Vagabond (31 page)

Bentinick mouthed: ‘There’s no traffic. Let the dog go.’

The spaniel, a roan, was across the road and sprinted. Bentinick called it – didn’t stand a chance. The spaniel charged at the other dogs, then danced round them on the pavement. They joined in and their leads were round the man’s legs.

‘He’s Timofey Simonov, there so his shin’s measured,’ Bentinick pushed himself up.

Another man was behind Simonov.

The spook murmured, ‘That’s a former brigadier of GRU, Nikolai Denisov, his chauffeur, butler and bodyguard, with a legally held firearm, I fancy he’s carrying it now. He was once considered a formidable opponent but, as they say, nothing is for ever. He’s a sort of trained chimpanzee now.’

Danny watched. Bentinick was across the street, scrabbling for the loose lead, spinning it out, close to a high-value target. Nothing more natural than a bumbling Englishman, incapable even of catching his dog. It lay down, seemed to know the part it was playing. Danny heard Bentinick ask the ages of the dogs that licked at the spaniel and pranced round it. He heard him praise their fine coats and excellent condition. Danny didn’t need to be closer. He could see the man, each wart and blemish on his face, his build and the slouch of his shoulders. Then not overstaying his minimal welcome, Bentinick had the lead and had pulled the spaniel to heel, made an apology and was back across the road, the spook tailing him but inside of the target’s eyeline. Danny Curnow understood that a sighting far outweighed the value of photographs.

Bentinick and the spook returned, neither glancing back at the two men going up the hill with the dogs, then turning into a side alley and disappearing.

They reached Danny. Bentinick asked, ‘What do you think?’

‘Insignificant. Ordinary enough.’

‘They don’t get to live in a home like that on charity handouts. Don’t undersell.’

And that was it. Back to the car park. He locked the memory of the two men’s faces into his mind. They were often like that, insignificant and ordinary, and he had seen enough of them in his time, enemies and assets. Bent in the back and with a pale, pinched face, no indication of the brains required to put together a personal portfolio that might hit a half-billion American dollars. It had begun, in Danny Curnow’s mind, to take shape, and he understood the role, valued, that Malachy Riordan had been awarded. The spaniel was dropped off, then the spook drove away fast. He had a plane to catch.

Malachy Riordan woke up. It was extraordinary that he had slept. He stretched and yawned, then felt the ache in his stomach.

After he’d been dropped, he had used the map to cross the city. He had been through smart and cheap residential areas, then the business quarter and the tourist sector, where the big squares were and the monuments. He had gone on past the railway station, quiet and shut down, then the darkened bus terminus. He had paused every two or three hundred yards to check the map, and if he had gone wrong he had doubled back. The porter had giggled when he had asked for the red-light district where the girls could be found. He passed girls on the streets, and their pimps. He hadn’t been with another woman since he’d married Bridie – these girls frightened him and he pretended not to hear them as they called to him. There was a cross on the map for the street the porter had suggested. He had reached Prokopovo Square, and had seen the turning. He could have chosen six or seven hotels or guesthouses. He could not have said why he had chosen this one. He had beaten on the door, fist clenched, until a guy had opened it, half dressed, foul-tempered. How many nights? He had paid for four, with an additional fifty euros, and had not been asked for identification. He had climbed three flights, stripped and slipped into the bed, between sheets that lacked crispness. It was where he wanted to be.

His mind had churned: the journey and the future. He had tossed and turned: the driver and his contempt, the girl in the hotel lobby, her flustered anxiety as she waited. A couple had begun above him. When they had finished, another pair started across the corridor and the woman squealed.

There was a cubicle with a toilet and a shower that he needed to contort himself to get into. The water dribbled. He had only gone to sleep when exhaustion had cleared the worries from his mind. He could not be followed and found here.

When he was dressed, Malachy Riordan went down the stairs, with his bag, leaving nothing personal behind. There was a breakfast room. A couple were bickering in German. He went to the desk. His story was that his mobile’s battery was flat. He asked to borrow a phone. A drawer was opened that held a dozen, or more, and the man gestured for him to take his pick.

He rang the girl. He had the map in front of him and told her where to be and at what time. She might have wanted a conversation, but he rang off.

He handed over another note, was rewarded with a smile, and pocketed the mobile.

He went out into bright sunlight. Later he would find a bar with satellite TV and learn of the death of a policeman. The warmth felt good on his skin.

A core had stayed on, three cars.

They moved late.

Pearse’s idea was that they could get it done in darkness by touch.

A wet grey morning had replaced a wet black night.

Twice they had been about to leave the trees to crawl across the field and down the last part of the hedge to the gate where the device was laid. Each time, the door had opened, people had come out and there had been shouting and laughter. Kevin said that it was because they’d been at the whiskey. The three had gone, no more cars. But the O’Kanes didn’t sleep in. He was outside early with the dog and his first fag, and she brought black bags out of the back door to stack them around the wheelie-bin. There was a mist over the grass.

Pearse had said that the caterers would be back early to clear up and shift the stuff they’d left overnight, and Kevin couldn’t deny it. Then Kevin had said they might leave the thing in the hedge till that evening and come back for it at next dusk, but Pearse had disagreed: they’d get the thing now.

They began the crawl across the field, both already sodden. Pearse knew it was no different for Kevin, that they shared the hunger and thirst, the weakness and exhaustion.

Then, Christ, they had some luck and perhaps they were owed it.

There must have been places on the lane where anyone looking from a car window would have seen the two of them, in the crap camouflage tunics, crawling through the cow muck and thistles. But no one did. More luck: no one came out of the O’Kane house – if they had stood on the raised step by the door and gazed towards the big lough, they would have seen the kids.

They went fast on their knees and elbows. Pearse led, and Kevin was breathing like an old pig. Was Kevin all right? He mumbled that he was.

They made the hedge, leaving a trail of bent grass. He would have liked to take out the cable, maybe a full hundred metres of it. A sprig of the hedge caught his cheek and ripped it. He wiped it with his hand and saw blood on his fingers. He had forgotten to do the proper clear-up search of where they had been in the trees. They might have left a sweet paper or a bus ticket. For that, he reckoned, Malachy Riordan could have trashed his balls. Through the hedge he could see the gatepost, and the light now was strong enough for the lamp on it to have been switched off. More worry: their car was parked where it could be seen from the road. It was a good enough place when it was dark, but not in daylight. They needed to get the job done fast and be gone.

They’d half buried it and couldn’t find it. He felt a pinch and turned.

‘What you doing?’ Kevin hissed.

‘Looking for the fuckin’ thing, what else?’

‘Can’t you see it?’

‘If I could, I’d have it, you eejit, wouldn’t I?’

He found the can. He had his hand on it. He groped for the end where they had connected, last evening, the cable to the maroon charge that activated the detonator. He found the contact point and eased the can back. He reached for the connection and remembered that it had taken effort to slot it. Again he felt the pinch.

‘For fuck’s sake, Kevin, what you think—’

He twisted round. Kevin didn’t speak but held up the cable close to where it had been cut. Cut. Not ripped apart by a fox or gnawed through by rats, but cut, left with clean, not frayed edges. Kevin gaped at him. Pearse understood that they had been touted: the weapon had never been live so no plug of molten copper would have hit the car driven by the policeman or his wife. The urine ran hot over his thighs and he was shaking. His hands were stiff, the fingers unresponsive. He felt the scream well in his throat. He dropped the can. He snatched at it, missed and—

He would not have heard the crows rise and scream. Neither would Kevin. They would not have seen the smoke that hazed over them.

‘It wasn’t very good.’

She had come to his door. He was mostly dressed, using an electric shaver and sitting by the window.

Ralph Exton mimicked her: ‘What “wasn’t very good”?’

Gaby paced, her hands fidgeting. He saw how stressed she was and that she could barely control her temper. He knew how to play it.

‘Don’t mess me about, Ralph. I’m not in the mood.’

‘Serious stuff.’

Fight back, deflect and provoke. He knew the big card he would play. Trouble was, she was a lovely kid. He fancied her and it might have been mutual. He reckoned it was time to hit hard.

‘I want answers, sensible ones. Has it crossed your mind that I’m trying to protect you as well as myself?’

‘I tell you as much as I know.’

‘Ralph, are you being honest with me? Because if you’re not, I’ve got a big problem.’

‘Can I tell you something?’

She softened. ‘Shoot.’

He thought Gaby Davies had a lovely throat, but he went for it. She was, he reckoned, the least of his problems. So reasonable and calm.

‘You weren’t there. Where were you? With that snivelling creature you brought to Ireland? You weren’t there when they switched the fucking drill on. You know what happens to bodily functions if the sphincter muscle goes slack? There was a drill in front of my face. Where were you? Did you have a “big problem”? Not as big as mine was.’

‘I’m right with you.’

‘Yes.’

She’d backed off. He’d thought she would. A nice girl, but no match for a decent shite like Ralph Exton. Nothing decent about Timofey Simonov, whose reach probably spanned continents.

He put on his saddened look, as if she had hurt him with her disbelief. She touched his arm. He let himself slump, a man reeling under the strain.

Gaby said, ‘We’re on the same side.’

‘Yes.’

On his screen, in his study on the first floor, with his dogs beside him, Timofey Simonov could check again the house to the south-west of London. Not that the image was recent – in fact, the satellite camera had recorded the picture on a clear winter’s day when the trees had lost their foliage. But he could see the house and the gardens at the front, rear and side, and could make out the raised ground further to the west, where, he assumed, the marksman awaited an opportunity.

It was raining. On his screen, there were lawns around the house, and paths and places where a man might sit – as Timofey did in high summer – but not in the rain. He cursed. He had taken money, given assurances, but the contract had not been fulfilled – and it was raining.

Timofey Simonov’s marksman waited. He was now on his third day in the country. He had found a good place with a clear view of the back lawn and the patio. There had been days in the snipers’ nests overlooking Sarajevo when the autumn mist had settled in the valley below and he had struggled to find a target. Some days he had fired at anyone who moved, not calculating whether or not a target had military significance or was a grandmother struggling with a plastic bag of wood and any food she had found.

He was close to a path used by dog-walkers, cyclists and school-kids. He was well concealed, away from the path, and protected in the cavern left by the roots of a fallen tree, but too many people were too close – and his hire car had been parked for too long in the same place. It was unsatisfactory. But he held his position, was obliged to.

There were puddles on the patio, alive with ripples. The man would not come out in the driving rain. The marksman needed to do well. He was in a competitive market. The trade, whether it involved a sniper, a bomb-laying under a car, a knifing or a close-quarters pistol shooting, was saturated. Too many kids coming from his own Serbo-Croat background and from Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and Moldova for too little work. And the way to further work was not to complain that a job couldn’t be done, when money had been paid up front, because it was raining. He stayed in place, waited and watched. Sometimes dogs came close but the wet must have deadened his smell. He was not aware of any crime his target had committed. The men and women on the streets of Sarajevo – with rifles or shopping bags – had been guilty of nothing that he knew of.