had half listened to radio news stations. She had found, seen, heard no reference to her work. It had taken nearly three months to prepare. There were photographs of kids dead on dirt roads and more kids holding AKs and RPGs, but the name of Planet Protection was nowhere. She had rung a friend – sweet man and bent as a corkscrew – who had always been good with her material. ‘Not even one fucking paragraph. For Christ’s sake, Giles, not one.’
‘I did what I could. No one in Editorial wanted to suck it.’
‘Did you shout and stamp?’
‘Megs, I pushed as hard as I could. What I’m saying, it needed some balls. No balls and no spice means no coverage. Are you going to hate me, Megs?’
‘Might just cut your tongue out.’
‘My features editor said there was nothing new from the last Amnesty release, and the news editor said your statistics didn’t count too much against the “mood of the day”. The editor said – this is the evening meeting – that people in the UK today have their own problems, like bankruptcy, being out of work and losing their homes. Megs, you want coverage, you’ve got to spice it up and give us some balls – balls. Are you listening to me?’
‘Hearing you. Look, it’s been a pretty foul day for me. Want to take me for a meal tonight?’
A pause… He wasn’t exactly jumping. Then, ‘Really sorry, Megs, but I’m on an extra roster tonight. Can’t do it.’
He had average expenses for a hack. Usually when she invited herself they managed a trattoria, and mended the world over pasta and a litre of plonk. She’d let her hand rest on his thigh under the table. In spite of his orientation he didn’t seem to mind, and they were good mates. She could have done with a meal, a freebie, and there was damn all in her purse. ‘Are you telling me my research is boring? Would that be an apt description of me, my work?’
He surged. ‘Megs, I love you and I admire you – your enthusiasm and dedication. What you’re doing, campaigning against the international arms trade, is pretty near the lowest level of everybody’s priorities. Dealers are nasty people, merchants of death, bad people, traffickers in misery – but where? Not at the end of my street, not in my factory and not in my office. You have to liven your act up, Megs, then come back to me. Sorry I can’t do a meal tonight. Take care.’
The phone went dead in her ear. She swept up the day’s papers, cleared them off her desk, carried them to the big black bag that hung from a hook and dumped them. She felt fucking miserable, as if she’d been kicked.
Then Megs Behan dug in her cabinet and tugged out a file: Harvey Gillot.
She looked for a photograph. A devil in a good suit. A monster in a laundered shirt. It was a two-year-old image, and there was no smile as he passed the protest line, as if the people behind the crash barrier and the police cordon didn’t exist. Where would she find the spice, the balls?
‘You said, Dermot, that we needed results for Alpha team to survive.’ Penny Laing stood with her feet apart, arms akimbo.
‘Something like that.’
‘I’ll do it verbatim. You said: “We are a natural target for budget slicing. To survive we need collars felt, court cases convened and sentences passed.”’
‘And if that’s what I said-’
‘The passing of years doesn’t diminish the guilt of criminality.’
‘Correct.’
‘There was, in Croatia, a desperate need for weapons or independence would go down the drain. There was a UN embargo on selling weapons to the country and it was a dealer’s free-for-all, Christmas come early. The town of Vukovar was on the rack, and a deal to sell weapons at that time would have been illegal – an offence – and could be prosecuted. Dermot, if we believe that pillock Roscoe, we have to accept that Harvey Gillot was there and intending to trade. It’s where to start.’
‘Vukovar is “where to start”? You’re suggesting?’
‘We go there, build a case. Have to start in Vukovar or, to be more exact, a village outside it. We need it, Dermot.’
‘You’re talking about haemorrhaging the team’s budget. I have to decide whether the time and effort are worthwhile, the cost and-’
‘The cost is minimal.’
‘But there’s the time and the effort.’
‘It’ll be worthwhile or we sink, Dermot. Are we serious people or do we just shuffle paper? He’s a good target, as good as any. We need to push our investigation into Gillot’s past, dig there with a bloody pickaxe. We can keep the expense to a minimum. Come on, Dermot, go for it.’
‘A successful prosecution – I won’t argue, we need that.’ He tilted back his chair, and would have been aware that the others in the team, nine of them, had abandoned their screens to watch him. Penny thought he liked an audience. His hands came up, palms together – in prayer pose. His words were now slightly muffled, but still distinct. ‘Contracts to kill, in my experience, arise when a debt is not paid, an agreement is broken, one party reneges. Each gangland killing in Manchester, Glasgow, London or down on the Costa is less about territory and more about retribution for a deal not honoured. I venture that Harvey Gillot is believed by the people of this village to have broken a deal. I suppose we have to hope that the hitman – if he exists – moves at a steady, snail-like pace towards the target, and that we might just gather enough evidence to warrant an arrest. Brilliant.’
Penny Laing basked. She imagined a beleaguered garrison, a dependence on weapons coming through, the resupply of ammunition, a deal done and… She had seen, on field trips out of Kinshasa, the aftermath of combat.
Her team leader let his eyes float over the others around the big central table. He would have been weighing whose work was important and whose could go on to a back-burner. He gestured. ‘Asif, would you please go with Penny? First thing tomorrow… Yes, I know the problem, but it’ll be less than a week away. Make arrangements, please, Penny, to turn over the embers of that village. Skewer him, please. Skewer Harvey Gillot.’
He sat in an easy chair. A table light in the hall and the porch lights were on, but in the living room he preferred darkness and the curtains were open at the picture windows. Harvey Gillot nursed a cut-class tumbler that had been refilled twice. He could see out over the east shoreline of the island.
Much of his life passed through his mind. There was moonlight on the sea and enough wind for tiny white scrapes to be whipped up. The dog slept near his feet. Below him the waves rippled on the rocks at either side of the narrow Church Ope Cove, but he couldn’t see them. Away to his left, just visible, was the ruined tower of Rufus Castle. Shards of light fell on old scaffolding. Childhood? Hardly worth thinking about. Only kid in the road who had won entry to the Royal Grammar School. Shunned by most in his class because his Stoughton accent clashed with those from Merrow, Shalford or Wonersh. Didn’t embrace the middle-class attitudes of the herd, but also rejected the pride, obstinacy, of his father’s blue-collar roots: the post office supervisor who wore a tie and a white shirt to work after twenty years’ service. No hobbies. Where had he been happiest? Happiness, as he had known it, was in a cafe near the gates of the barracks. Squaddies came there and tolerated a twelve-year-old sitting near them, hanging on their words about weapons they test-fired. He’d read the Jane’s books on infantry weapons and armoured vehicles and was a walking encyclopedia on military gear. The squaddies had tolerated him enough to take him to one of the Aldershot ranges to watch live firing. That experience had been the thrill of his life. It had been a hell of a bad day when the barracks had closed, the soldiers had left and the cafe had shut its door.
Had wanted work, not college. His first boss was Ray Bridge, who had chided him for lack of ambition in not furthering his education. That had been a week before he was sent with the catalogue of office gear to Solly Lieberman’s place. More thoughts drifted. There was a ferry, white-painted, the moon’s light latching on to it, ploughing at pace towards Weymouth, its cabins and passenger rooms ablaze with colour. Four months afterwards he had ditched his job selling stationery. He had sent Ray Bridge a postcard from Peshawar, North West Frontier, up in the hills from the Pakistan capital, Islamabad. Dear Ray, Thought you would like to know that I am getting on well. Many opportunities here for selling, but not much demand for stationery. All best wishes, Harvey (Herbert) Gillot. Had chuckled when he had posted it in the lobby of Green’s Hotel, and now managed a croak-laugh as he sipped his drink and watched the ferry glide on. Doubted that Ray Bridge – who would now be knocking on eighty if his toes hadn’t curled – would have equated ambition with a contract taken out.
In Peshawar, with Solly Lieberman, he had learned how to move on Blowpipe ground-to-air missiles and get them into the hands of the hairy bastards, our best friends of the day, who were fighting the Russians, our best enemies of the day. Some were bought by Saudis, others by Pakistani intelligence people, and more had been
