(2005) Rat Run (60 page)

He had never forgotten the sight and sounds of the destruction of a fallen pack leader.

That evening they would be circling. Wolves would be abroad, would be coming near to a mansion in the Blankenese suburb, would be edging closer to casinoe and shops, bars and brothels in the Reeperbahn would be marching on more casinos and more shops more bars and more brothels in the Steindamm. He had done it himself. He, a leader of a wolf pack, had buried Germans and put Russians into the trunks of cars. Word would have spread. If it were tax evasion or the corruption of local officials, living from the rewards of vice or sex-trade trafficking, or involvement with an Islamic group for which he was

investigated, then his lawyer would have fought, tooth and claw, to win his freedom. But he was investigated for the peeling of live skin from his wife's body. Who would stand by him? Who would believe he could return to a pre-eminence of power? He saw wolves. Wolves were on a cell-block landing when he returned from exercise in the yard. Wolves moved into casinos and shops, bars and brothels. He seemed to feel the heat of wolves' breath and the smell of it -

because he had believed a lie. And they edged nearer and their teeth were bared.

Timo Rahman screamed.

He was not heard. The cell's walls closed around him.

A Europol advisory landed on Tony Johnson's desk.

He had his coat on and was preparing himself for the evening struggle on a commuter train when the clerk brought it to him. It already had a half-dozen sets of initials on it but - what else to expect in this perfect bloody world? - it would end with him and he was to field it . . . His eyes scanned the single page, and he gasped, shook, and flicked it into his in-tray for the next morning's attention. Then he punched the air.

For a detective sergeant with a reputation,

deserved, for carrying equally weighted chips on each of his shoulders and for spreading contagious gloomy defeatism wherever he walked, his stride down the corridor was emphatic with cheerful energy. That morning he had repeated his refrain at the weekly meeting of colleagues to hack at current problems that drugs and organized crime, and their effect on the great mass of the capital city's punters, were on the back-burner, ignored and victim to the swollen resources pushed at the War on Terror. At the ground-floor lobby, swiping his card, he blew a kiss at the lady on Reception, and saw the shock wobble on the face of the duty guard beside her.

He went out through the swing doors and on to the street, imagined he heard the guard's question, 'God, what's the matter with that miserable beggar?' and imagined he heard the lady's answer, 'Must be that he's got hot flushes, or he's on a bloody good promise, or it's the lottery.' What he could have told them was that a Europol advisory had reached his desk and stated that police in Hamburg had arrested the Albanian national, Timo Rahman, on charges of grievous bodily harm and wounding, and that officers on the case urgently requested co-operation from European colleagues on all links between Rahman and criminal organizations for immediate investigation while Rahman was in custody, and vulnerable

. . . What he could also have told them, on the reception desk, was that he had contributed - damned if he knew the detail of how - to the life of an untouchable going into the gutter.

On the pavement he turned heads as he laughed to himself like a maniac. 'You done us proud, Malachy. I hope you've a drink in your hand because that's what you deserve. You've done us proper proud - I hope it's a damn great drink and then another.'

Malachy had rainwater in his eyes, ears, nose, had it weighing down the clothes on his back and his legs.

He quartered ground, was inland from the highest dunes. He moved, alternately slow and fast. When he went slowly it was to listen, because he could see so little, and then he shook his head hard. His fingers went into his ears to gouge out the wet, but he heard only the wind's bluster and the pattering of the rain.

When he went fast, he held to what he believed was the line towards the source of the gunfire and often he thought he had lost it and that his instinct failed him.

Going fast, on a track, his shoes, with their worn tread, slid from under him.

He fell, went down. The breath squeezed out of his chest and his hands flailed. When they hit the mud it was not tackiness they found, but something slicked, wet, but not like mud. Malachy felt the surface of the path, realized its smoothness - as if mud had been pressed flat by a solid weight and then the slick had been left. He could not see more than the outline of his hands but there was darkness on his palms. He believed that it was blood and that the mud had been smoothed by a man's body. He thought, where he was, a wounded man had rested, then crawled forward. But Malachy did not follow the trail, and he tried again to find his line.

He came to the pond. A little of the reflection of the water shone back at him through the reeds. He saw, as a silhouette, the shape of the viewing platform where he had put his shoulder against a support post . . . In a crash of noise, and he froze, ducks fled - splashed, beat their wings, screamed - and he could smell the body of the old man, as he had done at the platform.

Malachy had warned her that it was a crime to involve others and risk hurting them. She had involved the old man, had picked at his isolation with honey words and pleading eyes, and he had been shot and crawled towards a refuge. She had rounded on him - what did he think she had done with him, if not involve him? He had said:
I'll pick up my own pieces.
He would. She - sweet girl, warm girl with a taste of sadness - did not own him; nor did those who controlled her.

In his mind, he adjusted the line.

He came to a hollow. He found a plastic bag caught on thorns and near it a Cellophane packet that would have held a shop-bought sandwich. Maybe it was because the cloud weakened in its density and a trickle of the moon's light came through, but small shapes gleamed and then their brightness died. He picked up three discarded cartridge cases. On his hands, on his knees, feeling with his fingers, he found the trail they had used and the indents in the mud.

Later, Malachy came to the first marker: a strip of cloth tied to a branch.

He wanted to stand bare-faced in front of a mirror with brilliant light shining on his skin and coming back from his eyes. He wanted, as he had not done for a year and a half, to examine that face and those eyes, to search for a truth and know himself again. He would not know himself until he had hounded down Ricky Capel on the beach ahead where the sea stampeded the waves . . . Then, not before, he would learn if he was a coward, and the word beat in his head as he went forward and looked for the next marker.

19 May 2004

The old man walking towards the sandbags at the gate was
hazed by the high sun.

On sentry duty with machine-gun, Baz had called for
Sergeant McQueen to come, double bloody quick time, to
Bravo's gate.

The old man came slowly on the raised road from the
village, hobbled forward and used a stick in his right hand
to ease his weight.

Scanning him with binoculars, Hamish McQueen had
called for the major to get, soonest, from the operations
bunker to the gate.

The old man was alone, wizened, and an SA 80 assault
rifle dangled from his left hand and against his thigh, half
hidden by his robe.

'Do I slot him, sir?' Baz asked, and his eye was against
the sight of the machine-gun, his finger flexed on the
trigger's guard.

'I don't think so, no.'

It was for the major, the commanding officer of Bravo
company, a moment of extreme inconvenience. His place
was in the bunker where his clerks had for him a mountain
of paper. He watched the old man and the rifle he carried
through the binoculars' growing clarity. In two hours he
was due to welcome to Bravo the advance force of the
infantry unit that would relieve them after their six-month
tour of duty. Like a hole in his skull, he needed the distraction of an old man coming to their main gate
... He
had
laid down that the relieving force would not find justification for even a damned small complaint at the state of the
camp left for them. The old man carried a weapon that was
not used by the ragtag fighters in his area of responsibility

- they had the AK47 and its variants - but had against his
leg a rifle that was exclusively used by British soldiers, the
SA
80. He checked that his interpreter was behind him, saw
Faisal leaning against the back of the sandbags, smoking.

The major prided himself that he was blessed with a nose
for danger. For the last week he had cut back on the company's patrolling, had reduced it to force protection -

guaranteeing the security of Bravo's perimeter - and had
withdrawn any troop movements from the village. He had
dreaded losing a Jock for nothing in the last hours of th
deployment, wanted all of them on the flight home to Briz
Norton. He sensed no danger.

On his belt was a service pistol, and he unclipped the
holster's flap. He told Baz, the machine-gunner, to cove
him, and asked that Hamish McQueen be at his side. He
waved for the interpreter to follow him. He walked down the
entry road to Bravo's gates, then strode briskly along
the road to meet the old man.

He ducked his head, smiled, and introduced himself
through his interpreter. The old man transferred the rifle
ponderously to his other hand, juggled it with his stick and
gave his name. He shook the major's fist with a good but
bony grip, then gave him the rifle. On its stock was the
reference number in white paint. He knew it. Every man in
the unit bloody knew it. A lost high-velocity weapon's
reference number had been dinned into the heads of every
Jock, NCO and officer who had been tasked for house
searches since the late-afternoon patrol of 13 January - its
recovery had been an unfulfilled priority. He gave it to his
sergeant for checking and making safe.

The interpreter murmured in his ear, 'The gentleman,
Mahmoud al-Ajouti, has heard that the British persons are
going back to their country and thought it correct this
weapon be returned... It is his apology that it has not been
done before.'

'Please tell Mr al-Ajouti that I am grateful.'

He remembered, with the clarity of yesterday and not of
three months before, what he had seen that day and what he
had been told, and the gist of what he had said: 'Put him
somewhere in isolation where he can't infect anyone else...

I don't know how you'd ever get shot of it, being called a
coward
... I can't imagine there's any way back.' The man
had been sitting on a chair outside the command bunker,
head hangdog, expressionless, silent. He had heard, from the
vine, that the man had been shipped home, but his failing
was talked of, still, in every mess and barrack room used by
the battalion.

'Would you ask Mr al-Ajouti in what circumstances the
rifle came into his possession?'

What he was told, through the hesitant voice of the interpreter, first confused the major, then rocked him.

'The soldiers came up the street where Mr al-Ajouti lives
above his place of business, a bakery shop. They knew,
everybody in the street knew, that an ambush was prepared,
was ready, for the next soldiers, the next patrol, to come on
the street. His son, his son is called Tariq. He had brought
heavy stones, football-sized stones, into the home above the
shop and had a window open enough to throw them down.

Mr al-Ajouti did not know of the stones and he was in the
back of his home with his wife and his younger children.

Tariq is the eldest of his children. He does not think blame
should be given to his son, Tariq, because all of the older
children in the village are encouraged by men of the Mehdi
army, followers of the imam, to hate soldiers - he regrets
that. A soldier stopped outside Mr al-Ajouti's shop. His son
told him afterwards, that is how he knows it, the soldier was
lying on the ground, and his son, that is Tariq, threw down
a stone and it hit the soldier's neck, which was not protected
by the edge of his helmet. The stone, the size of a football,
stunned the soldier - that is, he was made unconscious. It
was just after a grenade had been fired into the wall near the
window where Tariq was. His son - Mr al-Ajouti, at
the back, did not know this at that time - went down the
stairs and opened the door of the shop. He took the rifle and
took the stone back into the shop. The rifle, it was hidden
under his bed, and the stones he took to the yard at the rear
where they had come from, from a wall that had fallen. For
sixteen weeks the rifle was under his bed, because his son
was frightened of having taken it, and was frightened of
giving it to the Mehdi army. Yesterday,
Mr
al-Ajouti's wife
found the rifle. Yesterday he questioned his son. Yesterday
he found the truth, is certain it is the truth, of how the rifle
came to his son's room, and of how the soldier was made
senseless. He begs forgiveness for his son. He is ashamed for
what his son did. He begs it is not spoken of in the village,
his returning the rifle. If it is spoken, his life will be taken
by the Mehdi army. He hopes it is enough that he has
returned the rifle, that his son will not be punished. Later,
children came. They took the soldier's helmet and the coat
against bullets. It is the flak-jacket. Mr al Ajouti apologizes
for the action of his son. He wishes you well on your return
to Britain, to your families.'