Riccardi sounded groggy, as if woken from a deep sleep.
‘What time’s it?’ he said.
‘It’s morning,’ said Anselm. ‘What sort of hours are you keeping there? Still up all night?’
‘Yup but now I’m getting paid for it. Got a job. Night job.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘In a call centre. I answer customers’ questions about software problems. From all over the world.’
‘What do you know about software?’
‘Fuck all. I’ve got an FAQ sheet, that won’t do it, I say we’ll get back to them.’
‘Do you?’
‘No. How you been?’
‘Alive. Listen, there’s something I want to ask you. Kaskis had a photograph.’ Anselm described it.
‘Yup. I saw it. The guy, he was in it.’
‘Diab?’
‘Yup. Diab. That woman get hold of you?’
‘In every sense. Did Kaskis say anything about the picture?’
He could hear Riccardi yawn, a sound a bear might make in spring.
‘She’d be an A1 fuck, I thought. Good legs. See her legs?’
‘She appeared to have legs. She was walking. What did Kaskis say about the picture?’
‘I turned it over and on the back was written SD and a date, I can’t remember, 1980-something, early eighties.’
‘SD?’
‘I asked him and he said, “Special Deployment, Sudden Death, the funny guys”.’
‘Slowly, I’m slow. Say that again.’
‘Special Deployment, Sudden Death. That’s what he said. And he said, “There but for the grace.” It stuck in my mind.’
‘I’m amazed. Drugs are doing you good. You asked what he meant?’
‘He said, just people who don’t exist.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yup. Wildly talkative, Kaskis, notice that?’
‘I did. He said, “But for the grace”?’
‘That’s what he said. Listen, you raking over all the shit again? Baby, it’s history. Get on with life. Take drugs. Get a job in a call centre.’
‘I’ll pencil that in for tomorrow. Anything else about the picture?’
‘The one musclehead was called Elvis-not a name you forget.’
Elvis.
‘How do you know that?’
Riccardi said, ‘Written on the picture. Guy next to Diab. Elvis. On his big fucking chest.’
Anselm had the log open, he found Inskip’s list
This was the something that had moved in a crevice of his mind. The names on the list were the men in Kaskis’ photograph.
Most of them dead. Five of them killed in the space of a few days in October 1993.
When the picture was taken, in the early 1980s, they belonged to Special Deployment-Sudden Death.
SD, some kind of special unit. Unit of what?
Sudden Death.
Not the Peace Corps.
70
…WALES…
They lay in their sweat in the cold room, her head on his chest.
She had come to him in the early morning, light behind the curtains. He heard the door and he was moving, one leg off the bed.
‘I dreamt you’d gone,’ she said. ‘I dreamt I came here and found you’d gone.’
He held out his arms. She came to him and he put his arms around her, put his head against the long white nightdress, against her stomach, smelled the clean cotton and her body, rubbed his face against her. She pushed him away gently, crossed her arms and lifted her garment over her head, revealed herself, lean, small breasts.
They made love slowly. He felt the hesitancy in her and he had it in himself, he did not deserve her, he was too crude a creature for her. But when he entered her, she became urgent, squeezed his flesh, made him roll, roll again, she bit him, scratched him, she groaned, and he could not maintain his silence.
Done, she was sleepy, languid, her body was aligned with him, her arm lay across him, a hand on his thigh.
Niemand spoke into her damp hair, softly, ‘I want to say thank you. Better than I said it. I don’t know why you did that for me.’
‘I saw you coming,’ she said. ‘You had this look.’
He felt her words on his skin, the warm brush of her breath.
‘I thought, shit, off his face, he shouldn’t be in the traffic. And then I saw your eyes and I thought, no, not stoned, I didn’t know what but I knew not stoned.’
He remembered the yellow helmet looking at him and the man coming from behind and the weak feeling.
‘My brother died in Cardiff because no one would help him,’ she said. ‘They thought he was drunk but he was diabetic, he was having a hypo and people walked around him, walked away. So. No. Anyway, you looked so straight, your hair, the tan, and you looked hurt, there’s a look you know, you see it in kids. And then I saw this guy coming, he was running. In a suit but not your suit person, like a bouncer, thug face, and I thought, fuck you, boyo, let’s go, catch us if you can.’
She raised a hand, touched his lips, ran a finger along the thin ridge of cartilage on his broken nose.
‘Do you have a job?’ she said. ‘Do something?’
How did you tell someone like this what you did, what you had done, without her rejecting you?
‘A soldier,’ he said. ‘I used to be a soldier.’
71
…HAMBURG…
‘Tell me what the fuck you’re doing,’ said Baader. ‘Just tell me.’
‘What I’m doing?’ The response of the guilty. Anselm turned his head to the window.
Baader looked down, tapped the edge of his desk with both sets of knuckles.
‘I talked to O’Malley,’ he said. ‘Don’t mess around with me, John. The boy’s dead because of this. Paul’s dead.’
Through the trees, Anselm could see a glass tourist boat going by, not so much a boat as a coach on water, light glinting on it.
How to tell this story to Baader? To anyone?
He tried. It took a while. Baader listened, head on hand, eyes closed.
When he’d finished, Anselm said, ‘That’s it. I’ll take it to the grave. Sending Stefan.’
He felt relief. He had spoken of the weight on his heart.
There was a long silence. Baader didn’t move, he didn’t open his eyes, he could have died during the telling of
