face and bad-mouthed by his grandson. He didn’t understand why the kid had crumpled.
‘People put their faith in you and have been let down. Me and your dad, we’re pissed on. I like to say, in this world you have one chance. You’ve got to hope, kid, that you have two chances. One chance, you failed. Worst is that the money was paid.’
It was the kernel of what he had to say. Didn’t know why he’d taken so long getting there. He wouldn’t have considered going gentle on the kid because of family. In the world of Granddad Cairns the most important factor was money. Men were paid, men did not deliver, men went into concrete and always had. Might be the flyover at Chiswick, or the foundations of the Dome, or the support towers of the new Olympics site. Money had been paid and lodged in an account, and he knew it because the paper slip from the cash machine had told him so. To be paid and to break faith on a deal was a death sentence, and to have to pay back the money was a humiliation he doubted he’d survive.
‘We were paid, we had their money. I have to tell people you failed. Also, I’m telling them you’re worth a second chance. Get it in your skull. Money was paid and needs earning. If it’s not, you’re in the gutter, Robbie, bleeding bad and-’
The call was cut. Might have been that the kid ran out of money, or that he put the phone down on him.
She sat on a bench, opposite the museum, and the lane in front of her ran down past the terraces of cottages. The gate to the house was out of sight. She could sit there – she was just a pretty young girl out in the sunshine.
She had assumed it was the wife who had left. Blonde, highlighted hair looking a mess through the windscreen, driving fast up the lane and turning on to the road without a glance to right or left. She’d not seen more of her because of the privacy tinting on the rear windows. A pick-up had followed. Leanne Cairns wasn’t a fool. Might have been – as her grandmother, Mum Davies, said – the brightest of the whole tribe. Wasn’t taxed. Leanne could register the scale of the catastrophe that had hit them down that lane. She wondered if by now, without her as a crutch, Robbie had dragged himself together.
She was to watch and not attract notice, and she was to tell him what she saw.
She imagined that by now her grandfather would be hyperventilating at the failure, that a message was on its way to HMP Wandsworth and her father’s cell block. She thought a report on the failure would have reached Lenny Grewcock, and would be homing in on some village in Eastern Europe. That it was Robbie who had failed amazed her. Not her father or her eldest brother: little Robbie.
She knew where he’d be. She wasn’t supposed to but she did. With Vern, she was the only member of the family who was privy to where he’d be – and a fat lot of fucking good it would do him.
She stood up and started walking. She went past the museum, past a group of walkers in shorts and country shirts with ruck-sacks, past small houses with bright window-boxes. She saw the gates and the voice grille and stood rooted. A suitcase came over the gates and split open when it landed, clothes spilling out and- She spun on her heel.
So, his wife had quit on him, hadn’t told him they’d ‘see this through together’. She had done a runner and wasn’t expected back, and Harvey Gillot, with her Robbie, was in the pits.
‘From what you say, Benjie, Blowback is apt.’
‘The trouble with Blowback is that every little man, with the benefit of hindsight, can lob a brickbat.’
‘Stuck in you, as a dose of garlic is?’
‘Don’t get me wrong. I merely offered advice. It was his decision. It’s not me that has Blowback.’
They ate in the dining room at the Special Forces Club, a discreet address in a road behind Harrods. Benjie Arbuthnot liked to support the place as the credit crunch and declining membership squeezed its finances. His guest could have belonged, might yet succumb to arm-twisting, and qualified through his commission in the Royal Marines and secondment to the Special Boat Service. They had met at that god-forsaken hole, the Iraq-Iran border, the old fighting ground of those countries in the 1980s, and twenty years later, Benjie had seen off the assets over the waterways that marked the frontier. They’d gone in RIBs with suppressed engine noise, and had been the responsibility of Denys Foster – Captain, Military Cross, the citation not published. It was an indulgence of Benjie’s to stay in loose contact with younger men: they freshened him, kept his mind alive.
‘Where we were – Iraq et cetera – that was a Blowback.’
‘Of course. We armed the old butcher, fed him intelligence, empowered him and it all blew back in our faces.’
‘And Afghanistan.’
‘Right again. I had a little part in that – fourth-rate ground-to-air kit was shipped in, and my young friend Gillot did what was asked of him. We helped expel the Russians and now we’re up to our necks in that awful place, toasted by the hairy blighters we encouraged.’
Benjie seldom met anyone in the bar these days whom he had known on the road. In the ranks of the SIS, he had served in Pakistan, Syria, Argentina, the Balkans and, of course, had done time as a cantankerous veteran in Iraq. There, he had not tolerated incompetence and had valued the friendship and humanity of the young man now opposite him.
‘You could say, Benjie, “They sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind”. Your Gillot sowed then and reaps now.’
The waitress hovered, and he indicated that they needed more time on the menu, but not on the wine list. A nicotine-stained finger stabbed on a house white, a chardonnay.
‘Book of Hosea, Jerusalem version of the Old Testament, chapter eight, I think verse seven. Yes? In my career – God, I sound pompous – I believe I tried to respond with fairness towards our assets. What do I owe him? Tell me.’
‘What are the police offering?’
‘Told him to hide in a ditch and keep his head down.’
‘Family stiffening his backbone?’
‘I doubt it. He’s a loner. All arms dealers are. They’re pariahs, on no one’s invitation list. Bizarre business, this blowback. The Americans slipped it into the lexicon to highlight the scale of the foul-up when they backed the Shah of Persia and created the monster of modern Iran. It was clever at the time, and they’ve cursed it for thirty years. The unintended consequences of an operation. Harvey Gillot made a fair profit out of that deal – set him on his feet, let him walk tall. Now it’s the ditch and maybe right into a wet culvert. I asked you, what do I owe him?’
‘In his case, put crudely, I’d want my hand held.’
‘Figuratively, literally?’
‘Maybe both – and something more in the way of advice.’
‘Spit it.’
‘He can’t hide for ever. Agreed? Can’t go into a ditch for the rest of his life. With me?’
He waved the waitress forward again. ‘Think so… Thank you. I make an abominable host. Can we order? I always go for chicken, safest, I think… Yes, with you. I hear what you say.’
It was enough to sap the enthusiasm of a convert. Megs Behan had always found those recently ordained into new branches of the clergy – or to the ranks of the anti-nicotine Fascists or the ones making the globe greener – nauseatingly saintly in the degree of their enthusiasm. Herself? The prospect of a trip to the coast had roused in her a rare sense of excitement. She had a giant canvas bag, containing her bullhorn, which was loaded with fresh batteries, and wads of leaflets describing the evils of the arms trade. Her enthusiasm drained away with a points failure west of Winchester. The convert’s loyalty to the cause suffered as she sat in a crowded carriage and watched nothing much happen outside. The coast, and the home of Harvey Gillot who sold weapons that killed innocents, was far away and the points stayed unrepaired. She had wanted to be there by midday – would be lucky now if it was late afternoon.
The battle raging inside her was fought along familiar lines: did she dare to poke her head out of the window and light a cigarette, or lock herself into the toilet and puff into the pan? She did neither, sat on the train and endured. Her mind was a jumble of statistics on weapons and ammunition exported, the destinations they went to, the schedules of flights out of Ostend, the ancient, unserviced aircraft that limped across continents in search of conflict, and men such as Gillot who met cronies and contacts in dark bars and select restaurants. None of them knew her name or what she looked like. He would, though. Too fucking right, he would. He would see her at his front gate, would hear her anywhere in his home and… Thinking of the blast of the bullhorn was almost better than
