Free HOME RUN by Gerald Seymour Page B

would all walk in the fear that they might, one day, feel the grip of his thick fingered fist upon their arm. It had not been done by himself, but he knew the man who had carried out the sentence of the Special Court of the Clergy on Mehdi Hashemi, and Hashemi had been the protege of the man named by the Imam as his successor. Likewise, he knew the man who had put Sadeq Ghotzbadeh to death, and Ghotbzadeh had been the Foreign Minister of the nation and the favourite of the Imam. No man in Tabriz trifled with the executioner. He was adept in hanging and shooting and lashing and organising the casting of stones at women taken in adultery, and in the handling of the newly arrived machine that was powered by electricity and that could slice with a guillotine knife through the fingers of a thief. He would use it this day: a thief who had stolen from a vegetable grower. And three executions, all in the city: a trafficker in narcotics, a Kurd who had aided the "hypocrites", a rapist of small children.

    His wife was scrubbing shirts in the yard behind the house.
    She hardly acknowledged his shouted farewell from the back door. His children, all four of them, were playing with a deflated ball around their mother's legs, too intent on their game to hear him. Inside the house, from a cupboard beside the bed in the room he shared with his wife, he took a 9mm Browning pistol - old, well cared for, accurate. He heard the car engine running sweetly beyond the open door.
    He walked out into the morning. He tiptoed between the rain puddles because he had earlier shined his shoes. He climbed into his car, and laid the Browning, that was loaded but not cocked, on the seat beside him, and he covered the pistol with yesterday's Ettelaat.
    As he drove away he hooted his horn. He smiled briefly, he did not think that the sound of the horn would interrupt the game of football.
    He tacked up the lane, avoiding the deeper holes, going slowly so as not to damage the suspension of the old Hillman Hunter. He rolled to a halt at the junction with the main road.
    There was a flow of lorry traffic heading towards the centre of the city. He waited for the gap.
    He saw a young man a little down the far side of the main road, facing towards the city centre, astride his motorcycle.
    The young man was stopped at the side of the road. The young man wore a blue tracksuit, and was well bearded and bare headed, and he carried a satchel bag slung around his neck.
    He saw the gap open for him, a small space, and he lurched the Hillman Hunter forward, seized his opportunity. He heard the high long blast of a horn behind him, but the Hillman Hunter had little acceleration and the lorry's brakes seemed to punch the air as the huge grille closed on his rear view mirror. Another howling blast on the lorry's horn and then he was under way. It was always a difficult manoeuvre, getting out of the lane in which he lived, and joining the highway into Tabriz.

    He was boxed in. There was a central reservation to his left. There was a Dodge pick-up to his right, filled with construction labourers. There was a cattle lorry to his front, there was a lorry with refrigerated cargo behind him. He could not go slower, he could not go faster. No matter that he could not pass the livestock lorry. He was not late for his work.
    When he looked into his rear view mirror, he saw the motorcyclist. That was an excellent way to travel. The motorcycle was exactly the right transport for going into the city in the early morning's heavy traffic.
    It was the motorcycle that had been parked on the side of the highway. The executioner looked ahead, then checked in his sidemirror, and he saw that the motorcyclist had pulled out from behind him, and was now poised to come alongside him, and to pass him, coming through the narrow gap between the Hillman Hunter and the Dodge pick-up. That was free-dom, to be able to weave in and out of the heavy trucks . . .
    He saw that the young man on the motorcycle