Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'Choice – I'd fancy a bit of il myself,' said SQG3.

'Not what I'd have expected from him, dipping his wick, not from what Boy Brilliant left us on him, out of the character Cann drew,' said SQG8.

'Silly old beggar, getting the flushes at his age, and his Princess won't like it, will not be a happy girl if she gets to see them,' said SQG5.

'She'll get to see them, in good time,' Gough growled. 'What I'd like, at both ends from tomorrow we start to build the pressure. From pressure comes mistakes – only a little diversion and can we now, please, concentrate.'

He gathered up the pictures of his Target One and an unidentified young woman, locked them in his drawer, and they applied themselves again to the first of the rummages that would be launched in the morning that would build the pressure, force the mistakes. The name of Cann, and what he did, dis not deserve another mention. They were too busy, inside their own agenda, to think of him.

He closed his door behind him and went down the corridor. He waved his ID at the man on the landing, thought it was Salko, and saw that both the hands were on the machine pistol. He had left behind his coat and he swivelled to show that there was no weapon in his belt. Outside her room, the one he thought was Muhsin acknowledged him sourly, and Joey thought he was allowed with reluctance to go to the door.

He knocked and heard a scrabble of movement behind it. He said his name. The door opened on the chain, then closed again, then was fully opened.

'Come on in,' she said. 'Join the party.'

She was on the bed, dressed, a filled glass in her hand, shared with a cigarette. Frank Williams, the policeman, in uniform, was in the chair by the window. The last two of what he had called the Sreb Four were hunched on the carpet – jeans, leather jackets and cigarettes, machine pistols against their knees within fast reach – one against the foot of the bed and one against the wardrobe. Joey reckoned they were Fahro and Ante. He saw the metal case on the floor under the window, by the chair.

'It's the advantage of a transit lounge, the duty-free.

I've Chivas Regal and Courvoisier.'

'You're drunk.'

'Have to be drunk or mental to come back here.'

'Why did you turn round?'

'A nice young man met me at Zagreb. He thought I was in mortal danger. He bought me three pink gins

… So, I got to think you needed wet-nursing.'

'Why don't you fuck off?'

'And needed looking after. I thought it was pretty foul to ditch you. I was three hours from home. At the debrief they'd all have bad-mouthed you, and they'd have apologized for sending me out with a kid, an amateur. The knives would have been in your back, Joey, and the sneers down the phone to where you work. I'd have gone home, alone.'

' I didn't ask you to stay.'

She spat, 'God, you make it hard!'

' I don't want you, don't need you.'

'A speech, we will have a speech. You will not, please, interrupt my speech.'

'Do you have something to eat?'

'Damn you.' She wiggled her bottom. The hem of her skirt climbed her thighs. She pulled two packets of peanuts from under her and hurled them at him. '1 was about to say-'

' I'll have the whisky.'

'You're an obstinate, arrogant sod. I am trying to help you.' She reached for the bottle and threw it at him. He caught it, then the plastic beaker that followed. Frank had his hand over his mouth, as if he was stifling laughter. The men with the guns were expressionless. 'We are all trying to help you. I tracked Frank down from the airport, he drove me here, then he called in the cavalry. We are all trying to bloody help you.'

' I don't want you, any of you. I'm doing all right.'

' I've stepped over the same line as you have. I-'

' I doubt it – isn't there anything more than peanuts?'

'Shut up, hear me – for God's sake, do me that courtesy.' The crackle slipped from her voice, and the wasp's sting. 'You showed me the line to cross and I've followed you. I told the joker who met me at Zagreb that I'd realized I'd left my best black shoes behind and was going back to get them – heh, don't look so damn pissed off, it's supposed to be funny.

Your Target One, he's your enemy. At my place, we don't have enemies. We don't hate our opposition, don't despise it, we play a fucking game with it.

Where are the KGB now, and the Hungarians and the Poles? They're at our seminars, or giving us lectures, and then we go off to the bar and we swap old stories, chat through the equipment we used, and we have a laugh about the poor puny bastards who believed in us, who they tortured and shot. We're dying, you're alive. You're bloody lucky to have an enemy. So I came back.'

He downed the whisky. He poured what was left of the first peanut packet into his mouth and pocketed the second.

' I'll see you in the morning.'

The neighbour knew Bruce James was away. He had been gone nearly a week; she'd seen him go with his bags. She had heard the footsteps tramping on the stairs, then the landing off which she lived, then going on up the last flight. Very few people called to visit him at any hour of the day or night, but she could not remember when anyone had come at a quarter to six in the morning. She thought there were four or five of them, and all men from the weight of their tread. She went to her door and listened as they walked up the final steps Her nose wrinkled; she could smell pipe tobacco.

She liked Bruce James. She thought him courteous and well mannered. Her own grandson was in the navy, an engineer on board a frigate, serving in the Gulf. Sometimes he brought up her post and then they'd talk, and he'd tell her of his own days in the army. She kept an eye on his small flat at the top of the stairs, under the building's eaves.

She heard a jangle of keys, then metal scrapes, and low – spoken obscenities. At the moment she realized that four or five men were attempting to unlock the door to Mr James's rooms, she heard the thud then the splintering of breaking wood.

She hurried to her telephone. Programmed into the set were the numbers she considered most important and among them was that of Hammersmith police station. She used the phrase she'd heard on television:

'Intruders on the premises'.

She heard the dragging of furniture above her ceiling and the movement of feet. It was a thin ceiling.

Mr James was exceptionally considerate and never had his music loud. She waited. She heard the siren of the approaching police car.

She met them on her landing, a young police constable and an older policewoman. She pointed up the last stairs, at the door off the hinges. The noise seeped through the doorway, and the voices. They told her to close her door and lock it, and she saw them take their truncheons off the belts, and the little gas canisters; she knew about the gas from the television programmes. She thought them very brave.

She locked her own door, bolted and chained it.

Joey slept in. When he woke his body ached, but his head was worse. There were the few seconds when he could not place where he was and he lay in the gloom of his room, but the pain in his head, his body and his feet lurched him alert. The curtains were drawn, but carelessly. A strip of gold light came between them and made a shaft on to his bed. He saw the time on his watch, swore and rolled out of the bed. He doused himself in the shower, let tepid water run over him.

He was half wet, half dry, as he dressed. He pulled on the same trousers he'd worn the day before, with the same mud on the knees, and the same shirt. He couldn't find clean socks in his bag, only used pairs, and he had to go down on the floor to find those he'd worn yesterday and which he'd scattered when he had undressed with the whisky in him. He didn't shave, didn't look in the mirror. He went out of his room and stopped at her door. He knocked. There was no reply from Maggie Bolton, just the stale stink of the cigarettes, and no man on the landing. He took the stairs two al a time.