Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The wind had dropped and the rain was now far out to sea, and the sun glinted between powder-puff clouds. Gaz thought the weather had been a theatrical effect and exploited by Knacker, as if the limit to his resources was not easily measured. He had been told to leave the bag he had packed but had been advised what to wear. Just bring some rough ground walking boots, what you’re comfortable in. No clothing. All will be given you. Passport, papers and credit cards? Not necessary, we handle all that, and a float for cash. We’ve had a passport put together. Which meant that his acceptance of the job had been taken for granted and that no one had ever seriously considered that he would stand up at his full height and say, ‘Sorry and all that, but I don’t care a flying fuck for what happened at that village all that time ago, and have no interest – none whatsoever – in seeing a young Russian officer, FSB you tell me, face any form of justice, of the legal kind or extra-judicial. So, please, get off my property and travel back to where you came from because I have important work to be getting on with, decorating and home repairs and mowing. Goodbye…’

What to say to Aggie? Usually, when uncertain, he said little, less if possible. He thought that Knacker had played her consummately. There were anglers who came to the Orkneys for wild brown trout, and none could have coaxed a beast on to a barbed hook with such skill. She had floundered and had spoken the spiel, and he had not been able to fight her. Her use was over. She stood by the taxi, her head drooping, and had learned much of him that he had wanted concealed, and had blurted out that he should go as asked. Maybe she appreciated that what was done and what was said could not be revoked.

Knacker said to her, “Thank you Aggie, and I’m obliged to you for making my clothes presentable. We’ll take good care of him. Have a nice day.”

She caught Gaz’s hand, squeezed it. A kiss and a cuddle beside the taxi with old Lachlan eying them? Did not seem appropriate. Gaz nodded to her. He felt haunted, and betrayed, and isolated.

They drove away and Knacker said that he’d a bag to collect at the hotel. Gaz knew Lachlan because he did pickups for the holiday owners that Gaz worked for, and some crab fishing, was useful at plumbing and helped kids with football, so the news of Gaz going away would be round the island, and round again, within the hour. Saw Murdo out with his sheep but close to the road and he’d have seen Gaz, and saw Lisa who cleaned many of the houses where Gaz worked. The whole island would have known that an aircraft had made a sharp descent at the core of the storm overnight, and known that if it had come for Gaz then there was much he had hidden from them. At the hotel, he sat in the back of the taxi while Knacker went for his bag and to pay his bill and Lachlan waited for him to speak, but he didn’t oblige.

He thought of a great man who used to slip away from the islands 1000 years before, so Aggie had told him. The times of Sweyn Asleifsson, cunning and clever, and living as a pirate off deceit and subterfuge, using an island as a safe haven; a predator and a plunderer, and taking Ingirid as his wife after slaughtering her lawful husband, and unable to settle and restless and chasing excitement and the whiff of risk, probably chained to his past and unable to put down roots, and talked of but rarely seen… Gaz doubted he would last long enough as an Orcadian to feature in its past, be subject to a saga.

Knacker came out, carrying a grip, had changed from his suit into casual dress, an olive-green wax coat and rough corduroys and heavy brogue shoes, a tattersall shirt and a flat cap and might have been going to a gymkhana. They were driven to the airstrip, out on the northern shore, and the wind-sock hung limp. Knacker seemed to add an extra bank note to the sum required for payment to Lachlan and murmured something about meeting Gaz when he came back, made it sound as if he were off for a visit to a mainland dentist. He carried Knacker’s bag, because he was a subordinate, no longer a civilian handyman and running from the past. Back in uniform and subject to those disciplines and Lachlan’s eyes seemed to beseech an answer. Gaz asked his own question.

“There was a hard man here, centuries ago, Sweyn Asleifsson. What happened to him – I never read that, his end.”

“You’d not want to know his end. Safe journey.”

“What was his end? In his bed?”

“And with his woman warm beside him? Want to believe it… He went away, didn’t have to. Should have stayed for a harvest. Went over the sea and seemed to win a battle but not a war, died fighting. The last man to fall. It’s in the saga… No good came of him.”

On the island, as Gaz had learned, they told stories as if the events had happened yesterday, and they had read them in a newspaper or seen them on a TV news bulletin… had a different sense of the past. A young pilot greeted them and seemed to carry Gaz farther back in his life and he climbed up into the Cessna as if he were scrambling on to a Chinook ramp or into a Puma hatch. They took off. No bullshit from the pilot and no nostalgic looping circle of the coast line so he might spot his bungalow or find Aggie making her way to the hotel where she’d offload her pottery, no chance to spot the various properties he looked after and the lawns he was supposed to cut. He wondered if he would ever come back, ever want to, and left behind in his temporary home was little that was precious to him, nothing that was permanent. Knacker was on a call, less than a minute, and his hand shielded his words, and all that Gaz heard of it was “… good luck then, Arthur, and give it them hard…”

He was on his way and Knacker said nothing to him but sat beside the pilot, ignored him… He could remember the officer, the Russian, would never forget him.

The girl who worked for Knacker handled the wheelchair as if it were a shopping trolley. Fee brought Arthur Jennings to Ceausescu Towers. Arthur had been in many corners of the world that he’d have laconically described as ‘tricky’, but being pushed across half a dozen traffic lanes from the railway station to the main gates was an awesome experience, except that he felt safe in her big, muscled hands. Known to all who worked closely with her as Fee, but born Tracey Dawkins, she glowered at motorists and some yelled obscenities that she seemed to relish… Arthur knew she lived in a housing authority flat in Peckham, and her mother was across the landing – how had that been fixed? Arthur always chuckled at the details of Knacker’s legendary ability to circumvent bureaucracy. She had been a persistent school truant, a serial shoplifter, and a magistrate had sent her towards the army rather than a custodial sentence. Had gone into the famed and secretive 14th Det as a clerk, and not looked back. Knacker was a renowned talent-spotter. It was said she had chased after him for a position: ‘even wash your scrubby smalls, Mr Knacker’, and all the usual civil service employment boards had been ignored. They made it across the road and she laughed out loud and Arthur grimaced. At the gates it was not necessary to identify themselves. They were well known to the pair festooned with kit, weapons, and body armour.

“Good to see you, Mr Jennings. Not keeping too bad, I hope.”

“Hanging on, thank you. Managing, thank you.”

“You’re looking well, Miss Dawkins. That was an expert display in pedestrian protocols. One of the best.”

“Fuck them. You boys been eating too many sandwiches?”

Both were laughing as she scribbled names on the sheet, and winked, and a side gate was opened for her to manoeuvre the wheelchair through, and she’d have put money on it that one of the armed guards would have said to the other. ‘Means something’s happening if old Jennings is in to see God Almighty. Something tasty.’ Usually the first to know. She’d hand him over to one of the Director-General’s personal staff, who’d take Arthur Jennings up to the fifth. The D-G would want to run a rule over a mission that had the potential of a damn great blow-back in their faces if it exploded – as most of the worthwhile ones did.