Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

After the anorak came the blouse. After the blouse came a flimsy vest. More pirouettes and more fast-foot shuffles, and then the speed of his clapping grew and her hands were at her waist and her belt was hanging loose.

She kicked off her trainers, then her jeans and came to her underwear. She did not look at the two men, did not know whether they watched her, were entranced, or were embarrassed, irritated. She went into the water, until it covered her ankles, and her dance splashed them. Flesh as white as if it had come from under a stone, went further and the water cascaded off her thighs, and her hair dripped and she went in deeper. Took one step more than she had intended and the bottom of the lake must have sloped sharply… and she was pitched forward. The clapping stopped, and she shrieked, went under. None of the men came forward to drag her out.

She surfaced, spluttering. The bones in her body seemed to jut out, sharp enough to break the skin at her elbows, her shoulders and her pelvis. Her hair was lank and tangled.

She chose Gaz. “You liked that?”

Hands on hips in front of him. “You thought I danced well?”

Made no effort to dry herself, had struck a pose, no modesty, and the smile cracked her cheeks. Her cabaret act was complete and attention was riveted on her, as she required.

“Did I do well enough?”

She stretched out her hand and the water dripped from her, and it would never have warmed during the brief Arctic summer, but she did not shiver.

“You will pay me?”

She played her role, thought she did it well. He took a wad of money from his hip pocket, tossed it at her and she caught it, grimaced, then threw it towards Timofey.

“And him?”

The prisoner had his back to her.

“Because he will name us, denounce us. His money.”

He turned. And blanched. Saw her, all of her, raked a gaze over her body, every angle of her. The officer whispered into Gaz’s ear. Gaz’s hand was in a pocket of his tunic and lifted out a smart crocodile-skin, wallet. Peeled out the bank notes, all high denomination. She came close and they were handed to her, and the wallet returned to his pocket. She took the money, as a whore would have done, and grinned.

“And he will denounce us?”

Gaz shook his head. For a moment, confusion knitted her forehead, and suddenly she was small and no longer pretty and her boldness was gone. She covered herself with one arm and scampered clumsily among the rocks for her clothing, and turned away from them while she dragged on her clothes, and it was hard to fasten clasps and buttons because her hands shook.

It was over, like a curtain had been drawn across a stage.

In a few minutes they would move. They had heard no sirens, no helicopters, no barking dogs or the shouts of a cordon closing.

Gaz hardly dared to consider that in a handful of hours he would be touching down on Westray, his island refuge. Never a smooth landing, always a series of lessening bumps and usually a skid, most often to the starboard side as the wind came off the west coast and ran clear across the makeshift strip. A hut there, with a closed but unlocked door, and a chance to call up the hotel and ask who was doing taxi duty that day… Wondered if they would ask, from the far end of the line, whether he had been far, anywhere nice, and had he had better weather than was hitting the island. Just a bit of business that had to be attended to. Would feel the wind on his face coming off the Atlantic, and would hear the gulls’ screams. He gazed out over the lake and saw reflections and felt the cold of the ground and the rock he sat on and the sunshine was brittle. Allowed himself the chance to dream because the last stage was almost on him, and on his prisoner.

The officer was silent. The kids were near him but not joining him, and the money would have been bulging the boy’s pocket. Gaz was surprised that the officer had murmured in his ear a promise that the kids would not be denounced by him, but it had been said. Only a few minutes. The memory was a sharp pain, not welcome.

He had been told that in his condition, which they took seriously, the Orkneys were ideal. An escape from stress, withdrawal from anxiety, an opportunity to regain his health and to prosper, a chance to make strong reliable friendships and to ‘make a difference’ – this was emphasised. Would he go back? He did not know, and the peace at the lakeside disturbed him.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the sixteenth hour

It ended quickly.

Shots were fired into the pits before they were filled with piled earth. No point in the shooting except that it might have reminded the militiamen that they had confronted dangerous enemies. The vehicles were manoeuvring and the headlights spinning through all directions, and sometimes they burned out the vision through his image intensifier lenses, and sometimes he saw men running. He saw the officer work in a frenzy at the second pit, the last bodies going in, and the last soil and dirt covering them, and then the officer was gesticulating to the personnel carrier drivers, and the Iranian commander stood with his hands on his hips and allowed the Russian to give instructions. The APCs were driven up and down over the pits and where they sank too deep in the loose earth, more soil shovelled up to level off the ground… and then chaos. One body had been forgotten, and the pits were already closed over. Gaz thought that it was from the first group to be executed, left beside a goalpost. Petrol was tipped on it and a match thrown. There was shouting from the NCOs, and the final men came running towards their vehicles.

Gaz had seen the pits and the burials and the work the officer undertook himself. Had watched because the alternative was to have turned his head away from the football pitch and the destroyed buildings of the village, and to concentrate on the gang, sprinting with the excitement of a pack in pursuit. He knew where she was, where the chase had ended. Knew also that she had broken clear of him and had run so that she would divert attention away from him. He saw the last one break from the place where they had caught her. Yearned for the opportunity to use his rifle, take aim and lock, get the range and density of any cross wind, line him up and squeeze… and the militiaman stopped, turned, and aimed down at the ground, into the rocks. Gaz thought he identified a piece of her clothing, and saw her bare leg. Aimed, fired, had a jam. Cleared the breach, aimed and fired, and again silence. And in frustration the boy hammered his weapon against a rock… but was not going to strip it down in the dark and clear it. He might have reached for a knife at his belt. If he was a country boy he would have thought little of taking a knife to the throat of a goat or a sheep. There were yelling for him. He went, and fast. If he were a country boy he’d have the sure-footedness of a youngster able to go at speed in near darkness. A crescendo of noise as the engines gained power. He saw a light come on at the back of a carrier and hands reached down to grab him, peals of laughter, and then the heavy noise as the armour-plated door clanged shut.

They left. He watched the headlights turn off the dirt track to her village and straightened on the metalled surface of the highway, fumes belched and they were gone. The lights faded and then disappeared. Night was allowed to settle, and it was quiet. And then a soft sound of whimpering. He knew where he would find her.

Gaz reverted to type. He did not crawl out of his cover, take off in leaps and bounds, charging down the slope and away to his left. He did what was drilled into him as the correct procedure when working behind an enemy’s lines. Folded the scrim net, stuffed it in the Bergen, packed what he had collected in tinfoil and the bottle. He could have gone down to the wall beside the highway and set about changing the batteries on the camera, testing them and seeing if the problem were with the internal electronics or was merely power outage. But he did not… Could have been that the cameras had failed because of the fierce rain getting inside the casing, and he worried that he turned his back on the problem – but he did. He went toward the sound of the dogs.