Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

Still not dawn. The heating not yet on. He was at his desk, still wrapped in his winter anorak; she was at her place and cocooned in her overcoat. Nothing eaten, the coffee machine doing only black because she had not bought milk on the way.

Gough said, ‘We are a minor investigation, probably down below a figure of one hundred in terms of priority. Lucky to have the boy, Andy or whatever he calls himself, amazing that we were able to lay hands on him. Had I gone in with a request for a three-shift surveillance of her, of her boys, probably fifty in all, that number of bodies on the ground, I’d have been laughed out. A ludicrous suggestion.’

‘And there’s a sting.’

‘Is he already in?’

‘Was in ten minutes before us, or stayed the night. The sting in the tail – the one that is impossible to bloody answer. Should you, Gough, have argued for pulling them in?’

‘I have nothing to go to court with.’

Pegs said, ‘It’s a cheap blow, a low one, it’s a kick in the privates, but Three Zero Eight has that talent. Only a query. Would we have been better off if they were lifted, maybe a ‘‘conspiracy’’ charge cobbled together? The usual – some lies and some innuendo, and some nods and some winks. We have our backs to the wall.’

Gough’s teeth ground together, always did that when stress scratched him. What to say? It was fouled up. The surveillance had been inadequate. The computers would be scrambling to get a match for the registration recognition. Any arrest swoop would have been laughed out of the magistrate’s court, if it had reached that far down the line… It was what he lived with, the stress of the work and the shortage of trained men and women, and the skill of the damn adversary, and it was never-ending and would last another decade as a minimum, and his ID would have been long shredded before any tide bloody turned. The ray of light in his life, often thought but never spoken of, was that Pegs – hard, brutal, pragmatic and moderately attractive – shared the workload with him.

‘We could not have pulled them in.’

‘And it is not a time for a blame game…’ She was hitting the keys. Pegs was the only woman Gough knew who typed with two fingers, fast and with the delicacy of stamped feet. She was responding to Three Zero Eight, and her message would be signed off as Three One Nine. ‘And the attendant shortages of support are what we endure every day, week, month… which is so boring. We remain confident of the quality of our boy in the field – are not yet ready to run up a white flag…’

She grinned at him. The neon on the ceiling caught the mischief. She might have typed that, might just have been teasing him, was capable of typing it into the reply.

‘…we hope for better than the apprehension of a few foot soldiers, look for strategists and controllers and leaders, and remain hopeful. France tomorrow, contact already established and cooperation guaranteed, or the day after at the latest. Gough… How does that seem?’

Where was she? The girl who appeared so innocent, who believed she had entrapped a boy with whom she could play marionette games, an experienced Undercover, a Level One. Had lost her. Pegs said something about going for milk, and hit her send key. Bad to lose a key player.

The train pulled away from Luton.

Passengers crushed, body to body, against her. Still dark outside. Around Zeinab were phone calls, ring tones and messages from the self-important as to what they wanted done in the office before they arrived. And eating, even a bulging burger, oozing stuff out, and others on sandwiches and some on flaky croissants. Sound in her ears and spilled food on her shoulder, and the warmth of the bodies pressed hard on her hips or her backside. She went to war. She caught the eye of a young man, perhaps her age. Seemed to have a new suit and a new shirt and a new tie that was not secured at the collar and his laptop bag was wedged against her stomach, and he smiled at her, apologetic because it must have seemed obvious that she was unfamiliar with the daily grind into central London. A nice smile, but she did not return it, but stared hard and through him, and saw darkness and street-lights flit past the window. And debated.

The weakest link, or the strongest, in the chain?

She had said he was the strongest. Pictured him. The grin, that seemed impossible to hide or suppress, the laughter that cracked open his mouth, the arms that were strong and muscled and that she sometimes wrapped round her waist, and the hands that were often dirtied from engine oil and calloused and that she allowed to rest on her cheeks, squeeze them, and the tongue that groped hesitantly into her mouth, and the eyes that stared into hers and were strong, uncomplicated, and did not blink. The strongest in the chain, of course. She imagined how it would be for him, coming off the ferry and slotting into the designated lane and approaching the customs check, and he would be in ignorance and would have no fear and would smile at the world around him, and would have an arm around her shoulder, and she’d have put her head under his chin. And she felt now, on the rolling rocking train with the body smells seeping at her, so alone.

The strongest link in the chain, and she had chosen him. Her tongue smeared over her lips. Some of the women around her were pale, with scrubbed cheeks and clean eyelids and had not yet bothered to apply cosmetics, and some were already painted and scented. She wore no makeup, not even a slick of lipstick. She remembered the taste of his mouth… She took her phone from her bag. Pay As You Go. Untraceable calls, Krait said. Did not register location nor recipient of a call, Scorpion said. She had to wriggle to manoeuvre the laptop away from her arms, and the young man smiled at her again. It would have been a train like this, same time of day, on which the boys had come with their rucksacks, and she wondered if they had stayed as a group, exchanged words, or were already walking dead.

She needed to speak to him. Herself, she might be the weakest link. Among the heat and sweat and in the motion of the train, Zeinab shivered. She pressed the keys.

Sleeping, but a phone ringing. Still clinging to the dream but its focus slipping .

Norm Clarke shouting, ‘Check the fucking tyre. Front fucking tyre. New tyre. Check it. Fucking puncture. A puncture, not what that fucking half-eyed cripple says.’

Bawling loud enough to push his voice over the volume of the chain-saw and the motion of it blowing aside the hair above his privates, and his eyes aware of the fine drill bit inserted in the head of the power unit. A moment of hesitation… saw that, and the blade wavered and the drill was pulled a yard back.

‘Go check the fucking tyre… okay, not new, retread, check it. The blind bastard, could he change a tyre in half an hour? All I fucking do for you, and you treat me…’

Would have been the fury in his voice that pulled them back. The cough of the saw as it was switched off, and the whine dying, and soft voices, and someone sent to look at his van. His mum – the real mum who did not figure in the life of Phil Williams or Norm Clarke – used to say that it was always sensible to store something for a rainy day. Torrential rain, flooded roads, rivers rising, that sort of day, and there had been a puncture and he’d not mentioned it because it was only a nail gone through and there was a chap he did drops-offs for who ran a used tyre market, and they’d put a new one on, had not seemed a big deal, and it was just enough for a drink, or three, that he’d paid for the tyre. If the saw or the drill had touched him he would have been yelling the phone numbers of SC&O10. They stood back from him. He felt the cold on his body. Cigarettes were lit. Bazzer must have lined up something to say but he was told to shut his mouth. If they were not happy with the tyre then they might take off his testicles and might drill through an eyeball, but most likely they’d just throttle him with a rope or beat his skull in with a bar, then wrap him in the plastic and pick up a couple of decent spades. They’d drive out to Savernake, the forest, fifteen miles away. Pretty much anywhere was good for digging a hole and losing him, and the plastic would keep the smell down and would prevent the foxes digging him up. None of these boys would split on the others: look at the ceiling, mouth a ‘no comment’, keep doing it. Might not be found, not for months, or years, not before a whole lot of rainy days had spoiled his mum’s washing… One of their phones was ringing… Yes, his van had a new retread tyre, left side, front, passenger.