Harvey Gillot, and that the secret of that grave would remain inside the village. All those years before he had run from the fight, and could run again.
In the car, he ruffled the dog’s neck, eased the ignition key, bumped along the track that led to the metalled road and turned away from the village. He thought it a place of death, condemned, and wanted no part in its future. The dawn was coming quickly and it would be a fine day, warm.
There were defining days in Mark Roscoe’s life. Some he had recognised as the dawn had advanced, others had been flung without warning into his lap – not many – and they had shaped him. On the most recent – twice – he had been a voyeur, like a pavement gawper. A stake-out in west London, in Chiswick: the firearms had been in place and the bad guys on the pavement, about to go into the building society, but one must have had a decent enough ‘villain’s nose’ to sense the trap about to be sprung. He had grabbed a woman, held a handgun to her head and backed all the way to the van. She – and he – would have been in the marksmen’s telescopic sights so they hadn’t fired. The woman had been thrown aside as the gang had piled into the van and disappeared round a street corner in a scream of tyres. All had been taken into custody three hours later. A defining moment? When not to shoot, when to be patient, when to wait for a better opportunity. Another such moment was outside a high-street bank in a nothing little town in the northern suburbs of Southampton. Roscoe had been with the gun team in the public lavatories when the gang had hit. A cash-delivery guard was looking down the barrel of a handgun, and the team had thought it right to fire, had done so, had taken the life of a serial robber, Nunes, killing him outright, with an accomplice. A defining moment? When it was right to shoot, and extinguish a life at ruthless speed.
Big moments… but as big had been the session in the police-station interview room when he had faced Harvey Gillot across a table, and when, in Harvey Gillot’s lounge, he had seen the stubborn refusal to submit to a threat. It was the nature of Mark Roscoe’s work that he was an observer of defining moments, not a participant.
He had had a shower, which had cleared the tiredness from his head, and now dressed fast. He didn’t catch bullets in his teeth: the Bible as taught to protection officers on the courses stated that he could do precious little protecting when he had no firearm, no back-up, no co-operation and no liaison. He had only a package.
When he was ready – suit, buttoned-up shirt collar, tie, clean, reasonably robust shoes – he swilled his teeth again and drank some tap water. Then he put his thumb into the package and dragged it open. He found inside a canvas pouch with a belt strap. He unzipped it. There was a list at the top, with a mass of items stowed beneath it: analgesic – pain relief; Immodium – intestinal sedative; penicillin – antibiotics; potassium permanganate – steriliser; surgical blades – various; butterfly sutures – general plasters; mini-tampons – blood-loss suppression; condom – can carry a litre of water.
In the Flying Squad, they had regular updates on what to do in a medical emergency before the professionals arrived. He’d never taken it seriously because he’d always believed there would be an ambulance team just round the corner, or someone on the team who had specialised in gunshot and stabbing injuries. The previous evening, there had been a doctor in the bar who had talked politics and psychology. Roscoe undid his trouser belt, slipped on the pouch and refastened his buckle. He thought of what he had said the previous evening – or earlier that morning – on ‘duty of care’; he would have given much to be wearing a holster with a weapon inside it. The kit was a poor substitute.
He made a call, explained how the situation seemed to pan out. There was an expletive and he wondered if his guv’nor had nicked his chin while shaving. He was told at what time the Gold Group would meet. And, like an afterthought, he was wished luck.
He shoved his night clothes, soiled socks and washbag into his duffel and hitched it on to his shoulder. What did duty of care mean? Easy enough to trot out at the Gold Group, harder when the kit was a condom, mini- tampons, little blades, sutures and a canister of antiseptic. The medical teams on the scene when Nunes and his associate were dropped in Hampshire had brought vast cases of gear with them and had set up half a field dressing station on the pavement in front of the bank. He had agreed, in the small hours, that Gillot was a ‘sinner’ and a ‘reptile’. Now, checking that he had everything, those words seemed cheapening and duty of care a crap commitment. Big breath. Best foot forward.
He took the stairs down.
He saw Penny Laing. She avoided his eyes, showed him her back. He thought her a snapped reed, and couldn’t get his head round what had happened to her at this place. In London, she would have been resourceful and conscientious, probably pushy with it or she wouldn’t have made it to the airport. A snapped reed had nothing to contribute. Anders, the professor who cut up decomposed corpses, was paying his bill at Reception. The voice boomed at him: ‘Good to see you looking so chipper, Mr Roscoe.’
There was a little bit, Roscoe reckoned, of the music hall about Benjamin Arbuthnot: he wore green corduroy slacks, a lightweight jacket from which a polka-dotted red handkerchief ballooned, an impeccable white shirt, a tie that looked ancient and military, heavy brogues, well buffed, and a frayed straw hat askew on his head. Almost a costume from the good old days of the Hackney Empire or the Collins’ Music Hall on Islington Green. A clatter down the staircase and Megs Behan reached them. She was still damp from the shower and wore last night’s clothes as she mumbled apologies that were ignored. She was carrying a crumpled jacket that was holed in the back with a bulletproof vest that had twin indents. He hadn’t expected to see Harvey Gillot in the hall, but looked anyway.
‘I think it’s time, Mr Roscoe, for coffee before the Vulture Club’s charabanc departs. Follow me, please.’
He wondered why Megs Behan had the jacket and the vest, but it was too early in the morning to come up with the solutions. ‘What about Mr Gillot?’ he asked.
‘Long gone, but we’ll catch up with him.’
At the desk he stood beside Megs Behan as she shovelled cash towards the girl. When it was his turn Roscoe scrawled his name on his account and followed them into the dining area where coffee steamed on a table and there were plates of rolls. He thought that the old spy had successfully tied his loose ends and now ran the show.
He was unsure what duty of care meant – what obligation it required.
They gathered at the cafe. It was not a parade – they had never stood in lines in the mornings or evenings before taking up shifts in the trenches. They wore the uniforms again, but did not salute now and had not then. Old Zoran, of course, had been respected by the village’s younger men when he commanded them but not for his self- appointed military rank; it was from his history as the village schoolteacher. Mladen had commanded them after Zoran’s death, and led them now. They were a cussed crowd but accepted the need for a spokesman. Mladen had said they should find something close to a uniform: then, they had not worn the uniform as an indication that they were part of the 204 Vukovarske Brigade that defended the town to the west, but because the camouflage pattern made it harder for the enemy’s snipers to kill them.
His own tunic was the one he had worn when he had broken out through the cornfields, large enough for him to put the baby boy under it and still draw up the zipper. It fitted him well. Andrija’s was too tight and the front was stretched grotesquely. Tomislav’s hung loose. Petar’s still had mud on it from having been buried before the break- out, then dug up on his return seven years later. It had not been washed in the last twelve years. Mladen carried his assault rifle as he walked among them in front of the cafe.
Andrija had his prized sniper weapon, the Dragunov SVD with 7.62mm calibre and a maximum range of 1300 metres with a telescopic sight. Its butt rested against his crutch. Tomislav held upright an RPG-7, with a loaded grenade, and Petar had brought a heavy leather shoulder holster that carried a Zastava M57 pistol taken from the body of a Serb officer. All their weapons had been buried in the hours before the break-out.
Simun had no firearm. One could have been found but that would not have been correct. He thought the boy sulked. Many were there, and all were armed. Only one man from the village had not come to the cafe. He felt a small breeze of irritation that Josip was not there. He had delayed his address until the Widow was with them and now he saw her in the low sunlight, hobbling towards them on a stick. Maria was with her, would have helped her dress. All the women already at the cafe wore black. Maria had on a black anorak, a black knee-length skirt and black stockings, and the Widow had chosen a long black dress and a black overcoat that would have been right for a winter funeral – today the temperature would climb to the high eighties.
But it would not last long in the cornfields. It would be over by the time the sun was high and the heat had built.
He drove carefully. It seemed right to Daniel Steyn that there should be no alarms for his passenger. The car had been past the command bunker from which the town’s defence had been organised. Steyn talked quietly, thought it necessary, but his passenger fiddled with his mobile and the doctor realised that the phone was being
