Reconstruction (29 page)

I see.

I’m glad. I’m glad you see. I’m glad the official inquiry saw too, because you know what they found, don’t you, doc? They found that it was a justifiable killing. And that guy knew that. He knew the risks he was playing. There’s an American expression, suicide by cop. Did you ever come across that?

You think he committed suicide?

I think if it hadn’t been me, it would have been the next officer on duty. That’s where my responsibility ends.

And you’re happy with that?

Happy’s not the word, doc.

But you’d do it again.

I hope never to have to do it again.

But if you had to?

To protect innocent lives? Yes, doc, I would.

Yes, doc.

I would.

Here and now, Bain’s not sure that conversation ever took place in quite that way, but this much is true: conversations like it have happened, and Bain has taken part in some of them.

Besides, here and now, all that’s irrelevant. All that matters is the space crosshatched by the rifle’s scope; and the certain knowledge that, if called upon to do so, DS Bain will do what’s necessary.

Target acquired.

Steady.

Ben Whistler to Jonathan Nott, about three hours ago:

If he ever made a pass, it was too subtle for me. When a man
asks if I’d like a drink after work, I generally assume he wants
a drink after work.

And did you?

Occasionally. Never just the two of us.

Ben to Jaime, more recently:

I didn’t know him that well. He was a private man. He didn’t
open up much.

He had done once, though. Ben remembered it well.

There was a pub on the corner – name a junction in Soho there wasn’t – with a widescreen TV in the front permanently tuned to sports channels, and a row of booths in the back affording private conversation. Either was a good reason for it becoming a department favourite; the fact that it was nearest clinched the deal. One evening last summer, World Cup in full swing, half the building had been there. Ben wasn’t an enthusiast, but he had a sense of occasion. He also had a keen memory for which colleagues owed him a drink, and the prospect of catching them all in the same venue was too enticing to miss.

It was coming back from the Gents that he’d encountered Miro. He was edging past the row of booths when:

‘Ben.’

He’d looked round. Miro Weiss was slouched untidily against the wall, having claimed a whole booth to himself. There was a half-drained Guinness in front of him, and a badly stubbed cigarette smouldering in his ashtray. Ben wouldn’t have pegged Miro for a Guinness man. If pressed he’d have suggested dry sherry; possibly port and lemon.

‘Miro. Didn’t realize you’d come.’

‘I slunk away once the outcome was obvious.’

It took Ben a moment to understand he was talking about the football.

‘You okay there?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, Ben.’

He didn’t look it, but this wasn’t worth calling the news desk. Miro, Reggie had once said in Ben’s hearing, ‘looks like somewhere hair loss is slugging it out with astigmatism. Basically, it’s battle for the planet of the Miro.’ If you had to cast him, you’d go for Peter Lorre. It helped that his voice bore a trace of Eastern Europe; a gift from his immigrant parents. Still: Ben had never seen him getting legless before. He doubted any of the others had either. ‘You should come and join us.’

‘Oh, you think they miss me?’

‘Well, I, ah –’

‘It’s okay, you don’t need to answer. Is Reggie there?’

‘Probably.’

‘Reggie amuses me. He’s one of those people whose sense of humour is absurdly reliant on use of the word
basically
. Did you ever notice that?’

Ben hadn’t. ‘Now you come to mention it.’

‘But I wouldn’t in his hearing. The Reggies of this world don’t compute criticism. It would be like addressing him in Swahili. Would you like a drink?’

‘I think I left one on the bar.’

‘You think so? I won’t keep you then.’

‘No. No, it’s probably gone by now. The staff here, they whip your glass away if you take your hand off it.’ This wasn’t true. ‘Can I get you one?’

‘I offered first, Ben.’

There was great precision in the way Miro excavated his wallet from his jacket pocket.

Ben settled in the booth, wondering what he was miss-ing in the front bar, then deciding he didn’t care. The evening was on its last legs, and Miro in his cups was a new experience. Miro the Mirror Man – where’d he get a nickname like that? Miro the house mouse, more like. Sequestered in his cubicle all day, traipsing through the money maze. Barely poking his snout out long enough to grab a foul coffee from the machine. Yes, this was new. And that
basically
comment was good. Ben’d be a fool not to hang about long enough to see what else Miro came up with.

Plus, Miro was not long back from Iraq, where he’d been chasing a money trail through bomb blasts and gutted buildings. Miro the house mouse, back from the war. Now dipping his whiskers in Guinness.

He returned from the bar, Guinness in one hand, lager in the other.

‘Cheers, my friend.’

‘And to you, Ben.’

Some of the most ravening drunks Ben had ever known became politer and politer before collapsing into formal oblivion.

He took a belt of lager. ‘So how are things, Miro?’

‘Things? Oh, peachy-keen, Ben. How are they with you?’ ‘Same old same old. You know how it is.’

‘Not really, Ben. Sometimes I think, the older I get, the less I know of anything.’

‘Yeah, well. The trick is not to let it get you down, I suppose.’

‘And that’s the trick old dogs find hardest of all, eh? The new one. The new one of not letting it get you down.’

Okay, thought Ben. This might have been a mistake after all.

‘How did you find Iraq?’

‘The way we left it, Ben. In ruins.’

‘Not a fun-filled jaunt, then.’

‘Not, as you say, a fun-filled jaunt.’

He lifted his glass, and Ben saw an amazing thing: he saw Miro the house mouse drain half a pint of Guinness in a single swallow. He might have been pouring water down a plughole.

‘It’s left you thirsty.’

‘It’s left me a lot of things, Ben. Tell me, among whatever it is you don’t allow to get you down, have you given much thought to what’s happening in Iraq?’

Definitely a bad idea.

He said, ‘Well, I was never in favour of the war. But what can you do?’

‘Precisely. We are not doctors, so there’s nothing we can do. The bombs still go off and the power’s not yet on. Children die for lack of the facilities we robbed them of with shock and awe. Families live in holes in the ground. But we are not doctors so there is nothing we can do.’

‘We can send money.’

Miro threw back his head and laughed – it was a night for firsts.

‘I only meant –’ ‘I know what you meant. I am sorry, Ben.’ Miro switched his laughter off as abruptly as he’d switched it on. ‘I was not laughing at you. And it is not especially funny anyway. You are not drinking your lager.’

Ben drank his lager.

Miro said, ‘They do not need our money. They need their own money. Iraq is a major oil producer, we don’t have to be rattling tins in pubs at closing time. Sending them our spare change. We simply need to hand back what is being taken from them.’

Someone passed on the way to the Gents, but Ben didn’t catch who it was.

He said, ‘You found a lot of corruption out there.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Millions going missing.’

‘Yes, Ben. True story. When the CPA was closing down – you know what I’m talking about? The Coalition Provisional Authority?’

‘They ran Iraq after the war. Before the elections.’

‘For a year, yes. During which time more than eight point eight billion dollars’ worth of oil revenue vanished, Ben. Money that belonged to the nation, that should have been used to get the place on its feet again. Anyway, this incident I’m talking about, there was one point four billion dollars transferred from Baghdad to the Kurdish Regional Government. In cash. You know how much that weighs?’

Of course he didn’t. He’d only ever seen that amount in pixels.

‘Fourteen tons. Think about it. Fourteen tons of cash. In vacuum-packed bricks. Transported by helicopters through what was, to all intents and purposes, a war zone. The war was over, Ben – it still is, technically – but helicopters were being shot down on a daily basis, so it was not exactly peace in our time.’

‘And is that what happened? They were shot down?’

‘No, they got there safely. Great relief all round, I imagine. And they took the money to the Central Bank of whichever town they were in. I am too drunk to remember which.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Not quite. What they forgot to do was ask for a deposit slip.’

Miro picked up what was left of his Guinness, and sent it the way of the rest.

Ben said, ‘You’re kidding.’

‘If only.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Nobody knows. The money’s not been seen since. Apparently attempts were made to transfer it to a Swiss bank. But this much is clear – fourteen tons of money evaporated, in one afternoon. And this mess has been going on for years.’

‘Jesus.’

‘There are contractors routinely overcharging by one thousand per cent. There are security firms guarding those contractors who are hiring mercenaries, ex-cons, and any-one else who is prepared to pick up a gun in exchange for money. And all this time the country’s oil is still pumping out, except there is no metering in place, so nobody knows how much is being produced, or what revenue it should be making. The only sure fact is that that revenue is not going into Iraq’s development fund, which, by the way, is in violation of UN resolutions. What it comes down to is, any-one who successfully tendered for any of the reconstruction projects – which essentially means those with contacts in the White House – won a licence to print money. Hallelujah, and God bless Dubya.’ He paused. ‘If they ever design a million dollar bill, whose image do you suppose they’ll use? Except they’ll have to do a full body version, so it can show Dick Cheney emerging from his arse.’

‘Whose arse we talking about, Miro?’

And this was the somebody on his way back from the Gents: Neil Ashton. Department dog.

Miro said, ‘It was a long joke. I don’t think I can repeat it.’

‘Ben doesn’t seem to be laughing.’

‘It wasn’t that kind of joke,’ Ben said.

Neil Ashton, who was a large man with an attitude to match, said, ‘So Miro gets round to telling a funny, and it’s not the funny kind. Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

‘The crew still out front?’ Ben asked.

‘They’re thinking of moving on. How long have you been skulking here?’

‘You’re keeping tabs on us off duty now?’

‘That’s practically the job description.’ Ashton stood by the booth, looking down on them; seemed as if he might, at any moment, slam his fists on their table. ‘Discussing our little field trip, Miro?’

‘Our?’ Ben asked.

‘I was accompanied by Mr Ashton,’ Miro told him.

‘Oh yeah,’ Ashton said. ‘I was there to hold Miro’s hand. Make sure he didn’t wander into any minefields, or get himself picked up and chained to a radiator. Or would that have been your idea of a good time, Miro?’

‘My idea of a good time would not involve being in Iraq. If you will excuse me a moment, gentlemen.’ Miro freed himself from the booth, and made his way to the toilets.

Ashton said, ‘Interesting conversation, Ben?’

‘He has quite a riff on the role of the metatarsal in England’s World Cup ambitions.’

Ashton lit a cigarette. ‘He didn’t mention the Iraq trip, then.’

‘No,’ Ben said.

‘Until I brought it up.’

‘No.’

‘That’s good.’ He exhaled smoke Ben hadn’t noticed him drawing in. ‘Talking out of turn in pubs, that’s the kind of thing I’m supposed to take notice of.’

‘Right,’ Ben said.

He didn’t mention the Iraq trip, then.

Later, Bad Sam Chapman asked Ben much the same question.

And Ben gave much the same answer.

Now, he said: ‘Jaime, did Miro mention the dogs, at all? By name?’

Jaime blinked, surprised to be addressed.

‘Jaime?’

‘Once,’ said Jaime. ‘He talk about a man he call Bad Sam.’

‘Yes,’ Ben said gently. ‘That’s the man you were running from at Marble Arch.’

‘How did he know where to find me?’

‘Because you told him, Jaime. He was what they call a duty officer last night. Chapman’s top dog. And ever since Miro disappeared, the dogs have been monitoring unusual calls to the department. Hell, for all I know, they’ve been monitoring the usual ones too.’

‘So he is listening when I call you?’

‘The call would have been put through to him, Jaime. Out of hours, from a foreign national? Ordinary circumstances, it would have been logged and your number taken. I’d have an e-mail in the morning, telling me you’d called. But since Miro . . . Things have been uptight.’

‘You think he is dead.’

‘Yes, Jaime. I think he’s dead.’

Jaime nodded, but a cloud passed across his eyes. He’d already known this, but knowledge shared grew harder and rougher. Grew true.

Ben said, ‘So you got on the bus. But they saw you, didn’t they?’

Jaime blinked himself back to the moment. ‘I think I am safe, on bus. I think they are still looking for me at Marble Arch, where everything is busy.’

‘But they saw you.’

‘The smaller man –’

‘That’s Bad Sam.’

‘I pay the busman. I take my ticket. The bus starts to move. And then I see him, through the window, running over road. He is nearly hit by car.’

Ben thought, Shame.

‘He does not catch the bus. But he sees me. I know this.’

They had reached another of those plateaus: everyone had shut up, and Jaime was allowed to move on with his story. There wasn’t silence, of course – the farmer had found a wife, and retreated to his den;
Ring-a-ring-a-roses
was circling the annexe now – but for the moment, it was just himself and Jaime.

‘And it wouldn’t have taken him long to work out where the bus was heading.’