Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

“There are enough fools here – behave like one, understand nothing… can you do that?”

“Have to look in his face – can do the rest.”

The glance over him from Timofey was cursory and there was a dissatisfied hiss between his teeth, but he whipped off his anorak and thrust it at Gaz. He shrugged into it, too small but breaking the khaki and olive colour of his shirt. Natacha started the tuneless whistle, like hope had gone, and Gaz grimaced. Not much else to do… except that he had to be certain and not nearly certain .

They went together. He thought the kid a cocky little beggar. There were enough of them, those kids on the estates he had worked in the Province, the Creggan and the Derrybeg… kids who could strut because they’d shed fear. The target would be killed, might be done cleanly and might be done messily, but not Gaz’s problem because he was only the one who marked the guy – but had to be certain. The rain fell pitilessly on them and they crossed the street and went past the BMW and Gaz didn’t turn to look at it, would have seen nothing anyway because of the tinted windows and the fog on the inside from two cigarettes, They walked to the entrance.

“You been here before?” Gaz asked him, sharp.

“No.”

“Know the lay-out?”

“No.”

“Anyone know you here?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Stay close.”

Gaz followed him inside. It was like a plague had hit. Almost a full bar at the front and a few scattered in the back area but the only voice was that of the football commentator screaming because there had been a goal, but nobody had seen it. A rock band played over speakers at the back but no one danced. A girl behind the bar eyed them. Gaz would have looked like any gofer who walked beside the boy and stood and waited. Timofey spoke to her, grinned, and might once have traded with her. He was just a step behind the slouched figure in smart uniform, half astride a bar stool with a vodka shot glass in front of him. Across the bar was a heap of change. Timofey ordered. The girl bent low behind the bar and brought up two bottles. Gaz looked at the face, first in profile.

This was not a man who was stared at. To gaze at him was more than impertinence, nearer to an offence. The head swung and looked hard at Gaz who was already turning away. A kaleidoscope of memories charged in his mind. Something about the venom of his look at Gaz, and then a dismissive tilt of the head, and something changed… The officer was reaching towards his change and pushing notes towards the girl, and pointing at Gaz. In the Pierowall hotel, on Westray, a Friday night, the query would have been: ‘What can I get you, chief?’ He was certain. He started towards the door, heard Timofey enjoying some banter with the girl before they left together, Timofey passing the bottles to Gaz. They went to the car, stepped into it, and the father was allowed to see what had been purchased and gurgled deep in his throat in response. They drove down the street, past the BMW, and they waited. All that remained for him was to catch up on a location, where the guy slept – where he could be found when the hitters came. Had done well, said so himself, and there was no mistake on his horizon, no chill on his neck.

Mikki and Boris in their car, working their way through a cigarette packet. Mikki had only to make a slight gesture with his finger and Boris would know the significance of what he had seen, what he shared. Not that Mikki had, that early evening, seen the young man, who walked behind the boy, little more than a youth and with the pale skin of everyone from Murmansk. The one carrying the bottles was not noticed, but the boy was. The boy was the cause of Mikki’s small movement of the finger, the equivalent of a raised eyebrow: surprise, and something of relevance.

It did not need to be said between the two great cities of their country, that the boy should be of interest to them. They had seen him before. At the gate on Prospekt when they had awaited the officer. An old drunk on the pavement, muttering of a conspiracy. Pissing himself, and a disgrace, and a guard working him over with a toecap. A boy had come to collect him. A polite and well-spoken boy, who apologised, addressing the guard with respect. Here now. A shit bar in a shit quarter of the city, the same boy… They did not have to speak. Did not have to say that it was ‘peculiar’ that the boy had been at the entrance to the headquarters building, now was at this bar where their officer – no fucking idea why – chose to go to drink. Nothing said, but the matter registered – which was enough.

Ropes were fastened. The boat massaged the old tyres on the quayside. She had come in with the delicacy of a girl negotiating a rough and muddy path, had weaved between the old cargo vessels and local fishing boats.

Waiting for her were the vans for the wholesale trade of red king crabs. Warm greetings for the crew. This was a place for maritime professionals where respect ruled. The disputes of political leaders, either under the NATO umbrella or facing it, carried no weight. A crane would lift out the boxes of crabs and the ice packed around them would have ensured that they lived, after a fashion, and still had wriggle in their pincers, snap in their claws, and they would make good money. An emergency call had gone to a Norwegian-based boat to supply the crabs because of the efforts of a gang of eco-geeks on the Norwegian side of the frontier, and of allies inside the city of Murmansk. Bluster had proved inadequate and Russian fishing was suspended, curtailed for another week, and then the authorities would claim that clean-up procedures were in place to allay the pollution fears. The dock workers would not have noticed that two of the crew’s eyes seemed to rake the high ground short of where the monument stood, and either side of the white walls of a famous church where the road twisted and climbed. Anxious faces, but then remembering where they were, why, and joining the banter of fishermen. All hard men, and brothers of a sort. But a secret divided them.

Out of the bar with not a backward glance.

From the front seat of the Fiat, Gaz had an eyeline on the major. He left the bar and Gaz assumed the talk would have erupted behind him. He knew of such bars in the Province where they could smell out a stranger, would have had Gaz if he had been dumb enough to go in without full back-up alongside him, and no difficulty for the man in this place because he wore uniform. He pondered it… thought he recognised some sort of aching and inescapable loneliness, like there was a ball chained to the man’s ankle. Knew it himself. The officer had gone into a bar where he would not be welcomed and had killed all the talk, morose or cheerful, had probably swallowed a number of slugs… What had been different was the posture of the men waiting for him in the black BMW. At the FSB building they had at least made a play of respecting his seniority and had opened the door for him, but now did not bother to go through the motions of deference. Lavrenti Volkov opened his own door, and closed it himself… like a dynasty was finishing. The car pulled away.

A short journey. Might have been little more than three-quarters of a mile. The traffic had thinned. Gaz saw more men in uniform and some walked briskly and some parked their cars, but this was the only BMW with the status of a driver. The block was as ordinary as any around it. He watched. There was one parking bay and two cars were heading for it; the officer’s in second place until it accelerated and squeezed ahead. The other driver could have taken a collision, and a scrape, or could accept that he missed out – and did. Gaz absorbed the scene. The girl no longer whistled but the old guy she sat astride had found his voice and gurgled protests. The boy turned sharply, caught at his father’s thin hair and jerked his head, was rewarded with a squeal and then quiet. Gaz gestured with his hand, wanted Timofey to stay where he was, slipped out of the Fiat and eased himself towards another bus-stop. They said in his trade that the hardest thing was to do ‘absolutely nothing’. To stand on a street corner and have no reason to be there was to invite what they knew as ‘third-party notice’ when a pedestrian – man or woman, old or young – was suspicious of an outsider on the patch. The bus shelter was good because he could be outside the arc of ‘10 to 2’ vision, was on a periphery… ‘third party’, they were told, accounted for four in five show-outs.