Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

All through the night he had heard it. A soft and gentle moaning. A light wind in the leaves of the summer birches. A cry for help. Not a scream or a shriek of agony, not a bellowing roar of anger, but the noise of pain and almost, he thought a call for his sympathy. It was somewhere in front of his cabin but he could not see it from the window. But it was a bear, wild… It had moaned for him for many hours now, and the sound of it wounded Jasha. He considered what to do, if anything were possible other than to take the rifle with the heavy bullets from the shelf high on the wall.

Knacker had slipped into the ‘waiting time’. Those were the hours that seemed to linger, once his immediate business was concluded. It was now a question of hanging about, tidying up any mess, getting ready for the departure which would be – as usual – at a scamper.

He had been to the airport and Fee had driven. Had watched from a distance. Alice had returned to their safe house, but had been up earlier and had spilled the bad news to their facilitator. Best to get it done early in the morning while the hitters were still half–asleep, half-cut, half-stoned from the previous night; they had been pitched from their pits, barely given time to dress, and were now up and away on the first leg of their flight home, and by the time that resentment kicked in and fury that the job they were recruited for had slid away, they’d be on the next stage of the journey, en-route for Amman: looking for a fast return to the rigours of a refugee camp… Not for Knacker to ladle out sympathy, but he had allowed himself one mutter of ‘Poor bastards, rather them than me’. They were gone, a headache culled.

By now, safe to assume, the trawler would have sailed. By now, also reasonable to imagine, a killing would have been completed. The waiting time was the collection of hours and minutes, seldom days, between something planned with care and the confirmation of its execution. He felt comfortable. He thought that a decent lunch, him hosting the girls and the Norwegian border ‘guide’, would be appropriate that day if a recommended place existed in Kirkenes… and his mind drifted. Up in the wild north of his own country, Maude would now be away from the temporary quarters that the diggers occupied and would be lugging her backpack along a platform at Newcastle for her train south. She would be turning her back on a Roman collector of wheat and his adversary who topped up the woad count on his skin perhaps twice a week. Would be back in New Malden that evening and saving tales of mutual derring-do on that frontier, either side of that Wall. Knacker would offer remnants of his own mission to her, tell of a fence, a barrier, a mission and a man far from help and reliant on his own skills for survival. Bugger all had changed over the centuries. She never asked but would have assumed that it had gone to plan, as he’d expect it to, and if she asked him directly ‘Win or lose, or score draw?’, he would fake annoyance and his eyes would flicker and he’d murmur across the pillow something like, ‘What would you expect,’ and they’d laugh, briefly. Funny old life and a funny old marriage, and a strong one as long as Maude realised that she took second place to his waiting times on the Russian frontiers. An acceptable one as long as he understood he would never compete with the glories of scratching in the dirt with an old toothbrush… He’d slip into VBX when he was back, first stop, and would have a sharp ten minutes with one of the Director’s team, would brief, then slip away; would hope to see Arthur Jennings and offer up good news, then would go home to New Malden. His dirty washing would make a moderate pile beside the machine – never could work the bloody thing – then back to his Yard and new plans and new thoughts and consideration of how to hurt them, the opposition, in their offices on Lubyanka Square. He had not been there, never would be. By now, the phones would be ringing, and computerised screens flashing news-bites, and senior men demanding answers from juniors, and the air rich with obscenities – and likely they’d not even know the name of James Lionel Wickes – the Knacker man. And laughed out loud, and Fee gazed at him perplexed.

A great team. One to be proud of. They turned away from the harbour and climbed the side street to the rented house. Alice would have heard them, perhaps had nothing better to do than come out to meet them. Had abandoned the preparation of breakfast, and they might just be about to broach a bubbly bottle, and Knacker saw her face. The angel quality gone from it, a hardness replacing the usual innocent prettiness, even the freckles in decline… he assumed it heralded the second stage, far worse than the first, of the waiting time.

Alice said, “It’s about knowing nothing. There’s zilch on their radio bulletins, nothing on Radio Volna and nothing on Big Radio, the principal stations, and the locals here would know if there was a security flap, would have it monitored. If an FSB joker was taken down then it would be top of the show stuff. There’s nothing. And the lift out would have sailed. Sorry, Knacker, but it is not looking great – don’t know how to dress it up.”

If he were punched in the stomach, Knacker would not react, would hide any pain. He walked towards the door, grimaced, went inside.

He had demanded they go back to the apartment because of his need for that rare item, quality time, an opportunity to think. Gaz straddled his prisoner and was satisfied that the lever on the pistol was back on safe, and kept the weapon barrel and foresight hard against the skin on the officer’s neck. What he had seen before of Timofey’s driving, Gaz would have rated him ‘high’: not now. The car skidded on bends and when overtaking, and the brakes went on late and the accelerator was stamped on: they careered through the city’s empty streets. He had seen a woman with a buggy frozen in fear in the middle of a street, unable to go back or forward and trying to protect her child from the inevitable impact. But Timofey had woven past her. Gaz had reckoned that Natacha believed herself the hard kid, a survivor of the prison system, fortified by her contempt for the regime that had failed to save her father’s fellow submariners, but she now cringed and had an arm across her face. Needed time to reflect, to consider… The kids did not understand him, and he doubted the officer would have been able to read him.

Gaz had been a trained man. Good at surveillance, at picking the hide needed for a covert eyeball position, decent on a shooting range… He would not have contemplated easing back the safety, squeezing the trigger and feeling the shudder through his whole body when the bullet was discharged and he was being spattered by blood and bone and tissue. Not his work. Which was his justification for the remark: I am going to take him out. End of story . And be thanked for it? A grim smile flickered at his mouth.

Timofey opened the door, waved them through.

The room stank. He could see where he had slept on the floor and where the old man had been, saw the heap of discarded food wrapping, and noted the grime on the windows where thin sunshine tried to penetrate. Nothing had changed in the room but it seemed to Gaz as if he had never been there before. He had had no clear idea in his head of what was possible and what was beyond the realm of what he could achieve. The old man crawled to his feet and had used the sofa arms to heave himself upright. It was for Gaz to lead. He gestured for a chair to be brought forward. Timofey watched Gaz, did not move. Nor Natacha, but she translated the instruction and the old man lifted a chair out from under the table and carried it awkwardly to the centre of the room.