by Will Self
of that. The Butcher looks at the landlord-magnolia walls of the
pod. He looks out through the thick Perspex window at the distorted
view of the pod opposite. He drops the holdall on the single
bed and looks at Fitzhugh, who must’ve escaped being retired by
one of his own greying whiskers. The General takes off his wire-rimmed
spectacles and massages his saggy eyes. His face is dead in
the mortuary light. The Butcher takes an interest in a tray with tea
bags, coffee, sugar sachets and miniature youaitchtee milk pots –
then hitches his silk-weave trousers at the knee, so he may bend and
open the dinky fridge. Inside there’s a green apple and a Mars Bar
on a small plate. The Butcher picks the chocolate bar up, his fingers
absorbing the chill and savouring it. Fitzhugh says abruptly, We’re
launching this sort of media strategy here – EffOh initiative, but
thing is to sort of normalise relations. The Butcher queries: With
the Basratis? And Fitzhugh laughs shortly, Heh-heh, no-no, ‘fraid
we’re rather out of the running there – no, normalise relations with
the media. One of the bods steps forward – he has a Coldstreamer’s
Captain’s badges, longish dark hair and a slightly sloppy, dew-picked
expression. He wears his camos … as if they were fucking
chinos and hands the Butcher a press pack blazoned with the slogan
A BETTER BASRA, in what some press officer presumably imagines
is a sexy typeface. The Butcher looks into the bod’s eagerly exhausted
face and says, You’re beautiful. Fitzhugh laughs his little laugh:
Heh-heh – the bod blushes – and the Butcher says, Just thinking of
your chap with the hit single – hear it everywhere I bloody go. He
chucks the folder on to the bed beside the holdall and says, Shall
we, gentlemen? Fitzhugh says, Don’t you want to have a wash and
brush-up? And the Butcher says, I’m not going on a fucking date.
Then they’re walking through a narrow defile between yet more
hessian-swathed fences and Fitzhugh’s maundering on about
incoming rockets and arrpeegees: Since things’ve hotted up everything
has to come in by night, air-wise – even then the Merlins
can touch down only for a few seconds, unload, and they’re away
again … The Butcher sees Portakabins and Hesco walls, sangars
and breeze-block-built blockhouses jumbled up in the moonlight –
thinks of how it is that any large military camp represents the sum
total of – (A lot of grown-up children playing with building blocks,
wouldn’t you say, Johnny …). They pass through a wicket gate
manned by a Gurkha sentry who punctiliously examines all their
eyedees. One of Fitzhugh’s bods indicates the locked rack of sidearms
beside the gate: No weapons inside the Divisional Detention
Centre, sir, so if you’ve … ? The Butcher gives him a cold, old look:
Don’t be silly, young man … And to Fitzhugh he says, Y’know
what the military historians will call this phase of the conflict when
they come to write it up, General? Fitzhugh, who’s chaining his
automatic to the rack, grunts interrogatively, so the Butcher tells
him: Losing – that’s what they’ll call it. Fitzhugh doesn’t respond
to this provocation, only gestures to the low concrete blockhouses
and says, This is where all those detained in our sector are brought
for processing – Rams brought eight down from Maysan this
morning, unfortunately two of them were dead on arrival … They
turn into another narrow defile between fences all dressed up –
but with nowhere to go … at the end of which something whitely
insubstantial looms, which, as they draw nearer, turns into a translucent
white plastic tent, lit from within so its occupants appear in
the form of two clearly defined black shadows writ large on the
canopy: one the bulky outline of a man seated upright in a chair,
the other long, low and rectangular. Moths and other night insects
are crawling over the translucent fabric … bamboozled muons and
positrons, their antennae twitching, their tattered wings fluttering.
A vast sheet, the Butcher thinks, has been thrown over the camp,
one patterned with towers, domes and cupolas – all the superfluous
ornamentation you’d expect to see if you were arriving by camel
for Belshazzar’s feast. There’re two red caps standing at ease beside
the tent flap. They’re wearing full body armour and snap to attention
as Fitzhugh’s party strides towards them. At ease … at ease … he
says – and to the Butcher: I could, ah, dismiss these men …
Jonathan, but I’d rather not. The Butcher takes the ArrEmmPee
Corporal to one side and shows him his EssEyeEss eyedee and
diplomatic passport: I’ll be speaking to your boss shortly, he says in
an undertone, but in the meantime I want you and your colleague to
skedaddle, roger that? The red cap, who must be a deal smarter than
your average plod, simply gestures to the private to fall in, and the
two of them evaporate into the Iraqi night. A dog starts barking
somewhere out beyond the perimeter. Barks and barks and screams
some more. Y’know, Fitzhugh says, they don’t treat the poor mutts
as pets at all – never allow ’em in the house, it’s against their religion.
Haram, the Butcher says, and Fitzhugh says, Bless you, and the
Butcher says, No, it’s haram – it means forbidden. It’s forbidden
to have a working animal in the home – now … if you’ll excuse me?
The beautiful Coldstreamer Captain salutes the Butcher, and Gerry
Fox says, Thirty minutes enough for you? And the Butcher replies,
More than … and the defeated brass and their bods tactically
withdraw. The Butcher stands for a moment, sniffing the night
air: burning dung and cooling piss – the after-reeks of cordite and
phosphorous from the chaff fired by ascending Merlins. Soon, he
thinks, I’ll be standing in Sloane Street, looking in the window
of an Italian suit retailer, and wondering whether I can face the
ignominy of buying off-the-peg never allow them in the house –
it’s against their religion … The Butcher remembers a reception at
the Embassy in Vienna twenty years past – the usual suspects:
EffOh wonks and their wives … the Anglican vicar … the British
Council representative – who had indeed borne an uncanny
resemblance to Wilfrid Hyde-White – and the opera singer or
ballet dancer he’d brought over from Blighty to be preyed upon
by sharp-beaked, flabby-faced and chiffon-winged Austrian lady
culture-vultures. Bored to distraction by the speechifying, the
Butcher had wandered away towards pastures old: wood-panelled
reception rooms and salons with pale striped wallpaper in which the
dust motes rose from over-stuffed armchairs to hover below lead-crystal
chandeliers. He’d touched up the old ivories of an ancient
Bösendorfer baby grand – he’d sipped his not-so-Qualitätswein,
and admired a sub-Sargent: a jut-jawed lass, her face at the epicentre
of an explosion of silks and satins. He’d peered at another painting:
Henry de Worms, First Baron Pirbright, Pol
itician, Writer and
Historian of Austrian Descent … and marvelled at the timelessness
of such solecisms … A servant came soundlessly across the Persian
rug towards him, bearing a silver salver on which there was a small
pyramid of gold-foil-wrapped bonbons … exquisitely … captivatingly
… clichéd, and the Butcher took one and slowly unwrapped
it. Why does he remember this episode so distinctly? Not only
because of the chocolate testicle which melted on the palm of his
hand … not in my mouth – but also because of the message the servant
dutifully delivered, verbatim: Mister Amir is outside the embassy
building, sir. He’s in a metallic-green Volkswagen parked at the junction
of Salesianergasse and Strohgasse – he says he’s only half an hour, sir …
The Mars Bar is melting in the Butcher’s hand (You’ll mess up that
suit of yours …), and the cracked actor’s words, penned for him by
his filthy little flack, have also been retrieved from his database:
Looking back over twelve years, we have been victims of our own desire
to placate the implacable … He pulls open the tent flap and hunches
inside. Gawain sits on a white plastic garden chair. He’s wearing
full body armour and holds his helmet in his lap. His face is drawn,
bloodless – its expression is utterly vacant. The corpse of a man lies
on a table in the exact centre of the tent, naked except for threadbare
boxer shorts in a faded blue-and-green Paisley pattern, and
irradiated by the harsh white light of an unshaded bulb clipped
to the tent’s ridgepole. It’s this clash of patterns that troubles the
Butcher initially: the Formica tabletop the corpse lies on has exactly
the same multicoloured speckles as the ones in the canteen at Saint
Alban’s Grammar … these eggshell fragments shored against my ruin.
The corpse is that of a man in his early fifties, of Middle Eastern
origin, with a thin ascetic face … you’ve waited twelve years, why
not wait a little longer? Its skin is less picturesque than General
Fitzhugh’s face: a sickly beige canvas daubed with purple and
maroon patches where the contusions inflicted before death have
subsequently clotted … One eye is so bruised it’s swollen completely
shut, the other’s wide open and staring dully at the dull roof of the
dull tent – whoever worked the man over did so systematically,
dully, over many hours. The Butcher takes two strides and is beside
the table, looking down into that face – a face he matches against
scores of potentially relevant images he retrieves from his vast databank
of all those he’s ever had business with. One time at Thames
House, Ventris, a senior plod, thought he’d belittle the Butcher
by introducing him to one of the so-called super-recognisers they
retained – in this case to try to match the walk-ups who’d streamed
in after the Twin Towers attacks against thousands of indistinct
mug-shots the Pakistanis had reluctantly ponied up. While the
super-recogniser was actually doing his bit, the Butcher scanned the
screen over his shoulder for a few seconds, then tapped here, ping!
and there, ping! Those’re your matches, he’d said curtly – now go
and give ’em a pull and stop piddling to the press about how under-fucking-resourced
you are … But this face – this thin, intellectual
face, with a nose which would’ve been pretty, had it not long since
been broken twice – once by the Iraqi Mukhabarat, once by the
Iranian Vaja – this face the Butcher matches against younger, live
versions of itself, met initially in Vienna in ninety-one … next seen
across a café table in Aman in ninety-three … through a plate-glass
window in Cairo in ninety-five … reflected in the wing mirror
of an old Peugeot in Tehran in ninety-nine. Not that he needs any
comparison: he knew who the man was that morning, standing in
the blankly buzzing clarity of his own house … pulling up my pants.
He stares down into the corpse’s open eye, seeing there, caught in
the already fraying net of its retina, a single silvery image, frail
as Victorian découpage … I also want to pay tribute to our Intelligence
and Security Services for the often extraordinary work that they do. He
looks closer, and can just about make out the faint reflection of ram’s
horns … Goodbye, Amir, the Butcher says, teasing down the dead
Iraqi’s eyelid with the very tip of his beautifully manicured fingernail
… they say they grow when you’re dead – like all horny things …
At last, he turns his attention to his lover: Are you in shock? are his
first words – his next: You should eat this – I can see you’ve low
blood sugar … Gawain’s eyes swim, then weep as he brings … the
Butcher into focus. I’ve had enough chocolate to last me a lifetime,
he says blankly, tears running down his cheeks. Jonathan turns
away slightly, stripping the wrapping from the softening Mars Bar:
Well, his tone is brusque, in that case I’ll have it myself – nothing’s
passed my lips since London. Gawain stirs dully, says, still more
dully, What was that titbit, then, Sally’s clit? And the Butcher darts
a sharp look at him: This isn’t a fucking film, Gawain – and we
don’t have time for histrionics of any sort. You need to buck up
and tell me exactly what happened if you and your men’re to avoid a
court martial. Gawain stirs in the white plastic garden chair, his
hands tightly gripping its white plastic arms. He blinks furiously,
trying to turn it all – the corpse, the tent and the Butcher – off
and on again … a factory reset. I thought … he says at length …
I thought you and your people rather wanted rid of this man anyway
– that was the impression I got from the intel’. The Butcher’s
mouth is gummed up with chocolate, toffee and nougat – which is
just as well, because by the time he’s able to, he speaks rather than
shouts: What my people want is of no fucking account, Gawain –
this man had a name, and his name was Amir Ali al-Jabbar, and he
happened – strange to relate – to be a fucking friend of mine! The
Butcher drops the crumpled-up Mars Bars wrapper to the gravelly
ground and kicks it under the corpse’s table. He balls his fists and
thrusts them deep into his trouser pockets. He can’t look at Gawain,
yet senses this emanation coming from him: a steady pulsing, as
from a bright light … He thinks of the press pack lying on the
pancake-thin mattress under the hard cover of the pod: it isn’t
the sort of thing the EffOh wonks would want publicised, but it
appears that Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas, commanding officer of
the Yorkshire Hussars, has finally become who he’s truly meant to
be … Did you murder my friend Amir, Gawain? The Butcher at
last pops the question … the answer to which will in all probability
terminate, rather than commence … our civil partnership. Gawain
shifts awkwardly from buttock to buttock. Murder’s a bit much, he
mutters. Killed, then, the Butcher snaps back – and Gawain shakes
his head. Killed’s also
an overstatement – this man was detained by
me and my men during a routine hard knock. A brief firefight
ensued and he shot and wounded one of the Rams – Trooper
Bessemer, who subsequently died. It might be that my men were
a little over-enthusiastic when it came to interro–. You what? the
Butcher cries, at last turning to look at the lost sheep … You
what? You had strict instructions to get anyone who came over the
border down here and turn them over to the slime. What the fuck,
Gawain … what the fucking fuck … Silence falls heavily on the
lovers, and the Butcher remembers the blond’s woolly leg thrown
across his own, under the duvet, beneath the eaves of the old cottage
in Bardney where we spent so many happy hours … He shivers disgustedly
– the object of his repulsion is fixated on his own cloven
hooves. Suddenly the Butcher is all business: Okay, you need to start
talking now – and you need to start talking well. I want the names
of every one of your miserable little troopers who had any contact
with these detainees, either on the op’ or subsequently. Fitzhugh
says the Provost Marshal knows about Amir’s death – and there’s
another, isn’t there, Gawain? Gawain stirs in his absurd chair – a
garden party guest who’s had rather too much of the Pimm’s – and
says, One of the detainees just upped and died on us – must’ve had a
heart condition or something … It unsettled the men, Jonathan –
what with their comrades getting banjoed, they just … sorta …
lost it. The Butcher is on him in two strides: his hands on the
arms of the white plastic garden chair, he stoops to vanquish … And
you – you, Gawain, you just sorta let them lose it, did you? Then
it all vomits forth: the thick, stinging, sweet-sickness of it – the
smelly-melting dissolution of this chocolate soldier. Gawain hunches
forward – the helmet drops from his lap and rolls under the dead
man’s table. Gawain puts his balled fists in his swollen eyes – and
smites his armoured breast as he tells his lover of Tizer’s breakdown:
I dunno why he hasn’t said anything before … He’s clearly been
thinking it for years – since I bested him for SeeOh … Surprised
he hasn’t used it against me before – then again, I personally led the
detachment which went to clear up after the Kiwis … strictly
