Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  He glances around at the set-up of his men, making sure those that he can see are in the places he’d want them to be, and then, with a dramatic chopping movement of his right hand, he puts a giant boot to the front door and strides forward as it bounces off its hinges.

  The signal goes instantly around the buildings from corner to corner and within a couple of seconds there comes the sound of other breakages, and then a couple of windows getting put in. Men disappear from view as they enter the house. The last person I see enter is Kuusk, a gun in his hand.

  There is loud shouting, and then from round the back a single gunshot.

  I get the feel of it now, with the opening of the door. This place, this wretched place, so full of sadness and horror, as if all this negative energy was waiting for a breath of air to escape.

  I don’t get the sense of evil however. There wasn’t evil here, it was just business, bastards doing brutal things for money. Like a grand metaphor for every government and large conglomerate that put wealth first without a thought for people or workers. Faceless and nameless individuals being sucked dry.

  The wave of sorrow has me standing still for a moment, as though it has physically manifested itself in lead boots. I’d been intending on going in behind them all, but I find myself frozen. And regardless of the innate feeling of horror, the show of force followed by the gunshot is enough to make me stay my hand. This kind of thing doesn’t scare me, but if I’ve learned anything from my time in the security services, it’s don’t go into a gunfight without a gun.

  I back away behind the solitary vehicle out front, the blue Toyota, and decide that if I can make myself useful, it’ll be in stopping someone making a break for it. I look round for the guy that Lippmaa ordered to wait outside and can’t see him.

  The shouting continues. There’s another gunshot, then a woman’s voice, loud, screeching. One of our men runs around from the far side of an outbuilding and in through the front door. Another gunshot.

  I don’t know what they’re doing. It seems so bizarre, so alien to anything we’d do. Up until now I’ve had nothing but scepticism bordering on downright disbelief for what John Baden has said, and yet on his word, and as far as I know, nothing more, they’re launching a full scale assault on the place, putting in doors and windows and firing shots. Perhaps they sensed the misery of this place long before I did.

  What would I have done? Men in reserve in the trees, and a knock at the door.

  A couple of quick gunshots and then someone falls through the window at the front of the house. The loud crash of the glass, then moments later the dull thud onto the ground, with the sickening crunch of bones breaking.

  A face appears at the window – one of our men – and then quickly backs away.

  The shouting continues, there is no more gunfire. Someone else runs past. I walk round the car to the man lying on the ground. I bend down beside him, put my hand needlessly to his neck. There’s a handgun lying just to the side. I lift it, check for rounds, put the safety catch on and stick it quickly into the back of my trousers.

  He’s in his early sixties, maybe. Grey hair, grey complexion, old clothes. A farmer’s hands. Neck broken, two gunshot wounds in the chest, brutal head wound from where he hit the ground. Any of those could have been the thing that killed him. I doubt there will ever be an autopsy to find out.

  The shouting has quietened down, there’s a sudden air over the place like the brief burst of action is over. The event, such as it was, has passed, and suddenly I realise that, in fact, I’d better get in now while there’s still uncertainty over everything. If I wait, the place will be locked down, and it’ll be too late.

  Pause at the front door, a wall of sorrow before me, then push through it. The sound of heavy boots all over. Pass a couple of our men, who pay me no attention. From the barked voices, I can hear that Lippmaa is upstairs, which is good, because I want to go in the opposite direction.

  Along the central corridor, and just before I get to it, I hear voices coming from a door which must lead downstairs. Squeeze past another couple of guys, and then down a narrow flight of steps. Down here there’s a long corridor, doors off either side. There are a few men going along, having not quite finished the check. The corridor, white and dirty, extends away some ten doors on either side.

  I take a look in the first door, a small dank office. Chair and desk, there’s a window high up on the far wall, allowing in virtually no light. A few pictures on the wall, a calendar, a phone on the desk, a few papers strewn around.

  Along to the next room. I’m glancing in – this one looks like a holding cell, a mattress on the floor, a toilet in the corner, of the type that Baden described – then Kuusk emerges from a room further down the corridor, sees me, and indicates for me to follow him.

  The two men who have been checking all the rooms have finished now, and they shout out loudly as they push past us, back towards the stairs.

  Kuusk holds the door open for me and lets me walk into the room first, following closely behind. It is a very rudimentary surgery, a gurney in the corner, an operating table in the middle. A couple of lights, a monitor against the wall, a sink, a small table with a silver tray of instruments.

  Like the office at the start of the corridor, but unlike the holding cell I’d just looked in, there is a window high up on the wall, long, narrow and dirty. The thought that you’d really want your surgery to be a sealed room flashes through my head, but is instantly dismissed. The room is grimy and squalid, much more so than the cell. What difference would a window make? The air from outside can hardly be any worse than the fetid air of filth pervading in here.

  Down here the feeling of grim misery is thick, but I do my best to shut it out. Need to shake it off and not think about it.

  ‘Perhaps your Mr Baden was not making up so much after all,’ says Kuusk.

  I take my phone out and, out of courtesy, make a small gesture. Kuusk nods, and I quickly start taking photographs around the room. I doubt I’ll get much more time before Lippmaa turns up to eject me from the premises.

  ‘Just remember that John Baden’s body was identified by his girlfriend, mother, and father,’ I say. ‘Whoever he is, and however much truth he’s telling, it’s too early to be calling him my Mr Baden. Or anyone else’s for that matter.’

  ‘So you won’t be taking him back to the UK with you this evening?’

  I stop for a second and look across the small, unpleasant room. There’s a thought. I could hire a car, and he could share the driving.

  Must be getting desperate.

  ‘I’ll leave him with you fellows,’ I say.

  ‘We will need to question him some more, certainly, but soon enough it will be time for him to go home.’

  I take another couple of photographs, then place the phone back in my pocket. Find myself smiling at him.

  ‘We’re all European Union. He can stay if he likes.’

  Kuusk smiles ruefully, and then follows me back out into the corridor. Another look along. A couple of Lippmaa’s men at the far end outside the office, but the boss himself isn’t down at this level yet, and we turn and walk further along, looking in rooms as we go. More cells, one ill-equipped storeroom.

  ‘So, we presume the operation, whoever they are, cleared out after Baden escaped,’ I say, but I’m shaking my head as I speak. ‘Who did they shoot?’

  ‘They found three people in the facility. They all resisted arrest.’

  ‘But how did they know…’ Pause to get my thoughts clear, because when you think about it, it feels wrong. ‘Surely the point of anyone being left here was to attempt some cover of normality should the authorities turn up?’

  Kuusk makes a small gesture, indicating the corridor and everything around us.

  ‘How was this ever going to look normal?’

  Turn away from him, look along to the two men at the far end. They have visibly relaxed. One of them has lit a cigarette.

  ‘The people in the house… they jus
t went straight to confrontation without any attempt at artifice? The only reason they were here was to attempt artifice.’

  ‘We just burst in with twenty armed men. There was never going to be a lot of conversation.’

  There, I must admit, he has a good point. Although they weren’t from his station, I don’t like to say that I found the instant use of heavy force questionable too. Although the old guy falling out the window with a gun in his hand, does seem to speak in Lippmaa’s favour. As does, of course, the fact that the farmhouse was indeed hiding something.

  I don’t trust it though.

  ‘Doesn’t it feel weird?’ I say, then pause as I hear Lippmaa approaching through the house, loud footsteps identified as his by the accompanying barked commands. ‘Doesn’t it feel weird that we’re here at all? Baden fled in a panic, running past trees, barely stopping to look over his shoulder. Not to mention it was the first time he’d seen daylight in twelve years. Yet he leads us back to this place with barely a step out of place.’

  ‘You’re very British,’ says Kuusk, clapping his hand on my shoulder. ‘Always cynical, always trying to see behind the curtain. Perhaps this is just what happened. Perhaps one thing they did not manage to remove from Mr Baden was his sense of direction.’

  He laughs and then walks ahead, just as Lippmaa appears at the bottom of the stairs, still shouting instructions and asking questions at a hundred miles an hour.

  He finally pauses when he sees me. Takes a moment, briefly considers his options, then says, ‘You, leave!’ jerking his thumb in the direction of the door.

  I walk past him, holding his gaze as I go. Up the stairs and back out into the grey morning. The fresh air.

  The weight of desolation begins to lift, although it will not be gone until we are far away from this place.

  I turn and look back at the house for a moment, wondering if it will ever feel normal again. Hard to imagine. Then, turning away, I take the gun from the back of my trousers and toss it onto the ground beside its former owner.

  ‘I won’t be needing it,’ I say to him.

  19

  Back in Tallinn, I stand at the window of the office of the Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy, looking out over a small park. The full cloud cover has rolled back in from the Baltic and darkness has come early. There are lights on in the park, a few people around.

  My flight is in two hours. My certainty of earlier about not getting on the plane has gone. I don’t know what to do. Considering getting blindingly drunk, but that’s not terribly professional, seeing as I’m here in a professional capacity, and anyway, if I was to try to get blindingly drunk in the next two hours, I’d likely just throw up.

  The door opens behind me, and he appears with a couple of mugs of tea, hands mine over with a smile, and stands beside me looking down onto the trees. He’s in his early fifties, slightly overweight and refreshingly normal. Ten years working overseas with the security services left me generally wary of the cocky twenty-five-year-old Foreign Office, Oxbridge grads determined to change their little part of the world in two years. It’s nice when you come across the regular ones.

  ‘Your hand’s shaking,’ he says. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Got to get on a plane, three planes in fact, before I get to go to bed.’

  ‘Ah. Not a lot I can do about that, sorry. You can’t get the ferry back?’

  ‘Supposed to be back tonight.’

  Don’t take a drink of tea yet. Catch his eye in the reflection in the window.

  ‘Don’t suppose you have anyone just about to drive back to the UK that I could share a car with?’

  ‘You mean with a diplomatic bag and a secret telegram for the Foreign Secretary?’

  I nod at the gentle mockery, and he smiles.

  ‘Would be nice if I could beam over,’ I say.

  ‘They have that technology, you know,’ he says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. People. The Americans, probably. But they’re keeping it under wraps because it would put all the airlines out of business, and the cars and the oil corporations. Think of the hell it would play with the world financial markets. The entire infrastructure of the western world would be destabilised.’

  ‘Foreign Office recommendation to keep the technology hidden away?’

  ‘Definitely. Think of the terrorist implications. Anyway, if you don’t want to get on a plane, I’m not sure why you’d want to be broken down into your constituent atomic parts and reassembled a thousand miles away.’

  ‘There’s that.’

  ‘OK, Detective Inspector, where have we got to? Where is Baden now?’

  ‘He’s back at the military hospital. The police are giving him another day, and then they’re going to be questioning him further. At least they don’t seem to be in any rush to kick him out. Maybe they’re keen on not letting him go.’

  ‘They think he might be involved? That doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  Take a sip of tea. Tetley, I reckon.

  ‘Nice,’ I say. ‘It’s not Lipton Yellow Label then.’

  He smiles. ‘No, thank God.’

  ‘How did that stuff get to be in every supermarket in the entire world outside of Britain?’

  He laughs. ‘Blame the Victorians, I think.’

  Another sip. Not too hot.

  ‘The whole thing’s messed up,’ I say. ‘Not sure what to think. They know, the police I mean, the police down in Tartu at least if not the ones up here, they know far more than they’re telling me. And what can I do? It’s fair enough. It’s their case, it’s their illegal body-harvesting operation. All we’ve got is this one guy claiming to be British, with absolutely no proof that he is. Did you meet him?’

  ‘No. It was one of our local staff members. She found him convincing. Scared even.’

  ‘Can’t argue that. He’s definitely scared.’

  ‘Have we got any family notified yet?’

  Shake my head. ‘As far as we know, they still haven’t found the girlfriend. Maybe they did today, I haven’t been in touch yet. I’ll go and speak to his mother when I get back, but she’s in a home with dementia, so…’

  ‘Father’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, and no siblings. There must be aunts and cousins or something, but I’ve not been involved in that. We’ll see when I get back.’

  I’d been beginning to relax, but there it is again, just the thought of having to return, and the fear comes sweeping in.

  Take a large drink of tea, but it doesn’t really help. He catches my eye in the reflection again, then steps away and places his mug on the desk.

  ‘When do you need to be back?’ he asks.

  ‘In work, tomorrow morning, 8 a.m.’

  ‘Realistically you’re going to have to fly.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How long would it take to drive?’

  ‘I’m thinking, twenty-four hours to get to Brussels, get the Eurostar to St Pancras, the sleeper to Inverness, be at my desk on Friday morning.’

  ‘A day late.’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘What’s your boss going to think about that?’

  Make a small gesture with the tea. Even as I explain it I relax a little. Not driving the whole way makes a difference, at least in my head.

  ‘How much sleep did you get last night?’

  ‘A few hours.’

  ‘And on the back of that you’re going to drive for twenty-four hours non-stop? Those time of travel numbers on Google Maps don’t include stopping for a cup of tea and using the bathroom, never mind sleeping for several hours.’

  Another check of the watch. The idea’s sounding good in my head. The last thing I want is some kindly middle-aged chap talking the sort of sense that usually gets inflicted on you by your parents.

  ‘You’re a dad, right?’ I say.

  He smiles.

  ‘Look, I might be able to help you.’

  He heads for the door, throwing, ‘I’ll make a call
, be back in a minute,’ over his shoulder.

  I look at the open door and out into the office, catching the eye of a young woman, who smiles and then looks back down at her work. I turn again to the window and try not to stare at my reflection.

  20

  In the modern world, where everyone is brave and heroic, and life is conducted in superlatives, I expect there would be plenty of people who would have blindly charged into that farmhouse, when shots were being fired and the place was in a state of confusion, to do their bit. Good sense, in that narrative, would be seen by many as pusillanimity. I just saw it as good sense. However, where I was, without question, pusillanimous, was in not calling Quinn and letting him know I wouldn’t be in work tomorrow.

  That was gutless. Equally so is the fact that I’ve turned my phone off. I’ll put it back on at some point along the way, the middle of the night, to make sure I don’t miss anything they really need to tell me. Other than, that is, the condemnation of my actions and whatever sanctions that Quinn is intending to lob at me.

  Maybe I’ll speak to him tomorrow when he might have calmed down. Little to be gained from him shouting at me, and me growing entrenched in my decision not to get on a plane. Or, my decision not to come into work when told to, as he will no doubt put it.

  I called Mary. Pretty craven. Getting the woman on the front desk to deliver the news. At least it was in the knowledge that Quinn isn’t a shoot-the-messenger type of man. Mary sounded concerned for me, rather than concerned about having to deliver the news. I didn’t feel I deserved her concern. I just wasn’t getting on a plane.

  The DHM found a solution, and I’m sitting next to her right now. I’m driving the first leg, she’ll take over somewhere around about Riga. That means I get the bang-in-the-middle-of-the-night shift, starting around 1 a.m., so I’ll need to make sure I sleep while she’s driving.

  Her name’s Dorothy. That’s all either of them told me. Works in the Embassy, but I’ve no idea what she does. UK-based, I presume. We don’t need to talk about it. So far, in fact, we haven’t talked about anything.