Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

The graveyard is desecrated. It would be wise to assume the well cannot be used.'

'May your God watch over you.'

Husein stood at the top of the track with the pile of blankets and the cardboard box of food and milk, and the plastic bag of match cartons with the candles and the jerry-can of heating-oil. The wind on his face was from the west. The ground under his feet was rock dry. The dog licked his hand when he bent, creaking joints, and felt the grass and found no moisture there.

He went back to his land, down the track, and waded across the river at the ford. The water flowed above his knees and the stones under his shoes were slippery as glass, but his will helped him m a k e the crossing. In his hands were the jerry-can of oil, the bag of matches and the candles, kept dry and h e l d high even when he stumbled. On the far side of the ford he looked up at his friend's house and wondered how he did and where he was, whether he was dead and in an unmarked grave, whether he was in a distant camp and still dreaming of the valley. On the track, near to the home of Dragan Kovac, the water sloshing in his shoes, he reached to snatch up handfuls of dry grass, made little heaps of it then spilled heating-oil on them. The wind came harder on his back and he welcomed it. He could see, ahead of him, the ribcages of his animals, and a hawk circled above him. When he had made a dozen small mounds of dried grass, buried halves of the candles in them and splashed them with the oil, he lit the candles' wicks.

The fires raged then guttered, then took. He had heard in the camp at Tuzla that fire destroyed mines.

A crackling wall of flames slowly advanced across his grazing fields and moved towards the ground which, in years gone, he had ploughed to grow vegetables and maize. A great smoke pall hung over his valley and was carried on the wind beyond the line of fire. He believed what he had been told in the tent camp. The proof was there in the explosions.

Seven times the ground broke and was thrown upwards by detonations; and the shrapnel sang over his head. The wind lifted burning grass tufts and wafted them beyond the extent of the line, spreading the fire. To his right, far out towards the line of the fire, there was a grass island circled by black scorched ground. The flames moved on and left the island behind.

Husein Bekir had heard in the camp that fire exploded mines. He had not been told, by experts, that only the mines nearest the surface would be affected; others would smoulder but would not explode; some would have their stakes burned through and would fall over but would not explode; some would have their nylon trip-wires melted but would stay in place with their antennae still lethal; and some had metal wire that the fire would not sever.

Each time a mine detonated he felt a wild sense of excitement, as if his youth returned to him.

A young boar broke in a panic run from the grass island. It ran back over the ground that the fire had covered and headed for the track where Husein stood.

Its stampede had covered twenty-five metres when it was lifted high by the flash of light and the crest of smoke. He saw the blood spurt while it was in the air and its right leg flying free as it fell.

Husein Bekir turned away. He thought he had wasted half of the heating-oil, half of the candles, and two cartons of matches. He went back across the ford.

Joey had lost himself in the late-evening darkness, had gone to his rendezvous.

When she was out on the street, or in the van and trailing, Maggie dressed up-market. When she was parked in the van, in the back of it, with her earphones for company, and her book, she was dressed down.

Neat skirts, blouses, cardigans and sensible shoes were left behind in the hotel wardrobe. She was in black jeans and wore a loose black roll-neck sweater and a black headscarf over her hair. She had been a small, darting shadow when she had gone to the Toyota four-wheel drive, had ducked down and levered herself underneath it on her back. With a small penknife, she had scraped mud sludge, crusted salt and the paintwork off the bottom of the vehicle.

She had made a square of clean metal that was large enough to take the magnet of the device. She called the device, in her own jargon, an OTTER. It would send a beacon signal for two kilometres in a built-up area, and up to three kilometres in countryside. It was One Time-Throw Away equipment, not meant to be retrieved. When the assignment was completed, she would have to pick up the probe bug in room 318 of the building towering above her, but the beacon would be abandoned.

Already she had learned from her earphones that Target One did not use his hotel telephone, nor did he hold meetings in the room.

She heard him shower, dress, whistle to himself, and she heard him snore when he catnapped on his bed. The only time she had heard his voice was when he thanked, and tipped, the maid for the return of his laundry. She was wasting her time and wished she were at home, with colleagues who mattered to her and with work that had a grain of importance. She thought that Joey Cann – slight, intense, his pebble spectacles hiding half of his face – would not have moved past the first-interview stage for recruitment into her world.

She heard Target One cough to clear his throat, then the room's door closing, then the silence.

First, Mister read the document prepared by the Eagle and printed out on his laptop. 'That'll do,' he said.

He passed it back, and the waiter came to take their order. He had again refused Atkins's offer to go out and find a restaurant away from the hotel. He gave his order, let the others tell the waiter what they'd have, then flicked his fingers impatiently at Atkins, ready for the papers to be passed him. He scanned the trans lated witness statements and reflected that they were conveniently tidy.

'You got your street map?'

Atkins unfolded his large-scale map of the city and spread it over their laid places. Mister pointed to the third witness statement, and the address of the discharged and disabled soldier. Atkins turned over the map and ran his finger down the street index; he said that the street, Hamdije Kaprazica, was in the Dobrinja district. 'It's about where I showed you from the plane when we came in. That's the old front line.'

'Could you find it for me?' Mister asked.

'Yes – what, in the morning?'

'Tonight. According to his statement, he was the last man to see Cruncher alive.'

The Eagle spluttered on his bread roll.

'You got a problem?'

'No problem, Mister, if that's what you want.'

'I'd like to see him and hear how it was with Cruncher just before he went into the river. He was a good friend.'

The waiter carried the tray to their table.

'I lost my leg in the war. It is taken off at the knee. The amputation was not done well. It was the circumstances of the operation. I cannot have an artificial one. The stump does not allow it. We were fighting here to hold the tunnel entrance at the airport. Do you have money for me?'

The room was a pit of filth. There was no electricity, no fire. In the brutal light of Frank's torch beam he could have been thirty or fifty. The face was sunken and pale, the hair was thinned through, and the hands shook perpetually. He was propped up on a bed of sacking, newspapers, and pillows that had no covers and leaked feathers. There was a stink of old faeces and urine. When the torch beam had roved across the room, searched for him, it had skipped over three syringes. Joey watched him and Frank translated: 'I have to have money. You want to know what I saw?

I say nothing without money.'

He held a crutch across his chest, as if to protect himself. His eyes were dulled in their sockets. His sleeves, both arms, were pulled up. Joey thought, from what he knew of pincushion arms, that the man would be finding it hard by now to get a fix on the veins. Joey pulled money from his pocket and handed it to Frank. The little wad of notes was tossed into the torchlight and onto the man's lap, above the stump.