The Outsiders (25 page)

The office allocated to them was on the first floor of the block. Beyond it, three rooms had been converted temporarily to sleeping quarters. There was a bathroom, and a kitchenette. She assumed Six used the place . . . but would have needed time to work out why they were in Gibraltar. A typed note had been left on each unmade bed, on top of the pile of neatly folded blankets, sheets and pillows, stating that smoking was forbidden and cleaning was to be done by occupants. Dottie had papered the bare walls with the pictures and maps, fastened with Blu-tack. Pavel Ivanov, the Tractor, gazed down at them and Petar Alexander Borsanov, the Major. Winnie Monks always thought of Dottie as tough, bred rough on a housing estate in Newcastle, with no romance in her life to soften the edges. She’d done time as a clerical assistant, then been assigned to Winnie’s section. She had worked for Winnie at the expense of any social life. She had looked mutinous when the Graveyard Team was wound up and a new post found for her. The ‘portrait’ image of Damian Fenby, from the West Middlesex mortuary, was placed near to the Major’s.

Winnie Monks often remembered that homecoming. There had been none of the slow pageantry of Wootton Bassett for the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. They’d unloaded him at night, hustled through the paperwork, and brought him by closed van to the hospital. The parents had not been permitted to see him before he’d been tidied. Dottie had made the picture prominent.

Winnie had secure telephones, with scramble devices. Her computer would encrypt any exchange she had with Caro Watson, in Africa, or Xavier, who was installed in a hotel with a view, no doubt, of the beach and also of the Rock. She had nothing to send and nothing came to her.

It was predictable.

Winnie said, ‘Baton passed. I can make little corrections, of course – and I have one window of possible intervention. Otherwise, I’m sat on my backside with a view of the boneyard and not a lot else.’

Neither Dottie nor Kenny answered her. Dottie went on with her decoration, and Kenny with drawing up his shopping list. Others now controlled the outcome, which lodged right up her nose.

Myrtle and Mikey had been two terriers with a rat.

Where they had come from, the old streets with the back entrances where the bins were kept, a terrier was worth its weight in gold: it did for the rodents in half a dozen yards better than any damn cat. The rat was the nephew. They had talked of nothing else.

Mikey had not been down to the bar and had not met Izzy Jacobs to share it, and Myrtle had not been down to the mini-mart to get fresh bread and a new carton of milk. They had not let go of it since the sun had woken them. She was harder, always had been. She was no beauty now, had been the best-looking teenage girl in the road and all the boys but had been, except Mikey, terrified to ask her out because of who her father was and her brothers’ reputation. Mikey had proved himself and won her – a bloody long time ago. He was angry that he’d had to stand up Izzy Jacobs and she was annoyed that she was going to miss an afternoon’s chat with other women in an ex-pat group – but the matter had to be settled.

As he usually did when his determination flagged, he threw it back at her. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I helped to make the debt. I’m part of it.’

‘The little rat can sort it,’ she said.

‘How? It’s millions of euros! We live in this dump, he’s sleeping in a car.’

‘He goes to the man and tells him.’

‘Goes to that man?’ Mikey threw his arms wide.

‘He has to face it out.’

‘You know what you’re saying, Myrtle?’

‘He has to face it out – he’s not our responsibility.’

‘Myrtle, he’s family. All right, mine, not yours, but family.’

‘He can’t run from those people.’ She was decisive.

He conceded. ‘I’ll tell him.’

Loy had brought more coffee.

‘Have you it in your head, is it registered? We’re not going.’ From Snapper, there was now no pretence of friendliness.

‘Mess with me and I can blow you out of the water.’ Jonno could hardly believe he’d said it.

Loy was making a list on a notepad, but Jonno couldn’t read it. Posie had not drunk her latest mug of coffee, and now had her hands over her ears.

Snapper smiled contemptuously. ‘I speak a bit of Spanish – used to come down here more often than now.
Lo dicho, dicho esta
. Since you know so much, young man, you’ll be aware that that’s about the folly of opening your big mouth, then wishing you could swallow your tongue. Explain. How will you blow me out of the water? I want to hear.’

Jonno looked at the faces. He thought Posie was pleading with him, wanted an end to it. In Sparky’s he saw a sort of aloof neutrality. Loy’s features betrayed amusement. Snapper peered at him. Jonno could back off. Anything that was sensible demanded a shrug, a grunt, a raising of the eyebrows. Some remark about ‘not worth the candle’. Who would have said that Jonno had the streak of bloody-minded obstinacy, and pig-headed contrariness – and something that was about doing, first time in his damned life, something awkward but right? No one. Not even his mother.

An engine started up outside.

Loy lifted the camera off the table and passed it to Snapper. Then, he pushed his notepad aside and picked up the big one. The engine beat steadied, and Snapper had the camera to his eye. He held it rock steady, and did focus turns on the lens.

Jonno said, ‘You have no concern for Geoff and Fran. You’ll use them and chuck them out like an empty fag packet. They’ll not be able to live here. If he’s Russian, let the Russians take him. If his crimes are in Spain, let the people here do the work. You have no authority. What’s so important that you have to come here and destroy the lives of two old people? How do I blow you out of the water? I have a mobile, and there’s a landline in the house. There’s a police station down the road, someone in there who’ll speak fair English. I can go down the stairs, outside, ring the bell next door and speak into their gate system.’

The shutter was going.

Snapper said, quiet and matter of fact, for Loy’s log, ‘That’s it, cat by the tail, cat held over the chipper funnel, cat gone.’

Loy wrote. Posie gave a low moan. The camera went back on the table.

Snapper turned to Jonno. ‘Didn’t catch the last bit, young man. I was watching them put the cat in the chipper. Something about going out? Loy’s made a shopping list, bits and pieces we need. We’ve a float for what it’ll cost, but a receipt would help. Can I give you some advice?’

He was handed the list.

‘What?’

‘Do the shopping. Relax a bit, and look after the lady. Go with the flow. You’re on holiday, here to look after their cat. Enjoy your time in the sunshine. Most days I’m working in people’s homes. We get to be part of the furniture, barely noticed. I hate threatening people, but just consider what I might do, or those I work for, what might happen if you disrupt what we’re at. Use your imagination . . . ‘

Jonno bit his lip and gouged his finger nails into his palms or he might have hit the man.

9

Jonno and Posie had stayed. Neither had checked the flights out, or the bus times from Marbella.

Jonno hadn’t used his mobile or the house phone. A day’s argument had gone unresolved. An atmosphere of armed truce separated them: he and Posie were on the ground floor;
they
were up stairs and allowed access to the kitchen and bathroom.

He had the shopping list, and Posie said she’d suffocate if she didn’t get out of the bungalow.

They found two Tesco carrier bags in a kitchen cupboard. He supposed it was a mark of trust that he and Posie were permitted to leave by the front door. Or perhaps, they regarded him as incapable of backing his words with actions.

He took the car down to the gates and Posie opened them. He went through and she shut them after him. They passed the big gates, the high walls, the wire and the cameras, and went down the hill.

It was another warm morning, the temperature high for November . . . and the holiday was buggered. He knew it and assumed she did. He drove carefully into the built-up zone. He passed the bus station where he could have bought tickets for Málaga International. When he and Posie had had supper the previous night, an omelette with everything thrown in from the salad box, Loy had come in, pleading a shortage of butter, and apologised for disturbing them. He’d said it was a pleasant evening, not too warm; he hadn’t spoken about targets, or cats that tripped alarms, or about a two-way exchange of threats. When they were clearing breakfast, Sparky had knocked on the kitchen door. He’d brought plastic plates and mugs and asked if he could, please, wash them in the sink. In the hallway, looking for the car keys on the table, he had met Snapper.

‘Morning, Jonno.’

Grudging, ‘Morning.’

‘Seems a nice one.’

‘In case there could be a misunderstanding, I’m standing by what I said yesterday. Your agenda doesn’t include the welfare of Geoff and Fran Walsh. I told you what I thought, and I’m considering what to do.’

‘Know them well, do you, the flight lieutenant and his wife?’

‘Well enough to argue their corner.’

‘See them often?’

He’d thought then that a man-trap yawned in front of him. ‘You know the answer?’

‘I’m assuming you’ve not been here before and that you don’t know them.’

Jonno had bridled. ‘I know what’s right for them.’

‘I’d say that, for an opinionated young man, you know very little – safe, middle-class, privileged and protected, with a meaningless job that does nothing for anyone, and a girl friend to shag which passes the time. You know nothing so I’m trying to teach you that nasty things can happen if important matters are blocked on the whim of a nobody. I’m sure common sense will win through. I hope so.’

There had been a little smile.

They had gone past the bus station and the box-shaped white building that was the police headquarters.

She had seen the sign for the supermarket and pointed, and he’d found the car park. They were like any other couple – he carried the bags and she had the list. The woman on the checkout was blonde and spoke to a customer in Russian. There were papers, books and videos from Russia, curry sauces and cooking oil with Russian characters printed on them. They started on the list.

It seemed obvious to him that police doing surveillance from a home endangered the householder, and obvious also that a conviction came higher up the pecking order than the householders. He was rather proud of his anger – not much of it had been cosmetic. It was a relief to have the shopping to do. School reports had had Jonno as ‘average’, as had university lecturers. No one rated him as a man prepared to make waves. Well, he had . . . and it made him feel good. He studied the shelves. Alternatives? If he hadn’t been shopping, he would have wrestled with the problem. The difficulty for Jonno was that he didn’t doubt himself.

They were all Russians in the shop. The kids made a racetrack of the aisles and had their small fists on the shelves. There was laughter. The world of a long-lens camera and the chugging of the chipper’s engine was far off. He didn’t doubt that he was right and that his obligation was to safeguard the Walshes’ interests. They had no reality for him other than as pictures on the walls. He had no way of knowing whether they were good company or God-awful bores. He saw them coming home from London, the man trying to manage with his crutches or walking sticks; there would be police, maybe a consular official, to explain that their property had been used. They would be under armed guard and would have to throw clothes into old suitcases. Then a van would take them away. Later a removals lorry would come. Their lives would be broken. He didn’t know what he could do.

The wire basket jerked down. He had the Tesco bags in one hand and the basket in the other. The weight wrenched his arm.

Posie was in front of him. He turned.

It was the one who had done the jump leads, Marko. He had also shot the cat. Now he grinned and pointed to the new weight in the wire basket: a four-pack of beer. He said, ‘In Moscow, many drink Stary Melnik, but it is not as good as Baltika. Baltika is St Petersburg. The big man, for us, is from St Petersburg. You try our beer. It is the gold, not strong, so you will not sleep all night. You will be able . . .’ He seemed to strip Posie, peel off her dress.

Marko said, ‘We have a good beer in Serbia, but I cannot get it here. You enjoy.’

Posie’s shoulder hit a shelf and milk cartons fell to the floor. Jonno looked at the man. He might have said, ‘Police from Great Britain have forced their way into Geoff and Fran’s home and are using the upstairs attic room as an observation post to watch your villa. They expect a criminal to come and will seek to have him arrested, then extradited to stand trial in our country. Geoff and Fran are in no way responsible for our police being there and spying on you. They are not, in any way, to blame.’

There was a silence, awkward. Then Posie, Jonno and the man were picking up the milk cartons and slotting them back on the shelf. He thought Posie looked terrified, wide-eyed and pale.

The floor was cleared.

Jonno stammered, ‘Thanks for that. I’m really grateful for the suggestion.’