the place had broken though common sense – she should have taken an early night in her room.
There was a crossroads where she stopped. To left, right and ahead, the roads were empty. The church she could see was incomplete and the walls were of concrete blocks that had not yet been rendered. Some homes had lights on behind thin curtaining. She was about to turn and go back to the Vukovar hotel when she saw a cluster of brighter light in front. She drove towards it.
At the edge of the village she saw a group of men sitting on a concrete veranda and braked. She was trained to wade into conversations of substance with strangers. Her job did not permit shyness, and a big question needed answering. She was watched by old eyes. She sensed indifference rather than hostility, but no trace of welcome.
She thought she interrupted. She asked the first question that had to be answered: please, did anyone here speak English? She was stared at. It was a distant dark corner of Europe, and there was little reason why any of these older men should have learned her language. Always a disaster to work through interpreters: investigators loathed working through the uninvolved third party. She smiled with what warmth she could muster and thought she had blundered. She should extricate herself, her first contact screwed. For a moment she regretted that Asif with the pregnant wife was not taking part of the load.
The voice was clear, young and came from the shadows. Tall, well-built, with a mop of uncombed hair, he emerged to answer her question. He said his name was Simun, that he had learned some English at senior school. His smile was friendly. She said what she wanted, didn’t mention Harvey Gillot: the story of the siege of the village. It was agreed. When she drove away it was not the boy, Simun, she remembered with greatest clarity, but the older men, careworn, with dulled eyes, as if experience had dealt harshly with them.
Harvey reached for the phone. He had glanced at his watch and done the equation: what time it was in Marbella. Didn’t think they’d be eating yet. The man there had been the first he had turned to after the death of Solly Lieberman. Harvey Gillot didn’t know whether his own father and mother were physically well, and his ignorance didn’t bother him, but when he’d heard that Solly Lieberman, boss, mentor and father figure, had died, he had gone down in a crumpled mess and wept. Could remember each moment of it.
He’d been at his apartment off the Marylebone Road, fancy, smart, minimalist and affordable because he earned good money from the patronage of Solly Lieberman. He was going out, had a date, half through the door and a telephone was ringing. In the trade nobody answered a phone. Everybody tasted a call through an answer-phone. The woman who did reception at the office was calling from her home, and pretty damn composed: Harvey, my dear, so sorry to call you with this. It’s about Mr Lieberman. Very bad news about him. From Russia, the embassy have come through to me. I think he’d listed me as next-of-kin. An accident. A fatal accident. I’m sure he’ll be in your prayers, Harvey, as he is in mine. Could you be in the office tomorrow? Thank you.
Solly Lieberman had boarded the plane in Sofia and flown east. Then he had travelled, helicopter and four- wheel drive, into the perma-frosted Russian tundra, with a guide and a hunter. His host was the designer of the new generation of 155mm howitzers. They had been on the search for a brown bear, a male, that had terrorised an exploration team of geologists prospecting for a possible platinum mine. They had been camping in bollocks-freezing cold, and on the fourth day they hadn’t found the bear – but it had found Solly Lieberman. He had been swathed in clothing on his way to a call of nature. The bear had been shot but not until it had got tooth and claw into frail old Solly Lieberman. It had been ten feet high, weighed nearby three-quarters of a ton, and had made a bad mess of the sixty-eight-year-old arms broker. Harvey had helped carry the coffin. He didn’t reckon much of Solly Lieberman filled it.
Now was his moment but he’d doubted he could tread in the American’s footprints.
He had been told: You’re privileged to be offered that chance. You owe it to Solly Lieberman, a great man and a great ally, to take in two hands what he offers you. Go for it, as our friend did when he was little more than a kid. He had driven the man from London to Heathrow and seen him on to a flight to Malaga, fifty kilometres from Marbella. He had paid, as the testament stipulated, a token sum for the business and known that the money went to a Jewish charity for the education of the sons of rabbis. Then he had sat in the old man’s chair and had started to follow the footprints.
Ten months later, a phone call from overseas. A familiar, accented voice. A remark about the autumn sunshine in Marbella in contrast to the fogs and mists of London, and an introduction. I don’t want it, Harvey. I want nothing to do with the Balkans. What you should do if you want it is to telephone this man in the defence ministry in… He had been given a number, had called it and a week later had been on a flight to Zagreb.
Now, he lifted the receiver, checked the number in his book and dialled. It was answered.
‘It’s Harvey.’
‘Good to speak. You are fine now?’
‘Everything is good. Sorry about earlier. Now, we were talking in terms of…’ Had been talking earlier in terms of assault rifles and the ammunition to go with them, bulk numbers of RPG-7 grenades with high-explosive or fragmentation warheads. He thought it best to be in total denial, more comforting.
Robbie watched. He had the car door open and through the shop’s window he saw the woman pour vinegar, scatter salt and wrap. Then Vern was reaching into his hip pocket for his wallet. He was aware, always had been. He could see Vern with the three portions of fish and chips, almost ready, and could see, too, the three kids – in the mirror – coming near to the car. He turned away from his brother, who was waiting now for change. Kids like the ones on the Albion Estate and the Osprey Estate… The likes of himself, his sister and elder brother had not been, ever, a part of the gangs. Didn’t need to be. Vern, Leanne and Robbie had been born with authority and had the respect accorded to their name. Their father and grandfather had drilled it into them that authority and respect were not to be abused, that once lost they were hard to reel back. He was in the front passenger seat, his feet were on the pavement and the door was wide open. One of the kids veered off and went round the front of the car, hesitated, pushed up past the front wheel and extended his foot. For a second or so, he was balanced on one leg.
The kid said, ‘You’re blocking us. Close the fuckin’ door.’
The other two laughed. The raised foot rested against the open door.
‘Didn’t you hear me? Close the fuckin’ door.’
What Robbie Cairns had been thinking while he watched Vern collect the fish and chips hadn’t been important. He was now feeling the pressure of the door against his shin and spotted a knife. Kids who thought they ran a street corner – not Rotherhithe but a corner of what Leanne had said was called Weston on the Isle of Portland. A man came down the road, older than Robbie’s father and younger than his grandfather. He had a stout stick in his hand and the streetlamp caught him. He would have seen the kids. He crossed over to the other pavement as the pressure grew on Robbie’s shin. The knife blade was against the wing of the car and started to gouge. Throaty laughter, and Robbie saw the line in the paintwork that the blade scratched.
‘You going to fuckin’ move, wanker, or do I kick the fuckin’ door shut? Come on, shift.’
The blade came close. He saw Vern pocket the change and turn for the shop door. He had a plastic bag with their food in it.
He was Robbie Cairns, one of a dynasty. The face was above him, grinning manically, and the light caught the blade. Kids in Rotherhithe carried knives, scraped the paintwork on cars, had fun – and had the wit to recognise a member of the Cairns family. No one would have kicked the door and scraped the car of a Cairns. He pushed himself up, had to wrench the door away to extricate his leg. He reckoned that the skin on his shin was broken and perhaps there was a blood smear inside his jeans. He was five feet eight or nine – hadn’t been measured since he was in Feltham Young Offenders. Not more than twelve stone, or hadn’t been then. No spare flesh on him. The kid had a knife and a stocky build; he hadn’t looked into Robbie’s eyes.
The knee came into the kid’s groin. As he jack-knifed and subsided, a trainer toe followed where the knee had been and he gasped. The knife flew – lodged in the grass of the verge. More kicks went in. None to the face. The hands that tried to cover and protect the kid were battered aside. Done fast and clean. There was the receding clatter of the other two kids as they ran.
He had stopped before Vern reached him. Didn’t need Vern to tell him he was an idiot to fight in the street – draw attention, get noticed. Not that Vern would have criticised him to his face. His right hand slipped up and the forefinger rested on the left side of his chin, against his lower jaw. The tip could be inserted, just, into a tiny indentation that most would not have noticed and had healed well. A big kid, pervert, had gone after him in the showers at Feltham. When told to leave off he had struck out and his ring had cut Robbie’s face. It was said in the block that night – and he’d heard it was said in the prison officers’ mess – that it was doubtful the big kid would
