Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

There had once been a garden. Over the rubble of the house end lay the tangle of sprouting rose suckers, trying to crawl towards the open, wall-papered interior. What had been an inner door was barricaded with nailed planks. Atkins thought it a pitiful place, not a judge's home, not five years after the war had ended. He saw the nearly buried roof of a car. If he hadn't been examining the building, turning it over with his trained eye, he would not have seen it. It would have been parked beside the building when the artillery shell had struck home. Part of the roof and all of the outer wall had fallen on it, along with the last of the dirtied snow of the winter. There were narrow wheelmarks making tramlines to and from a ramp leading to the main door. It was the right address, the wheelmarks confirmed it. The door, with the paint weathered off it, was firmly shut. There were no lights behind the two remaining windows, which were covered with double layers of cellophane; he could not see inside… He was the best, quality. Mister had said it. He turned his back on Judge Delic's home.

Over breakfast and before leaving for a vaguely explained destination, Mister had described the departure of Cann and a woman scuttling with their bags from a central hotel – without crowing – and then Atkins had been told of a 'little problem' that Mister wanted sorting out. He looked above the house. He searched the hillside for a place of elevation, where the tripod could be set up, that could be reached on tarmac.

He thought the place would be near the Jewish cemetery.

Atkins set off to find it, and the Eagle puffed after him.

'Miss Bolton? I'm Ruthin, Eddie Ruthin. I came down from Vienna.' She thought him a vacuous-looking younger man, with a quiff of hair falling on his forehead below a trilby, thin under an oversized Burberry mackintosh.

'What for?'

She had come into the airside concourse at Zagreb.

She felt wretched. It was not the turbulence that had hit the flight, but the glowering thoughts in her head that affected her. She was out, Cann was still in. She had found justification for it and had walked away, abandoned him. She hadn't even pecked him on the cheek, but had given him instead a homily on failure.

'They thought, in London, after what you've been through, that a friendly face might help.'

'Did they?'

'Well, your life was in danger, wasn't it? So, how can I help?'

'How long do I have here?'

' 'Fraid there's three hours to kill before the London flight. I suppose, also, they didn't want you lugging all your gear round on your own. May I take the case?'

'I'm perfectly capable.'

'Well, let's find a chair, somewhere to sit you down.

What about a coffee?'

Maggie sat in a chair and faced the plate-glass windows. She manoeuvred the heavy case under her thighs and behind her shins, stared out over the runways and saw a distant line of hills to the west.

Beyond the hill was the border, and beyond the border was Joey Cann. The case holding the equipment that might have helped him was cold against her shins and thighs.

'I'd like, please, if you can get them to make it, a pink gin'

Gough listened. 'So, you came down to see old Finch, to see how the old beggar's surviving, and to pick the old brains. Surviving not too bad, actually, with a bit of help from ten year-old malt. You know the best-kept secret in the Custom House? There's a life outside. Fancy that. My life now is the garden and the newspapers, and I do the housework because Emily's still working, and I've. a bit of time to think. You'll be wondering if I'm bitter and twisted. Can answer that easily enough – I am. What makes me bitterest, twists me tightest, is that Cann still works in Sierra Quebec Golf. I used to pity him, almost feel sorry for him. now I just detest him. I go to the wall at dawn, blindfold over my face, and the rest of my people get the Church's version of Siberia, but Cann survives.

You want to know what I think? He's one of those empty people fuck-all in him. No life and therefore no balanced view, searching for a cause. The cause might have been God,, might have been Chelsea bloody Football club, might have been fuchsias in a green-house. but it was Packer. That sort of empty person needs a bloody cause, something to fill the hole.

Bastard didn't have one iota of the ethic of law enforcement, not like I had and the rest of my people

– and look where it's got us. It was more like that pitiful sort of dedication those sick creatures have who stalk celebrities, photograph them, stand outside their homes and go through their rubbish, all wrapped up in some shitty justification that he was the only one who cared about the job. I ran a good team. We worked for each other. He didn't. To the other guys, girls, he was a pain. He wanted to be alone, wasn't a part of us, he had his mission. His mission made him a big boy, gave him a reason for living. People with a mission, they come unstuck, don't know when to stop. You shouldn't have sent him there, not to Bosnia. Wouldn't that be the sort of place where you'd need to know when to stop, and back off?'

Gough left Brian Finch in his conservatory with the first glass of the day in his hand. He had heard what he wanted to hear.

'It's a neck of the world I don't know.' Mister's con-fession of ignorance felt like an apology.

'I promise you, there is no place more beautiful, more pure, Mr Packer, or more sad. Perhaps one day you will go there, yes?'

'Maybe. The way you tell it maybe I should – but not to see the sad part.'

Monika Holberg was like no woman he had ever known. But, then, the Lofoten Islands, north of the Arctic Circle, was a place he had never heard of. As she'd told him about her home and a life of farming small fields, and of dragging cod out of the sea, he'd thought grimly that they didn't grow poppies in their fields or coca bushes, didn't have laboratories that manufactured E tablets or amphetamines, had nothing for him to buy, nothing for him to sell. Not good fertile territory for trading. She was like no woman he'd known because she talked. From the time she'd |picked him up, with her driver, sitting in the back of the UNHCR jeep she had barely drawn breath, He knew about her home village, Njusford on the island ol Hakstodoya. He knew about her parents, Henrik and Helge. About her brother and sister, Johan and Hulde. He knew the names of their cows that lived eight months of the year in a heated barn, and the annual weight of the cod they caught in the nets.

He knew about the brother, Knut, who had hanged himself aged sixteen, twelve years before as an escape from the demon depression' of the winter's darkness.

She told him everything and asked him nothing. Her life cascaded over him. It was so rare for him to be treated to such trusting, personal confidences. Then, when she had finished with the Lofoten Islands, and the hanging of her brother, she switched effortlessly to her career working with refugees in Somalia and East Timor, Mozambique and Kosovo; he knew where Kosovo was, had a vague idea of where Somalia and Mozambique were positioned on the African continent, but had never heard of East Timor. He didn't like to display his ignorance, thought it lessened him. He didn't want to be small in her eyes.

They turned off the main road and the jeep began to bump up a rough track. 'You are all right, Mr Packer?'

'I'm fine, I'm really enjoying myself.'

'I am not talking too much?'

'Not at all You fascinate me. You make me think that I've led a very sheltered life… Everyone calls me Mister. I'd like you to, please.'

She pulled a face, then she giggled. 'It is a very strange name but it that is what you w a n t… We are nearly there. The village is called Visnjica. You will remember that? Visnjica in Opstina Kiseljak.'