Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Rough repairs had been made, enough to proof the roofing against the weather and seal the sides. To the right side of the compound there was a mountain of wrecked vehicles, as if they had been bulldozed together after the artillery and the fires had destroyed them. Rubble, debris, glass shards were scattered through the compound and Mister's feet crunched as he walked towards the shed. It would be his place.

There was a louder, abrasive crushing behind him, and he turned to see Atkins drive into the yard. He was at the wheel of the replacement four-wheel drive, a white Mitsubishi. It was more thousands of marks of outlay, a minor investment against what he would accrue when the lorries rolled home with the

'product' on board. Glass slivers and little showers of concrete spat from under the wheels. Atkins hurried to catch him.

He was led to the first warehouse. When the hatch door was pulled open he stared inside and blinked. As far as he could see were stacked boxes: every Japanese manufacturer's televisions, stereos and videos. The second warehouse was filled half with wheat, barley and flour sacks, and half with plastic racks of women's clothes. The third was empty. He noted the ramp for vehicle repair. It would have been the electricity company's maintenance workshop. One of the men came to Serif and whispered in his ear, pointed to the gate, and was dismissed.

The location was right, the facilities were right, but it was not Mister's way to show enthusiasm.

Serif eyed him, as if waiting for the opportunity to state something of importance, but holding back for a better moment. Fuck him, he thought. They went to the shed. Coffee was made. A radio played local music. An electric fire made a fuggy heat. He took off his jacket, and so did Atkins. Neither carried a firearm, but he noted that Serif kept his jacket on. He spoke of the arrangements he had made for the transfer of monies, because the deal was signed and the contract agreed. The statement of importance from Serif, when it came, was a question that surprised him.

'You were followed in Sarajevo, you were tracked, who…?'

'I said I'd deal with it – I have dealt with it.'

'Who followed you, from what agency?'

'One man from Customs in UK. It's not a problem, I dealt with it.'

'What does "dealt with it" mean?'

'They'll pull back, ship out. You can forget it.'

'My question that concerns me: can the Customs in UK send a man to Sarajevo and track you without notifying the authorities here? Is permission not required?'

Mister turned to the Eagle. 'What's the position when they operate abroad?'

The Eagle said, 'It's quite clearly laid down.

Couldn't just come in here like tourists and operate clandestinely. That would be cowboy. They would require written authorization in Sarajevo from a government minister or a senior official or a judge.'

Mister thought it was the answer Serif expected.

There was a silence round them. Words moved sound-lessly on Serif's lips, as if names flicked on to and off his tongue, as if his mind turned over a list. His head went up and he stared at the ceiling as he pondered.

He must believe he owns, Mister thought, all the ministers in the city, all the officials with influence, and all the judges of importance – except one.

Abruptly Serif cracked his fingers as if by elimination he had decided which of them he did not own…

Then he threw the bomb.

'You said you would deal with it, had dealt – but you are still tracked, followed.'

Mister merely rolled his eyes, raised an eyebrow, queried it. Serif put down his coffee cup, went to the shed door and beckoned. Mister followed him. The Eagle and Atkins scraped back their chairs and made to go with him but he waved them back. They walked across the compound. The red mist played in his mind but he smiled, as if the matter was of no consequence.

He felt rare, raw anger. They reached the closed gate.

In the steel plate, at a man's eye height, was a hole the size of a large screw's head. Serif had to strain up on his toes to peer through it, then backed away. He stood aside. Mister bent his head slightly, looked through the hole and up the rutted street leading from the compound to the main road. He saw the traffic – buses, lorries, vans, cars, jeeps – on the Bulevar Mese Selimovica's eight lanes. He saw the pedestrians on both pavements going slowly against the wind. He saw tower blocks beyond the road.

He saw him… He saw Joey Cann.

Cann was sitting on a concrete rubbish bin where the street joined the road and seemed to shiver as the wind that funnelled down the road snatched at his anorak and his hair. Mister watched him take off his spectacles, wipe them hard on a handkerchief, then replace them… There should have been telephone calls from bright-lit rooms in the Custom House, in the small hours of the night, from the high men of the Church to the hotel. Calls should have been pumped through the switchboard of the hotel by the clerk who had eased money into his hip pocket.

The high men should have ordered Joey Cann to pull out, quit, run. There should have been packed bags, empty rooms, and a stampede for the airport.

But Cann sat on the rubbish bin and did not even make a pretence of concealment. Mister backed away from the spyhole. He smiled again but his nails dug into his soft palms and his knuckles were white, bloodless, with the effort of it. He went back towards the shed. Among those who knew him, the few who were close enough to watch, it was unthinkable for Mister to act when his temper was shredded. Rules he lived by were seldom broken. At the shed door Serif took his arm. 'What will you do?'

'I will deal with it myself.'

'It is what you said before.'

'Myself. I don't want, need, help. Ourselves Mister pulled open the shed door. He waved, a short, chopped gesture, for the Eagle and Atkins. He led them away into the yard. As he said what they would do, his finger jabbed in emphasis. The spittle from his fury bounced on Atkins's face and the Eagle's. It was personal, an insult. He would not turn the cheek to an insult, never had.

'Sounds to me as if that's not in your bloody precious manual,' Maggie had said.

She was parked up off the road. Except when high-sided lorries went by she could see him. He was so small. He sat on the rubbish bin and his legs were too short for his feet to rest on the pavement. He seemed to blanch in the wind that carried sheets of newspaper and empty packets up the pavement and the road around him. He had stepped over an undrawn line, and she'd told him that. He hadn't listened, but had slipped away from the van when she'd parked and walked back to the junction of the road and the street leading down to a warehouse complex, and he'd jerked himself up onto the rubbish bin. She had the camera on him, at that range a tiny blurred figu re, and she had the tape running on a loop… She saw Joey ease himself off his perch. He walked away from it carelessly, back towards her. When he looked behind him, every dozen strides, the wind lifted his hair, pulled it up to the roots, which made him look younger, and without protection. She'd seen the Mitsubishi turn into the street, driven by the former soldier, as Joey would have done. He'd been loitering then, but almost immediately afterwards he had taken to the perch on the rubbish bin. He'd have moved because the gates were opening and started his walk away up the pavement towards her. But it wasn't the Mitsubishi that appeared from the street and waited to join the traffic, it was Target One. To her, he seemed a small, insignificant figure, hunched in his overcoat.

He came out of the street on to the pavement, turned and walked towards Sarajevo's centre. Why walk?

Why go alone? Why not ride? Joey was following, a hundred yards behind, and matched the quick stride of Target One. She did not know the manner of it, but she recognized that a man-trap was set.