Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

They stuck around at the end. The main party would go on for a meal. Both men had wriggled into tight suits, shirt buttons barely fastened, and ties clumsily knotted. They waited until the gravediggers had started to shovel earth noisily on to the box.

Both finished their cigarettes, down to the filters, then tossed the ends – still alive – into the grave, and left.

“I need to know… the guy who came and took him, what do we say?”

“Just a crazy guy – who got himself shot, for fuck-all. Proper crazy guy.”

There would be rumour and gossip. Stories would travel ‘word of mouth’ and on internet chatroom pages. They had a single factor in common… they were second-hand stories. None was verified, but had a tenacity, and some were driven by what people feared and some by what they wanted to hear.

‘What I was told, good source, just on the Russian side of the frontier with Norway, quite close to the main highway going down to Murmansk, there is a cairn of stones. Newly built. Quite big stones and might well have needed machinery to carry them into place. It’s not where there would be a marker for a summit, and not on a site commemorating a World War Two battle, and there is no plaque indicating why it has been built. The suggestion is that under the stones, proof against scavenging wildlife, is a grave. Another guy I spoke to had suggested to me that he’d been told a military detachment had been there when the cairn was erected, might have been an honour party and might have been cheap available labour. But it ticks plenty of boxes. You can’t see it from the fence, nor from the highway, but I’m told it’s there.’

Other people said, ‘There was a grave dug by border guards in the woods that are four, five klicks back from the border fence. There was security in place, and the guys who did the digging were warned, pain of something worse than death, that they would face supreme punishment if they talked of that night’s work. I heard – it was a Baltic states fisheries minister who told me – that in fact the grave was not dug sufficiently deep and was excavated by wildlife. Could have been foxes or bears, and if the flesh was still comparatively edible then a lynx would have had a feed. I mean, up in those parts, nobody turns down free grub. Nothing in the local media, but there are whispers of an agent crossing from NATO territory, not substantiated, but it was said.’

A few said, ‘I talked to a man, a deck-hand on a trawler, and he had been told that another boat, sailing out of Murmansk and up into the Barents – quite near, in fact, to where the Scharnhorst lies, a war grave and a thousand drowned there, Germans… but that’s not the point – anyway, another boat retrieved a small dinghy, the sort that could be used in harbour to get from the shore to an anchored pleasure boat. Far out and drifting, not capsized, but no evidence of a holiday-maker or a survivor in distress. It had no safety kit, was just drifting, and in rough seas. Visibility was good but there was a fierce swell. No one had been reported missing or overboard, so perhaps it was there by chance and had been carried that far by tides and currents. Not a nice thing to hear about, makes one think of a desperate end… but then it might have just broken free from a mooring, never had anyone clinging to it. Only one thing certain, it was not a Russian dinghy, most likely southern Norway or Sweden. FSB were told of it but showed no interest.’

More said, ‘I heard, I was in a bar and fishing crews were talking, of a corpse being washed on to the rocks out on the headland, east side, of the inlet. Had been in the water a long time. Too damaged to be identified. That’s the crabs, do the damage, or the big cod, no eyes and no hands and most of the flesh on the face taken. No one reported missing so he stays in the icebox at the hospital, the one on ulitsa Pavlova, and no one has yet been forward to claim him. Like no one cares… it’s what I heard.’

One man said, and was hesitant, seemed fearful of being overheard, but told what he had learned, third-hand, could not confirm, but shrugged… . ‘A man was picked up at sea or on the shore and brought into harbour, not Kirkenes but further west and nearer the Cape, and the local doctor and the nurse were never called but a military helicopter was at the quayside. He was flown direct to Bodo, to the Nordland hospital, and there’s a wing there for air force use and for NATO people. Went into a secure room and even the hospital authorities were not told his name, armed security for him. What I did hear was that his condition was grim, infected combat wounds and the talk was that he’d need big luck to win through. Did he die, did he live – if he existed? Don’t know, no one ever said.’

Someone said, ‘There were people in the bar of the hotel on the island of Westray, in the Orkneys, one of the smaller islands. They said that they had heard, not directly, but from friends, that lawyers had been up from Aberdeen on the mainland. There was a croft up towards the Noltland Castle and it was owned by an incomer, nice enough chap but kept to himself. Except that he went away, all of a sudden was gone and his grass-cutting contracts were left unworked. Just vanished and a plane had come to take him south in a storm when no one in their right mind would have moved out of their living-room. The lawyers had travelled up to arrange the sale of his home… and more to it. He had a woman friend on the smaller island, Papa Westray, and they were almost an item, not quite. She packed in a fair little business, craft pottery for the tourists, gone without explanation. She was Aggie and he was Gaz, and both gone and no explanation given. Like they were running and like they were hiding. It’s what was said.’

Another man said, ‘People up here, Orkney people, they can guard your privacy. A stranger comes by boat or by air and walks to the first house he finds and asks for directions to a particular man or woman’s home. He’ll not be told. They protect their own. The one they’re looking for could be in the next house, could be in the kitchen drinking coffee, could be out at the back fixing the sewage pump, but the stranger will not be told. It was explained to me, and I was told that a man came back, was unwell, damaged, came back from away over the water, and a nurse called three times a week to change his dressings, and he’s out somewhere close to Inga Ness and down from Fifty Hill, but no one will say. Who knows? It’s like he’s guarded… Myself, I never saw him, could just be for the fairies.’

He stood in the doorway.

Bright autumn sunshine lit that side of Rostocker Strasse. His body threw a dark shadow into the bar area. He leaned heavily on the surgical stick, let it take his weight. The last few steps from the Hauptbahnhof had been a struggle. Probably should have queued for a taxi at the rail terminus, but there had been too many indignities in his recent life and convalescence. To have paid a cab driver would have seemed feeble. He collected his breath, then was nudged. Not rudely, but unpleasant. It was the lunch hour and men and women had disgorged from the office blocks along the main drag and needed to eat, and wanted to get past him. He stepped awkwardly aside, was not thanked. He would not be hurried. The wind was on his back and at two tables clients turned and scowled and one flicked his fingers as if to get him inside or out, and the door shut and the draught excluded. He was impassive. There was little that any of them inside, eating or waiting for service, could have done that would have fazed him.

He saw the pictures of the big masted ships on the walls and most had full sails, all faded with age and needing cleaning. Saw the memorabilia stacked on shelves, navigation equipment from centuries before, and wood plaques that commemorated ships of the nineteenth century. Crowded with beer bottles, the tables were heavy, of weathered wood, scratched but well scrubbed. The chairs looked hard, uncomfortable. A manager hurried between tables and tried to placate the most impatient customers, and he was pointed out. A complaint: could the street door please be closed?