by Peter Cocks
Then it was all off for a curry in one of those dodgy Indians you find in villages all over the country. More beer and a chicken jalfrezi. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was probably the worst curry I have ever eaten.
On the way back, I sat next to Anna again. She was wedged between me and Baylis, and as the car swerved round the country lanes, gravity pushed her against me, so close that her hair flew across my face and I could smell her faint perfume above the aroma of beer and fags in the car. As the car banked violently again, she steadied herself and her hand slipped accidentally across my leg into my crotch.
“Sorry, Eddie,” she said, pulling away quickly.
“Don’t mention it.” I swallowed hard. She leant forwards and shouted at the Pitbull in the driving seat.
“Jim, will you stop driving like a complete see-you-next-Tuesday? Some of us have the rest of our lives to look forward to.”
“Sorry, love,” he said. “Bit fast for the girls in the back, is it?”
“Put a sock in it, Jim, you sheep-shagger,” I said, half joking and cocky with the booze, “or I’ll have to give you another slap.”
Jim laughed. No offence taken. Anna laughed too, which pleased me a lot, and Jim slowed down a little.
I don’t remember much about going to bed. It was dark back at base and there were slaps on the back and drunken goodbyes and a kiss on the cheek from Anna. I remember crunching back across the gravel, hitting my bunk and closing my eyes. The room spun around for a bit, but I managed to hold on to the contents of my guts – which might have been a bad idea because as soon as I drifted off, I started to dream…
I was in a park somewhere. Greenwich? It was hot and sunny. My mum was there too and Steve, drinking cans of Stella: wife-beater. We were having a picnic and Anna was with us, lying in the sun in a bikini, looking pretty fit. I was feeling embarrassed because I was wearing these stupid swimming trunks, like Borat’s Mankini, and I had trouble keeping my wedding tackle contained.
The sky seemed to darken over, as if there was a thunderstorm coming, and dogs from all over the park began to circle our picnic. Steve was drunk and started trying it on with Anna and she was doing her best to push him away, and the more she did, the more persistent he got. He pulled at her bikini top until it came off and she shouted at him. He wouldn’t leave her alone, so I threw myself on him, rolled him over and began to smash my fist into his face again and again, blood spraying everywhere.
Then I noticed that he wasn’t resisting and that my fist seemed to sink into his head. Like punching an overripe melon. I pulled my fist away and saw that his face was completely pushed in, dead and grey, filled with maggots, and his body was swollen and bloated as if it had been in the water for weeks. I could hear my mum screaming and I looked around to where she was sitting, surrounded by dogs: Alsatians and mastiffs, all growling, and eating whatever they could find. Then my mum screamed louder as a big dog bit the sleeve of her cardigan and tore at it. I jumped up and tried to pull the dogs away, but they snapped and snarled, gnashing and baring their teeth, biting at her face, biting my hands.
Two dogs had broken away and were doing something to Steve’s body. As I got closer I could see that they had torn his bloated stomach open and were eating his entrails, dragging out lengths of intestine on to the grass, their teeth and gums covered in his blood.
Then I saw Anna raise her head from Steve’s body. She was on all fours and her mouth was covered in blood, as if she had been eating him too, the blood dripping down from her chin all over her naked—
For a split second I didn’t know if I was still dreaming. The door smashed in and I was dragged from my bed in the darkness. A hand slapped gaffer tape across my mouth and someone blindfolded me. I was dragged away down the corridor. I could feel the shiny lino under my feet, and then the gravel as I was manhandled out of the building. There were no voices. Just grunts of effort as various hands lifted and pulled me this way and that, tying me up. The night air was damp and I could hear an engine running. I felt cold metal. I was bundled into the boot of the car. The smell of petrol. It became darker, the sounds muffled as the door of the boot was slammed and the car roared off.
What the—?
How could they let this happen to me? My heart was pounding and the adrenalin seemed to clear my head a little. I tried to think rationally. This place was supposed to be high security, yet someone – several people – had just dragged me from my bed. Unless it was someone on the inside? What was this? A hostage-taking? A kneecapping?
A warning not to get involved?
I bumped up and down in the boot, wrestling against the ropes around my wrists as the car sped along the lanes and round corners. Finally it stopped, and the momentum threw me against the back of the boot. I hit my head on something sharp. If I hadn’t been fully awake before, I was now.
I heard voices, muffled, and then the boot opened. I was pulled out again. My feet were bare and I was only wearing a T-shirt and boxers. The night air felt chilly and I could smell woodland. I heard a wooden door creak open and I was led into some kind of building.
It smelt of hut: damp canvas, sawdust, wood preserver.
I was pushed down into a chair, and a light punch in the guts helped me sit down. I thought I was going to chuck up. The gaffer tape was ripped off and the nausea subsided.
“What’s your name?” a voice came from the darkness. A voice I didn’t recognize.
“Eddie Savage.”
“What’s your brother’s name, Eddie?”
“I … I don’t have a brother.”
“You sure?” the voice said. “You don’t seem too sure.”
“I am sure.”
“Tell me again, about your brother.”
“I don’t have a brother,” I insisted.
“What about Steve?” the voice said, gloating.
“I don’t know any Steve,” I said.
“What’s your middle name?” The voice came closer, hoarser, and I could smell alcohol on its breath.
“Arthur.”
“After your brother?”
“No, after my granddad.” I desperately tried to remember the details of my cover.
“So what’s your brother’s granddad’s name?”
“Arthur.” Shit. No. “I haven’t got a brother.”
The voice jeered and another voice joined in. Suddenly the chair was kicked from under me and I felt cold metal against my neck.
This is it, I thought. I’ve blown it and now I’m dead meat.
Terrified, I felt a tug at the waistband of my boxers. My mind reeled at the possibilities of the torture that might follow. Then I felt something wet splash on my face, heard the gurgle of an aerosol and smelt something perfumed, soapy and unmistakeable.
I was being drenched in beer and covered in shaving foam.
Moments later, with much joshing and beery laughter, I was bundled back into the boot of the car and driven a short way down the lane. Then I was pulled from the boot, dumped on a grass verge and left as the car sped off.
“You bastards!” I screamed after the car.
It took only a few seconds to wriggle my hands free and pull off the blindfold. I untied my feet, which were filthy. I was half naked, and my underwear was torn. Soaked in beer, ketchup, aftershave and shaving foam. Alone in a country lane in the middle of the night. The victim of some stupid initiation ritual.
“Perverts!” I screamed again, for good measure, though they were long gone.
I began to walk. Twenty minutes later the lights of the building appeared between the trees. The guard on the gate let me through with a nod. He’d clearly been expecting me. The clock on the wall of his hut made it nearly three-thirty.
I found my way to my room and went straight into the bathroom. As well as my already bashed-up face I had a fresh cut on my forehead, and not only did I stink like a dead ferret, but my face had been blackened with boot polish. I looked like I had been camouflaged to go on some mad night manoeu
vre up the Amazon, smelling of aftershave, shaving foam, ketchup and beer to attract the natives and the flies.
I got into the shower and turned it up as hot as I could stand. As the needles of scalding water stabbed my shoulders I scrubbed at my face and body, trying to remove all the boot polish and the lingering smells. Trying to wash away the stains of my shame.
The horror of having been so comprehensively done over would be hard to live down. My cover had cracked under pressure. I stepped into the bedroom, naked. Shaken, but clean.
“What kept you?” The voice came from the half-light.
From my bed.
“Anna?”
She sat up and pulled the covers back, making room for me beside her.
“In you get,” she said.
TWELVE
I woke up early, the sun already shining through the window. I woke up alone: she was gone. Only the indentation on the pillow and the light smell of perfume told me that she had ever been there.
Tony Morris came and picked me up at about ten-thirty. No one else was there to see me off. Apparently they’d all gone back to London already. I was quickly realizing that there was no sentimentality in this game. Anna hadn’t even said goodbye, or left a note. What Tony had said about not getting too close to anybody, particularly other operatives, clearly held true. A note would have been concrete evidence of closeness.
I would have to adjust my way of thinking.
As I threw my bag in the boot, I had a momentary flashback to the small hours of the night before.
I got into the car. Tony looked genuinely pleased to see me.
“How are you, kid?” he said, throwing an arm around my neck and pulling me to him in a hug. “The boss said you did brilliantly.” He squeezed tighter. “I’m really chuffed, Eddie.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t bad.” My new name was beginning to sound normal to me already. “I could have put up with being brain-damaged by Baylis and near crippled by that Welsh sadist. But being abducted, terrorized and dropped in the woods with my pants round my ankles in the middle of the night was pushing it a bit. I felt like I’d been raped.”
Tony’s face dropped.
“Oh, they didn’t, did they?” He looked pained.
“Well, not raped exactly…” I admitted.
“I thought they’d stopped that initiation stuff years ago. Boot polish and shaving cream all over, was it?”
I nodded. “Plus ketchup, beer, aftershave, gravy and possibly piss.”
Tony shook his head. He pulled away and started off along the drive. “Who was it?”
“I didn’t really see,” I said. “But I suspect Ian Baylis was behind it. He still doesn’t like me. There was another voice I didn’t recognize – maybe that bloke Oliver?”
“Hmm. Could be. He’s the man of a thousand voices, cracking mimic. Although it could have been any of them. Possibly people you haven’t even met.”
“OK,” I said. “So if it’s just an initiation prank, why did they scare me shitless? I thought I was going to be decapitated or something.”
Tony pulled out on to the main road. “The charitable view is that they were just testing your cover under stress. Especially if you’d had a skinful.”
“Nice of them to be so concerned,” I muttered.
“Well, you can’t always choose when your story’s going to be tested,” Tony said. “It’s quite likely to take you by surprise.”
“So why did they keep going on about my brother?” I asked.
“Did they?”
“Yes, every other question. Trying to catch me out.”
Tony sighed. “Well, the uncharitable view…”
“Yes?”
“Is that Steve wasn’t universally popular. And you might be taking a bit of stick for it.”
“Great.” Instinctively I felt protective of Steve. “Now you tell me. Why?”
“Everything I’ve told you so far has been true,” Tony assured me. “He was a hero. But that’s just it … the gong and everything, makes people jealous. Especially when they feel they’ve been working just as hard, or in equally dangerous conditions. And Steve went about stuff his own way. On his own. Which can make people resentful, like they’re not being trusted or kept in the know.”
“But he got results, right?”
“Sure,” Tony said evasively. “On his terms.”
“I see.”
“I just thought you should know.” Tony looked across at me.
“Cheers,” I said. “Better late than never.”
“So you got back all right afterwards?” Tony asked, changing the subject back to me.
“Yeah, half naked and covered in cack, but alive.”
“Good, and you got cleaned up OK, and got some rest?” Tony threw me a sideways glance.
“Yeah, I was fine once I’d had a shower and got into bed,” I said, feeling myself blush.
“Good.” Tony indicated to overtake a slow old lady.
I put my head back on the headrest and shut my eyes, smiling at the memory: remembering a faster, younger one.
We got back to Deptford around lunchtime. Tony decided to push on into Greenwich and we drove up the hill and parked outside a nice old pub in the middle of a row of Georgian houses. Well, Tony told me they were Georgian. I should take notice of that kind of detail, he said. It can come in handy.
I still felt a bit wobbly from the night before, but I’d had a kip in the car and by the time Tony had forced a pint and a sausage baguette down me, I felt as right as rain.
“So, you still all right about taking on this job?” Tony wiped a smear of ketchup and mustard from the corner of his mouth. I shielded my eyes from the sun, which beat down brightly into the beer garden. Tony was wearing mirrored sunnies and it was hard to read his expression.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“You don’t sound too keen.”
I paused for a second, picking my words. “It’s been quite a week,” I said. “I’ve had to change the way I think about one or two things.”
Tony nodded.
“Learned to trust no one,” I said, then paused again. “And not to take anything or anyone on face value … even my own brother,” I added.
“Sure,” Tony said, “that’s spot on. So?”
“So, it’s made me view the world as a pretty dark place.”
Tony looked into his pint for a moment as if it were a crystal ball. “That much darker than before?” he asked. “Vagrant, alcoholic father, no money, dead brother?”
I looked up at the bright blue sky. Something in me had always been able to make a blue sky look black. “No, not that much darker, I guess.”
“So, you got serious doubts?” Tony peered at me over the top of his specs.
“It’s a bit late to back out,” I pointed out. “Now I know the nature of the game.”
“It’s not too late yet,” Tony said. “But I agree, it wouldn’t look good for any of us to try and get you out now.”
“So, I’m in.”
“Good man.” Tony smiled. “I can give you this then.” He put his hand out across the table and gave me a memory stick.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Some of Steve’s stuff,” he said. “You don’t have to use it, but it might give you a bit of insight, you know, into what ‘James Boyle’ was up to.” He reached over and squeezed my shoulder, then drained what was left of his Guinness and lifted up his sunglasses. “One thing, mate,” he said. “You can trust me.”
“Can I?”
“Yes,” he said. And I believed him.
***
Tony dropped me off at the flat after lunch. He said I should spend the weekend relaxing, and get to know the apartment and the area. Get up to speed with my new computers and phone before starting the job on Monday.
A new term.
I reminded myself of the codes and let myself in. The apartment still smelt brand new. My stuff was all there and the fridge had been filled in my absence. There was a go
od-luck card from Tony and a bottle of champagne. He really was looking after me. He’d also left a handful of black notebooks on the table. Moleskine, the label said, as used by Ernest Hemingway, Picasso and Bruce Chatwin, whoever he was. Tony had written in his note, “Use them, then get them back to me. Store in a safe place.” I supposed it was up to me to find my own safe place – even Tony didn’t want to know where it was.
I wandered around the apartment aimlessly for a few minutes, stared out of the big windows across at Canary Wharf, then took a leak in the brand-new toilet, like a dog marking its territory.
I got a beer from the fridge, enjoying the fact that I could. Then I walked over to the bedroom and lay back on the big, white bed, which smelt fresh and clean. I pointed the remote at the widescreen and a black-and-white movie came on. I caught a shot of Piccadilly Circus, then a sign that said New Scotland Yard. A police officer was talking to a woman wearing a great big bow and one of those ugly hats they wore back then.
“You’re quate rate, madam,” he said in a squeaky, old-film voice, “it’s true that the air ministry has a new thing thet quate a few people are interested in, but they’re puzzitive thet no papers are missing thet would be any use to a spy…”
I laughed.
The next scene was in the London Palladium, where a greasy-looking bloke with a pencil moustache asked the memory man on stage, “Look here! What are the Thirty-Nine Steps?”
And the memory man went into a kind of trance and said, “The Thirty-Nine Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office…” Then he got shot by some villain in the balcony with a cap gun.
I sipped my beer and chuckled at the simplicity of it all. I didn’t find out what happened in the end, because by the time the old jazz-band music kicked in, I was nodding off into a deep and dreamless sleep.
II
Sophie
THIRTEEN
It didn’t take long to spot Sophie Kelly.
She was surrounded by a group of girls. Good-looking girls like her usually hang around with a couple of rough-looking ones who won’t draw the attention away from the main attraction. But the girls surrounding Sophie Kelly weren’t exactly dogs either: they were all well-dressed with good haircuts and a kind of polish you rarely see in my patch of South London. Taken individually, you would probably fancy any one of them, but together they all looked a bit ordinary compared with Sophie. She was naturally blonde, while the rest of them had expensive highlights or shiny brown curls. She wasn’t small – she must have been five eight or five nine – and not thin either. She had quite an old-fashioned figure. Curvy. The others came in various shapes and sizes. There was a snotty-looking Indian beauty and a very tall, unsmiling black girl who could have been a tennis player or a model.