The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

by Victoria Hendry

  ‘Please tell me there are some left,’ said Archie, his heart beating faster.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mike, pulling them out of a drawer stuffed with bills. ‘I’m not the kind of kid that eats all Santa’s chocolate on the first day. I could make an Easter egg last till the next new moon. I’m a past master of the art of eking out treats.’

  Archie took one of the pills and pocketed the rest.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ asked Mike, as they sat down on the sofa in front of the telly. Archie had crammed his mouth full of pasta. He nodded. The newsreader was immaculate as her daily litany of disaster spooled from her lips. ‘The Fitch indicator predicts that America is on the brink of defaulting on its debt repayments if Congress doesn’t agree to raise the debt ceiling from sixteen trillion dollars. International markets could be plunged into chaos,’ she said. Archie leaned forward. Mike snapped the telly off. ‘I don’t care about those clowns in Congress,’ he said, ‘and their stupid fucking tea parties. I suppose I really want to know why the police were at my door hunting for yours truly.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Archie. ‘Honest.’

  ‘When people add the word “honest” to what they’ve just said, then a tiny alarm bell goes off in my ear. Do I say “blah, blah, blah, sincerely”, or “blah, blah, blah, sadly”? If you’re adding a commentary, then you’re being bogus.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Archie putting down the plate. ‘A woman I walked home has disappeared. A woman I happen to like – from the hospital.’

  ‘And you’re the local nut-job?’ said Mike.

  ‘Looks like it,’ he replied.

  ‘And is she chained to a rock somewhere about to become lunch for a passing dragon?’

  ‘What do you think? How would I know?’ said Archie.

  ‘How do they know she’s missing anyway?’

  ‘There is a fucking poster stuck to a tree for her. She’s the reliable type who turns up when she says she will, doesn’t throw sickies, loves her patients, her friends, her family. When women like that go AWOL, then something has happened.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Mike. ‘Aren’t you overreacting?’

  ‘I went back to her flat. She wasn’t there.’ Archie pulled the Cupid Calling number from his pocket and passed it over. ‘Some randy bastard? A lone wolf?’

  ‘Looking for his Red Riding Hood?’ Mike took the number with his free hand. He had a thin roll-up in his right, which he waved. ‘A Saughton fag,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been shown how to do it. You roll them thin to make the baccy last. What you don’t learn on the street ... Ring-fencing resources in the university of life. So why aren’t you going to the police with this?’ he asked.

  ‘PTSD, a restraining order, my prints all over her flat. Take your pick. I’m number one suspect if she cops it, and the prick that took her never shows up. I mean, who keeps a track of those numbers in the paper? I mean, really? She’s a gorgeous girl, Mike.’

  ‘Smitten?’ asked Mike, blowing out a puff of smoke.

  ‘No,’ said Archie, ‘but I could be.’

  Mike’s mobile rang. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘See you in five.’ He stood up. ‘Sorry, pal. I’ve got to go. Stay here tonight. I doubt the police will be back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Archie. ‘Could you do me a favour?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get a girl you know to ring that number and set up a meeting? Eight pm?’

  ‘And you’ll be there in shining armour to see who turns up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please, Mike,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Take another of your pills and go to bed. Ever heard of an early night? It might do you the world of good.’

  ‘I’m begging you,’ said Archie.

  Mike sighed and looked at the time on his phone. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but only because you look so undignified begging. I’ll ask Jackie. I’m late for her as it is. She’s an old mate. That’s the good news. She’s thinking of moving in here. That’s the bad news. Sorry. I didn’t know how long you’d be gone. I had to rent that room. You can have it till Saturday. I’m assuming you’re not coming back permanently?’

  Archie nodded. The SSRIs must have been kicking in because it didn’t feel like a disaster.

  Once Mike had gone, Archie fired up the computer. He hovered his mouse over Facebook and then googled car tracker devices. They were cheaper than he thought. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. His cheeks were hollow and he looked cold. His buzz cut was a bad idea. He had cut himself shaving and the blood showed as a red dot under the tissue he had stuck over it. The blood was fresh and bright – not dried black by a road side, or brown and stiff on a uniform in fifty-five degrees of heat. He selected a mini car-spy with cellular vehicle tracking for urban use. Three in stock. He reckoned there was no need to pay extra for GPS, have satellites triangulate a position for an extra twenty quid when any wireless provider could do it straight to his mobile. He noted down the address of the nearest store and logged off. He went to bed and dreamt of the toys Santa wouldn’t buy boys for Christmas and then woke up in a sweat. It was five in the morning. There was a note by the kettle. ‘Jackie made the call,’ it said. ‘Your date is at the Jupiter Bar, Saturday, 8 pm. He’s called Calum Ben. Forty, bald as a coot apparently, blue suit. Borrow my bike if it helps. PS. You are fucking insane.’

  * * *

  Early on Friday, he lay in bed listening to the radio. America had pulled back from the brink and agreed to raise its debt ceiling to seventeen trillion dollars. He thought of their spending in Afghanistan, wondered if they regretted their Afghanistan shopping list: the Apache attack helicopters, the RPGs, the SUVs, the briefcases of cash for goodwill. John Reid had thought he could leave in a year without firing a shot, but it had been an expensive trip for him too in more ways than one. They had gate-crashed the party to find all the guests had left, searched mountains and caves for Bin Laden and come back empty-handed. Now they were propping up Karzai’s government, and who knew what would happen when they drew down Operation Herrick. ISAF was melting away, leaving the Afghan National Army to stand up alone.

  29

  It was raining when he met Brenda the next day, and they started running in silence. He wondered how he could face lying down in his den again, alone and outside. The thought of his face near the mud he saw squelching beneath his feet chilled him. He wouldn’t be able to sleep out for much longer. ‘You seem a bit subdued,’ said Brenda. ‘No inspirational thought for the day?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Have you looked at my chart?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s leave it for a bit,’ he said. ‘We can’t do it day by day. You can’t measure progress like that.’

  ‘I found a quote,’ she said, ‘“To fail to plan is to plan to fail.” What you really need, Archie,’ she said, ‘is a good e-marketing plan. It’s not customer acquisition that counts but customer conversion and retention. You need a concrete product – an app, or a T-shirt. Print it up with your extracts from the Psalms. I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘“When you want to dip into the fridge, dip into the Bible”; “Fill your soul, not your belly”.’

  ‘Let’s increase the pace,’ he said. ‘Get out of this rain.’

  ‘Did you hear me?’ she said. ‘You want the best return on your investment. A hyper-personalisation of your product. I think you’ve got that,’ she said, ‘with the charts. That’s where the apps would come in too. You want to inspire and enlighten.’

  ‘I can’t really get my head round this at the moment, Brenda,’ he said.

  ‘It’s crucial to have a digital strategy,’ she went on. ‘Some synergy between the social media divides – Facebook and email. I’m trying to help you here.’

  He stopped running. ‘I’m not taking the business further at the momen
t,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some stuff on.’

  ‘What stuff?’ she asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Archie. You need to focus. I can’t help noticing that you’ve been wearing pretty much the same gear since I started.’

  ‘It’s not the outside that counts,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Brenda. ‘It’s the inside. The inside becomes the outside, Archie. Isn’t that your message?’ And he wondered where that left him with his shredded heart and his bomb-blast brain.

  She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll get off now,’ she said. ‘I’m in Dubai next week, but I’ll see you the one after that.’ She ran off without giving him his money.

  ‘Brenda,’ he shouted. ‘The money.’

  She ran back. ‘Sorry,’ she said, jogging on the spot. ‘You’re such a cheap date that I completely forgot.’

  * * *

  He looked like any other punter in a waterproof with his hood up when he picked up the tracker on the way back to Leith. The rain lent anonymity to the people on the street. Everyone was dressed in blue or black. Everyone was cold. Nicola Sturgeon was on a bank of TVs in the store window, ‘349 days, 15 hours and 30 minutes’ to the independence referendum ticking down on a clock behind her. Big, digital numbers flick-flacking on a board.

  As he walked past the gardens of some flats on his way to Leith, he reached up into an elderflower tree hanging over the wall and grabbed a handful of elderberries. A magpie in the tree chattered at him as he stopped to pull the berries from their stalks with his teeth. They tasted bitter. The bird, in his feathered uniform of black, white and brilliant green, was staring at him. Where did this eternally perfect magpie come from? Where were all the old magpies, the sick magpies, the magpies down on their luck?

  As he neared the funeral home where his grandpa had been laid out, an old warrior in a cardboard coffin, a hearse pulled out of the drive. It was gleaming grey. He stopped to let it pass and bowed his head. The driver waved a hand at him in thanks. The face at the window was pasty as if he had spent too much time with the dead. There were no flowers on the casket. Archie wondered who would mourn this soul. The expensive coffin with its brass handles must have been a last gift from the person to themself, chosen from a catalogue in the old folks’ home with a social worker kneeling at their feet, turning the pages. For a moment, Archie wished he had died in combat rather than face his internal battle alone – a battle in which, for some reason, he was now cast as a misfit, ashamed of his own inability to maintain a social front. This failure had cost him everything. It wouldn’t have mattered, he thought, if he could have contained the damage inside, fought the odd skirmish with his thoughts. It was his traitor eyes that made him a target, and the fire they returned at him was social fear. He was the warrior who could not contain his own power, fit the acts permitted by international rules of engagement back into his daily life. ‘Permission to fire, sir? I have a clear line of sight.’ The social act of death.

  30

  When Petal woke up, a tray of breakfast and a dustpan and brush had been put into the room. There was a carrier bag of charity-shop clothes – a pair of trousers, a jumper and a dress.

  ‘No hard feelings but I thought we might have made more progress by now,’ said a note. ‘Let’s try again tonight.’

  Petal ate the food and went back to bed. She had to think of a way out of this situation, but her mind was empty. She lifted one of the chairs onto the bed, balanced on it and looked out of the grille. There was a small cavity and then a thick panel of frosted glass fixed over the opening to ground level. It was a street. She could hear muffled traffic, see footsteps passing over the glass, between her and the light. A child’s shadow stopped and jumped up and down on the barrier. ‘Help,’ Petal shouted. ‘Help.’ She banged on the grille, dislodging dust and powdered moss. She was so close to life, and yet had never been further away. Calum’s will stood between her and everything she had expected would happen to her in the days ahead: her weekends; her holiday; the larger events of courtship, marriage and children. She looked at the future she had anticipated through the smelted puncture marks of the grille and cloudy glass, each blank circle a lost opportunity. ‘If I ever get out of here,’ she promised herself. ‘I will never complain about anything ever again. I’ll book that trip to Machu Picchu, shout my gratitude from the top of the mountain. I’ll walk the labyrinths in the Nazca desert, and sing. Perhaps Calum would see reason,’ she thought. He was the key to the door.

  That night he seemed distracted, less focused. She had tidied up the room and put on the charity shop dress, determined that looking as normal as possible might move them back towards discussion and away from confrontation. ‘To be honest,’ he said over a dish of tagliatelle and clams. ‘I’m not enjoying your company as much as I thought I would. I thought you might be a little friendlier, so I’m going to meet someone else tomorrow night.’ He raised his glass and drank half.

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘My point about you, exactly. No conversation – or perhaps you are a teeny, tiny bit jealous?’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she said. ‘Look, it’s not too late to let me go. Then you can start again.’

  ‘That might be a little awkward,’ he replied, ‘for obvious reasons.’

  The muscles in her jaw tightened and she shivered.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how it goes.’ He stood up. ‘I think I’ll call it a night. You’re not as much fun as you were on our first date.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ she said. ‘Look at this place.’

  ‘That’s not very nice, Petal,’ he said. He walked towards the door. ‘I’ve made a big effort for you.’

  She got up and threw her arms round him. ‘Let me go,’ she sobbed, ‘I’m begging you.’

  He unpicked her fingers from his shirt. ‘Don’t be so undignified.’

  She grabbed his ankle and bowed her head down onto the floor.

  ‘I said let go.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Please. Please, Calum. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ he said. ‘What kind of girl answers an ad in a paper anyway?’

  She looked up. ‘It’s not a crime to be lonely.’

  He pushed down on her hand with his free foot. ‘No, but it might cost you.’

  She let go and lay on the floor. ‘Get back on the bed, Petal. I don’t want any trouble when I open this door.’

  31

  It was 19.45 on Saturday according to his phone. Archie stood in a shop doorway opposite the Jupiter Bar, pressed into the shadows, as far back as he could go. Fifteen minutes later, a small, grey car parked on the opposite side of the road. It was quiet. Laughter and conversation burst onto the street as the man opened the door to the bistro. He was bald and wearing a navy-blue suit. Archie pulled the tracker from his jacket pocket and strolled across the street. He tried to look as if he might be toddling out for a beer, or going to pick up a takeaway. Single bloke on a Saturday stuff. He crouched down as he reached the car, pretending to tie a shoe lace, and slipped the tracker under the rear bumper. There was a clunk as the magnet bit onto the metal. He walked back across the street. Through the window, he could see the man standing at the bar, holding out a twenty-pound note to attract the attention of the barman. He pointed at a bottle of wine on the back wall and moved towards a table in the far corner. Big, shiny, plastic stars hung from the ceiling, and planets were projected round the walls, travelling in a celestial loop over the diners’ heads. Without dragon lights, no one would see him in the dark beyond the circle of light; without dragon lights they hadn’t seen the Taliban beyond the perimeter. The rocket had slammed into the store.

  Archie walked back to his doorway on shaking legs and sat down on his haunches to wait. He had to focus. He didn’t want the police to get a GPS fix on his phone, so he would put it on twenty minutes after the guy left.
That should give him a position if he stayed in town, but the man seemed in no hurry to leave. Archie pulled his knees up to his chest. The microscopic world of the pavement spread out before him: bits of chewing gum stuck to the concrete slabs, a sweet wrapper, a can rattling along, blown by an intermittent breeze. In the camp, they had rehearsed sorties with cans of food to stand as forward operating bases, jackets dropped as crumpled mountain ranges, socks as compounds. He remembered the desert stars, the thin mountain air, and he wondered at his stagnation in an Edinburgh gutter, questioned his hunch that this man could be connected to Petal. She was probably tucked up in some warm family home, her mum bringing her hot cups of tea, and ice packs for her ankle. The poster was most likely a premature alarm call posted by an over-anxious Joy via her fag-fetcher on a shop run – a case of too much time on her hands and a TV diet of Crimewatch. He resolved to leave. He pushed his hands into his pockets and pulled out Petal’s elf. ‘This is so fucking ridiculous,’ he said to himself and laughed, an out-loud laugh. He looked up. The bald man was staring at him from the doorway of the Jupiter. Archie reached for the beer can at his feet and raised it. ‘Cheers,’ he shouted, hoping he sounded drunk.

  The guy turned away and beeped his car. There was a short burst of orange light running over the wet street and the sound of a door banging. Archie saw him framed in the window as he passed, his mobile phone to his ear. Archie crouched down, his back against the wall, and watched the car take a left at the end of the street.

  Operational silence. The long hours of waiting on base, till boarding the Chinooks, till contact. Waiting. Waiting till the picture changed, and a larger picture was understood. He remembered landing at Camp Bastion at three in the morning and going straight into an orientation session. ‘Life here can get a bit sporty,’ said the second-in-command who was briefing them. ‘Our principal difficulty is resupplying the forward operating bases. They’re mostly in old police stations but since the locals abandoned the villages, the TB are getting in a bit of target practice on us. Most of you will remain on base, but if there are any volunteers I can guarantee you a piece of the action. Twenty-five thousand Soviets couldn’t subdue this place but, hey, we have four thousand six hundred British troops. And how do we maintain morale? We dig deep. We remember why we’re here.’