The investigator always worked late in his office. He liked the cool and calm of the evening, the silent shadows in the corridors. He made his decision, he lifted his telephone. When he talked it was against the distant thunder of an air raid striking the west of the city.
He travelled on a false passport in his wife's maiden name, and with the occupation of 'Academic'.
Harriet had seen him off, which was unusual, but then it was wholly unusual for a Desk Head to journey abroad. They had had their little nuzzles at each other's cheeks, and he had told her to get back to the Bibury cottage and keep on giving that city farmer hell, double-time, over the rape of the footpath.
Actually Mattie was rather pleased to be airborne, in harness again, but he hadn't said that to Harriet. Good to be on the road, not pushing paper.
4
The car had coughed to life, and thick fumes poured from the exhaust. He let the engine run while he thanked his neighbour for the loan of the charged battery that had been attached to the leads. He could ask any small favour of his neighbour and it would be granted. His neighbour knew his work. Most m en, in fact, who knew his work, treated him with respect.
No man in his company offered him offence or cursed him.
Perhaps no man in Tabriz could feel with certainty that he would never look across the space of a cell at the deep brown eyes that would peep from the slits of the tight-fitting black mask that he had taken to wearing when he performed his work. The highest in the land, and the lowest, would all walk in the fear that they might, one day, feel the grip of his thick fingered fist upon their arm. It had not been done by himself, but he knew the man who had carried out the sentence of the Special Court of the Clergy on Mehdi Hashemi, and Hashemi had been the protege of the man named by the Imam as his successor. Likewise, he knew the man who had put Sadeq Ghotzbadeh to death, and Ghotbzadeh had been the Foreign Minister of the nation and the favourite of the Imam. No man in Tabriz trifled with the executioner. He was adept in hanging and shooting and lashing and organising the casting of stones at women taken in adultery, and in the handling of the newly arrived machine that was powered by electricity and that could slice with a guillotine knife through the fingers of a thief. He would use it this day: a thief who had stolen from a vegetable grower. And three executions, all in the city: a trafficker in narcotics, a Kurd who had aided the 'hypocrites', a rapist of small children.
His wife was scrubbing shirts in the yard behind the house.
She hardly acknowledged his shouted farewell from the back door. His children, all four of them, were playing with a deflated ball around their mother's legs, too intent on their game to hear him. Inside the house, from a cupboard beside the bed in the room he shared with his wife, he took a 9mm Browning pistol – old, well cared for, accurate. He heard the car engine running sweetly beyond the open door.
He walked out into the morning. He tiptoed between the rain puddles because he had earlier shined his shoes. He climbed into his car, and laid the Browning, that was loaded but not cocked, on the seat beside him, and he covered the pistol with yesterday's Ettelaat.
As he drove away he hooted his horn. He smiled briefly, he did not think that the sound of the horn would interrupt the game of football.
He tacked up the lane, avoiding the deeper holes, going slowly so as not to damage the suspension of the old Hillman Hunter. He rolled to a halt at the junction with the main road.
There was a flow of lorry traffic heading towards the centre of the city. He waited for the gap.
He saw a young man a little down the far side of the main road, facing towards the city centre, astride his motorcycle.
The young man was stopped at the side of the road. The young man wore a blue tracksuit, and was well bearded and bare headed, and he carried a satchel bag slung around his neck.
He saw the gap open for him, a small space, and he lurched the Hillman Hunter forward, seized his opportunity. He heard the high long blast of a horn behind him, but the Hillman Hunter had little acceleration and the lorry's brakes seemed to punch the air as the huge grille closed on his rear view mirror. Another howling blast on the lorry's horn and then he was under way. It was always a difficult manoeuvre, getting out of the lane in which he lived, and joining the highway into Tabriz.
He was boxed in. There was a central reservation to his left. There was a Dodge pick-up to his right, filled with construction labourers. There was a cattle lorry to his front, there was a lorry with refrigerated cargo behind him. He could not go slower, he could not go faster. No matter that he could not pass the livestock lorry. He was not late for his work.
When he looked into his rear view mirror, he saw the motorcyclist. That was an excellent way to travel. The motorcycle was exactly the right transport for going into the city in the early morning's heavy traffic.
It was the motorcycle that had been parked on the side of the highway. The executioner looked ahead, then checked in his sidemirror, and he saw that the motorcyclist had pulled out from behind him, and was now poised to come alongside him, and to pass him, coming through the narrow gap between the Hillman Hunter and the Dodge pick-up. That was free-dom, to be able to weave in and out of the heavy trucks…
He saw that the young man on the motorcycle had reached inside his bag that hung across his chest, that he steered the motorcycle only with his right hand.
He was aware of the shape beside him, looming close to his wound down window.
He saw that the motorcycle was virtually against the side of his car.
He saw the grin on the face of the rider, the rider grinning at him, and the rider's arm was outstretched above the roof of his car.
He heard the thump of an impact on the roof of his car.
His window was filled by the grinning face of the rider.
Cold sweat, sweat racing on his chest, in his groin. He could not stop. He could not pull over. If he braked hard he would be swept away by the refrigeration lorry behind him, 60 kilometres an hour and constant.
It never crossed the executioner's mind that he might be the victim of an innocent joke. He was reaching for his pistol, and he was watching the motorcycle power away ahead of him, he flicked off the safety, but what could he do? He couldn't fire through the windscreen. There was a moment when the motorcycle rider, the young man in the blue tracksuit seemed to swivel in his seat, and wave back at the old Hillman Hunter, and then was gone. He no longer saw the motorcyclist, only the lorry tail. He did not know what to do… Where to turn to
…
He was staring into the mirror above him, and he saw the image of his own eyes. So many times he had seen staring, jolted, fear filled eyes.
Charlie had had to turn one last time to wave, and to see that the box was held to the roof of the low-slung yellow car.
The metal box contained two pounds weight of commercial explosive, a detonator, and a stop-watch athletics clock wired to explode the detonator and the polar-amon gelignite 45 seconds after the control switch had been pulled. A nine-pound strain magnet locked the tool box to the roof of the Hillman Hunter.
He waved, he saw the tool box stuck like a carbuncle on the car's roof.
He twisted the accelerator handle, then stamped up through the gears. Great thrust from the motorcycle, taking him speeding past a cattle lorry.
Charlie, in those stampeding moments, could imagine the stench of fear inside the car, the same fear smell as the man would have known when he took the arms of those who had been brought to him. He swerved in front of the cattle lorry.
The explosion blew in from behind him, buffeted him.
The thunder was in his ears.
The hot wind rushing over his back.
And the motorcycle speeding forward.
He took a right turning, he was off the main highway. He accelerated along a lane and scattered some grazing goats that were feeding on the verge. He took another right. He careered forward, full throttle. He was on a track parallel to the main highway, two hundred yards from it. He glanced to his right and could see above the low
