came, they had assumed it would be their grandchildren's lives. She took a grimy handkerchief from the pocket of her apron, under a heavy coat, and defiantly wiped his eyes; she had not wept. He climbed the steps, treacherous from the damp, from the cellar. She would pack. She would know better than him what they, old people, could carry.
He went out of the back, then tried to run to the outbuildings. He could not go quickly and his best effort was a slow, crabbed short stride and he bent his spine to make a smaller target. The one shot was high.
He reached the buildings where the cattle bellowed in protest, They were hungry: no fresh fodder had been brought to them for three days.
He went to the main double door of nailed planks, and threw it open. The rain spat on to him.
Husein Bekir looked out over the valley, peered through the driving rain. Past his rusting tractor, and his fields that had died from inattention, past his vineyard where the weeds sprouted and the posts sagged, grey streams of water ran down the hill from the village of Ljut and from the high ground that flanked it. The track from the far village was a watercourse, but many more streams were pounding in torrents from the hills and pressing past the bare trees to the flooded river, which had already broken its banks.
Although he was not stupid, with a deep-set experience of agriculture, and cunning where money and commerce were concerned, Husein Bekir did not have the intelligence to consider that a minefield was, in effect, a living organism with the power of movement.
His eyes roved over those places where he had witnessed the mines being laid, and he did not know that some of the PMA2 anti-personnel mines were now being buried deep under silt that would provide a protective layer over them, and that others would be lifted by the flood's force and carried metres from where they had been sown. Neither did he know that the wooden stakes holding in place the PMA3s and the PROMs could be pushed from the ground by the streams, as the stakes holding the trip-wires had been dislodged. He did not know that some of the points he believed to be poisoned with the mines were now free of them, and some of the places where he had thought the ground safe were now lethal.
As he looked across the valley there was nothing to see of this secret movement.
The whole of the afternoon, he stayed in the outbuildings and talked quietly with his cattle, the beef calves and the sheep. He told them what he would do and, in his simple way, he wished them well, and said that he would return. He would come again, he said, and they nuzzled against him. At last light, the main door to the outbuildings left open, he went back to his home where Lila had filled two small bags.
He shouted at his dog. His voice was sufficiently angry to ensure that it ran from him and hid. He could not take it, or bring himself to shoot it.
His animals were already out and foraging for food when Husein Bekir, Lila, the villagers and the troops, in the growing darkness, trudged slowly away from the village. He found only minimal comfort in the knowledge that when he came back he would remember where the mines had been laid.
Bent over his desk, her father had not noticed.
For a long time after the call had ended, Jasmina Delic sat with the phone in her hand. She had been helping her father to clear his desk. She had to nag him to keep control of the paper mountain that covered it. There were no resources to employ the staff who should have worked for a judge. She had taken one file from the pile in the corner where they were stacked, and casually opened it. At the top had been the note from the IPTF policeman, Williams, concerning the drowned Englishman, and the telephone number retrieved from a bedside notepad. Idly, she had rung the number. She had heard the voice, she had asked if the number was correct, and it was confirmed. She had recognized the voice, had listened to it until the call was cut.
She put down the phone, closed the file, wheeled herself to the corner and dropped it onto the floor.
Her father noticed nothing. She would tell him in the morning.
Always the busy man, without time to waste, Mister had three more meetings between the time he left the Covent Garden cafe and his arrival home. At one meeting he authorized the payment on delivery at Felixstowe harbour for a container, now at Rotterdam docks, that held a fraction under a million pounds' worth of heroin, street value, bedded in made-in-China ornamental garden tubs; at another he rubber-stamped an agreement for him to be paid a little more than a thousand pounds a year by a novelty-stall holder operating in Trafalgar Square, up from the previous rate by seven per cent; at the final meeting he talked over with an architect a development project for four hectares of Mediterranean coastal land west of Cap d'Antibes. Whether the profit margin was measured in millions or hundreds was immaterial to him. He despised laziness. He kept the same close eye on all his deals. That night the negotiation that gave the greatest satisfaction was the one with Lennie Perks for the safety of the stall in Trafalgar Square, because he had taken Lennie Perks's money for twenty-nine years, and the job went at a loss. But he never gave up on a customer, would never accept that he was now too grand to deal with the bottom end of trade. He spoke on his mobile phone with Albie Wilkes, as he walked the night streets, to confirm what they both already knew because it had been well worked out before he had cast an eye over young Sol; he spoke also to a detective chief inspector in the National Crime Squad and was told that investigators were without leads in the matter of Georgie Riley, who was not expected to last the week; then he took a taxi home.
There were aspects of his life on which he would not have dreamed of acting without the approval of the Princess. His dress was one of them. He had not, as she had not, ever been to Bosnia-Herzegovina. She would have checked on the TV's text earlier in the evening for local-weather advice, and that would have decided her on what clothes he should take. On his return, they packed the case together.
Then they drank together, champagne but only one glass each, and she toasted him and wished the venture well. He knew she looked at him, over the glass, and he thought he saw in the sparkle of her eyes a sense of triumph for him because he was on the road he wanted to travel, and also of apprehension.
But he knew there was no cause for fear, not for her and not for him. Nothing frightened him, nothing ever had. He kissed her eyes. His lips brushed them and when he looked again he thought he'd chucked out the anxiety. He was fine, he said, had never felt better. It was good days ahead.
Back at the hotel, Joey rang Jen. He told her about the plane delay and the drive. She said she loved him and he rang off. He was too tired to work out in his mind whether he loved her or not.
In the hotel's car park, underneath his window, the light fall of snow caked on Maggie Bolton's coat as she stripped down the hire car, retrieved her equipment, then rebuilt the car's interior – and Joey didn't know that her work was not yet finished.
He slept. Small pieces of a mosaic were falling into place, and he was dead to them, unaware of their importance.
Chapter Six
'I'm not coming.' she'd said.
'Please yourself.' He must have sounded crest-fallen.
'I don't trail around after you. I've my job to do.'
'Which is?'
'Dock in the hire car, rent a van – and finish my breakfast.'
Joey had said when he would meet her, and what time the flight was due in, and hesitated… 'I don't suppose I take anyone from the embassy with me.'
'I don't suppose you do. Just make sure you're wearing your charm boots.'
She'd gone back to her breakfast. Joey had left her there, surrounded by rolls, jam, cheese and coffee. She hadn't even wished him luck.
He'd never worked alone before.
But what little Joey Cann knew of judges was that you didn't make appointments – you pitched up early in the morning. The room was high in the Ministry of Justice building. The lift was occupied, groaning slowly above him. He hadn't waited, but had gone up ever-narrowing flights of stairs to the floor under the roof. The building was damaged. Damp ran on the walls, and the ceiling above him had been crudely plastered. The floor at either side of the judge's door was piled high with cardboard file folders that were held tight with string and elastic bands. He steadied himself. If he were thrown out on his neck, had the door shut in his face, then he was in trouble, deep. He needed the legality of authorization. He rapped on the door and breathed hard. Maggie had said, dismissively, that
