Jig (76 page)

With the special kind of malice that is often found inside a bureaucracy, certain members of Special Branch had been jubilant when Pagan had returned empty-handed last year from the United States where he'd gone in pursuit of an IRA gunman. There were even a few who had rowdily celebrated the disbandment of Pagan's own anti-terrorist section over drinks in a pub called The Sherlock Holmes. From the accounts Pagan had heard, it was an evening of gloating merriment. For his own part, Pagan didn't give a damn what his colleagues thought of him. He had never lived his life to please other people and he wasn't about to let the opinions of morons trouble him now.

John Downey's waxed moustache suggested something faintly colonial. He had the face of a man who might have watched the last flag of the British Empire come down from the flagpole at the final outpost. He had the deflated cheeks of an old bugler.

“I had better plans for Saturday than this,” Downey said. “Spurs are at home to Arsenal. I wanted to be at White Hart Lane.”

Frank Pagan didn't share the great British passion for soccer. He watched the daylight disappear as the train plunged briefly into a tunnel, then the darkness was gone again and Downey's face came back into focus.

Downey peered into the compartment at the Russian. “He's not much to look at for a First Secretary of the Communist Party.”

Pagan wondered if Downey would have been more impressed by a hammer and sickle tattoo on Romanenko's forehead. He found himself gazing at a globule of moisture that clung to the impenetrable hairs of Downey's moustache. The sight amused him.

“It's a job, John,” Pagan said. “Think of yourself as a delivery boy. One Russian brought to Edinburgh, then hauled back to London again. And everybody's happy.”

Downey appeared to consider this, as if he suspected a buried insult in the reference to a delivery boy. Then Downey's face changed to a leer. “At least he's not Irish. Is he, Frank?”

Pagan smiled in a thin way. Men like Downey, when they had the hold of a bone, never quite managed to let it go. For many months now, Downey had brought up the subject of Ireland on any pretext. It was infantile, Pagan knew, but it appeared to feed some deep, ludicrous need inside Downey's heart. What a life Downey had to live, Pagan thought. He had his football games and the task of waxing his bloody moustache and what else – beyond making tasteless remarks at Pagan's expense? It was a life that was difficult to imagine in its entirety. And yet not difficult, perhaps just appallingly easy. Despite himself, despite his resolve never to respond to sorry barbs, Pagan had an urge to slash back at Downey in some way – but that required an energy he hadn't been able to find in himself lately. He was treading water, going through the motions, listless. The death of the IRA gunman had pleased some people inside the hierarchy at Scotland Yard. They could at least claim that the man known as Jig was no longer a menace. And there had been a half-hearted attempt to make Frank Pagan some kind of hero, but it was doomed to failure because it was a role Pagan didn't have the heart for. Besides, credit for the gunman's death – if credit was an appropriate word – had been attributed to the FBI. In the end, there had been nothing remotely heroic in the death of the Irish assassin, and it had left Frank Pagan with a sour taste in his mouth.

Now, following the dissolution of his own Irish section, he'd been doing odd jobs for months, mainly guarding visiting dignitaries from African and Commonwealth countries, or Communist tourists like Aleksis Romanenko, who came to Britain to do a little business and squeeze in some sightseeing in this quaint green land.

He stared at Downey. “As you say, John. He's not Irish.”

Downey's smile was like a bruise on his face. He enjoyed scoring points against Pagan, especially when Pagan failed to rise to his own defence. “Because if he was a mick, Frank, they wouldn't let you near him with a ten-foot pole, would they?”

Pagan slid the window open a little further and rain blew into Downey's eyes, making him mutter and blink and reach for a handkerchief in his coat pocket. Such a small triumph, Pagan thought. The trouble with a man like Downey was how he reduced you to his own idiotic level. He watched John Downey rub his face with the handkerchief. Moisture had caused the wax moustache to lose some of its glossy stiffness, and now it curled above Downey's upper lip like a furry caterpillar.

“Sorry about that, John,” Pagan said. “I hope you brought your waxing kit with you,” and he shut the window quickly, stepping back inside the compartment. The train was already beginning to slow as it approached Waverley Station.

Romanenko looked up expectantly. “Are we there?” he asked.

“A minute or so,” Pagan replied.

“Excellent, excellent.” Romanenko stood up, clutching his briefcase to his side. He wore a very British Burberry raincoat and shoes of fine Italian leather, soft and gleaming.

“Do we see the Castle soon?” Romanenko asked.

“Very,” Danus Oates answered.

Pagan watched the platform loom up. When the train came finally to a halt, Pagan opened the door of the compartment and climbed down. Romanenko came immediately after him and almost at once John Downey fell into step beside the Russian, who was sniffing the air deeply and saying how railway stations smelled the same the world over, an observation with which Oates, whose experience of railways was minimal, readily agreed. The sullen man from the Soviet Embassy walked several feet behind the group looking this way and that, his head, reminiscent of a pumpkin, swivelling on the thick stalk of his neck.

Pagan stared the length of the platform, aware of people disembarking from the train, being met by relatives, little reunions, porters hauling baggage, mail sacks being unloaded – too much activity to follow at one time. Too many people. Pagan, who was walking about five or six feet ahead of the Russian, looked in the direction of the ticket-barrier, some twenty yards away. Beyond the gate there were more crowds. The bloody Festival, he thought. And a local soccer game into the bargain. There was no real control here. The environment wasn't properly sealed. And that made him uneasy. But uneasiness was something that plagued him these days, a sense of groundless anxiety. He supposed it was part of his general mood, his indecision, the feeling that his life and career were a pair of bloody mongrels going nowhere in particular.

“I understand we have a car waiting outside the station,” Danus Oates said. “We're to dine at the George Hotel, which is said to be the best in the city. The chef is preparing Tay salmon in an unusual manner in honour of your visit.”

Pagan wondered what was meant by ‘unusual' in this case. He hoped it wasn't going to be some nouvelle cuisine monstrosity, salmon in raspberry sauce with poached kiwi fruit. He had a sudden longing for plain old fish and chips smothered in malt vinegar and eaten out of a greasy newspaper, preferably
The News of the World
with its lurid tales of child-molesting vicars. He had an urge to whisk Romanenko away from any official arrangements and plunge with him into the side-streets of this city, into the dark little pubs and alleyways and courtyards, into the places where people really lived their lives. This is the way it really is, Aleksis. This is what you don't find in the restaurant of the George Hotel.

“We must visit the Castle after we've eaten,” Romanenko said. The eagerness in his voice was unmistakable. He had a thing about the Castle.

“Of course,” Oates replied.

Pagan looked towards the ticket-barrier. Crowds were milling around. Loudspeaker announcements reverberated in the air. Through the station exit, some distance beyond the barrier, Pagan saw a square of rainy grey sky. A bleak Saturday afternoon in August in what he considered the most austere of European capitals. Behind him, Romanenko was staring up at the vast glass ceiling of the station.

They reached the ticket-barrier, Pagan still a few feet in front of Romanenko and the others. Which was when it happened.

When Jacob Kiviranna saw the train come to a dead halt, he was standing about six feet beyond the ticket-barrier. He took a few steps forward, pushing his way through the crowd, his hand covering the pocket that contained the gun. It was strange now how utterly detached he felt.

He watched Romanenko's group approach the barrier. There were five in all. Romanenko was talking to a man in a camel-hair coat and pinstriped suit. On Romanenko's left side was a well-built man with a dark moustache. In front of the Russian was a tall short-haired man in a tan suit, who moved with a watchful sense of purpose. And in the rear was the fifth man whose overcoat and haircut identified him as Russian, most likely KGB.

Kiviranna focused on Romanenko as he came through the barrier. Then he stepped closer, squeezing himself between a porter and a group of genteel elderly Scottish women with walking-sticks and umbrellas who were trying to induce the porter to carry their luggage. Kiviranna reached into his pocket and removed the Bersa, concealing it in the palm of his hand. He needed one clear shot, that was all. One clear shot at Romanenko.

Kiviranna brought the gun up. The sound of loudspeaker announcements detonated inside his head and then dissolved in a series of meaningless echoes, because he was conscious now of nothing save the short distance between his pistol and Romanenko's face.

With an expression of horrified disbelief, Romanenko saw the gun and raised his briefcase up in front of his eyes, a futile attempt to protect himself. Kiviranna fired directly into the Russian's heart, and as Romanenko screamed and collapsed on the ground and his briefcase slithered away from him and panicked pigeons flapped out of their roosting places in the high roof, Kiviranna turned and started to run. But the tall man in the tan-coloured suit, who had hesitated only a second in the aftermath of the gunfire, seized him roughly around the waist in the manner of an American football or rugby player and dragged him to the ground.

Frank Pagan, struggling with the gunman, disarming him, clamping cuffs on his wrists, was conscious of old ladies yelping and porters hurrying back and forth and the appearance of two uniformed policemen who immediately began to keep curious onlookers away – including a group of soccer fans who had apparently decided that the violence in Waverley Station was more authentic than any they might see on a soccer field. There was chaos, and that was a state of affairs Pagan did not remotely like. There was chaos and gunfire and he hadn't been able to prevent this awful situation from happening and that galled him as much as anything.

Pagan left the handcuffed gunman face down beneath the watchful eyes of one of the uniformed policemen, then he turned to look at Romanenko, who lay flat on his back with his eyes open, as if it were not death that had paralysed him but a catatonic trance. There was a dreadful wound in Romanenko's chest, and Danus Oates kept saying “Oh my God, my God,” as if the killing would mean a demotion for him inside the Foreign Office. John Downey, who at least knew how to behave around a murder scene, was wading into the spectators and cursing as he roughly pushed them back. It was all madness, that special kind of disorganised lunacy which surrounds any scene of blood. It was the way flies were drawn to feed and bloat themselves on a fresh carcass, and in this case the carcass was one Frank Pagan had been supposed to protect. But he'd failed and Romanenko, the ebullient Romanenko, the enthusiast, the new friend, lay dead.

You weren't supposed to let this kind of thing happen, Pagan thought. This was going to be an easy job. The kind of work any nanny should have been able to accomplish without breaking sweat. And now suddenly it was a mess and he felt the muscles of his stomach knot. Oates, like a somnambulist, was reaching down to pick up Romanenko's briefcase, which had fallen alongside Aleksis's body.

The man from the Soviet Embassy, who hadn't uttered a word all the way from London, said, “Please, the case,” and he made a move in Oates's direction, stretching out his hand to take the briefcase away from the young Englishman.

Pagan stepped between Oates and the Russian. He seized the case from Oates and held it against his side. “It stays with me,” he said.

“On the contrary, Mr Pagan,” the Russian said in immaculate English. “It goes back to the Soviet Embassy. It may contain business documents that are the property of the Soviet Union. Private material. Confidential matters.”

“I don't care if it contains the Five Year Plan for the whole of bloody Siberia,” Pagan said. “It stays with me. A man has been murdered and the case may contain material evidence of some kind. If it doesn't, you'll get it back.”

Danus Oates muttered something about the possibility of a diplomatic incident, as if there were no words more blasphemous in his entire vocabulary. Pagan gripped the briefcase fiercely.

The Russian looked at Oates. “Explain to Mr Pagan that the briefcase is Soviet property. Explain international law to him, please.”

Oates stammered. His tidy little world had collapsed all about him and he appeared unsure of everything – diplomatic protocol, international law, perhaps even his own identity. He had the expression of a man who suddenly discovers, late in life, that he's adopted. “I'm not sure, it's outside my province,” was what he finally blurted out. Pagan almost felt sorry for him. Good breeding and all the proper schools hadn't prepared Danus Oates for violence, other than the kind in which pheasants were despatched by gentlemen with shotguns.

“I keep the case,” Pagan snapped. “And that's final.”

The Russian wasn't easily appeased. He reached towards Pagan and tried to pull the briefcase away. Pagan placed a hand upon the Russian's shoulder and pushed him back – a moment of unseemly jostling that might quite easily have led to further violence had it not been for the fact that there were policemen everywhere now, plainclothes men from the Edinburgh Criminal Investigation Department, uniformed cops dragged away from soccer duty, sirens whining, ambulances roaring – through the rain. Pagan, clutching the briefcase to his side, was suddenly drained by events – and at the same time angered by what he saw as his own delinquency in performing a task that should have been as simple as sucking air.