and gone. I'd trust the shit-face as far as I could kick him, wouldn't let him carry my bag. You just get that feeling, don't you, when it's all going to finish in grief?'
'You heard, Benji, what Davey said. Petrol.'
'On the dosser's clothes in Bevin Close, the stink of petrol. I heard what Davey said. And petrol done George Wright's place… I don't know what's happening – used to, but I don't now. He went off all trusting, Ricky did, with his bag carried for him, and what I'm thinking about is the claws stuck in him – and I didn't tell him, and I never do and you don't
– and grief.'
'No, Mr Capel, he is not in the hotel. I am sorry. I have paged him and he is not in the restaurants or in the bar. You heard yourself the paging announcement for Mr Enver Rahman, and he has not come. He is not here.'
He sagged. He gazed at the tall, leggy woman behind the desk, who wore the hotel's uniform, its logo sewn over a shallow breast. Nothing that had happened was what he had expected. No answers when he had pumped on the flight as to what business he would be doing with Timo Rahman; questions brushed aside like he was a kid and talking too much and would find out when elders, betters, decided. No chauffeur at the airport to meet them, but Enver had gone to Avis who had held a car for them. No explanations as they had driven into the city. The hotel was a tower of glass and concrete, not in the city centre, and they'd come past gardens to get there; the sort of hotel that did conferences, twenty-six floors of it. He'd checked in. Enver had said that he had phone calls to make and they'd meet up later, had to do the arrangements. No suite for him, no flowers, no bowl of fruit: just an ordinary room. He'd kicked his shoes off and lain on the bed because the one easy chair was dead hard, and he'd flicked the zapper and the channels were all German except one that was American news. Who gave a fuck for American news?
Not Ricky Capel… And he'd waited… and waited some more. .. had waited for the phone to ring and it had not. Maybe he'd dozed off on the bed. Then he'd woken, had worked the phone buttons and called down, had asked to be connected to the room of Enver Rahman, and a dumb cow had told him there was no gentleman of that name resident in the hotel, and she'd checked, and she'd repeated it. It was like he'd been dumped. He'd just assumed that Enver was booking in after he'd gone to the elevator. It wasn't respect. The disrespect was on the plane, was a hire car, was a hotel that was shit, was him being abandoned and Enver bugging out. What wound up Ricky Capel tightest was disrespect. He believed nothing, nobody.
He strode away from the desk, went to the swing doors, pushed them open violently, didn't care that they battered into the back of a man manoeuvring his bags inside, and walked out into the forecourt. He could see where Enver had parked the green VW
Passat that had been his lift from the airport. There was a BMW 5 series, black, where the Passat had been.
He strode back inside and anger pounded in his head
… All disrespect. There was a family now at the desk, in tracksuits: that sort of hotel, short breaks, cut rate, for bloody families. He pushed past them and imposed himself in front of her.
He demanded that she look for any message left him. She left the desk and walked elegantly away, but slowly – he reckoned that deliberate, like she thought he was shit. He turned and saw the faces of the family, kids and adults, all staring sourly at him, like they thought the same of him as she did. She returned, a folded sheet of notepaper between her fingers. He snatched it.
No smile on her face, but she pissed on him. 'You can read German, Mr Capel?'
He felt the blood run in his face.
'Would you like me to translate for you, Mr Capel?'
He nodded.
'It says, 'Ricky, you will be collected later. Have a good stay in Hamburg, Enver.' That is all.'
'What's it mean, later?' He was Ricky Capel. He was big. He ran an area of south-east London. He was He blurted, 'What does that mean?'
The skinny bitch said, 'I think, Mr Capel, it means that you will be collected later.'
He stood on a great dyke and gazed out at the sea. The Bear had stayed in the car, on the road on the land side of the barrier built to hold back flood tides. Timo Rahman knew about the life throb of cities and the demands of men for the titillation of the shows provided by his clubs and the requirement of the young for heroin, cocaine and pills, which he sold, but he knew nothing of the coast and its wildness.
The tang of the salt was in his nose, and the wind ripped at his hair and tugged his coat tight against his chest and flapped it away from his legs, and there was the spit of rain in it. He stared out over the white crests of the waves and watched seabirds ride on them in the shelter of inlets. He had looked at the motoring-book map in the car, had searched for a place on the coast where there were fewest roads, had seen the line of islands and had made his decision. It would be here that the man would be brought, then shipped to the island and taken on board the trawler. Because he had no knowledge of the sea, it seemed to Timo Rahman to be a simple matter.
If he braced himself against the wind's power, held his hand across his forehead to divert the rain and squinted, he could make out the faint line that was the island's shore facing him. It was remote, isolated.
Always Timo Rahman went with the instinct that his gut gave him. .. From his car, before they had driven along the road behind the dyke, he had watched the ferry go, with fewer passengers on it than he had fingers on his hands.
He had seen what he needed to see. He turned away. Beyond the road and the Mercedes, a solitary tractor ploughed a field of dark earth, and further back, shielded by trees, was a farm with brick out-buildings, and on that horizon, inland, were the towering wind turbines that turned briskly. Mud splattered his trousers at the ankles and smeared his shoes as he went down the dyke's slope, and reached the Bear.
He asked if there had been a call but the Bear shook his head.
Timo Rahman said quietly, 'He will come, I have no doubt of it, and it is from here that we will send him on.'
Malachy left them his key and went out into the afternoon light. Time to kill till darkness. He cut down towards the Hafen City of modern-built apartments on reclaimed land, then left behind the two big church spires, like markers for him, and found the pavement that led him west along the Elbe. He would walk the whole way. Walking was best for soaking up the atmosphere of a city never visited before: time spent walking, his mentor at Chicksands had said, was never time wasted. He had no plan, only the determination that he would manufacture one when the evening came, when he was in place. He walked well, with brisk purpose, and his only stop was at the Landungsbrucken where he parsimoniously pecked coins from his pocket and bought himself a burger and an ice-cream. There was no weapon for self-defence or attack in his pocket, but he was without fear: nothing worse could be done to him than had been.
He was home for lunch. One night in every three weeks on his roster, Tony Johnson did a thirty-hour shift, worked through the night, then came home for a meal and sleep. He was dead beat.
'You actually did that – God, I can't believe it.'
He had no secrets from her. While she cooked, he had sat at the table, with the coffee mug in his hands, which shook, and told her what he had done.
'You bought his ticket, you gave him money, you sent him to Hamburg? I find it hard to credit.'
He hung his head, then lifted the mug, both hands, and slurped the coffee.
'Have you any idea of what you've done? To him?'
In his reply, exhausted and rambling, he tried to explain why he had done it. It was hard for him to be rational, coherent. He spoke of the man and the files that the National Criminal Intelligence Service computers had trawled up for him. He told of the devastation to a man's self-respect, personal esteem. A man on the floor who wanted to drag himself up and stand again.
'But you gave him Capel's name. You sent him after Capel. Almighty God – he could be killed – killed and dumped, killed and disappeared. Tony, have you no conscience?'
The struggle to describe the smile and the light in the eyes, then slamming down the mug, splashing the cloth on the table. Recalling the battering of the questions. Where to in Hamburg? To meet whom?
Spilling out the answers that Intelligence had produced – and the name of Timo Rahman.
'I know that name. You could rot in hell, Tony.'
His explanation, yelled, that he had lost control of the man. It was what the man needed, what the man demanded. He was now only the vehicle for the journey. His wife stood by the cooker and saucepans bubbled
