the fur collar, purchased in Helsinki where there had been an exhibition of body armour. What he did was an act of spite. All the clothing he liked had been bought before they moved to the Isle of Portland – before he had isolated them from the world in a place where he had felt safe.
They watched him.
Free country. Couldn’t stop them.
He hummed, as he lifted the last of the hangers, his anthem: Nobody Loves Us and We Don’t Care. He knew a little of the style and ethics of protection officers. Perhaps once a year he would be in central London, taking a client to dinner at the Ritz or Claridge’s, busting open the expense account in the hope of rich reward, and the guest would have them swarming on the pavement and in the lobby. Roscoe, the girl and the big fellow would have had the training. Something bordering on arrogance enveloped anyone with a Glock, who rode in a car with a compartment for a Heckler amp; Koch machine pistol, vests and gas in the boot, and a list in the front of blood groups, religious affiliations and the nearest hospitals. He knew these three weren’t bullet-catchers. He doubted they reckoned it their duty to put their lives on the line if it went hard for him.
There were cardboard boxes in the garage and a stack of old newspapers in the tool shed. He would go back in and start on the ornaments – glass, pottery, china vases – that she had accumulated over the years. They’d be wrapped, put in the boxes and come out of the front door, across the drive and up to the gates. He turned away from the watchers and went back inside.
He hadn’t thought through the matter of his daughter – Fiona – but he’d likely lump her with her mother and the horse. If he did, her room would be next on the list for clearing.
She saw the door close, heard the latch fasten and his tread fade.
She was short of a friend. There were women at work with whom, occasionally, Barbie went for coffee – even a drink – and a movie, but not many. The visit to the show, in the West End, was rare but anticipated with warm pleasure. There was nobody at the store in whom she would confide, not even the girls she would be with tomorrow evening. It made for an enduring loneliness. There was family – an elder sister lived with two children, no husband, in Lincolnshire, and was close to their parents, but Barbie wouldn’t bare her soul to any of them.
First she thought she would finish some ironing, then wash up what was in the sink, but she wasn’t sure which to attack first.
Her only friend, doubling as lover and keeper, was Robbie Cairns. He had wolfed a sandwich, then had walked, naked, into the bathroom. She had heard the shower run and he had gone into their bedroom. She had put his clothing into the machine and had turned the dial so that the wash would be thorough. While it went through the system and then into the dryer he had slept on their bed, under the coverlet. A couple of times she’d tiptoed to the door and peeped in. There had been a sort of calm on his face.
She didn’t start with the ironing or the washing-up but went into the bedroom to straighten the sheets and bang the pillows.
She had no friend. Had there been one, questions would have been asked. Who was he? What did he do? Where did the money come from? When was he going to ‘out’ her as his girlfriend? And what confused her as much as her lack of knowledge about him was his apparent indifference to her past. Her age? He had never asked. Neither had he shown any interest in her family. He didn’t want to know what men she had been with before he had found her in Fragrances. She had been married – her eighteen, him nineteen, a junior maintenance fitter at the air-force base at Scampton. It had lasted a week less than six months, and the divorce had been through years ago. She had no contact.
Coming from the bedroom, crossing the living room, she paused by the window, parted the lace curtains and saw him coming off the pavement and going into the road. His hands were deep in his pockets, his head was down and there was no spring in the step. He went through the traffic and she lost him.
She had pretty much given up on being close to a man until this one had wandered into her life. He had come with certainty, had never seemed to consider that he might not be welcome. There was little conversation, and he might go almost an entire evening and not speak a dozen words. He would nod, the basics of gratitude, when she’d cooked and he’d cleared the plate. No shouting in sex, and he didn’t expect a grunt chorus from her. Most often it was television, and he chose what to watch – nature, angling, endurance. All the bills were paid. Each week a hundred pounds, in notes, was left in a plain brown envelope and she was expected to shop with it. She wouldn’t have called him generous or tight. Had there been a friend, and had honesty ruled between them, Barbie would have been hard placed to acknowledge why Robbie Cairns needed her in the apartment. The meals were infrequent, the sex was indifferent and occasional, the conversation was halting, but she wasn’t a fool and she understood that he could not have found elsewhere the peace she had seen on his face as he slept.
She paused in the middle of the room and frowned. Her nostrils twitched. Petrol, paraffin. He’d called it lighter fuel. She never criticised him – she wouldn’t give him lip for making the room smell, and the furniture.
Who was he? A criminal, probably. Maybe a fence who received stolen goods and passed them on, or a money-launderer. The smell annoyed her and the cushions in the chair were rucked up.
What did he do? Nothing legal, but also nothing that hurt because she couldn’t believe him capable of that. There had been peace on his face on the bed, and the same peace when he slept against her, his head on her breast – then he was like a child. She reached for the cushions to smooth them.
Where did the money come from? Money from pills, money from car radios that were taken but covered by insurance. Well, not everyone was white as the driven snow, and she had never had a place as nice and… She lifted a cushion.
The light was dropping outside, and heavy shadows were thrown across the room.
Its handle was black, the grip manufactured with a roughness that would make it easier to hold. The trigger lever seemed huge, and the hammer was depressed. Barbie knew little about pistols, except that… For God’s sake, the local paper in Rotherhithe was full of gang shootings. Most were black on black. Most were targeted. The material of the chair was cream and the weapon an ugly intruder.
Should Barbie have been shocked? She was the mistress of Robbie Cairns, who had never explained what he did. She was the workhorse of Robbie Cairns who didn’t tell her where the money came from that furnished the flat and bought the food. The handgun had shocked her, like a blow to the stomach… where his hand rested when he was still.
She bent. She allowed her fingers to run on the smooth metal shape, and she could see the faint discoloration of the gun oil.
Her knees weakened. The cushions were on the floor. She sank down and laid the pistol her lap. It was a moment of enormity, beyond anything she had known in her life before. If a man had a pistol – not a kid but a man – he owned it for a purpose. Her manager had said in her last annual assessment that she was an employee of loyalty and intelligence. Did she owe loyalty to Robbie Cairns who had a handgun, when the purpose of a handgun was to kill? She was trembling, and couldn’t prize her hands off the gun. The light failed around her. She didn’t know when he would come back or what she should do.
Leanne stood behind her grandfather, her hands resting on his bony shoulders.
Granddad Cairns said, ‘Your sister was there, lad, when the police came, but not uniform. What your sister saw was London people, and that’s most likely the Squad. They had jackets on, and it’s hot enough to be stripped on the beach. So, there’s guns, and the Squad carry guns… When you was there, Robbie, there was no detectives, no Squad people, no guns – but there was fuckin’ wasps.’
Robbie stayed silent.
‘For that information, your sister had to hang round the street, then take a fuckin’ bus and a train. Had to show balls, and she did. Good money was paid. A good chance of a hit was there – but fuckin’ wasps was in the way, and the good chance went. What about the good money, Robbie?’
He didn’t answer, wasn’t expected to.
‘A man on the other side of the continent, Robbie, speaks to a good friend and makes a request of him, and it’s passed on. Came to rest with Lenny Grewcock, and he’d heard of you so he came to us. You get chosen, the deal comes to us and the money’s paid. What do I do, Robbie? Tell the big men that our kid’s no good if there’s wasps?’
Robbie would have half killed Vern if he’d spoken to him with such contempt, would have bloody near broken his father’s neck. He heard out his grandfather, and his sister saw his humiliation.
‘They have a crowd at the Yard, part of the Squad, supposed to protect men threatened by a contract. What’ll they do? They’ll move him. There was a chance but it’s like the door’s slammed. You don’t know nothing about
