‘Thanks so much. You’ve been a real help.’
The increment was smiling as he backed away, and the baby had begun to bawl again.
A photograph was glanced at, studied long enough for recognition. The door of a public house was pushed open and a wall of noise — music, raised voices and laughter — bounced into a man’s face.
A voice shouted, ‘Come on, Sim, you’re next up. Double top, ten and a five, and we’re in.’
A second voice shouted, ‘Your Coke’s on the table, Sim.’
And Simon Rawlings a former paratroop sergeant who was now bodyguard to a Russian-born launderer and integral to a pub darts team, glanced sideways, saw his drink put on the table among filled and empty glasses, and walked to the line in front of the floodlit board. He gazed at his personal arrows and readied his concentration. His team, and the opposition, crowded behind him. The first arrow was the double top, neat. His people cheered and the others groaned, and he prepared to throw his second dart … and nobody had a view of the table and the Coke glass on it … and nobody saw the miniature bottle of pure alcohol — tasteless — tipped into it.
Simon Rawlings had the ten, and elation coursed in him. He eyed the segment of the five … and nobody saw the intruder slip from the pub, or heard the door close after him.
A quiet evening, as it always was. He sat alone in the basement ready room. Viktor and Grigori were gone with the Bossman and the Bosswoman. The housekeeper had finished the washing-up, the clearing and stacking of dishes in the kitchen, and had gone up the stairs to her comfortable chair on the landing outside the kids’ rooms. She would spend her evening there.
He didn’t like the quiet. It made for complacency, and complacency was a killer in Johnny Carrick’s work.
The television was off and he had read the newspaper, had completed two of the puzzles.
Two lives were his existence. They merged, then separated. Carrick would have said that any human being who had not experienced twin lives could not contemplate the stress of deceit. Of the two, one was factual biography, and one was legend. That night, on the settee, in front of the security screens, he thought factual — which was safe, as legend was not — and childhood.
On his birth certificate was his mother’s name, Agnes Carrick, and the address given was of his grandparents, David and Maggie Carrick, both with the listed occupation of schoolteacher. Where his father’s name and details could have been entered there was a blank space, free of the registrar’s copperplate pen. The certificate was still in place, could be referenced by a thug or a private detective or launderer who checked out his name and his story.
The screens showed the front porch, the rear gardens, the back basement door, the front hall, the landing and the top of the stairs outside the family’s bedrooms. Only the one on the front porch moved, traversing slowly. If there was duller work than watching screens in the late evening, Carrick hadn’t experienced it.
The address on the certificate was a road in the village of Kingston where a bungalow overlooked the mouth of the Spey river. It was Scotland’s premier salmon water then and now, and the kid’s earliest recollections were in spate time when the flow drove melted snow off the Cairngorms, carried their great fallen boulders and rolled them on its course towards the grey North Sea. Spectacular for a kid. Not so special was learning, as a kid, that his mother had gone to London for work, aged twenty, had had a fling — older man, married — and returned to bear the baby in her parents’ home. Then she had gone to work in the food factory at Mosstodloch. Hard, that, for a kid … Hard also that his grandparents were high on the church, went twice every Sunday, tried to love their daughter’s bastard but couldn’t hide from young eyes the difficulty of giving that love. On the kid’s learning curve had been the origin of his name, biblical, and an old man gripping his wrists and whispering, breath on his face: I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love for me was wonderful, passing the love of women. II Samuel, I:26. His grandfather had been David, and it was like they were inseparable friends, and it was suffocating, and he was kept in view and watched. Couldn’t go down on to the riverbanks and scramble on the stones, watch otters or seals and have the ospreys swooping over him without the eyes of his grandfather on his back. For all those childhood years, the factual life and the legend were merged. He had left school, in the big market town of Elgin, on a June morning, had taken a bus in the afternoon to the recruiting office in Inverness, had been there ten minutes before the doors had closed, had requested to join the Parachute Regiment — that regiment because David Carrick, his grandfather, suffered vertigo nightmares, was terrified of heights. It was safe for him to relive childhood.
A telephone rang.
He jerked alert. His eyes went to the screens, then to the telephone, on a side shelf, that was linked to the ready room. Those that the family used, and the line into the Bossman’s office, did not ring in the basement. It was for him to answer, and he did. The telephone was from the world of his legend, was where safety ended.
He gave the number curtly.
‘Christ, that you, Corp? It is you?’
He recognized the voice of Simon Rawlings, but unreal and strained, hoarse. He asked what had happened.
‘Bloody life’s fallen in on me, that’s what. I can hardly believe this. They’ve given me one call, and it’s to you. I’m throwing darts. I’m not, you know me, on the piss. Finish the game, get in the car, drive off. Gone a hundred yards, not even round the corner, and I’m pulled over — I’m breathalysed, positive, way over. If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have believed it. “Must have been spiked,” I say, and the copper says everyone uses that line. I say the kit must be defective, and the custody sergeant says it’s never the kit’s fault. I’m going into the cells overnight, that’s routine. I’m drunk in charge, I’m going to lose my licence for twelve months. Corp, I’m fucked … I’m just telling you, there’s nothing you can do … You’ll have to tell the Bossman. Don’t know whether I’ll see you again, Corp, because I don’t think my feet’ll touch the ground when the Bossman hears—’
The call was cut and the phone purred in his ear.
Chapter 3
Viktor had told him.
Esther said, ‘It is just not possible. There has to be a mistake.’
They were back from their evening, and Viktor had gone down to the basement area. It had been a good evening, the sort that reminded Josef Goldmann of the success of his new life in London, where he was accepted and respected. He had bought a picture, and paid too much for it, but rich applause had rung round the gallery when the gavel had come down, and many had congratulated him on his generosity, while the organizers of the charity for the Chernobyl children, who had thyroid cancer, leukaemia and kidney tumours, had wrung his hand in gratitude … and Esther had flushed with pleasure. They had returned to their home, and Johnny had opened the front door seeming ill at ease, but Josef Goldmann had barely noticed it. Viktor had gone down to the basement to make himself coffee, Grigori with him. Coats off, himself flopped in a low chair, Esther perched on the arm and working her fingers on the muscles of her husband’s shoulder, relaxing him, until Viktor had come back to report on what he had been told.
‘I can’t believe it of Simon. It’s impossible.’