by Andy McNab
Lynn made it clear that in no way did the retainer mean any change in my status; he didn't say it in so many words, but I knew from the look in his eyes that I was still lowlife, a K spy, a deniable operator carrying out shit jobs that no one else wanted to do. Nothing would change unless I could get Lynn to put my name forward for permanent cadre, and time was running out. He was taking early retirement to his mushroom farm in Wales when he finished running the desk in February. I didn't have a clue who was taking over. Contacting the message service last night, I'd heard Lynn would see me at 1:30.
If I ever got back into the boys' club, pay would be increased to 290 pounds a day for ops, 190 pounds for training, but in the meantime I was in the shit. The chances of selling this house were zero; it was in a worse state than when I'd moved in. I'd bought it for cash, but I couldn't get a loan against it because I couldn't prove my income.
Since leaving the army it had been cash in envelopes, rather than a regular paycheck.
Getting out of the warm bath into the cold bathroom, I dried myself quickly and got into my leathers.
From inside the paneling that contained the cistern I retrieved my 9mm HK Universal Self-Loading Pistol (Heckler & Koch universal self-loading pistol), a chunky, square-edged semiautomatic 9mm, and two thirteen-round mags. Its holster was my usual one, which could be shoved down the front of my jeans or leathers.
Sitting on the toilet lid, I bit open the plastic bag protecting it and loaded the loose rounds. I always eased the mag's springs when the weapon wasn't needed. Most stoppages occur because of a misfeed from the magazine, either because the mag's not fully home in the pistol grip or because the mag spring has been under tension for so long that it doesn't do its job when required. When the first round is fired it might not push the next up into the breech.
I loaded the weapon, inserting a mag into the pistol grip and ensured it was fully home. To make the weapon ready, I pulled back on the top slide with my forefinger and thumb and let go. The working parts moved forward under their own steam and rammed the top round of the mag into the chamber. I had three Universal Self Loading Pistols in the house, two hidden downstairs when I was here, and one under my bed-a little trick I'd learned from Kelly's dad years ago.
I checked chamber by pushing back slightly on the top slide and put the weapon and spare mag in my pocket, slung the backpack over my shoulder and locked up the house.
Waiting for me outside was the bike of my dreams, a red Ducati 966 that I'd treated myself to at the same time as the house. It lived in the garage, another stone marvel of 1930s architecture, and there were times when I reckoned the sound of its engine bursting into life was the only thing that kept me from total despair.
* * *
8
The London traffic was chaos. There were plenty of shopping days left till Christmas, but you wouldn't have thought so from the number of cars.
As I rode down from Norfolk it had been cold, overcast, and dull, but at least it was dry. Compared with Finland it was almost tropical. I got to Marble Arch in just under three hours, but progress was going to be slow going from now on. Weaving my way around stationary vehicles, I looked down Oxford Street, where the decorations blazed and twinkled.
The season of goodwill was everywhere, it seemed, except behind the steering wheels of gridlocked vehicles and inside my head.
I was dreading this. The house I called in Hampstead last night was staffed by two nurses who, under the psychiatrist's supervision, were looking after Kelly twenty-four hours a day. They took her to a clinic in Chelsea several times a week, where Dr. Hughes had her consulting rooms. Kelly's round-the-clock attention was costing me just over four grand a week. Most of the 300,000 I'd stolen from the drug cartels in '97, together with her trust fund, had been spent on her education, the house, and now her treatment. There was nothing left.
It had all started about nine months ago. Her grades since coming to England had been poor; she was an intelligent nine-year-old, but she was like a big bucket with holes in it-everything was going in, but then it just dripped out again. Apart from that, she'd shown no visible aftereffects from the trauma. She was slightly nervous around adults, but okay with her own age group. Then, at boarding school, she'd started to complain about pains, but could never be more specific or explain exactly where they were. After several false alarms, including the school nurse wondering if she was starting her periods early, her teachers concluded that she was just attention seeking. Then it slowly got worse; Kelly gradually withdrew from her friends, her teachers, her grandparents, and me. She wouldn't talk or play any more; she just watched TV, sat in a sulk, or sobbed. I didn't pay that much attention at first; I was worried about the future and was too busy feeling pissed at not having worked since the previous summer while I waited for Lynn to make up his mind.
My usual response to her sobbing bouts had been to go and get ice cream. I knew this wasn't the answer, but I didn't know what was. It got to the point where I even started to get annoyed with her for not appreciating my efforts. What an asshole I felt now.
About five months ago she'd been with me in Norfolk for the weekend.
She was distant and detached, and nothing I did seemed to engage her. I felt like a school kid jumping around a fight in the playground, not really knowing what to do: join in, stop it, or just run away. I tried playing at camping with her, putting up the tent in her bedroom. That night she woke with terrible nightmares. Her screaming lasted all night. I tried to calm her, but she just lashed out at me as if she was having a fit. The next morning, I made a few phone calls and found out there was a six-month waiting list for a public hospital appointment, and even then I'd be lucky if it helped. I made more calls and later the same day took her to see Dr. Hughes, a London psychiatrist who specialized in child trauma and who accepted private patients.
Kelly was admitted to the clinic at once for a temporary assessment, and I'd had to leave her there to go on my first St. Petersburg recce, and to recruit Sergei. I wanted to believe that everything would be fine soon, but knew deep down that it wouldn't, not for a long time. My worst fears were confirmed when the doctor told me that besides regular treatment at the clinic, she'd need the sort of constant care that only the unit in Hampstead could provide.
I'd been to visit her there a total of four times now. We usually just sat together and watched TV for the afternoon. I wanted to cuddle her, but didn't know how. All my attempts at displaying affection seemed awkward and forced, and in the end I left feeling more fucked up than she was.
I swung right into Hyde Park. The mounted soldiers were out exercising their horses before perching on them for hours outside some building or other for the tourists. I rode past the memorial stone to the ones who were blown up by PIRA in 1982 while doing the same thing.
I had some understanding of Kelly's condition, but only some. I'd known men who'd suffered with PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) but they were big boys who'd been to war. I wanted to know more about its effects on children. Hughes told me it was natural for a child to go through a grieving process after a loss; but sometimes, after a sudden traumatic event, the feelings can surface weeks, months, or even years later. This delayed reaction is PTSD, and the symptoms are similar to those associated with depression and anxiety: emotional numbness; feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair; and reliving the traumatic experience in nightmares. It rang so true; I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen Kelly smile, let alone heard her laugh.
"The symptoms vary in intensity from case to case," Hughes had explained, "but can last for years if untreated. They certainly won't just go away on their own."
I'd felt almost physically sick when I realized that if only I'd acted sooner, Kelly might have been on the mend by now. It must be how real fathers feel, and it was probably the first time in my life that I'd experienced such emotions.
The road through the park ended and I was forced back onto the main drag. Traffic was virtually at a standstill. Del
ivery vans were stopping exactly where they wanted and hitting their flashers.
Motorcycle messengers screamed through impossible gaps, taking bigger chances than I was prepared to. I slowly worked my way in and out of it all, heading down toward Chelsea.
Things were just as bad on the sidewalk. Shoppers loaded with shopping bags collided with each other and caused jams at store entrances. And as if things weren't bad enough, I didn't have a clue what I was going to get Kelly for Christmas. I passed a phone shop and thought of getting her a cell, but fuck it, I wasn't even any good at talking to her face to face. At a clothes shop I thought of getting her a couple of new outfits, but maybe she'd think I didn't think she was capable of choosing her own. In the end I gave up. Whatever she said she wanted, she could have. That was if the clinic left me any money to pay for it with.
I eventually got to where I wanted to be and parked. "The Moorings" was a large town house in a leafy square, with clean bricks, recent re pointing and lots of gleaming fresh paint. Everything about it said it specialized in the disorders of the rich.
The receptionist pointed me to the waiting room, a place I was very familiar with by now, and I settled down with a magazine about the sort of wonderful country houses that mine would never be. I was reading about the pros and cons of conventional compared with under floor heating, and thinking that it must be rather nice to have any sort at all, when the receptionist appeared and ushered me into the consulting room.
Dr. Hughes looked as striking as ever. She was in her mid to late fifties, and looked like she and her consulting rooms could have featured in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. She had the kind of big gray hair that made her look more like an American anchorwoman than a shrink. My overriding impression was that she appeared incredibly pleased with herself most of the time, especially when explaining to me, over the top of her gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses that no, sorry, Mr. Stone, it was impossible to be more definite about timetables.
I declined the coffee she offered. There was always too much time lost sitting around while waiting for it, and in this place time was money.
Sitting down on the chair facing her desk, I placed the backpack at my feet. "She hasn't got worse, has she?"
The doctor shook her unusually large head, but didn't answer immediately.
"If it's about the money, I-"
She lifted her hand and gave me a patient, patronizing look. "Not my department, Mr. Stone. I'm sure the people downstairs have everything under control."
They certainly did. And my problem was that supermodels and football players might be able to afford four grand a week, but soon I wouldn't be able to.
The doctor looked at me over the top of her glasses. "I wanted to see you, Mr. Stone, because I need to discuss Kelly's prognosis.
She is still really quite subdued, and we aren't achieving any sort of progress toward her cure. You will remember I spoke to you a while ago about a spectrum of behavior, with complete inertia at one extreme and manic activity at the other?"
"You said that both ends of the spectrum were equally bad, because either way the person is unreachable. The good ground is anywhere in the middle."
The doctor gave a brief smile, pleased and perhaps surprised that I'd been paving attention all those weeks ago. "It was our aim, you will also remember, to achieve at least some movement away from the inertia! state. Our best hope was to get her into the central area of the spectrum, not too low or too high, able to interact and make relationships, adapt and change." She picked up a pen and scribbled a note to herself on a yellow Post-it pad. "I'm afraid to say, however, that Kelly is still very passive and preoccupied. Stuck, if you like, or cocooned; either unable or unwilling to relate."
She peered over her glasses again, as if to underline the seriousness of what she was saying. "Young children are deeply affected by witnessing violence, Mr. Stone, particularly when the victims of that violence are family members. Kelly's grandmother has been describing to me her previous cheerfulness and energy."
"She used to be such fun to be with," I said. "She never laughs at my jokes now." I paused. "Maybe they're just not very good."
The doctor looked a little disappointed at my remark. "I'm afraid her current behavior is such a contrast to how she was previously that it indicates to me that the road to recovery is going to be even longer than I at first thought."
Which meant even more expensive. I was ashamed at even having the thought, but there was no getting away from it.
"What sort of time scale are we looking at?"
She pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. "It's still impossible to answer that question, Mr. Stone. What we're trying to repair here is not something as simple as a fractured limb. I appreciate that you would like me to give you some sort of schedule, but I can't. The course of the disorder is quite variable. With adequate treatment, about a third of people with PTSD will recover within a few months.
Some of these have no further problems. Many take longer, sometimes a year or more. Others, despite treatment, continue to have mild to moderate symptoms for a more prolonged period of time. I'm afraid that you really must prepare yourself for a long haul."
"Is there nothing I can do to help?"
For the second time, Dr. Hughes smiled briefly. It was fleetingly triumphant rather than warm, and I got the feeling I'd fallen into some kind of trap.
"Well," she said, "I did ask you here today for a specific reason.
Kelly is here, in one of the rooms."
I started getting up. "Can I see her?"
She, too, stood up. "Yes, of course. That is the object. But I have to say, Mr. Stone, that I'd rather she didn't see you."
"I'm sorry? I "
The doctor cut in. "There's something I'd like you to see first." She opened a drawer in her desk, pulled out several sheets of paper and pushed them across the desk. I wasn't prepared for the shock they gave me. The pictures Kelly had drawn of her dead family looked very different from the happy smiling photograph I had in my backpack.
The one of her mother showed her kneeling by the bed, her top half spreadeagled on the mattress, the bedcover colored in red.
In another, her five-year-old sister, Aida, was lying on the floor between the bath and the toilet, her head nearly severed from her shoulders. The nice blue dress she'd been wearing that day was spattered chaotically with red crayon.
Kev, her father and my best friend, was lying on his side on the floor of the den, his head pulped by the baseball bat that lay next to him.
I looked at the doctor. "They're the positions I found them in that day exactly I hadn't realized "
I'd found her in her "hidey-hole," the place where Kev wanted the kids to run to if there was ever a drama. She'd never said a word to me about it, and I'd never thought that she might have witnessed the carnage. It was as though the events were recorded in her memory with the clarity of a camera.
Hughes looked over her glasses. "Kelly has even remembered the color of the comforter on her bed that day, and what was playing on the radio as she helped set the table in the kitchen. She has talked to me about how the sun was shining through the window and reflecting on the silverware. She recalls that Aida had lost a hair band just before the men came. She's now just replaying the events immediately preceding the killings, in an effort, I suggest, to achieve another outcome."
I was relieved that her flashbacks didn't go any further, but if the treatment worked she would surely begin to recount what had occurred afterward. When it did, I would have to involve the Firm to sort out any "security implications" that might arise; but for now, they didn't need to know that she was ill.
The psychiatrist interrupted my thoughts. "Come with me, if you will, Mr. Stone. I'd like you to see her and explain a little more about what I hope we can achieve."
She led me a short way down the hall. I couldn't make sense of any of this. Why wasn't Kelly allowed to see me? We turned left and walked on a while, stopping outside a door that had a cu
rtain across a small pane of glass. She poked it very slightly aside with a finger and looked through, then moved back and motioned for me to do the same.
I looked through the glass and wished I hadn't. The images of Kelly I kept in my memory were carefully selected shots from before she got sick, of a little girl quivering with excitement at her birthday party on the replica of the Golden Hind, or shrieking with delight when I finally kept my promise to take her to the Tower of London and she got to see the Crown Jewels. The real-life Kelly, however, was sitting on a chair next to a nurse. The nurse seemed to be chatting away, all smiles. Kelly, however, wasn't replying, wasn't moving. Hands folded politely in her lap, she was staring at the window opposite her, her head cocked to one side, as if she was trying to work something out.
There was something deeply scary about how still she was. The nurse wasn't moving much, either, but Kelly's was an unnatural kind of stillness. It was like looking at a frozen image, an oil painting of a young girl in an armchair, next to a film of a nurse who happened to be sitting still, but who would move again in a second or two.
I'd seen it before. It was four years ago, but it could have been four minutes.
I was on my hands and knees in her family's garage, talking gently as I moved boxes and squeezed through the gap, inching toward the back wall, trying to push the images of the carnage next door behind me.
Then there she was, facing me, eyes wide with terror, sitting curled up in a fetal position, rocking her body backward and forward, holding her hands over her ears.
"Hello, Kelly," I'd said very softly.
She must have recognized me-she'd known me for years-but she hadn't replied. She'd just carried on rocking, staring at me with wide, scared, dark eyes. I'd crawled right into the cave until I was curled up beside her. Her eyes were red and swollen. She'd been crying and strands of light brown hair were stuck to her face. I tried to move it away from her mouth.
I got hold of her rigid hand and guided her gently out into the garage.
