Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  Goodman folded the telex and replaced it carefully on his desk.

  ‘And?’ he said.

  Davidson looked at him, weighing up the exact limits of his remaining responsibilities to Goodman. In a sense, it was academic. Evans was right. The man was gone. Davidson picked up the telex and put it in his inside pocket.

  ‘A-Taff are calling it a mistake,’ he said.

  ‘A-Taff?’

  ‘Allied Tactical Air Force. In theory …’ he smiled tiredly, ‘they control the Jaguars.’

  Goodman frowned. ‘But why are they apologizing,’ he said, ‘if this plane of ours simply got lost?’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘No?’

  Davidson shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘the Jaguar was on the way home. He’d done his job. Paid his visit …’ He hesitated … ‘there’s a supplementary to the telex.’

  ‘There is?’

  Davidson nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Our RAF friend bombed a tank park near Brandenburg. The Russians are very upset.’ He paused. ‘And under the circumstances, I don’t blame them.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No.’ Davidson looked out, down the length of the Bunker. ‘He was carrying two bombs,’ he said bleakly. ‘One of them was nuclear. Modest yield. But hardly the friendliest of gestures.’

  He glanced at his watch and stooped quickly to the waste-paper bin, retrieving Goodman’s gas mask which still lay on a litter of discarded paperwork. He put it carefully on the desk, dead centre, the perspex eyes uppermost.

  ‘The shooting’s started,’ he said. ‘You may need to set us all an example.’

  He smiled briefly and left the office. As he opened the door, Goodman heard the noise for the first time, curiously faint, intermittent, an animal grief, muted by two millimetres of rubber and the Mark III charcoal filter. He looked out, through the plate glass, down at the scene below. The secretary had given up with the typewriter. She was sitting very still, her head in her hands, waiting.

  A memo, Goodman thought. He reached for his notepad, wondering again why nobody had thought about psychological testing.

  Gillespie lay on his back on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. The room was small, two iron beds, and a bare deal table beside each. The single window was barred, and the door was locked, and through the wire meshed window he could see the shadow of the guard outside in the corridor. Every time he moved, the plastic undersheet on the mattress crackled. The sound annoyed him. It was a nursery sound. It suggested infancy, helplessness. They think I’m going to piss myself, he thought grimly. They think I’m here for the taking.

  He glanced at his watch. It was nearly two in the morning. From the remains of his boat, they’d taken him back to the dirt track, a different path, quicker. No one had said anything, no warnings, no drama, no questions, no explanations, just the tacit understanding that he knew the score, that he’d make no waves. There’d been a squaddie up ahead, full combat gear, SA80s, and a couple more behind. They’d moved fast through the tussock, leaving behind them the rich smell of charring timber and blistered paint, the hiss of salt water on the red hot embers. At the dirt track, he’d been bundled into the back of a Land-Rover, people who knew what they were doing, nothing unnecessary, nothing flash, and driven away. As they bumped back towards the main road, the engine whining in the low gears, he’d looked at the men opposite, flak jackets and combat helmets, silhouettes against the reflected glare of the headlights on the tall stands of reeds. The smell of it was hopelessly familiar – wet kit, and sweat, and rifle oil, and that special tang of mud on a hot exhaust pipe – and he knew all too well that it would be hopeless asking these men why and how and what next? For one thing, they’d never tell him. For another, they probably didn’t know.

  Back on tarmac, they’d driven at speed across the city, using the empty main roads, turning in through the gates of the big psychiatric hospital. He recognized the place at once. They’d taken him to one of the more remote villas, out near the perimeter wall. They’d marched him down the long bare corridor. And they’d bolted the door behind him.

  Now, he stirred again, thinking of Sandra, of Sean. They’d have seen the fireball, heard the explosion, drawn their own conclusions. Sandra would have slid behind the wheel, resigned and capable, the usual mix. By now, they’d be back at home, Sandra probably asleep, Sean probably worrying at it all, this boy of his who always tested the strength of the current, the lie of the bait, the precise set of the tide. He’d want to know what had happened, where his dad was, and one day – please God – Gillespie would tell him.

  He closed his eyes, flirting with sleep. Some time later, perhaps an hour, perhaps more, there were footsteps outside in the corridor. The footsteps paused. A female voice, gruff. Gillespie got up on one elbow, eyes suddenly open, blinking in the harsh overhead light. The door opened. Sean walked in. He was still wearing his jeans and anorak. He looked as if he’d just stepped out of the VW. He looked confused, wary, scared. He saw Gillespie. He smiled, fighting the urge to run across the room, making a fool of himself, being a child. Gillespie solved the problem for him, getting up off the bed, crossing the room, putting his arms around the boy, quite oblivious of the woman in the corridor and the men in the blue serge uniforms nodding good-night, pulling the door behind them.

  ‘Son …’ he said, ‘you OK?’

  The boy nodded, gulping back the tears.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘yeah.’

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He shook his head, emphatic. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded, same message. ‘Promise.’

  Gillespie gazed at him, arm’s length, then hugged him. It was something he hadn’t done for years, and they both knew it. Gillespie led him across the room, back towards the bed. They sat down, same bed, side by side.

  ‘What happened?’ Gillespie said. ‘Where’s your mum?’

  ‘I dunno. Here somewhere.’

  ‘She come back with you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded again, back with his dad, a feeling even better than freedom, ‘they got us both.’

  Gillespie listened while the story spilled out: the pair of them sitting in the freezing car, the noises all around them, Sandra fretful, nervous, waiting, she’d said, for the inevitable. Then abruptly, the shadows emerging from the darkness, wrenching open the door, motioning them out, gunpoint, the real thing. Sandra, Sean said, had given them a real earful, and Gillespie smiled, imagining the harsh Belfast brogue, the torrent of abuse, a half-forgotten reflex triggered by the uniforms, and the cam cream, and the infant fingers on the triggers.

  Afterwards, with some respect, they’d been taken to a waiting car. The last he’d seen of his mother had been an hour or so back, outside the villa, she going one way, he another. Gillespie nodded, proud of her, proud of them both. Fuck the Russians, he thought. Fuck the world. He’d had it right first time round. Deep green eyes, and a wide, wide smile, and the best pair of legs he’d ever seen. Endless bottle, and a wicked sense of humour, and limitless patience with any other member of the human race. And the boy, too. Frightened out of his skull, totally stuffed, yet here, in one piece, beside him. He patted him on the leg.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘OK.’

  Sean looked up at him, smiling, lost for words, then Gillespie frowned, struck by a sudden thought.

  ‘When did they get you?’ he asked. ‘When did all this happen?’

  Sean looked startled, the wariness back in his face.

  ‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘I just told you.’

  ‘But when? Exactly? How long after I went?’

  The boy hesitated. He was confused now, not sure of himself.

  ‘After the explosion,’ he said, ‘ten minutes after. Maybe more.’

  ‘So why didn’t you go?’

  ‘I wanted to. I said we should.’

  ‘And Mum?’

  ‘She said we should stay. In case you came ba
ck.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Gillespie smiled, genuinely touched. Lying there, in the small barred room, he’d wondered how they’d found the boat, who’d told them. Sean had been one possibility. Maybe they’d come across the car first. Maybe they’d asked questions, made threats, torn the truth from him at gunpoint, hard-faced men on a very dark night. But here was Sean, telling him the way it was, the way it had been, giving his own squalid fantasies the lie. The boy was watching him carefully now, following the questions upstream, to their source.

  ‘You think I told them?’ he said. ‘You think it was me?’

  Gillespie shrugged, the old response.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he said.

  The boy shook his head, emphatic again.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t. And I wouldn’t.’

  Gillespie nodded.

  ‘They talk to you at all? Ask you any questions?’

  ‘Yeah. A bit. Yeah.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’ Sean looked at him a moment, not answering. ‘Well?’

  The boy shook his head again. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t tell them anything.’

  He began to smile, a smile that spread wider, into a grin. Gillespie watched him, amused, relieved, the questions posed and answered, the weight off his mind. The boy had something else to say, a surprise, a bonus.

  ‘Well?’ Gillespie said again.

  Sean looked pleased with himself, savouring the bond between them, old mates, comrades in arms.

  ‘You know those rolls of film you gave me? Before you went?’

  Gillespie frowned, dangerously slow on the uptake.

  ‘Yeah …?

  ‘Well …’ the boy bent forward, conspiratorial, ‘I hid them in the car. I stuffed them down the side, under the —’

  Gillespie cupped the rest of the sentence in his open hand, sealing the boy’s mouth. Sean’s eyes widened. Gillespie nodded up at the ceiling, the walls, signalling microphones, hidden ears, the whirr of a distant tape recorder. Sean caught on only slowly, resenting the hand over his mouth, thinking that – after all – he’d done rather well. Finally, he understood.

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ he said quietly, ‘sorry.’

  Four rooms away a figure leaned back from the table and reached for the phone. The spools on the big Revox were still turning, seven and a half inches per second. The boy was fainter at the end than he’d have liked, the voice abruptly masked, but the drift of the conversation was very clear. Somewhere, in the abandoned VW, there were yet more rolls of film. The number answered. The man at the table lowered the volume on the tape recorder. Gillespie and his boy were just whispering now, silly talk, father and son, low grade stuff. He bent to the phone.

  ‘Mr Ingle?’ he said, ‘a word …’

  The Timothy Lee docked again at three-thirty in the morning, same slack oily water, same pitted iron ladder inset into the damp stones, same loop of heavy rope around the bollard on the quayside above. The passengers disembarked at gunpoint, the harbour master’s men in makeshift uniforms under the arc-lights, the passengers lined up like refugees, family by family, no explanations, the few protests met with a grunt or a shake of the head. Last off the boat were Mick and Albie. They joined the other passengers, Mick embarrassed, Albie sullen, ignoring the whispered questions, the incipient outrage, a service paid for and manifestly not delivered.

  The harbour master’s men had found McNaught in the engine room. He was blind drunk, barely capable of coherent speech, but he knew enough about human nature to recognize that these quiet men in their ribbed blue sweaters meant what they said about giving the money back, and when the conversation had turned to the real possibility of physical violence, he’d nodded quickly at the dark recess behind the gear box, watching them toss aside the heap of oily rags, exposing the biscuit tin behind.

  Now, they redistributed the money on the quayside under the harbour master’s careful gaze, £300 here, £700 there, big handfuls of high denomination notes, tens and twenties and fifties. At the end of it all, four in the morning, the families returned to their cars, reloaded their children and their dogs and their cardboard boxes, and drove away into the darkness, the party over. The last car gone, the dock deserted, the harbour master’s men wiped their hands, and clambered back aboard their power boats, and burbled off into the first thin light of dawn, accounts settled, justice done.

  Mick and Albie watched them go. Mick’s head was beginning to throb, a combination of Stella Artois and Gillespie’s well-aimed kick. Given a choice, he’d have settled for a hot bath and bed. Albie, though, had other ideas.

  ‘That’s robbery,’ he said. ‘Blind fucking robbery.’

  Mick looked resigned.

  ‘What is?’ he said.

  ‘What they just done.’ He nodded down at the dock.

  Bubbles in the oily water. The receding whine of the big two strokes in the chilly half light. Mick shook his head.

  ‘Tough,’ he said, ‘win some …’

  He shrugged. Albie looked at him.

  ‘Win some?’ he said. ‘Win some? You know what happened tonight? You know who screwed us?’

  Mick shook his head, weary beyond belief. First the end of the world. Now this.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘go on, surprise me.’

  ‘Too fucking right, mate,’ Albie said, ‘your little friend. That’s who. Bloody Cartwright. That’s who. Off and away. Clean as a whistle. Wham …’

  In lieu of anything else, Albie kicked the bollard, hands deep in the pockets of his bomber jacket, genuine outrage. Mick eyed the trawler, back beside the quay, higher now, the tide rising.

  ‘Yeah …’ he said, remembering Cartwright’s flash motor yacht disappearing into the darkness as Albie pushed McNaught off the wheel, gunning the tired old diesels, doing his best to outrun the cone of light from the surrounding launches. They’d come from nowhere, no warning, no clues, and minutes later, when Albie had hit the sandbank on the seaward side of the dredged channel, the harbour master’s launches had been alongside within seconds, shallow draught, the trawler’s deck suddenly crowded with burly men with revolvers and set expressions. The harbour master had been with them, a shadowy figure in the background, white cap and gold epaulettes, trying to coax some sense from McNaught. But McNaught had been worse than useless, a man deprived of his precious bottle, and when he’d led them down to the engine room Mick knew that the game was up. No dosh. No Ireland. Just a tow off the sandbank, and the chilly twenty minutes back into the harbour.

  Now, the dock deserted, the wind rising, Mick began to climb once again down the ladder. Albie watched him, wondering why. There was no prospect of a second chance. The punters had gone, and Cartwright had gone, and the harbour master’s men had even taken the key McNaught used to start the engines. Knowing McNaught, there’d be no spare.

  ‘What now?’ Albie said.

  Mick looked up at him, a small white face in the gloom.

  ‘Three crates of Grolsch,’ he said. ‘Or had you forgotten?’

  Annie awoke with a start, aware at once that something had changed. At the far end of the ward, light spilled in from the corridor. Annie peered closely at the next bed. A woman was lying on the single blanket. She looked about thirty-five, maybe forty. She was fully clothed and her eyes were wide open. She was looking at Annie, very direct, no attempt to disguise her gaze. Annie wondered for a moment whether she was mad, a regular inmate, but then she reached across, a touch of the fingertips, an accent Annie recognized at once. Northern Ireland. Probably Belfast. Definitely sane.

  ‘My name’s Sandra,’ the woman said, ‘who are you?’

  Annie blinked, fighting the obvious conclusion.

  ‘Annie,’ she said, ‘my name’s Annie.’ She paused. ‘Sandra who?’

  ‘Sandra Gillespie. As was.’

  ‘Oh?’

  The other woman nodded, a smile in the half-darkness. She’d recognized Annie from the start, the moment
she’d clambered onto the big iron bed. She’d seen her four or five times, a silhouette in the Marina outside her house on nights when Dave dropped by, a blurred, out-of-focus background face in a photo she’d found in Sean’s bedroom. Now she was here, the next bed. Vaguely, she supposed they’d been put together for a purpose, some clever ploy by the people Dave had always hinted at, the dim, nameless figures that had always lurked behind the headlines in Belfast, the kind of men her brothers would talk about after their sessions in Castlereagh. Deep down, she’d never really believed they existed, fantasy figures, men’s talk. Now, she knew she’d been wrong. She looked at the girl in the next bed. Annie McPhee. Dave’s current woman.

  Annie was up on one elbow now, awake, alert, inquisitive.

  ‘Why you?’ she said. ‘Why here?

  Sandra shrugged, sounding more bitter than she really intended.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Bloody Dave again.’

  It was dawn when Joanna heard the air-raid sirens. She was asleep, Charlie beside her in the cot. She blinked. There was a cold light filtering through the bedroom curtains. She turned over and got out of bed, still dreambound, still thinking that somehow she could turn down the volume, silence the world. She parted the curtains. The garden was empty, the city grey and lifeless. She pulled the curtains again, trying to shut it out, this hideous noise, rising and falling, wondering what on earth she should do. Her mother, she remembered, had once told stories about sitting out the blitz under the dining room table. The stories had always emerged at Christmas, a confection of memory and good port, the folklore of a whole generation. They’d lived in London. The nearest bomb had been half a mile away. The warden’s name was Arthur. He’d been marvellous with children. On the worst night of all, the goldfish had died of fright. Belly up in the morning. Another corpse for Mr Hitler.

  Now, Joanna padded across the room towards the door, meaning to check on the other children, quieten them down, still their fears, but when she got there they were both sound asleep, untroubled, unaffected, leaving her with that same hideous burden of decision: what to do?