Aggressor

"Nah, I"m just letting her sleep with me till I find somebody better."

He frowned at my bad joke. "You"re a k.n.o.bber then. She seems a really good girl. Make the best of it while you can, lad." He looked at the sofa then back at me. "So, you want to come and watch the sun go down, or what?"

He couldn"t have made it more obvious he had something he wanted to talk about if he"d tried. He lifted two new cans and I followed him out onto the veranda.

He leaned on the rail. A couple of hundred metres away, a group of horses kicked up dust in the paddock.

Charlie sat on a bench and motioned me to a swing seat opposite. Whatever was on his mind, he didn"t seem ready to talk about it yet. My eyes followed his to the horse grazing on its own in a corner.

"You know what, Charlie? You were the one that I picked. I never told you that, did I?"

The training major always gave just one piece of advice to the newly badged troopers. "When you get to your squadron, shut up, look and listen. Then pick one man you think is the ideal SAS soldier. Don"t let him know you"ve picked him, but watch and learn. There will be times on operations when you don"t know how to act or react. That"s when you ask yourself what your man would do."

Charlie had started out as the one I picked, but he very quickly became even more important to me than that. In my mind, I awarded him the highest accolade one soldier could ever give another. I could honestly say that I would have followed him anywhere.

He took another swig and rested his can on the rail. "I know, lad. I used to see you watching me. You learn much?"

"I think I did. In fact I thought about you on the last day of that Waco job. Do I deck the bloke or not? I know I made the right decision."

"I"m not sure everybody at Waco did." Charlie turned his head to look at me. "Remember that young lad from DERA, the gas man? He killed himself a year later."

I hadn"t heard. I"d left the Regiment by then. "His name was Anthony. He was all right."

He sat back in his chair. "Good men, f.u.c.ked over by the system. It"s nothing new." He picked up his beer with a trembling hand, as if the emotion of the moment was getting the better of him. "You know, I fell for it when I was a lad. I really did believe all that s.h.i.te about Queen and country. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys. It took me thirty-seven years playing soldiers to realize what a load of old b.o.l.l.o.c.ks it was. Maybe you got there sooner? That why you got out?"

Charlie wouldn"t know what I"d done after I left, and he would never ask. He knew that if I wanted him to know, I"d tell him.

"Sort of."

He looked back at the solitary horse in the corner of the field. "Did you know I was in the troop when my boy was on foot patrol in Derry?"

I nodded. A couple of guys had had sons in the green army, and all of them had been operating over the water at the same time.

He gave a little self-mocking laugh. "I used to kid myself that every PIRA guy we dropped meant one less who could take a pop at my boy. Kind of felt I was looking out for him. But we weren"t doing the job full throttle, were we? We were only dropping the ASUs [active service units] that Thatcher and Major thought would hold up the peace process." His eyes narrowed. "We were actually protecting Adams and McGuinness so they could have secret talks with our "We do not deal with terrorists" governments. Seemed there were good baddies and bad baddies, something I hadn"t really thought of before."

I shrugged. No-one had ever officially admitted it, but we had all known what was going on. Eliminate the ones who were objecting to any sort of progress, then hope the rest were going to fall in behind our guys, Adams and McGuinness. "Maybe it worked. We"ve got a sort of peace."

"Whatever. Only thing that mattered was, all the time I was running around working was time I didn"t have to sit and worry about Steven."

He gazed at the horse, lost for a moment in a world of his own. "And afterwards... after he was killed... I didn"t care how they did it, just so long as they kept me busy."

I lifted the can. "Must have been grim, mate." I hesitated. "I"ve kind of been there myself..." I tailed off again, because I wasn"t sure what I was going to say next. In any case, Charlie was giving me that slightly challenging look you see in the eyes of the bereaved when people say, "I know exactly how you must be feeling," and they have no f.u.c.king idea. I shrugged. "She wasn"t my own, but f.u.c.k, it felt like she was. If it had hurt any more, I couldn"t have taken it."

Charlie shifted in his seat. "Who was she? Stepdaughter?"

"Kev Brown"s kid he was in Eight Troop, remember?"

Charlie tried to, but couldn"t.

"He and Marsha had made me guardian in their will."

"Oh yeah, I heard about that. s.h.i.t, I had no idea it was you who"d stepped in." His voice dropped. "So what happened to her?"

"She got killed two years ago in London." I stared down at the can. "She was fifteen. I took her back home to the States and buried her, then, well, I buried myself, a bit like you."

Charlie nodded slowly. "Then you just wake up one day and wonder what the f.u.c.k it"s all about..."

"Something like that. I always used to pretend I didn"t give a f.u.c.k, but, well, you know, I loved her. Losing her f.u.c.ked me up big-time. Next thing I knew, I was sitting at the wheel of a combi with long hair and a wrist full of these things." I jiggled the friendship bracelets.

Charlie smiled. "I guess everybody deals with it the best way they can. Know what Julie bought me for Christmas? Slippers. f.u.c.king slippers! Ever since Steven died, that"s how she and her mother want things to be. They want to live in a bubble. Everything nice and fluffy, and Steven"s a happy face in a photograph. That"s what this place is all about. It"s Hazel"s own self-contained eco-climate, like a f.u.c.king Eden Project for happier times."

He took another swig of beer and looked me square in the eye. "Coming here was the worst thing I could have done, lad. Far too much time on my hands. People look at me and think I have a slice of paradise, but it"s driving me f.u.c.king mad. If you keep moving, keep doing, there"s no time left to think. But now I spend half the day thinking about him. It"s that same old feeling I had over the water, that I should have been there, should have been looking after him. I know there was nothing I could have done, but that doesn"t stop you thinking it, does it?"

He gave me a rueful smile as he nodded over towards the paddock. "You see that one in the corner, the bay? He was a stallion once. In his prime he covered three or four mares a day, and spent the rest of the time kicking down stable doors. He doesn"t get to use his gear at all these days. Too knackered. Only difference between him and me is that instead of eating gra.s.s and s.h.i.tting all day, I"m pruning the f.u.c.king gum trees and watching the sun set. You know the best thing I could do for him?" His jaw tightened. "Put a f.u.c.king gun to his head and put him out of his misery."

I chanced a smile. "Or buy him slippers, mate."

"Yeah, or buy him slippers. But some guys do it for themselves, don"t they? Guys like Anthony. I used to think they were copping out, taking the coward"s way, but I"m not so sure any more. Maybe they"re the smart ones."

I didn"t know where he was going with this, and I didn"t get the chance to find out. Julie pushed the door open and hurried from the house, a child"s hand gripped in each of hers. She had a horrified look on her face, completely at odds with the bright tone in her voice. "That was a silly film come on, let"s go. It"s bedtime anyway." Something not very good had happened inside, and she was trying to make light of it. She shepherded them down the steps just as her mother appeared in the doorway. Hazel looked distraught.

Charlie got up and took a couple of steps towards her, then jerked his head at me to go and check.

I pulled open the screen door and went in. Silky and Alan were standing in front of the television. This was no kids" DVD; the screen was filled with jerky, urgent images. I heard screams and the rattle of automatic gunfire.

Silky turned to me. "It"s near Russia somewhere. A siege. They"re shooting children."

The picture cut to soldiers trying to make entry into a big square concrete office block. The rolling captions announced that terrorists were holding an estimated three hundred people hostage. The town of Kazbegi was in the north of Georgia, on the border with Russia. Many of the hostages were thought to be women and children.

I watched as a small group of soldiers fired their AKs wildly into the windows and others tried to make entry with sledgehammers.

The camera shifted to an armoured vehicle ramming into a door. Screams filled the TV"s speakers.

Women and children tumbled out of the building, only to be caught in vicious crossfire. Black smoke billowed through broken gla.s.s. Elsewhere, I could see panic-stricken faces pressed against the panes.

Soldiers gesticulated wildly to get them to stand aside, but it wasn"t happening. They were frozen to the spot.

The picture cut again to a reporter hiding behind an armoured vehicle, her pretty dark eyes wide as saucers as she extracted and processed information from the chaos. All around her, what looked like half the army was popping up and firing pistols and a.s.sault rifles. I was watching a gangf.u.c.k, Georgian style.

As two attack helicopters rattled overhead, she shouted into her microphone, in an Eastern European accent with an American tw.a.n.g, that the building was a regional government office; a census was being conducted and that was why there were so many people inside. The attack was thought to be an Islamist militant group protesting against the Caspian pipeline. f.u.c.k knows how CNN had got someone there so quick, but they had. The breaking news caption now put the death toll at thirty.

Silky held her hands to her face. "Oh my G.o.d, those poor kids!"

A soldier ran across the screen. Cradled in his arms was the limp body of a child, his clothing charred and smouldering.

There was an explosion inside the building. The camera shuddered as a rapid flash hit the windows on the first floor. Gla.s.s blew out, then smoke billowed from the holes.

I could hear a series of shouted orders, but the chaos continued. Usual story; more chiefs than Indians.

A couple of soldiers who had successfully made entry jumped back out of a ground-floor window, one of them with flames dancing on his uniform.

The camera zoomed in on a fleet of ambulances coming down a road, some civilian, some military. The two helicopters still rattled overhead.

Two blood-covered women dashed from the building, gathering up whatever dazed and bloodied children they could as they ran.

There was another prolonged and totally indiscriminate exchange of gunfire as the camera zoomed in on two kids jumping from a first-floor window to escape the flames.

Hazel hit the remote and the TV died. "Enough. Not in my house."

4

I sat next to Silky on the veranda as the sun came up, listening to last night"s events being endlessly dissected on the radio as I cut orange after orange for her to put through the juicer. Getting the Tindalls breakfast seemed the least we could do to repay their hospitality, and I hoped it might help put a spring in their step. The atmosphere had been pretty subdued after Hazel switched off the TV. We"d helped clear up in near silence, then gone to bed. Hazel hadn"t been at all happy about the way the real world had come in uninvited, and Charlie had been tense, preoccupied.

"Hear that?" Silky whispered. "They now estimate about sixty dead and a hundred and sixty injured." She poured another few oranges" worth of juice into a jug. "That"s over half the people who were in the building. It"s terrible."

"It"s not so bad, you know, as sieges go." In the corner of the paddock, the old bay was treating himself to an early-morning dust bath. "You have to work on the basis that they"re all dead from the beginning anyway. Even a single survivor is a bonus in a situation like that."

She stopped squeezing and straightened up. "I keep thinking about that poor child. The one who"d been burned. Did you see the soldier holding him?"

I cut another couple of oranges and pa.s.sed them across. It seemed to be taking an awful lot of fruit to produce not very much juice. "The place was probably rigged with explosives. We saw one lot go off. I"m surprised there aren"t many more dead."

"But all those soldiers looked out of control. They didn"t know what they were doing."

"You know, if twenty per cent or fewer get dropped it"s a success. What those soldiers were doing was reacting to what was happening, whether it was the correct thing to do or not."

"Dropped? What is dropped? Killed? For a panel-beater, you seem to know an awful lot about these things..."

"Don"t you box-heads read Time Time magazine?" magazine?"

Silky pulled a face before going back to her task. "You certainly don"t. The only magazines you read have parachutes on the cover."

I was still laughing when Hazel appeared in the doorway in her dressing gown. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were red and shiny.

Silky jumped to her feet. "Hazel, are you all right?"

Atear rolled down her cheek. "He"s gone."

"Gone?" I said. "What are you on about?"

"He"s not here."

A lot of thoughts raced through my mind in the next split second, and all at a thousand miles an hour. Charlie had withdrawn into his sh.e.l.l after the news broadcasts. "That stuff really seemed to get to Hazel," I"d said. "She"s been like that ever since Steven died," he"d replied. "She wants to shut out the real world, keep us all from being hurt like that again. That"s what this place is all about."

He"d been very morose all evening, come to think of it, but I"d put that down to the Toohey"s; it had been looking more and more like he had a drink problem. And all that stuff about shooting horses... f.u.c.k, he wouldn"t have taken it into his head to drive off into the night and top himself, would he? He wouldn"t have been the first.

Silky wiped her hands on her jeans and wrapped her arms around Hazel. "Charlie has gone somewhere? Would you like some coffee, or maybe some tea?"

I glanced across at the parking area at the side of the house. The Land Cruiser was missing. "Maybe he"s gone to fetch some croissants." I gave her my biggest smile. "I noticed a little bakery about a thousand miles back."

Silky glared at me as she comforted Hazel. "It"s not funny, Nick." She was right; wrong time, wrong place.

"I"m sorry. You sure he hasn"t left a note or something?"

She shook her head. "He didn"t say anything to you? You two were talking together a long time out here."

Silky"s head bounced between the pair of us as she tried to get Hazel to sit down. "Anyone want to tell me what"s going on?"

I touched her hand. "Later."

She got the hint. Hazel finally sat down and Silky disappeared inside the house to make that tea she"d promised.

"I"m scared that something"s happened, Nick. He wasn"t himself when he came to bed. You sure he didn"t say anything?"

Silky was back in the doorway. "Hazel, the telephone"s ringing. Do you want me to-"

Hazel was already moving. Silky stared at me quizzically but I wanted to listen, not speak.

I started through the door, but Hazel was already on her way back. "That was Julie. The Land Cruiser"s at the train station. What"s happening, Nick? Everything"s going to fall apart again, I just know it..." She buried her face in the front of my shirt, and clung to me like a woman drowning.

At last she raised her head. "Please help me find him, Nick. Please..."

5

Even with the door closed, the racket Julie"s kids were making carried into her father"s office. Then the TV came on, and cartoon voices took over from their shrieks and the clatter of small feet across wooden floors.

I looked up from Charlie"s desk. "He won"t have done anything stupid, Hazel. You know that"s not his style."

She nodded as if she wanted to believe me, but couldn"t quite bring herself to. "I pray you"re right, Nick. I want him home."

She"d already told me Charlie had been suffering from depression over the last few weeks, and the episodes had been getting worse and more frequent. She wanted so much to convince herself he wasn"t off in the bush having a final dark night of the soul.

"Promise you"ll try to find him for me?" She sounded lost, bewildered. She had changed out of her dressing gown but her hair was still a mess, and she"d given in to little bouts of weeping over the last hour. I"d never seen her look so vulnerable, and I wanted to do whatever I could to make her smile again.

She leaned down and switched on the worn, stained-plastic PC for me. I listened to the modem shaking hands with the server on the line. I certainly wasn"t going to admit to what Charlie and I had talked about. Maybe without realizing it I"d said the wrong thing and got him all sparked up. "You go back to Julie, Hazel. I"ll give you a shout if I find anything."

As she left the room, the PC played the Windows music and went into msn. It was a very uncluttered office; the desk, the swivel chair I was sitting in, a filing cabinet, and that was about it. A venetian blind over the window cast big wedges of light and shadow. There was a strong smell of wood.