Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Frank listened to the pitiless ring of Joey's voice. He thought Mister's shoulders, out in the field, were lower and he wondered whether Mister's knees were near to buckling. Frank had driven into Mostar and dumped his prisoner in a police cell, under IPTF supervision, and then had bought supermarket cold food and water. He had come back to the crest of the hill, then the call on Maggie's phone had driven him down the slope path, with the food and water, past the skeleton of a wretch who had tripped the wire of a PMR2A mine, with the instruction from London. The men had their backs to Joey Cann. He crouched beside them and listened to what he was told as they ate and drank. Frank Williams was a career policeman and he believed in the rigour of law enforcement and in the processes of the criminal code. He listened to Ante, their spokesman, and then to the chipped remarks of Salko, Fahro and Muhsin, who had the dog's leash coiled in his hand. He had seen the monitor picture from the video camera and had heard the mocking shout across the valley. What he had seen and heard made a travesty of justice as he knew it. When they had finished, said what they wanted to, he went and stood behind Joey Cann, brought bread and cheese and an apple and what was left in the water bottle.

The head wasn't turned, the eyes were locked on the back in the dark suit jacket that rose above the hazed heat of the fields.

'Are you listening to me?'

' I'm hearing you.'

' London want you out.'

'Do they?'

'The instruction to be passed to you was made, personally, to me by Douglas Gough acting on behalf of Dennis Cork, chief investigation officer. Not tomorrow or the day after, but now. Out, and quit.'

' Is that what he said?'

'What you're doing is barbaric. Maggie rigged up the video and it's playing over the mobile. They are watching it in London. They know what you're doing and, like me, they are disgusted at your self-serving arrogance. You're going down to his level, Mister's, maybe going lower than him. If you don't believe what I'm telling you, out and quit, then use your mobile and call your Gough. Go on.'

Joey shifted his weight and took the mobile off his belt. He peeled it out of the ragged leather case, flipped off the back flap and took out the battery. The battery went into his breast pocket and the mobile was hooked back on his belt.

Frank spoke, steely quiet: 'Those men behind you, they call you Nasir. They've given you the dog's name

… Muhsin told you that Nasir Oric, defend -r of Srebrenica, their military leader, was a hero. Salko's just told me that when the town fell the people rampaged and looted in the last hours before the Serbs came in, and they found warehouses stacked to the roof with UN-donated food, but it wasn't for free handouts. It was for black-market sale, and that was criminal… Ante tells me that Nasir, who had been pulled out by the government to Tuzla before Srebrenica went under, led a column of a hundred and seventy men who fought through the Serb lines to link with the fighters breaking out, hand-to-hand combat, against the odds, and that was heroic… Fahro tells me that today Nasir Oric is a rich man, not bad for an ex-police bodyguard, with a money-spinning restaurant on the lake at Tuzla and won't talk about the source of the start-up cash.'

'Why do they call me Nasir?'

'Only one side of him was a hero. The other side of him was… a good man and a bad killer. It's the sort of confusion this place breeds, and you've got it bad.

So, I'm telling you now, I want no part of it, nor Maggie, nor them… Do I leave you food? We want no part of what you're doing.'

'He's not eating, so I'm not eating.' Now he turned.

Frank saw the boyish sincerity wreath his face, and the smile. ' I'm going to win, you know. He's the loser, I'm the winner.'

'At what cost?' Frank asked sourly. 'At what bloody cost?'

The smile slipped, the frown was above the big spectacles. 'I've only one favour I need from you.

Please, request of them that the dog stays with me. I'll bring him back to Sarajevo, safe and sound, a promise, but I'd appreciate it if I could keep him. The food and the water'll do for the dog, if there's nothing better.'

It was only a dog. Frank put the request. Only another dog. Frank left with the Sreb Four. Before he went into the depth of the trees, he stopped and looked. Joey fed bread to the dog, then poured water into its mouth. He started to walk, hurrying to catch the men ahead of him, and the sun fell in shards between the trees.

It was a soft call. 'Thank Maggie for what she's done for me – give her my love.'

He was weaker.

The sun was on Mister's back. It was off his face and that brought slight relief. He stood and did not move. He gabbled numbers but they had no sequence, no rhythm, and he had no target number. The numbers were random, the decision was put off. He did not know the time, but the sun's force had come off his face and away from the top of his head and was now on his back.

He was sinking.

The numbers, in hundreds, tens and thousands, cluttered his mind. When he lost them, they slipped away from him. Then he thought of Cann. Between the scrabble of numbers was the sight of Cann's face.

Big spectacles, a wide forehead, curly hair without a comb, a small mouth – the clerk, the paper-pusher of Sierra Quebec Golf. At that age he would be little more than a probationer. The kid stuck leech like to him. Why? Mister could buy policemen and judges and bankers and the civil service and… What was Cann's price? Small change, ten thousand, pocket money, fifteen thousand, enough for a down-paymert on a flat. The Eagle had said: You know what I worry about?

I mean it, lose sleep about? One day you overreach – know what I mean – take a step too far. I worry… Poor old Eagle, good old boy, and right again, always. He could no longer see the trees at the river because the sun bounced on them and his eyes were too tired to focus on them. There was no respect in Cann's voice when he shouted. .. He did not know how much longer he could stand and not move. If he were to be beaten, and to beg, it would be soon.

He was slipping.

He played a game with a man's mind, and with a man's life.

Joey was alone with the dog. He had fed it the bread and cheese, and the apple for pulp crunching, and all of the water that they'd left. He'd heard the murmur of the van's engine as it had driven away from the track, and the pick-ups. Sometimes there were the voices, carried on the wind, of the de-miners working from the track by the river but they were little more than whispers and he could not see them.

He said to the dog, who was named after a hero and a killer, 'Doesn't worry me, Nasir, if I'm going down in the filth with him, and get to fight dirtier than he knows how. He loses, I win. What I want is to have him in my hand and to crush him. He's always won, I've always lost, but not here. You can understand that, Nasir?'

His head shook, the hunger and thirst were worse, and he could not cough up saliva to run over his tongue.

In front of him, out in the sunlight, Mister fell.

Joey croaked his shout, 'Don't cheat me, you bastard. Don't beg, don't cry. Stand up… '

'Stand up, you cheating bastard. I want you running, running among the mines, and I want you screaming.

Get up.'

The sound on the speakers faded and was lost against the traffic on Lower Thames Street; the picture was dying. SQCH said it was the battery going down on the mobile, or the power pack on the camera was exhausted. She remarked that she was surprised the camera and the mobile, abandoned on the vantage-point by Miss Bolton when she had pulled out, as ordered, had lasted so long. All of them in the room stared, without forgiveness, at Dougie Gough.

'Don't say it, you don't have to tell me. I take responsibility. I think they are about to go into what is euphemistically called close-quarters combat. It'll be in the gutter, Gorbals street-fighting. I ask myself, down there, can Cann win – and then, does it matter, other than to Cann, who wins and who loses? God watch for him.'