Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'You can go home now,' Gough said. 'I appreciate you staying on.'

'Home' for SQG8 was a single room in a guest-house behind King's Cross terminus, far from her husband and kids in the Manchester suburbs. He dismissed her because he did not wish his call to be overheard. He trusted nobody, not even those he had picked with his own hand. He never quoted it to a second person, but Dougie Gough lived as a senior investigation officer on the maxim of an Irish judge who had said, in 1790: 'The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.'

John Philpot Curran had spoken for him.

He thought it a reasonable assumption that a young woman in terror would not have run to a work friend or a college colleague, but to her mother.

The track through the computer's records by SQG8 gave him the telephone number of the parents of Jennifer Martin. He waited until the room was empty, then dialled. The message sifting in his mind should not be shared.

'Could I speak to Miss Jennifer Martin, please? I do apologize for disturbing you at this late hour. Is she reluctant to take my call, could you tell her that it is Douglas Gough and that I run the team – Sierra Quebec Golf – for which Joey Cann works. Thank you so much.' He waited. He had had little doubt that Cann would have told his girl something of the back ground to his work on the Packer investigation. All the men and women, senior and junior, on the class A teams used wives, husbands and partners as crutches to lean on. A small voice answered the telephone. His reply purred, was reassuring. 'So good of you to come to the phone – may I call you Jennifer? I may? Thank you. I heard about your pet and I want you to know that I am deeply shocked, and sincerely sympathetic.

Both Joey and I work in a dark corner of our society.

Most of that society ignores the darkness, doesn't feel it's their business to illuminate it, or to get involved.

Go to any multi-screen complex, in any city, and you can guarantee there will be a flashy gangster apology to be seen. Those films portray a glamorous, fraudulent image of the men we target. The films do our society a disservice. The men they depict are not Jack the Lad, they are leeches. They are evil, foul bastards – forgive me if I sound emotional – but Joey will have told you that. I've sent him on a mission that I regard as of critical importance. The measure of his success so far, and the mission is not yet completed, is that Packer has struck back at what he thinks is Joey's weak point. You. I am taking a great liberty in asking it of you – you are not a law-enforcement officer although you are a citizen – but I want you to stay where you are. It's Shropshire, isn't it? I want you to stay there, not break cover, not use the telephone, not contact Joey. I'm asking you to be brave. I think you're up to i t.. . I'm going to give you a telephone number to call it you have any suspicions that you are watched, call it night or day. You're important to me, Jennifer, and I need your co-operation. Can I rely on you?'

She sounded what his wife would call a 'decent girl'. He gave the number of his own mobile phone.

He wished her well.

He switched off the room's lights and the door locked after him. Those who worked with him would not have expected a flicker of sentiment from Dougie Gough. He hadn't wanted a frightened girlfriend's calls to Sarajevo to distract Joey Cann from work in hand. He had not spoken of a murder attempt, or of the withdrawal by the Secret Intelligence Service of one half of Cann's partnership.

He walked along the empty corridor and remembered the picture of Cann, from the video, kicking his heels in an act of bloody-minded defiance against the concrete of the rubbish bin. It was Cann who had said that the weakest link was Mister – Albert William Packer – and he'd liked what he'd heard… He recognized obsession and thought it valuable if channelled, but dangerous if not. He believed, with Cann alongside him, that he stood at the threshold of success.

Was the obsession compulsive enough to hold fast?

He must check its strength. He felt no shame for sweet-talking the young woman, and he would lie again before the night was over.

He lay on his back on his bed, and he thought of Jasmina's face.

He had gone past Maggie's room and the dark strip under the door had told him her light was off, he'd paused and heard her tossing in her bed, and he'd gone to his room.

The note had been on the pillow.

Joey,

My crowd are pulling me out. They, and me, say it's not worth the candle – sorry. You should be with me. It's the 7.15 early bird for Zagreb. There are seats on it. Where were you tonight? I waited up, we should have talked about it. Pride never won anything. I'm leaving at 6.00, on the dot. Be there!

Luv, Maggie.

He thought of her strength, and what she went through, each day, to keep that strength. He was humbled by her. What he would do was for her. He wanted to push her, in her wheelchair, in a park, among flowers, where birds sang, and share her strength.

He would go, for her, wherever the road went, wherever it led.

May 1998

The sun shone on the valley. The scene in front of Dragan Kovac was a picture of beauty. It was impossible for him, looking from the porch of his home, to recall the war. The village of Ljut was behind him and he could not see the wreckage of the houses.

Across the fields and over the river small columns of smoke rose from Vraca, but his eyesight was too weak for him to distinguish which buildings were repaired and which were abandoned as derelict. He saw the carpet blanket of the flowers that were the sign of the coming summer, specks, pockets and expanses of blue, pink, yellow. The sun fell on him and warmed his bones.

He was a meticulous man. As the police sergeant, the core of his life had been based on careful planning and thorough preparation. He had risen early. He had made his bed and swept through the room that doubled for living and sleeping, cleaned it, and then he had carried out the small table from inside and placed it on the stone flags under the porch roof. It would be hot later. He put the table where the porch shade would cover it, and then he brought out two strong wooden chairs and manoeuvred them on the uneven stone so that they were firmly set. He went back in for the chess set and the board, brought them out. He spread the board and laid out the pieces. He always felt a little shimmer of pleasure when he handled them. They had been carved by his father from oak; the legacy passed to him from his father's deathbed, given to him seven months after his father had come home from the Partizans with the festering leg wound from a German machine-gun bullet. He had been twelve years old and he had promised his father that he would value the set. King, queen, bishops, pawns, all were freshly painted each year with linseed and had been for fifty-five years. The largest pieces, those of greatest importance, were twenty centimetres high, those of least worth were ten centimetres. It was a fine set, and it was a worry to him that the future of their ownership was not yet determined.

The grandson of his friend had a good child's face, intelligent, serious. Dragan Kovac had no son of his own, no nephew, no child that he could be certain would respect the chess set. He set out the pieces, then brought an old glass ashtray to the table. It had been on his desk in the police station for more than twenty years and it had disappeared from there on the evening of his retirement. He had his last two remain ing, unbroken, glasses for the brandy. It was all done with exactness and pride. He looked at the river, and already the shimmer of the heat was on it. Each day of the previous week it had dropped and he could finally see the silver speckle of the ford. The old fool would make an easy crossing and they would play their first game of the summer… He'd had a pain in his chest that morning – more an ache than a pain – and it had worried him. He thought he would take the opportunity that day to speak with the old fool, his friend, about the grandchild and about the chess set.