Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

Pegs brought with her, from a depot café down the Embankment, two plates of full English, enough sausage and bacon and black pudding, and mushrooms and hash and a sunny side egg, to keep a navvy going through a day. Or should they go for Murphy’s, Law. Murphy reckoned that if anything could go wrong then it would. Cutlery and paper napkins and coffee in a beaker.

Gough said, ‘Damage done, yes. Trouble with damage is that it takes time to repair. If it’s not repaired then…’

With a mouth full, and spluttering, she said, ‘Then the people we rely on are fucked. People at the sharp end, but that’s how it always plays out.’

Still sleeping, deep, but dreaming .

The two cars were pulled off the road. It had been a squeeze but eight of them had come. It was two weeks after the crisis, and Dominic was with them but less a part of them, and the auburn-haired girl had taken over the leadership, was first among equals. Tristana had not been back to the former leader’s room, nor had Bethany. There were a few lights on in the house, and they waited for the one in the downstairs hall to be doused, and the one in the bathroom upstairs to come on. The dog, a yappy spaniel, had already been out, and had peed and been called back in. A warm night, no moon and only a few stars.

He could not be a perpetrator and could not be a provocateur. Instructions were clear on the limits of his engagement. Phil was able to commit a criminal act, but not be a principal player, nor be party to any serious injury being handed out. The two cars were side by side in a field gateway and the scientist’s house was a hundred yards farther on… The hall went dark, and lights had come on upstairs. They’d need a little time to get the clubs out of the car boots, and the paint sprays, and the pepper that they’d squirt at anyone in the family who intervened. Last out would be the battering ram: a considerable investment at £200 and care taken in disguising the purchaser’s identity. Bethany was out and Tristana, and the guys with them. The auburn-haired girl had had her hand on his thigh most of the time since they had left Plymouth, had put it there before it was dark, had made her statement and would have been seen. She would expect to be high, like it was a big spliff smoked, by the time they were back and would expect to get what she wanted. After standing up for himself, he had become a more attractive package. Phil Williams knew how it would end, and it would not be with her hand on his thigh, as they made the return journey – all bubbling at the success and the violence meted out to a ‘horrible bastard’ who put animals in the path of misery.

There were car headlights coming towards them down the lane and another car’s lights appeared behind them. Phil had stayed inside his car while the gang cleared the boots of what they needed, and all were caught. The lights, at full power, beamed hard at them and some protected their eyes, and Bethany swore, and the first to realise – of course – was Dominic. Cops poured out of the cars and a van came up behind the lead vehicle. Not the local people, but a specialist team and fearsome in overalls, with Tasers drawn and batons extended.

Very quick. Handcuffs on, and everybody down on their faces. A torch shone full into Phil’s face.

‘You all right, mate?’

‘Fine, yes, I’m good.’

He unfastened his seatbelt and stepped out of the car. The uniforms around him were polite but no praise was given. It might have been that these men and women understood he operated in a world of shadows and of deceit, lived off a diet of lies, might not have liked what he did. He was told that a cop would drive his vehicle, and that a squad car was round the corner and would take him to a safe place. A ‘safe place’? Hardly needed it now, but had needed it two weeks back… There was enough light on them, on the ground, for him to read their expressions: anger, contempt, shock, loathing.

Dominic said, ‘Rot in hell, you bastard. One day, I swear it, I’ll fucking find you.’

The girl with the auburn hair said, ‘Find you and burn your balls off. You broke our trust. Happy?’

He walked past them. Did not feel good, only numb. Before dawn he would no longer be Phil Williams, like that legend had never existed.

Still slept, and hated the length of the night .

He lay on his back, and his breath came in heavy spasms, asleep but suffering .

‘What problem, guys?’

‘You’re it. You’re the problem.’

Norm Clarke played it calm. He had been asked into the back room of a club close to the bus station. No music, and the grille down over the bar and the lights low, but a pall of tobacco smoke in the room, and the old gang were there – sitting, watching. Their younger people stood and a couple of the bigger men – likely enhanced with steroids – were behind him. They had the door. The back room’s one window was barred, with a steel shutter on the outside. Had all seemed good, and Norm was back in Swindon after a run across country to Bristol. Had come back all innocent: might have thought the sun shone sweetly on him… now wondered where he’d made the mistake.

‘Not that I know of, don’t see myself as a problem.’

‘We do, we see you as a problem.’

‘That’s just a laugh… I’m no problem.’

‘You’re a problem because you don’t stack right.’

There was no fast way into a group. Took time. Street corner selling, school gate trading, doing running and lookout for a dealer in Exeter, best part of a year of a life gone, and somebody must have said something about him to one of the boys, up the chain, who handled Class A. They might have taken a long slow look at him, and then small bits and pieces were put in his way, trivial jobs. Opportunities came rarely and were not to be missed. He had offered himself. Could do driving… did not say that he had been to prison because that was the fastest and easiest place to do a check on his history. The instructors said that advancement was never to be rushed, had to go with the flow and the tide. A long story, told short, a big flu virus went the rounds, guys dropped like flies hit by an aerosol spray. A supply chain of what came in from Spain on a Brittany Ferry to Plymouth staggered to a stop. Norm was around, people knew of him, talked of him, and nobody had gotten round to running a deep examination of his legend. A packet, a couple of kilos, perhaps less, and a location. It was done. Delivered to satisfaction. But the virus was stubborn and showed little sign of easing, and another run was needed. By the time the antibiotic did a good job on the virus, Norm had made himself useful, seemed – almost – a part of the furniture: he did not ask questions, had never been caught eavesdropping phone calls nor seen flicking through papers in the office. Easy to be with, and every trip he made seemed to get through, no hassle. The way they might have looked at it, ‘too good to be true’. Just took one guy to open his mouth and start questioning a newcomer’s credentials, and then an examination and more guys chipping in with anomalies, what did not fit, and the starting of a trade in them because no one wanted to be left high and dry and defending a casualty… and down the line, somewhere, was a mistake. When it went sour, it was always because of a mistake, and most times the Level One, skilled and trained and alert, never knew it. One of the ’tecs who had briefed him at the start had said of them, ‘Not idiots; foul and vicious and no education, but not idiots. Cunning, take the job seriously, don’t want to go back to gaol, and they have a sniff of who you are and we have to hope the cavalry and the guns come running and quick. They are hard little shits, our evaluation. Good luck, lad, good luck.’ Might be a trawling run, might be because Delia, one of the groupie girls with them, had taken a fancy and put another’s snout out of joint, might be because he had fucked up big. Only one of them did the talking. The son of the founding father of the group. Clever little shite. Big glasses and did the accountancy and when the hit came – which it would – then his mobile would do the work of a good prosecutor, would send them all down with the key thrown away. Didn’t hold anyone’s gaze, failed to confront at this early stage in the game.