Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

I said: "In every city, town and village children are in danger of being ensnared by drugs and crime." You both know that an election's looming. An essential part of this government's battle plan is our determination to break the link between drugs and crime. I went on to say, "Addicts ruin more than just their own lives, they mug, burgle and steal to pay for their next fix. Every year heroin users criminally take more than a thousand million pounds to feed that disgusting habit – the equivalent of sixty pounds from every household in the country." We want action, gentlemen, we need visible action. Bickering over minor scraps of turf is not the action I'm looking for. I, the government, demand results – require arrests and convictions so that these foul narcotics are cleaned from our streets. In the case of Packer, what's happening?'

'We've sent a man -'

'- with a first-class operator alongside him.'

The minister, the supplicant, clasped his hands together in a prayer of frustration. 'Don't you see, dammit, what I'm trying to say? A criminal waltzes from the Old Bailey a free man. The response of the law-abiding community is to send a man after him who you tell me is twenty-seven years old, therefore inexperienced, earning the rate paid to people at the bottom of the ladder, the minimum response because you plead the strictures of expense and the un-certainty of success. You send, along with him, a woman with a box of tricks. I want results that are high-profile, I want people to read in their morning newspapers – all of those people who are scared witless that their children and grandchildren will be caught up in this ghastly life-threatening trafficking, and who vote for us – that we are doing something.'

Endicott asked coolly, 'Doing something worthwhile, Minister, or doing anything?'

Cork said, a little sadness in his voice, 'If, when Packer has sealed whatever business deal he's gone to make, he were to return and fall happily under the wheels of a number seventy-three bus the effect on the availability of heroin on the streets of London would be less than negligible… That is a fact.'

'That's not good enough.'

Endicott said, 'We are not, Minister, soldiers in a holy war.'

Cork said, 'We deal with the real, and unpleasant, world.'

'I need, require, success.'

Cork said, 'It's not the way things work, I'm sorry to say. It's slow, tedious and undramatic. He's called Joey Cann. He may, with considerable luck, put one building brick in place and that's only one – but it's ridiculous to assume he can win you those headlines, bring Packer down.'

The meeting broke up.

They went together from the minister's room out onto the pavement and into brittle spring sunshine.

They paused before parting.

'Even for a politician, that fellow's not the full shilling,' Endicott said.

'If I thought Cann and Bolton were going for Packer's jugular with a hacksaw, were going to endanger themselves in that snake-pit, they'd be on the first plane home.'

Joey's eyes were on the arrivals door, fastened on it.

He saw Mister between the Eagle and Atkins. He edged the gear from neutral.

'That them?' she asked.

'That's Target One and the fat one's Target Two. The younger one's Target Three.'

'Happy days,' she said, and her camera's shutter clicked beside his ear.

The photographs he'd seen, scores of them, were good: he had recognized Mister immediately and watched him with fascination. For the first time the man was in front of him, flesh where before there had been only monochrome images. The greeting party lounged against the two waiting cars. He saw Mister's head incline towards the Eagle's and saw his lips move. It was a private moment of exhilaration. He could not have explained it to Jen. There might have been an opportunity the previous summer, when Finch had put together the arrest team, for him to have piped up and asked to be included. He'd hesitated – the team might have laughed at him, he might have had to stutter why it was important to him, their archivist and the bottom of the tree, to be there when the handcuffs went onto Mister's wrists – and the moment of opportunity had gone. That night, alone in his room and knowing what was to happen at a quarter to six in the morning, he had beaten his pillow in frustration. Yet those who might have refused him or laughed at him were all gone. He had survived. The moment was his.

'He needs to know, this Serif, who's the boss. Polite and firm, but it's understood from the start. We are big players, he's a small player, that's what he should be learning now.'

He was about to start forward but Atkins's hand was on his arm. 'They're big on pride, Mister. They think they won their war – they didn't, it was won for them, but it's what they like to believe.'

'I hear you.'

The Cruncher should have been back to London to brief him and should have been with him for the return, not the Eagle. Across the paving from them were four men, their weight against the doors and bonnets of the cars, in a uniform of black windcheaters, shaven heads, black shirts, tattoos on their necks, black jeans, gold chains at their throats, black boots, cigarettes. Mister wore a suit and a white shirt.

The Eagle carried a businessman's attache case and was dressed in a blazer, slacks, collar and tie and a maroon-brown overcoat. Atkins was the officer boy, in brogues, chocolate corduroys, sports jacket, and was loaded with the three bags. A cigarette was thrown down, then three more. The back door of the front car was opened.

'Which one's Serif?' Mister murmured.

'He's not here,' Atkins said, 'if I remember him right.'

'Shit,' the Eagle muttered. 'That's one hell of a good start.'

A policeman, with a heavy pistol slung from a waist holster, approached the cars. Gold rank on his tunic, he slapped shoulders, gripped fists, and was given a cigarette from an American pack, as if he was meeting friends, and then he was gone. Mister wondered whether it had been arranged to send a message. The boot of the front car was opened, the bags taken from Atkins and lifted inside. A pudgy hand, with gold rings on it, gestured to the car's back seats.

'Where is he?' Mister asked Atkins.

Atkins asked. Mister saw them all, in unison, shrug.

' They're saying they don't know.'

There was a sigh from the Eagle. It was the nearest he ever came to saying there were always consequences when his advice was ignored. 'I told you so' would have been too bold for the Eagle to utter.

They were pressed together on the back seat of the Mercedes, a driver and a minder in the front, the second driver and second minder in the car behind.

They were jerked against the leather as the car powered away. The sign they swept past proclaimed that the airport's new terminal had been built with Dutch money. They went past the guarded entrance to a French military camp. The driver didn't slow as he approached the barrier at the perimeter but hit the horn. The bar was lifted, the car accelerated, a policeman waved a greeting. Apache gunships, American, flew over them in formation, and Mister craned to watch them before their disappearance into the cloud.

Ruined buildings confronted them as they swung onto the main road – the close-up mayhem wreckage of what he had seen in the aircraft's final approach.

For a moment he was unsettled, a slight toll of his confidence taken by the absence of the man due to meet him, the closeness of the police officer to the escort, the scale of military power, the extent of the war damage. Atkins looked at him, queried with his eyes.

Did he want a running commentary? He shook his head. He was absorbed.

He had never seen anything like it. Whole streets were burned, shot away, roofless. Kids played football in the roads where snow-covered debris was bulldozed to the side. And people lived there