The right side of the head was intact but the left had shattered. It was the third weapon he had tested. Robbie Cairns would have said it was like trying on a new pair of shoes. The feel was right or it wasn’t. The third of the Baikal IZH-79 pistols was the one that seemed good to him, better than the other two. They had come off the same production line, had been converted from discharging tear-gas pellets to firing killing bullets by the same Lithuanian craftsmen, but the way the weight lay in his hands and the grip of his fingers on the butt seemed different.
He was the best customer the armourer had. Robbie Cairns believed in the total discretion of the man who sat a mile away in a car park and didn’t watch him shoot with the three pistols at the shop-window dummy. The armourer would take the secrets of his customer base to the grave. If he didn’t, the grave would welcome him earlier. Blood pulsed in Robbie’s veins, always did when he fired live rounds. Crazy thing, but the elation was no greater when he shot at a walking, screaming, falling target than when he aimed at a plastic head that might have been in a display at the store where Barbie worked.
Now he was careful. His hands were in sensitive rubber gloves. The two rejected weapons went into the briefcase in which they had been delivered. The one he would use, now that a contract rate had been agreed and a deal done, was dropped into a small holdall with the ammunition. A supermarket bag held the remnants of the two plastic heads already demolished, and he knelt to pick up the fragments of the third. The bullets would have been squashed beyond recognition and were spent somewhere among the trees.
He had had no training in handling weapons. His grandfather wouldn’t have them in the flat, said he hated the damn things. He had also said that firearms hanged men. His father had never had a gun on a raid. Only one man had urged Robbie Cairns to get serious firearms expertise: an officer at Feltham – not the one who had told him he could have a better life than traipsing in and out of courtrooms – had urged him to go for the regular army on his release, had told him it was possible for a teenager’s criminal record to be ignored. Robbie had dismissed it out of hand. Nobody would give orders to him once the gates at Feltham had closed behind him.
But he had met a man – might have been a tinker – on Rainham marshes who was shooting pigeons. He’d had decoys pegged out and had made himself a hide of camouflage netting. The man had told him about shotguns, rifles and handguns – he might once have been in uniform and booted out. Late in the day, evening coming on, the geese had flown in. The man had shot one, then passed the weapon to Robbie and left it to him. Beginner’s luck or natural talent? A Canada goose had been hit, in flight, had feathered to the marshland and flapped, crippled. Robbie had walked to it and – two turns – wrung its neck. Why had he been on Rainham marshes? To bury a metal-lipped cosh that had been used on a man at a club in Southwark; the guy was hospitalised so the cosh was hot and needed to disappear. Never saw the tinker again, but had learned about posture, breathing, and to respect what his hands held. He had taken the goose home, and his mum had thrown half a fit and gone apoplectic and said it was for the rubbish. Granddad Cairns, round the corner, had plucked and cleaned it. Grandma Cairns had cooked it. A good bird but stringy: it had flown hundreds of miles before landing on Rainham marshes.
When he was satisfied that nothing remained, he hitched up the briefcase, the duffel bag and the plastic one that held the broken head and the spent cases, put the decapitated dummy under his arm and started to tramp back along a narrow path. He headed for the car park where the armourer would be waiting, and in his hip pocket – always cash up-front – was what he would pay.
One worry nagged at him.
That day, Leanne was in an Internet cafe and would be doing the Google thing on aerial views of a stretch of coast; cliffs and quarries that might be working or were disused. It was easy to be on a pavement in Bermondsey or Rotherhithe, or up in Tottenham, merging with people. He had never worked out of London, had never been asked to do a hit in a wide-open space. He wondered which of his talents would count when the city was behind him. He didn’t know.
When he didn’t know, he worried.
Please, just tell me it’ll be your best effort. That day Vern would be making the last arrangements for the car, test-driving what the garages under the arches had on offer. He’d be going carefully because it was well known that they were flagged by the police and watched. And he worried because Leanne had said that the target’s house could only be reached and left by one road.
He didn’t like worrying, wasn’t used to it, but the contract was agreed – and his credibility did not permit Robbie Cairns to wriggle or do a weasel run.
They’d go down the next day to where the target lived and look.
The building was a warren of sections. The impoverished groups that protested against brutality from right- wing governments, left-wing regimes, state-sponsored torture, the exploitation of migrant labour and the international arms trade had to work cheek by jowl. It was rare, though, for one group to seek advice from another. Megs Behan broke a habit.
On the floor above there was an overspill office used by the Peace Brigade.
‘What do you want me to tell you? That you’re just a clerk, a paper-pusher? How’s that for a start?’
The organisations in the building were, of course, fiercely independent. They guarded their territory jealously.
‘You’re hardly going to hit their heights with a few media releases. You do stands at political conferences, you brief administrators, a few junior ministers know your names, and it all seems like the centre of the universe. We’re not on those tracks.’
She had had a bad night. She’d smoked through half of it, had been up twice and into the little communal kitchen for coffee the first time, then herbal tea, her self-esteem battered by the sense that her efforts were useless – her family’s assessment of her work. Her father was a senior hospital administrator, her mother a High Court judge. One brother was a partner in an accountancy business and the other a CEO in pharmaceuticals. She went home at Christmas, endured their patronising remarks about her ‘good works’ and left as soon as public transport was running again, but permitted little wads of banknotes to be dropped into her handbag. Last year, when she’d heard of their triumphs and survival in the downturn she’d still felt some degree of worth, but not last night, so she had climbed the stairs and bearded one of the Peace Brigade people.
‘We’re in Colombia, Salvador, Nicaragua and particularly Guatemala. We’re not in Westminster. We’re alongside potential victims – the writers, the free-press journalists, trade unionists, priests who won’t be cowed. We’re walking with them, living in their homes. We are – almost – a moral shield. Where are you, Megs?’
He had the tan to prove where he had been and there were scabs on his neck that she thought were from a vast mosquito in some horrible jungle.
‘If I cause offence, so be it and I won’t apologise. The arms trade is wrong. End of story. It’s responsible for deaths on a criminal scale. It’s an area of quite colossal greed. So, get off your bum, Megs, do something that’s noticed. That message on board?’
She bobbed her head, bit her lip and headed for his door. ‘Do they know who you are, Megs, the brokers of arms? Do they know you exist? Are you a pain in the arse to them?’
She stamped down the stairs and back to her cubicle.
She was almost at the check-in desk, lifting her bag, when a mobile rang. Not hers, Asif’s. The girl at the desk was waiting to take the printout that Travel Section’s computers had spewed, then had turned away to her screen and gesticulated at the conveyor-belt beside her. Penny Laing dropped her bag on to it. Asif was talking quietly and she couldn’t hear what he was saying. The sticker was fastened to her bag’s handle and it was gone; she was passed her boarding card. He was still talking and the girl heaved an impatient sigh. A man from the queue pushed him, and a woman coughed noisily.
He stepped out of the queue, and the man elbowed Penny clear of the desk. Asif’s head was bowed and she sensed anguish. The woman nudged her further aside. She might have flared up. She was tired, ready to flop down on a seat. Flying, since she had joined HMRC, had been limited – the DRC, Kinshasa via Brussels, Dublin a few times and the red-eye flights to Malaga and all points on the Costa where traffickers lived in the sun. It was in Gibraltar that she had met Paul…
‘I’ll be there, darling. I’m on my way.’
In her mind, this was a good assignment, potentially rewarding. It had the footprint on it of Harvey Gillot. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked sharply.
‘It’s my wife. There’s a complication and-’
‘When’s it due?’ She knew little about the vagaries of childbirth.
‘About a month. If I’m not travelling, can you cope? I mean…’
