Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

If he wanted to get back his chill, she said, that was his business, but she was not permitting him to abandon her grandson up a dangerous tree. If he got his chill back, through his own stupidity, when he should have been milking the goats, then it would not be she who nursed him. He wriggled in annoyance, and Dragan Kovac reached, grinning, for the bottle.

Husein Bekir saw his wife, Lila, stamp away from him in her shining rubber boots. She was stout, strong for her age, heavy-built. She seemed to plough through the long uncut grass below the porch towards the drooping fence in front of the mulberry tree. She straddled the fence, caught her skirt on the wire, extricated herself, leaving a thread on the barbs when she swung over her back leg, then went into the shade under the tree's leaves. He saw the deepening lines in his friend's forehead, and his eyes were screwed to narrow slits. His mouth gaped open, as if he tried to clarify a little moment of memory from far back, and could not. Then his friend's tongue flapped idly, but no words came. She was calling the child down.

Husein did not know what memory seeped back into the mind of Dragan Kovac, nor what his friend tried to say.

The child was pale, thin, like the scrawny dog gliding on the baked earth under the tree, had no meat on him and was lightweight.

His woman, Lila, was solid and heavy.

She moved under the tree so that she could better steady the child when he dropped down to her and her voice was harsh with her command as if she had no patience.

Dragan Kovac hissed, 'It's where they did it – put them I remember, it's where-'

'Put what?'

The mine exploded under her foot.

For Joey, it had been the journey from hell.

The nightmare had begun after he had seen Mister and the woman leave the village in the UNHCRjeep.

It had been hard to track them at the end, in the failed light. He had kept a distance back from them, but had seen Mister pick up a child and hug it, and then the small boy had run up the track past him. Joey had walked another mile through the long strip of the village, to where the blue van was hidden in trees beside the river. As he'd approached, stumbling over fallen branches, he'd heard the charge of their escape.

They would have run when they'd heard his approach. The van's doors were open. He'd sworn.

He'd reached inside, felt the dash and found the loose wires from the radio. His foot, as he'd stood by the door, had brushed against bricks. He'd sworn aloud He'd gone round to the passenger side, found the pocket open, and the torch hadn't been there. Mori-bricks against his hand on the passenger side – bricks to hold up the van, because there were no bloody wheels, no tyres. He'd sworn again in fury. Of course he had seen the poverty of the village, abject poverty, but he'd never thought that a little of the poverty might be removed by the acquisition of his tyres, his goddam wheels. He'd started to walk.

He dragged himself up the stairs of the hotel. A man had been sitting, smoking, an empty coffee cup in front of him, close to the reception desk, and he'd been given his key by a scowling night porter whose eyes were never off the man. He went up to his landing.

A man lounged in a chair at the top of the stairs, seemed to strip Joey with his gaze. He, too, wore the uniform of the man in the foyer – jeans, a cigarette, close-cut hair, a black leather jacket. A short-barrelled machine pistol, two magazines taped together, lay on his lap. Joey knew the face but couldn't put a place to it. It confused him, but in his exhaustion he didn't stop.

He went past the door of the room that had been Maggie's; there was a light under it and low voices, the scented fumes of cigarettes.

He let himself into his room, dumped his bag on the bed and took out the camera.

Opening up his laptop, he wrote his report, his fingers hammering on the keys.

He'd walked to the main road, then gone west along it. He'd hitched every car and lorry that had passed him, but none had stopped and some had nearly clipped him. He'd reached a village and seen a cafe's lights. He'd gone into it. Was there a taxi in the village? Shrugged responses, there was no taxi. Was there a telephone to call a taxi from Kiseljak?

The telephone was broken. He'd headed off, continued walking.

The report was typed out. He was tired, so bloody tired. He was cold, he was damp, he was hungry. He snatched the wire cables from his bag. His fingers shivered. It was slow going, and his temper was fuelled – should have taken him thirty seconds but it took him minutes – and he linked the cables to his laptop and his mobile, and hit the transmission-code keys. The first time, with his clumsiness, it didn't go through, second time it did.

He had walked for an hour and a half to reach Kiseljak. No taxis, no buses. In the police station he had gone half-way down on his knees, and flagged them with his ID. A police car had taken him to Rakovica, half-way to Sarajevo, and the driver had gestured that he could go no further, that he was not allowed beyond his area. Again, he had walked. A lorry with a drunk driver had lifted him as far as Blasuj, then dropped him. He'd walked in the dark, another hour, almost crying in his frustration, towards the always distant lights of the city, his goal.

Joey wired the digital camera to his mobile, and dialled. And the camera's pictures were downloaded to London. The mobile's screen message told him they were received.

He'd walked into Ilidza. No taxis in Kiseljak, Rakovica or Blasuj, and half a hundred bloody taxis in the Ilidja suburb. He'd been driven to the hotel, He'd staggered in through the door, into the bright light mud on his boots, his trousers and his coat.

He remembered, the recognition seeped into his mind, where he'd seen the men… They had been in the back of the truck. When he had been picked up in the truck, and the door had been opened for him, the interior light had come on. They had been in the back – Ante and Muhsin. He had seen their faces -

Salko and Fahro – before he had nestled down in the front seat and slammed the truck door, and the light had gone out. When they had come from the truck and had gone into the druggie's block, they had worn balaclavas and he hadn't seen their faces. He'd seen their faces when they'd come out of the block, work done, before they'd pulled their hoods back down.

'An excellent meal,' Mister said, and pushed his chair back from the table.

It had been the same meal, the Eagle reflected, that they'd eaten every night, but it was the first time Mister had praised the food. He'd talked, rambling, about his day, about war and poverty, about hatred, and the Eagle and Atkins had been his audience. If it had been hot, stinking hot, he would have diagnosed Mister as a sunstroke case, but there hadn't been any fierce sun… She wasn't mentioned. The Eagle began to think the unthinkable.

Almost as an afterthought, Mister turned to Atkins.

'You did all right today?'

'Went well, Mister.'

'You got the place?'

'We did a reconnaissance on the house and we've found a position where there's a clear field of vision on to it, a clear field of fire.'

'And tarmac?'

'Tarmac and frozen ground. The ground's smooth.'

'That's great, well done.'

The Eagle thought Atkins was a bloody puppy lapping praise.

'That's what we do tomorrow – should be a bit special. I mean, seeing it actually fired, that'll be sort of exciting… Good night, guys.'

Mister walked away from the table, left them, and his whistling echoed out ol the restaurant. It was, of course, unthinkable, and he had known Mister for twenty-eight years, and the Princess for eighteen of them – unthinkable.

The pictures were passed by Gough round the central table, to be subjected to the team's scrutiny.