Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

It's not light for eight hours. When it's light they've got to make a path to him – what is it, eighty metres, could be a hundred? They've got to go on hands and knees with probes. That'll take the whole of tomorrow

… May I tell you a story? It's not first hand but I was told it by the guys al the station when I arrived, they'd been there, Eleven months ago there was a minefield on the edge of Sarajevo that's not in the backwoods, that's the capital city of this God-forsaken country – and it was marked with signs but not fenced. Ema Alic

– I was told the name and haven't forgotten it, won't ever – was a little girl, aged eleven. She was with two boys, both twelve years, and they'd gone out to play.

One of them detonated a mine. The boys were killed straight out. She lived. She lived for two hours. She was waving for help and screaming for help. A crowd watched her and listened to her, but they were too frightened to take the risk of going where the kid had. Sarajevo, right, and it's the middle of the day.

They can get de-miners there double fast. By the time they reached her, had made the corridor, she had stopped waving and had stopped screaming… Not even for a child do they hurry. You asked if he would survive.'

Flat-voiced, Joey asked, 'What does Mister do?'

'My question, what is his spirit?'

'At home, Frank, he has support.'

'Now he is alone.'

Joey thought of the hours, weeks, months, years of living with Mister's life. Never close, never able to touch – until now. There was no one in his life to whom he could have described his feeling of driven elation – not to Jen, not to his mother or his father, not to Dougie Gough. The elation was his own, and he guarded it.

Joey said dully, 'At home he has the Cardmen to enforce, he has an accountant and a solicitor, he has the Mixer as his chief of staff, he has the Eels for his transport, he has the Princess – he has a legal system that he holds in contempt because of its corruption and incompetence. He sits on the throne of an empire.'

'Alone, Joey. That's why it's different.'

'Will he break and run?'

In the darkness, Joey thought that Frank Williams, armed policeman, squirmed, seemed to shiver.

'Would you? Would I? I would not. If he stood up and walked away – I don't know the ground, and I can at best guess – he would have a nine out of ten chance of getting to the river, perhaps it is a ninety-nine out of a hundred chance. But that leaves one in ten or one in a hundred. Does he run or walk, or crawl? Does he close his eyes and just go, or does he test each step?

He will have been deafened by the explosion, he has no experience of this situation, he is traumatized because he knows that his companion has lost a leg, he is trying now lo think clearly but that is very difficult for him. He has not gone to the help of his companion, and that is a good decision because an amateur who tries to rescue is almost always the second casualty'

The wind was in the trees above them, zephyrs moving the bared branches, the same wind that tugged at Mister, who was alone.

' I like what you say,' Joey said.

'What do you want from him?'

' I want him broken.'

' It's the worst place a man can be.' A quaver stammered in Frank's voice. 'He is trapped in a minefield.'

' I wanl lo hear him scream, in fear.'

'There is a legal process.'

He said, 'I want him destroyed.'

'Are you sick? I think you're sick.'

Frank Williams blundered away. Joey sat with the dog. He leaned against a tree, and his feet were under the yellow tape. He scratched the dog's stomach, and his face was licked, and he laughed. He shouted into the night for all of the valley to hear. 'Heh, Mister, look over your shoulder, and I'm there.'

And Joey Cann laughed louder.

Midnight…

… as he helped her to undress and prepared her for bed in the shambles that was their home, Judge Delic asked his daughter, 'Do you think of him? Is he ever out of your mind?' Jasmina Delic said, 'I try not to, I try to think of the car and the new kitchen we will have, and our new life.' He thought she lied, but he had not the heart to tell her that he recognized the lie.

… Ismet Mujic reached his apartment in the city's old quarter. He had left the Turk, the Russian a nd the Italian at the airport with a private pilot who would fly them out. He was disgraced, humiliated, and he shouted in fury up the stairs, 'Have you found him?'

He was told by a craven man that his friend had not been found, and his world fell further into ruin.

… a body that had been snagged among sunken tree branches in the Miljacka river broke free and came to the surface, was carried on by the current past Hrasno and the apartment blocks of Cengic Vila, under bridges, and tumbled over the weirs.

… her day and evening in the Unis Building, Tower A, finished, on her way home to Novo Sarajevo, Monika Holberg pushed open the glass swing doors of the Holiday Inn. She went to the reception desk. She saw her letter in the pigeon-hole, untouched, unread, tightened her lips and went back out into the city's quiet.

… in the room occupied by the Sierra Quebec Golf team in the Custom House, a secure facsimile message was received from Endicott, room 709. Vauxhall Bridge Cross. It was given to Gough. They were all there and they watched him. Gough said, 'Packer was at his big meeting – it aborted when Cann showed out

– there was no electronic evidence – Target Three, Bruce James, is in IPTF custody – Packer and Arbuthnot have gone across country, and Cann is in pursuit. It doesn't matter, though, local authorization for intrusive surveillance has been withdrawn. I think he's beaten us, Packer has. I asked too much of Cann.

I thought, and I took a chance with him, that Cann would bring him down. It was too much to ask.'

They began to clear their desks and unhook their

…Endicott, in his room at VBX, rang the home of a commander from the National Crime Squad. 'Don't interrupt me, please, and don't ask who tasked me.

You have an information leak from your building to Albert Packer. A call to Sarajevo was made the day before yesterday, in the morning, from the pavement outside your Pimlico office. We can be that specific.

The call was made at ten nineteen and was terminated at ten twenty-one. If you were to check your exterior video cameras you will see who made the call, who went out of the building either side of that window.

Act on it, please.' Endicott rang off. Traitors, turncoats, betrayers were a part of the history of his organization; He understood the cancerous contamination of their presence.

… the minister came into his wife's bedroom at their grace and favour home to switch off her light and kiss her cheek. He sat beside her. 'You remember, when we were in opposition, what you used to do, your good works. You tramped east Yorkshire to raise money for refugee relief in Bosnia. You were fearsome to the stitch-pockets, you bullied till you had your cheques.

I'm late because I've been reading about the place. You needn't have bothered. The dream's gone. It's a corrupt haven for criminality, and sinking, and it'll be worse.

The end of a dream is always sad, the light going out and leaving a dark, grubby corner.' He held her hand and hoped she slept and had not heard him.

'Are you there, Mister?'

' I'm here, Eagle.'

'What time is it?'

' If it matters, it's a minute past midnight.'

' I know where I am.'

'Good on you, Eagle.'

Yes, he knew where he was and he knew what had happened. There had been a moment, bliss, a happy moment, when he hadn't known where he was or what had happened to him. It couldn't have been sleep, but he might have fainted. There hadn't been delirium, or anything that was a dream, only blank insensible darkness in his mind. He had come through that darkness and he remembered opening his eyes, and he'd tried to swing his body but the pain had stopped him. He felt weak and wanted to vomit. He hadn't the strength. His hands groped over his body, as best he could lying on his side. Each place he touched made the pain hurt worse, and there was sticky warmth on his fingers. The liquid smeared them when he touched his stomach and his thighs.