The Outsiders (20 page)

It was ‘get a life or get a plane’.

The music boomed and the lights flickered across the floor. Posie danced and Jonno took her lead.

She’d giggled, like a schoolgirl, and said they were hookers. He’d said in her ear that the men wore jackets to hide the armpit bulges.

They’d had the big talk at Villa Paraiso: they could either walk out of Paradise – leave the cat to fend for itself – put the key back under the pot by the front door, go to Málaga International on the bus, fly home and text their gang. Or they could hang on in there put their glad rags on, and party. With the alternatives laid out on the table, it had not seemed like a big decision.

Posie wouldn’t let him off the floor. ‘Only Girl in the World’ from Rihanna. The floor had been empty when she’d started, and he’d felt self-conscious at them being alone, and nervous of making an exhibition of himself, but a few others had joined them now. Jonno had never heard gunfire before at close quarters and didn’t know of any friend who had either. No one he knew had been flat on his face, shielding his girlfriend, when a gunman had used his shoulder as a springboard. And no one he’d ever met had seen the owner of a neighbouring property sitting on a chair by a pool and holding an assault rifle.

Now, like an anthem for them, ‘I Got a Feeling’, the Black Eyed Peas. They’d dance until they dropped.

7

It was past one when Jonno and Posie, arm in arm, had gone back to the car. At home they’d found a radio station on a seventies music centre, eaten what was in the fridge and opened some wine.

The radio station had kicked in with Lady Gaga’s ‘Alejandro’. They’d pushed back the chintz-covered sofa and an armchair, moved the coffee-table and rolled up the rug. The floor round it had been polished, but underneath it there were raw boards. He’d dumped his trainers and her sandals were gone, and they’d danced some more.

They’d danced until the bottle was empty, and the station had switched to operetta, then gone to bed and giggled a bit. The world was a good place and they were drunk. Jonno had gone to sleep first, then Posie. The curtains had not been drawn so the sunlight had bathed them from dawn, but they’d slept late.

Jonno faced the world before she did.

He had a shower, wrapped a towel round his waist, walked a bit in the garden and looked for the path up the cliff but couldn’t see it from the back of the bungalow. He realised again how well hidden it was. He went inside to do the decent thing by Posie.

Eggs, scrambled, toast with local marmalade. Coffee. He found the tray, which had a Cotswold cottage garden flaking from it, and the towel fell off him. He replaced it with an apron that bore the decorative motif of a Phantom fighter bomber. He took the tray into the bedroom. She was awake, must have heard him whistling ‘Alejandro,’ sitting up and hadn’t bothered to cover herself. Good.

He said, ‘There are some things, Posie, that I’m prepared to be flexible about, but not all. This is not negotiable. We’re going back to that club tonight, and we’re going to have another bloody night out.’

She nodded.

The wheels hit the runway and Winnie mouthed, ‘God, I hate this.’

Dottie said, ‘That was a good one, Boss.’

They had left before dawn. She appreciated that it had been an intrusive visit to the Fenbys but had ploughed on with it. Winnie Monks was not one to back off a pre-ordained course. It had been necessary to tell the couple that the hunt for their son’s killer had moved forward. Where it had gone to and what had shifted it were not for sharing: once she had let slip that it was important a murderer had a clear idea that he would be tracked wherever he went, that files were not left to rot on shelves or in a computer’s memory, that retribution was certain, and— The father had interrupted her, gazed into her face, and challenged her, ‘I seem to recall the quotation, Miss Monks, but not its source, that suggests ‘There is no sweeter act of vengeance, or revenge, than forgiveness.’ We treasure memories of Damian, but would not wish to orchestrate a lynch mob for whoever put him to death.’ She’d ridden it . . . and had changed her plan. They’d left the Fenbys, gone to a nearby pub and taken a room. Winnie had slept on the bed and Kenny had lain on the floor. They’d paid for the night and been gone by four.

They walked from the aircraft to the new arrivals hall. The passports were looked at briefly, aroused no interest, and they went through. Armed police patrolled the concourse, passengers and greeters milling around them. An officer in air-force uniform caught her eye and advanced on them. ‘Welcome to Gibraltar, Miss Monks.’

A storm had come up when they’d left the pub, and the lanes had been empty. Kenny had driven fast and she’d talked. It was an effort to lighten the load on her chest. ‘It’s going to war, isn’t it? But not like the squaddies have it. No Wootton Bassett, no medals, no parade ground, no Harry Hotspur speech. It’s like we’re the poor relations. We don’t have the drama of forward operating bases and mortar pits. We’re not marching through some market town with a garrison. But it’s war. There’s no end to it, no victories, and we’re trying to hold the line, but defeat is unthinkable. The military can pull back and talk about strategic withdrawal, but we can’t. If you lose against organised crime, you’re wrecked. When I did this full-time, I used to go – Christ, Kenny, you were with me half the time – round Europe. I’d walk into a police headquarters in Palermo or Naples, Bucharest, Prague or Ankara and meet the ones who’d given up and pushed paper around. Losing a war, for the military, means nothing. If we lose, the corruption gets dug in, the big players hawk their stuff on the streets and shit on legality. There’s a blurring of what’s within the law and what isn’t – right and wrong – and if we forget what they are, then control of our own lives is down the pan. Anyone can be bought,
anyone
. Defeat means there’s no point in standing against the flow. In the military they can die as heroes but that didn’t happen for Damian Fenby, and it won’t happen for any of us if we go under. You still with me, Kenny? Bonaparte said, ‘Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.’ We could be like that, time-serving. Am I boring you, Kenny?’

His eyes had not left the road. ‘Boss, there was an American football coach who preached the same line, ‘‘If you can accept losing, you can’t win.’’ I think it’s the same.’

They had reached the motorway and found the tipping point in the early morning, when revellers and nightshift workers were heading for bed, and when those who opened shops and offices were on their way. They went to
their
war, and she thought a little of where she had been the day before, how the kid from her community had gone into his trenches and . . . She said, on the last leg of the motorway, ‘I liked Damian Fenby, but this is not sentiment. The target came on to my patch and fucked with me. I’ll not tolerate it. I visit his grave because I led the team he was in. I will not accept anyone messing with my team.’

They went out into the sunshine. There were tourists decamping from taxis and a bus: middle-aged, conventional dress, carrying plastic bags, and she doubted that many had availed themselves of Gibraltar’s banks, with their laundering service. The man who lived on the hill, Pavel Ivanov, in the Villa del Aguila, would have. She could see high-rise buildings in the distance. That would be where the banks were that the tourists didn’t visit and where a Russian’s cleaned cash was kept. The officer escorted her to a Land Rover.

Winnie declined with a minimum of politeness.

She wished to walk.

The Rock was new ground for her. She led, and savoured the experience. Winnie carried her own bag and Dottie a heavy rucksack. Kenny had the strap of a holdall on his shoulder and they crossed the runway. The Land Rover trailed them. In an hour, the route across the concrete would be closed and the aircraft that had brought them would be readying for take-off with the tourists. Winnie Monks walked whenever she could and rode only when necessary. She had not heard of any other airfield in the world where a main road crossed the runway.

They reached the far side. She sucked in a deep breath, felt the sea’s tang in her throat. She heard the gulls, looked up for them, and she took in the formidable height of the rockface that was topped, high above, with communications antennae. She paused, let the mood sink into her. This was where she handed control to others. She would now be a voyeur, unable to influence what was played out.

She climbed into the Land Rover, with Kenny and Dottie, and was driven towards the base beyond the runway, where she would be circled by barbed wire, a spectator. Before they passed the guard house, she had a view through the windscreen of the sea and the beach. Beyond was the hazy outline of the Spanish coast, where it would happen.

They did a little routine.

She asked, ‘What does everyone dread, us and the big players alike?’

‘Events, Boss,’ Dottie chimed.

Behind her, Kenny said softly, ‘What the old prime minister said, Boss. What could blow him off course, ‘‘Events, dear boy, events’’. Out of a clear blue sky.’

‘In equal parts, us and them.’

The second officer on the bridge had seen a pod of whales to the port side. There were gulls ahead, perhaps with an albatross. The light in the expanse of the Atlantic was growing, and there was no cloud – blown away by last night’s winds. He was aware of an object in the water out to the starboard side, but it offered no threat to the
Santa Maria
– maybe a cargo container that had been dislodged from a ship’s deck, but they were clear of it. He had on earphones and listened to music from home, Lebanon.

He did not hear or see the helicopter, because it approached from the stern. The first moment he was aware of it was when it slid past the bridge, level with his eyeline, and hovered over the deck. Two ropes fell from the hatches on either side of its cabin, and men abseiled down to land on the deck. They wore black combat trousers, tunics and black balaclavas, and carried black-painted weapons. Half of those taking over the ship’s superstructure were British Royal Marines, the others from the Infanteria de Marina. The deck and the bridge were secured, the engine was put to idle and the
Santa Maria
waited for a frigate of the Spanish Navy to close on them with Customs men. The crew – those not required for the engine room or steering – were left under armed guard in the mess room. The ship, with its cargo of cocaine, had been under satellite observation from the day it had left the docks at Maracaibo. The decision had been taken to board on the high seas rather than permit the dumping of cargo overboard for collection by smaller craft.

When the seizure operation had been launched, a ‘good’ haul was expected, not one that would dismantle the Latin America-to-Europe trafficking, with a street value of at least five million dollars in London, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Warsaw or Madrid. A rigid inflatable ferried the search team from the frigate to the
Santa Maria
. Their work would not take long because intelligence had identified the storage point.

The Major attempted to climb the ladder with nonchalance but the rungs sagged under his weight and the sides creaked.

The priest had declined to go up – he was too old, he said – and the mayor, too, had hung back. A young deacon had gone up first, and a nun from the Pskov convent had followed.

The staircase reached to the platform above which the bells hung, but it was necessary to use a ladder to see at first hand the state of the roof timbers. The church was a few kilometres out of town and west of the river, and it had been abandoned more than thirty years before. The grass round it was grazed by sheep, the track to it was rutted and needles were scattered in the porch with beer cans. The local people wanted the church refurbished, but the roof had to be repaired before the building was usable. The deacon and the nun now straddled the cross beams and waited for him. The ladder was a death trap – as Afghanistan had been.

When he was in position, he could inspect the damage to the timbers from the rainwater coming down on them through the spaces where tiles were missing, and assess what the work would cost him. It was unlikely that a local builder, having been awarded a contract that he had bankrolled, would have the nerve to bolster his bill – unlikely and unwise. But the Major had to see for himself. He was hands-on because he was in control. He oversaw his charity projects, his management of the tax office, his trafficking, laundering and killing, and kept tight control of them all.

As the Major went up the last rungs he reflected that neither Grigoriy nor Ruslan had volunteered to go with him – they had stayed below in the church. When the hit came, would they back away? The deacon offered a hand to help him the last two metres but he waved it away. The men who had dominated major groupings were killed by close-up gunfire, a sniper or a car bomb. All had had bodyguards close to them. How often had the minders survived? He swung himself on to a beam. There were bats above them, in the deepest shadows. The deacon had a torch and played the light over the wood. The Major saw the wet rot. The deacon passed the nun a small bladed penknife and she scraped at it. The wood fell away and spiralled down.

He had seen enough.

They steadied the top of the ladder and he swung himself on to it. He had been in combat zones, had faced men who wished him harm, but the shaking of the ladder below his feet unsettled him: at that moment, he had pictured Grigoriy and Ruslan, the coldness in their faces, and they had not climbed up with him.