by David Thorne
Ade looks as if his memories are causing him physical pain, as if looking back at what he has witnessed is a form of torment.
‘One girl, I don’t know what he wanted but she said no, no way she was doing that. He lost the plot, cut up her face with a blade.’
‘What happened?’
‘Her and her dad, didn’t have no mum, they both just moved away. Don’t know where. Just went.’ He pauses. ‘This beautiful girl, man.’
I think back to Connor Blake, his astounding eyes and chiselled features. If I saw him in a photograph, I would imagine nothing but goodness, a man of virtue.
‘He once said to me he wondered how it would be to put his hands inside someone here.’ He frames his belly with both hands. ‘Deep inside. He was serious.’
My mind skirts briefly over this image, of Blake elbow-deep in another person’s innards, the heat, the blood. I am not surprised that Ade flinches from the thoughts of what he has seen and heard. I accept that there is a spectrum of human desire and that the idea of a norm is notional at best. But some people inhabit the outer limits and their most mundane desires would horrify any ordinary person.
Ade tells me that he had run with Connor Blake partly through fear of what he would do to him if he did not. He tells me that Blake liked to be surrounded by people who had some physical quirk, unusually tall or large or misshapen in some way; freakish. Ade tells me that he weighed twenty stone by the time he was fourteen and that Blake had been fascinated by his size. He sighs, the uncomprehending sound of the duped and brainwashed, trying to understand how he had fallen under such a man’s influence.
‘And nobody said anything?’
‘Got away with it all. Didn’t matter what,’ Ade says. ‘Always had done. His dad’d buy witnesses, make sure they didn’t say nothing. Paid Connor’s victims off, made it all go away.’
‘All of it?’
‘Untouchable, always had been, Connor. Couldn’t do no wrong. You seen him. Fucking film star.’ For the first time I sense aggression from Ade, an anger deep inside him. I look at him, his size, and choose my words.
‘And now? You don’t see him?’
‘Don’t have nothing to do with him. Ain’t allowed anyway. Parole, and all that. Besides, them Blakes scare the shit out of me, always did. Soon’s I can, I’m leaving. Moving away. Another country. Can’t get far enough away.’
I thank Ade, apologise again for taking up his time and for asking him difficult questions. Ade shakes his head, says it’s okay, whatever, long as he still has a job to go back to.
I stand up but Ade stays seated. When I leave the hotel I look back through the window of the lounge and Ade is still sitting on the sofa, massive in his chef’s whites, looking down at his hands. His lips are moving and I think that he might be praying, to who and for what I do not know.
18
I FIND GABE working on his car in his garage, the door pushed open. Working next to him is the shaven-headed man I met days ago, who Gabe had called Gavin. It turns out his official title is Major Strauss and they served together in Afghanistan, where Major Strauss had been the battalion commander to Gabe’s platoon leader. He is popping out the bodywork of Gabe’s car and while he does it he tells me that he has worked on Land Rovers in Northern Ireland, that he cannot recall the number of dents he has repaired. He tells me that British soldiers are worse drivers than Italians. Watching them work I see that they have an easy camaraderie, a product of years serving together; a part of Gabe’s life I know little about.
As they work they explain the situation to me as it stands, 7 Platoon and Lance Corporal Creek, recount it in crisp sentences as if they are briefing a junior officer who is still green and needs everything spelling out. But they are right: I have no idea of the world they are dealing in.
‘So the platoon all went into private security?’ I say.
‘Most of them,’ says Gabe. ‘At least twenty.’
‘Unusual,’ says Major Strauss. ‘For all of them to go at once. But after what they’d seen in Kunar they’d had enough, wanted the easy life.’ He tested the electric window on the back rear door and it did not work. ‘Fuse,’ he says.
‘So what they’re doing, that’s easy?’
Gabe laughs, counts off on his fingers. ‘Better pay. Better weapons. More respect.’
‘And they get to do whatever they want, make up their rules of engagement,’ says Major Strauss. ‘In the British Army, before you pull the trigger you need to be damn sure you understand the politics of what you’re about to do. Shoot the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, you’re going to jail.’
Gabe shakes his head. ‘Joke.’
‘Getting that way,’ says Major Strauss, who is now the other side of the car, poking around underneath Gabe’s steering wheel. ‘But in private security, there’s no rule book.’
‘All depends on where you’re willing to go,’ says Gabe. ‘A group of mates can win a massive contract in the first year or two of trading, just because they’re the only ones’ll go there.’
‘South Sudan,’ says Major Strauss. ‘There are regulars with two, three years’ army experience cleaning up over there.’ He stands up. ‘It’s not the fuse. My guess is that window’s buggered.’
‘Mostly about reputation, though,’ says Gabe. ‘Think about it, you’re some white-collar boy from a multinational – petroleum, minerals, something like that. Living in a gated compound in Lagos or Khartoum, hostile locals, you’re going out in the field three, four times a week. You want people you can trust looking after you.’
‘The Americans like ex-Rangers, the Brits go for Special Forces or, if not, then regular infantry with combat experience,’ says Major Strauss. ‘All about reputation.’
‘So the boys from the Rifles have got it all going on,’ says Gabe. ‘Masses of combat experience, decorations, readymade command structure. Good to go.’
‘Global Armour?’ I say.
‘That’s what they’re calling themselves,’ says Gabe. ‘And the word is they’re up for some huge contract in Iraq. Word gets out about what happened in Afghanistan, there’s no way they’ll win it.’
I nod. For the first time I have a sense of what Gabe is involved in: taking on a group of battle-hardened soldiers, threatening their chances of getting rich, of hitting the big time.
Major Strauss pulls off the trim around Gabe’s rear door and looks at the assembly underneath. ‘This,’ he says, ‘looks fuck all like a Land Rover.’
We give up on Gabe’s car and move to his kitchen, make coffee, sit at his table. Gabe sits opposite Major Strauss and as I sit next to Gabe I once again have a feeling of intrusion, of encroaching on private territory and history. They drink and reminisce about Afghanistan and Gabe reminds Major Strauss of an Afghan army recruit who had arrived at their base fresh from having been given rudimentary training at the army centre outside Kabul. The first thing he had done when on routine manoeuvres was shoot a cow with an RPG; he had missed the first time but had got it on the second attempt, scoring a hit in the cow’s centre mass so that it rained steak and there was little left of the cow but hooves and a head. Apparently the recruit had been disappointed as he had wanted the cow for food and the RPG had done too much damage.
‘Why didn’t he just shoot it?’ says Major Strauss. ‘He had a sidearm, right? Could have walked right up to it, shot it in the head.’
‘Don’t know,’ says Gabe. ‘Maybe he just liked the feel of the RPG.’
‘He last long?’
‘Gone the next day. Like he’d joined the army just to blow up a cow, soon’s he’d done that, adios.’
Major Strauss and Gabe laugh and I smile with them; I have never heard Gabe discuss his time in the army like this, treat it with such wry amusement. My initial impression of Major Strauss had been unfair; I had been hostile, jealous that Gabe had put him before me, assumed he was something he was not. But he seems a good man, urbane and jovial but with the strata of hardness running through
him that has got him to the rank of major, has made him able to command men on the battlefield.
Gabe stops laughing, turns his empty coffee cup with his fingers. ‘So, Gavin. What’s the situation?’
Major Strauss looks at me, back at Gabe. Gabe shakes his head. ‘Daniel’s on our side. You can talk in front of him.’
Major Strauss nods and I feel strangely privileged to be included, but also out of my depth in the company of these two men who have seen combat up close, who have taken lives without compunction or guilt.
‘So,’ says Major Strauss, ‘Corporal Creek’s inquest. I’ll be honest, Gabriel, it’s not looking great. Not great at all.’
‘You spoke to the generals?’
‘Got as far as their secretaries.’ He sighs. ‘They’ve pulled the drawbridge up, Gabriel. Closed ranks. You know what it’s like.’
‘No reply?’
‘Left messages, written letters. Nothing. Right now it’s a dead end and I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure what’s left to do.’ Major Strauss takes a deep breath, lets it out. ‘It’s the situation out there, much as anything. Helmand’s going under and there are more casualties every day. The government in Kabul is a joke, an embarrassment. We tried to rebuild a nation and it’s worse than under the Taliban.’
Gabe nods. ‘We’re pulling out?’
‘Probably. Soon as we can convince everybody that we’re not running away from it.’ He smiles without humour. ‘Which we will be. But the point is, last thing the army needs is any more bad publicity. Reopening an inquest? They don’t want to know.’
‘Anything left to do?’
‘Unless you can dig up a witness. We need to apply pressure, give them no choice. Right now, they couldn’t give a shit about us.’
Major Strauss picks up his jacket and we walk with him out to Gabe’s hall. He shakes our hands, puts his arm across Gabe’s shoulders.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says to Gabe. ‘I understand why you want this to happen. But you may need to make your peace.’
Gabe nods. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he says. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Major Strauss leaves and Gabe turns without speaking, heads back to the kitchen. I think perhaps he wishes to be alone, put my head around the door but he beckons me in.
‘Coffee?’
‘Okay.’
Gabe takes down coffee, filters, talks to me as he is doing it. ‘You go to see this Blake guy?’
‘I saw him.’
‘And?’
I shake my head. ‘Man thinks he owns people. Never met anyone like it.’
‘What’s he want from you?’
‘Wants me to represent him.’
‘Why?’
‘Search me. Didn’t get that far.’
‘You hit him?’
‘A bit.’
Gabe laughs, fills the coffee machine. ‘Enough to scare him off?’
‘Don’t know. Hope so.’
I sit in silence at Gabe’s table, thinking about Connor Blake. ‘I asked him about Ryan. What he’d wanted from him. He told me he wanted Ryan to get him out of prison. No idea how, no plan. Put it all on Ryan. Asked the impossible.’
‘Can understand why he killed himself.’
‘Yeah.’
Gabe sits opposite me. ‘This is all happening because you agreed to help, what was her name?’
‘Vick.’
‘Yeah, Vick. Listen, Dan, you’re a decent man. Things’ll work out.’
I do not reply. Instead, unbidden, a string of images pass through my mind: of Vick, her kids, Maria, all the ways in which things could not work out, could end in catastrophe.
‘She all right? Vick?’ Gabe says.
I bring myself back to the here and now, blink the thoughts away. ‘She’s seeing her kids. Thinks she’ll get them back soon.’
I had spoken to Vick earlier and she had seemed better. Nothing more had happened in her house, she was getting regular access to her children and, she told me, the events of the last few months were beginning to seem like a bad dream. A bad dream that had caused her ex-husband to take his own life.
‘See?’ says Gabe. ‘Things’ll work out.’
He pours coffee and we sit and drink and plan our next matches, discuss opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, formulate strategies. As always with Gabe, I feel stronger, more of a formidable force alongside my old partner. His kitchen is warm and as familiar as my own and eventually I convince myself that I might have seen the last of the Blakes, that they might leave me alone. I am stronger than Ryan, bigger and uglier; I could be more trouble than it’s worth. But at the same time, I cannot help but think of Alex Blake. A man who would do anything for his son: cover up crimes, make it all disappear. Where will he stop?
19
THE NEXT MORNING a slight warmth has at last overcome the cold and the sun is shining, giving a sense that spring is finally marshalling its vast green reserves. Maria and I drive into the countryside with the windows open, the breeze snatching at our hair and the flat land opening out in front of us like an invitation to participate in a worthwhile future.
A friend of Maria’s from school is getting married and Maria is maid of honour; we have booked a room where the wedding is being held, are staying overnight. Two days away from the events of the last weeks – the relief I feel is like taking deep breaths of air after having been smothered. Maria catches the lift in my mood, sings along happily to whatever songs come on the radio, makes up words that make little sense but which make me laugh.
The wedding is at a brick country house built in the sixteenth century by Sir Somebody and had been visited by Queen Elizabeth I, a man in a white suit tells us as he shows Maria and me through to the reception, carries our bags to our rooms and points out the view, the four-poster, the bathroom, the mini-bar, until I give him a tenner to go away. Maria is hanging up her dress and it strikes me that this must be what all couples do: go to weddings and stay in hotels. That we are a couple, just like any other; the feeling is something I cannot describe.
The hotel provides bathrobes of thick white towelling, and seeing myself in the full-length mirror, part of me cannot help feeling that I look as if I’ve broken into somebody’s palatial home and am trying the bathrobe on for size before taking off with the jewellery.
Maria apparently agrees with me, says, ‘You know, you’re not really the fluffy bathrobe type.’
She is lying back on the bed, stretching, twisting around like a cat on the white sheets and she has a crafty look on her face.
‘No?’
‘No.’ She sits up, sniffs the air. ‘Are those bubbles you’re putting in?’
‘I thought I’d try it.’
‘Daniel Connell in a bubble bath. Well I never.’ She cocks her head, regards me with suspicion. ‘Are you going soft?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, and I cannot help but smile at Maria, at her pointless provocations.
‘I don’t do soft,’ she says, stretching out on her back again. ‘I like my men hard. And stupid,’ she adds, kicking her legs at the high ceiling.
‘You can have it if you want,’ I say. ‘The bath.’
‘Or,’ she says, rolling onto her front and resting her chin on her hands, raising an eyebrow. ‘Why don’t we hop in together?’
Maria can say things I would never dare, say them as if they are the most natural things in the world, and I am momentarily speechless, not trusting myself to answer. Maria rocks her head from side to side and sighs as if regarding a lost cause.
‘Tell you what, you dope. You get in, and I’ll sneak in when you’re not looking.’
I smile at Maria’s rough kindness, the depths of her understanding and affection. I turn and go into the bathroom and my whole being feels limned by a charge of delicious possibility, all the better for it being so alien, so unexpected, and so good.
The weddings I have been to often bring two different worlds together, divided by class or religion or culture, playing out as miniature soci
al experiments, though lubricated by drink and good wishes. Maria’s friend Jade is pure Essex. Her guests are builders, taxi drivers and men with money and vague occupations, accompanied by dolled-up beauties in skimpy designer labels and outrageous heels. The groom, Rufus, on the other hand, is a City banker and old money: Harrow and Oxford and a seat kept warm around the boardroom table. His guests are groomed and dressed in understated suits and frocks that whisper of class and wealth. The reception is held in the Great Hall and half of the room are talking loudly, laughing heads thrown back, expansive hands gesturing and slopping Champagne over the parquet; the other half are looking on with faint puzzled smiles on their smooth faces, as if they are watching a difficult performance they do not quite understand.
‘Okay,’ says Maria, snatching a glass of Champagne as it passes by. ‘Could be interesting.’ She holds her glass up in front of her face. ‘Cheers.’
I knock my glass against hers, take a drink.
‘You seem better,’ she says. ‘Less detached.’
I nod. ‘Getting there.’
‘Maybe you’re just better when the sun comes out,’ she says. ‘Like a lizard.’
‘A lizard?’
‘Cold-blooded,’ she says. ‘Needs warming up.’
I shake my head. ‘Never been my problem,’ I say.
Maria looks at me in amusement. ‘No. No, Daniel, I’ll give you that.’
‘Just happy,’ I say. ‘To be here. With you.’ The words come out haltingly, but they come out nevertheless. Maria’s face lifts, her eyes open wider, and I think of a time-lapse film of a flower blossoming.
‘Well,’ she says, and doesn’t say anything more. It is not often that Maria is lost for something to say. She drinks and looks about the room and smiles at what she sees: people talking, drinking, laughing, and a young man at a grand piano gently playing a tune that I cannot place but which I have heard before, have heard many times.
‘There she is,’ says Maria, just before a tall, pretty woman in a sleek white wedding dress prances up in heels like a skittish pony, followed by a handsome, nervous-looking man who is glancing about him as if he expects to find a sniper in the crowd.