The Director was talking about the small print now, how long the trip should last, whether or not to invite her husband, and Robbie reached for his pad again, jotting down the details. As he did so, Liz appeared from the kitchen with a tiny birthday cake. On top was a single candle. She beamed at him, making space for herself on the edge of the bed, and he blew her a kiss as the Director completed his brief. Llewelyn’s passport was already at the Angolan embassy, awaiting a visa stamp. Robbie was to collect Mrs Jordan’s and drive it up there after lunch. Three seats had been booked on a Sabena flight out of Brussels late tomorrow night.
‘Who’s paying for all this?’ Robbie asked, still eyeing the cake.
‘We are, for the time being. But I understand the television people will be reimbursing us.’
‘And Mrs Jordan? Has she said yes?’
The Director made a strange throaty noise on the line. It might have been a chuckle.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought the invitation might be best coming from you. You’ve met her. You’ve got the relationship. Give me a ring this afternoon. Tell me how it went.’
*
McFaul found Christianne at the house rented by Médecins Sans Frontières. So far, the second morning of the siege had been as peaceful as the first, the rebel mortars silent since daybreak, fearful of giving their positions away to the marauding government MiG-23s. McFaul had taken advantage of the lull, walking the mile and a half from the Red Cross bunker to Domingos’s house to make sure the little Angolan and his family had survived the night intact. He’d found them gathered round a table in the room they used as a kitchen, sharing a bowl of cassava. No mortar bomb had fallen closer than a couple of hundred metres away but none of the kids had slept at all and Domingos’s wife was beginning to fret about water supplies.
Earlier in the year, McFaul had helped Domingos build a collection tank in a recess behind the house, but the rains had yet to arrive and the tank was nearly empty. McFaul had taken a look at the tank himself, and when he left he’d promised to come back with a couple of the big plastic jerrycans they kept at the schoolhouse. Ten extra gallons wouldn’t keep the family going for ever, but it would save Domingos and his wife the dangerous trek to the riverbank to replenish supplies.
Already, law and order was breaking down within Muengo. There were rumours of fifth columnists inside the city, UNITA sympathisers in touch with the soldiers in the bush, feeding them information, giving them targets. Indeed, just after daybreak, there’d been several outbursts of small-arms fire in the area around the cathedral, evidence of summary executions. Under siege, government troops didn’t bother too much about the rules of evidence. Suspicion and hearsay were quite enough to earn you a bullet in the head.
Christianne was in bed when McFaul knocked on the door. MSF occupied a modest one-storey colonial house about a quarter of a mile from the hospital. By Muengo standards, it seemed to have suffered little in the war. The stucco walls and the terracotta roof were still intact, and visible damage was limited to the torn-off branches of the acacia tree in the wilderness of parched brown weeds that had once been the garden.
McFaul stood outside in the sunshine, waiting for the door to open. Already, at ten in the morning, it was hot. At last came the scrape of a key turning in the lock and Christianne was standing in the shadowed hall, her toes curling on the cool tiles. She peered into the bright sunlight, one hand over her eyes.
‘I wake you up?’
She recognised McFaul at once and invited him in, checking the street in both directions before shutting the door again. McFaul heard the key turning behind him. At the back of the house was a kitchen, a long, bare room with four chairs set around a table. The table was littered with the remains of a recent meal, a bowl of tinned fish and rice draped in muslin to protect it from the flies. At the far end of the room there was a collapsible camping stove and a couple of Butagaz bottles. Beside the stove was a half-open door, and in the next room McFaul could see a freezer chest similar to the one they had at the schoolhouse.
McFaul sank into a chair while Christianne took a mug from the table. She peered into it, moistening a finger and running it around the inside of the rim. Then she went to the sink. The sink was full of water. She half-filled the mug and offered it to McFaul. McFaul shook his head, his eyes going to a poster on the wall. Pink Floyd were playing the Paris Odeon. Tickets started at 95 francs.
‘How are you?’ he asked at length. ‘Coping OK?’
Christianne shrugged, the mug to her lips. She was a strong-looking girl, broad-shouldered, well-made, with a blaze of auburn curls. She was cheerful and down-to-earth and McFaul had liked her from the start. Now, she was barelegged, wearing some kind of rugby shirt over a pair of knickers. The shirt had red and blue hoops, and the size of the garment told McFaul that it must have belonged to Jordan. She’s probably got a whole drawerful, he thought, enough to last her for years. Christianne was telling him about the hospital now. She’d been working there eighteen hours a day. The building had been hit twice during the night, two mortar bombs within the same half-hour, and the second had demolished the corridor where they kept the post-operative patients. She emptied the mug, shaking her head. Eight successful operations, eight patients on the mend, a whole night’s work. Gone.
McFaul nodded, toying with the stump of a candle.
‘I meant you,’ he said. ‘How are you coping?’
‘At the hospital, you mean?’
‘No, inside …’ He shrugged. ‘The other night. Your English friend.’
‘Ah …’ Christianne nodded, understanding the question at last. McFaul’s head-to-heads with James Jordan had been the talk of the Muengo aid community and McFaul had never bothered to hide his contempt for the boy. But the night he’d driven out to the minefield, the night James had died, he’d put all that aside. Her friend was dead. Her friend had mattered to her. She therefore deserved a little attention, a little sympathy, a little respect. Twice, since then, McFaul had called round to check how she was, missing her on both occasions, but word of his concern had got back to her and when she’d finally needed help she’d known at once where to turn.
She looked at the empty mug a moment then put it back on the table.
‘These bombs at the hospital …’ she said, ‘the other one hit the generator.’
‘No power?’
‘No. We’ve got candles but there’s no power for the … machinery … on comprend?’ She paused, biting her lip, and McFaul sensed at once what was coming.
‘You mean the fridges?’
She nodded.
‘Fridge. There’s only one. A big thing, very old, very noisy.’
‘I see. You’re telling me …’
She nodded again.
‘James is there. Still in your bag, the one you brought …’ She began to wind a curl of hair around her forefinger, letting the sentence expire. Then she sat down opposite McFaul, looking him in the eye. ‘I know you and James weren’t such great friends but he still matters to me. Very much. He wasn’t the person you thought he was. He could be loud, and silly, bien sûr, but underneath he was a child. He had a good heart, he was a good man …’
‘And you …?’
‘I loved him.’ She let the coil of hair go free, her eyes never leaving McFaul’s face.
McFaul nodded. He had little taste for scenes like these.
‘So where is he now?’ he said.
‘Still in the hospital. Still in the fridge. But soon …’ She pulled a face. ‘It’s like a butcher’s shop in there.’
McFaul was looking out of the window now, at the tangle of weeds in the garden.
‘So what next?’ he said at last. ‘You want me to bury him?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘When we were together, before the accident, he made me promise him something. If anything happened, he wanted to go back to England, he wanted his body to be taken there. He gave me the name of a place, he wrote it down for me … moment …’
She got up, heading for the door, but McFaul told her not to bother. Where James Jordan had elected to be buried was immaterial. What mattered was getting him out.
‘How cold’s the fridge? At the hospital?’
‘Nine degrees celsius, three hours ago. Not hot. But not cold.’
‘So what’s the alternative?’
Christianne indicated the open door at the end of the kitchen. McFaul got up and left the table. The big freezer was a third full, mainly food, but there was plenty of room for what was left of James Jordan. McFaul reached inside, testing a pack of frozen prawns with the back of his hand. The crust of ice was already beginning to melt and there was water pooling beneath it. McFaul pulled the freezer away from the wall, prising off the metal grille and peering at the machinery inside. The power cable snaked away towards the window.
‘So what’s wrong with it?’ he said. ‘Why isn’t it working?’
Christianne told him to follow her. She went back through the kitchen and into the garden. The cable from the freezer plugged into a junction box. From the junction box, a thicker cable led through the undergrowth to a portable generator of a kind McFaul had never seen before. He knelt beside it. A small green lizard watched him from the foot of the nearby wall. At length, McFaul stood up.
‘It’s buggered,’ he said. ‘Someone’s nicked the HT lead.’
‘Comment?’
‘The HT lead.’ McFaul frowned, making a semi-circular movement with one hand. ‘The thing that goes from the top of the spark plug to the ignition coil. The lead that carries the charge. Look.’ He showed her the bright scars on the metalwork where someone had gouged away with a screwdriver before removing the lead. Christianne was kneeling beside him. She smelled of antiseptic.
‘It stopped working yesterday,’ she said. ‘Before I got back from the hospital.’ She looked at him. ‘Can you mend it?’
McFaul shook his head.
‘No chance. It’s a non-standard connector. Nothing I’ve got would fit.’
‘So what happens?’
He looked at her for a moment.
‘We eat the food,’ he said at last. ‘Bloody quick. Before it goes off You got any butter? Garlic? I’ll bring Bennie round. Hostilities permitting …’
McFaul got to his feet and limped back towards the house. She caught up with him by the kitchen door, leading him through to the hall. The bedroom she shared was at the front of the house. The metal shutters were closed over the window and the room was remarkably cool. McFaul stood in the open doorway, peering into the gloom. The framed photograph on the upturned cardboard box beside her bed was unmistakable: the blond crew-cut, the wide-set eyes, the way the boy’s smile always suggested he was taking the piss. Christianne was rummaging in a tea chest. Eventually she produced two bottles. She showed them to McFaul.
‘We have many,’ she said.
McFaul looked at the bottles. The labels said ‘Sancerre’. He knew nothing about white wine except the obvious. A crate or two of this stuff would make the prawns taste even sweeter. He frowned a moment, weighing the bottles in his hand.
‘Rice?’
‘Of course.’
‘Beer?’
‘Bien sûr. Sagres.’
‘OK,’ he nodded, ‘leave it to me.’
He backed out of the room and headed for the front door, knowing that he’d been right about the girl. Nothing had to be spelled out. She understood the way things worked, the barter system, favours offered, favours owed. As well as pretty, she was grown-up. God knows what she’d ever seen in James Jordan.
Back outside in the sunshine, McFaul extended a hand.
‘I’ll need a trolley,’ he said, ‘or a barrow of some kind.’
She nodded.
‘No problem.’ She hesitated, looking at her watch. ‘Come to the hospital. Come up the stairs to the second floor. I’ll be there in an hour.’
‘And the party? My lads? Only the UN bloke’s trying to organise a flight out. And the stuff won’t keep.’
McFaul smiled for the first time, his hand outstretched. She touched it briefly, returning the smile.
‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘Before dark.’
It was quarter to one before Molly Jordan got to the Blue Boar Hotel. Todd Llewelyn was waiting in the lounge bar, stationed on a chintz sofa in the big bay window. He was wearing light grey trousers and a cream linen jacket and she recognised the Garrick Club tie at once, thinking how well it sat against the pale pink shirt.
He got up at once, nodding at Robbie Cunningham, offering his hand to Molly.
‘Todd Llewelyn,’ he murmured. ‘May I say how sorry I am.’
Molly thanked him for the thought, loosening the scarf at her neck while he summoned a waiter for her coat. Llewelyn looked older than she’d expected, his skin a little slack around the jaw line, his face pouched beneath the eyes. She’d seen him a hundred times on television, mainly because of Giles’s interest in current affairs, and she was surprised how tense he seemed to be. She smiled, wanting somehow to put him at ease. If anyone should be nervous, she told herself, it should be me.
They stayed in the bar for twenty minutes or so. Robbie organised the drinks and she joined Llewelyn on the sofa. On the journey over from Thorpe-le-Soken, Robbie had already explained about the Angolan trip, extending the Director’s invitation for her to fly out at the charity’s expense. Molly, astonished, had reminded him of their conversation only days earlier. Then, Terra Sancta had ruled out any such visit. So what had changed? The question seemed to have embarrassed Robbie. He’d talked vaguely about a film project, and said that Todd Llewelyn would be involved, but it was plain that he hadn’t wanted to take the conversation any further. Now – her thoughts a little more collected – she put the question again. This time, to Todd Llewelyn.
‘Robbie tells me you’re interested in going out to Angola. Some kind of film,’ she said carefully. ‘What exactly did you have in mind?’
Llewelyn was nursing a gin and tonic. He cleared his throat, leaning forward, using the low, urgent, almost confessional tone that had become his onscreen trademark.
‘It’s a question of focus,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in documentaries all my life. They only work well when you have a story to tell, an important story …’ He looked down at his drink. ‘James died trying to do his bit for Africa. I think that’s an important story. And I think you’re the person to tell it.’
‘Me?’ Molly blinked. Robbie hadn’t gone this far. Anything like.
‘Yes,’ Llewelyn nodded, ‘you. If anyone on this earth knows a son, it has to be his mother. Who better to tell James’s story?’
‘But why? Why James? Why me?’
‘Because he tried,’ Llewelyn said gently. ‘Because he did his best. And because, in the end, it cost him his life.’
Molly looked at him, transfixed. For a moment or two he’d become the face on the screen again: the carefully sweptback hair, the steely glint in the eyes, the look of total probity. A sharp prosecution barrister, Giles had called him, with the weekly benefit of a very good brief.
‘Robbie tells me you’re keen to get out there,’ he was saying.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Then this might be the best way of achieving that. Angola’s at war, as you know. Going by yourself, or even with your husband, wouldn’t be easy.’
‘My husband can’t come,’ Molly said at once.
‘Oh?’
‘No, he’s very busy just now. He’s got one or two …’ She shrugged, not wanting to go any further.
Llewelyn was watching her carefully now, newly alert.
‘What does your husband do?’
‘He works at … ah … Lloyd’s …’
‘Broker?’
‘Underwriter …’ She paused. ‘It’s pretty tough at the moment. You probably know more about all that than I do. So …’ she shrugged again, ‘Angola’s out of the question. He just couldn’t afford the time.’
Llewelyn watched her for a moment, t
hen glanced at his watch. A waiter appeared with three menus, handing them round. Llewelyn left his unopened. For the first time, Molly noticed the copy of the Financial Times lying on the sofa beside him.
‘There’s a film crew upstairs,’ Llewelyn began. ‘A cameraman and a sound recordist. They’re on stand-by for after lunch but the decision is yours, absolutely yours. No pressure. I promise.’
Molly looked at Robbie, confused now. Robbie was trying to hide his own surprise.
‘Here? Upstairs here? In the hotel?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Llewelyn was toying with his gin and tonic.
‘People’s have asked me to do an interview before we leave. That’s if Molly decides in favour, of course. They believe it’s important that we understand the way she feels now, while it’s still so fresh, and actually I think they’re right. We have to have a context, a framework. Grief is a strange thing. It changes people. I’ve seen it time and time again.’
Molly nodded. This much, at least, she knew already.
‘But what would happen?’ she asked. ‘Upstairs?’
‘It’s very simple. We’ve put a couple of lights in a bedroom. We’ll shoot it in such a way that it’ll look like you’re at home. The shot will be very close, very tight.’ He drew an oblong in the air, framing her face.
‘But why not come home? If it’s that important?’
Llewelyn smiled, ever-patient.
‘Logistics,’ he said simply. ‘I know it sounds crazy but the crew have to be back in town by six. This way we give ourselves a chance.’ He paused. ‘But it’s your decision and yours only. Please. Let’s eat.’ He gestured at her menu and picked up his own, skipping the hors-d’œuvres and moving straight to the entrées. Molly looked at Robbie again. This time his expression gave nothing away.
‘What do you think?’ she said.
Robbie had his finger in the menu. He glanced up.
‘Todd’s right,’ he said guardedly, ‘it’s really up to you. All we … Todd … can do is explain what’s involved.’ He paused, looking across at Todd. ‘Are the crew upstairs coming to Angola too? Assuming we go?’
The Perfect Soldier Page 8
