…HAMBURG…
Riccardi sounded groggy, as if woken from a deep sleep.
‘What time’s it?’ he said.
‘It’s morning,’ said Anselm. ‘What sort of hours are you keeping there? Still up all night?’
‘Yup but now I’m getting paid for it. Got a job. Night job.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘In a call centre. I answer customers’ questions about software problems. From all over the world.’
‘What do you know about software?’
‘Fuck all. I’ve got an FAQ sheet, that won’t do it, I say we’ll get back to them.’
‘Do you?’
‘No. How you been?’
‘Alive. Listen, there’s something I want to ask you. Kaskis had a photograph.’ Anselm described it.
‘Yup. I saw it. The guy, he was in it.’
‘Diab?’
‘Yup. Diab. That woman get hold of you?’
‘In every sense. Did Kaskis say anything about the picture?’
He could hear Riccardi yawn, a sound a bear might make in spring.
‘She’d be an A1 fuck, I thought. Good legs. See her legs?’
‘She appeared to have legs. She was walking. What did Kaskis say about the picture?’
‘I turned it over and on the back was written SD and a date, I can’t remember, 1980-something, early eighties.’
‘SD?’
‘I asked him and he said, “Special Deployment, Sudden Death, the funny guys”.’
‘Slowly, I’m slow. Say that again.’
‘Special Deployment, Sudden Death. That’s what he said. And he said, “There but for the grace.” It stuck in my mind.’
‘I’m amazed. Drugs are doing you good. You asked what he meant?’
‘He said, just people who don’t exist.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yup. Wildly talkative, Kaskis, notice that?’
‘I did. He said, “But for the grace”?’
‘That’s what he said. Listen, you raking over all the shit again? Baby, it’s history. Get on with life. Take drugs. Get a job in a call centre.’
‘I’ll pencil that in for tomorrow. Anything else about the picture?’
‘The one musclehead was called Elvis-not a name you forget.’
Elvis.
‘How do you know that?’
Riccardi said, ‘Written on the picture. Guy next to Diab. Elvis. On his big fucking chest.’
Anselm had the log open, he found Inskip’s list. Elvis Aaron Veldman.
Dead, shot by intruder, Raleigh, North Carolina, 7 October 1993.
This was the something that had moved in a crevice of his mind. The names on the list were the men in Kaskis’ photograph.
Most of them dead. Five of them killed in the space of a few days in October 1993.
When the picture was taken, in the early 1980s, they belonged to Special Deployment-Sudden Death.
SD, some kind of special unit. Unit of what?
Sudden Death.
Not the Peace Corps.