by RJ Bailey
‘Is she still alive? Your mother?’
He shook his head. ‘Nor my father or brother. A number of uncles are on the board, along with their wives and a few cousins, that is all I have as family.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir. But I suspect Nuzha will also go far in life, like her grandmother.’ It sounded cheesy even as I said it, but I meant it.
He nodded. ‘At least they had the chance to meet before she died. Nuzha’s safety is paramount to me.’ He seemed to snap out of his torpor a little. ‘It’s why you are here. Her mother, she thinks I worry too much. But as you know, people in our position are a target sometimes. Blackmail, extortion. You understand that?’
‘I do.’
‘And we are most vulnerable through our children.’
I didn’t like the way the conversation was going. I was expecting a pep talk, a debriefing of some description, an assessment of my performance so far. This man had something on his mind other than dead sons and whisky. ‘I have to ask you, sir. Is there a threat or a risk situation I should be aware of?’
He took a deeper draught of the whisky, smacking his lips with pleasure. I noticed the fingers wrapped around the glass. Long, elegant, beautifully manicured. Like the fingers of a concert pianist. ‘Aren’t threat and risk the same thing?’ Sharif asked.
‘Not quite. I can’t do anything about a threat to you. But I can minimise the risk of it being carried out. So once more, if you don’t mind, are you aware of any specific threat and, therefore, risk to you or your family?’
‘No,’ he said firmly.
And to think I was stupid enough to believe him.
Matt was waiting for me when I got home. I spotted him sitting in the car. There were cigarette butts outside the driver’s window. He’d been there three cigarettes’-worth. Of course, he wasn’t on The Circuit, but it is ingrained in those of us who are never to drop litter out of cars. A stray coffee cup can show someone has been watching.
I drove past my parking slot, tucked the VW into the next block’s forecourt and circled back on foot so I could rap on the window and make him jump.
‘Jesus!’ he said as he hit the button that lowered the glass. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’
Shame. So near, yet so far. ‘You want to see me?’
‘Only if you’re not going to belt me, I’d’ve gone up but I saw Jess arrive with some girl.’
‘Woman. Laura.’
‘Au pair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cute.’
‘Fuck off.’
He shook his head. ‘Here we go again.’
I stepped back and he opened the door and got out, stretching as he did so. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and I had to admit he had kept himself in shape, even if it was a shape I no longer approved of.
‘Look, I’m going to forget the assault—’
‘It wasn’t an assault. It was a slap. If I’d wanted to assault you, you’d still be in traction. Did you tell your solicitor that I’d attacked you?’
‘Look, I don’t want to go down that hostile route. It won’t do anybody any good, least of all Jess. Agreed?’
The sound I made in the back of my throat was some sort of agreement, I suppose.
‘Are you going to ask me up?’
‘No.’
Matt heaved out a big, childish sigh. ‘All I want to ask is if I make firm proposals for limited access, would you consider them?’
‘What kind of proposals?’
‘We have to put it in writing apparently. It involves neutral ground, what’s called a Contact Centre. If I draft something, will you read it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll read it. But that’s all I promise.’
‘That’s all I ask.’
‘I’m still not sure why you . . . why now? Why come to see Jess after all this time?’
‘Because it marks a new start for me. The thought of not seeing Jess . . . It’s an ache, here.’ He pounded his chest with a fist. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
‘Put it in writing, I’ll take a look.’
‘Thank you. So I’ll –’ he pointed at his Toyota and his eyes flicked up to the flat ‘– be going? Will I?’
‘Yes. You will.’
‘OK. I’ll be in touch,’ he said to my back and for once I had the horrible feeling he was telling the truth.
Not for the first time I wondered how the fuck did I get myself tangled up with him in the first place?
And then I remembered.
TWENTY-ONE
The Medical Supplies Store, or MSS, is really just a big steel container that bakes in the sun. None of us like going in. The suffocating air is toxic with hot plastic and other astringent chemicals. But when your medi-pack is running low, there is no choice. You have to obtain a requisition form from logistics, fill in your requirements, have it countersigned by the senior MO at the camp and then collect the key to the MSS. You could stock up on everything except morphine. The MO liked to keep that one close to his chest.
That morning I jump through all the army’s bureaucratic hoops and then head across the compound, kicking up yet more yellow dust. The main activity in camp that day is cleaning the filth out of the various vehicles’ engine filters. The air is alive with the hiss of high-pressure air hoses, and the resultant dislodged particles have formed into a malevolent, choking cloud. Never mind the filters, who’s going to clean our lungs out once we are done here?
The MSS is tucked away close to one of the blast walls, beneath Obs Post Six, an observation tower that has been hit more times than anything else on the base, mainly because it makes for a decent ranging target from the low hills to the east of us. Those scrub-covered foothills looked smooth but, in reality, when your boots were on that sunbaked ground, they were wrinkled and creviced like a bull elephant’s skin. It was great terrain for creeping up with a mortar, sighting on Obs Post Six, lobbing a few shells over and scarpering. Obs Post Six is not a popular spot on the duty roster.
I look up as an Apache helicopter sweeps overhead, its rotor wash adding a few more kilos of dust to the air, the thrum hurting my ears. It is followed by a Chinook, lumbering through the sky. The pair always remind me of a great whale plodding through the water with its smaller, more agile, attending fish zipping around. Only in this case the Apache is there to watch the vulnerable Chinook’s back. Although quite what it could do about a Stinger launch I am never sure. Just take out the perps after the event.
I’m never certain how to convey what all this feels like to the people back home. Unreal, surreal, terrifying, boring, mind-numbing, exhilarating, often all within a single hour. I had tried, after a few drinks, to paint some sort of picture for the guy I met in the White Lion when I was last home. Nice guy. Despite being – how could this be? – an estate agent. An estate agent? What the fuck could they know about what it was like being in a shithole like this? But he was a good listener and, surprise, a smooth talker and he didn’t wear those nasty suits or the aftershave, every bit as choking as Iraqi dust, that most of them favour.
Besides, he had said, it was only a stepping-stone. Estate agenting. What he was really interested in was property development, buying a few wrecks, getting them done up, selling them on. He honestly thought that was some kind of step up the evolutionary ladder from being an estate agent.
So after I’d voiced that opinion he’d challenged me on the morality of the British being in Iraq, when it had played no part in the events of 9/11 that had triggered the whole War on Terror frenzy. We moved on to a few pointless exchanges in which I had tried to suggest that removing Saddam Hussein was akin to taking out Hitler in 1939 and he demanded to know why we hadn’t invaded Saudi Arabia instead. At the time I thought he was attacking the men and women of the army, rather than the duplicitous politicians behind the war, so I told him about the mundane realities of life on the ground. Which included a regular, long hot schlep to the MSS, just like today.
As I reach the container I
can see that the door is already open. Which is odd, because there are four keys to it and all four were hanging up when I collected the one now clutched in my right hand.
I pull the door open, wrinkling my nose at the esterish stink of superheated polythene and the gust of hot air that wafts it over me. We’ve asked for a proper, airconned storage unit and been told it is ‘in the works’. But then, others had also asked for properly armoured Land Rovers. As far as saving lives went, the latter is probably a greater priority.
At first I think the noise I am hearing is a new form of helicopter, but as I step past the first row of metal shelving, I appreciate it is the unmistakable sound of energetic flesh colliding with a rhythmic, urgent intensity.
Freddie is bent over almost double, her splayed fingers grasping one of the lower shelves, her cammies around her ankles, along with her knickers. The man creating all the disturbance in the air, and sweating as if he is leaking, is a young lieutenant, a fresh- and red-faced Rupert. I am frozen in place, slack-jawed, as I watch him slide in and out of her, ridiculously pleased and relieved that he is wearing a condom and mesmerised by the oscillating movement of Freddie’s breasts.
‘Get the fuck out!’ yells the officer in a hoarse voice. ‘Can’t you see we’re busy?’
‘And for fuck’s sake shut the door behind you,’ adds Freddie.
I have just reached the exit and am stepping down when a fist catches me on the back of the head, a driving sucker punch that sends me sprawling into that hated dust.
‘Look, it’s very simple,’ says Freddie as she pours out the teas. ‘I needed a cock in my cunt. Sometimes, you do, you know. Need a cock in—’
‘All right, I get the picture. Thanks.’ I take the mug from her. We are in the regimental first-aid post, where she’d plucked splinters from my scalp and dressed the bigger wound at the top of my neck. Outside we could hear the low grumbles of vehicles starting up. A patrol was going out.
‘Jesus, though,’ she said, ‘at first, I thought it was the biggest come of my life. Talk about the earth moving.’
I laugh despite myself. Just as I had stepped out of the MSS a mortar round had hit Obs Post Six. It was the blast and a few shards of timber that had knocked me to the floor. It had also put the young Rupert off his enthusiastic stride. The patrol we could hear starting up would be going out to chase the mortar team, but we all knew they’d be long gone. One fortuitous hit and the insurgents would have melted into the landscape, pleased with their efforts. It was only luck that the tower had been empty when the round detonated. ‘And the look on your face when you saw us at it.’
‘Now listen, Freddie. I’m not judging you. But you know, they say women have no place on a battlefield. They’ll be a distraction in wartime. No, we say. We are professional soldiers. Medics before we are women.’ I let my eyebrows finish the thought.
She sighs. ‘Try not to look like you are sucking sherbet all the time. You’re right, it was stupid. But you do sound fuckin’ judgemental. As I said, I just needed—’
‘Don’t say it again.’ I warn her.
‘I wasn’t going to. But next time I’m bringing a bloody vibrator with me. A Rampant Rabbit. A whole warren of them. Anyway, I won’t see him again. The Rupert. He was only here with some major and he’s rotating home next week.’
‘To his wife and kids?’ I say, regretting the mean-spirited sharpness of the words as soon as they have left my lips.
‘Oh, do fuck right off, Buster. It was just a shag. I didn’t suck off Osama bin Laden. Nobody died. I didn’t even come properly thanks to those bastards out there.’
‘War is hell,’ I suggest.
She smiles. ‘It is when you need a cock up your cunt.’ A giggle shakes her shoulders. ‘I just love your expression when I say it. You look like . . . who’s that girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?’
‘Veruca Salt.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s a spoiled rich brat.’
A smirk spread across Freddie’s face. ‘I rest my case.’
I let out a gasp of exasperation. ‘I’m none of those things.’
‘You, my lovely, are posh.’ She amped up her burr as she said it.
‘Fuck off.’
‘See, you don’t even swear properly. Fuck orfff.’
I know I can’t win this. I am not posh, I am maybe middle class and girls like me don’t normally join the army. That much I’ll accept. But Freddie hardly had a Dolly Parton hand-me-down upbringing. Plymouth might be rough in places, but it isn’t the Appalachians or the projects.
And so, just to show I am not a prig or a prude, I tell her about the night I picked up an estate agent in a bar and then fucked his brains out until he couldn’t manage a just-one-more-time-for-the-road the next morning.
‘What was his name, then, this sex machine on a stick?’
‘Matt.’
‘Matt what?’
‘Matt . . . Black.’
She explodes with laughter, launching tea across the room. ‘You’re fuckin’ kiddin’? Matt Black? Does he have a brother called Gloss?’
I shake my head. ‘No, that’s not his name. It’s . . .’ I could feel myself frowning.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Her jaw drops in surprise but her eyes show her delight at this lapse in standards. ‘You didn’t even ask his second name? I take it all back. You, Buster, are a fuckin’ slut.’
I grin. I feel like I’ve made up some ground in her estimation of me, even though I know I’ve done it by demeaning myself. Matt Harper had been his name. And I have an old-fashioned love letter from him to prove it.
TWENTY-TWO
At home that evening I asked Laura to stick around while I did some work. I didn’t want to. For some reason I’d been thinking of that time when I had burst in on Freddie with a Rupert rogering her for all he was worth. I found the thought strangely erotic. Which was odd, because watching other people have sex – at least in the flesh – has never been one of my go-to buttons to push. Partially clothed sex – a personal favourite – yes, voyeurism, no.
But maybe that ghostly echo of Freddie’s charming little catchphrase that popped into my head the other week had been right. I needed a man. Or maybe twenty minutes in the bath with my waterproof Jimmyjane.
But that would have to wait. I had with me a USB stick of footage downloaded from the hard drive One-Eyed Jack had installed in the BMW. On it was footage from the modified reversing camera. It wasn’t EastEnders exactly, but it was going to be my evening viewing. Laura fixed fish fingers for Jess and, without asking, brought me a glass of white wine and some crisps while I fiddled about inserting the USB and opening the files.
‘Do I look like I need it?’ I asked as she proffered the wine.
‘You looked like you’ve earned it,’ she replied with a grin.
Such tact. ‘Thank you.’
I inserted the USB and scrolled through until I found the UPS delivery van. The tail camera was not intended for surveillance work – given more time, Jack could have replaced it with something of higher quality – but it gave me enough to get the licence plate and to follow the brown van’s movements. I couldn’t swear to it, but I reckoned it was playing piggy in the middle – with me being the pig – with a nondescript Peugeot that popped up more than once. I noted down that number, too. I took my first sip of the wine and then I dialled Jack. He did after-hours service, too.
‘I’ve got two numbers for you.’
‘That was quick. Hold on. Oscar! Oscar! Not in the mouth!’ There was a muffled noise and silence before he came back on. ‘Lego. Sorry.’ Jack had a new, younger wife, who came with two stepdaughters, and Oscar, a new toddler of his own. I didn’t envy him the Lego-eating years, not at his age. There was the older boy, too, from his first marriage – Jordan, who worked in the hangars, although I had never actually met him. ‘Go ahead.’
I gave him the licence plates.
‘Tomorrow OK?’
‘Fine.’ I don’t know h
ow he did it exactly, but I know he didn’t go through DVLA to ID a vehicle – too many bootprints left all over the computers, so he said – but an insurance database. If those cars had a UK policy, he could get name and address. ‘Can you do something else for me? Add it to the tab?’
‘Depends.’ He sounded wary. Maybe something in my voice suggested this wasn’t strictly PPO business.
‘If I give you a mobile number, can you get me the registered address?’
He laughed. ‘That’s so easy I wouldn’t have the nerve to charge you, my love.’
‘Do it anyway.’
‘OK. Again, be tomorrow.’
I read out the number. ‘Just email it to me whenever. You get back to the Lego.’
He sighed. ‘I think I should have bought Duplo.’
‘I think you’re right. Much harder to swallow.’
I hung up and switched off the computer; as I lowered the top, Laura slid a plate of grilled chicken and broccoli over to me.
‘What’s this?’
‘Dinner,’ she said. ‘I made myself some, too. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, of course. Sit. Where’s Jess?’
‘She says homework. I suspect Orange Is the New Black.’ I began to say something about the suitability of the show for a fourteen-year-old, but Laura held up her hand. ‘I know. But it’s fine.’
‘It’s got lesbians and fisting and such in it, hasn’t it?’
Laura raised an eyebrow.
‘That made me sound old, didn’t it?’
She let me off with a shrug. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s not so bad.’
I drank some more of the wine, which had grown lukewarm. ‘You OK about tomorrow?’
