by him? Who would believe he could return to a pre-eminence of power? He saw wolves. Wolves were on a cell- block landing when he returned from exercise in the yard. Wolves moved into casinos and shops, bars and brothels. He seemed to feel the heat of wolves' breath and the smell of it – because he had believed a lie. And they edged nearer and their teeth were bared.
Timo Rahman screamed.
He was not heard. The cell's walls closed around him.
A Europol advisory landed on Tony Johnson's desk.
He had his coat on and was preparing himself for the evening struggle on a commuter train when the clerk brought it to him. It already had a half-dozen sets of initials on it but – what else to expect in this perfect bloody world? – it would end with him and he was to field it… His eyes scanned the single page, and he gasped, shook, and flicked it into his in-tray for the next morning's attention. Then he punched the air.
For a detective sergeant with a reputation, deserved, for carrying equally weighted chips on each of his shoulders and for spreading contagious gloomy defeatism wherever he walked, his stride down the corridor was emphatic with cheerful energy. That morning he had repeated his refrain at the weekly meeting of colleagues to hack at current problems that drugs and organized crime, and their effect on the great mass of the capital city's punters, were on the back-burner, ignored and victim to the swollen resources pushed at the War on Terror. At the ground-floor lobby, swiping his card, he blew a kiss at the lady on Reception, and saw the shock wobble on the face of the duty guard beside her.
He went out through the swing doors and on to the street, imagined he heard the guard's question, 'God, what's the matter with that miserable beggar?' and imagined he heard the lady's answer, 'Must be that he's got hot flushes, or he's on a bloody good promise, or it's the lottery.' What he could have told them was that a Europol advisory had reached his desk and stated that police in Hamburg had arrested the Albanian national, Timo Rahman, on charges of grievous bodily harm and wounding, and that officers on the case urgently requested co-operation from European colleagues on all links between Rahman and criminal organizations for immediate investigation while Rahman was in custody, and vulnerable
… What he could also have told them, on the reception desk, was that he had contributed – damned if he knew the detail of how – to the life of an untouchable going into the gutter.
On the pavement he turned heads as he laughed to himself like a maniac. 'You done us proud, Malachy. I hope you've a drink in your hand because that's what you deserve. You've done us proper proud – I hope it's a damn great drink and then another.'
Malachy had rainwater in his eyes, ears, nose, had it weighing down the clothes on his back and his legs.
He quartered ground, was inland from the highest dunes. He moved, alternately slow and fast. When he went slowly it was to listen, because he could see so little, and then he shook his head hard. His fingers went into his ears to gouge out the wet, but he heard only the wind's bluster and the pattering of the rain.
When he went fast, he held to what he believed was the line towards the source of the gunfire and often he thought he had lost it and that his instinct failed him.
Going fast, on a track, his shoes, with their worn tread, slid from under him.
He fell, went down. The breath squeezed out of his chest and his hands flailed. When they hit the mud it was not tackiness they found, but something slicked, wet, but not like mud. Malachy felt the surface of the path, realized its smoothness – as if mud had been pressed flat by a solid weight and then the slick had been left. He could not see more than the outline of his hands but there was darkness on his palms. He believed that it was blood and that the mud had been smoothed by a man's body. He thought, where he was, a wounded man had rested, then crawled forward. But Malachy did not follow the trail, and he tried again to find his line.
He came to the pond. A little of the reflection of the water shone back at him through the reeds. He saw, as a silhouette, the shape of the viewing platform where he had put his shoulder against a support post… In a crash of noise, and he froze, ducks fled – splashed, beat their wings, screamed – and he could smell the body of the old man, as he had done at the platform.
Malachy had warned her that it was a crime to involve others and risk hurting them. She had involved the old man, had picked at his isolation with honey words and pleading eyes, and he had been shot and crawled towards a refuge. She had rounded on him – what did he think she had done with him, if not involve him? He had said: I'll pick up my own pieces. He would. She – sweet girl, warm girl with a taste of sadness – did not own him; nor did those who controlled her.
In his mind, he adjusted the line.
He came to a hollow. He found a plastic bag caught on thorns and near it a Cellophane packet that would have held a shop-bought sandwich. Maybe it was because the cloud weakened in its density and a trickle of the moon's light came through, but small shapes gleamed and then their brightness died. He picked up three discarded cartridge cases. On his hands, on his knees, feeling with his fingers, he found the trail they had used and the indents in the mud.
Later, Malachy came to the first marker: a strip of cloth tied to a branch.
He wanted to stand bare-faced in front of a mirror with brilliant light shining on his skin and coming back from his eyes. He wanted, as he had not done for a year and a half, to examine that face and those eyes, to search for a truth and know himself again. He would not know himself until he had hounded down Ricky Capel on the beach ahead where the sea stampeded the waves… Then, not before, he would learn if he was a coward, and the word beat in his head as he went forward and looked for the next marker.
19 May 2004
The old man walking towards the sandbags at the gate was hazed by the high sun.
On sentry duty with machine-gun, Baz had called for Sergeant McQueen to come, double bloody quick time, to Bravo's gate.
The old man came slowly on the raised road from the village, hobbled forward and used a stick in his right hand to ease his weight.
Scanning him with binoculars, Hamish McQueen had called for the major to get, soonest, from the operations bunker to the gate.
The old man was alone, wizened, and an SA 80 assault rifle dangled from his left hand and against his thigh, half hidden by his robe.
'Do I slot him, sir?' Baz asked, and his eye was against the sight of the machine-gun, his finger flexed on the trigger's guard.
'I don't think so, no.'
It was for the major, the commanding officer of Bravo company, a moment of extreme inconvenience. His place was in the bunker where his clerks had for him a mountain of paper. He watched the old man and the rifle he carried through the binoculars' growing clarity. In two hours he was due to welcome to Bravo the advance force of the infantry unit that would relieve them after their six-month tour of duty. Like a hole in his skull, he needed the distraction of an old man coming to their main gate… He had laid down that the relieving force would not find justification for even a damned small complaint at the state of the camp left for them. The old man carried a weapon that was not used by the ragtag fighters in his area of responsibility
– they had the AK47 and its variants – but had against his leg a rifle that was exclusively used by British soldiers, the SA 80. He checked that his interpreter was behind him, saw Faisal leaning against the back of the sandbags, smoking.
The major prided himself that he was blessed with a nose for danger. For the last week he had cut back on the company's patrolling, had reduced it to force protection – guaranteeing the security of Bravo's perimeter – and had withdrawn any troop movements from the village. He had dreaded losing a Jock for nothing in the last hours of th deployment, wanted all of them on the flight home to Briz Norton. He sensed no danger.
On his belt was a service pistol, and he unclipped the holster's flap. He told Baz, the machine-gunner, to cove him, and asked that Hamish McQueen be at his side. He waved for the interpreter to follow him. He walked down the entry road to Bravo's gates, then strode briskly along the road to meet the old man.
He ducked his head, smiled, and introduced himself through his interpreter. The old man transferred the rifle ponderously to his other hand, juggled it with his stick and gave his name. He shook the major's fist with a good but bony grip, then gave him the rifle. On its stock was the reference number in white paint. He knew it. Every man in the unit bloody knew it. A lost high-velocity weapon's reference number had been dinned into the heads of every
