by Vince Vogel
Kevin Yates glanced about behind them at the pool players and then at the barman. The game went on uninterrupted and the barman never even flickered away from his game.
“You wanna be careful who you say that around,” Kevin said in a hushed voice, leaning across Jane so that Dorring could hear. “Some of the guys don’t like it when you call their work pointless.”
“But it’s true,” Dorring said.
Kevin shook his head and then retracted it.
“So Bishop’s a fanatic,” Jane said, turning to Kevin.
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Just the right type to want to score insignia into the flesh of his victims.”
“Okay. It’s a start but, like Dorring said, not much. What have you got me that might be worth something, Kevin?”
A cocky smile erupted on his face and she knew he had something. He always smiled smugly when he was about to come up with anything worthwhile.
“Well, I told you he was in the Commandos, right?” he said.
“Uh huh,” Jane said, lifting her beer to her mouth.
“So he was in Iraq right after the invasion. Was part of the first wave of soldiers after the bombing campaign. Had to fight what was left of Saddam’s Republican Guard amongst the ruins.”
“Okay, get to the point,” she said.
“So on one operation, Bishop and a team of eight are hit by a mass of Republican Guards. It started with a Land Rover full of regular army being kidnapped. Then a tip off that they’d been spotted in the ruins of a bombed out office block. So they send in the Commandos, Bishop among them. But of course it’s a trap. They get there, search the levels of the place and then find the infantry boys.” Kevin paused for effect. “They’re nailed to crosses,” he went on, “like back in the days of Pilate.”
“Pilate?” Jane said.
“It’s Pontius Pilate,” Dorring said. “The Roman prefect of Judea when Christ was alive.”
“Oh.” Then turning back to Kevin, she added, “So he saw that?”
“Yeah. Saw those men nailed to crosses. But that wasn’t all. See, they’d been mutilated.”
“Mutilated how?”
“Someone had cut all their balls off.”
He let this hang.
“So you’re saying,” Jane said, “that…”
“No,” Kevin interrupted. “I’m only putting a theory forward.”
“But you’re saying that George Bishop was traumatized by what happened in Iraq?”
“That and the fact that no sooner had they discovered those dead men than 150 members of the Republican Guard stormed the building and they had to spend the next hours fighting their way out until backup arrived in the form of Black Hawk helicopters.”
Jane nodded and finished off her beer. She held the empty glass up to the barman and turned to Kevin. “You sure you don’t want one?”
“Sure,” he said. “You and Alex here go ahead with your little date. I won’t keep you much longer.”
Jane frowned at him and he shrugged.
“So what else you got?” she asked as the barman took her glass and began refilling it from a beer tap.
“Well, to support my theory,” Kevin said, “I checked with psych. Found out that afterwards, Bishop spent a little time in a DCMH assessment program for a month. It almost barred him from the SAS. Before they’d let him start general training, he had to have another assessment with their psych guys too. In the end, they cleared him.”
“Anything else?” Jane asked as her fresh beer was placed on the beer mat in front.
“Not so far. That’s all the juicy bits. I think it gives us confidence to move on Bishop though. Watch him closely.”
“I agree,” Jane said.
Silence fell over them and Dorring could see from the corner of his eye that Kevin was watching Jane with a dark look on his face while she stared straight ahead. Dorring wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Kevin then got up off his stool.
“I’ll leave you lovers alone,” he said, patting Jane’s shoulder and squeezing it.
She turned to him sharply as he walked out of the bar and Dorring could swear that he had annoyed her. When the door was closed on the bright light, the two faced forward.
“What was that all about?” Dorring asked.
“All about what?”
“Kevin. I mean, he looked almost pissed that we were together.”
“Oh him! It’s nothing. A mistake made a long time ago.”
“What type of mistake?”
“The type where two people wake up in the morning with hangovers and guilt.”
“So you went out with each other?”
“Huh!” she scoffed loudly. “I wouldn’t call it that. We slept together once after a drunken night out. That’s all.”
“How long ago?”
“A year.”
“He doesn’t look like he’s over it.”
“He likes to tease me. But he’s okay.”
They went back to sipping the beers. Half an hour or so later, they were a little drunk and a little warm. The mood had lightened up and the conversation flowed as well as the beer.
“So, obvious question,” she said, “but you were saying earlier that you joined because you wanted to get away from home. Is that true?”
Dorring thought about the question for a moment. He joined the Marines to get away and then turned out to be good at soldiering. He’d always been physically fit and had done well academically at school. He could have run away to university if he’d wanted to. But it wouldn’t have been far enough away. He needed whole continents between him and home. So he joined because they promised to take him away. Then it turned out that he had an aptitude for what they commanded him to do. Dorring had discovered something about himself in the Marines. He’d discovered that he was a natural born killer.
“In the beginning it was to get away,” he said. “A job that would take me away from home for years at a time. But then when I got into it, I realized that I was good at it. Not just the stuff they taught us in training, but a natural ability to stay calm under fire. Sure, I find myself shaking every so often after a mission, but my number one asset is that I never panic. I’m always on the ball.”
“And you like that? You like being on the ball?”
“Yeah. I like that I can do something that not many people are capable of.”
“At least you get to prove it,” she said in a despondent tone, returning to her beer and taking a swig.
“How do you mean?” he said.
Placing the beer back down on the bar and wiping her mouth, she said, “Because as a woman, I can’t join the SAS. I can only go as high as infantry if I want to see combat. And only then it’s only keeping the peace. Not the kinds of operations you go into.”
“And you’d like that?”
“I’d like to be able to prove myself.”
Dorring didn’t reply straight away. Instead, the two of them sat listening to the pool balls, the idiotic talk of the two drunk players, and the television’s low hum for a moment. Dorring felt good in her company and he couldn’t help staring at her reflection in a mirror that hung opposite. It felt good to be with her. Good to see himself sitting next to her.
“So go on then,” he said.
“Go on, what?” she put back, turning to him.
“You asked me, so now it’s your turn.”
“You mean, how did I join up?”
“Yeah. You’re obviously passionate about armed combat.”
“Not a fanatic,” she said, pointing her finger at him.
“No, not a fanatic. But you’ve obviously got the military in your blood one way or the other.”
She smiled at him and lifted her glass to her lips. Her cheeks went rosy red as she did and he could tell that she was blushing.
“You’re very observant,” she said when she placed the beer back down. “You should be a cop.”
“Thank you. But it doesn’t answer my question.”
“Well, like yo
u just pointed out, it runs in my blood. My father was a Royal Marine. Spent thirty years in the corps before retiring.”
“So he wanted his daughter to go in?”
“Not entirely. See, he had the slight misfortune of having three girls. I was the youngest and I guess he and my mother gave up after that. Scared that they’d end up with a house full of girls before they got a single boy.”
“So are your older sisters in the forces?”
“Nope. They cringed when I joined. I watched them go off to uni and get careers. Get married. Become mothers. And all the time I watched my dad look sad, knowing that he’d love to have at least one of his kids in the forces. It’d been the same for him: his father and grandfather were Marines.”
“So you couldn’t let the chain break?”
She smiled again and once more blushed.
Pointing her finger at him, she said, “Right again. I felt it my duty to join up.”
“So why the Royal Military Police?”
“I guess I wanted to see equal combat,” she replied. “Know there was nothing my male colleagues would be asked to do that I wouldn’t.”
“In the police? You see much combat in the RMPs?”
Grinning, she replied, “You try breaking up a fight between pissed squaddies at two in the morning. That’s combat.”
He smiled at her and they finished their beers. Dorring ordered two more and Jane ordered them some shots on top. As they waited for them, one of the drunks sauntered over from the pool table. As he leaned and wobbled against the bar to the side of them, he turned to Jane and smiled in an inane way, his eyes glazed over and the smile making him look like a child pulling a face.
“Alright there, darlin’?” he asked.
She turned to him and frowned before turning back to her beer without saying a word.
“I said,” he called out, “you alright there, darlin’?”
She grinned and merely faced the front. Dorring leaned forward and gazed along the bar at the drunk.
“Fuckin’ lezzer!” the guy said before turning back to his friend and saying loudly, “Oi, Geoff! We got ourselves a fuckin’ lezzer!”
Gripping his pool cue, the friend, Geoff, began strolling over, a giant smirk plastered on his face. The first drunk peeled himself from the bar and came staggering over to Jane with half a scowl on his face.
Opening his mouth, he began saying, “Now there’s no need to be…”
He got no further than that.
He’d placed a hand on her shoulder and Jane had immediately grabbed it, jumped back off the stool, and twisted it around his back. With all her force, she smashed the guy’s face into the bar and held him there by the twisted limb.
“Agh!” he groaned. “My fuckin’ arm.”
“You watch your tone there, sonny,” she snarled into his ear. “If you’re not careful, I’ll snap your arm and you’ll be even shitter at pool.”
His friend came tearing over. Dorring was already on it. He stood up from the stool and stepped to the guy. He was much shorter than Dorring. He glanced up and down the big man’s length before deciding his only hope was with the pool cue. But it did him no good. He jabbed the thick end clumsily at Dorring, who dodged to the side, pirouetted his body around and swung a counter punch right into the side of the guy’s head.
The cue made a crack as it hit the ground and the guy was launched sideways off his feet so that he smacked into the bar. He was out cold.
Jane dipped into her back pocket and pulled out her RMP identification. She placed it in front of the face of the guy she pressed into the bar.
“See that?” she said.
“Yeah,” he could barely get out, his face mushed against the sticky bar top.
“Can you read the writing?”
“Yeah.”
“Then read it out to me.”
“What…?”
She twisted the arm and he cried out.
“Read it,” she commanded.
“Jane Saunders, Royal Military…ugh!”
He knew he was screwed now. It was the same as attacking a cop back home. Just like his friend snoring loudly on the floor, he didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“Name and number?” Jane said next.
“Private Dunn, ma’am. Peter H.,” he said respectfully. “Unit B12294.”
“That’s the catering division of infantry, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m a chef.”
“What about him?”
“His name’s Private Cohen. Geoffrey. Same unit.”
“Well, I’d stick to peeling potatoes in the future.” With that, she let him go and he stood back from the bar, rubbing his arm. “Now take your mate,” she said, “and get out of here. I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Private.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The mate was coming to. Private Dunn helped him to his feet. Private Cohen was still in a daze and glanced about the place as though he had no idea where he was. Dorring and Jane watched them leave. Dunn was leading Cohen with his arm around his shoulder. Like a boy scout guiding an elderly lady across a busy street.
When they disappeared out the door, Jane and Dorring turned to each other and laughed. Turning back to the bar, they downed their whiskeys and ordered more.
Wiping the spirit from their chins, they grinned and laughed uncomfortably. Jane began staring intensely into Dorring’s eyes and he couldn’t help returning the gesture. Suddenly, she threw herself forward and he caught her in his arms. As the barman placed the whiskeys on the bar beside them, they kissed passionately.
18
The water they chucked over Dorring was ice cold. He was jarred awake by the shock and immediately became aware of the terrible pain in his face. He gathered it was from a broken nose. He’d busted it before, so he knew the pain by heart. Apart from the general throbbing, it didn’t bother him. It was easily reset, so there was no need to cry over it.
Glancing about, he saw that he sat in a cell painted the color of diarrhea. In the electric glow of the strip lighting buzzing above his head, it looked terrible. Nevertheless, it didn’t resemble his idea of Hell. So he gathered he wasn’t dead. Which was something.
Standing before him in the room, holding a dripping bucket in his hand and a scowl on his face, was Fergus the cop. Behind him, the heavy metal door was wide open and other police officers glared in at Dorring from the doorway.
He heard shouting.
Someone cried: “Let’s lynch the bastard!” And someone, possibly the person who’d cried it, tried to push past the men at the door. But the man was stopped, his raging face glaring over their shoulders at Dorring as they bustled him back.
“Let me at him,” the guy screamed. “I’ll do it myself.”
Dorring ignored him. He glanced down at himself and then along the length of the wooden bench he was sitting on. It lined the far end of the cell. His hands were behind his back and cuffed together. He tried to scoot forward but they stopped him. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw that the hands were shackled to a ring that stuck out of the bench. Two holes went through the wooden plank and the ring was bolted to the other side.
“You all good there?” Fergus asked, crouching before Dorring and gazing malevolently into his eyes.
“What happened?” Dorring asked. “Why am I not dead?”
“You wanna die?” the cop asked. “It can be arranged.”
Fergus lurched forward and pressed his thumb into Dorring’s broken nose. A terrible electric pain shot through the front of his skull and attacked his brain like a bolt of lightning.
“Agh!” he couldn’t help crying, annoyed that he’d let it out at all.
There was more commotion at the door. A woman’s voice called out.
“What’s all this bloody nonsense?” she said. “Get out o’ my way.”
She pushed past the men at the door and stopped in the center of the room as Fergus stood up and came away from Dorring. It was the woman with the mole. It was Abigail
Pritchard.
She turned fiercely on the men at the door.
“Go away!” she snapped. “Every one o’ you. Get back from that door. I will not have you harming him.”
Dorring was getting more confused by the second. He had awoken with the distinct impression that he’d been handed over to the cops to keep him safe until Appleby’s men—possibly Conner—came to torture him into telling them everything he knew. But the emergence of Abigail Pritchard confused it all.
Again he asked: What was she doing at the grave?
“I’m senior officer here,” Abigail said, facing Fergus, who glared down at Dorring. “As detective, he’s my prisoner, so I’ll be interrogating the bastard. Until then, I want nay bother to him.”
Fergus nodded at Dorring. “I’ll be seein’ ya, lad,” he said, and went to leave.
Abigail stopped him. “The key, Fergus,” she said.
“Of course, ma’am,” he replied almost begrudgingly, dipping his hand into the top pocket of his shirt and pulling some keys out, staring at Dorring the whole time he handed them over to her.
With one last smirk in Dorring’s face, Fergus turned and left, shutting the door behind him and shooing the others out of the way.
“This how you treat people here?” Dorring asked Abigail Pritchard when they were alone.
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied, taking a seat next to him. “I’m not from here.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds, Abigail staring at the door and sitting forward with her hands gripping the edge of the bench. Dorring gazed sideways at her.
“So are you with them?” he asked.
Abigail frowned and turned sharply on him.
“With who?” she asked.
“The others. They’ve brought me here to hurt me.”
Her furrowed brows getting even more pinched, she asked, “You think you’re here so we can hurt you?”
“Those men talked about lynching me.”
“Well, after what’s happened, you can understand that.”
“What has happened?” Dorring asked, meeting her frown with one of his own.
“You tell me,” she said.
“I woke up and saw men approaching the cottage with guns.”