Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘I thought you were my friend. I…’

He doubted that the kids behind him, a little cluster of them on the stairs, with their medley of firearms, would have understood a word said in a foreign language with the accents of sub-continent and Yorkshire, but the sight of the veteran rifle, and its prominent fore-sight wobbling between ceiling and floor, via his knees and his stomach and his chest and his forehead meant big entertainment. They did little whoops of giggling as her voice rose steadily in pitch, and she grew close to hysteria.

‘…I thought I could trust you, thought I could believe what you said to me. All the sweet words and no meaning in any of them. You bastard…’

The kids had climbed the stairs behind him. The smell was unchanged, the air fetid with decay, the graffiti depressing, and the lights sporadic, and there were only small windows, like gun slits, for the sunshine to come through, and he had rapped the door. Not a hesitant knock. As if it were a demand. A girl had let him into the hall area where he was hit with a barrage of game show music and canned applause and the scream of a compère. Quite a pretty girl except that her face was scarred by indifference and tiredness: she had opened the door, eyed him briefly, then seemed to reflect that he was not her business, no one she should be involved with, and she went back inside and slumped on a settee and was again engrossed in the television. She’d called once, then again, then had bawled, then had regarded her business as done, obligation finished.

‘You are a liar, a bastard liar.’

The boy had come first, then had yelled over his shoulder and she’d emerged. Might have been weeping, or might just have had reddened eyes from the sprint away from the scooter. She looked, not that it mattered, quite simply terrific. Always did, his opinion and from the scantiest of knowledge… a woman in a temper and losing it, with her chin out and upper lip trembling, a flush in the cheeks and shoulders thrown back, and spitting accusations – that sort of woman always, he reckoned, was a sensation. She had the rifle. He’d lifted his arms, gone to surrender posture. He started to move forward. Not in a hurry, taking it easy, and like any fair to middling boxer, he rode the verbal blows and showed no sign of being hurt by them; but had not started to counter punch, just came on inside.

‘I should kill you, what you deserve, and hurt you.’

Would she? He doubted it. Dangerous to be certain of his opinion because the Kalashnikov was two, three yards from him and had an effective killing range of 200, 300 yards, and she had spittle at the side of her mouth. He did not answer her, but came along the narrow corridor where paint was needed and he eased past rubbish sacks, and they both backed off in front of him. He was allowed into a bedroom, would have been the boy’s, and realised she now had a soul mate, and could talk endlessly to the boy about the Kalashnikov series and its copycat versions. He saw the books. All the time that he moved he kept his hands high. The bed was not made, there was food – a rice and sauce meal half consumed – on a plate. Biker magazines carpeted the floor, and on top was one with a photo on the cover that showed the Piaggio MP3 Yourban, and at an angle that demonstrated the tilting front wheels, and that would have been his aspiration, not the wrecked Peugeot that was by now being loaded up for a journey to the breakers, and a photograph of an older woman who had three kids with her: one would have been the game show audience girl, and one was the boy half a pace behind Zed and one would have been the eldest and the owner of a Ducati Monster. He was good at noting what was around him, part of his training, what might be used in evidence in a courtroom when he faced her, had a clear view of the dock where she’d sit with the guards, screened from the public gallery but not from her, and described how he had deceived, betrayed, lied to her, and at the end of it, after she’d been sentenced, left pole-axed by the severity, chances were he’d be called back into the judge’s chambers and personally congratulated, and told what a debt he was owed by society – unless the case was waived out. Compromise and entrapment. Deniable. An experienced police officer’s relationship with a naive student. Never happened. She might broadcast that she had been seduced by him: about her only chance, but a poor bet… The boy waved him down. The big irony: she felt no guilt, in his assessment, of her lies to him, all one-sided. But did not dwell long on it because irony went poorly with a situation such as he faced. He slid his spine on the wall, sank to his haunches. The boy wanted his hands.

Zed aimed the rifle barrel at him.

The weapon might have been with Noah in the Ark. Was the oldest that he had ever seen, certainly more of a museum piece than anything they’d had in the collection at Lympstone. Scratched and scraped and scarred. There were moments when she tilted it and he could see the stock and the evidence of its history… Would have expected a modern and unmarked version coming into the courier service. It was almost antique, would have seen service, and the notches on the stock were proof of an enduring effectiveness. He saw the setting of Battle Sight Zero on the rear of the weapon, for close quarters fighting… He did not think she would fire.

He held out his hands.

A restraint came from the boy’s hip pocket. It went round his wrists, was jerked tight and the boy stepped back. The boy’s expression told him that a mistake, big or up the scale to catastrophic, had been made in coming back here, too fast a decision taken, and unable to reverse it. She had gone to the window, had gazed out, then had flattened herself against the wall beside it. He could hear sirens and it would be that time in an operation when the cavalry arrived and would dismount, bivouac, and put a perimeter in place. A mistake to come here because they, the boy and Zed, were now trapped, had nowhere to go, and about all they had as a chip to bargain with was him, the People’s Hero, Phil or Norm or Andy, or whoever he had once been before living the lie. He supposed himself a kind of a hostage… what would they pay for him? If the question were asked of the Detective Inspector, Gough, or his faithful and foul-tongued bag carrier, then they’d have chorused in unison: ‘What, money? Pay for him or give her free passage? Not effing likely. Forget it, sunshine…’ And, why was he there? Not quite sure, but working on it.

He said nothing, allowed the rant to build. Later he might, not yet.

‘Should let you sweat, then hurt you, then fucking kill you – do it like they’d have done with a traitor in Raqqa, Mosul – saw your head off with a blade. Shooting’s too good.’

She might do it, shoot him. His judgement might have been mistaken, but he thought she would not. Be a shame if he was wrong, always was the problem for an Undercover, making an error.

He never answered. No response and that angered Zeinab the most.

Neither argued with her nor pleaded but sat on this pit of a room’s floor and kept his eyes off her, had not looked her in the face since the boy, Karym, had fastened his wrists together… She supposed that was what a druggie dealer always carried, not a handkerchief because he always snivelled, but something easy that disabled an enemy. No denial, no squirming with excuses, and what she shouted at him seemed like shower water running off him. He looked round the room, and at the ceiling, and at the floor, and never at the weapon and never at her face. She went closer.

‘To go to bed with me, was that a part of your work? Do you draw a bonus because you screwed me, screwed me and might get some pillow talk? They pay you more for that? You are so hateful which is why it is better that I shoot you, shoot you now.’