village, perhaps the town as well. It is a myth. I did research when I came back here. The Malyutka has a minimum range of half a kilometre, too far. It is not effective below five hundred metres. It is very slow and the controller must guide its flight with a joy-stick – his signal travelling on an unravelling wire. If he is fired on and flinches, he loses control. The manual says that a controller of a Malyutka must, to be proficient, have achieved more than two thousand simulated firings, then fifty more every week to maintain his skill. We had one man who knew a little of the weapon, and no one else who had ever handled one. It was for nothing. There could have been a hundred Malyutka missiles and the defence here would still have failed. There was exhaustion, hunger, and too many wounded with no drugs. The myths grew flesh and the legends added skin. I tell you truths, but no one in the village would hear them.’
He stopped, took her hand and held it. He bit his lip and breathed hard.
‘I should tell you also, Miss Laing, that it was I who set in motion the process for the killing of the arms dealer. I made the contacts and paid over the money given me. In this small matter I take responsibility.’
The birds sang close to them and a shadow flicked over his face. She looked up in time to see the wide wingspan of a stork. There was coolness in the shade of the trees, and wild flowers grew among the weeds. She needed certainties but she had few left to support her.
‘And you should, Miss Laing, take responsibility.’
He let her hand fall. It hung against her thigh. She wanted to run and could not.
‘Each word of your pillow talk, your privileged information from London that you gave to the boy – when you loved him and thought he loved you – went to Harvey Gillot’s killer, into that chain of communication from the village to him. He knew today to be at Munich station – almost, Miss Laing, you told him yourself – and he fired twice. The dealer was blessed, and still does not join the angels. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. He will come here, and the killer too, because you were told of Gillot’s journey and whispered it in the sweat of loving to the boy. We are told everything. We are told you are a good fuck, Miss Laing, but that you are noisy. You, too, have responsibility.’
‘What will I do?’ A small voice, a husk, and no certainties left. She swayed.
‘Is there anywhere with no myths and no legends? Have you heard of such a place?’ He laughed, in sadness.
She walked away from him, quickened her stride. At the end of the path she found the boy, smoking. She passed him, ignoring him. She went to where her car was parked. She had been ignorant and was devastated. She did not know herself.
Ignorance. Granddad Cairns sat on a hard chair in a dreary interview room at the back of Rotherhithe police station. A window, barred, faced on to a car park and a high wall. He had been enough times in that station, in that room, on that chair but had never felt stripped naked – what ignorance did. A policeman said, ‘He’s looking at a charge of murder – not the attempted murder of Harvey Gillot on the Isle of Portland but the actual murder of an innocent young woman who is – was – not a part of the criminality your family feeds on. Her only guilt, as we understand it, was to associate – God knows why – with a very cruel psychopath, your grandson. We can do you with obstruction, probably aiding and abetting, maybe with perverting, and if we’re on a bonus we might get into the area of conspiracy. You’d die inside, Mr Cairns. The alternative – let’s use language you understand, Mr Cairns – is to grass on Robbie: what he’s done in the past, what else we can nail to him, everything, full and frank. When you think about it, remember that from your dick has come a quite horrible creature.’
He had been ignorant of his grandson. Never had a Cairns hurt a woman. Never had a Cairns as much as smacked a woman. He’d done a jewellery shop in Surbiton, 1958, snatched some trays, and a woman had started bawling and blubbering. Two days later flowers had been delivered to her. No one in the Cairns family had ever hurt a woman.
He was left alone. By now, he reckoned, in another room on the same floor of the building, the same stuff would be fed into the ear of Leanne. Loyal as they came, the only one who liked the little bastard, Robbie. But a woman had been strangled. His granddaughter would have been as ignorant as himself, and Vern, who had done a runner, successful. He thought of Jerry, banged up but hearing fast enough of what the kid had done. He, too, would have been in ignorance.
It was not about thieving, not about working, not about dealing and fencing. It was about the bastard’s hands round the throat of a woman. He had never grassed in his life – the disgrace of it, grassing, would kill him if nothing else did and he’d be marked by it every day of his life in the Albion Estate.
He murmured at the ceiling light, ‘Do me a favour, kid. Get yourself slotted.’
He sat on a settee. Only the low rumble of traffic from the street far below drifted into the room through the opened balcony windows to break the quiet. Robbie had been offered coffee, had declined, and had been shown a bottle of water, an ice bucket and a glass beside a plate of biscuits. He had been told that the man he should see was unavoidably detained on urgent business, that he should call if there was anything he wanted, and the door had been closed.
He sat on the settee and ignored the water and the biscuits. There was a tray on the low table.
He ignored also the view through the open window, which looked out on to the square he had walked through and the statue of the guy with the spear on the horse.
Robbie didn’t like to touch the guns on the tray, but all had tags attached to them on which was written their make. There was a Zastava 9mm Parabellum and, beside it, a Ruger P-85. Then a Browning, High Power, the ‘Vigilante’ model. Last in the line was the IMI Jericho 941. They had been laid out with care and made the form of a cross with the barrel tips together. A filled magazine nestled alongside each. He assumed he would be offered whichever he chose. It would be between the American-made Ruger, which appeared heavy and solid, and the Israeli-manufactured Jericho, but he wouldn’t be certain until he had touched them, let each lie in his hand. The room was furnished with quality. His grandmother would have gawped at the weight of the curtains, the comfort of the chairs and the polished age of the furniture, while his mother would have gaped in disbelief. Looking at it heightened the sense of isolation, as if he had no business to be there, so far from the Albion Estate and Clack Street, SE16, a world away. He didn’t know how he could belong… or how, ever again, he could return to Rotherhithe.
It would be good if he had the chance to test-fire, as he had with the Baikal.
Then footsteps. The door handle turning. Looked like a fucking banker from the Gherkin building on the Thames.
‘Mr Cairns, welcome. You have been looked after. I hope you have everything you needed. I apologise for asking you to wait.’
He thought it all bullshit.
The journalist, Ivo, typed at his keyboard.
A girl, a trainee, brought coffee for him.
He had a source in the National Office for Suppressing Corruption and Organised Crime who had supplied a grainy surveillance photograph of a meeting between a minister and a big-time player. He had pictures of the former inner-city school that had been sold low; authorisation had been given for forty luxury apartments to be built on the site. He had another photograph, from a Paris agency, that showed a horse-race winner being led towards an enclosure, with the minister’s wife and the criminal’s mistress in the background. His story was authenticated and could not be killed for any reason other than the self-censorship of survival. His editor paced close to his shoulder and the stress mounted. For fuck’s sake, it was the material the magazine existed for.
The coffee cooled and beside it a sandwich curled. His fingers danced on the keys. In front of him, a little to the side of his screen, was the photograph he treasured of his wife and baby, but he had no time, as he typed, to linger on them.
And the mood of the room changed – same curtains, same furniture, same sunlight, same people, but everything had changed.
He had the Jericho, and said it was good to hold, not as heavy as the Ruger. The Zastava was not as easy in his hand. He would go with the Jericho.
The man – full of bullshit – who had been late, smiled warmth. Not an old yob and not a middle-aged thug, but well-turned-out and his appearance ratcheted the discomfort that Robbie Cairns felt. He reckoned his armpits would smell in the heat and maybe his crotch did. Clothes crumpled, creased, as if he’d been pulled in off the street or maybe from sleeping under the arches.
He wanted to please and tried to look grateful. He said again that the Israeli one would be good.
