Gerald Seymour - Home Run

"For fuck's sake, Bill, we are talking about a heroin trafficker. We are talking about a heroin distributor. We are talking about a joker who is walking away from major dealing.

Since when did that sort of track get a block on it?"

"The instructions to me, the instructions that I passed on to you, were that Eshraq should not be lifted."

"It's criminal, Bill, and you know it."

"Me, I know nothing, and I do what I am told. You should do what you're told and go home."

David Park went to the door. He turned, he spat, "And I thought this was supposed to be a serious outfit, not a comic strip… "

"Don't give me that shit, Keeper."

"And I'd have thought you'd have honoured your promise."

"Listen… don't pull the old holy number with me… listen. The ACIO went to see the Home Secretary last night, said we were ready for a lift. The Home Secretary called him in his beauty sleep. I shouldn't be telling you, but the Home Secretary gave the instruction, that's how high it came from.

You want to know what's happening, I want to know what's happening. What I know is that on the top floor the ACIO and the CIO are not available to me. I will be told what is happening when they are ready to tell me, and you will be told when I am ready to tell you… So do me that favour and bugger off home.

… Did you ring your missus?"

"He's just a filthy little trafficker… "

"I hear he saw you off."

"What the hell…?"

"Merely making an observation… Did you ring your missus?"

"He's a cocky little swine."

"And you showed out to him – so go home and take your missus out and buy her a pretty dancing frock."

"Are you going to let them walk right over you?"

"That's a slogan, and that's not worthy of you… just go home."

A few minutes later, from his window, Bill Parrish saw David Park on the street below, walking through the traffic like it wasn't there. He thought that he might have destroyed one of his best young men, and he hadn't known how to stem the rot. He called up on the radio. He was told that Tango One was back at his flat. He had two of the April team on the flat, but the soul had gone out of the surveillance and the investigation, and the bugger of it was that no one had felt it necessary to tell Parrish why the block had gone down. Why take it seriously… it was only heroin, it was only kids' lives being chucked on the garbage heap, it was only evil bastards getting rich off misery. Why worry? Only bloody fools would worry. Bloody old fools like Parrish, and bloody young fools like Park. He knew that Park hadn't taken any leave for two years, and he hadn't put in for holiday time for the coming summer. He might just book a couple of weeks for the two of them on the Algarve, and handcuff Keeper to his Ann and kick him on to the plane. Could be sentimental, Bill Parrish, when he wanted to be. It was a crying shame, that couple was.

Another day… of course, there would be another day.

One step at a time, sweet Jesus. It was the favourite hymn of Bill Parrish who was a rare Christian once a year, late at night and Christmas Eve. One step at a time, sweet Jesus, the hymn that he liked to hear on the radio when he was in his car. One step at a time… and he ought to teach the words to Park, if the youngster hadn't gotten himself run over crossing Holborn and not looking. He rang the ACIO's extension, and was told he was in a meeting. He rang the Bossman's extension, and was told he was in conference. One step at a time, sweet Jesus… it was only heroin.

He sat on the floor of his prison room beside the door. He had worked out the angles of vision from the peephole in the door, and he believed that where he sat he was hidden if his guards checked at the peephole before entering. He sat on the floor in his underpants and his vest and his socks. He had used the pillow on his bed and his rolled up shirt and his bunched together trousers to make a shape under the blanket.

He always slept with the blanket over his head, to shut out the ceiling light. He had put his shoes at the end of the bed and half covered them with the blanket. A long time he had listened at the door before making the preparations, long enough to satisfy himself that he was not watched.

They had shamed Mattie Furniss, humiliated him. To break that shame he would kill. He would try, damned hard, to kill.

Eventually the Mullah remembered Juliette Eshraq. Not well, of course, but he remembered her.

He had to remember her. If he had not remembered her then he would have been the only living being amongst close to two thousand present at the hanging who had forgotten Juliette Eshraq. The investigator thought it a great spur to memory, his information that the brother of Juliette Eshraq was coming to Iran with an armour-piercing missile on his shoulder, and revenge in his mind.

"But you are assured, Excellency, of my best endeavours.

It is in my interests, also, that the brother of Juliette Eshraq be found. If he is not found then it is me that he will come lor, after he has gone to you."

When he left the Mullah, now very clear in his recollection of Juliette Eshraq who had smiled at the crowd who had come to see her lifted high on the crane's arm, he went to his own office in the capital and there he made the arrangements for the watching of an official in the Harbourmaster's office at Bandar Abbas, and of a merchant in carpets, and of an engineer who repaired broken lorries.

It would be late in the evening before he could catch a military flight back from Tehran to Tabriz.

Go for it, that was the Major's oft-repealed injunction at the Fort. Go for it.

"You go for it, gentlemen, because if you're going to be all namby-pamby then you'll fail, and after you've failed then you'll wish to Christ that you'd never tried. If you like living then you go for it, because if you don't go for it then you won't be living."

Mattie sat on the floor behind the door and he gazed at his made up bed, and he listened for the footfall of the guards bringing him his evening food.

The Major was from Hereford. The Major had grown tired of lying on his belly in ditches in Northern Ireland and branched into consultancy, which paid better and which was safer. It was said of the Major that he had once spent two clear weeks living rough on the fringe of the Creggan Estate in Derry, and that was not a friendly place. The Major advised multi-national companies in the security of their overseas executives, and he came down to the Fort to let the Service know the current thinking on Escape and Evasion. He said that a prisoner must look for the opportunity of escape from the moment of capture. He said that it didn't matter how often the circumstances of imprisonment changed, the captive must be prepared to rip up his plan and start again. And there was another story about the Major. A new high-security gaol in Worcestershire, and the first convicts due to arrive on a Monday morning. The Friday before there had been an escape prevention drill. The Major had been the guinea pig, and he'd been out by the evening; problem was, the Major said he'd been paid to get out, not to tell how he'd done it. Never did tell them… Mattie thought of the Major and scratched his memory for every last nugget of what he had been told.

There were low voices on the stairs, and the soft shuffle of sandals.

The bolt was withdrawn, the key was in the door.

There was the numbing shock spreading from the heel of his hand. And the body was at his feet.

There was his food tray on the table.

Go for it…

Mattie went. Fast and cold, just as the Major had told them.

He went out through the heavy door. He went straight at the second guard standing back from the doorway. He saw the surprise wheeling across the face of the second guard, and Mattie's hands were at his throat and his knee rose sharply with all the force Mattie had into the man's groin. No going back because the body of the guard who had carried the food tray was on the tiled floor behind him. The second guard crumpled to his knees. Mattie let go of his throat and brought his knee swinging back into the man's face. His head flew back, struck the wall. One more jerk with the knee to the head now slumped against the wall, and he was almost gone.