and get the hell out. Not sorry to see them go. The Gold Group, in relation to Harvey Gillot, had been an unsatisfactory frustration. Three new men and women took their places. Another Gold Group was in session, better stuff and straightforward: an Albanian brothel owner from Kilburn had ‘kidnapped’ a star girl who worked for a Kosovan pimp. If the Kosovan and his chums found their Albanian ‘cousin’, he was dead wherever they could reach him with a knife or an Uzi sub-machine gun. The man was refreshingly grateful for the protection offered.
She did not expect that, as a Gold Commander, the name of Harvey Gillot would again cross her table. A difficult man and without gratitude.
Benjie Arbuthnot marshalled them with the same skill as a Cumbrian collie would have employed on a flock of Herdwicks. He had his own bag behind his heels and the soles of the brogues crushed the matchbox, now empty, given him at the airport along with the medical materials.
Mark Roscoe was waved into the front passenger seat, and William Anders – his grumble ignored – was told to dump his bags in the boot, then get into the back with the women. Last into the boot, flung there without ceremony, were the jacket and vest. Then the hatch was slammed down so that the vehicle shook on its chassis – it was only a hire car. At that stage of developments, he didn’t believe he could have done more. It was Arbuthnot who had arranged for Steyn, the doctor, to be in the hotel’s forecourt from five thirty a.m., wait for the emergence of Gillot and offer the man a lift to where he needed to be dropped. A small thing, but it had seemed important. Best, also, for young Roscoe to have the more comfortable place alongside him: he liked the detective sergeant and thought he might be the only one among them who had a code of ethics that would stand up to any rigorous examination. He had assessed him as a decent man, dedicated, and rare because he seemed to make no judgements on his fellows. He was about the only one Benjie was interested in.
Not interested in Anders. He would greet the Californian with apparent affection, enthusiasm, but thought him egocentric. He believed the trade of digging up putrefied corpses merely kept alive vendettas and stultified reconciliation. At five thirty, on the forecourt, Steyn had told him that the villagers knew Gillot intended to cross the cornfields, and that the hired gun would be waiting where the bodies had been excavated. That would have come through the woman, Laing. He could see from her thrust-out chin, lowered eyes, defiance and back-to-the-wall defensiveness that she’d been humped rotten by a man who was both unsuitable and outside her supposed loop.
He wasn’t interested in the woman Behan. She would have gone to his room with the intention of hectoring, lecturing and gloating, and the salesman’s smile would have flashed at her, maybe a little of the salesman’s pitch given her, and she had ended up destabilised, certainties wrecked, carrying a jacket that was not needed and an inappropriate bulletproof vest. Only Roscoe interested him – and he had seen that the pack was stowed on the detective’s trouser belt.
He wouldn’t tell Roscoe where the hired gun would be placed. To do so would be intervention and would break the law of the safari.
He turned the ignition and was about to murmur a further inanity about the departure of the Vulture Club, but stayed silent, reached inside his jacket and touched the pen that was clipped to the inside pocket. At that moment, he felt old, sad, exhausted, and the past – with skeletal hands – seemed to claw at him. It had been a damn long time ago that he had stood on the dockside at Rijeka… It would be over by lunchtime and then they could, guaranteed, get the first flight of the afternoon out of this damn place.
He said, sprightly, ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, the weather seems to be top hole for the day, so let’s get the club’s excursion on the road.’
Mladen was efficient. It was expected of a leader. He had the sheet of paper in his hand and, for the last time, he repeated where each man and woman should be. One exception had been made – he could not have prevented it. The Widow had decided where she should be and had gone earlier, Maria with her because the heat rose and it was a long walk for an old woman.
From the rest, he demanded discipline. He walked at the front when they left the cafe, turned at the near- completed church, headed for the cemetery and was on the track that would bring them to the Kukuruzni Put. Behind him were many rifles, the sniper’s Dragunov and the RPG-7. Some of the men had only shotguns, and women who were without grenades carried kitchen knives.
Far ahead, they heard a single shot, perhaps fired from a pistol. None could identify it, or think of a reason for it, but they pressed on, hurrying.
One shot fired – he had needed only one. He had fired and killed as cleanly as he had in Zagreb when they had tested him.
The man in Zagreb had slumped to his knees and gone prone. The fox had been bowled over by the impact of the bullet, which would have gone into the heart because there was barely a spasm. It lay now on its back, its legs erect and stuck out. He made the pistol safe and pocketed it, then bent to pick up the cartridge case. He threw it, bright and flashing in the sun’s low light, towards the tree-line and saw it fall where the grass was long, beyond ploughed ground. It had looped high over the cross. There was blood at the fox’s mouth, rich, dark. It came slowly in a dribble from in front of the incisors. A little flowed over the whiskers and some went into the nostrils. He looked at it for a long time.
The preparation for killing the fox had taken more than an hour.
He had laid out the last of the sandwiches – some crusts and a quarter-slice of ham, with the core of the apple – on the ground near enough to the undergrowth at the tree-line to tempt it. Hunger had won. The animal had come out by the little track that led down to the water. He had seen the fur at the mouth that had brushed against his hand, the tongue that had licked his skin. Obvious to Robbie Cairns why he would kill the fox. It would have taken him down the riverbank to the pool. He would have walked and scrambled over the grass and weeds of the incline. The fox had small light padded feet and would not set off a landmine. It would have tricked him. The fox had nuzzled and licked him to deceive. He was pleased to have shot it and had done it well. No one deceived Robbie Cairns and walked away from it.
He had forgotten his yearning to be loved by the fox. He stood, then walked to the animal and took hold of its tail, above where the mange infected it. He threw it hard and high, heard the body break through the branches and then the splash.
It had tried to lead him into the mines.
The sun was higher and beat on him. Far down a track that ran off through the corn he could see the movement of men and women, but they were hazed and indistinct. Sweat ran on him, and was in his eyes. It was the path, where the movement was, that his target would take.
He came off the road and ahead of him was the small, squat pillbox. In front of the pillbox was the shrine with the painted statuette of the Virgin and behind it the pole. The flag fluttered dismally in the heat.
Harvey Gillot crested a small hill, dirt and dust skidding out from under his feet, and realised there had been no rain for many weeks: the ground was baked dry. He passed the flag, then the shrine, and assumed it to have been built as a memorial to those who had died using the Cornfield Road. On the pillbox he could see the marks of war and the exposed lengths of steel wire on to which the concrete had been poured long ago. The ground in front of the shrine was covered with white chippings and weeds grew freely among them. He wondered why – if the past lived so strong – a man or a woman did not come here with a hoe and tidy it. Then the flag, the pillbox and the shrine were behind him.
From the top of the slope, he looked forward. To his left, distant, was the water tower, which peeped above the corn crop. To his right, nearer, was a farmhouse among mature fruit trees. There was scaffolding on one of the walls as if an attempt was made to move on from the past. Ahead was an expanse of fields, corn and sunflowers, and above the corn, chimneys that were difficult to focus on in the bright sunlight. In places, between the corn stems, he glimpsed red-tiled roofs. It was the village that had paid him.
It was why he was there.
No reason to mess around. Time to step out and confront it. ‘It’ was a gun, a balaclava, a hammer blow on his spine, then repeated. Could have hidden and flinched at his own shadow. Harvey Gillot started his walk.
The plastic bag, in his right hand, had little weight. The slight wind that blew on the open plain and was sucked down the path riffled it, making it flap against his leg. He wore a pair of creased lightweight trousers, should have been washed and pressed, and the shirt had been on his back since he had left the island. He was unshaven, which didn’t bother him. He had soft trainers on – he would have chosen them for a quiet day on the patio with his mobile for company. He hadn’t tidied his hair. He had dressed fast, moving on tiptoe around the hotel room, hadn’t showered or washed or swilled his teeth, and had looked often at her, fully dressed, sleeping well, her face calm.
