Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Atkins thought he tramped a treadmill, and did not know how to get off.

'This isn't a discussion,' Mister had said, and stabbed his finger into Atkins's chest. 'I'm not asking for advice, I am telling you how it is. It's not for talking round, it's for doing, doing the way I say it.'

By driving the new Mitsubishi, he walked the treadmill. He'd bought the Toyota outright, but the Mitsubishi was cash up front for rental. The vehicle had been stolen, four days before, from the parking area outside the apartments occupied by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the ICRC logo had been spray-painted off the doors, new number plates fitted and an additional set, with different numbers, lay on the floor behind him. It handled easily and well. He took it out into the traffic flow. Mister was a full three hundred yards ahead of him, and the tail – as the man had been described to him – was a hundred yards behind Mister. He idled the engine and scanned the road ahead. The Eagle had said nothing, hadn't protested, hadn't joined in when Atkins had queried his instructions and been slapped down. Ahead of him were the fruits of an effort to brighten the route into the city. New trees had been planted in the grass between the road and the pavement, supported to give them stability by tripods of wooden stakes, and interspersed between them were high street-lamps. He eased the vehicle forward. The Eagle's eyes were closed and he was breathing hard.

Atkins held the slow lane. He should have had notice of this, should have planned and rehearsed it, but it was on the hoof and he hadn't dared dispute it further with Mister. From the slow lane he would accelerate towards the tail and Mister, then pick the moment, swing at increased speed between the new trees and the street-lamps, hit the pavement, straighten, take the target square on the radiator grille, pull back between the obstacles, bump over the kerb, and swerve into the fast lane. The way Mister had said it, it had seemed so easy. It was beyond anything Atkins had ever done in his life – and the sweat ran on his back and across the pit of his gut. Each gap between the new trees and the street-lamps was as good as the last, as good as the next.

'Do it in your own time,' Mister had said. 'Just do it when you're ready.'

He recognized that Mister kept the pace steady, so that the tail's pace and position could be estimated, and the timing of the surge through the gap could be more exact. It couldn't fail, if he had the w i l l… it was murder. In the army he had never killed, never fired a weapon in anger. Bosnia, with the blue beret force, the source of his casually told war stories, had seen him in the ditches and crouched behind the sandbags, trembling and close to wetting himself, just like all the other guys. Mister would have done it, wouldn't have hesitated, but Mister played the decoy, wasn't there to stiffen him, and the Eagle shook, uncontrolled, beside him. He was alone. Atkins edged up through the gears, speed surging, and picked out a gap between the new trees and the street-lamps, his eyes tunnel-focusing on the head and shoulders, back, hips and striding legs of the tail.

'No need to be scared. Just imagine I'm holding your hand,' Mister had said.

It seemed to unfold so slowly in front of Maggie.

She started to shout into the microphone clipped to her blouse, incoherent. She'd said to him that if he insisted on going through with this ludicrous, un-professional surveillance procedure, she'd only be a part of it if he listened, and bloody close, all the time to his earpiece. She yelled, and the white Mitsubishi was going faster and closing on him, but his stride speed never altered. A young woman with a pram and her shopping in plastic bags balanced on it had passed Mister and walked towards Joey. Maggie could see through which gap the Mitsubishi would go. It was going too fast for it to be a shooting hit. The distance between her van and Joey, for the earpiece to pick up her screamed warnings, was too great. He should back off, take cover, dive. He should… She hit the van horn, smashed her clenched fist down on it, again and again, beat a tattoo with it. The woman with the pram and the shopping was near him. The Mitsubishi lurched as the nearside wheels bounced on the kerb, skidded on the grass, found grip, then aimed for the gap. The cacophony of the horn dinned in her cab, and Joey stopped, turned. Beside him, frozen, petrified, was the woman with the pram. Maggie saw Joey throw himself at the woman and she fell away from him, the pram toppling over, her shopping scattering.

The edge of the Mitsubishi's fender caught him.

No pain, but he felt himself tossed upwards, and he thought he floated. No sound, as the flank of the vehicle swept past him. He fell. The breath was driven out of his body, and everything around him was blurred.

Joey lay on the wet grass, the damp from it seeping into his clothes, and he gasped.

The woman picked herself up, righted her pram, and scooped up the shopping strewn around him. She never looked at him. When he squinted, screwed his eyes together, he thought he could make out the shock on her face. She said not a word, merely scurried away, pushing the pram along the pavement. He thought he had saved her life, and her baby's life, and her shopping, but she had nothing to say to him – then the pain spilled in him.

A man came past him, going towards the city, and didn't look down at him. Two youths, smoking, went by him, going away from the city, and seemed not to see him. Was he invisible to them as they hurried on their different ways? Fuck you, he mouthed. He groped on the grass for his spectacles, found them – bent arms but the lenses intact. He put them on, wedged them at a clown's angle on his nose. The pain ran through his leg and hip. Far down the road, the Mitsubishi slowed to a stop and Mister disappeared into it. Then it was gone, lost in the speed of the traffic.

Only tyremarks on the grass showed what had happened. He crawled to a tripod of stakes holding erect a young tree and tried to pull himself up, but couldn't.

The van swept over the kerb and onto the grass.

From the windows of two black Mercedes, faces peered at him, shallow outlines against the smoked glass of the windows, and ducked away when he caught their gaze.

Maggie ran from the van, came to him and knelt.

He thought, irrationally, that she didn't have to get her knees wet and her tights dirty on the mud in the grass.

'Are you all right?'

'I think I am – my leg hurts.'

'You tried to climb up, I saw you, against the tree.'

'I couldn't.'

'If you'd really hurt yourself you wouldn't have been able to get half-way up the tree, not if you'd done a bone.'

'You've a great bedside way. He tried to kill me.'

'But he didn't, that's the point.'

She reached over him and put her hand into the tear rip of his jeans that ran from the faded knee to the hip. Her fingers gripped at his bone and the flesh covering it. She'd the sensitivity, he thought, of one of those old, seen-it-all veterinary surgeons who had come to the estate and were taken by his father to see a lame heifer or a limping ewe.

She straightened. 'I don't think anything's broken – you were lucky. I expect it'll bruise up quite prettily.'

Joey flared. 'You were supposed to be watching my bloody back. I wouldn't have had to be lucky if you'd been awake. What about the goddam radio?'

He saw a small blood smear on her hand as she wiped it with her handkerchief.

'Didn't you hear me?'

He shook his head. She looked around. A frown settled on the delicacy of her forehead. Her gaze fastened on the PTT building back up the road and the antenna forest on the roof, the tilted mushroom dishes.

Joey said, 'Oh, that's good. Radio interference, too many spikes and bowls. Useful for you to know that when you get back. Be able to do something about that in the lab, won't you? It's very pleasing to know I've contributed to pushing along the frontiers of science. So, when did you cut your hand?'