A Deniable Death (38 page)

The night was quiet around him.

The lights inside the house were out, and the curtains were drawn at that bedroom window. He had not seen her undress, didn’t know with what intimacy her husband might have helped her with straps and fastenings. The man was not a jihadist who would explode himself in a carriage in an underground tunnel, and he was not a smuggler of Class-A stuff, polluting streets and youngsters and breeding addicts. He was not a break-off from a splintered Irish republican team. The man, the Engineer, did not threaten Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter, or anyone he knew.

They had talked about the town the coffins came through, the military wing of the Selly Oak hospital, of the place in Surrey where the prosthetics were fitted and mobility was taught again. It was not his agenda.

Badger reckoned he walked at others’ beck and call. Like he was a dog and a whistle blew. Foxy had told him he was deniable and an accessory, that it was illegal, and he had answered, ‘Thank you.’ What to do?

His mind churned, and his eyes hurt from exhaustion. The scabs hurt worse, and the last water bottle was dry. The mosquito bites itched and his guts were full but he couldn’t empty them. He didn’t know where to find answers.

It was the last morning. He had the headset on and waited for the first light to be switched on in the house. Then he would wake Foxy, whom he had thanked. He saw the flash of a cigarette lighter to the right and the goon came out of the barracks. There was a slight smear on the horizon, and the day started.

Chapter 12

When it had the light to see where it flew, the bird left its perch on a broken tree. Its place, a favourite for two years, was now dried out, and the mud under it had become a wizened mosaic so it could no longer wade there and hunt. It had not fed for three days, but the bird was a creature of close-governed habits and its instincts preserved its loyalty to that place. Hunger drove it to abandon its perch.

It laboured into the air, weakened by lack of food. It was up before the dawn light had spread, and before the eagles had soared high to search for prey. It worked hard to get elevation and to feel the draught of wind under its broad wings.

It went over areas of sunbaked mud, once covered with a film of water, and over what were now narrow drains and had once been deep waterways, and skirted a collection of huts that would have been in danger of annual flooding when the bird was young but now were marooned. Below it a few skinny, undernourished water buffalo meandered in search of lakes and lagoons.

The ibis flew towards water, to the east where it would find food: small fish, frogs, mice or immature rats, beetles, spiders, butterflies and moths. The bird was female. The last year, her eggs had addled. Hunger had driven her from the stick nest in the tree and she had spent too many hours away, looking for the food that would sustain her. The ground had been arid and without life, and the village where in previous years she had scavenged was now deserted. Once she had seen the carcass of her mate but she had not fluttered down to feed off it, had left the mess of bones and feathers for the crows to peck at.

She had broad wings, white with black-tipped feathers. As she flew, climbed, a rhythm returned to the flaps that took her forward. It tired her to fly any distance, but she would go as far as her strength permitted in her search. A column of smoke spiralled near to some buildings and she saw people there, swung away and did a half-circle around them: she had no love of people.

When the sun edged over the horizon, she felt the first of the day’s warmth on her wings and back, white-feathered, and on her neck and head, black-feathered and with a black beak. The sun encouraged her to beat her wings harder, and soon she found a rivulet to follow. Then it became a stream, and a different smell seemed to come from the ground. There were reed banks.

She flew lower.

Beyond the reed banks there were expanses of water, not clear and dark as it would have been if the level was deep beyond the length of her wading legs. She looked for water that reflected the skies and in which she could see the mud bottom, not thick weed.

She saw a building that had small lights around it, the green of the reeds and a bare space of dried dirt on which debris had accumulated, and she saw a little promontory just above the water and at the end a mass of dried leaves. She made a clumsy landing because of the time she had been flying. She settled, had barely steadied herself, then readied to strike. She was listed as a bird deserving the status of ‘conservation concern’ and ‘threatened’. In the last survey of the marshlands, while warfare raged around the dedicated lovers of the ibis, it was estimated that only twenty-six adults lived in this habitat. She hit with her beak. The strike was brutal, fast: she had a frog.

It was a fat frog and it struggled, but its existence was already forfeit. It was put down on the reed fronds, and held by the beak until the claws at the foot of the bird’s left leg could pinion it down.

It was eaten, swallowed whole and alive. Digestion would take time, and the water level around the place where she settled was good for her wading.

She squatted, preened herself, pecked at insects real and imagined. She gazed around her and felt comfortable.

Badger watched. He had had the glasses on the bird as it circled the landing place twice, each time lower on the circuit. He wondered what species it was, but thought it pretty – and effective in the art of killing.

The bird, hunched down, lancing its body feather with its beak, was welcome – a relief to Badger from the
options
, from breaking disciplines and scratching bites. The mosquitoes had gone now, the flies were gathering, and the wind coming from Foxy was foul. Twice he’d elbowed the man’s ribcage to stop the snoring, but then the options had been uppermost.

A man of ethics? A police officer bred on morality? Badger didn’t know if he was or not. He believed in getting a job done and not much more. He had never fabricated evidence, had never claimed not to have seen another constable strike a man with a baton, and had never fiddled expenses. He had never done anything he would be ashamed of, had never risked his career with a criminal action. The rip-off culture at the police station in Bristol where he had started out had passed him by. Almost, in fact, he had been bollocked for insufficient arrests, relying on cautions and verbal warnings rather than hoicking the arrest statistics for the division. He had a moral code, not flaunted when he was in uniform or out of it, not based on any religious teaching and not worn on his sleeve. The code gave him – he recognised it now – a sort of naïveté. Maybe the naïveté had come on heavier since he had gone into rural surveillance and after he’d nagged Human Resources for the chance to go on the CROP course. Options? They had nagged at him through the night, while Foxy slept, and the one factor making the matter bearable was that nothing had materialised for him to report. He was watching the bird scrabble with its big feet for better grip on the reed fronds he had put there. More serious than ‘options’, it was kicking at the camouflage he’d made.

The bird hacked hard, thrust dried stuff back and seemed anxious to work down to a hard surface. The glasses showed him the slim, long body of the microphone and, once, the drive of the right foot lifted the cable . . . If the bird kept going, the microphone would be pushed into the water. Down to options that mattered. Out of his mind went
I was, sir, only following orders that I believed to be legitimate
. No more baggage about
I’m not prepared to be involved, Foxy, in extra-judicial murder. I’m not some fucking Israeli. I will not allow any message that contributes to the target’s killing to be transmitted.
Pushed down the agenda was
I’m walking out now and having no further part in this
, and at the bottom of the heap was
I’m a moron and ignorant, and I didn’t understand
. More important, top of the pile, was how to stop a pretty bird – a bloody nuisance bird – kicking out the microphone and drowning it. Couldn’t stand up and shout, couldn’t go walkabout to look for a stone and lob it. Once more it scratched. The shape of the microphone was clear now and the cable was well visible and . . . It stopped, seemed to compress itself down.

The door opened – the front door.

The goon was walking from the barracks towards the house. Lights had been switched on inside and, faintly, a radio played. The door was wide open and the kids spilled through it. Then the case was lifted out. Maybe it was the Engineer who brought it, maybe the older woman.

The case didn’t bulge. It had a green ribbon tied to its handle. Badger saw that the small girl was crying and the boy went to the water’s edge, threw in a pebble from the track, watched it bounce. The bird was hunkered low on what was left of the foliage. Maybe it thought this was a place to stay, where frogs were available on order. Maybe it was not about to shift out. He jabbed Foxy.

Him and Foxy? Between them now a sort of tolerance existed, like a ceasefire. Not peace and not war. When the car came, the suitcase was loaded and they drove away, the mission was done, whether they had anything to radio or not. He doubted he and Foxy would speak much on the way back to extraction, or while they were driven to the base, and not at all when they were helicoptered to Kuwait City. Likely they’d be in different rows on the flight, which Foxy might demand and he himself might insist on. There might be a handshake at the terminal but it would be transitory and neither would go on the other’s Christmas-card list. They’d never meet again.

One jab was enough. He passed him the headset. When the bird had kicked, noise, explosions, had been in his ears, but the bird’s chest – small mercy – did not cover the microphone tip and he could hear the little girl crying.

There was more wind, then a murmur about needing to piss, then the question: how much water was left? None. Then the statement: without water they were screwed. The headset went on Foxy’s ears and Badger whispered about the bird. ‘. . . and can’t do much about it. The goon has it in his glasses, looks excited enough to do a jerk-off. What is it? Not anything I’ve ever seen.’

‘It’s called an African Sacred Ibis. Pretty rare. Big in Egyptian mythology. Do me a favour, just shut up.’

Foxy looked wan, weak, about played out. A day wouldn’t have gone by in the last ten years without him shaving and examining his moustache in a mirror, without him putting on a clean shirt and polished shoes. He looked sad and a frown cut his forehead. Then he grappled in his pocket for the notepad and flicked the switch to light the screen.

The wife came, and the children ran to her. The Engineer peered up the track and past the barracks, then looked down, savage, at his wristwatch. The goon gazed at the bird. She had the children against her knees and bent awkwardly, held them tight and tried to comfort them. What comfort, Badger wondered, could she offer?

The car would come and the bird would fly. The noise of the car and the crying of the boy would be too much for it. Many weeks, several months, Mansoor had dreamed of seeing the bird,
Threskiornis aethiopicus
, merely fly low over the reeds and be in the lenses for a few seconds, half a minute, but it was down and he had a fine view of it, and could not believe that the moment would last, but she comforted the child.

He heard her. He had no children. He did not know if it was his fault that his wife was barren or hers. She said, in their bedroom at the back of the house that was owned by his father, in a low voice, so she should not be overheard, that he was responsible for her inability to become pregnant. He could not believe that. He refused, of course, to go to a doctor and have tests done on his wife, Safar, and himself. So, with no child to look after, she went each morning on a shuttle bus from their home in Ahvaz to the Crate Camp Garrison on the road to Mahshar, came back each evening and helped his mother to prepare a meal, then did cleaning and went to bed. They had sex every weekend, quietly so as not to disturb his parents, but her period never missed. He saw how Naghmeh, wife of the Engineer, comforted the children. He had looked away from the bird that was on what seemed to be flood debris that had snagged at the end of a mud spit.

‘You should not be frightened.’ She held tight to the children. ‘There is nothing for you to be frightened of.’

He thought she did not cry because it would have frightened the children.

‘We go to see a very clever doctor, and he will make me better.’ He looked up but the bird had not moved.

He did not know if he would ever see her again.

‘We will bring you back sweets, because you will be very good when your grandmother cares for you . . .’ If she died in Germany, the children would go to her mother, and their father would be found an austere room in the Crate Camp Garrison. He would visit them only at the end of the week and on public holidays, and would bury himself in the papers and circuit boards on his workbench. ‘The reward for being good and brave is very special sweets.’

Then Mansoor would be recalled to the ranks of the al-Quds Brigade and most likely a desk would be found for him, papers to process and a keyboard to hit. He might be in Tehran or Tabriz or in the mountains on the Afghanistan border . . . if she did not come back. She had quietened and calmed them. The car was late. It reflected on him. It should by now have been at the house.