Normandy in 1944 and not dug up until the skeleton was recovered in 1998? It would need more than engineering oil to free up its working parts. There was a Luger pistol, from the Great War, and the barrel had been drilled. It didn’t work and she should check why her paperwork did not provide the up-to-date situation with the near-historic weapons. They were kept under the living room in a safe mini-bunker, reached by a trapdoor and hidden from view by the carpet.
A bit of fear would have helped Gillot’s cause, Roscoe reckoned. The last three cases he had done for his small wing of SCD7 had involved safeguarding an Albanian brothel owner, a cocaine dealer in west London and, most recently, a scrap-metal king who had minded the prime proceeds from a jewellery heist at Heathrow for ten years until the guys who had done the heist, and done time, wanted the sparkle back. All involving lowlife, all with a sense of humour and a degree of dignity, and all with respect for the job Roscoe had tried to do. The Albanian was now back in Pristina with his nephews and cousins and had dispersed his assets; he had offered the team the chance to meet some ‘nice clean girls and young’, and had sent a postcard via New Scotland Yard. The dealer had wisely returned to Jamaica, and the scrap-metal king had gone quiet, perhaps had been encouraged to find what he had minded. In the three cases there had been congratulations from on high, men had faced conspiracy-to-murder charges, advice had been taken and shots not fired.
They were under the castle’s walls. Suzie said that the English Heritage website stated it had been built in the eleventh century, then fought over, repaired and strengthened over the next five hundred years. More important, there was a place where the weathered stone had been hacked away. Roscoe bent down while the others maintained a guard. He found the bullet, squashed and almost unrecognisable except to a trained eye, which lay at the side of the path. Further down, Gillot indicated where he had been as the second shot was fired and pointed to the gap in the undergrowth where the rotting apples and wasps were. They did the alignments and saw the mark on a branch where sap oozed and a bullet had lodged.
Roscoe noted the prettiness of the place and the beauty of the sea’s colours. Easy to imagine murder on the streets round the King’s Cross brothels, in the dealer’s estate territory or under the mountains of scrapped vehicles in the yard, but not here. Walkers came past and must have wondered why a man who was unshaven and sweat- streaked was with two well-turned-out younger men and an attractive girl, and why the two men wore jackets in the heat and the girl carried a big bag.
‘Have you seen enough?’ Gillot asked.
Roscoe said they had.
‘I shouldn’t have been left alive. If that’s the best they could dig out, they paid for a bum.’
Roscoe said he supposed killing wasn’t an exact science.
‘I was helpless, half down, had flipflops on – then nothing. He didn’t follow me. A wasp fazed him.’
Roscoe said, drily, that he imagined even contract killers had the occasional bad day at work.
‘You taking this seriously?’
He was, and tried to muster some sincerity.
They were walking back up the hill, the sea behind them, the sun hard on their heads.
A salesman’s smile cracked Gillot’s face. ‘Crap, he was.’
‘If you say so, Mr Gillot.’
They were at the front gate. Gillot walked through the clothing, as if it wasn’t there. A family had come down the lane, laden with beach kit and little fishing rods, and stepped through the mess. Bill and Suzie started to pick up and fold the clothing as best they could, then stacked it in the cases. Gillot didn’t help. He said he was not open to advice, was not going to run, was staying in his home.
Roscoe shrugged.
Gillot opened the gates, and the dog leaped at him with enthusiasm. ‘I doubt he’ll be back.’
‘Of course he will,’ Roscoe snapped. ‘He won’t have moved till he had confirmation that the money had been paid. He has to be back. It’s your privilege to reject advice.’
‘I suppose you think I was just lucky-’
Roscoe interrupted: ‘A man once said, “You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.” That was after he had failed to kill the prime minister. It’s a mantra of ours, Mr Gillot. We think it’s hard to be lucky all the time when he only has to be lucky once.’
He was alone, stretched out in a chair, the one he always sat in. Vern had dropped him off, and there had been a curl of contempt at his elder brother’s mouth that he hadn’t seen before. Another time, Robbie would have made a punchbag of Vern’s face. Another time, he would have telephoned the extension on the counter where Barbie was and demanded that she make an excuse and get back to Rotherhithe.
He felt exhausted, and had not before. On each occasion that he had fired at a man and seen him crumple, he had known only calm satisfaction. Then the feelings of power had gushed. Now he had fired and a man hadn’t crumpled. There was no calm satisfaction and no… It played, as if it was on a loop, in his mind and he couldn’t escape it. A man walking, a dog running, wasps around him, the man stumbling, the shot fired and hitting a stone wall. A man down, the shot lined up, the wasps in the face mask and the shot gone high. A flipflop thrown at him. The man running… Hadn’t missed before – had once shot at twice that distance and done two hits, head and upper chest. He didn’t know why he hadn’t run down the track after the target – and the target was barefoot, the track rough stone – caught him and killed him. He remembered when a steer had broken out of a wagon transporting animals to a slaughterhouse, had kicked out of the tail flap when it stopped at the lights on Jamaica Road. They hadn’t just let the thing go, but had gone after it and killed it with a rifle shot. The eleven-year-old Robbie Cairns had seen it all.
And with the images were the words spoken by his grandfather on the telephone. His eyes were tight shut and the sunlight didn’t penetrate. He held the pistol in his hand, couldn’t stop the trembling. Maybe, for failing, they would put him in the concrete while he was still alive, and it would come up over his knees, his gut, his chest and his head. He held the pistol tight, his knuckles white and- He heard the key in the door, slipped the weapon into his waist band and covered the bulge with his shirt tail.
A light kiss – how was he? Fine.
A little hug – had his day been good? Yes.
Where had he been? Just around, nowhere special.
Fingers on his face, gentle – would he like some tea? He would.
She had dumped her bag, was in the kitchen. She never asked why he didn’t make tea for himself if he wanted it. And, she didn’t question how he spent his time. And the fingers had made a little pattern on his cheeks, the hands had held his shoulders when she’d hugged him and, almost, he could taste the kiss she had put on his lips. It was important to him, more important than he could tell her. He peeled off the clothes he had worn under the overalls that morning, and put the Baikal pistol under a cushion on the chair he always used.
She was at the kitchen door. ‘You smell, Robbie – mind me saying that? No offence.’
‘Want you to wash these.’
He didn’t pick up the T-shirt, the trousers, the vest, underpants and socks, let her. When he was naked she didn’t touch him. She bent and gathered up the clothes. ‘What was it I smelt, Robbie?’
‘I spilled some lighter fuel on my arm. Maybe I’ll take a shower.’
She went back to the kitchen and he heard her load the washing-machine. Then it rumbled and the kettle whistled. She knew nothing. He’d wait for the tea, then take the shower. Uppermost in his mind were the people who had paid for his failure and how they’d be.
‘Why, in London, should you be interested now in us and our village?’ The boy, Simun, translated the question put by his father.
Penny Laing answered him: ‘There were regulations in place, British laws, and we believe that Harvey Gillot conspired to breach them. We have a strict policy in our country for the suppression of illegal trading in weapons and ammunition. Harvey Gillot is a target of the agency I work for, and we wish to build a picture of his operations, so we begin here.’
Penny had often spoken through a third party and understood the pace she should set and the gaps she should leave. They walked on the main road through the village, leaving the cafe behind them. In front she could see the church, the crossroads, the shop and little else. If she had been a holidaymaker, driving between two points, she would have gone through it in half a minute and registered nothing.
The man, Mladen, waved an arm expansively. ‘You would have wanted us all dead.’
‘A question or an opinion? I haven’t said I wanted you all dead.’
