Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘Yes, heard. For the greater good of the greater number. That is where we are?’

‘He’ll be fine. Have to be – yes? – fine. And have to hang on to the girl. Must.’

Back from Dewsbury, Zeinab was in her Hall of Residence room.

She had seen a boy from her floor in the reception area, and two of the girls in the corridor, and had walked past all three, had spoken to none of them. Inside her room, untidy but bare of personality, she had seen that her desk remained, of course, covered with the notes for the essay she was supposed to be busy with. They played no part in her life… nor did her parents, or anything and anyone else in Savile Town across the Calder from Dewsbury – except that it had been the home of her cousins – nor did her tutors. She belonged to none of the student societies, played no sports, and her work suffered which was, to her, irrelevant. Important to Zeinab were the shopping mall in central Manchester, or one of those on the outskirts of Leeds, or in Sheffield. Important, more so, were the two guys who had again met her at the train station and had driven her close to the Residence, then dropped her. She had been told when she would be travelling, and by what route. One had smelled of fast food, and the other of old sweat dried on his body, and she felt no affection for either, but they facilitated her though did not seem to give her respect. Most important to her, Zed, was Andy. The first boy, the only boy, who had sought her out, been a protector, then had come back to her. One bunch of flowers only, and she had treasured them and been to a florist to get a ‘potion’ to put in the water of the vase that she had been loaned by the housekeeper and had only thrown them out when they had drooped. She could picture in detail, like a film slowed, his rush to help her, and the strength of the blows that he had landed against the three thugs who were after her bag. The violence of the response lived with her… and he had gone after the one who had wrested away her bag, had retrieved it. Could recall also the joy she had felt when she had kicked the one against the wall, had hurt her foot but a small price.

Other than what they called themselves, she had no names for the guys who had met her, driven her – who had shown her the body of the potential informer in the boot of the car – and handled her. One was Krait. In the Quetta region, where her family originated from before the migration to Dewsbury, a Krait was a common and highly venomous snake, with a diet of other smaller snakes and mice. The second was Scorpion. Around Quetta there was a trade in the reptile which made it a valued creature – a good and healthy scorpion was worth $50,000 because its venom could be regularly squeezed from its stinger, bottled and sent to European pharmaceutical laboratories, highly prized… Her guy, Krait, she thought well capable of devouring his own, and the proof had been in the trunk of the car… Her guy, Scorpion, seemed overtly deadly, a killer, but had the greater value through care and skill and an ability to read their mutual enemy. She had been told when they would leave. A text would be sent that night to her tutor, saying she needed more time for her essay; she would not be chased because of fear of ethnic harassment. The bag would be packed, and the sales tag taken off the new nightdress.

Zeinab would sleep a few hours before her alarm woke her… He made her laugh, was devoted, was more than useful, the boy she imagined in bed with her, and she held a pillow close, spoke his name in the silence of the room – but most important, Andy Knight was useful , otherwise he’d have had no place in her life.

He was booked in a hostel south of the river. The woman in Vauxhall had fixed it. He walked there, went down deserted streets, and only occasionally was lit by vehicle lights. A rucksack was hooked on a shoulder. Once he heard the great chime of a church clock behind him. At the hostel, £20 a night per person, and the place was favoured by European back-packers. He was offered a multiple occupancy room – could have slept with three strangers. Pegs had told him what name to use at the desk. Must have been a longstanding deal that she had with the place. He would be alone in the room. It would have been the type of anonymous doss-house that Specialist Crime and Operations 10 favoured when one of their people surfaced for a debrief, for a night. There were voices but reasonably quiet, respectful of others. He found the room. Three iron beds, folded sheets and a duvet, a picture of the Queen on a wall and nothing else, and a doorway to a shower and toilet which made the room top-dollar.

He dumped his grip.

Flopped on the bed, did not bother to make it. Kicked off his footwear, dragged down his socks, shoved the bedding aside, lay in the darkness.

It was a job. It paid every month and the cash went into an account that was in the name he had been born under, and the workload as Phil Williams and Norm Clarke and Andy Knight had been heavy enough to prevent him from using it. No opportunity to spend outside the make-believe life of legends he constructed. It was a job where the psychologists spoke earnestly of burn-out, but the time to quit was never dangled, not while a mission ran. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling and a little light came from outside and split the thin curtains not quite drawn together… when the stress mounted, at night, he’d dream of the past. Before the dreaming would be the anxiety, growing, of a mistake made.

He kept his eyes open, had no wish to dream. Saw her face: a strong chin and a powerful jaw and a nose that did not hide, and eyes that could pierce, and the flow of her hair. If he watched her face he would find comfort, and that would calm him, then he would sleep.

If he slept, he would dream.

‘Phil, would you come in here.’ Always a mistake, going to sleep, failing to stay awake. Memory time, vivid .

‘Yeah, just finishing up.’

‘No, Phil. Now, Phil. Not after the fucking washing up.’

The door off the kitchen was open. All the rest were in the communal room in the front of the house, terraced and in an old quarter of the west country town of Plymouth, and by a miracle of fortune the street had avoided the local blitz. Phil had been washing up the plates from their lunch. Most were vegetarians, and the meal was a pizza without meat, but the vegans amongst them had just nibbled salads… the lettuce leaves had been rinsed under a cold tap but a spider had hunkered down and survived the sluicing and had ended up on its way into the mouth of one of the girls, then had fallen off the leaf and dropped on to a slice of tomato. Was she going to squash it, kill it, cull the poor bloody spider? No. She had picked it up in a tissue, handled with delicacy, had taken it to the back door, had put the spider into an over-grown flower-bed, and had come back to resume her meal… He might have giggled. Not a fun laugh, but something closer to a sneer: the girl was pathetic, didn’t everyone see that? He was washing up. There were times in the day when Phil needed to be away from them, have his own space.

One of the guys was in the doorway, and barked at him.

‘Leave that. Get in here.’

‘Yes, coming, yes.’

Buying time, and drying his hands, and pulling the plug in the sink, and his mind had started to sprint because of the tone. Not a request that he might care to join them when he had finished. A demand. Phil was not the newest to be accepted; there was a blonde girl with big glasses and short hair who had come after him but she’d joined after reaching Plymouth from west of Birmingham where her group had been decimated by arrests. Phil was the last ‘outsider’ to join them, starting at the bottom with leaflet hand-outs, and manning the table with flyers on the evils and cruelties of animal experiments in laboratories. Not something that could be hurried and he must have been at it a full year – which was a hell of a commitment for SC&O10 before he was let into the house: might have been that the auburn-haired girl fancied him, might have smoothed the way. That was a half year back, but he was one of them in name, not a part of them. The rest, except for the Birmingham girl, were the founding fathers and mothers of the group. Still, some of the guys would stop talking if he came into the room, or would slide papers away. He left the kitchen, went into the communal room. The atmosphere cut. Worse than sneering when a girl took the trouble to save the life of a spider and give it a new home among the weeds in the flower-bed. Some looked at him and some dropped their heads so as not to meet his eyes. Two of the guys were standing and one slipped behind him and had guardianship of the door. There was a rug on the floor, threadbare, the pattern faded, and he was waved to the centre of it. They were still on a high, had been to a kennels two nights before, had let loose a pack of young beagles, the favoured breed for the laboratories, and the little blighters had headed off into the woods. Pointless, ridiculous, and they’d be half starved by now but… perhaps better than being close up to a hypodermic. Anyway… that was good. Next up was an address in the Portsmouth area where a scientist lived with his family, and he did research in a laboratory and was going to get the full focus of a visit, and they were at the planning stage.