From SCD11, Intelligence: ‘We don’t have a line on the identity of the guy who took the contract. It’ll sneak out – always does – but at this moment I have no idea who this village bought.’
From SCD7, the inspector: ‘I have Mark Roscoe back from the coast. He knows the Tango better than anyone… Yes, I am concerned about our duty-of-care obligations. My suggestion, while the Tango plods across Europe, we put Roscoe on a flight first thing in the morning. He can liaise in Zagreb, then go on to Vukovar. What he’ll do there I don’t know, but it’ll give our shoulder-blades some cover.’
From HMRC, a line manager: ‘We have there, already in place, Penny Laing and she’ll be able to brief Roscoe. She’s an experienced, highly capable operative and-’
The inspector flared, ‘My man, Roscoe, is quite capable of crossing a road on his own and will not need his hand held.’
The line manager said evenly, ‘I wouldn’t want heavy police boots blundering over the sensitive ground that our investigator is looking at.’
Time for Phoebe Bermingham to call a halt, and she did. It had always astonished her that separate departments went on to a war footing when co-operation was called for. The concept of a detective from the Flying Squad working with an investigator from HM Revenue and Customs was obviously built on shifting sands.
‘I’m sure they’ll do very well together and create complete harmony in their professional relationship. The Tango’s gone and we should be thankful – whatever happens to him is to be laid squarely at his own door. Safe home, gentlemen.’ She shuffled her papers together, pushed back her chair. It was an afterthought and she had forgotten herself sufficiently for a puzzled frown to gouge her forehead. ‘I cannot imagine what he thinks he can achieve – and it’s all so long ago. I mean, do I look back to what happened in my life nineteen years ago and allow the past to dictate my present? Aren’t memories fogged by time? It’s Europe, the twenty-first century, and blood vendettas should be consigned to history classes. Is nothing ever forgotten?’
‘No, Ma’am,’ the Intelligence man said softly. ‘Never forgotten and never forgiven. He’ll probably get the top of his head blown off.’
Simun touched her arm to attract her attention, then pointed. ‘You see, Penny, no wedding ring. And there was no ring on the finger of Maria, the wife of Andrija, and my mother had no ring when she was buried. She has no ring, no gold chain with a crucifix, or any earrings. Everything she had went into the bag that was taken by Harvey Gillot.’
‘Yes.’
It was late. She had been brought to a farmhouse. She was sitting at the kitchen table, hewn wood, and the chair was old, its legs uneven. She had been offered, and had taken, a glass of tap water. The eyes of the woman opposite never left Penny’s face. She could see where the house had been rebuilt. The beams were exposed, some charred, and the walls were not plastered. In one there was a big hole, like a bite from an apple, filled with different bricks and newer mortar.
‘He went to the bank and took out a loan for five thousand euros. That was his share for the payment on the contract.’
‘Yes.’
‘Their boy went to the place where the Malyutkas were to be delivered. The delivery was not made and their boy was identified by his size and the scraps of his clothing that remained. His testicles were in his mouth. They will not speak of the siege and the death of their son.’
She had been told that in the days between the loss of their son and the collapse of the village’s defences, their home had taken a direct hit from a tank shell. If the Malyutka missiles had arrived the tank would have been destroyed. Simun had said that their son’s room was sealed now, the window bricked up. The wife had been in the kitchen: if she had not been close to the table and able to crawl under it as the floors above collapsed, she would have died too. She had been unhurt except that her hearing had gone. She lived in silence. They were separated, Simun had told Penny. Her company was the quiet and his was the anger at what had been done to them. The focus, now, of the anger was Harvey Gillot – and it was as if a man crouched by a fire, blew on its embers and flames reared.
‘He farms a hundred hectares that he owns and another hundred and fifty that he rents. He could be rich, but is not. All the money that the farm makes goes to the association for the support of war veterans. He is a pauper. Look at his clothes, how she dresses. He is a fine farmer, but is now in his sixty-eighth year. Soon he will drop and his farm will be sold, maybe to businessmen in Zagreb or to expatriates living in America. For now he stays close to his son’s room. His son should have farmed this land and lived here. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
She was looking at her hands on the rough table and imagining the woman under it, the dust cascading with the beams and bricks, when her mobile rang. She answered it brusquely, was given a name, asked for it to be repeated, then spoke it aloud: ‘Mark Roscoe, sergeant, SCD7.’ She remembered him, sharp and abrasive. She had called him ‘patronising’ and had thought him stereotypical of the average specialised-unit policeman: he would have thought the sun shone from his backside and the rest of the world was second rate. She was given a travel itinerary, and rang off. Simun queried, but she shook her head and stood.
They went outside into the night.
She sensed, then, that time was short, that a world created for her in this village, with its history, would imminently fracture.
She thought that the son – who would now have been in his late thirties, with a wife and a clutch of kids – would have gone with a village girl to the barn behind the house where the winter fodder was stored. Perhaps the boy with her might have been there with a new generation of village girls. Penny Laing thought herself absorbed into the life of the village; the Alpha team and her bed-sit were almost blown away. They went towards the darkened hulk of the barn and she could hear animals – maybe pigs, goats, heifers – and a truth smacked across her face.
Had Harvey Gillot broken the law of his own country, flown in the teeth of a Security Council resolution, and supplied Malyutka missiles to this community, there would now be a statue in his honour in front of the church, and a street or the cafe would bear his name. She thought of the great and the good in Whitehall, and the Alpha team who made their policy decisions. They had not been here, had seen nothing and were ignorant. But Harvey Gillot had failed on the deal and was condemned.
They climbed bales. She helped him to strip, and felt the prickly warmth of hay against her skin. He had brought his own condom and was shy when he gave it to her. She split the packet and rolled it on to him, then arched, took him and felt a liberation – a cord cut, a link broken. She had never before belonged – not even with her naval man – and she clung to him. He cried out to his animal audience, gasped and sagged. She held him, clung tight. Into his ear, kissing him, she whispered, ‘When he comes here…’
‘Who?’
‘When Gillot comes here…’
‘Yes?’
‘… will he be killed?’
The boy slipped wetly out of her. ‘Why not? If he comes here, of course he will be killed.’
The train had halted and was lodged in a siding. He didn’t know how far they had travelled, but he estimated from the time that they were outside Cologne. The long-distance trains, travelling overnight, needed places to park so that they would arrive at their destination after the world had woken.
He lay on his back. Earlier he had washed and scraped off the sweat of the previous day. He hadn’t really slept, but the project was still forward in his mind: armoured cars, the big new market area. Could be Mercedes – he had a smattering of German, enough to ingratiate himself with the sales force of this particular specification, which was important because he would be looking for exclusivity in the territory agreed and also for decent profit margins. Could be Jaguar.
There wasn’t much in price between the German and British vehicles, both around a quarter of a million euros, and he could hear his patter: A bargain, actually. Only thing that comes cheaper than this vehicle is a funeral – yours. Some customers would look for a German product on principle, and others had to have British-made. Of the Jaguar, his line might be: At a quarter of a million, it’s a snip. I predict it’ll be the preferred transport for heads of state, business leaders, celebrities, the Diplomatic Corps. Such fine lines… He buried himself, through that night, in the thicknesses of armour-plating systems, the depth of bulletproof-glass windows, the cost of run-flat tyres, a global after-sales service to check the continuing effectiveness of Kevlar plates, the armour-driving training course
