Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Mister knew the way it worked because he had climbed that ladder himself and pitched off it men who had believed themselves superior. It would start with talk, then there would be the elbowing in on Mister's territory, then he would similarly be thrown off the step. To hold his place at the top, he must act at the first sign of talk – Cruncher would have understood, but maybe not the Eagle. He knew Riley, thought he was clever arid careful, except when drink was taken.

The informant scurried away, perhaps believing that he had ingratiated himself and that Mister was now indebted to him. It would be the informer's error if he acted on that conviction.

Alone in the sacristy, Mister made several short, pithy calls on his mobile, using an always-changing code to cover names and locations. He had just switched it off when the vicar, half drowned, came in behind him.

'Hello, Reverend, how did it go?'

'Well, we could have done with a few more there.

But I think those who did attend valued the occasion.'

' I regret not being with you.'

'Difficult times, Mr Packer. There was a wretched photographer hiding in a car – looking for you, I suppose, no sense of decency or occasion – and one man I didn't recognize who neither the family nor the boys acknowledged.'

The funeral's stranger was described, and the vicar said he had not been dressed like a policeman, but as if from the country: he had had the appearance of a rural vet. Then he dropped his voice and grimaced. 'A miserable-looking vet, the sort who'd put down a family dog and not console you. But he sang well, knew all the words of the hymns I'd chosen, never looked at the hymnal.' If the Eagle's court strategy had not accomplished the halting of Mister's trial, the vicar had been lined up, ready to take his place in the witness box and swear firmly to 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth', and say that on the night Mister was alleged to have been in the car he had in fact been in the sacristy discussing further fund-raising for the repair of the rotting roof.

'I'll be away for a bit,' Mister said casually.

'Somewhere nice?' The vicar was discarding his vestments, darkened at the hem by the rain.

'Doubt it's nice, don't know whether it's warm. I've a bit of business in Sarajevo.'

'Where poor Mr Dubbs died.'

'He was setting up a deal – too good a deal to let go.

That's the trouble with business, these days, you've got to run fast just to stand still.'

'I wouldn't know… but I read that Sarajevo is an unhappy place, quite brutalized by that awful war I'll be concerned for you, Mr Packer.'

Mister stood up and wrapped his coat around him

'Don't worry about me. I can look after myself.'

David Jennings had taken home the carriage clock two years ago. He'd have preferred his farewell from the Custom House, from the Sierra Quebec Golf team, to have been marked with a crystal decanter, but they'd given him a clock. It didn't work now and the jeweller he'd taken it to had said repairs would cost more than it was worth.

Enforced retirement had been a bitter blow to him: one day an experienced executive officer working on heroin importation then targeting Albert Packer, the next thumbing through conservatory leaflets and estimating what a new back patio would cost. At first his wife had said that it was wonderful to have him home and around to help with the shopping, but that had palled. An increasingly testy marriage was kept alive by off-peak sunshine holidays.

All the girls in the travel agency were busy, so Jennings settled himself on the bench by the window, ready to book a pre-summer break in Tenerife. He didn't have to see the Fixer's face to know him. Most times he'd seen him from the back, on buses and tube carriages and pavements. He knew him well. He'd been close up in pubs with him, close enough to count hairs on the back of his neck, trying to get 'overheards'. His last year before retirement, when the team had been expanded to a branch, kitted with body microphones, with an eyeball on the Fixer, hoping to hear him talking dirty rather than talking social, he'd spent hours, nights, weeks, months on the Fixer who was Target Six. God, and he missed it. The old life was still a microbe in his bloodstream.

When the Fixer was finished and had left with his tickets, three of them, Jennings slotted into the empty . hair in front of the girl. Former habits died hard. He was a good pump man, always had been. He asked casually where his pub friend was going, and not taking the darts team, was he, not with the quarter-final coming up.

'Funny old booking,' she said, grinning. 'Takes all sorts, b u t. .. ferry to Calais, hire car, then Amsterdam to Zagreb on KLM, and on to Sarajevo. First time I've ever booked for there.'

'He's not taking Brennie and Pete – we won't ever win anything without Brennie, please tell me it's not Brennie and Pete.'

'A Mr Packer, a Mr Arbuthnot, and a Mr James – that's the passengers' names.'

'That's not George James, surely? He's not as tasty as Brennie, but he's useful – in our second pair.'

'Bruce James.'

'When are they going, then?'

'Travelling Thursday, arriving Friday. Now do you want some help or do you want to talk about your darts team?'

He laughed, she giggled. He started to explain the hotel details of the last trip to Tenerife, and how they wanted a back room because the front rooms were too noisy, and as high up as possible because of the row from the discotheque. By the time he had finished explaining about the hotel the girl had forgotten her breach of customer confidentiality. David Jennings hadn't forgotten when the old Target One was travelling, with his Eagle and his Atkins, or when he was arriving. As he always used to tell the few who were close to him, and who put up with his former-life anecdotes, it had never been flushed out of the system. Nursing his small morsel of information he went home, his sunshine break reserved, and made a telephone call to an old chum at the Custom House.

'It's probably nothing, but I thought you'd like to k n o w… '

A message was sent from a spieler, a Turkish cafe, in Green Lanes. The cafe was sandwiched between a halal butcher and a greengrocer specializing in Near Eastern vegetables. From the long street in London that represented the heart of the immigrant Turkish population, it went by digital phone to the Bascarsija district of Sarajevo. The Turkish community in Green Lanes, and in Sarajevo, understood the value of strategic alliances.

At any time, day or night, there were in that drab street, with renovation and refurbishment yet to arrive, the parked cars and vans in which sat surveillance experts of the Church, the Crime Squad, Criminal Intelligence and the spooks.

Any of those men and women, idling away the hours, waiting for the next greasy burger and fries, watching, recording and photographing, would have known the statistic that dominated their work.

Of every ten wraps of heroin imported into the United Kingdom, nine passed through Turkish hands, and most of those hands were in Green Lanes.

The trail started in the poppy fields of fundamentalist Afghanistan. A train of camels would carry a tonne of raw produce over the porous Iranian frontier. From Iran the cargo moved by lorry, passage cased by back-handers, across the Turkish border. In Turkey the opium was refined to high-grade heroin, too strong for the human body to accept by swallowing, or inhalation, and the tonne was divided into one hundred-kilo loads, each with a final street value ol eight million pounds sterling. Hidden in long-distance transport lorries the loads were moved through the Balkans, Germany and France, and up to the choke points of the Channel ports, where the danger of discovery was greatest for the Turkish importers. Once inside the United Kingdom, the Turks sold it on to the major dealers.