The Dealer and the Dead (38 page)

Heads shook. There were no offers. A reason for her rapid advancement up promotion ladders was her ability to read a situation and judge an audience. ‘In summary, then, we do not have the resources here or locally to mount close protection on this man. He has been offered expert advice and relocation help and has – with stubborn consistency – refused it. So, as has been recommended and not disputed, he should be warned that after twenty-four hours an armed guard will be withdrawn.’

She breathed in hard. She might have taken the most momentous decision of her fast-track career. A reputation for being hands-off and avoiding responsibility for unpredicted events was in shreds. If a body bled from gunshot wounds on a pavement, a roadway, a drive or in a living room, she would be called to account.

‘Have it made plain to him that after a day and a night, the twenty-four hours, we are not beside, behind and in front of him. He’s on his own.’

Roscoe took the call. He said into his mobile, encrypted, ‘He’s along with the best for rude boorishness. About as unpleasant
as it comes, full of shit, but I’m thinking this is a show that’s being put on for me. Where am I now? On the coast path and we’re doing a scenic walk. The dog has just crapped and the sea looks fantastic and the whole place is a postcard. We’re bringing a horse back from a field. I don’t know why we went to collect it or where we’re taking it. I’m not in the loop and I’m unrated as a need-to-know friend. We don’t talk … Yes, fine, shoot it … I’m telling you, it’ll be a somewhat abrupt response. Twenty-four hours, yes? And the clock starts ticking when I tell him, yes? Is the plan that this staggering piece of information will knock him so far off kilter that he’ll be begging for protection? … Guv’nor, I don’t want to be a pooper but I’ll just get an earful … No, guv’nor, I’m fine, and it’ll be done.’

He put the mobile back in his pocket.

They turned off the coast path into the lane. The hoofs rattled and Gillot hadn’t turned, seemed to have forgotten Roscoe was there.

Ahead was the car, Suzie beside it and Bill behind. In front of it was a woman, a huge bag slung over a shoulder. Quite a good-looking woman, but not dressed for the coastal path or for an office: casual clothes that tried to make a statement and … She was burrowing in the bag. He thought it peculiar that neither Suzie nor Bill had reacted.

Roscoe flicked back the jacket by the top button and the weight of the keys in his pocket took it far enough not to snag him as he reached for the Glock. She brought out a bullhorn – not an RPG-7, a Kalashnikov or a Baikal firing 9mm soft-nose bullets. He was confused. He didn’t understand why Suzie and Bill hadn’t gone for their weapons. He didn’t think Harvey Gillot had noticed her.

It came with a blast, as if the volume was tweaked up.

‘Harvey Gillot is a merchant of death … Harvey Gillot is a merchant of death … Harvey Gillot is a merchant of death …’

Could have woken the dead in the chapel’s ruined graveyard.

Megs Behan shouted, ‘On Harvey Gillot’s hands is children’s
blood … On Harvey Gillot’s hands is children’s blood … On Harvey Gillot’s hands is children’s blood …’

She gagged for breath. She had been on picket lines, her hips pressed hard into crash barriers by the weight of bodies behind her, and she had bawled the same slogans. Different: then there had been a cacophony of sound in her ears and around her the true believers.

‘Harvey Gillot, trader in misery … Harvey Gillot, trader in misery … Harvey Gillot, trader in misery …’ She was level with him, might have been five or six feet from him. The horse he was leading shied and he hung on to the rope fastened to its head-collar. The dog should have lunged for her – maybe it was deaf because its tail wagged and its tongue hung from its mouth in a lather of saliva. When she was shouting, she heard the perky little cries of songbirds, the wind in the trees above the lane and, distantly, the rush of broken waves on rocks, stones, whatever was there.

‘Shame on you, Harvey Gillot, killer of babies … Shame on you, Harvey Gillot, killer of babies … Shame on you, Harvey Gillot, killer of babies …’

She had arrived, had parked her bag by her ankles. She had gazed, mystified, at the clothes draped over the gates and the piled suitcases. It had been later than she had intended, but the delayed train was followed by a cancelled bus, then a traffic snarl after a road accident. A little of her enthusiasm had dribbled away and she was hungry, thirsty, tired and in need of a shower. She had rung the bell at the gates, and had not been answered.

Then the girl had wandered to her from the car, had flashed the ID card and asked what business brought her here. She had expected then to be given the boot. With defiance, she had been chattering about ‘legal and peaceful protest’ and the ‘rights of the individual on a public highway’. The policewoman had grimaced and her lips had moved in near silence – she might have said: ‘Please yourself, sunshine, the stage is yours.’ The guy, big, heavy built, sweating rivers, had called across the road that Gillot had taken the dog for a walk.

The police attitude further flustered her – they were, from everything she rated sacred, in alliance with the dealers in death. She had asked, of course, why the clothing was on the gate, smart jackets and dresses and blouses and coats – far beyond her range and inclinations but it might have suited her two sisters-in-law. There had been grim smiles, and she had not been enlightened. So, she had steeled herself and waited, and had heard the rhythmic beat of a horse’s hoofs. She had seen him … filthy, looked as if he had slept in those clothes, lost his razor … looked pretty bloody ordinary, or like a derelict from Hackney, Pentonville or the Caledonian Road. Now he stared at her, as if she had come from under a stone. She lifted the bullhorn. ‘Harvey Gillot, dealer in murder,
guilty …
Harvey Gillot, dealer in murder,
guilty …
Harvey Gillot, dealer in murder,
guilty …’
She hammered it into his face, but he didn’t blink. The horse strained and the dog sniffed her jeans. She felt anger rising because she had won no response. Felt cheated, too, that the police had not intervened to protect him, and short-changed because there was no crowd at her back and her denunciations had gained no audience. She was asked her name.

She spat it at him, and that of the organisation she was proud to belong to.

His voice was calm, as if emotion had drained away through a muslin cloth. ‘Right, Miss Behan, where you fit into this game, I haven’t a clue, but probably nowhere. It’s a bad day for me. My wife has left home after eighteen years of partially successful marriage and will be back shortly to collect her stuff. She has left home because I accused her of getting herself fucked by our jobbing gardener, and also because …’

She drowned him, full volume: ‘Harvey Gillot, merchant of death … Harvey Gillot, killer of babies … Harvey Gillot, trader in misery … Harvey Gillot, dealer in …’

It was a fast, short jab from a stubby fist. It was not aimed at her face but at the side of the bullhorn. The blow was strong enough to break her grip. It would have been a triumph, major proportions, if the fist had caught her chin, lip or teeth, but she
was denied it. The bullhorn fell on the lane, bounced, settled in nettles. She saw that the police had straightened and knew none would intervene in defence of a dropped bullhorn.

Still quiet, still a voice that sounded reasonable: ‘My wife was fucking the gardener, which was one reason she thought it right to leave home, but she wanted to go, too, because my life is now out to tender. Got me, Miss Behan? There’s a contract and a man’s been hired to do the business, which is to kill me. Simple enough for you, Miss Behan? To shoot me. He tried this morning while I took out the dog and my wife did the foreplay with the gardener. Tried and failed. Sorry and all that, Miss Behan. I expect it would have made your day to get down here and find police tape and a tent with my feet sticking out under the side, half the world’s snappers and me cold, stiff and dead. He fired twice and missed twice. Bad luck for you, Miss Behan.’

She didn’t bend to pick it up. Her voice was almost reedy – pretty pathetic without the amplification, but she cupped her hands over her lips for the megaphone effect. ‘Harvey Gillot, merchant – trader – dealer in death – misery …’

‘Do us all a favour. Go down to the beach and keep walking.’

‘You are a dealer in evil, a purveyor of destruction, you are—’

‘A man came here, to my home, and waited outside my gates. He had a pistol, I thought it a Baikal 9mm – a conversion job. It starts off as a tear-gas gun on the same lines as the Makharov. The conversion is done in Lithuania, and he’d have used soft-nose bullets – that’s dumdum – and he was at point-blank range. I was half on the ground and a wasp went up his nose. He missed twice. You’re small beer, Miss Behan, less important to me than the wasp. You want to stand out here, make an idiot of yourself, do it. See if anyone notices you, Miss Behan, and I doubt they will. For me, getting shot at is higher up the ladder of my concerns than you are. You’re not even on the first rung.’

She remembered.

He led the horse away from her and the dog gambolled at his side. The policeman who must have walked with him hurried past her and chased Gillot towards the gates.

She remembered. A phone call: her hammering the keyboard, stressed at the press-release deadline.
Harvey Gillot … I’m a freelancer … Have you an address for him to get me started?
Remembered it well. No contact name or number. Excuse enough that she had been busy?

She shouted, ‘Dealer in death … Harvey Gillot … Trader in misery … Harvey Gillot … Blood on your hands … Harvey Gillot.’

The gates closed on them. Her throat was hoarse.

She didn’t know what a Baikal pistol looked like or, indeed, whether a bullet wound in a body was clean or messy, bloody or of geometric precision. To bring purpose to her life she must crouch, put her hands on the bullhorn, lift it and use it …

Roscoe said, ‘We’re prepared to give you twenty-four hours, Mr Gillot, to put your affairs into some sort of order and then to move out.’

‘Have we not had this conversation?’

‘You will have protection for that number of hours – they’ve started – and then protection will be withdrawn.’

‘Am I permitted to comment?’

‘Why not?’

The woman was on the bullhorn, as repetitive and tedious as before, and as lightweight. Roscoe would have admired a silent protest, one without the bucketload of cliché. He had done enough public-order events before he went to CID and then the Flying Squad to recognise that most protesters were brimful of passion and ideology, just short of good scriptwriters. He had no objection to her being where she was, only wished she’d freshen up her text.

‘It’s bullshit.’

‘That’s neither sensible, sir, nor rational.’

‘Bullshit, and that’s polite.’

He didn’t argue. He supposed he should relay what the Gold Group had passed down. He, Suzie and Bill would do relays of sleep and observation from the car. He looked at his wristwatch.
Twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes remained. He wondered if an officer with greater seniority would arrive to read a Riot Act towards the end, but thought it unlikely. He would have liked to say, ‘From our brief acquaintance, Mr Gillot, I see you as a man of stubbornness and rudeness, without decency, manners or concern for others. Your money is earned from a trade that most right-minded folk would regard as disgusting, bordering on immoral. Don’t expect me to volunteer for duty standing in front of you … and if you’re going to get yourself shot, would you please ascertain that I’m off duty at the time. Not on my watch.’ He didn’t say it.

His tone tried to placate: ‘You leave us with very little option but to—’

‘If my wife comes you can help her with the clothes and tell her that her junk’s in the boxes. The horse will be inside the gate and hopefully it’ll find a good feed off the roses. Thank you, but no. I can manage her boxes.’

The gate was opened – a winter coat and a summer jacket fell from their hangers – the horse was taken inside, let loose, and the dog ran towards the house. Its movement activated the security lights. Roscoe couldn’t recall when he had hated a job as much as this one. Chrissie used to say it would take bubonic plague to keep him off work. Gillot carried a cardboard box through the gates, the size a house-removal company would use. When he dumped it, Roscoe heard china break. The woman, Megs Behan, was still bawling her message. A second box was brought out and put down heavily. He would have liked to say, ‘I tell you, Mr Gillot, it’s not easy to be lucky every time … and you as a broker in weapons will know what they do to the human body. That they don’t kill as prettily as the films would have us believe. It hurts and it’s ugly – as you’ll find out if you stop being lucky. But I’m sure you know all that, Mr Gillot.’ He waited till Gillot was pulling shut the gates. ‘We’ll see you in the morning, sir.’

The man smiled, did it well.

*

‘A good day, dear?’

‘Not bad, thank you.’

‘Drunk too much?’

‘Some, but not too much.’

It was a ritual. Deirdre had driven the Land Rover from their home to Shrewsbury station and met Benjie off the train. She asked the same questions as she pulled out of the forecourt and received the same answers, then moved on to the business particular to that day. The hip: what was the verdict? ‘Not too bad, quite a good prognosis.’

The visit to the Monstrosity – as she always called VBX – had that been satisfactory? ‘Alastair’s done very well and sends regards. He’ll go a long way. He told me the story, and the opinion is that our sad asset is now in considerable manure. Sort of business where the past comes along fast in the outside lane when least expected. He’s not going to have protection.’

And Denys Foster, the lunch guest, had he been able to oil the waters? ‘I think so. Yes, he did. We talked of Blowback – something exploding in your face. And then we did a bit of Old Testament, “They sow the wind, They shall reap the whirlwind”, and I think Denys stiffened my spine quite successfully. He told me what I should tell Gillot … I’ll call him in the morning.’