The Untouchable (36 page)

'He's under surveillance. He's targeted with an audio device. That's heavy . . . I didn't expect that -

not here, anyway. You're close to him, much closer than me - surely you need to know what action he's taking.'

'I wouldn't ask and I wouldn't listen if I were told, it's called "accessory before the fact" or it's "accessory after the fact", depending - I don't need that. As a legal professional, my advice to you is to maintain a similar indifference.'

'It's not going well, is it?'

'What do you think? Good night.'

Mister had switched from the lorries and their trade to the wider horizons. He was above the small, confined world of London. He was going to an international stage. Electronically moved monies went too fast to be tracked. Commodities were needed on the global scale, and would be paid for without the petty restrictions of Value Added Tax and levied Customs duties. The vision was of a centre controlling a network of assets. The centre was Untouchable.

Napoleon had said, 'The bullet that is to kill me has not yet been moulded.' Atkins had remembered the quotation, and been frightened. Mister talked of power, talked with arrogance, and neither he nor the Eagle dared contradict him. It wasn't going well and Mister didn't recognize it. He was a messiah but had only the Eagle and Atkins with him to play his disciples.

Atkins ordered another beer, swallowed it, and ordered another.

Joey said, 'She was hysterical, she couldn't put a sentence together, she was gone.'

Maggie was wiping sleep dust from her eyes. 'Start it again - start it all over again.'

'When she opened the box there was a plastic bag in it. On top of the box was a piece of paper. Written on it was my name, the room number, and the hotel's phone, even the international dialling code for Sarajevo.'

Maggie pushed herself up in her bed. She was hunched with her knees against her chest. He had been banging, frantic, at her door.

'In the plastic bag?'

'Her cat.'

'Oh, God. Tell me, come on.'

'The cat's called Walter.'

'Fuck its name - what had they done to it?'

'They must have caught it in the garden. It had only just gone out, it's a hunter. It goes out and—'

'Spare me the soundbites.'

'She loves the cat, the cat is—''

'We all love cats. Everyone loves cats, except dogs.

What had they done to the cat?'

He sat on the end of the bed. She had draped a blanket over her shoulders. She noted, at that moment, a calm came to him. The choke in his throat was gone. There was no longer any emotion in his voice.

'She took the plastic bag out of the box and opened it. Her cat was in the bag. I don't know which they had done first. They had cut its head off and also sliced its stomach so its bowels were hanging out. She opened the bag and its entrails and blood went over her hall floor. The blood was still warm, and so was the cat's body. They knew who she was. She's a teacher, she's just my girlfriend, for fuck's sake. If they'd killed Jen, then I'd just have felt blind bloody anger and they'd have known - he would have known that I'd have gone to the end of the earth to follow him. He enjoys inflicting pain. This is all about pain, not about elimination. She will never forget her cat was killed because of me, what I do - he'll have broken us. She was yelling for me to come back, first flight. She said that Packer wasn't worth it. It's how he destroys people . . . Jen's never been to the Custom House, she doesn't do the socials there with me, nobody's ever heard of her - how did he know about Jen?'

'Have you rung her from here?'

'On the first evening, when we'd just checked in, I—'

'On the room phone?'

Joey nodded. It hurt too much to admit the responsibility out loud. His head dropped. She didn't sneer at him, didn't hit him with sarcasm.

'Where is she now?'

He said, 'I told her to go to a friend's house, ring school in the morning, and stay away sick.'

'Has she spoken to the police? Can't she get protection?'

'I told her not to speak to the police, and not to ring the Church.'

'How did you explain that?'

'Gave her some crap about informers, touts - about leaking sieves, shit about not knowing who you can trust. She wasn't thinking straight enough to argue.'

She took his hand. 'Why did you do that, Joey?

Why did you tell her not to ring the police or your people at the Custom House?'

'They'd call me home,' Joey said simply He let her hold his hand. 'If they knew I'd showed out and that I was identified by name, they'd call me home.'

'You'd better sleep in here with me, but you're on the floor.'

She threw him a blanket and watched him settle on the carpet. She switched the light out.

Chapter Eleven

They were getting out of the car, off the main road, in front of steel-shuttered gates, when the klaxon sounded behind them. The lorry had slowed but kept going.

Mister turned, saw Bosnia with Love on the side, and the Eel in the cab waving to him, before the lorry accelerated away down Bulevar Mese Selimovica, going away from the city. He waved back. It was the last time that the lorry would return to London empty.

The next time the lorry rolled for the frontier it would be carrying 'product'; this time it carried, in a pouch fastened to the base of the driver's seat, a short, affectionate letter to the Princess, and instructions to young Sol for the transfer of monies from a Cayman account to a Cypriot bank in Nicosia.

For a moment, deep inside himself and hidden from the Eagle and from Serif, he felt a small sensation of loneliness. For that moment he almost wished himself into the cab beside the Eel and going home to what was familiar.

They walked to the gate and one of Serif's men produced the keys that unfastened a rusting padlock. The heavy chain was freed, and the gates scraped open. It would be his Sarajevo base, the site from which he would launch his new career. It was the heart of Mister's grand design. He was told that it had once been the transport headquarters of the nationalized electricity company. He stepped through the gate after Serif, followed by the Eagle, then looked around him.

The compound was enclosed by high walls that were concrete rendered except where shell fire had hit them. The holes were filled with crudely placed cement blocks or sheets of old corrugated iron. The walls were topped with weathered coils of barbed wire. They were high enough, and the surrounding buildings low enough, to prevent the compound being overlooked. There were three steel-sided warehouses at the far end, and a small brick shed. The warehouses had been burned out and were charred black, but the shed had survived without a direct hit.

Rough repairs had been made, enough to proof the roofing against the weather and seal the sides. To the right side of the compound there was a mountain of wrecked vehicles, as if they had been bulldozed together after the artillery and the fires had destroyed them. Rubble, debris, glass shards were scattered through the compound and Mister's feet crunched as he walked towards the shed. It would be his place.

There was a louder, abrasive crushing behind him, and he turned to see Atkins drive into the yard. He was at the wheel of the replacement four-wheel drive, a white Mitsubishi. It was more thousands of marks of outlay, a minor investment against what he would accrue when the lorries rolled home with the

'product' on board. Glass slivers and little showers of concrete spat from under the wheels. Atkins hurried to catch him.

He was led to the first warehouse. When the hatch door was pulled open he stared inside and blinked. As far as he could see were stacked boxes: every Japanese manufacturer's televisions, stereos and videos. The second warehouse was filled half with wheat, barley and flour sacks, and half with plastic racks of women's clothes. The third was empty. He noted the ramp for vehicle repair. It would have been the electricity company's maintenance workshop. One of the men came to Serif and whispered in his ear, pointed to the gate, and was dismissed.

The location was right, the facilities were right, but it was not Mister's way to show enthusiasm.

Serif eyed him, as if waiting for the opportunity to state something of importance, but holding back for a better moment. Fuck him, he thought. They went to the shed. Coffee was made. A radio played local music. An electric fire made a fuggy heat. He took off his jacket, and so did Atkins. Neither carried a firearm, but he noted that Serif kept his jacket on. He spoke of the arrangements he had made for the transfer of monies, because the deal was signed and the contract agreed. The statement of importance from Serif, when it came, was a question that surprised him.

'You were followed in Sarajevo, you were tracked, who . . . ?'

'I said I'd deal with it - I have dealt with it.'

'Who followed you, from what agency?'

'One man from Customs in UK. It's not a problem, I dealt with it.'

'What does "dealt with it" mean?'

'They'll pull back, ship out. You can forget it.'

'My question that concerns me: can the Customs in UK send a man to Sarajevo and track you without notifying the authorities here? Is permission not required?'

Mister turned to the Eagle. 'What's the position when they operate abroad?'

The Eagle said, 'It's quite clearly laid down.

Couldn't just come in here like tourists and operate clandestinely. That would be cowboy. They would require written authorization in Sarajevo from a government minister or a senior official or a judge.'

Mister thought it was the answer Serif expected.

There was a silence round them. Words moved sound-lessly on Serif's lips, as if names flicked on to and off his tongue, as if his mind turned over a list. His head went up and he stared at the ceiling as he pondered.

He must believe he owns, Mister thought, all the ministers in the city, all the officials with influence, and all the judges of importance - except one.

Abruptly Serif cracked his fingers as if by elimination he had decided which of them he did not own .. .

Then he threw the bomb.

'You said you would deal with it, had dealt - but you are still tracked, followed.'

Mister merely rolled his eyes, raised an eyebrow, queried it. Serif put down his coffee cup, went to the shed door and beckoned. Mister followed him. The Eagle and Atkins scraped back their chairs and made to go with him but he waved them back. They walked across the compound. The red mist played in his mind but he smiled, as if the matter was of no consequence.

He felt rare, raw anger. They reached the closed gate.

In the steel plate, at a man's eye height, was a hole the size of a large screw's head. Serif had to strain up on his toes to peer through it, then backed away. He stood aside. Mister bent his head slightly, looked through the hole and up the rutted street leading from the compound to the main road. He saw the traffic -

buses, lorries, vans, cars, jeeps - on the Bulevar Mese Selimovica's eight lanes. He saw the pedestrians on both pavements going slowly against the wind. He saw tower blocks beyond the road.

He saw him . . . He saw Joey Cann.

Cann was sitting on a concrete rubbish bin where the street joined the road and seemed to shiver as the wind that funnelled down the road snatched at his anorak and his hair. Mister watched him take off his spectacles, wipe them hard on a handkerchief, then replace them . . . There should have been telephone calls from bright-lit rooms in the Custom House, in the small hours of the night, from the high men of the Church to the hotel. Calls should have been pumped through the switchboard of the hotel by the clerk who had eased money into his hip pocket.

The high men should have ordered Joey Cann to pull out, quit, run. There should have been packed bags, empty rooms, and a stampede for the airport.

But Cann sat on the rubbish bin and did not even make a pretence of concealment. Mister backed away from the spyhole. He smiled again but his nails dug into his soft palms and his knuckles were white, bloodless, with the effort of it. He went back towards the shed. Among those who knew him, the few who were close enough to watch, it was unthinkable for Mister to act when his temper was shredded. Rules he lived by were seldom broken. At the shed door Serif took his arm. 'What will you do?'

'I will deal with it myself.'

'It is what you said before.'

'Myself. I don't want, need, help. Ourselves Mister pulled open the shed door. He waved, a short, chopped gesture, for the Eagle and Atkins. He led them away into the yard. As he said what they would do, his finger jabbed in emphasis. The spittle from his fury bounced on Atkins's face and the Eagle's. It was personal, an insult. He would not turn the cheek to an insult, never had.

'Sounds to me as if that's not in your bloody precious manual,' Maggie had said.

She was parked up off the road. Except when high-sided lorries went by she could see him. He was so small. He sat on the rubbish bin and his legs were too short for his feet to rest on the pavement. He seemed to blanch in the wind that carried sheets of newspaper and empty packets up the pavement and the road around him. He had stepped over an undrawn line, and she'd told him that. He hadn't listened, but had slipped away from the van when she'd parked and walked back to the junction of the road and the street leading down to a warehouse complex, and he'd jerked himself up onto the rubbish bin. She had the camera on him, at that range a tiny blurred figu re, and she had the tape running on a loop . . . She saw Joey ease himself off his perch. He walked away from it carelessly, back towards her. When he looked behind him, every dozen strides, the wind lifted his hair, pulled it up to the roots, which made him look younger, and without protection. She'd seen the Mitsubishi turn into the street, driven by the former soldier, as Joey would have done. He'd been loitering then, but almost immediately afterwards he had taken to the perch on the rubbish bin. He'd have moved because the gates were opening and started his walk away up the pavement towards her. But it wasn't the Mitsubishi that appeared from the street and waited to join the traffic, it was Target One. To her, he seemed a small, insignificant figure, hunched in his overcoat.