'Getting science into your skull, Donald, is a labour of Sisyphus.'
'Beg pardon?'
'He had to roll a stone up a hill – Homeric legend, father of Odysseus – and each time he reached the top it rolled back down and he had to start again. Next paragraph. "Patient's silence during consultation is compatible with a current state of dissociative fugue. Brackets. Only basic self-care maintained, but refusal to acknowledge familiar locations and life structures. Close brackets." What you have to understand, Donald, is that cowardice is no longer a word in our lexicon. In the modern environment, PTSD explains everything.'
'The guys with him won't buy that, Colonel. You dressing it up won't change it, with respect. To them, he's just a coward. No escape from that reputation, being called a coward.'
'You'd tax the patience of a saint, Donald. More's the pity, I won't have enough time with him -going to damn well try, though. Paragraph. "Treatment of patient is handicapped by the delay in his movement from a forward area to my Battleshock Recovery Team unit. Valuable time has been lost, with consequent onset of acute stress reaction. The – capitals, PIE, close capitals – principle has been negated. Proximity, Immediacy, Expectancy cannot now apply. In a more ideal world than provided by combat in Iraq, the patient should have talked his actions through with a qualified expert at the location, within hours of it happening, and should then have been assured he would be subject to fast recovery from a 'one-off' behavioural incident." That's about it.'
'But the PIE principle didn't happen, sir, did it?'
'It did not.'
'Which is why, Colonel, he's shafted. He's labelled a coward, and big-time he'll believe what's written on that label.'
It was the moment when he realized the flimsy nature of the plywood walls and the lightweight door that divided his consulting room from the waiting area beyond. He cursed softly and felt a little moment of shame. 'Perhaps, Donald, you could get those consent forms out.
Make some coffee, then get him back in.'
Ricky had asked, 'What you got? A dozen passengers for the boat?'
Timo had said, 'One.'
'No, not the boat, one boat. What I asked was, how many passengers is it carrying? Twelve?'
'One passenger.'
They had been at the table, now cleared by the Bear, and the map was unfolded to its full size and lay spread across the mats.
Ricky had laughed in surprise. 'What? One passenger? The boat comes all that way for one body?'
'I see nothing to laugh for. The boat comes now for one passenger. The purpose of the boat's journey is not to fish. It is to carry back across the sea the one passenger.'
Because he was bent over the table, because his eyes were set on the island marked on the map, Ricky had not seen the piercing brightness of the eyes of Timo Rahman or the narrowed lips that signified his annoyance. 'You know what it costs, Mr Rahman, to put that boat to sea? A bloody fortune. It costs… '
A hand had slipped on to his shoulder and fingers had squeezed tighter into the flesh and the bones, and the voice had been silkily smooth: 'You bring the boat now, Ricky, for one passenger. Not next month or next week but now. That is very easy for you to understand, yes? And you will remember the many favours I have shown you, yes?'
'Yes, Mr Rahman.'
And the hand had loosened but had left behind it the pain of the pressure on the nerves, and there had been the first shout from the kitchen, and the chaos had followed.
Ricky Capel, far from home, had sat for close on two hours in the dining room. Had not spoken, had not moved, had not known what the fuck had happened.
He had heard the yelled commands and questions, the staccato orders given down the telephone in a language he knew not a word of. He had sat motionless with the map in front of him. Twice the Bear had come through the dining room, like Ricky wasn't there, with a Luger pistol in his hand. Now, from the kitchen, among the savagery of voices, a woman sobbed.
In the door was Timo Rahman. He hurled a heavy coat across the room – an overcoat, brown and with a fleck in the material. It hit the table and slithered half its length. The coat was in front of Ricky. 'You know that coat?'
'Not mine.' Ricky giggled, not from mischief or cheek but fear.
The voice was soft. 'I asked, Ricky, do you know that coat?'
'No – no, I don't.' The smell of the coat was under his nose, and made the fear acute. 'How could I?'
Timo Rahman's arms were folded across his chest, seemed to make him stronger, more powerful. Looming behind him was the brute of the man who had driven him to the house, who had served him at the table, who was always close, who still held the pistol. Rahman said, a gentle sing-song pitch, 'From England, Ricky, you come to my house as my guest. At my house, Ricky, you are given my hospitality. We agree?'
'Yes, I agree.'
'I say to you, Ricky, and you should believe me, that never has a thief or an intruder come to my house since my family and I moved to Blankenese. Any thief or intruder would prefer to attack the home of the police chief of Hamburg than risk my anger and retribution. You come, and my house is attacked, and this coat is left on my garden fence.'
'Never seen it before, Mr Rahman, never.'
On the coat, faint but recognizable, was the smell of petrol.
'My housekeeper had hold of his coat, but he slipped from it and went over the fence – and you have never seen it before?'
'It's what I said, Mr Rahman.'
'And the label of the coat is from Britain. I think Harris tweed is from Britain, and in the lining under a hole in the pocket, in two pieces, is a train ticket, Victoria to Folkestone, and they are in Britain. Ricky, what should I think?'
'Don't know, can't help you -1 never saw that coat before, honest.' His voice was shrill. 'That's the truth.'
'As your grandfather would have told you, Ricky, in Albania we live by a code of besa. It is the word of honour. No Albanian would dare to break it. It is the guarantee of honesty. Can you imagine what would happen to a man whose guarantee of honesty and truthfulness is found to fail?'
'I think I can,' Ricky said, breathy. 'Yes.'
'And you do not know who wore the coat?'
He seemed to see, from the doorway of his home in Bevin Close, the short-arm jab that dropped the man at Davey's feet, seemed to see the bundle of the man on the pavement made larger by the size and thickness of the brown overcoat. Seemed to hear Davey: Some bloody vagrant scum, Ricky. Seemed to feel the recoil in his shoe when he had kicked the face above the overcoat's upturned collar… seemed to hear, clear, Davey: On his coat, he had the stink of petrol.
Seemed to see George Wright's place, burned, and heard what George Wright, his leg fractured, had yelled about kids on the Amersham estate and a dealer, and a line from bottom to top: I want to be there, watch it, when it's your turn. He hadn't Davey at his back, and he hadn't Benji and Charlie at his shoulder
… Had no one to tell him what sort of crazy idiot, a mad dog, went after pushers and a dealer, a supplier and an importer, and turned up at the place of an untouchable who ran a city. If he had stood, his legs would have been weak and his knees would have shaken. Anyone knew, Ricky Capel knew, what
Albanians would do to enforce a contract. Himself, he had Merks on hire, from shit-face Enver, with baseball bats to kill a man who was late with payment, had seen them used on a man strapped to a chair.
'I swear it. I never seen that coat, not on anyone…
First thing, I'll do the boat, like you said. I'll get it over here.'
With their second bottle of Slovenian wine, their favourite, which they had carried off the ferry, the couple from Dusseldorf discussed their ill luck. Both had taken a week away from work to travel to their holiday home on the island of Baltrum.