by Andy McNab
I went to a primary school near the chocolate factory. I hadn’t been a big reader in those days, so had no idea about Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket and the Golden Ticket. Maybe that was why lotteries had never been my thing – as far back as I can remember I’d always tried to improve the odds on a good result.
That didn’t stop me fucking up big-time on a regular basis, of course. It always took me a while to learn from my mistakes and, after one scrape or another, I was a regular visitor to Guy’s Hospital or Southwark nick.
But I always looked on the bright side.
Whether I’d lacerated my hands on the broken glass along the top of the Kirby Road sweet-shop wall, or had my collar felt for any one of a hundred different reasons during my time as the world’s youngest South London criminal mastermind, at least I’d got the day off school.
2
The mixed bag of tourists and punters doing business from out of town didn’t seem to mind that the Premier Inn wasn’t as shiny, these days, as it probably once had been, and neither did I. I only needed somewhere to leave my daysack and get my head down, and if it was good enough for Lenny Henry, it was definitely good enough for me.
I had some time to kill, so instead of going back to my room I wandered east along the river to the freshly polished wharves and warehouses that used to conceal Fagin’s hideout, and where Bill Sikes ended up hanging himself.
Oliver Twist hadn’t been on Anna’s reading list, but way before I’d ever tried to read a novel I’d nicked one or two of Dickens’s from a dusty old bookshop in Greenwich. They smelt of leather and had great pictures, so I’d guessed they were worth a bob or two.
The bookseller used to crouch over a high table at the back of his store, as old and dog-eared as his books, mumbling to himself as he turned the pages. His mad white hair looked like an explosion in a feather-pillow factory and at first I couldn’t tell whether he was covered with dust or dandruff, so I’d made the same mistake I had with the Doodlebug expert and dismissed him as a sad old nutter.
The first couple of times I’d lifted his gear he hadn’t seemed to notice. The third time I slid one under my shirt, he suddenly appeared behind me. His gnarled hand shot out and gripped my wrist.
I thought I was fucked. I couldn’t move an inch, and could almost hear the police siren on its way towards me. But all he did was put it back on the shelf and hand me another instead. ‘Great Expectations is a work of genius,’ he said. ‘But you should start with Oliver Twist.’ Then he asked me if I wanted to join him for a brew.
I nodded, speechless, then managed to summon up the courage to ask if he had any biscuits.
When the kettle had boiled he handed me a steaming mug of tea and some custard creams and fixed me with the kind of beady-eyed stare big old birds give you at the zoo. ‘You bunking off? Dodging school?’
When I told him that was what I did most days, he pointed at the book and said he was going to call me Dodger. I must have looked severely puzzled, because he then told me the story of Oliver.
After that, he’d invite me in for a chat every time I passed. ‘Dodger,’ he’d say. ‘Consider yourself at home.’ It was only later, when I saw the musical on TV, that I realized this was another of his little jokes, but after a while, I did. He’d entertain me with the most amazing tales of Dickens’s London. I stopped nicking his stuff and started calling him Fagin.
He died years ago, surrounded by his treasures, but I heard his voice in my ear again as I wandered through the labyrinth of passageways that surrounded St Saviour’s Dock.
I had a feeling that if I did decide to buy a place of my own, it would be an apartment somewhere near here. I didn’t fancy a designer barge, however seductive the estate agent’s bollocks tried to be. I’d developed a liking for multiple exits over the years, and though I enjoyed the water, I hated being marooned in it. Back in the eighteenth century, according to Fagin, the river was so busy that incoming cargoes were often stranded long enough for pirates to attack them at their moorings. I reckoned there was a lesson there for all of us.
There seemed to be a dry cleaner’s on every block, but the further you got from the river, the more haphazard this stretch of the city became. Duplex penthouses for baby fat-cats fought for space among dilapidated tenements. Upmarket artisans’ cottages stood alongside chunks of waste ground overrun by brambles and strewn with rusting supermarket trolleys.
In one of them I saw a Russian T34, barrel sweeping across Page’s Walk, which someone had painted sky blue with big white spots. When they’d first got hammered by it in 1941, the legendary German generals Guderian and von Kleist called it the deadliest tank in the world. Every home should have one.
My stomach suddenly reminded me that I hadn’t had anything to eat since Maggie’s club sandwich, so I headed down to the Café Reality on the New Kent Road. I’d been there a couple of times before – they served up a great full English and didn’t piss around with their brews. And, besides, I loved its name.
After getting some more calories down my neck, I bimbled back towards the river by the scenic route. I used the Shard as my cathedral spire. It hadn’t yet opened its doors, but was already the tallest inhabitable building in the European Union and towered over my old manor, like a giant CGI space rocket.
Funded by a big slice of Qatari cash, London’s newest landmark was bang next door to the outpatients department that used to be my second home. Its highly polished hoardings were keen to share the excitement about the imminent opening of the Shangri-La Hotel at its base. I’d had a couple of beers at the one in Hong Kong when I was a young squaddie pretending to be James Bond, so I knew the chain had got its name from a novel about a lost valley whose inhabitants never grew old. Maybe that was because they all had corporate expense accounts and never even had to look at their own bills, let alone pay them.
I still couldn’t get my head around the distance that existed between the haves and the have-nots in this part of town. The shiny steel and glass world rubbed shoulders physically with the minging one I was passing through now, but in every other sense they were a million miles apart.
I skirted a derelict community centre that had once housed a karate club and a gospel assembly room. A torn plastic banner proclaimed, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever!’ but He seemed to have abandoned this place a while back to the dossers and graffiti artists.
I saw movement behind one of the splintered sheets of plywood that cloaked its covered walkway and became the target of a hostile glare from deep inside a random collection of nylon sleeping bags, plastic bags and mouldy old bits of carpet.
Further along the street a sign on a ramshackle church building with a barbed-wire crown and bars on every window invited passers-by to come inside and enjoy their Christmas Fayre. As well as Santa’s grotto and tombola, Irish coffee was on offer. I was gutted to have missed it.
3
The Tabard Estate had been rebranded as the Tabard Gardens Estate, which meant that the grass was mown and the patch where the dogs used to shit was now called the Nature Area.
Scaffolding was the business to be in around here, and the lads who owned Sky’s the Limit obviously took their holidays in the Bahamas. Although there wasn’t a hi-vis jacket or a hard hat in sight, their pipework seemed to be propping up every building, and there was a tower at the corner of the block where my best mate Gaz used to live.
His flat was boarded up, but the building had been treated to a spray with a power-washer and a new coat of paint since I was last here. The railings and fire-escape ladders on every walkway gleamed in the winter sunshine, and so did a silver three-litre Audi convertible in a nearby parking space. That made me smile. In the good old days a wagon like that would have been up on bricks as soon as the driver’s back was turned, and everything removable flogged out of a van ten minutes after that.
One summer, after bunking off school in the mornings, the two of us wasted a good few afternoons on the roof above his third-floor fl
at. Gaz’s mum helped out on a fruit and veg stall in Borough Market, so we’d wait for her to go down there, then nick a pack of his dad’s condoms and fill some with mustard, some with ketchup and some with water. We’d sling them in a Co-op carrier-bag and climb over the railing by their front door and onto the fire escape.
Since fire escapes are designed to go south rather than north, there was a gap between the top rung of the ladder and the guttering. We had to haul ourselves over it with the help of a slightly dodgy cast-iron waste stack. We broke a lot of tiles in the process, but once we were on the ridge, we felt like we ruled the world.
In the main we’d sit up there and swap man talk. Sometimes we’d flick through our Victor and Commando mags and make the kinds of noises kids do when they’re imitating a main battle tank or a GPMG. And sometimes we’d set up our fire position, select an enemy target, calculate range and angle of elevation, and let the Squareheads and the Nips have it down in the square. Political correctness hadn’t been invented then.
Mostly we’d just leave a trail of red and yellow splodges on the Tabard Road, and if we were really lucky, on the bonnet of an armoured troop carrier disguised as a VW camper. The only time we scored a direct hit on an enemy soldier it turned out to be one of Gaz’s mum’s mates and we were in a world of pain.
She never got the stain out of her dress, but that wasn’t what made the two of them go ballistic. ‘You stupid little fuckers!’ they yelled when they finally caught up with us. ‘What the fuck do you think would have happened if you’d fallen off that roof?’
Me and Gaz looked at each other like we’d each grown a giant light bulb on the top of our head. We hadn’t thought of that.
We never went up there again. I often wondered whether our cache of war mags and spare ammo was still under the ridge cap we’d loosened on our first mission.
4
Arriving at Hare Court after dark was like walking into a different century. This world still seemed as if it were lit by gas lamps and candles, and populated by men in tailcoats busying themselves with quills and ledgers.
The space between the red- and brown-brick buildings was part-paved, part-gravelled, with a scattering of evergreen shrubs and wooden benches that looked like they’d never been sat on. It wasn’t that kind of place. Everything here was designed to send one message: Stand up straight and pay attention, because nobody has bigger brains or bigger bollocks than the Law.
I didn’t yet know about his bollocks, but the size of Geoff Blackwood QC’s brain was not in doubt. I was surprised that his wig was big enough to keep it warm. He tossed it onto a nearby pile of documents and waved me towards the kind of leather wing chair you didn’t see much outside old-school gentlemen’s clubs.
Once he’d extracted himself from his gown he started to look almost human – mid-forties, maybe, blond hair swept back over the ears, the kind of complexion that you probably only get when you spend your weekends at a shoot or in a friend’s chalet in Verbier.
He sat down at his burgundy-topped mahogany desk and unfolded a pair of extremely expensive rimless reading glasses. He placed them very precisely on the end of his nose, beneath a pair of clear hazel eyes, which gave the impression that he wasn’t just looking at you, he was staring into the depths of your soul. He hadn’t said a word yet, and I was already pleased that he was on Sam’s side.
‘So … Mr, er, Jones … Father Martyn believes you may have something to contribute to the Callard case.’
I knew his clock was ticking, so I briefed him swiftly about serving with Harry, and told him I had a witness who was present at the exercise in the CQB Rooms who might be prepared to testify that Sam was nowhere near Scott Braxton when the fatal shot was fired.
Blackwood wrapped his left hand around his right fist like one was paper and the other was stone. ‘You won’t be surprised to hear that I’m not permitted to share any privileged information that may have a bearing on the outcome to these proceedings, but I can tell you that we have a problem. Sergeant Callard has admitted to a negligent discharge. He has also refused to provide us with any helpful information of the kind to which you claim to have access.’
‘Has anyone managed to track down the SSM?’
He leaned forward. ‘I’m told that Squadron Sergeant Major Grant is currently overseas on a clandestine operation. I imagine he will miraculously reappear on the courtroom steps, leaving us no time whatsoever to question him in any detail.’
‘Could you enter a plea of mitigation, if push comes to shove? Unsound mind, or whatever you guys call it? The deaths of two of his mates in Afghan seem to have really messed him up. One was particularly brutal.’ It wouldn’t save Sam’s career in the Regiment, but I figured that being RTUed (returned to unit) was a whole lot better than a manslaughter rap and a dishonourable discharge.
Blackwood removed his glasses and placed them carefully alongside his wig. ‘I can only achieve as much as my client permits me to. But I believe him to be innocent of the charge, and can assure you that I will do everything possible to leave the court in no doubt of that.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘The trial date has not been set, but I’m sure you know how these things work. The opposition can bugger around for ever with their Article 32 investigation, if it suits them, then catapult us into court with less than two weeks’ warning. Even the least explosive of these proceedings needs to be swept under the carpet, as far as the top brass are concerned. And a fatality behind the wire at Hereford is far from that.’
He unfolded the glasses again and replaced them on the end of his nose. It was clearly a ritual that had become so instinctive he no longer realized he was doing it.
‘I think we can safely say that the event that led to Sergeant Callard’s court martial is top of the list of stories the director of Special Forces doesn’t want to see breaking out of Barford, let alone being given a starring role on News at Ten. And he’ll go to considerable lengths to ensure that neither of those things happens.
‘They’ll take a leaf out of your old reference manual, Mr Jones. Speed, aggression and surprise will be their strategy.’ His eyes glinted. ‘Suffice it to say that I will prepare our position with all the energy and commitment Samuel Callard has the right to expect.’
5
I hailed a black cab on the Embankment and paid off the driver by the wobbly pedestrian bridge that led from St Paul’s Cathedral to Tate Modern. It showed the city at its sparkling best on a clear night, and I needed some time to think. I also needed to check whether anyone was taking an unhealthy interest in my movements. I’d just left another known location, and that would be the first port of call for any trigger.
The bridge was a great place to start scanning for a follow. It was the only way to get across the Thames at this point, unless you walked on water or were prepared to tab some distance up or down stream. I stopped on the South Bank and swapped banter with a couple of smiley Rastafarians playing Bob Marley songs under a street lamp, not too far away from a sign that said No Buskers.
They treated me to ‘Three Little Birds’, competing for a moment or two with the beat of a passing heli’s rotor blades. I lobbed a pound coin into their guitar case and turned back towards the Globe Theatre. The leather jacket, jeans and trainers that had trailed me from the St Paul’s side was still on the bridge, taking a great deal of interest in the view east. You’d come a long way to see the Belfast, the Tower of London and Tower Bridge under floodlights, but the wind had sparked up again and it was too cold for sightseeing.
It was definitely time for a warming brew. The Costa joint beside the Golden Hinde would be the perfect place. It served big frothy coffees, and was situated at a chokepoint in the riverside walk, which gave me eyes-on in both directions. But I wasn’t going to go there straight away.
I might have been wrong about the jacket. It was like a uniform out there: every self-respecting heavy had to wear one. During my time in Moscow and Moldova I’d been chased around and sh
ouldered aside by so many of these guys I’d started to dream about them. So, at some point in the next hour, I needed to know for sure whether I’d been pinged or he was merely a third party.
Before I went the barista route, I paid a flying visit to the Anchor. It always amused me to be having a drink at the spot where Samuel Pepys had watched the Great Fire of London, and where the locals had once enjoyed a bit of bull- and bear-baiting instead of Grand Theft Auto on the PlayStation, but maybe that just meant I was another mug punter who’d fallen for the olde-worlde PR pitch that yelled at us from every leaflet and beer mat.
Behind the pillar-box-red-painted woodwork was a warren of dark panelled and oak-beamed bars and function rooms. It was also on a corner site, with three or four exits onto the street, one of which faced the archway on Clink Street that ran beneath Southwark Bridge, which made it perfect for what I had in mind.
Glasses chinked and after-work waffle spilled onto the pavement as I pulled open the door closest to Shakespeare’s favourite theatre. The evening crowd were already getting well stuck in. I eased my way through to the nearest bar and ordered a pint of their 1730 Pale Ale, then struck up a conversation with the guy who was best positioned to allow me to keep eyes-on the entrance I’d just walked through.
The fact that he looked like he’d got back from Afghan the week before was a bonus. He wasn’t wearing combats and didn’t have a Bergen at his feet, but there was something in his eyes and the way he carried himself that said he’d recently been teleported from a different planet. A planet where discipline was everything and dropping your guard could have fatal consequences. If you knew the signs, you could always tell.
Sure enough, he’d been with 1 Yorks, bouncing between FOBs in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand with the Danish Battle Group. I wondered whether he’d bumped into my old mate Jack Grant along the way – highly unlikely, but you had to ask. The only Grant he’d come across was an illegal bottle of Scotch. He laughed. Tasted like shit. Give him a Jägerbomb any time.
