Gerald Seymour - Home Run

"Don't be so fucking silly, Major. It's too late at night for games."

"Charlie ran heroin. Heroin subsidized him. You ran Charlie. You're going down, old boy, going down for a long time."

And the arm was round his shoulder, and Mattie was trying to push himself up from the sofa and away from the calm of the voice in his ear, and he hadn't a prayer, hadn't the strength.

"Nothing to do with me."

"Fifteen years you'll get. Very hard years, Mattie."

"Not me."

"You'll be in with the queers and the con artists and the GBH lads, in with them for fifteen years. It's all sewn up, Mattie. How's Mrs Furniss going to cope with that? Is she going to traipse up to the Scrubs every first Tuesday in the month? And your daughters. I doubt they'll come more than once or twice."

"I don't know anything about heroin, nothing, not at all."

"Ask the magistrate to believe you, Mattie… Ask him to believe that you didn't know how Charlie Eshraq, more or less a son to you, funded himself… and ask Mrs Furniss to believe that you didn't know. It'll break her, Mattie, you being inside. Think on it."

"It's just not true."

"She won't have a friend in the world. Have to sell up at Bibury, of course. Couldn't face the neighbours, could she?

Your neighbours'll be a bit foul, Mattie, the jokers in your cell, they have their pride and heroin they don't like."

"It's a lie, I know nothing about heroin."

"It's all been a lie, Mattie. It starts with the lie that you didn't name Charlie Eshraq… Did Eshraq fuck your daughters?"

The pause, the silence. Henry had turned. Henry looked at his watch, grimaced. The Major nodded, like he thought that he was nearly dry, close to home.

"Mattie, Charlie Eshraq was running heroin out of Iran when he was fucking your daughters. Do you reckon heroin came with the service, Mattie?"

"It's not, tell me that's not true."

There was the first shrill call of the birds.

"It's what I hear."

"God… "

"Pushed heroin to your daughters, Eshraq did."

"The truth;…? "

"It's you I want the truth from."

"Charlie gave that filthy stuff to my girls?"

"You've just had bad luck, Mattie, a long run of terrible luck."

There were tears running down Mattie's cheeks, and the hands that held the glass shook. The Major had raised his head and Henry could see his eyebrows aloft.

Carter said, from the window, "You named him, Mattie?"

"It wasn't my fault."

"No, Mattie, it wasn't. And nobody will hold it against you."

Henry came to the sofa. He had his notepad in his hand.

He wrote a single sentence and he put a pencil in Mattie's hand, and he watched the scrawled signature made. He buffeted off the hall table on his way to the telephone and there was pandemonium in the kitchen.

The Major was at the door of the lounge, on his way out.

It did not seem necessary for them to shake hands. Henry went back into the lounge. He went to Mattie. He took his arm and hoisted him, unsteady, to his feet.

"Can I go home?"

"I think that's a good idea… I'll drive you myself."

"Tell me that it wasn't true."

"Of course not, Mattie. It was an unforgivable trick. I am so very sorry."

Dawn was coming, and at first sight the day looked promising.

He was looking down from the window and into the yard.

There was a kid, ten or eleven years old, scrubbing at the windscreen, and Eshraq was hunched down by the front radiator screen and he already had the Turkish registration off and he was holding the Iranian plate in place while he screwed it tight. There were lights in the kitchens that backed on to the yard, and they threw shadows into the yard.

He was dressed and he was shaved when the telephone bell rang in the room. He was zipping shut his bag, and he had his passport and his wallet on the bed beside him, and the ticket for the flight back to Istanbul. The telephone in the room had not rung since they had arrived in Dogubeyezit.

Below him, Eshraq had the front plate secure, and was moving to the rear of the Transit. He was moving easily and casual in old jeans and trainer shoes and a service blue cotton shirt. And the telephone was still ringing.

He picked it up. He heard the clicking of big distance connections. He heard a small voice and far away.

"Is that room 12?"

"This is room 1 2. "

"Is that David Park?"

"Park speaking."

"I want to speak to Charlie."

"He's not here."

"Bugger… I've been cut off twice on your switchboard.

Can you get him?"

"Take me a bit of time."

"And we'll get cut again, God. Name's Terence, I met him in Ankara."

He remembered the Genclik park. He had been 400 yards back, and Eshraq and the man had walked, and there had been a tail. He remembered it very clearly. He could picture Terence. Terence was pale skin, almost anaemic, with fair hair and a missing chin, and he looked to have come from a good school.

"If you give me the message I'll pass it."

"You can reach him?"

"If you give me the message I can reach him."

"The telephones in this country are bloody awful… You guarantee he gets my message?"

"I'll pass it."

"This is an open line."

"That's stating the obvious."

"He's not to go… That is a categorical instruction from my people. He is not to approach the border. He is compromised, can't say more than that. He is to return to Ankara.

Do you understand the message?"

"Understood."

"Most grateful to you."

"For nothing."

"I might see you in Ankara – and many thanks for your help."

He replaced the telephone. He went back to the window.

The rear plate was in place and the kid was scrubbing dust off the Transit's headlights. There had been the tail in Istanbul, and the tail in Ankara. He assumed they had been better in Dogubeyezit, because he had not been certain of the men on the tail, not certain as he had been in Aksaray and the Genclik park. He was a long time at the window. There were many images in the mind of David Park. There was, in his mind, Leroy Winston Manvers back in the corner of the cell, and he was at safe haven in Jamaica. There was the wife of Matthew Furniss at the door of a cottage in the country, and her husband was the guarantor of a heroin trafficker, and he was on safe wicket back in the United Kingdom. There was Charlie Eshraq sitting on the bonnet of a Sierra saloon and mocking him, and he was on safe passage out. There were images of Ann and wet towels on the bathroom floor, and images of the supercilious creature who had done the big put down at Foreign and Commonwealth, and images of Bill Parrish stuck in an ante-room outside the office of the power and the glory at Century. He knew what was right and he knew what was wrong. He had to know. Right and wrong were the core of his life. He moved around the room. He checked each drawer of the chest and each shelf of the cupboard, and he frisked the bathroom. He made sure that they had left nothing behind. He slung on his jacket and put his passport and his airline ticket into the inner pocket with his wallet, and he threw his grip bag over his shoulder.

You will satisfy yourself that he has indeed travelled back into Iran.

At the Reception he paid for the room. They had made out a joint bill, and he paid it. He folded the receipt carefully and put it into his wallet. He didn't give the porter a tip, because he couldn't claim on tips, and anyway he preferred to carry his own bag. He put his bag in the small hire car, locked it away from sight. He went back inside the hotel and took a side door beside the staircase, and then the corridor that led into the yard at the back. The tail doors of the Transit were open and David could see the drums of electrical flex piled to the roof and stacked tight.