Osama

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘His friend. From last year.’

  Joe vaguely remembered. There was a kid about Conor’s age living in the nearest village. They’d met on the beach last summer. The mother was blonde, overweight and bubbly. The father was a twat. Dressed head to foot in army surplus gear that covered his paunch, he thought he was David fucking Stirling, not some shitkicker from Berwick with a beer belly and a shelf full of Bear Grylls DVDs. It was true that Conor and Charlie had hit it off, but now something made Joe reluctant to be in contact with anyone else.

  ‘It’s better if he stays with us,’ he said.

  ‘He can’t stomp around the house by himself all day, Joe. He needs someone his own age.’

  ‘It’s safer if—’

  ‘What are you talking about, safer?’ Caitlin took a deep breath, as though calming herself down. ‘Nobody knows we’re here, sweetheart. Even JJ doesn’t know we’re here. And anyway . . .’ She glanced down sheepishly. ‘It would be nice for you and me to spend a bit of time together.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Right,’ he said.

  Conor had other ideas. At midday, once Caitlin had spoken to Charlie’s mum and arranged for Conor to spend the night with them, he looked crestfallen. ‘What if we can’t think of anything to say?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll be fine, sweetheart. He’ll be fine, won’t he?’

  Joe nodded. He’d be fine.

  At 4 p.m. he was packing Conor into the car. ‘You take him,’ Caitlin had whispered in his ear. ‘But hurry back.’

  Conor hugged his mum tight, clearly holding back some tears. Joe looked away. He didn’t want anyone to see his frown. Why couldn’t his son be a bit tougher?

  It was a short, silent journey to Charlie’s. Joe felt himself growing tense as soon as JJ’s house disappeared from the rear-view mirror. And as he rounded the base of the hill that hid the house from sight, he found his senses were as alert as if he was driving out on ops. He scanned the fields on either side. A tractor trundled over the horizon two klicks to the south-west. A silver Clio sped up behind him and overtook dangerously just before a hairpin bend – female driver, two kids in the back. A white Transit van passed from the other direction, registration number VS02 RTD. Driver bearded, baseball cap shading his face. Rear doors, Joe saw when it was behind him, blacked out . . .

  Ten minutes later he was entering the small village of Lymeford. A road sign announced that it welcomed careful drivers, but Joe was tipping eighty: the Mondeo’s brakes screeched as he slowed down and passed the Crown and Sceptre, where he and JJ had sunk more than a few pints in years gone by. There was a quaint little pond where a couple of kids were feeding the ducks. Here he turned left, into a close of modern red-brick houses, then pulled up outside one that had a black Cherokee Jeep parked outside, with a Help for Heroes sticker on the rear window.

  ‘OK, champ?’ he asked.

  Conor nodded mutely.

  Charlie’s mum – Caitlin had reminded him that her name was Elaine – greeted them at the front door with a wide, bubbly smile and a hug for Conor that wasn’t really reciprocated. ‘It’s so lovely to see you again . . . Charlie’s been dying to have you round . . .’

  Charlie, who was waiting for them in the front room, didn’t look like that was true. He’d grown in the last year, both upwards and outwards. Conor looked tiny next to him, and when Elaine encouraged them to go upstairs to play, neither boy looked very enthusiastic.

  ‘Bless,’ Elaine observed. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Joe?’

  ‘The man doesn’t want tea,’ came a voice from the next room. Two seconds later Charlie’s dad, Reg, appeared carrying two cans of Carling. He wore camouflage trousers that were several sizes too small for his considerable waist, and a Parachute Regiment T-shirt. ‘How do, mate.’ He nodded gruffly and handed Joe the warm beer. ‘What happened to your face, eh? Bit of bother with Terry Taliban?’

  Joe had a vague memory of telling Reg that he was off to the Stan, though of course he hadn’t mentioned the Regiment.

  ‘Something like that, Reg,’ he said, taking a sip of beer.

  ‘Sit down, then.’ Reg plonked himself in an armchair that was already indented with the shape of his arse. Next to it there was an occasional table on which lay a copy of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

  ‘I should go . . .’

  ‘So we’ve given those fuckin’ Al-Wotsit bastards a good seeing-to, eh?’ Reg spoke proudly, as if he’d nailed the Pacer himself. Then he belched.

  ‘Right,’ Joe muttered. Elaine had already rolled her eyes and left the room.

  Reg leaned forward. ‘You want to know what I think, though?’ Joe didn’t, but knew he was about to find out. ‘That bin Laden – something fishy about him. Our Charlie, always on the fuckin’ computer, he is. Always on that fuckin’ . . .’ He clicked his fingers three times and shouted, ?‘Elaine! What’s that You-Wotsit he’s always on?’

  ‘YouTube,’ came the reply.

  ‘Always on it, lookin’ at dancing cats and shit like that.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Probably lookin’ at all sorts of mucky stuff an’ all. Anyhow . . .’ he tapped himself proudly on the chest ?‘. . . I’ve been looking on it myself. Wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve found, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Right.’

  Reg leaned forward. ‘You know 9/11?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, did you know that there was a third building went down that day? Just near the Twin Towers, it was. And did you know it was reported on the news before it happened?’

  Reg sat back and took a triumphant swig of his beer.

  Joe put his down on the mantelpiece. ‘Look, mate,’ he said. ‘Really, I’ve got to—’

  ‘So if it were on the news before it happened, how come they knew about it?’ He leaned forward again, as though he was about to reveal a great secret. ‘Mark my words: that Bin Laden, he was a double agent’ – he almost spat it out – ‘working for the Americans . . .’

  ‘Reg, I’m sorry, mate. I’ve really got to be off.’

  ‘None as blind as them that can’t see,’ said Reg, ‘but you answer me this: what was he doing living where he was, eh? Right under everyone’s noses? You think the Americans didn’t know?’

  Fortunately, Joe didn’t have to say what he thought, because just then Elaine walked back into the room. She put an affectionate hand on Joe’s shoulder.

  ‘Never mind Reg, love,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s always looking for someone to listen to his loony ideas.’ Reg shrugged, and belched again. ‘Now don’t you worry about Conor. They’ll have a lovely time. I’ve got fish fingers for their tea, and I’ll make sure they’re not too late . . . Oh, and I’ll bring him back round first thing after breakfast. We pass your place on our way to school. Now then, Reg, say bye-bye to Joe.’

  Reg just raised his beer in Joe’s direction.

  Joe couldn’t get away quickly enough. Guys like Reg were fucking everywhere, keeping the army surplus stores in business and boring everyone shitless about their knowledge of modern combat from the comfort of their armchair. Put a fat fuck like him within sniffing distance of a contact situation and he’d be browning his boxers before you could say RPG. But he was harmless enough, and Elaine would look after Conor.

  He looked through the windscreen. Conor was at a window on the first floor. His pale face looked almost ghostly. Joe gave him the thumbs up, and the boy smiled unconvincingly back.

  Joe checked the time: 1710 hours. With a nagging sense of guilt he reversed the car, drove away from the house and headed back to JJ’s.

  It was growing dark when he got there. The sheep had moved from the hillside and a flock of noisy geese, silhouetted against the sky, were flying north-westerly in an arrowhead formation as he stepped out of the car. Their croaking echoed across the landscape. Once they had gone, everything was silent.

  Joe looked at the house. There were no lights on.

  Why the hell not?

  So
mething was wrong.

  He checked the long grass at the front of the house. He counted three sets of tyre tracks: arrival of the Mondeo yesterday, departure to Charlie’s, arrival just now. He located the indentation of Conor’s footprints from this morning. And nothing else.

  But still, no lights.

  He circled the house. The back garden was just as overgrown as the front. There was a modern, two-storey annexe here. On the ground floor was a kind of boot room, with a spiral iron staircase that led up to the landing on the first floor of the main house. But the rear door to the annexe was locked. Windows closed. No light. No sign of access.

  A gust of wind picked up, carrying with it the bleating of a distant sheep.

  Nobody knows you’re here, Joe told himself. He walked round the other side of the house, past the coal shed. The rickety wooden door was closed, the loose chain tied round its bolt in a figure of eight, just as he had left it. When he reached the front door again, the evening had grown a shade darker. And still there were no lights from the house.

  He opened the door and slipped inside.

  He was about to call Caitlin’s name, but something stopped him. The chill darkness of the hallway, perhaps. Or the silence, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock that Joe had wound that morning.

  The kitchen: empty and dark, the remnants of their lunch still unwashed by the sink. The sitting room on the other side of the hallway: ditto. Joe headed silently up the stairs. The steps were nearly two metres wide, with a winding, burnished-wood banister. Joe walked lightly along the left-hand edge of the treads, to minimize the creaking. The staircase turned back on itself. The banister continued horizontally for two metres along the landing, overlooking the staircase.

  At the top of the steps, he stopped and listened.

  Silence.

  He was on the verge of calling Caitlin’s name again. And again, something stopped him.

  The landing was ten metres long and covered with a musty grey carpet. To his left, there was a closed door that led back to the annexe, with its spiral staircase down to the ground floor. At one end of the landing was a door leading to the bathroom. This too was shut. The room Conor slept in was at the far end on the right. His door was fully open but no light was on inside. Opposite this was the room he shared with Caitlin. The door was a couple of inches ajar, and from it emerged a faint, flickering glow.

  A glow he hadn’t seen from the window that looked out onto the front.

  He approached with care, treading lightly, the tip of his shoe checking for any looseness in the floor that might make a noise before the heel went down. It took him twenty seconds to approach like this. When he was just inches from the doorway, he stopped and breathed deeply.

  Then he kicked the door open.

  The flickering glow, he saw instantly, came from a single tea light burning on the chest of drawers by the door. Against the left wall was a wardrobe with two long mirrors on the double doors. Opposite it, just to the right of the window, where the curtains were closed, was an old four-poster bed without any drapes.

  And on the bed was Caitlin.

  ‘Jesus!’ She had sat up suddenly when Joe kicked the door in. ‘Joe, what’s the . . . ’

  Caitlin closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, then forced a smile to her face. She wasn’t wearing much. A satin vest that did nothing to hide the curve of her breasts; skimpy underwear.

  Joe stood stupidly in the doorway. Caitlin approached him, took his hand and led him over to the bed.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed. She clambered up behind him and started massaging his shoulders. ‘Baby, you’re so tense. Take your shirt off.’

  Joe removed his shirt; behind him, he could sense Caitlin taking off her vest. When she started massaging again, he could feel her breasts brushing against his back.

  ‘Lie down,’ she whispered.

  He obeyed.

  Conor placed his knife and fork together on his empty plate, the way his mum had told him. He didn’t really like fish fingers, but he’d eaten them anyway, as well as the potato waffles, both smeared with ketchup.

  ‘Looks like blood, doesn’t it?’ Charlie had said as he squirted his own plate. Conor had kept his eyes fixed on his food. Charlie’s dad, who was passing through the kitchen on the way to the fridge, had said, ‘Too thick for blood, sunshine,’ before his mum had asked them to change the subject. After that they’d eaten in silence. They weren’t really getting on, and Conor didn’t want to be there.

  ‘Half an hour’s telly before bed, boys,’ Charlie’s mum said as she gathered up their plates. They walked through into the front room, where his dad was sitting with a can of beer in his hand reading his magazine. He gave Conor the creeps, and he sat as far away as he could, at the other end of the sofa.

  They watched Doctor Who on DVD. Conor found it scary, but Charlie was rapt and he didn’t want to look like a wimp. He was glad when Charlie’s mum came in and said, ‘Seven-thirty, boys. Time for bed.’

  Conor slept on a blow-up mattress on Charlie’s floor. Or rather, he didn’t sleep. He lay there in the darkness, listening to Charlie’s slow breathing and the sound of the TV downstairs. Thinking of his mum, and how she put on a brave face when it was just the two of them, even though he knew how much she hated it when Dad was away. And thinking about Dad too. How he had been sitting in the bath with the water pouring over him. How he had ripped his Xbox away from the screen when he’d been playing Call of Duty – something he was only doing because he thought playing a game like that might make his dad think more of him.

  Thinking how Dad was just different this time.

  He didn’t know how late it was when he started crying. All he knew was that once he started, he couldn’t stop.

  Joe and Caitlin lay together, naked. Spent.

  ‘What’s that?’ Joe breathed.

  ‘It’s nothing, baby. Just the old house creaking.’

  The curtains were open now, and their bodies were lit more by the moonlight that flooded in through the window than by the tea light. Caitlin had her head on his chest and one hand on his stomach, which she stroked reassuringly. She was warm, and there was something about her touch that made Joe feel more relaxed than he had for months. She was right. No need to be scared of things going bump in the night.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a long pause. ‘This wasn’t the homecoming I had in my head. I’ve been—’

  ‘Shhh . . .’ Caitlin soothed him. ‘I do understand, baby. I know the old Joe’s in there somewhere. I wish I could just make it better.’

  ‘I’ll make it up to you. And to Conor. I promise.’ I’ll be a dad, he thought to himself. I’ve had enough of being a soldier.

  ‘You don’t have to promise anything, baby.’ Her voice cracked slightly. ‘It’s enough that you’re back with us.’

  Silence. He stared at the ceiling, listening to the soft sound of her breathing. Neither of them felt the need to speak. Joe pretended to himself that he was not keeping an ear out for another creak from elsewhere in the house.

  A minute passed. Something caught Joe’s eye.

  It was almost nothing. A dot of light, reflecting from the wardrobe mirrors and zigzagging like a firefly across the ceiling before vanishing. Joe sat up immediately, bringing Caitlin with him.

  ‘Joe, what is it?’

  ‘Quiet!’ he hissed. ‘Lie down . . .’

  ‘Joe, please . . .’ She was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, her arms crossed over her breasts as though she was trying to protect herself from something.

  ‘Lie down.’

  But Joe was looking out through the edge of the dirty window, casting around for movement. Clouds were scudding across the sky; the long grass out front was rippling in a light breeze. But apart from that, nothing.

  Joe quickly pulled on his jeans, blocking out the sound of Caitlin’s voice, which was tearful once more. ‘Joe . . . it’s all in your head . . .’

&nbs
p; But it wasn’t in his head. He’d seen something.

  He looked around for anything that would serve as a weapon. Finding nothing, he removed his sturdy leather belt from his jeans and held each end tightly. At least you could strangle someone with it – just.

  ‘Stay there,’ he said.

  The tea light was guttering. Joe snuffed it with his thumb and forefinger before stepping back out into the hallway. He remembered that JJ kept his shotgun and cartridges in a locked cabinet in the basement. If he could get there . . .

  He edged down the landing. But he’d only gone a couple of metres when he stopped and stood very still. There was no doubt about it. He could feel a breeze in his face. He peered into the darkness. The door leading to the spiral staircase and the annexe was open.

  ‘Caitlin!’ he roared. ‘Caitlin, get dressed!’

  Many things happened at once. Two figures appeared, one at the end of the corridor, emerging from the open door, a second from Conor’s bedroom two metres away at Joe’s eight o’clock. But it wasn’t the presence of these figures that momentarily paralysed him with terror. It was what they were wearing: white, all-in-one outfits.

  A dazzling light. The man at the end of the corridor was holding a pencil-thin torch. He switched it on, shining the bright halogen beam in Joe’s face. Half-blinded, Joe turned to attack the man who had emerged from Conor’s bedroom. He had a torch too, and so did a third man behind him. Joe hurled himself at them, and they crumpled down onto the floor. Joe only had to touch the guy’s clothing to realize what these men – he assumed they were men – were wearing: reinforced-paper SOCO suits. They covered everything: shoes, bodies, heads. They wore tight yellow rubber gloves, sealed to the SOCO suits with layers of packing tape. Their faces were covered with what felt, as he clawed his hand into the assailant’s face, like tinted cellophane.

  A scream. It was Caitlin. ‘He’s got a gun! Joe! He’s got a gun!’

  Rage surged through him. He didn’t bother with the belt, but brought his fist down on the nearest man’s face. He could instantly feel the wetness of his blood slipping around between the cellophane and the man’s nose. He rolled off the intruder, ready to jump to his feet and strangle the cunt that was threatening Caitlin. But now the one he’d seen coming in from the annexe door was standing right over him, shining the torch in his face. Joe started to push it away.