine's howl, and the distorted voice of Ricky Capel, and the questions coming more frantic… When was he going to be there? What time? Why so long? A rogue wave could come as one in ten or one in a hundred. A rogue wave could not be ridden by a trawler.

  They went on through it and the wheel-house seemed to go dark, seemed as though night came, of blackened blue and green. Then they burst clear. Light where there had been darkness and the Anneliese Royal steadied and Harry knew he would not be pitched over on to the wheel-house plank floor. He loosened his hold on the wheel, and the sweat spilled down the nape of his neck and on his throat. He looked behind him, and the boy hung in misery from the rail round the wheel-house's sides, and the door to the deck had come unfastened in the impact and hammered backwards and forwards. The sea came in and cleaned some of the boy's sickness. Harry tried to smile, to find confidence for the boy, took a hand off the wheel and gestured that his grandson should get the door closed. Maybe it would be the last time he went out of harbour for Ricky Capel, maybe…

  He depressed the switch.

  'Don't know where you are, Ricky. Where I
am it's force ten and gusting up to force eleven and sometimes it's cyclonic… Right, when are we getting there? I'm reckoning to be in the approach channel for German Bight and turning into Jade Approach at approximately twenty hundred hours local, and that'll put me off shore around twenty-two thirty – if the old girl's still holding together. It'll be a dinghy pickup, which'll be no picnic. I don't want any more radio traffic before twenty-one hundred, don't want the world to know, and I'll want a light signal from twenty-two thirty for the dinghy… Oh, Ricky, I'll have the guest suite ready… and, Ricky, I won't be hanging about, so you'll need to paddle out quick for the pickup – like I said, no picnic. Over. Out.'

  'Give it to the Germans? Good God, no… absolutely not.'

  The meeting was chaired by the assistant deputy director, Gilbert.

  'Let the Germans in on the act – I can promise you

  – and it will be pain and tears.'

  He presided at the end of the table in a room set aside for conferences on the ground floor.

  'If the bloody Germans are involved, their lawyers will demand access to every slip of paper, intelligence material, that we have. No way, not to be considered.'

  Sandwiches, coffee, nibbles and jugs of fruit juice were at the side, and plates, cups and glasses had been brought to the table.

  'We all know the German style. It's endless court cases, appeals that'll go into the next century, and weak-kneed determination to see it through. Forget them.'

  Behind the assistant deputy director, sitting on six straight-backed chairs, was a line of stenographers.