Gerald Seymour - The Dealer and the Dead

The doctor, Steyn, shouted into Roscoe’s face, ‘The one who had the launcher accused Gillot of killing his son, his eldest. Many of the others just babble hatred. The one with the rifle, the sniper who needs a crutch, accused Gillot of killing his cousin. His wife was raped. You want more?’

Roscoe demanded, ‘Is this real, not just manic theatre?’

‘Their lives were destroyed – death, torture, fear. The days of that autumn are as clear now as if the artillery was still firing on them, the knives were over their testicles, they were being herded into the cages and their women “entertaining” a platoon at a time. It is real enough to bring him to the end of the path.’

‘The hired gun, Robbie Cairns, is at the end of the path… if we get that far.’

One moment Megs Behan was among the crowd and beside the sniper, the crutch embedded in her stomach by the press around her, and the next Roscoe had taken her arm, yanked her free and she was among them. He saw tears on her face – and the clamour was greater, the violence more extreme and his body swayed as he was shaken. The bag was no longer at his hip but Gillot had wedged it under what remained of his shirt and behind his belt buckle.

Steyn said, ‘Nothing can be done. Get involved and he’s dead and we may be. A pace closer to him, with a degree of protection, and we end any minimal chance he has. To survive, small chance, he has to be alone.’

Roscoe didn’t know how the man stayed upright and walked. He couldn’t see the end of the path.

Steyn again: ‘They are even, in Croatia, appealing for Serbs – the enemy of centuries – to come here for holidays. Here, they beg the Serbs to come with the little they have. Money, at last, preaches rapprochement, so Gillot is precious. He makes a very decent target, which is rare for them. He’s convenient.’

*

Penny Laing was close to the wizened Petar, who had a shoulder holster across his chest. He smelt of manure and beside him was the deaf woman. She remembered a home that had been rebuilt piecemeal, without the help of craftsmen, and a door that had been boarded up on the first floor, the image of a son who had gone away into the night and not returned, and the devastation of a battle. She remembered being fucked in a barn, and could reconcile nothing of the last week with what her life had been before. A policeman she had met on a narcotics importation stake-out had talked about Northern Ireland and a local politician he had guarded from a Provo attack. The politician had come out of a meeting with military commanders: laundered uniforms, polished boots and certainties as to how their ‘war’ should be won. He had remarked, ‘Anyone who thinks he knows the answer to Northern Ireland’s problems is ill-informed.’ Bullseye. She would have said, on her back in the barn, that she knew the wrongdoing, criminality and worthlessness of Harvey Gillot, arms broker. She would have been ill-informed. She saw him. Pulled right and left, spit on his face, cuts and bruising, his shirt nearly off his shoulders and more cuts on his chest. She swallowed hard.

He came towards her, setting the pace. Behind him was the small group from the hotel – which the spy-buffoon had called the Vulture Club – linked, elbow to elbow. The girl from the NGO was in the centre and they took the pressure off his back, but he had to walk into the teeth of them. Some shook fists at him or waved knives and others jabbed him with rifle barrels. His shirt, once blue, seemed the only colour on show against the drab olive base of the army tunics and the women’s black. What had she wanted?

Easy enough.

She could have spelled it out before she had taken the plane. She knew where the house was, the lay-out of the garden, its size and position overlooking cliffs, coves and a seascape. She knew there was a wife, a teenage daughter at a private school. There would be a spoiled family dog and smug comfort. What had she wanted? She had wanted to exercise the power of the Alpha team, HMRC. Arrive at the outer gate at 05.55, count to a hundred while the cars were parked, break open the gate with a portable battering ram, then a brisk trot to the front door, count to ten, repeat with the battering ram, pour in, shout loudly and have the family spill from bedrooms. At 05.59 she would have wanted control of the house, could justify breaking down a gate and a door by the need to prevent the destruction of evidence. One guy, big laugh, had shredded his incriminating paperwork but they’d wanted to nail him badly enough to stick the shreds together and had won the conviction. The joy of it would have been him in shock, babbling, half asleep, the wife screaming, the kiddie sobbing and the dog whining. Then to a custody suite. Would have been brilliant. His jaw would have been slack and his dignity down the drain.

The chin was out, not ostentatiously, and she thought his dignity was intact.

Was she as big a casualty as him? Not in the same league, she told herself – but a casualty.

He came past her. She had to hold her hands clasped together or she would have reached for him and let her fingers brush his face. She thought his eyes were empty, as if nothing more could be done that would shock or hurt. Wrong. She was ill-informed because Robbie Cairns, who had taken the contract, was further down the path where it ended at the gravesite. Her wrist was caught, she struggled to free herself, then realised Anders had hold of her. He dragged her from the crowd into the bosom of the Vulture Club, and she was one side of Roscoe and Megs Behan was the other. They held the crowd back from pushing against Gillot, toppling and trampling him.

She saw, above all the heads, the straw hat perched rakishly. Past and above it was the tree-line by the river. It was close now, near to the end. The day was barely launched and the sun was still low.

‘I think – I begin to think – that he will walk through this.’ Across the Customs woman, the detective and the peacenik, Steyn said, ‘He’s unarmed. Back then, in 1991, him being unarmed wouldn’t have saved him – just made him easier to kill. Could be, today, that him being unarmed keeps him alive. I don’t know.’

‘Irrelevant.’ The word wheezed out of Anders’s mouth as a surge from behind knocked the breath out of him.

‘It’s like the sting has gone – now it’s parrot stuff.’

‘Could you prevent this, Daniel?’

‘No.’

‘Do I have the weight?’

‘Wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘I’m supposed to believe in the rule of law, not a rope chucked over a branch.’

‘Emotions run deep, Bill. You have no place but to hold your peace.’

‘If he broke and ran, went into the corn?’

‘Cut or shot to pieces within a minute. Is sympathy squeezing in your gut?’

‘He has balls.’

‘And a guy waits for him up the path. Heroics tend to finish with posthumous awards.’

Their voices lapsed and the crowd had swelled round them. Steyn saw Anders glance at his watch and reckoned he checked to see if he’d make the scheduled flight. Likely he would. Likely, also, he’d write a paper on this morning and read it to an august body. He was getting closer to the high straw hat, and beyond it was the hired gun.

They had come into Benjie Arbuthnot’s view. He had a clear sight of the scene, and that section of the path was straight. He thought Gillot had the position of fulcrum, was at the heart and centre of them, and his shirt showed up clear against the blur of the uniforms and the women’s weeds. There was a stork overhead, wings languid and flapping, but no vulture. Higher up, a buzzard rode the thermal. Two hundred yards from them the crowd advanced and Gillot led them. A haze of dust hovered and danced in the early-morning light. Very pretty… He turned. The path went on and the corn was close, making tight walls to it, and he could see the lone figure who waited there, but couldn’t make out the features as the sun was in his face. Even the brim of his hat couldn’t deflect its brightness.