Tim Stevens: Severance Kill

Calvary gripped the frame of the photo, melding the image of the children on to his retinas.

No illusions. No running away.

He dropped the picture, crouched, and laid a hand on either side of the man’s face. At the last, before the crack, the faintly smiling lips were moving, he supposed in prayer.

*

The north London street stretched ahead, suburban and dull, its terraced houses supporting one another wearily up a sluggish slope. Wads of early spring blossoms like discarded rags broke up the evenness of the pavement and clumped in the gutters.

Llewellyn fell into step beside him. Calvary picked up his pace so that the other man was left trailing for a moment.

‘He got one past you, then.’

Llewellyn was only an inch shorter than Calvary but his narrow shoulders and air of turning inward upon himself made him seem far smaller. Above his rumpled, cheerful Celtic face his hair was thick and startlingly bouffant.

Calvary kept walking. He knew Llewellyn meant the swelling lip. The rest of the bruises he’d been able to conceal with gloves and scarf.

He said: ‘Your intelligence was below par. He was a fighter. Unit 777 or something.’ The special operations outfit of the Egyptian Army.

‘It’s possible.’ Llewellyn was actually beaming. ‘Beside the point, now, though.’ He’d found his stride and was matching Calvary.

After a beat he said: ‘Bit of a mess back there, it would appear.’

‘Nothing you won’t be able to handle.’

Calvary had phoned Llewellyn once he’d put several blocks between him and the Songwriter’s flat, which was in a quiet residential district on the far north-western fringes of the city. The rendezvous was set up for a few miles away. Calvary had taken the Tube, knowing that by the time he arrived at the meeting point Llewellyn’s crew would already be swarming over the flat, removing every trace of Calvary’s DNA.

Do the fire escape, too, he’d said on the phone. Llewellyn had reproached him with silence.

Wanting to be alone, Calvary turned down a side road, trying to shake Llewellyn off. It didn’t work, of course. In a moment Llewellyn murmured: ‘There’s another job.’

‘No.’

‘I know it’s a bit soon. Sooner than it’s ever been before. But it’s really — ’

‘No. I mean, no . I’m not doing it.’ At last Calvary stopped, half turned to the smaller man. ‘Not now, not later. I’m finished.’

I’ size="n the Songwriter’s flat, after the heaves had died away and there was no more sourness to be ejected from his belly and his throat, he’d stood gripping the rim of the sink and stared at himself in the spattered glass. Fair hair darkened by sweat and matted to his forehead, eyes muddy, stubble like buckshot. Thirty was a milestone he’d left behind him. Forty was, if not quite on the horizon, then no longer the imaginary, fantastical notion it had been ten years earlier.

Enough , he’d thought. Not just thought; decided .

Llewellyn was watching his eyes. After a moment he clapped Calvary on the shoulder and shook his head, grinning. ‘My manners. Look. Drinks and dinner, on me. Or if you’d prefer to get some rest first — ’

Calvary stood where he was, resisting Llewellyn’s attempt to tug him along. ‘You’re not listening, Llewellyn. I’m out. I’ve had enough. I’ve done enough. This isn’t some knee-jerk response, something I’ll get over once I’ve had a few pints. No more.’ He turned, began walking back down the hill.

Behind him Llewellyn didn’t call out, didn’t run after him — he never ran — and Calvary assumed he was standing there watching him walk away, trying to think of the right words before he disappeared out of earshot.

Calvary’s phone buzzed and he fished it out of his pocket. A text message, from Llewellyn.

Except there was no message, just a photograph.

In it, Calvary, his face clearly distinguishable in profile despite the relatively low resolution, was emerging through the front door of the block of flats he’d vacated an hour earlier. The name of the block, Victory Gardens, was clearly displayed over the entrance.

He’d disabled the CCTV cameras outside the block, so the picture hadn’t been taken by them.

He hadn’t been aware that he’d stopped walking until he heard Llewellyn’s voice at his side.

‘So you see, Martin,’ he said gently, ‘it isn’t quite as simple as that.’

The branches flailed at him, competing with the squalls of rain that managed to slip between the trees. Calvary ignored them. His breath sawed and his thighs burned. The pounding his feet were taking from the knotty, stony floor of the woods would raise blisters. A year earlier, six months, there would have been none of this after only eight miles. He’d been letting himself slide.

The forest lay on a ridge to the northeast of the city, a swathe of ancient woodland within walking distance of the flat where Calvary lived, alone. The soil under his feet was said to be riddled with bodies, victims of the East End gangs. Calvary couldn’t say he felt at home in the forest, quite; but he didn’t feel like an interloper there either.

His watch, a sports model, said it was five in the afternoon. The flight was at six tomorrow morning. Plenty of time to force in himself through another few circuits, scald himself in the shower, exhaust himself before dropping into a sodden slumber. Do anything but think.

He drove himself deep into the gloom.

*

Llewellyn had turned the tablet computer round to show Calvary.

‘Sir Ivor Gaines.’

They were at a corner table in a tiny restaurant a few miles into the Berkshire countryside, west of the city. Calvary had never been there before but he assumed it was one used regularly by the Chapel for meetings such as this one. He assumed it had discreet, well-compensated staff and bug-free walls.

One other table was occupied, by a young couple who were so engrossed in each other they barely spoke. Llewellyn himself had said little while he’d driven. Calvary had kept completely silent, staring out the window.

‘Age seventy-three. Former FCO, retired seven years ago. Career diplomat. Served in Hong Kong and Indonesia, and closer to home in Vienna, Prague and Berlin.’

Llewellyn had ordered his usual Scotch and soda. He took a hearty swig. Despite himself, Calvary glanced down at the image on the screen. The picture was a sharp one, taken with a decent camera. Its subject seemed unaware he was being snapped. He looked younger than his years, small and molish and with sparse hair combed over his pate in the manner of a middle-aged rather than an elderly man. To Calvary he resembled an older Philip Larkin.

Calvary drew a breath, grappled his feelings — towards Llewellyn, towards the situation he was in — until they were secured, then stowed them. Forced himself to concentrate.

He said, ‘Spook?’

‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? Diplomat of his generation, posted to those particular fields. But no, surprisingly SIS never managed to recruit him. They tried, of course. Several times. He was never interested.’ Llewellyn sipped some more whisky. ‘Bit of a lefty, apparently.’

‘That’s odd, in a diplomat.’

‘It’s more common than you might realise. People spend time in the host culture, interacting with the other side, sometimes they go native.’ He raised his eyebrows as the food arrived. ‘You really ought to eat something.’

Calvary ignored him. ‘How left wing was he?’

Llewellyn jabbed his fork at Calvary in delight. ‘Exactly. You’ve got it.’ For a moment he seemed to be congratulating himself silently. ‘So left wing that, during his time in Berlin in the late seventies, Gaines was suspected of liaising with the KGB. Nothing too drastic, a few low-level documents that got leaked. And nothing that could be pinned on him. They tried the usual traps — feeding him false information to see if it made it across to the other side — but he was too good to fall for those. And he was a bloody good diplomat, so they were disinclined to sack him. They decided to keep him in place and watch what happened.’