figure in darkened bronze leaned against a pissoir, and a little beyond a bookshop, still open.
He went inside. He had no business buying books in Croatian. Perhaps it was to talk that he crossed the threshold – but the buds of memory ripened again: he had been here. A man greeted him and a cigarette hung loose from the upper lip. Harvey Gillot told the man he had been at the shop in 1991, and there was a smile. English spoken. He had been here, Harvey Gillot said, at the time of Vukovar, and the man’s smile was wiped. ‘It is a dark corner. We believe there was a treason. Vukovar was sold. It was the deal that was done.’ He was sure he remembered the shop and pausing at its window, rain sluicing on to his umbrella. He climbed higher and reached, as he had then, the cathedral. A wider square and a Christ figure that was floodlit, high on a plinth, and fountains. He had stood on a slab in front of the cathedral and killed three minutes or four, had allowed the quiet of the place to play round him. Now, that evening, he walked into the gift shop beside the doorway and a nun greeted him, would have recognised his Englishness and told him firmly she was about to close. He said that he had been there in 1991, at the time of the battle for Vukovar. She was tiny. He might have snapped her apart with two hands, broken her. ‘It could have been stopped. The West could and should have. They were betrayed, and the government did nothing. It was allowed to fall and the people were allowed to die. It was deceit.’ The nun was no more than five feet tall and waved him away with an imperious gesture. Harvey Gillot couldn’t have said why he had spoken the name of Vukovar to strangers or what he had hoped to learn.
He knew he was close and old memories returned. The flower, fruit and vegetable markets had closed and the last of the stall-holders were washing down the slabs under their pitches, but that night the rain had done it for them. He saw the cafe-bar in the side-street.
There was a brighter light shining from it than there had been on a November night, and tables and chairs were outside. He was drawn there, a bloody moth.
He was confused. The counter had been ripped out, replaced. Stained wood had given way to plastic and chrome. An old man had been behind the counter, guarding bottles, glasses and a display cabinet of tired sandwiches. Now two girls were there, hanging out, with bright lipstick and heavy eye-shadow, and the coffee machines were new. He went inside and asked for coffee. Did he want latte or cappuccino? If they had been born then, they would have been carried in arms. There was bright light, bright music from America, and bright-faced girls looked at him with a growing impatience. Latte, cappuccino or, perhaps, mocca from Yemen? He cited the privilege of the customer, changed his mind and asked for a beer. He was given no choice: a Budweiser bottle was opened and passed to him.
He drank it from the neck, as he had that night, and then a neat Scotch. The man, Zoran, a schoolteacher, had hollow legs. He had worn once-decent grey slacks that had no shape and were mud-spattered, and a foul, filthy shirt, a tie, a sweater with earth smears, an overcoat and muddy shoes. He had thought then that the man had dressed to impress: he had come from the conflict zone and sought to keep up appearances. He was unshaven and his eyes were hollow, sunken, but had rare life in them.
Drank beers and chasers. Talked about the deal and shook hands on it. A plastic bag was passed, then set down on the vinyl flooring, worn almost through, by his feet. What was in the bag? ‘Everything we have.’
Enough to pay for fifty Malyutka kits? ‘It has to be enough. We have no more to give.’
How was it, where he had come from? ‘We survive, we exist… With the Malyutkas we will survive better, exist longer.’
Subject closed. He had drunk with an educated, middle-aged man, who had walked through a cornfield with a plastic bag, but had no war stories, no derring-do crap… How many times, with Solly Lieberman, had he sat across a table or perched on bar stools and listened to men telling hero-tales and thinking the world should stop and listen. What did the guy want to talk about? A Wembley win for Tottenham Hotspur in the spring, how they would do under the new owner, and… They talked about football and Harvey Gillot knew nothing about it and didn’t like to tell the man that football bored him. They had drunk some more, then gone over for a last time, slower because of the drink, the arrangements for ferrying the gear across the cornfields and into the village.
One Budweiser and a couple of whiskies, then out on to the cobbled street.
Then he had held the plastic bag. The man, Zoran, had caught his face in two hands, kissed him on each cheek and was gone. He had seen the man pause near a streetlight and turn to wave, the rain cascading off his face. Then he had lost sight of him.
It was a bright night, a good piece of the moon showing, and the stars were up and clear. He was glad he had climbed the hill and found the bar, and he started off down the same street as he’d used that night, on which the schoolteacher had walked away. His chin shook and his cheeks were wet, as they had been then, when it had rained.
He went to find a taxi and negotiate a price.
17
Neither of them had spoken to him. The guy who had come into the park, found him by the statue heads and walked him to the apartment, was in the passenger seat. He had been with him when he had chosen the Jericho. He was still in the suit, his tie not loosened, not a hair out of place. The driver was the same size and dressed in the same way. They’d talked among themselves, quietly, in their own language but had not addressed Robbie.
It was a BMW, a black sports utility with tinted windows. Robbie assumed it was armour-plated, the boss- man’s wheels, his personal driver and personal muscle. They had been, for the last half-hour, on side roads, with deep potholes that had made it lurch – not that he would have slept. When they had stopped at a fuel station, his door had been opened and the muscle had pointed to a lit sign at the side of the building – the toilets. When he’d come back he’d been given a bread roll, spiced ham and a bottle of Coke. He’d thanked them, and they hadn’t responded. There had been heavy traffic, tankers, and lorries with trailers on the main highway, but the road they used now was deserted. They made good speed, and on bends the headlights speared across fields of high-growing corn, miles of it.
The last place they had been through – he’d seen the name – was Marinci. A one-drag place with a crossroads in the middle and a church, a shop. Few lights and none of them bright. They had come to a road bridge and Robbie had seen the signs in an overgrown field, a white skull and crossbones on a red base. They bumped hard going over it and he was still wondering what the sign meant when the vehicle swung hard left, didn’t follow the pointer to Bogdanovci. There was a new nameplate but it came too fast for him. He thought it was near to the end of the journey.
The road they went on was narrower. Further to his left, and sometimes picked up in the lights, there was a high tree-line, as there had been at the bridge, and the surface was poorer. There was a dull glow of lights ahead.
They came into the village. If he leaned forward he could see the satnav screen built into the front panels. Now the cursor closed on the red arrow that would be ‘end of the road’, the destination. A man had stepped forward from the shadows and was caught in the headlights. He was supported by a crutch and his right trouser leg was folded short at the knee. A woman followed him and Robbie saw a face with no emotion. Her arms were folded across her chest. The driver braked.
Words were spoken. Robbie Cairns couldn’t understand them. His door was opened.
He stepped out, ground his fingernails into his palms. Did that to regain his concentration. Who am I, what am I? He was Robbie Cairns from Rotherhithe. He was top man. He had taken a contract, had been head-hunted – was big, important. ‘This it, then?’ he said. ‘This where we’re going?’
He took a couple of paces forward. The man on the crutch didn’t move towards him and the woman kept her arms tight across her chest. He realised that the driver had kept the engine ticking over, and now the muscle slammed the door at the back, gave a sharp wave towards the darkness, then was back in his own seat and closing his door. The BMW did a three-pointer, backed on to the grass in front of a house and spun. Its lights were in Robbie’s face, and he blinked. Then all he saw were the tail-lights going away – fast.
‘For fuck’s sake, don’t you wait?’ he shouted after them. ‘Don’t you take me back? Where the fuck am I?’
The brightness out of his eyes, Robbie Cairns saw the faces of those who’d waited for him. They were on a veranda, with a dulled interior behind them. Then he saw the chrome of the coffee machines at the back and the
