The Outsiders Read online

  The psychiatrists had said that the best therapy for his condition was to work in a garden where he was safe, the danger was distant and the screams were silenced. When he had slipped back, stayed in his hostel bed, she had gone there, pitched him out and dictated the apology letter to Parks and Gardens, his employer, and had acted as a referee, done a letter of support for him – might even have used headed paper. Why? He didn’t know or care, but he was grateful. He had kept his job, and now stayed the course.

  She came every day to the same bench, and had her smoke in the oasis of quiet. He held the umbrella over her and had abandoned raking the leaves and stowing them in the bags he’d toss into the barrow. Now they scudded over paths he had already raked and swept. St John’s Gardens had been a cemetery from the early eighteenth century, with 5,126 graves. At the turn of the nineteenth century, funds were allocated for two night-watchmen to preserve the newly buried corpses from theft. The year before the battle of Waterloo they were armed with pistols – there was a desperate shortage in the medical schools for cadavers. Now it had been closed to bodies for a hundred and fifty years. Occasionally she would host a reunion there, the wine and gin in soft-drink or water bottles. She called her guests the Graveyard Team . . .

  He had told her about everything he had done before – what he was proud of and what he was ashamed of.

  She reached over to drop the butt into the waste bin and stood up. ‘Time to get back to the fucking treadmill, Sparky.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  He escorted her to the gate and only then let her go free of the umbrella. She bobbed her head and was gone . . . He often thought she was as alone as himself. Some days, when she had work out of London, she had hired a car and called his supervisor. Then he’d drive her. They didn’t talk and she sat in the back with her papers. Now Sparky went back to raking leaves, filling bags and loading his trailer. He would go on until it was too dark to see, and Lofty shouted that it was time to lock up. He loved this place for its peace, which he valued. The gardens were the horizon of his world.

  On the third anniversary, with her Graveyard Team gathered round her and an air frost forming across the garden, Winnie Monks had said of her branch director, ‘The fat fucker hadn’t the balls to say it to me, but I could read him. What he wanted to say was ‘‘Stuff happens, people get hurt and we have to be adult in our response because that’s life. Accept it. We must look to the future and move on’’, but he didn’t dare. He just authorised the budget. I would have told him that we’re a tribe, we protect our own, and a strike on one of us is a strike against us all. It’s the creed we follow. Old-fashioned, maybe, but it’ll do for me and all of us. In a year we’ve made fuck-all progress. They want to consign the team to history, but the tribe stays strong. One day, I promised him, it’ll happen.’

  The taxi driver hooted.

  They were at the front door, the two bags were outside on the step. The keys were in her hand, but the phone had rung.

  ‘Leave it,’ the flight lieutenant (ret’d) said.

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ she retorted.

  So, she was back inside and the hall lights were switched on. He heard her repeat the name she’d been given and knew she was speaking to Penny, a niece by family arrangement, not blood. She was nodding firmly as if she was hearing good news. She’d sat in the chair beside the hall table and was asking about flights and times. Geoff Walsh glanced at his watch and tried to catch her eye, pointing at its face. Her hand flapped at him as if her conversation was more important than their departure. Her head twisted away from him and he was left with a view of the wall and the framed photographs: himself in front of a Hawker Hunter jet on a runway at the Khormaksar base in the Protectorate of Aden, forty-eight years back; himself in the open cockpit of a Lightning interceptor on an apron at Leuchars on the Scottish east coast, forty-two years before, and with his navigator beside an F4 Phantom on a stop-over at RAF Wildenrath in Germany in 1977. He had never really got the hang of the promotion thing . . . He could see the state of the paintwork on the wall where the pictures were mounted – he’d never really got the hang of the money thing either.

  When he had come out, his flying days over, Fran had had a persistent bad chest, respiratory difficulties, and their dream had been a home on a hill above the barely developed fishing harbour at Marbella – the first few hotels had sprouted by the beach. They’d bought a bungalow on a quarter-acre plot and had planned a big extension and a good life. There had been an investment in an Australian mining company, an odds-on certainty, a bucketful of Marconi shares and . . . Geoff and Fran Walsh lived off the RAF pension and the extension had never materialised.

  She was saying what she had left in the fridge. Did it bloody matter? His hip hurt, but he started down the path towards the front gate, his stick tucked under his arm, pulling the two cases. They bounced and lolled on the uneven stones. Because of the pain, he could be short-tempered. The operation was to be funded by a veterans’ charity associated with the Royal Air Force, and Fran would stay in an attached hostel until he was considered fit to return to Spain.

  The lights went out behind him. He heard the door slam and the locks turn. Her torch came on. If he didn’t come through the operation – had to be a possible outcome – and the Villa Paraiso was sold, any likely purchaser would call in a bulldozer, flatten it and start again. That was pretty much what had happened on either side of them. Fran had relieved him of the heavier bag and the torch beam showed the weeds in the gravel. The light caught their car, an Austin Maxi from the long-defunct British Leyland factory, which he had driven from the UK when they’d emigrated. Either side of them there were castles of opulence. A banker from Madrid had the one to the left, and the Russian fellow was on the right. Both would have paid a couple of million euro each to the developer, then chucked, minimum, another million at their villas. The developer had tried to buy Villa Paraiso but Geoff Walsh had turned him down. He and Fran were sandwiched between top of the range, and themselves were bottom of the pile. Since his hip had deteriorated he’d hardly had the car out and a committee man from the local British Legion called by every week to take Fran to the mini-mart. It seemed a hell of a long time ago that he’d done the bloody sound barrier, set off the boom and been half flattened by the G forces.

  She had the gate open, scraped it back. Fran Walsh said, ‘That was Penny.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Her boy’s coming. Tomorrow or the day after, more likely the day after.’

  The taxi driver had come to the gate to help her with the cases. Geoff Walsh was looking back towards the bungalow, the Villa Paraiso. The moon was nearly full. It bathed the roof and the white stucco of their front walls. Its light caught the big trees that hid the other properties and reflected off the high stone wall, the razor wire that topped it, the cameras that moved and tracked them . . .

  He said, distant and preoccupied, ‘Good. I didn’t want to leave the place empty. I’d prefer a stranger here than it being deserted and—’

  She interrupted, often did, ‘He’s called Jonno – silly name – and his mother says he’s hoping to bring his girlfriend.’

  ‘Not, I hope, to hump in my bed.’

  The cases were stowed, and she was in. She said, ‘You’re a miserable old cuss, Geoff Walsh, and it’s a long time since your bed’s seen any romance. Come on. You’ll be back here in two weeks and nothing will have changed.’

  He looked back a last time for his cat, Thomas, then closed the door and did up the belt. The cameras on the walls of the Villa del Aguila tracked them as they drove down the road. They turned the hairpin and headed for the airport at Málaga.

  Winnie had said, ‘He was one of us. He was with us in good times and bad. Three years gone and we still look out for him, still want his input. We could never hold up our heads if we put him on the back burner. I hate those who did it today as much as when I saw Damian in the mortuary. Listen – it will happen. God knows how, but we’ll have a name. He won�
��t know, right now, who I am but he will. He should know that the day will come when we’ll bring him to some sort of justice.’

  ‘Of course I haven’t lost them – they’ve been stolen.’

  She stood in the doorway of the suite’s living area and the bedroom they shared was behind her. He gazed at her, undecided as to whether the blaze in her eyes and the curl of her lips made her even better-looking than she was when she walked with him into the best restaurant in the town or crouched over him on the big bed and nibbled his earlobes . . .

  He was the Major. His name was Petar Alexander Borsonov, but he had been known as the Major – by friends, a few, and enemies, many – for nearly three decades. The Major had bought her the missing earrings at the two-day stop-over in Ashgabat, capital city of Turkmenistan, astride the Silk Road; among the population of that dump-town there was a jeweller of true quality. The Silk Road interested the Major. Today it carried the unrefined opium paste from the poppy fields of Afghanistan, and the chemicals from China that were needed to make the tablets the kids craved. He had come to do deals and had brought with him the Romanian girl: Grigoriy, the one time praporshchik or warrant officer, called her his ‘arm candy’, while Ruslan, long ago a starshina or master sergeant, referred to her gruffly as the ‘bike’. The earrings were diamond and sapphire and he had paid cash for them. The craftsman’s grandson had interpreted and negotiated . . . He had brought them to her in the crap hotel where they had stayed the two nights and muttered something awkwardly about the stones mirroring her eyes. On the flight across the Caspian Sea and towards Trabzon he had seen the way the light caught them. She had been beautiful, haughty and his – as if he had bought her.

  ‘The maid did the room early. It’s not her. They were stolen, but not by the maid.’

  He had paid from a wad in the hip pocket of his jeans. He had not talked it through with the warrant officer or the master sergeant because he was the Major, with control and authority. That morning they had been to meet a haulier who worked the Silk Road and had access to the boats needed to cross the Caspian with cargo. He had relationships with police and Customs in Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, and could handle border posts into Turkey. She had been cut adrift to shop in the pedestrian street, and the Gecko had stayed in the hotel – he had had messages to send, codes to renew and firewalls to check. The Major knew the word ‘geek’, and understood it, but it was awkward on his tongue, so he used ‘gecko’. With the warrant officer and the master sergeant, the Major was working methodically through the finance offered at the meeting with the haulier. The girl stamped her foot. She almost made him feel his fifty-four years. The other two men, around the same age, scowled at her – she had broken their concentration.

  ‘You’ve looked?’

  ‘Of course I have looked. We were all out, except Gecko.’

  ‘You looked carefully?’

  ‘Everywhere. I didn’t wear them, of course, to go into the streets.’

  She had worn them last night. They had brushed over his cheeks and across his nose, where her lips had been. She was young enough to be his niece. Neither the warrant officer nor the master sergeant had offered an opinion when he had said she would travel with them in the executive aircraft now parked at Trabzon airport . . . Was it possible that the Gecko had gone into the main bedroom, off the suite, and pocketed a pair of earrings? She stood in the doorway with her feet a little apart and her skirt stretched tight across her hips. Her lips jutted and her eyes challenged. The other two men, as if they had given up on him, began to shuffle their papers and tidy them.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ She had been a waitress in Constanta, a Romanian port city, and when they returned there, on the last leg of their journey, she would be paid off and would walk away without a backward glance. ‘Are you going to do anything? They’re missing. He was here – the Gecko.’

  The Major jabbed with his finger towards the door of the bedroom they shared. It was a strange gesture because the index finger of his right hand had been amputated at the lower joint, and old skin made an ugly lump of the wound. The warrant officer was getting the last sheets of paper together and did it awkwardly because he had suffered a similar wound, same finger, same hand, same hasty surgery. The master sergeant scratched his cheek, not with his right index finger but with the middle one. He, too, had the old wound. Three men bound together by identical injuries from a war fought many years before.

  She went back to the bedroom and flicked the door with her heel, shutting it.

  To one of them: ‘Get the Gecko.’

  To the other: ‘Search his room.’

  The Major knew that a gecko was a lizard and protected itself by spreading shit on a predator. It could change colour for better concealment, and scurry upside-down on ceilings. In the last two years the kid, Gecko, had become almost a part of him, like an old sock or glove. The Major could not have handled the computerised encryptions; nor could either of the others he relied on.

  The master sergeant brought the Gecko in. The kid would have read the anger.

  ‘Have you anything to tell me?’

  A shake of the head.

  ‘You came in here?’

  A nod.

  ‘And into the bedroom?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why?’

  A hesitation. Then: ‘I went into the bedroom to see if your number-three phone, the Nokia, was charged.’

  ‘The Nokia was with me.’

  ‘I couldn’t find it so I assumed it was.’

  Those years ago, in that war, the Major had been in charge of a small Field Security detachment of what was then the KGB, and had travelled among fighting units in the west of Afghanistan. Sometimes the troops brought back captured mujahideen and he would interrogate them.

  ‘You searched my room?’

  ‘For the Nokia, to charge it. I—’

  In Herat province, to speed up questioning, the Major might have used pliers on fingernails or teeth, a rifle butt across the face. He might have wired the bastard to the generator. He kicked. Quick, without warning, into the Gecko’s privates. The head went down as the torso doubled and he caught the cheek with a hard slap. The kid was crumbling. His heavy glasses had fallen off.

  ‘What did you do with them?’

  A choke. ‘Do with what? I didn’t find the mobile. I—’

  A fist caught his collar from behind and lifted him easily. The kid was lightweight and didn’t do exercise or steroids. He was a bag of bones in his T-shirt and jeans. The Major slapped him again. He had done extreme violence, in Herat province. He had refined it in the chaotic days when the Soviet Union had fallen apart and the scramble for wealth had begun. He had learned more of the art when he had quit the employ of government for work that was hidden and better paid. He could hurt and he could kill. More slaps to the face. The Gecko squealed and wet himself.

  All the big players needed a Gecko to ensure the safety of their communications. The French agencies were said to be good, the Italians sophisticated and the Germans had fine equipment. The British had listening posts in Cyprus that covered the Middle East, the Caucasus and the frontiers of Afghanistan. The Americans hunted the big players – the Major was among them – with the resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. He needed the Gecko, his own geek, to preserve the security of his communications. He slapped him once more, hard enough to hurt but not to damage.

  The warrant officer was in the door that opened on to the corridor, and shook his head. Nothing found. The master sergeant pulled the Gecko upright and the Major did a fast body search. He probed into orifices, then checked the belt and the trousers.

  ‘Did you take her earrings?’

  ‘No.’ A grunt.

  His fist was raised. The anger was less from the certainty that the Gecko had taken the earrings than that his session had been disrupted, and that his two good men understood he had fucked up by bringing the Romanian whore on the trip.

>   She stood in the doorway that led to the bedroom. The light was behind her, silhouetting her head. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders and made a bright halo around her ears. The back light caught the stones. She had a towel knotted precariously above her breasts, reaching halfway down her thighs. ‘I was about to run the shower. I found them.’

  He loosed the Gecko, let him find a chair to hold on to. He asked where they had been.

  ‘I had a shower this morning, left them in the soap tray.’

  She turned, as if it was the end of the matter, and the door closed after her.

  The Major gave a short smile, neither amused nor concerned: it showed that a matter of controversy was resolved. Through the door he could hear the shower running. He gave the Gecko a sharp hug and might have squeezed the air from his lungs. It was a month more than three years since he had pulled the kid from an Internet café, on a valued recommendation. He paid him a thousand dollars a month, fed him, housed him and let him ride in the executive aircraft. He had come to depend on the kid’s computer abilities. He slapped the Gecko’s back – the big gesture that showed he harboured no ill feeling, that the accusations made against him were forgotten. He picked up the kid’s glasses, straightened the metal arm that had bent. He wiped the lenses on his shirt front and replaced them on the kid’s face. He did not look at the crotch of the kid’s jeans, or glance into the Gecko’s eyes and take the chance of reading them. The papers came out and were spread again on the table. The next day they would be in Baku, and from there they would go to Constanta where the girl would trip away from the airport with a bulge in her purse and the chance of a new conquest. He would be with her tonight. In Baku he might give her to the master sergeant or the warrant officer, whichever wanted her most, not to the kid. Abruptly, he chuckled.