The Pig Man Cometh
I. Unwelcome Visitors
THE smart looking 4x4 looked out of place in the gateway.
I'd noticed it when spreading straw in one of the large pig arks, pushing the old sows out and onto their patch of brown earth. The shiny motor had tentatively pulled up, as though not wanting to spoil its tyres with mud splashes.
I doubted it was the boss inside. He drove the latest Range Rover and didn't hesitate to practice his off-driving skills amongst the exposed road's ruts and divots. Roughly one hundred acres and pig arks of varying sizes in every available space. And it didn't smell that good either. Outdoor pigs they were, but even outdoor pigs en masse could conjure up a pretty awful stink.
Maybe they were lost tourists, spotting a field of charming pigs, cooing over the cute scene and glossing over the smell, the dead piglets outside many of the farrowing arks and the copious rats. No, if you only looked for a few minutes, then you didn't see such things.
I moved back inside the big ark and decided to let the visitor move on; chatting about the pigs, or giving directions, would just be a waste of time.
Bent double I kicked the fresh straw around the ark, then moved back outside, saying a few things to the pigs that maneuvered about with the slowness of animals that are near the end of their time.
I took my time straightening up and glanced again at the gateway; the car was still there and two suited men were standing nearby like sentinels, looking my way. It was a hundred yards or more, but I instantly recognised the two forms that were paying me some unwanted attention.
They had found me.
The two men seemed immobile against the mid-morning gloomy horizon.
The one of the left was a short, squat, even ape-like man. A thug in an ill-fitting suit that might have been fashionable on an accountant 30 years ago. He was of dubious Irish East European parentage, although a few of his colleagues used to joke, well out of ear-shot of course, that he was reared by a pack of wandering gorillas. Few people, even in personnel, knew when, or how he had been recruited into the Service. But he had become a faithful acolyte to a man who was at the other end of the evolutionary scale; and he was stood on the right.
Tall, patrician, gray-haired, erect and with a gait that said ex-public school, ex-fine university and ex-soldier. Archetypal British establishment, yet there were many examples of people who had misread his upper-class persona for weakness. He had climbed the slippery pole to become what the Service now called a Divisional Director; one step from the position of Head Honcho, and one position that he would never fill, mainly because his Whitehall bosses could fill a filing cabinet with complaints about this methods. But those methods had got results; blind eyes were often turned in his direction, as long as the tracks could continue to be led elsewhere.
The tall one gestured at me, calling me over to share his luminous space. I ignored him; I was employed by someone else now.
The pair of them shared a few words and the small ape went back to the car - I could feel his frustration from where I stood.
The tall man began to walk towards me, picking his way over the divots and walking like a man who was he just knew that his shoes would be ruined, and maybe also his expensive Seville Row suit. I could just imagine him berating his dry-cleaners to get that horrid animal smell out of his number ones.
I stood my ground, watching him pick his way over to me, his nose twitching and his hand nervously combing his full head of gray hair away from his aristocratic forehead.
He stopped at the electric wire; thinking he had done enough. He looked over at me; just ten yards of mud separating us.
"We need to talk." He said, his deep baritone voice making a few of the pigs look up and give him an inquisitive stare.
I wasn't sure how to react. My instinct was to grab hold of his head and push it down into the mud until he stopped breathing, but I knew his ape-like companion wouldn't like that.
So I kept my reply short: "Why."
His face took on a pained expression.
"Look, can we go and talk somewhere...this...well its not exactly conducive to having a chat."
"Not a problem for me." I said, not budging from my position outside of the ark, enjoying his discomfort.
"Someone might come." He sounded like a petulant child.
"The boss won't be back for hours. Its just me and the pigs."
"Right, well..." he spied a collection of straw bales, near the fence by the wood "...how about we sit over there?"
"How about you go away?"
"It's not that simple I'm afraid Tom."
It never was with him. Seeing there was no where to go with this, I led the way over to the bales, making sure the ape was still in the car and not doing a flanking manoeurve.
He must have sensed my caution, as he looked over to the car, and then back at me before settling himself on one of the cleaner bales.
"Don't worry about him. If we meant you harm, you'd be lying in the gutter by now."
I sat a few bales away, knowing that what he said was true. These guys didn't make idle threats, they didn't have to.
"So Tom, how's it going?" He asked with not an ironic tone in his voice.
"Yeah, great Geoffrey..." I said, looking around me "...things are on the up. They now trust me to look after the pigs by myself." Neither of us laughed.
"You didn't have to leave. You put that tart before the service, not a good idea."
I was about to argue back, but I calmed it. The likes of Geoffrey Humber wouldn't understand my stupid concept of honour. He'd sell his own child if it furthered his career.
"And how is she by the way? Tucked away in a nice warm cottage somewhere, waiting for her man to come off the land and play happy families." He sniped.
I gave him a look, wondering what I'd done to deserve this routine.
"No, she's not, is she..." a cold smile played across his aging lips "...last I heard, she's back doing what she does best?"
"You don't understand." It was the best I could do.
"You bet I don't. Still, enough of past problems eh?" He put a manicured hand into his jacket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of newspaper. He unfolded it, pedantically, like a magician keeping his audience hooked. He laid it on the bale before us, turning it around so I could read it. I did, not immediately see which of the stories I should focus on.
Then I did.
It was a clipping from a newspaper, but not fully understanding the Chinese characters didn't matter, it was the picture that held my attention. He was dressed in an expensive looking linen suit, leaning against a plush looking hotel wall with panoramic views over Hong Kong harbour. A little pepper gray in his hair, an expansive smile, a small, street-wise scar across his chin, he was a little older, but still unmistakable. I checked the date at the top of the newspaper - three days ago.
I tried to stop my jaw dropping and staring at Humber: I did both.
He reached out for the clipping, folded it neatly and placed it back in his pocket. He didn't look pleased.
"Ring any bells?" He asked needlessly, knowing full well that I recognised the man in the picture.
But it was impossible. I had last seen that face lying in a skip in the back streets of Hong Kong; about what was it, ten, maybe even 15 years ago? Humber had ordered the hit on the insignificant jerk when he had threatened to expose a little scam he had going in the new territories to earn a few green ones to get his kids through Eton. I could hardly give the game away, as I was the middle man, running between my boss, Humber, the guys who could accidentally lose a few Western weapons for a price and the guys on mainland China buying as much as we could supply. I got 15%; not bad, it had bought me that Jaguar I had always dreamt about.
II. Bad Memories
I looked over Humber's shoulder, seeing Hong Kong as it was back then, a land of opportunity, especially if you were prepared to bend the rules. Officially employed by Britain's erstwhile overseas secret service agency, I was an ex-Army intelligence officer, comparatively intelligent that is, and used as a 'pointer.' Bit like the dog of the same name.
I was responsible for setting up a target, whether for a honey trap, a con, or a kill. Some desk jockey came up with the concept and I made sure we got the right person, before the avenging angels moved in and did the deed. Killing was rare, but when the order came, I had to contract it out to some trustworthy individual, namely one who would get the job done, then disappear back into the mire where they had emerged. Many of these guys were one-offs, with maybe a military training and looking to supplement their pension. The hired professional assassin was a pre-occupation of the movies.
I forced my eyes back to Humber.
"Impossible. He's dead. Very dead."
"Seems he's very much alive." Humber replied, not losing eye contact.
"Listen, I don't know what trick you're trying to pull here, but he's dead. Comprendo?"
"Came a bit of surprise to us as well, seeing him standing there quite contentedly, especially when you had assured us he was no longer a problem."
I remembered standing in the waste skip, in a grubby Hong Kong back street, sweating that some police control would find me checking the pulse of some Chinese that was deemed a problem. But I did check and spent some time doing it, knowing that the revival of this one would cause us all a few problems.
"So, you're saying that 15 years later he's back, beeming away?" The disbelief was obvious in my voice.
"It's actually 12 years. Nothing for 12 years, then he's back in some newspaper, every inch the budding entrepreneur." It was Humber's turn to look off into the middle distance, reliving some memory of those evil days.
He brought himself back to the present. "He was dead, wasn't he? I need to hear you say it."
I examined Humber's face. On closer inspection he hadn't aged well, his numerous lines giving him a creased, almost pained look.
"You've looked at all the possibilities?" I said.
"Everything. Ran checks through some of our junior technies who wouldn't spot a link. They confirmed it was the same man. We had that picture of him, you remember? Taken a few days before the hit, in the restaurant."
I nodded, not wanting to trawl back through all the details of that squalid part of my life.
Humber stood up, looking around at the pigs, the mud, the arks.
"Maybe I get it. I didn't at first, when they told me where you were, but maybe I just do." He said.
"Get what?"
"All this. It must be easy to forget when this is your life." And with that he pulled his overcoat tightly around him and walked back to the car. I watched as the ape gave me a final look, then they were gone.
I ssteadied my breathing. They were gone, but I was no longer the anonymous pig man, and with that, I would have to move on again.
(to be continued)