Lifeless tt-5

by Mark Billingham

  He closed his eyes. He could hazard a pretty good guess at what sort of mood Russell Brigstocke would be in when he arrived. Thorne was fairly certain he wouldn’t be bringing coffee.

  From what Kitson and Holland had seen on the cab ride from the station, the army had built on, or fenced off, vast tracts of land in and around the lush river valley a few miles from Taunton that was now home to the 12th King’s Hussars.

  Standing at the main gate, as they’d waited to be escorted to the admin block, they’d been able to hear the boom of guns from ranges a long way distant and see sheep and cows grazing, unconcerned, on the hills that swept away on either side. Such incongruities were everywhere: a fully outfitted soldier in face paint and camouflage coming toward the barrier on a rickety bicycle; a car park full of Lagunas, Volvos, and Passats, while fifty yards away, on a rutted patch of tarmac as wide as a football pitch, rows of tanks and other armored vehicles stood in lines, some grumbling and belching out plumes of black smoke as they were repaired.

  Major Stuart Poulter’s office was small, but predictably neat and organized: a series of drawings illustrating the development of the modern tank was arranged along one wall; wooden “in,” “out,” and “pending” trays were lined up along the front of his desk; and kit bags of various sizes were laid out in one corner, as if he were expecting to be called away at any moment. Poulter was in his early forties, a little under average height, and with a thick head of dark hair worn relatively long. A full mouth and ruddy cheeks gave him an oddly girlish expression, but his body looked hard and compact under his uniform. He was immaculate in gleaming, brown oxfords, light trousers, and a green sweater with leather epauletes over regulation shirt and khaki tie.

  As they waited for their tea to be delivered, Holland explained just how confused he’d already become by the terminology; by the unfathomable series of initials and numbers on the signs that hung outside every office on the corridor. He wondered why an RSM was a WO1 while a CSM was a WO2, and even when he’d been told what OC and CO stood for, he wasn’t certain what made commanding officer any different from officer commanding. Poulter, who chain-smoked, and smiled rather too much, explained patiently that anyone unfamiliar with the military was bound to find it all terribly bewildering at first.

  Then, even though they knew that Poulter had been comprehensively briefed, Holland and Kitson were obliged to spend five minutes or so going over their reasons for being there.

  “Just so we’re singing from the same hymn sheet,” the major said.

  The visit had, of course, been agreed between the army and the Met well in advance; the details hashed out in a series of telephone conversations between officers far senior to both Detective Inspector Yvonne Kitson and Major Stuart Poulter.

  Poulter used a brass Zippo to fire up his second cigarette since the interview had begun and leaned back in his chair. “I still think it would make more sense for the Met to liaise with the RMP on this.” He had a soft, comforting voice, like someone who might read out a weather forecast on the radio. “But, ours is not to reason why. Correct?”

  Once tea had been delivered and they’d got down to business, it became apparent that the system of tracking regimental personnel was every bit as complicated, every bit as arcane, as the command structure itself.

  “We only keep any sort of record on soldiers who are still serving,” Poulter said. “That’s the first thing, and it’s purely practical. Once they leave here, they’re no longer my concern, and I can’t really care anymore. You should really talk to the AP Centre at Glasgow…”

  Kitson told him that they knew all about the AP Centre. She explained that they simply needed the names of those who had served alongside Christopher Jago. She gave a brief and relatively vague outline of exactly why those names were so important. The existence of the videotape was not so much as hinted at.

  “It’s basically about tracing the other three on the crew,” Holland said. “We just need to know how we can get that information.”

  “Which crew are we talking about, though?” Poulter asked.

  “Like we said, it’s the Gulf, 1991…”

  “I’m clear about that, but this Jago might have been part of any number of crews. Do you understand? Just in that single campaign.”

  “Right…” Kitson was starting to sense that this wouldn’t be straightforward. That even though, this time, they’d come armed with all the relevant information, they were as far out of their depth as they had been when they’d interviewed Rutherford and Spiby at the Media Ops Office.

  “I’ve been all over the U.K.,” Poulter said, “and to most parts of Europe, right? I’ve been to Malaysia and Hong Kong and Belize; to Bosnia, the U.S.A. and Australia. And I’ve been to the Gulf. All in just the last ten years. Do you see what I’m driving at? Soldiers move around, all the time. Not only do they change location, but they also get shifted from troop to troop and from squadron to squadron.”

  “What gets done with their records if that happens?” Kitson asked.

  “It’s fairly standard… unless, of course, the soldier in question has served at any time with one of the intelligence-based units. The SAS, the Special Boat Service, 14 Int, or what have you.. .”

  “What happens then?”

  “Well, those records can have a habit of disappearing, or at the very least of a few chunks going missing. Normally, though, each man has a P-File, which is confidential and contains all the basic info: the courses he’s been on, names and dates, his disciplinary record, that kind of thing. That file goes with him if he switches squadrons. There’s also his Troop Bible, which gives admin details-passport number and so forth-but, again, that travels with the soldier.”

  “So the paperwork is as mobile as they are,” Holland said.

  Poulter turned, blew smoke out of the window he’d opened behind him. “That’s about right. And again, it’s purely practical. We’d be swamped with the stuff otherwise. I guess you lot have got much the same problem, right? Filling every bloody form in three times.”

  Kitson smiled politely, acknowledging the moment of levity. “Why might a soldier move?”

  “Any number of reasons. Troops go where they’re needed, basically. You might be going to assist another regiment, right? To backfill wherever it’s necessary. On a tank crew, say, you might have trained as a driver, and if a driver on another crew falls ill or whatever, you get shunted across and someone else is moved into your crew and trained up. You work as crew and you also work as engineering support for crew, and if that expertise is required elsewhere, you go to plug that hole. Some commanders like to move their crews around as a matter of course and some don’t, but either way it’s all change once the ORBAT comes through.” Poulter saw the confusion on Holland’s and Kitson’s faces and explained: “Order of Battle. That’s any troop movement order, peacetime or wartime, right? Once that comes through, you go. Simple as that.”

  Holland had begun by taking notes, but had realized fairly quickly that there was little point. Even so, he drew a line on his notepad, as if underscoring something of great importance. “I understand all that, but surely when there’s a conflict, like there was in the Gulf, it’s a good idea to have some… continuity.”

  “It’s certainly a good idea, ” Poulter said. He looked vaguely pleased, as if Holland had asked the predictably stupid civilian’s question. “When the regiment’s deployed, that’s when people really start to get switched around. Troops are reorganized all over again in accordance with battle regs.” He stuck the cigarette into his mouth and began to count off these regulations on his fingers: “You can’t go if there are any medical issues, any at all; you’ll get left behind if you’ve got so much as a toothache, right? You can’t go if you’re underage…”

  “I’m not with you,” Kitson said. “How can you be underage?”

  “You can join up when you’re sixteen and a half, right? After basic training and what have you, we get them at around seventeen, but you cannot be sent
to war unless you’re eighteen years of age. You’re a gunner on a tank crew and the regiment gets deployed to a combat zone, right? If you’re a week short of your eighteenth birthday, somebody else is going to get brought in to do your job.”

  Kitson nodded. She couldn’t help but wonder if the Iraqi army had been subject to the same regulations…

  “Then, once you’re actually out there, everything can change again. People get injured; that’s the most obvious thing. And I don’t just mean as a result of enemy action.” He pointed out of the window toward the line of tanks that Kitson and Holland had seen earlier. “You take a tumble off the back of one of those wagons and you’re going to know about it. These things have a knock-on effect as well. One tanky breaks his arm, half a dozen crews can get shifted around.”

  In his notebook, Holland circled the full stop beneath a large and elaborately shaded question mark. “What about soldiers who were in the Gulf and are still with the regiment?” he said. “Could we perhaps just talk to them? From what you said before, there should be a list of those people somewhere.”

  “Yeah, I think that would be very useful,” Kitson added.

  Poulter thought for a moment, before rolling his chair back and tossing his cigarette butt out of the open window. “I’ll go and have a quick word with someone about what you’re suggesting,” he said. “If you’d like to wait there, I’m sure I can rustle up some more tea.. .”

  Holland closed his notebook before Poulter walked past him on his way to the door.

  NINETEEN

  Spike had found him within half an hour of Thorne’s release from custody.

  “Fat Paul, who sells the Issue outside Charing

  Cross, saw you coming out. How was it?”

  “Bailed for a fortnight,” Thorne said. “Gives ’em time to decide if they want to go ahead and charge me.”

  Spike looked surprised, as Thorne knew he had every right to be. “I don’t know how you managed to wangle that. Can’t see there’s much to decide, seeing as how you decked a copper.”

  “They’re waiting for medical reports or something.”

  “Right…”

  “Plus, if they do me for assault, they know they might have to do one or two of their own.” Now Spike thought he understood. “Good thinking, mate. We’ll get one of them disposable cameras, make sure we get some photos of your face. It’s a right mess, like.”

  Thorne had finally got a good look at himself in the gents’ back at the station after Brigstocke had finished with him. He looked every bit as worked over as he felt. One eye was completely filled with blood, while the other was half-closed above a bruise that was plum-colored and blackening at its edges. There were scratches down one side of his neck, and a graze, livid against his forehead, from where he’d been pressed against the wall.

  “Yeah, well.” Thorne could feel the air, cold on his wounds, and the pain that still sang along his shoulder blades where his arms had been driven up hard behind his back. “There were quite a few of them in the end…”

  “What d’you expect? You smack a copper in the face and a lot of his mates want to give you something to remember them by. Sounds like they did you a right favor, though…”

  Thorne looked at the cut along Spike’s cheekbone and the side of his lip that had split and swelled. “I thought you’d be a damn sight worse,” he said. Spike shook his head, looking smug. “I kept my head covered most of the time, like. Bastard ribs are black and blue, mind you. Just sorry I never got a chance to stick the fucker.”

  “You carry a knife?”

  With half his lip as swollen as it was, the smile was as lopsided as McCabe’s had been. “I’ve always got a weapon,” Spike said.

  They were heading north through Soho. The overcast streets were busy with lunchtime shoppers and workers hurrying to grab a bite to eat, or a quick drink to take the edge off the rest of the day. Thorne and Spike walked slowly along in the center of the pavement. The state of their faces allowed them to cut a swathe through pedestrians a little thicker than might normally have been the case.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t pick you up with it,”

  Thorne said. He was thinking that, despite what he’d said to McCabe, things could have been a lot worse.

  If he’d been party to an assault with a deadly weapon, there’d have been bugger-all Russell Brigstocke could have done about it…

  “Sorry I scarpered, by the way,” Spike said. “I had stuff on me. You know how it is, right?”

  Thorne knew how it was.

  “Otherwise… you know?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Spike sniffed and spat. He shoved his hands into the pockets of a scarred vinyl bomber jacket. “I wanted to say thanks for wading in, you know? For trying to pull the tosser off me. Not that I was in any trouble…”

  Thorne nodded solemnly, sharing the joke. “ ’Course not.”

  “So”-Spike grinned as a young couple swerved into the street to avoid him, “as a small token of my appreciation, I’ve got us both a job…”

  Half an hour later and Thorne was hard at work. The sign he was holding had a bright yellow arrow drawn on it and bore the legend mr. jerk. chicken ‘n’ ribs. The restaurant was situated halfway along Argyll Street, and Thorne and Spike, with their gaudy advertising boards, constituted a cheap and cheerful pincer movement. Spike was at the Oxford Circus end of the street, his sign pointing hungry people one way, with Thorne doing his bit to encourage them in the other direction from a pitch down near Liberty’s. Every half an hour or so the two of them would swap positions; pausing for five minutes’ chat outside the Palladium.

  At a couple of quid an hour, Mr. Jerk was happy, and by the end of the day they would have made enough for Thorne to get a decent dinner and for Spike to get himself fixed up.

  Thorne stood, propping up his sign; letting it prop him up. The features of those who moved past him were anonymous, in sharp contrast to his own, which had been punched into distinction…

  What he’d told Spike had been at least partly true. Brigstocke had done his bit to placate McCabe and the officer whose face Thorne had rearranged, but nothing had really been decided. There might well be charges to answer, either sooner as a rough sleeper or later, when the operation was all over, as one officer assaulting another. Unlikely as it was that he’d be allowed to walk away from the incident, Thorne was far more concerned with how his stupidity might have compromised the job he was trying to do. McCabe had given assurances that, as far as Thorne’s undercover status was concerned, confidentiality would be maintained. But they were worthless: he could not possibly vouch for the discretion of every one of his own officers, never mind those hundreds of others-the beat officers, the Drugs Squad, the Pickpocket Teams, the Clubs and Vice boys-who moved through Charing Cross Station every day. The Met was no different from any other large organization. There was talk and rumor. There were drunken exchanges and gossipy e-mails. Thorne thought about the man they were trying to catch; the man who might be a police officer. If word did get out, would the killer himself be able to hear those jungle drums?

  Thorne remembered something Brigstocke had said. The mouse doesn’t know there’s cheese on the trap, but we still call it bait…

  When he’d stormed into the interview room at Charing Cross a few hours earlier, Russell Brigstocke was one police officer who certainly had looked like he wanted to kill him. The language of each I told you so had been predictably industrial, and he hadn’t spared himself. He’d also aimed a good deal of invective at his own stupidity for trusting Thorne in the first place…

  “I must have been fucking mental,” he’d said. “Maybe it was that diet you were on…” That hadn’t helped, and it wasn’t until Brigstocke was about to leave that he’d seemed to soften even a little. He’d turned at the doorway, exactly as McCabe had done, and let out a long breath before he spoke. “At least you look the part now

  …”

  Walking up now toward Oxford St
reet, Thorne could see Spike on his way toward him, spinning the sign in his hand as he bounced along. He looked twitchy, like his blood was jumping. He’d need paying pretty soon.

  Thorne remembered the look on Brigstocke’s face when he’d spoken; it was somewhere between pity and relief. He’d always been confident that he could look the part. He just hadn’t banked on feeling it.

  The soldier standing at the side of Major Poulter’s desk wore regulation combats over a green T-shirt, and Holland could not help but be struck by how good the uniform looked on her. As part of the Royal Armoured Corps, the 12th King’s Hussars was an all-male regiment. Neither Holland nor Kitson had expected to see any women.. .

  “This is Lieutenant Sarah Cheshire, our assistant adjutant,” Poulter said. “She’s the administrative wizard round here, maintains all the databases and so on. If you’d like to tell her exactly what it is you’re looking for, I’m sure she’ll do her best to sort you out.”

  Kitson explained that they needed a list of all those soldiers currently serving in the regiment who’d also fought in the first Gulf War.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Cheshire said.

  Holland’s charm was not quite as boyish as it had once been, but he turned it on nevertheless. “That’d be great, thanks…”

  Cheshire nodded and turned to Poulter. “I’ll get on it then, sir.” She was no more than twenty-two or

  – three, with ash-blond hair clipped back above a slender neck, and a Home Counties accent that Holland found a damn sight sexier than the major’s.

  “That’s good of you, Sarah, many thanks. I can’t see it taking you too long, to be honest.”

  “Sir?”

  Poulter looked across his desk at Kitson and Holland. “Aside from myself, I don’t think we’re talking about more than, say, half a dozen men left in the regiment.” He smiled at Cheshire; drew deeply on his cigarette as he watched her leave the room.

  “Why so few?” Kitson asked.