HOME RUN (6 page)

Parrish gazed into the young face in front of him, into the coolness of the eyes that were not misted with drink, at the determined set of the youngster's chin. He swayed. "And where's out there? 'Out there' is the arse end of Afghanistan, it's the happy little villages of Iran. My darling, you go there on your own. You don't go there with your old Uncle Bill."

"Then we might just as well give up - legalise the stuff."

"For a joker who's going to get a Commendation, who's just had the Judge's praises sung up his bum, you are mightily hard to please, Keeper. . . . You should go home. In the morning, a good shit and a good shower and a good shave and you'll feel no end better."

Parrish had given up on him, headed back for the group.

He stood a few more minutes on his own. The rest had now forgotten him. He could not help himself. He could not turn it off, like they could. He was right, he knew he was right, but none of them came over to join him, to hear how right he was. He called across to say that he was on his way. None of them turned, none of them heard him.

He drove home. He observed the speed limit. He was stone cold sober. It meant nothing to him that the Judge had singled him out for praise. It only mattered that there was a war, and it was not being won.

Home was a two-bedroom flat in the south-west suburbs of the city. He could afford to live in the flat because of his overtime and Ann's work in a local architect's office. He garaged his Escort at the back of the block. He felt half dead with tiredness. He was a long time selecting the right key.

What made him tired, what made him want to throw up, had been their looks from the dock as they had heard sentence.

The bastards had laughed at April's best effort.

Inside there was a note on the narrow hall table.

" D . I've gone to Mum's for the night. Might see you tomorrow if you've the time, A . "

The detective, bright and early, thanked the supervisor at the exchange. A small country town, of course there were easy and unofficially good relations between the exchange and the police. The number that had been disconnected last evening had been reported out of order three times during the night.

One caller had left his name and telephone number. And not a name that surprised him. Young Darren was quite well known to the local detective. He suggested to the supervisor that it would be quite in order for the telephone to be reconnected.

In his office he told his subordinates when they came in not to take their coats off, and he handed them the address, and told them to bring in Darren Cole for a chat.

He was whistling to himself, Gilbert and Sullivan. He would enjoy talking old times to young Master Cole, and talking about Lucy Barnes' purchases. A fine start to the day until his clerical assistant informed him that he was required in the Chief Superintendent's office, and that two big shots were down from Constabulary Headquarters.

3

He was dressed as a
pasdar
in the loose-fitting dun khaki uniform of the Revolutionary Guards, and he walked with a limp that would be noticed but which was not ostenta-tious.

He had left his motorcycle a hundred yards behind where t he man that he followed had parked his paint scraped Hillman Hunter. He had trailed the man through the alleyways of the closed bazaar, past the steel shuttered doors, and towards the Masjid-i-Jomeh. He walked on, ignoring the pain of the pebble taped under the ball of his right foot. He watched as the man passed the guards at the outer doorway of the mosque, entering the dark shadow beneath the linked domes. When the man was lost to him, Charlie veered away, and crossed between the sparse traffic to the far side of the street. For years now there had been heightened security at Friday prayers, all across the country, ever since the bomb hidden beneath a prayer mat had exploded at Friday prayers at Tehran University. Charlie watched and waited. The Guards at the entrance to the mosque had seen the young man who now sat on the cracked pavement across the street from them. They had seen his limp, and they waved to him, and smiled a comrade's greeting. A veteran, they would have supposed, of the great marshland battles on the perimeter of Basra far to the south, maybe a casualty of the fierce fighting around Halabja on the mountain road to Baghdad. Charlie knew that men in uniform, and with guns in their hands, and who were stationed far behind the lines, always had respect for a wounded veteran.

He would cross the street and listen to the Mullah's words from the loudspeakers high on the domes of the Masjid-i-Jomeh, and he would talk to the Guards.

Charlie had not been brought up to respect the faith of modern Iran. It had been his father's concession to his American-born wife. His mother had had no religion, Charlie had been raised without the teachings of the Ayatollahs, and without the teachings of the Christian priests who had served the expatriate community in Iran. The children he had played with, been taught with before he went to the American school, they had taught Charlie enough of the Moslem faith for him to be able to pass as a believer. He would want to talk with the Guards. Talking was what Charlie did well, and he was better at listening.

He listened to the Guards. He let them talk. Duty rosters,

"hypocrite" outrages, troop movements. To questions about himself he was modestly reticent, his wound was a small thing, he hoped that soon he would be fit to return to the service of the Imam.

Charlie saw the man come out of the mosque. At one moment he was listening attentively to their talk, at the next he had made his farewells, pleading weariness, he must rest, and he had drifted away.

He had known the name of the man for two years, and he had known his address for seven weeks, since he was last home. He knew the age of the man and the name of his wife, and the number of his children, and he knew the man's work.

He knew by heart the case histories of at least a dozen of those executed by this man since the Revolution. He knew that, depending upon the order of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, sometimes the man made his executions by hanging and sometimes by shooting.

The man was at peace, safe after communication with his God, safe in his home city, safe in the service of his Imam.

The man had hanged a teenager of the Baha'i faith who had refused after torture to recant his heresy. He had shot the 94-year-old former Captain Iraj Matbu'i, who had been helped to the execution post, sentenced for leading the Gendarmes against the Mullahs in the Mashad revolt of 1935. In public, he had hanged Juliette Eshraq.

Charlie had known the man's name for two years, since he had first returned to Iran, since he had scraped away at the story of his sister's death. It had taken longer to find the names of the two Guards who had lifted her on to the table, beneath the crane, in front of the Guards' barracks in Tabriz. These two he had now hunted and killed. He knew the name of the investigator who had tortured his sister. He knew the name of the Mullah who had tried and sentenced his sister.

He saw the man climb into his old car. He rode behind him across the bridge, over the broad river that was swollen by the melting mountain snows from the north, along the straight road beside the cemetery and the gardens that once had been the city's pride. The midday heat, trapped in the valley, Mistered the squat concrete buildings. Charlie felt the warmth of the air on his face as he rattled in the wake of the Hillman Hunter, bouncing over the coarse paving of the old road.

The car ahead of him pulled off the road, no signal, wound up a dry dust lane. Charlie braked, cut his engine, dismounted and seemed to be adjusting his chain. He watched the children stream out of the house, and the man laugh with them, reach lor them, and lift them.

He had seen enough. Charlie remounted and powered the motorcycle away.

Young Darren had been left to sit in an Interview Room, watched over by an expressionless policewoman, and sweat.

His two juniors reported to the local detective, and in the Chief Superintendent's office, sitting back easily, feigning the indifference of rank, were the big shots from Constabulary Headquarters. The local detective liked what he heard. Young Darren had been lifted outside his address, taken on the pavement as his hands were busy with the keys and door handle of his car. Two arresting officers approaching from different directions, and the suspect taken unawares, and without the chance to dispose of the evidence.

The detective heard them out, then muttered a lukewarm congratulation. He could play politics with the best of them.

Nothing too fulsome, because that way he gave the impression that it wasn't a miracle that they had done it right. When they had finished, and bowed their way out of the presence, the detective addressed himself to his seniors. He had the file. He glossed through the prime detail. Cole, Darren Victor. Age, 24 years. Address . . .Previous: Possession (fined), Possession (fined), Possession (6 months). Common-law wife, two babies.

Income: No visible means. Upsum: Hick, second-rate villain, pusher and user . . . Young Cole was what would be expected in a country town. Small time, small beer, not the sort of chummy who would ever expect to be confronted in the interview room by big shots from headquarters.

They left the local detective with no doubts. He was working to them, they were in charge, they had taken over. He would do as he was told and be thankful for it. He didn't complain, had never in his police career tried to buck the system. He was to go back to Darren Cole's address with his two juniors and a dog, relieve the uniformed constable who had been left to watch over the woman and her brats, and take the place apart. He would not be required for the interview with chummy, and God help him if he came out of that house with at least one evidence bag not filled.

In the interview room they dismissed the policewoman. They introduced themselves, a Superintendent and a Chief Inspector. They sat and tilted their chairs back as if that were more comfortable. They looked at Darren Cole like he was filth, like they'd want a good wash after being in the same room with him.

Their chummy's eyes flickered, hovered from one to the other.

They let him soak it in, they wanted him soft.

"It's Darren, right? Darren Cole, is that right?" The Chief Inspector said softly.

Their chummy pursed his lips, stayed quiet.

The Superintendent said, "I am going to assume, Darren, that you are not wholly retarded. I'm going to give you the benefit that you are not completely dumb. Now it's not every day that the likes of my colleague and I miss our breakfast to get down here to talk with a shit bag such as yourself, Darren.

Have you got me?"

Young Darren nodded, nervous and showing it.

"Can we start again, Darren?" The Chief Inspector passed his pack of cigarettes across the table, and Darren Cole fished one clear and his hand was shaking as he held the cigarette to his mouth. It was lit for him. Neither of the big shots took a cigarette. "You are Darren Cole, is that right?"

A feeble reed reply. "Yes."

"Good boy, Darren . . . I said to my colleague that Darren Cole was cute enough to know what's good for him. I said that Darren Cole would know how to behave. You push scag, chummy."

"Might have done . . ."

"You push it regular."

"Maybe."

The Chief Inspector's voice hardened. "Regular."

"So, I do."

"You pushed to Lucy Barnes."

"I don't know the names."

"To Lucy Barnes."

"Perhaps."

"Getting silly again, Darren . . . To Lucy Barnes."

"Yes."

"You gave Lucy Barnes her scag."

Darren shrugged.

The Superintendent said, "Lucy Barnes is dead, chummy.

On the slab. Don't tell me that you didn't know. Christ, is this bloody cow town so bloody slow . . . ?"

There was a quiet knock at the door. A uniformed policeman came in and handed the Superintendent a folded message sheet. He read it slowly, he smiled slowly, then he handed the message sheet to the Chief Inspector. Another smile and then the fast look of satisfaction between the two of them. Darren Cole saw the signs. He was shrivelling in his chair.

"The dog's been down at your place, Darren. I tell you what, when you get through this, when you've done whatever's coming your way, then I'd learn to hide things a little better.

I mean that approximately 400 grammes of what we are presuming to be a prohibited substance, namely heroin, could be better hidden than under the bloody mattress. That's making it easy for the dog, Darren, oh dear, oh dear me . . . "

"That's not very clever, chummy," the Superintendent shook his head.

They had the well oiled routine, they had been working in tandem for more than a decade. Straightforward, this one, a roll over.

"You are looking at a bad scene, Darren," the Chief Inspector said it as if it hurt him.

"I didn't know she was dead."

"You've only done an open prison, Darren. Closed prison isn't the same. The Scrubs, Pentonville, Winson Green, Long Larton, Parkhurst, they're not the same as where you were.

They are nasty news, Darren. Do you know what you're looking at, Darren?"

Cole did not reply. His head was sinking.

"You could be looking at a tenner, Darren, because of who and what Miss Lucy Barnes was. God's truth, Darren, a tenner. A very hard time in those places, Darren, if we weren't speaking up for you."

The voice was muffled through the hands, pathetic. "What do you want?"

"We don't want_yow, chummy, that's for sure, we want up the chain from you. We'd speak up for you, if you gave us the name of the dealer."

A long silence in the Interview Room.

The Superintendent said easily, "Just the name of your dealer, chummy."

Cole's head burst upwards. He was actually laughing. His shoulders and upper body were convulsed, like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. His mouth was frothing.

"You trying to get me blown away? I don't get less than a lenner if I grass, I get stiffed. You get a name and they don't ever forget. Shove it, mister."

For the next hour Darren Cole stared fixedly ahead of him.