Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

They knew the house. They'd have been working from the pictures taken when the house was 'burgled' a year back. They'd each been assigned a room. The oldest man among them had an unlit pipe stapled in his mouth. She'd seen him look around from the moment he'd come in through the front door. There were no ashtrays in the Princess's home. She thought he yearned to produce his matches and scratch a flame, but he didn't ask her. The old Bill always asked if they could smoke, and her mother had always produced an ashtray for them. This man wandered between the rooms, took on the role of a supervisor, and the Princess followed him. They went into the kitchen, the sitting room, the living room, her snug where she did her post, the dining room that was never used, and up the stairs to the bedrooms and the bathrooms. She tracked him like a suspicious dog.

When the woman who had searched the dining room, taking everything from the sideboard then replacing each plate and each glass just where they'd been, had met the heavy-bearded man, who'd gone through the sitting room with fine-tooth comb care, the Princess had been at the top of the stairs. The woman and the bearded man were in the hall below.

'You know what's funny about this place, sort of creepy, it's not lived-in. It's like a show house at the Ideal Home. There's nothing out of place – and there's not a book. Did you find one book here? I didn't. It gives you the shivers. Or it's like a hotel room, cleaned for the next guest.'

Then they'd seen her at the top of the stairs, and the Princess hadn't heard another word spoken among them, until they left.

They filed out. Years ago, Clarrie Hinds had said that you never showed anger to them, never flipped, never screamed, because they'd talk about that in the canteen at their late breakfast, and the word would have been passed to the scum, the informers, they paid. To have shouted at them, to have wept in a corner, would have demeaned her dignity, would have diminished Mister's self-respect. They took nothing with them.

'Thank you for your co-operation, Mrs Packer.'

The older man's match flashed in the dull light.

She didn't answer. The cars were starting up in the road. Usually, at her mother's home or at her own since she'd married Mister, when the police or the Church came with a warrant, searched and left empty-handed without evidence in a bag, there would be tight-lipped annoyance at the senior man's mouth. She didn't see anger, but there was a slow smile, which might have been contempt, or satisfaction. It was no big deal. She'd tell Mister about it when he was back, tomorrow or the day after. Their house rule, which she'd never broken, was that she did not call him when he was away. It would keep until his return. They were a partnership. In his strange, unshown way, her Mister loved his Princess.

He didn't crawl all over her, didn't touch her when they were out, didn't smarm her with compliments in front of strangers, but he loved her. It was returned.

The trust was between them. When he came back, she would tell Mister where they'd been, how they'd searched, what they'd looked like. He'd listen to her, never interrupting, and every detail of it would be stored away in his mind, his memory. When she'd finished, he'd say, 'Well done,' or 'That's good,' or, if he was expansive, 'You'd have thought they'd have better things to do…' and life would go on. She never looked to the future, didn't think about it. A long time ago, when they were first married and Mister was on the up, she'd feared he'd be found in a gutter, or in a fire-destroyed car, and that the uniformed Bill would come to escort her to a mortuary to look at his body.

She no longer harboured such a fear. He was untouchable now; as she joked with him, 'God wouldn't dare.' She didn't ask him what the future was, and didn't care.

As the cars drove off, she saw across the road that Leonora was hy her gate, in her bathrobe, and miming at her a charade game of filling a kettle and drinking a cup, but she shook her head, smiled – because it was no big deal and closed her door behind her.

One point confused her. There had been no warning. The night before his arrest, Mister had known they coming for him in the morning. She'd tell Mister that his network hadn't warned her… She went into the kitchen. She made hersell a collee and put bread in the toaster. She took the toast and the mug into the sitting room and switched on the television.

Her eyes roved from the set, from the mug and the plate, over the room. There was no sign that the Church had come mob-handed into the house, it was all strangely tidy and undisturbed. She was almost at the end of the traverse of her gaze over the watercolour paintings, the ornaments, the decanter and the glasses, the fireplace, when she saw the envelope.

It was propped up on a low table beside the chest where she kept her tapestry. She had not put a brown, large-size envelope on that table.

She wondered what they'd left behind.

She laid her cup and the plate on the footstool beside her chair, went to the table and picked up the envelope.

The flap was not sealed, was folded inside. There was no logo on it, nor any handwriting. She opened it and took out a wad of plate-size photographs.

Attached to the back of the top photograph was a stick-on message note. 'Room 329, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Phone: (00 387 32) 664 273.' She turned the photographs over. She looked.

Her eyes closed, she lashed out with her foot. The fluffy pink slipper kicked against the stool beside her chair. The toast went, margarine-and-marmalade side down onto the carpet, and the cup of coffee flew. The Princess ripped off the stick-on message note, marched into the kitchen and snatched up the telephone.

He had been dressing, his best suit, best shirt and best shoes and the phone had pealed beside the bed.

Mister held it away from his ear, and heard the rant.

'They're not my problem, they can come any time they want, once a week if they want, by appointment or without – you're my problem, Mister. Who is she? You are my problem. Who is she? Don't play dumb eith me, Mister, and don't bloody tell me,

''Oh, she's just nobody… Oh, she's just a friend, someone I met Oh, she's just a quick shag." Out in the bloody open, like you're some sort of kid out in the park Who is she? Lost your bloody voice, Mister? Did you lose your trousers, Mister? Have to be called "Mister", don't you? because that's about your bloody self-respect. What sort of self-respect is it to be out in the middle of the bloody day, cuddling and cow eyes, in front of the Church's camera? And, don't tell me, "I didn't see the camera, I didn't know they were there", you wouldn't have seen luck all except for her tits, you wouldn't have seen a camera if they'd poked you with it.

Bloody good laugh for the Church. I have sweated for you, Mister, I've been here when you've wanted me, I've covered your back, I've lived a bloody half-life – and what do I get out of it? It's a bloody Crown copyright surveillance picture of you with a horn on hanging on to a bit of stuff young enough to be your bloody daughter if you were capable of making a daughter. I've trusted you, Mister, and now you've -'

He put the phone down on the cradle.

He finished dressing, chose a good tie, and checked himself in the mirror.

They were waiting for him in the lobby. How was he? He was fine, he was looking forward to a good day, he was top of the game.

Was it falling apart? He sat beside Atkins, who drove, with the Eagle behind him. They thought it was cracking, splintering, and were both silent, had been all the way from the city to Jablanica and the start of the gorge that held in the Neretva river. Nothing in Mister's life had ever fallen apart.