Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

The officer came last.

Husein Bekir sat on his log, lit another cigarette. He could see, as the mist cleared, a pall of smoke over Ljut, the old gold of the trees behind the village, the fallen yellow grass of the fields he had not ploughed that spring and the sagging weeds in his vineyard, the house of his friend, Dragan Kovac.

He asked, 'Did it go hard for you?'

The officer stumbled. He would have fallen from exhaustion but was able to collapse on to the log, and his breath came in great heaving pants. 'It was the mines – because we did not know where they were. I don't know, I have to check, I think I have twenty men, not more, killed or wounded, and the mines would have been fifteen, or fourteen.'

'What has happened to the people of Ljut?'

'The village is cleaned. It is no longer a threat to you,' the officer said.

Husein thought of the blood he had seen on the knives, and of the people of the village across the valley whom he had known.

'Did any escape?'

'A few ran away because we were held up some minutes by the bunkers. Most stayed in their homes, in their cellars.'

'And you had time to find them before you were pushed back?' Husein asked grimly.

'We are a platoon and they were a company. When the reinforcements came it was one man against three… Yes, we found them in the cellars before that.

If I had wanted to stop the men I could not, not after they had seen what the mines did.'

Husein gabbled his question: 'Was there a big man there – a boar of a man – he is a retired policeman – big shoulders, big stomach, big moustache – a leader? Did he escape? Is he alive?'

'If he ran away, he is alive. If n o t… ' The officer shrugged, and struggled to his feet. 'I don't know. I didn't see him – there were many I did not see, did not care to see.'

When his wife came with coffee and a slim glass of brandy, the old farmer told her that in the night the life of the valley had died. She steadied his shaking hand so that he did not spill the coffee, and he gulped the brandy. He did not have to tell her, because she knew it, that it would have been the old people who had hidden in the cellars. They knew it because on other mornings they had stared, together, across the valley and the river, and seen the distant figures going about their lives.

The sun rose and threw clear long shadows from the trees on the far side of the valley. He watched as the Serb soldiers emerged from the smoke of the village with a wheelbarrow and heavy sacks. He saw them fan out then gather in little groups and kneel.

More mines were sown in his fields to replace those detonated during the night, and he tried to shut out the screams, and the whimper of a young trooper who had held his stomach and asked for his mother.

Dougie Gough would go a long way for a good funeral, if it were up on the Ardnamurchan peninsula.

Many times he'd helped to carry the coffin from the Free Presbyterian chapel at Kilchoan to the cemetery that was neatly cut out from a grazing field. He liked to stand in that cemetery, high over the sea that stretched across to Mull, and ponder on the life of a friend and fellow worshipper, to feel the wind, the rain or the sun on his face. It was the best of places for a temporary parting, and he always looked to the cliffs to see if an eagle hunted or over the water for a glimpse of a seal or a porpoise. His faith gave him a sense of fatality and a feeling of inevitability that did not frighten him. He had no fear of death, or of hard-ship. The lack of fear toughened him.

This, though, was a pathetic funeral, he thought.

There was no dignity, no love, no respect at the crematorium.

The coffin carrying the stitched remains of Duncan Dubbs, whom he now knew as the Cruncher, was wheeled into the chapel by strangers. He stood at the back. The coffin was followed by a couple in their seventies and he thought they understood nothing of their son's adult life. Only four women had taken places in front of Gough, the same age as the parents, and two young men in loose gaudy shirts without jackets. The vicar, another stranger, hurried through the service of committal. Gough thought the church-man knew little more of the dead man than his name and therefore fell back on to familiar ground. 'Duncan was, above all, a private man, whose loyalties were primarily directed towards his beloved parents, to whom he accorded all the love of which he was capable. He was a popular and well-liked member of his community and will be sorely missed by his many friends.' A reedy hymn was sung as the curtains closed, and without the vicar's strength of voice the words would have been drowned out by the power playing of the female organist.

Outside, in light rain, his waxed coat heavy over his tweed jacket, he stood back and kept his distance as the mourners paused beside the show of flowers. The parents, Gough reflected, would now be millionaires from their son's last will and testament, and the rent-boys would be hoping that the suddenness of the Cruncher's death had not precluded generous bequests. But he had come to see others, and he was disappointed. No Packer and his wife, no acolytes or enforcers. An official gently, but firmly, hurried them on. Behind a low wall with a trellis above it supporting climbing roses, a new funeral party was forming up. The vicar, sheltered under an umbrella, was pleading urgent business elsewhere, and shaking hands.

They'd stayed away. In the car park the parents climbed into and were lost inside the big black limousine, and the young men left by scooter. He stayed put until a car on the far side of the car park had driven away. He'd seen the camera lens. It would have been routine for the Crime Squad to send along a police photographer, and he had no wish to be pictured and identified by them.

It was interesting to him that Packer had stayed away. It told him something of the coldness of the man, and something of the care taken by him not to display himself. He had learned from the funeral.

'He said that?'

' That's what the little shit said, Mister.'

'Tell me again what he said.'

' He said, I can quote it because I heard it, "Mister's gone, washed up, history." Then he said, "Mister's not hands-on any longer. You don't have to worry about Mister. Anyone who pays him is chucking money at a has-been. You just ignore Mister." It's all gospel. I heard Georgie Riley say it.'

In Intrusive Surveillance – Code of Practice, section 2 paragraph 3 states

Any person giving an authorization (for intrusive surveillance) should first satisfy him/herself that the degree of intrusion into the privacy of those affected by the surveillance is commensurate with the seriousness of the offence… no intrusion should be authorized which is out of proportion to the crime committed or planned. This is especially the case where the subjects of the case might reasonably assume a high degree of privacy or where there are special sensitivities such as where the intrusion might affect communications between a Minister of any religion or faith and an individual relating to that individual's spiritual welfare.

Safer than the Eagle's office was the sacristy of a turn-of-the-century brick-built church in Hackney.

Along with the vicar, two churchwardens, and a cleaner, Mister was a keyholder to the rear door of the church and the sacristy. He had never worshipped there but his contributions to the upkeep of the grounds surrounding the building, and the generosity of his donation to the roof fund, ensured him access to a building where there was no possibility of bugs and taps.

'I appreciate what you've told me.'

In an east London pub, a medium-scale importer, dealing primarily in amphetamines ferried over the Channel from Holland, with drink taken, had shot off his mouth. That man, Riley, stood on a rung far below the one occupied by Mister. At that time, he represented no threat to Mister's commercial dealings.