God, where were the old rules of her life? Gone. The woman’s voice was quieter now, almost matter-of-fact, and Simun’s tone reflected it. Penny could pass no more judgements, but could imagine the darkness, the noise of shellfire, and then the dawn coming, the men not back from the cornfield, the depth of the loss, the spectre of defeat… then the flight of the men, and the women staying because the wounded in the crypt could not be abandoned. The advance of an enemy who had taken many casualties. And the revenge. She wanted it over and stood up, but the crow woman would finish.
‘If he is still alive, if he comes, Gillot shouldn’t think he can smooth us with good words. We don’t listen to talk. If he comes, it is to die here. They, our dead, demand it and so do we… He will never leave here, I promise that.’
The train ground out the kilometres beyond Salzburg, carrying Harvey Gillot towards fields where the harvest had not yet been gathered, and where graves had been unearthed.
16
He had settled into the rhythm of the train. There would have been, any other day, the sense that his time was wasted, that he should have flown. Not today. Harvey Gillot was satisfied with his smooth, slow progress through the Austrian mountains, the vistas exposed to him, castles and valleys and little communities on hillsides, surrounded by sloping meadows.
He could acknowledge the failure.
As he had frittered each hour, he had promised himself that when the next one started, he would begin the process of examining prospects, options… what he would do, why he would do it, when he would do it and where he would make the gesture that had brought him this far. Difficult to find answers when the train rolled, rocked, almost made a lullaby sound, the windows were sealed and the air-conditioning was set for comfort. The effect was soporific: he could have snoozed, could have forgotten his destination.
Hours slipping away and distance covered. He spoke to no one, not even the polite ticket attendant, and when he went through to the restaurant carriage he ordered with his finger, jabbing at the menu. He remained aloof and alone, as if he was not a part of the life and times of any other person on the train.
No man, woman or child was the same as Harvey Gillot. He could have gone to any high-street bookie in England and put a hundred pounds and his shirt on the bet, with good odds, that no other passenger on the EuroCity Mimara express was under sentence of death from a community that had taken out a contract. If that shirt had been put with the cash stake there would have been two neat bullet holes in the back to prove his case. He could have gone into any Square Mile casino, put a thousand in notes and one dented vest on the table, and wagered that no one on the great train could share with him: ‘Know how you feel, Harvey. In the same boat.’ So he kept his silence, ignored the slow pace of life around him and failed to answer the questions posed by his presence on the train.
He had forgotten now about deals, the buying and selling of weapons, ammunition and communications equipment. He no longer considered whether the Mercedes or the Jaguar was better value as an armoured car. Harvey Gillot sat in his seat, the sun beating against the tinted window, in the bulletproof vest and the holed shirt. If he came through this, if… He had not done games at school unless he had been subject to a three-line whip, and it was only by an accident that he had once strayed into a sports pavilion and seen faded shirts in display cases, worn by kids who had been picked for a national schoolboys’ rugby team and donated them… If he was still standing, walking, hadn’t had his head holed, his guts torn open, his lungs sliced and his bones splintered, he would take that shirt, a sort of soft lavender blue, to one of those trophy places off Piccadilly and ask for a case of polished wood to be made with a velvet background and his shirt pinned inside so that the bullet holes were on view. He’d have a little silver plaque screwed to the woodwork: Herbert (Harvey) Gillot, pupil 1974-80, later arms dealer and survivor. Might take the thing, swathed in bubble-wrap, down there himself and dump it at the head teacher’s door so that the cocky little buggers, who thought a rugger pitch was big-time, could marvel at it and wonder where the blood was. But he didn’t know whether the old boy would return to the Royal Grammar School. Then again there might be another message on the little strip of silver, Herbert (Harvey) Gillot, pupil 1974-80, later arms dealer and loser, and there would be blood on the shirt, which would make it more interesting. He had no music to listen to, he had read the magazine and the Herald Tribune, and he never did crosswords or brain teasers.
He could gaze through the window, see the sights and rush past people who waited at level crossings, worked in fields, were in cars on country roads or waited on platforms where there was no stop, and know that nothing and nobody was relevant to him. He was separated from them and had a rendezvous to keep.
Did it hurt?
Might find out, and might not.
He didn’t know if it would hurt to be shot.
Might learn and might not. He was more frightened of the pain than of the black emptiness, supposed, of death. The option had been to live in the hole, to shudder at each shadow moving, each footfall behind his back, and never be free of it. Some things were clear in his mind. He wasn’t going to hide for the rest of his days. He would try to offload the issue of the cornfields. He would beg and plead. If the hair shirt had to be worn then it was for costume necessities, and if he had to show ‘penance’ it would be laid on with thick greasepaint. He was good on the big picture but, as a man had once said, the devil was in the detail. This was the only way he could think of to rid himself of the problem.
The train carried him on, and its wheels made a drumbeat, relentless, as they went over the joins in each section of rail, as if the end of the journey was inescapable.
A bus dropped him close to the railway station. The sun beat down on him, but he didn’t notice it. The girls walking past him were slim, wearing halter tops and shorts, but he didn’t see them. He went inside the station and found a phone booth.
Robbie Cairns had the scrap of paper in front of him. The number he had rung in Munich was scratched out. He dialled the one that remained and waited, dragging air into his lungs when he was answered. He gave his name and said where he was. He was told, English language, crisp and accented, that he should come out of the station, cross the road, go into the park, and where he should stand.
He walked. He was never alone in Rotherhithe. Anywhere between Albion Street and the disused docks of Canada Water he felt comfortable – not alone. No one would have caught his eye and smiled at him. It was his familiarity with the fabric of the place that meant he didn’t feel isolated there. Almost, he yearned to hear voices. Not the bloody automatic ones at the airport in Germany, not women’s voices barking at him in talk he didn’t understand. Like a hole in him he couldn’t fill – no Leanne, no Granddad Cairns, no Vern, whom he’d always treated as wet shit but who now he would have grovelled for, and no Barbie… It might be that the hole was Barbie, not to be called back. He walked the length of a path with lawns and trees flanking it. The buildings beyond were old and fine, had been renovated and had flowers on the balconies. He walked because he had been instructed to. If a wasp had not gone up his nose, if Barbie was on her bloody counter, and if the fucking target hadn’t worn a vest, he would have told anyone where they should meet him.
Robbie Cairns didn’t know how he might find a friend.
He was in gardens now. Carved heads sat on squares of stone or pillars. He couldn’t have named a famous sculpture or sculptor. Birds sang from the trees.
So alone.
There was a narrow inner pathway between the mown grass and the hoed beds, and he walked round it. The first time: would they have found her? The second time: would she be on a slab in the mortuary at Guy’s? The third time: would the paper trail have dug up that the apartment where she lived was in the name of Robert Cairns? The fourth time: because of her was he now subject to a manhunt? The fifth time: because of her, was he now fucked, finished… and isolated?
‘It is Mr Cairns? Yes?’
He turned, saw a heavy-built man who wore a suit, had good hair and a tie. He thought himself tired and dirty. He nodded, could hardly speak.
The stranger – a friend – said, ‘Follow me, please, Mr Cairns.’
The journalist, Ivo, gathered his papers into his laptop bag, picked up his son, little more than a babe in
