His mind leapfrogged to Amy — he liked to remind himself of her name so that she remained a person and not just so many pictures. Lying there like broken porcelain in a sea of blood and ash.
“. . . So I was wondering what the entrance criteria is?”
He’d learned to tune in at the end of sentences and just wait for the echo.
“Only I’d love to do more with a camera, professionally like.”
He swallowed another mouthful. “I can give you a number to call.”
“Thanks, I'd appreciate that.” The sergeant jotted it down, placing it carefully in a top pocket. Most likely he’d never look at it again.
Thomas knew that he wasn’t exactly a walking recruitment poster. Another time he’d have been happy to talk about the relative merits of polarised filters, but today he had other things on his plate — besides the gristle.
* * *
As soon as Thomas returned, Major Eldridge made himself scarce. Everything had been locked away. Thomas’s two cases sat on the desk; out of habit he checked the locks and hinges then went to work.
He used a voice-activated phone device, one that also recorded inbound-caller numbers. Later, he’d remind the major to continue using the phone as normal. When that job was done, he took out a different plastic box. This was the bug Christine had removed from her office, not so long ago. He made short work of the second telephone and added a faded plastic tab over one bottom edge to suggest the phone hadn’t ever been disturbed. After all, who looked closely at the underside of their work phone? No one. Besides him and Karl, of course.
To pass the time, he took out Karl’s four-step guide — only one gem left, relating to Jess. He tried running through the sequence again: Jess rings the major; Jess goes out to see him, but doesn’t tell him where she’s staying. It didn’t play well at all. Something was missing.
By the time the major walked in, Karl’s notes were safely away and Thomas was happily browsing the glass bookcase. One of Karl’s theories was that your bookcase told the world who you wanted to be, while the books you’d actually read showed how close you were to becoming it. In Miranda’s case, she grazed on chick-lit and murders, but her most creased covers held Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. Funny girl.
The office bookcase held few surprises — military biographies sat cheek by jowl, Churchill was among them; technical books on warfare and the latest edition of Jane’s Tank Recognition guide; and some historical tomes on the Roman Empire. They all looked in very good condition. In one corner though, peeping out like an anonymous peace protestor, was an ancient copy of Winnie-the-Pooh. A sudden image of Piglet piloting the C12 Battlebuster momentarily brightened the day.
The major nodded curtly. Everything was packed away, waiting by the door; no need to state the obvious. But there were things to be said.
Thomas sat down and hunched forward, hands clasps together. He hoped he looked as uncomfortable as he felt. “Major Eldridge, I’m a little confused about exactly what my assignment here is — from you I mean.”
It was the major’s turn to look uncomfortable and he didn’t squander it. “Let me put it this way. In the absence of Karl, you’re my best means of locating Jess.”
“So in the meantime I turn up with a camera every day or carry a few parcels about?”
“Don’t be absurd, man,” the major blazed at him. “I’m not interested in how you spend your time. Just find Jess, before anyone else does.”
Time, as Sheryl liked to say, to fess up. “Look, I’m confident I can get a message to Jess. I imagine she’ll want to attend the memorial service.” He was banking on not having to elaborate.
“Can you get word to her today?”
He checked his watch, for no reason other than an early finish might be useful. “I think so.”
“Then tell her . . .”
Jesus, please not a love note.
“. . . Tell her the best thing she can do is return the papers immediately.”
Thomas tightened his jaw and tried not to shout, ‘bingo.’ “Now, I just need to use your phone then we’re set.” He didn’t wait to be invited.
“Hello, it’s Thomas.” He looked straight at the major. “Major Eldridge is out of the way. I’ve networked his phone. I’ll do the co-ord when I get back to the office. Really? To whom?” He breathed slow and deep, and put the receiver down carefully as if it were made of gold.
“Why would Engamel Solutions want to view data from your phone tap?”
The major wore a stoic mask. Stalemate. Thomas headed for the door.
“Thomas, tell me this: why are you helping me?”
“I could just as easily ask: why isn’t Jess?”
* * *
Back at Liverpool Street, he checked one of the cases back into Stores and trudged up the stairs. Before he swiped in, he peered through the reinforced glass to see who was home.
Ann Crossley was nowhere to be seen — second bonus of the day, after Christine’s breakfast. He logged on, checked the major’s chosen phone line and played the first of the recordings. Good boy. He’d check the other line he’d bugged from home, outside office hours.
His phone started ringing so he paused the recording. “Thomas Bladen speaking.”
“Hi, Thomas, it’s Michael Schaefer from Engamel. I wanted to call and thank you for your work today. As a matter of fact, I’d like to invite you to dinner, tomorrow night — anywhere you can recommend?”
He couldn’t think of a good reason not to accept and let Mr Smiley sort out the details. It was barely five o’clock, but he needed a shower; he suddenly felt unclean.
* * *
Karl picked him up at Holloway Road tube station, same as the old days — the before Yorgi days. He didn’t say much as Thomas got in the car, but he’d cued up ‘Dead Ringer For Love’ so Thomas took it that Karl was in a good mood.
Nothing to it, he told himself, as the car wove through the traffic; just a quiet evening out with Karl. Except that this evening happened to be his first time back at the gun club. Just thinking about it brought the numbness back to his hands. Part of him just wanted this over with, so he could move on.
He returned to the present as Karl pulled up and switched off the engine. They sat there for a while, practising surveillance on the other vehicles.
“Right then, Tommo, shall we?”
Chapter 17
The door to the club seemed heavier, the woman behind the glass more officious. Not that he’d expected a fanfare; he still wasn’t even a member. Karl led on, a little diffidently, to one of the pistol ranges. He could hear the dulled thuds and discharges of neighbouring alleys through the walls.
“Any preference?” Karl might have been calling heads or tails to cue off.
“Brownings,” he decided. He knew Karl would like that; Karl, with his own pair hidden away somewhere — part of that other life that Thomas had only glimpsed.
* * *
Karl re-entered the room quietly. Thomas stayed fixed on the targets. It could have been minutes, could have been days. The air was heavy somehow, tainted with smoke and spent heat. And oil; that strange mineral-metal combination that seemed to remain on the skin afterwards. He drew back from the wash of senses, mentally rejoining the room as he heard the boxes being opened.
“Here, Tommo, I thought you might like to go first.”
He checked the piece over methodically, loaded the magazine and clicked it hard into place. He opted for people targets straight away — no point beating around the bush; it would come to this anyway. He observed his right hand trembling a little before he felt it, up in his shoulder, the jangling dread running up and down his spine. His bladder squeezed — an old fear reflex — but he held it all together and waited. Then he remembered the ear defenders, setting the safety on while he attended to it, every movement measured and controlled. The familiar roar insulated him from the world.
The targets turned and so did his stomach. But there was also a rush of adrenaline, coursing th
e blood and sharpening the vision. The first shot was the hardest. After that they followed in a steady burst. At the final click, he called “clear” and set the gun down.
Karl hit the button and whirled in the target for inspection. “Nyah.” He waved a flat piano hand, so-so fashion. “Better than shite, but don’t give up your day job.”
Thomas stared at the target. “I’m not even sure what my day job is anymore.”
Witnessing Karl in action was like watching an African wildlife documentary, only with guns. Karl stalked the targets. He moulded himself into a predator; he was in no hurry. He took his shots further apart, which lent them greater intensity, each one punctuating the silence between them.
When they finished, he eagerly awaited Karl’s first words — the climax to the performance and a reintroduction to normality. Even the target seemed to fly back that little bit quicker for the delivery.
Karl lifted his head. “I’d say the drinks are on you, Tommy Boy — for about the next five years.”
Karl suggested trying some Glocks or 38s, but Thomas played safe and opted for another magazine with the Browning. No point pushing his luck. Almost before he knew it, before he was ready in a sense, they were done.
“I have to say, Tommo, that I am impressed.”
Thomas did him the courtesy of not interrupting. “Not only are you less shit, after weeks of absence. But your sweating skills are excellent.”
On cue, he felt a cold trickle against his back. Nothing more to be said.
* * *
The bar, as Karl liked to call it, was actually a café area within the gun club. Thomas thought of school, of coming back after an illness, and everything feeling different even though nothing had changed. It was space to be reclaimed.
He sat back and felt the dampness in his shirt, beneath his sweater, moulding like plaster to the contours of his skin. When he closed his eyes and heard the gunfire in his head, he saw the targets flickering. It was a welcome change from Yorgi, bursting scarlet amid the heather.
Karl brought over a tray, waddling for effect — a comical waiter. He glanced at Thomas’s mobile on the table.
“Listen, Tommo, I’ve a wee confession.” He set the tray down and distributed the goods. “I told Miranda that you and I were meeting tonight and suggested she might want to hold off from ringing you until later. Purely on the off-chance you might find all this a bit difficult.”
He felt his cheeks tingling and grabbed a pastry, biting into it savagely, chewing the doughy mass, holding it in his mouth while he poured hot coffee into the mixture.
“Now . . .” Karl continued, “there’s been a delay getting the stuff from Jess’s home. Even my superpowers don’t include invisibility.”
Thomas smiled, sipping at his coffee now that he’d burnt his mouth.
“I’ll get it to you first thing tomorrow morning — before work. Right-oh, your turn — hit me.”
He stuck to the details; that’s what he did best.
He told Karl about bugging both of the major’s office phones, about dinner plans with Michael Schaefer from Engamel, and the major’s cryptic reference to missing papers. “How well do you know the major, from your army days?”
A glow crept across Karl’s face. “Major Charles Eldridge — stand-up man, no question about it.”
He frowned a little. “I thought his name was Cecil?”
“Well, he must have really taken a shine to you. Cecil’s his middle name — some sort of family tradition. Only his nearest and dearest call him Cecil, apparently, and never in front of uniforms.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “Wanna come back to mine for a takeaway?”
* * *
“So really,” Karl said, holding the takeaway bags, while Thomas fiddled with his door key, “This is our first proper date. You do know that I won’t be putting out?”
Thomas swung the door wide and let Karl lead the way.
“Nice place.”
People always said that, even if it was a shit-hole. It was right up there with, ‘Of course I love you’ and ‘I promise I’ll be careful.’
Karl made straight for the photographs displayed on the wall. “She takes a good photo, your Miranda.”
Your Miranda. He liked that.
“I want to show you something.”
“Not your etchings.” Karl covered himself strategically with his hands.
“Better than that.”
With two people, the dark room was cramped. Karl looked without touching, asked questions, seemed to be drinking it all in. He sidled up even closer.
“Actually, I have a collection of war memorial photographs. Dawn and dusk, stark against the skyline. No names visible because that seemed wrong.”
“Ever exhibited?”
“Not really. I sold a copy of one once; felt so bad afterwards that I gave the money away to the Royal British Legion.”
* * *
Thomas set his albums ready on the living-room table. But no touching until the curry was consumed and all the surfaces had been wiped clean.
He’d brought out three of them. The first two were orderly, categorised by theme and labelled with dates and times, as well as a few notes about the camera and settings. Yorkshire featured strongly, as did London’s East End and the City after hours. Mostly black-and-whites; frozen faces, frozen time. But the third, smallest album was more random and personal. Like a mix cassette tape that someone had never planned to share with anyone else.
He made two mugs of tea and dug out the last of a packet of shortbreads. Karl had already made sure the albums were out of harm’s way.
“How’s your mum doing?”
Karl sucked in a cheek. “Did you ever wonder how your life might have turned out, if you’d done one thing differently?”
Thomas sat and absorbed the point.
“Y’see,” Karl shifted to one side of the cushion, as if suddenly aware of his own discomfort, “I used to be somebody else. Flew out of Belfast International when I was nineteen and never set foot in my mammy’s house again.” He drew his hands around the mug and clasped it tightly.
“People on the outside, they don’t understand the way things are over there. The way things were, so they tell us now. It wasn’t just bombs and intimidation; it was straight lines and invisible fences. Religious apartheid — for the same God! What shops you used, what schools you went to, what friends you could keep. Where the wrong secret could get you killed.”
The clock ticked away the silence.
“I made a mistake — a terrible, innocent mistake. I took up with the wrong girl. Her brother and I, we used to ride together. Taking cars and that, nothing heavy. But Martin was getting a wee name for himself and building a bit of a gang. It was what you did.”
He sounded apologetic as he filled in more details.
“Somehow, Martin had picked up a contact across the fence. A Catholic boy, Francis-Andrew — sure it was all a business arrangement, but we were sworn to secrecy; the kind that threatened a severe penalty if you broke his trust.”
Thomas noticed there were no surnames.
“Anyways, from what I figure, Martin and Francis-Andrew formed something of an alliance. Two gangs could have rich pickings if they were good and organised. Me, I was your typical angry young man — I had my reasons mind.”
He huffed out a breath, as if the last piece of the puzzle required extra effort.
“It looked like I’d got Martin’s sister pregnant. False alarm, not that it made any difference. Martin always claimed he had connections — he wasn’t bullshitting. A couple of nights after our little showdown, my ma got a knock on the door, eleven o’clock at night. The kind of knock you don’t ignore. I went to answer it even though I was shitting myself.
“There was a man standing there who I’d never seen before. The way I remember him is in a black overcoat, but it may have just been the shadow. Tall man he was, tall and thin. He looked down at me and he said ‘Ya have twenty-four hours to leave — j
ust you.’ Then he turned and walked up the street.
“I had to hold on to the door handle to keep standing. I really thought he was going to come back and cripple me or something. Ma was in the hallway; I’m pretty sure she heard everything. She just looked at me and went inside; never said a word.” Karl took a longer pause now, emptying his mug while Thomas sat frozen.
“Martin and Francis-Andrew are successful businessmen these days, so I hear. Partners, under the table, just like always. And when one of my cousins went to see Martin about my situation, what with my ma dying and all, he gave him a bust lip and a black eye for his trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Karl.”
He waved a hand at Thomas dismissively. “I used to send money home like fucking Clark Kent and my mammy would fly over, maybe twice a year for a weekend. When it was easier for her to travel south, we’d meet in Dublin. We could never relax though; never knew if Francis-Andrew had friends there.”
“What did you do for work?”
“I drifted for a while. There’s one or two of my family over here — not many — but they weren’t jumping to get involved. So I worked on a few building sites, like every other lad from across the water. Christmas and Mother’s Days were awful hard, Thomas. Even now I prefer to shut up shop come December and pretend I’m a Buddhist.”
“But surely, under the circumstances . . . ?”
“Unfortunately not. I could just fly over and deal with the consequences,” the voice had a harder edge, “but I still have family over there, and afterwards — who’d protect them?” He set the mug on the table and propped a hand under his face.
“I’m still paying for a mistake I made a long time ago, and so’s my ma. And you wanna know the crazy thing? I really loved her, Jacqueline. It was never just, you know . . . Anyways, she’s probably married with a couple of kids now, nice house in Holywood. And here’s me, telling you my troubles over an empty mug and a dry throat.”
Line of Sight Page 10
