The Outsiders (40 page)

The Boss told him what would happen, what he should ask of the young man who played cuckoo with them but who was necessary because he could drive past the cameras into the town. She said where the pick-up would take place.

She did not try to persuade him. It wasn’t a matter for discussion. She could have been his Sunray and he could have been her lance corporal. She did not enter into any discussion on legality, but talked to him as if she accepted his expertise in his field, and told him what he should do afterwards.

‘You good, Sparky?’

‘Yes, Boss.’

She ended it. He told Snapper that Jonno should leave now to collect a package. Loy was sent downstairs to tell him.

Snapper asked what she was sending him.

He didn’t answer.

‘Clean socks? Is that what you’re getting?’ The sourness played through it, and offence was taken that
he
, as team leader, was excluded.

No response. The light on the communications unit flashed. Snapper answered it. Sparky went downstairs to make himself coffee. His hands shook but he hadn’t refused.

‘I can’t see any point in us being here,’ Snapper said.

‘If you say so.’ Loy shook his head, bewildered.

‘She doesn’t do that herself – no. Leaves it to Xavier to  shovel the shit.’

‘Reckon you’re right.’

‘I can’t think of any reason for us to stay.’

‘Not from what you’ve said.’

He heard the car door slam shut.

‘If the local authorities are saying no to arrest and extradition, if we’ve managed to lose the principle source who might be the key item in the witness box, if it’s all bolloxed, there’s no point in us staying. We’re an expensive piece of kit, Loy, you and me, and we work for UK plc. It’s not our job to worry what bandits, gangsters and thugs are doing to each other in Spain. We’re not signed up to the Graveyard crowd.’

‘I’m not disagreeing, Snapper.’

The engine started and the gravel crunched.

‘Nor are we some special-forces gang, a combat team. At SCD11 we have a motto of
skelatus non skelus
– you know that as well as I do, Loy. It means we track the criminal, not his crime, which is to say that our work is in intelligence gathering. It’s a very clear mission statement. More to the point, we’re exposed here, not properly defended, and there are people across a garden wall who are about as vile as it gets. They have handguns and at least one assault rifle. We’re out on a limb.’

‘Can’t fault what you say, Snapper.’

‘I’m not one to complain, Loy.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I can tell you, very frankly, I’m considering whether we quit.’

‘I’ll go with what you decide.’

‘We don’t belong to her like the rest of her people do.’

The smaller of the Serbs was out. He had picked up a ball and threw it for the dog. To quit would be a big thing – career defining. And what was expected of him anyway? A man pitches up and is welcomed inside. Xavier is called . . . and fuck-all is the result. But to walk out would be a big move.

Jonno parked. The contact had been given the make of the car, its colour and plate. To get there, he had driven past the bus station and under the main road to Málaga and the airport. He had cut down beside the police station and gone past its rear entrance, where there was a line of vehicles, from a Porsche to a standard Ford Transit. They all bore a sticker that declared they had been seized by the UDyCO police unit –
vehiculo intervenido
. There had been two officers, uniformed and armed, walking out of a side entrance to their building and going into the main garage. He could have called to them – it was likely that any policeman in Marbella spoke a smattering of English. He could have told them who had mounted a surveillance operation from the Villa Paraiso, and about a man being fed feet first into a chipper at the Villa del Aguila.

Why had he not done it?

It might have had something to do with a cat’s eyes, the softness of a cat’s fur, the blood and the wound from a rifle shot . . .

A car started on the far side of the parking area. He saw a Corsa, blue and nondescript, what the hire companies used. Jonno had been told he should look for a place to stop where the slot adjacent was free. The Corsa came towards him.

Then Jonno saw the Mercedes, big engine, black windows, across the car park. He saw the man who had done the jump leads. His mind froze. He didn’t know whether it was Alex or Marko, but it was the smaller of the two. The Corsa had come into the slot. Whichever it was – Marko or Alex – carried a plastic bag. He had come out of the butcher’s on the far side of the road and strolled towards the Mercedes. He recognised Jonno. Jonno didn’t know whether he had started up the chipper, then forced the legs into it, or whether he had fired the rifle shot at the cat. Neither did he know why the man had been fed into the chipper. He couldn’t focus.

A voice close to him asked him his name.

‘I’m Jonno.’

‘Open the boot, please. Let’s do it nice and quick.’

It wasn’t important whether it was Alex or Marko – whether it was steaks, ham or chicken in the plastic bag. He had been seen, identified and waved to. The man from the Corsa had his own boot lid up and was manoeuvring a package clear. They would arrive together. The Corsa man was lean and dressed casually in jeans, a decent shirt and a light windcheater. His hair was cropped short and his expression wary on a tanned face. Jonno had not moved towards his boot.

‘I said, get the boot open. Do it.’

He called, best he could do, and tried to smile. ‘Hello! What did you buy? The beer was good. I’m grateful.’

Corsa Man had worked the package sideways again, sliding it back into the boot, and had extricated a newspaper. He looked at his watch, went back to the car and settled into it, for all the world as if he had time to kill and needed a paper to help him through it. Clever and professional. Alex or Marko grimaced and smiled, then said something that Jonno didn’t catch. The man used the zapper and the Mercedes’ lights flashed. Jonno shook. They’d nearly collided. He watched as the Mercedes did a three-point turn. There was no wave and no belt of the horn to acknowledge him. The big car took the road back up the hill towards the police station.

Jonno looked around him, did the full three sixty, saw nothing. He was breathing hard, gasping. He fumbled with the keys. First, he tried to put the Yale that did the front door of Villa Paraiso into the boot’s slot, then did it right. He swung the lid up and pushed aside the jack. The parcel was brought quickly. He was buffeted, pushed aside, and the package was in. A hand snaked out, grabbed a travel rug and drew it across the package. Jonno straightened it. What had he expected? An envelope? Something big enough for A4 documents, a collection of files or blown-up photographs? He looked up.

The Corsa man had gone. There was a squeal of wheels as the car turned sharply and headed out into the road. Perhaps, deep down, he’d expected a brief conversation:
Thanks for doing this for us, Jonno
.
You did well there, fast thinking
.
Good to have met you, and we appreciate your help
. He hadn’t been given the time of day.

He had seen all of the package as it was moved and then it had been tipped over. It had no markings. Where there might have been labels or travel dockets there were none. He doubted they trusted him, and thought that the man would be sitting up the road at the wheel of the Corsa and would stay there until Jonno left the car park, went under the highway and climbed. It was hard to drive and he thought he shook more convulsively than ever Sparky had at the foot of the stairs. And he knew nothing – not the contents of the package, nor when a target would show.

They smoked to kill time and drank beer.

The village was up from the beach, between the headlands of Punta Cires and Punta Leona. Away to the west was the big port of
Tangier. They were waiting for darkness. The Major, the warrant officer and the master sergeant shared the veranda of the café with stacked cartons of Marlboro cigarettes. The cargo, they had been told, would go in a relay of boats from dusk to dawn. Vans brought them and were unloaded by men who ignored the strangers on their territory.

A pier of wooden stakes and planks jutted out from the beach. It was where they would go from. Their own launch would come when it was dark and when the patrol vessels had likely gone into harbour. They had been told the boat that would take them could outrun anything used by the colony’s Customs and by the Spaniards, and they had been told, too, that the Gibraltar authorities refused to co-operate with their neighbours. They had no seasickness pills and the crossing would be rough.

More cargo arrived, not with the clean packaging of the American franchised cigarettes but in bales wrapped tightly in plastic, with binding tape. It might have been Moroccan Polm hash, Primero or Moroccan Slate hash. It was near the end of the journey, and they saw now where their own future cargoes would leave Africa. It was an old smuggling route, tested by centuries of trafficking. The Major liked to be where others had gone before and where the tradition of evasion was passed down through the generations. His cocaine would come from Nouakchott and end here, at this café, where money would be paid and eyes averted. Down the beach was the pier, and across the sea the European mainland.

The time passed slowly, and they dreamed of what they would find across the rough water crested with white caps. He still didn’t understand what the Gecko had done, and likely never would. On the horizon the Rock, and Spain, plucked at him.

Mikey Fanning had missed the last of the showers and the sun was out. The suit jacket was too heavy. He’d taken the bus from San Pedro to the Marbella stop. Twice he’d stopped and looked back at the vista of the town below. He’d gazed out across the sea into the shipping lanes and had seen the outline of the Moroccan mountains and the stump that was Gibraltar. The wind was up and slowed him but didn’t dry his sweat. He stopped to rest his legs.

A car came up behind him. He turned hopefully. He was a bit bloody old for hitching but it must have been the discomfort in his face. The silk shirt didn’t seem to breathe. It was an old Austin and it came past him, slowed, stopped and reversed. Far ahead was the ochre villa that was home to Pavel Ivanov. He must have looked pathetic, his neck wet with perspiration. He thought his appearance had the ring of disaster. A young man pushed open the front passenger door and Mikey climbed in. Up they went, took a couple more bends, and he saw the sign on the wall, Villa del Aguila. He saw, too, the coiled wire above the wall and the camera aimed down at them. He nodded, and the door was opened for him. He pushed himself up and out. The bloody arthritis was nagging, and he tried to thank the young man but his voice had choked. Instead he reached back inside, took his hand and squeezed it.

The car went on a few more yards and turned into an overgrown drive past the wall. Beside the Villa del Aguila’s gate was the pad with the keyboard, the speaker and the button.

Mikey Fanning tried to steady his voice, and held his finger on the button. He said who he was. It was about family, he told himself.

‘It doesn’t say it’s for me.’

Jonno thought Sparky’s response stupid.

He’d parked the car, lifted it out of the boot. He had not been met at the door, was not treated as if he had joined a conspiracy. He’d carried it in, kicked the door shut behind him, then had gone up the stairs. He had opened the door. No thanks, no remark from Snapper that he had done well – and he had. He had done well because he’d prevented the Serb and the drop-off man bumping into each other. They would have known that – the message would have come through to them by the time he was a metre or two out of the car park. They were staring through the window: Snapper had the camera up, Loy had his notebook and pencil poised for the next log entry, and Sparky was against the back wall, looking over them. Posie knelt, seeming to lean against Loy’s chair. He’d put the package on the floor. The only marking, in broad-nib pen, said it was fragile and should be handled with care.

‘It’s nothing to do with me.’ Sparky kept his hands at his sides.

Snapper turned in his chair, sent him a withering glance, then was back at his view-finder. His shutter went. Out in the garden, through that precious gap in the trees, one of the Serbs – not that one who’d come out of the butcher’s – walked with purpose, the dog trailing after him, to the shed.

Jonno had been told the package was important. He had collected it – and the man had refused it. He reckoned he’d have been justified in throwing a strop but had the sense to keep quiet.

‘Open the bloody thing,’ Snapper barked.

It was an order.

The man reached the shed and took out a key for the padlock.

Snapper’s voice didn’t brook argument: ‘The Boss sent it to you, not me. I’m not in the loop. Do it.’

From his rucksack, Loy brought out a penknife, opened the clasp and passed it to Sparky. Jonno saw the hands tremble, but they took it. The blade went down into the tape binding the package and cut it. The tape was ripped back and the flaps lifted. Inside there was black polystyrene. Jonno saw the confusion on Snapper’s face, realised he’d spoken the truth – he didn’t know what was in there. The top was lifted off.