was never made. That is betrayal in my book. Only the teacher had the name of the seller, and he didn’t share it. You with me? The living don’t know who betrayed them. Did it jump out at you?’
The cigar was nearly finished and guttered in his fingers. Anders said, ‘No woman I saw wore even the cheapest earrings, and there wasn’t a brooch or bracelet in sight, not even a trinket you’d get out of a cracker at a kids’ party.’
‘Because a pulse beats in the place that no woman will wear so much as a wedding ring to replace what they put into the bag, until revenge has been taken on whoever sold them short. They live in the past – more so than any other community here that suffered, and plenty did. That village and community are trapped… Heh, it makes for clients – I could do a year’s work on that one village and not have seen half of them.’
The cigar butt was thrown down. Two hundred and sixty people had been taken from the underground bomb-proof shelter of the hospital, the wounded and the staff who cared for them, and butchered. Two hundred bodies had been taken from the ground and identified by William Anders and many colleagues. Sixty remained hidden, buried. Steyn knew his friend would keep coming back until the last grave was found. They’d have dinner together one night. His housekeeper would cook. He had little money, but the woman did miracles with what he could give her. On the refrigerator in his kitchen he had stuck postcards Anders had sent him from corners of the world where graves had been uncovered. God, he valued the man’s company. He clasped his friend’s shoulder and saw a car pull up, a Mercedes 300 series saloon. Daniel Steyn had not treated the village leader but knew him and his history. The door was slammed. He was acknowledged. A question was asked. Steyn translated: ‘Do you have the identifications?’
‘I do.’
‘He asks whether anything of significance has been found.’
He watched Anders’ raw, weathered face. He saw little lines form in it, as if a matter was worthy of consideration. Then an answer: ‘Not for me to censor. Hell, this isn’t a business in which we suppress. We throw light – we shine the beam into dark places.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Tell him to wait right here.’
William Anders pocketed the hip flask, strode back to the marquee and through the flaps that kept the internal air chilled.
The man – he knew him as Mladen – told Steyn that one of the veterans had that morning come near to suicide, but his wife had found him and a hand grenade was now back in the box beside the Dragunov rifle that a sniper had once used. Which man? He was given a name. He knew the man with the crudely chopped-off leg – surgeons under pressure had done their best with minimal time and skill.
Anders was behind him. ‘Translate this. There was a piece of paper in the teacher’s pocket, folded close enough for writing to survive. There’s a name, Harvey Gillot, and a phone number. In a different ink, and therefore written later, there’s the name of a hotel, too.’ Anders passed him a sheet of paper on which he had written the name, the number and the address. Daniel Steyn didn’t know whether he would have done that – probably not – but, hell, it was nineteen years ago and any trail would have chilled.
Mladen took the paper. He said softly, ‘Harvey Gillot… Harvey Gillot… Harvey Gillot…’
‘Does she have anything interesting or marginally relevant on Harvey Gillot?’ Her line manager put the question without looking up from his laptop.
Penny Laing thought it blatant rudeness not to make eye contact. She feigned indifference. ‘I sent it over to you. Do you want it sent again?’
His head was still lowered. She wondered what he was reading that so captivated him – maybe the new guidelines on safeguards required by human-rights legislation for intrusive surveillance, maybe the runners tomorrow at Doncaster, maybe the revised pension estimates for HMRC. She stood, waited, made silent complaint.
He said, ‘I didn’t learn whether you thought she was worth going to, following, sticking with. That’s what I’m asking.’ She ground a fingernail into her palm and let the pain remind her that sourness was the fast track back to VAT work or worse. ‘Yes, she was. But – am I allowed to say it? The whole scenario got right up my nose. I did time in the Democratic Republic of Congo and-’
Now the line manager interrupted with a sweet smile to match his voice: ‘And I’ve worked in Halifax, Glasgow and Plymouth. Why is Megs Behan worth sticking with?’
‘Can I be blunt?’
‘Blunt will do.’
‘Because she has better assets than I do. Because she’s better informed than I can ever be. She knows where Gillot is, what deals he’s doing, when he’s in Ostend and what charters are then flying out and – are you getting me? It’s humiliating to be traipsing to an organisation like that when we don’t have the resources to do a proper job. Stick with her, yes.’
‘Remember the downturn, the crisis, the crunch.’
‘I do, with my corn flakes each morning.’
‘Also remember we’re somewhat of a luxury. A good conscience appeaser for legislators, the Church and the pink brigade. We’re a natural target for budget-slicing. To survive we need collars felt, court cases convened and sentences passed. Sorry and all that. Please, regular reports on Harvey Gillot – who is likely to be a right little shite.’
He was back at his laptop.
Penny Laing headed for her desk and wondered whether he was indeed an enemy. She swigged water and thought a thunderstorm was brewing – wondered if the target was touchable. The photograph in the file showed what she would have called a chancer’s face.
‘Harvey Gillot, oh, yes. Bloody hell, I’d nearly lost him.’
‘Who, Benjie?’
‘Harvey Gillot’s the name, Deirdre. Little man I used to know – and know no longer. One place for him.’
He had been known as Benjie since he was sent as a boarder to preparatory school sixty-one years before. By christening, he was Benjamin Cumberland Arbuthnot. He and his wife, Deirdre, lived in a small, damp-ridden corner of her family seat, handed down on a line of inheritance for some two and a half centuries. He was now on the move. It was his seventieth year, so their son and daughter-in-law were giving them the push from the west wing, two floors of it, and consigning them to a cottage beyond the chapel adjacent to the pets’ cemetery. Clear-out time.
He might have been arrested, banged up in a cell without his tie, belt and shoelaces, if Special Branch had done a search and found the caches of classified papers – tea chests of them – he had accumulated during his time as an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service.
There was a brochure for a hotel in a Croatian coastal town, fastened with a paperclip to a three-page typewritten report – SECRET stamped in red on each page. He tossed it into the scorched oil drum that acted as an incinerator. More on that trip, and more stamped pages, than all the files from Peshawar – he was a magpie, unable to help himself, had always needed to take copies home. Always forgot to send them to Archive or an official shredder.
‘I don’t remember that name.’
‘You never met him, Deirdre.’
‘Did we never have him for a gin in Peshawar?’
‘God, no, we did not.’
‘Careful, you silly ass. Benjie, are you trying to singe yourself?’
Flames leaped. It had to be done. Half his damn life there, in the chests, now going into the fire. The Balkans. The Afghan trafficking of weapons. Too many files from Buenos Aires in late 1984 when relations were being restored over gin and more gin with the Secretariat of State Intelligence. The Balkans and Afghanistan were now unrecognisable grey flakes of burned paper.
He said, ‘Harvey Gillot was just a little man who was useful for a brief window of time. Then we closed the window and drew the curtain. With a fire like this we can get rid of damn near everything, but whether I have any eyebrows left is a moot point.’
He had always seemed an idiot – could give a polished impression of imbecility and was clever at playing the fool. He chuckled as a flurry of seriously compromising documents spilled into the inferno.
