by James Craig
Dino nodded his agreement. ‘Most people aren’t good at anything.’
‘Quite. Christian Holyrod always struck me as a bit of a fish out of water as a politician. God knows what he’ll be like as a businessman.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Dino said coolly, ‘the bar’s not set very high. I’ll sort him out.’ He gave her a searching look. ‘As you know, I always get my money’s worth.’
EIGHT
Corporal Adrian Gasparino tapped the toe of his boot against the low mud wall in time to the tune of Bleeding Through’s ‘Love Lost in a Hail of Gunfire’, which was pounding through the headphones of his iPod Nano. Reaching up into the shade, he plucked a fat white grape from the vine above his head, popped it into his mouth and crushed it between his teeth. Sharp and juicy, it tasted good, so he snapped off a couple more, crushing them mechanically between his teeth.
‘Hey! Leave those alone.’ Sergeant Spencer Spanner appeared at his shoulder, poking him gently on the arm with the barrel of his SA80 assault rifle. ‘Those aren’t any old grapes; they’re terrorist grapes.’
‘They’re good,’ grinned Gasparino, taking another.
Taking a handful for himself, Spanner stuck them in his mouth and chewed. ‘Mm. Not as good as Tesco’s.’
‘Cheaper though.’
‘Whatever,’ Spanner shrugged, tiring of the chat. With his SA80, he pointed at the buildings behind the wall, on the far side of the compound. ‘Let’s go!’ he shouted at the line of soldiers strung out behind them. ‘Another day at the office beckons. Watch where you put your fucking feet.’
‘Okay.’ Gasparino smiled as Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’ took over the task of numbing his brain. He scanned the dense orchard littered with mines and other ordnance which concealed the irrigation canals used by the Taliban to move freely under the noses of the coalition troops.
‘A chess game,’ was how their Commander had described it in an interview with CNN a few months earlier, ‘played with bullets and IEDs.’
A chess game? Like fuck. Gasparino glanced at the ground a metre in front of him in a half-hearted attempt to identify anything suspicious. Not only was it a waste of time, it only made him feel worse about his situation. Your best hope was that, if you did get blown up, the IED was sufficiently powerful to blast you to smithereens, so that small parts of your body were scattered to the four winds before you even had a chance to realize what had happened. Far better that than losing your legs and bleeding in agony while watching the confused, helpless expressions on the faces of your mates.
‘Your best hope.’ A familiar feeling of the pointlessness of what they were doing engulfed Gasparino. Every day was the same. It was truly remarkable how nothing ever changed. They had about as much chance of pacifying the country as he had of becoming Prime Minister. An estimated 25,000 Taliban fighters kept 140,000 coalition troops, plus the ANA and Afghan police, at bay. The bogus body counts – the US Army claimed to have killed 952 Taliban and captured 2,469 in the last three months – fooled no one. ‘On average,’ said one commander, ‘we’re killing three to five mid-level enemy leaders.’ Well, thought Gasparino, enraged by the corruption and fecklessness of the Afghan government, there are plenty more where they came from.
Not quite twenty-six years old, Gasparino was already on his fifth tour of duty. After three trips to Iraq, this, his second in Afghanistan, would be his last. For him, the war ended here, in the area known as the Devil’s Playground. He had promised Justine, his heavily pregnant wife, that he would leave the Army and get a civilian job.
Time was quickly running out on Gasparino’s Army career. In little over a week, the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment were due to turn over their stretch of the Arghandab River Valley, sixty miles from the Pakistan border, to their American replacements from 2-508th Parachute Infantry. The Brits and the Americans were currently patrolling together as part of the handover process. In the pre-dawn twilight, twenty-eight soldiers had left their combat outpost a mile away, heading for the Taliban-controlled vineyards and pomegranate orchards. In the abandoned compound they would wait to engage the enemy as they did almost every day with monotonous regularity.
As he watched his comrades take up their positions around the compound, he idly wondered what he would do in civvy street. Nothing ever came to mind. With a single GSCE in woodwork to his name, Gasparino was not exactly well equipped to deal with the so-called ‘real world’. He had never had a hankering to do anything in particular; that’s why he had joined the bloody Army in the first place. The situation vexed him but there was no point in worrying now; it was something he would just have to deal with next month, when he would be back in England for good.
Alain Costello scratched his belly. ‘I need some new games,’ he told his father down the phone.
Je m’en fous, Tuco Martinez thought angrily. Not for the first time in recent days, he wondered what had happened to Alain’s mother, a nightclub singer from Toulouse who had run off with her ‘business manager’ (read pimp) less than a year after their child had been born.
She had really put one over him. He felt an overwhelming desire to give the bitch a slap for lying to him about her birth control.
And for giving him the clap.
And for stealing 240,000 francs from him – at a time when that sum was still worth something. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was sure she was long since dead, he would have hunted her down and killed her.
On the other hand, she was the only woman who had managed to give him a son. It drove him insane. Disappointment or not, Alain was his only hope for handing the business down to the next generation.
‘I’m bored,’ Alain complained. ‘I need to get something good, like God of War: Ghost of Sparta.’
Tuco shook his head. What did people do before computer games? Wandering around all day like zombies; these things were worse than drugs. He sincerely hoped that the boy was just winding him up. The alternative – that he was just stupid– was something that he refused to contemplate. ‘Enough with the games!’ he barked.
‘It’s totally boring here,’ the boy whined. ‘I want to come home.’
Tuco sighed. Looking out through the open windows, past the terrace towards the cool blue of the Mediterranean, he tried to work out where the sea ended and the sky began. It was a view he could stare at for hours on end without getting bored; one of the few things in life that made him feel calm. ‘Tu dois rester là-bas pour le moment,’ he told his son.
‘Fuck. C’est trop banal ici. Je crève d’ennui et il pleut sans cesse.’
Tuco allowed himself a little laugh. He knew what the kid meant. He didn’t like going to London himself. It was a total shithole. But it was a shithole full of customers. He was in business, so you had to respect that. The market was always right: you had to follow the money. Aucune question.
Traditionally, outside of France, Tuco had always lacked what business analysts called ‘critical mass’. London was waiting for him like a big, fat whore, her legs wide open. The problem was, his dick was just too small to give her a proper seeing-to. He needed more sales, growing revenues if he was to become a player and take the business to the next level. That meant finding a serious local business partner, someone with a successful track record and a good reputation. After a couple of expensive false starts, Tuco was optimistic that he had finally found that man.
He suddenly caught sight of one of the hookers he’d brought down from Paris for the weekend strolling towards the pool. Black as ebony, she wore a fetching canary-yellow bra but was naked from the waist down. ‘Look,’ he said to Alain, his voice thickening. ‘You have to stay where you are for a while. I need some time to sort this out.’
‘But—’
‘No buts,’ Tuco snapped. ‘Just keep out of sight. I will speak to my – our – business partner in London. He will make sure you are well looked after. I’ll even ask him to get you some more games.’ Before the boy could complain any further, Tuco ended the call. To
ssing the handset onto a nearby sofa, he headed for the pool.
The temperature was well on the way to a humid 100 degrees. Sitting in the dust, with his back resting against the outside wall of an empty hut, Adrian Gasparino took a mouthful of water from his bottle and thought about Justine back home in Worthing. Hopefully she would be getting a good night’s sleep around now. He hadn’t spoken to her for a few days. She was due to have a scan of the baby this week but he couldn’t remember which day. Gasparino wanted a boy. Justine hadn’t been convinced that they were ready to start a family, but couldn’t go through with an abortion and he had talked her round. They could have a boy now and then a girl later, once he had sorted himself out with a decent job. Maybe a third one a little later down the line.
Perfect.
From behind his Oakley M Frames, he watched as one of the Americans, a sergeant called Anthony Withers, strolled over, placed his M-16 carefully against the wall and dropped heavily onto the ground beside him.
Gasparino offered up a palm and they exchanged a high-five. Withers was one of the few Americans who had shown any interest in fraternizing with the Brits. He had taught Gasparino and a few of the other guys how to play poker – taking them for a tidy sum in the process – and generally had shown an interest in learning from their experiences in the Arghandab, unlike most of his comrades who, it seemed, just wanted to work out, smoke dope and listen to thrash metal. They seemed more hostile to the Brits than the Talibs.
With his regulation buzz cut and beefy features, Withers was a squat guy from Hartford, Connecticut. Gasparino had tried to imagine where that was on a map. Somewhere near New York? He had no idea. Withers had told him that Hartford had once been the ‘insurance capital of the world’ but now it was number three on the list of America’s Top Ten ‘dead cities’ – former business hubs which had been left behind by the global economy in recent decades.
‘A good place to get out of,’ Gasparino had mused, for want of anything else to say.
‘Absolutely,’ Withers grinned. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘It’s just the same in England.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Lots of places like that. Lots of dead towns and cities. Probably just about everywhere’s dead, apart from London.’
‘Ever been?’
‘To London?’ Gasparino shook his head. ‘Nah. Too big. Too many people. Too noisy. Too dirty. Too expensive. Not for me.’
They sat together in companionable silence for a while, listening to the sound of sporadic small-arms fire in the middle distance. After a while, Withers took a bottle of water from his pack, drank half of it and poured the rest over his head. ‘How’s it going with you Brits?’
Gasparino shrugged. ‘It’s going.’
Withers smacked him on the shoulder. ‘Chin up, my man. It’s another day closer to going home.’
Gasparino smiled. ‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Thing is,’ Withers stared into the middle distance, ‘as soon as you get home, you wanna get back.’
‘Tell me about it.’ The realization that he would miss all this – seriously miss it – was like a nervous ache in his stomach. Gasparino hoped that the baby would make that feeling go away, or at least give him something else to think about and make it more manageable.
Withers rubbed the heel of his left boot into the dirt. ‘I mean, this shit can be boring, but when it’s exciting, it’s really fucking exciting.’ He turned to Gasparino. ‘Know what I mean?’
‘I do.’
‘It’s a great fucking buzz.’
‘Yeah,’ Gasparino said almost wistfully.
Withers took a packet of Camel cigarettes from his jacket pocket, offering one to Gasparino, who refused.
Withers pulled a cigarette from the pack with his teeth, lit it and took a deep drag. ‘So,’ he said, exhaling the smoke through his nose, ‘will you be coming back?’
‘Me? Nope.’ Gasparino shook his head. ‘This really is my last time.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re not coming back?’
‘That is correct. I’m not coming back.’
Grinning, Withers sucked down another mouthful of smoke. ‘Wanna have a little bet on that?’
NINE
Men, couples, singles, groups – all welcome!
Carlyle read the sign and yawned. It was late and he was of the firm belief that he should have been in bed hours ago. Everton’s Gentleman’s Club was maybe a two-minute walk from his flat and he felt a strong temptation to keep on walking. Inside, the inevitable commotion had kicked up as the police went in and started asking people to prove their identities. Almost immediately, a couple of customers slipped out, middle-aged businessmen, eyes glued to the pavement, the looks on their faces suggesting a mixture of frustration and embarrassment. After watching them slink round the corner and disappear into the hustle and bustle of Kingsway, the inspector turned his gaze to the girl standing in the doorway. She was wearing a lime-green Puffa jacket over a white blouse, with the shortest skirt he had ever seen showing off her black suspenders to good effect, as well as the goosebumps on her thighs. In her Ferrari-red stilettos, she still only came up to his chin.
‘ID?’ he asked.
Shivering against the cold, she shook her head.
‘No papers?’
‘No understand,’ she lied lazily, making no effort to try and be convincing, in an accent that suggested she came from somewhere east of the Danube. Belatedly, he thought that maybe they should have brought a translator.
‘Where are you from?’ he said slowly, sounding like an English tourist abroad.
Wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jacket, she took a tentative step towards him, glancing quickly inside. ‘Caledonian Road.’
For fuck’s sake, Carlyle thought, why do I bother? He took a pile of flyers from her hand. ‘You go inside,’ he said slowly, gesturing with his thumb, ‘and get something that proves who you are. Passport, driver’s licence, something like that . . .’
Still shivering, she stood her ground.
‘Show it to one of the officers,’ Carlyle continued. And put some proper clothes on, he thought. ‘Now!’
Reluctantly, the girl finally went into the club. Even more reluctantly, Carlyle followed her. Inside, the place was almost empty. A couple of punters sat at their tables, drinking in silent amusement as the police went about their business. The sound system had been turned down to a respectable level and the house lights had been turned up, allowing him to appreciate the full splendour of Everton’s somewhat gothic decor.
Carlyle looked at the Harlequin Contour pattern wallpaper in brown and salmon pink and tutted. ‘Surely this kind of stuff went out of fashion in the 1970s,’ he quipped, gesturing at the wallpaper, to a small, pretty WPC standing by the bar.
‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ the girl deadpanned. ‘I wasn’t born then.’
Ignoring the mischievous twinkle in the WPC’s eye, the inspector turned his attention to the matter in hand. It appeared that Sergeant Bishop had divided the staff into ‘talent’ and the rest. Along one wall, a group of gentlemen – oversized bouncers and undersized barmen – had been lined up while Bishop and a couple of the other WPCs went through their documents. On the other side of the room, a larger group of officers were slowly processing the strippers, none of whom were wearing more than a G-string and heels.
Trying not to make his gawping too obvious, Carlyle scanned the latter line, making random notes in his head as he did so. There were two black girls, two white and one Asian. All had effortlessly adopted the kind of generic bored-hostile look that Carlyle saw day in, day out from just about every member of the public that came into contact with the police.
When the Asian girl, who had the best, most natural-looking figure, caught Carlyle staring at her chest, he quickly looked away, feeling himself blush as he did so. His gaze turned to the far end of the room, where the small stage, lifted barely six inches off the ground, was e
mpty.
‘Get on with it!’ shouted one of the punters, a stocky young guy in a suit, as he slammed an empty beer schooner down on the table.
Bishop stepped towards the guy’s table. ‘Shut it,’ he warned, ‘or you’ll be under arrest.’
A look of indignation flashed across the young man’s face. ‘For what?’ he said belligerently.
‘Oh, I’ll think of something,’ Bishop growled.
Carlyle smiled. He liked the sergeant’s style. Bishop was a relatively new arrival from some station out east; the Isle of Dogs’ loss would be Charing Cross’s gain. He wondered about asking Simpson to assign Bishop to work with him on a more regular basis. That decision, however, had already been made.
Not knowing when to stay schtum, the man was about to talk himself into a cell when there was an almighty commotion from the back of the stage. One of the officers, a young PC called Lea, came sprawling through a doorway, holding his nose as blood poured from it. ‘I’ve been hit!’ he groaned, stumbling over the edge of the stage and falling flat on his face. The laughter that rolled round the room was quickly followed by gasps of amazement as a raven-haired Amazon followed the hapless Lea through the door. Easily six foot tall, she was completely naked apart from a pair of incredibly high stilettoes.
Those look very classy, thought Carlyle, impressed. And she’s gone to town with the Philips Ladyshave. A true professional.
In her hand, the woman had some kind of cosh. With an angry flourish, she brandished it at Lea. ‘C’mon, you bastard!’ she screamed, in what seemed to Carlyle to be some kind of American accent. ‘Come and get another thrashing.’ Whimpering, Lea sought refuge under a nearby table.
Finally tearing his eyes away, Carlyle looked at his troops. Those that weren’t mesmerized were drooling. ‘Okay,’ he sighed, gesturing to Bishop, ‘that’s enough. Take them all in. We’ll sort this out at the station.’ Swivelling on his heel, he walked straight into a man in a baseball cap with a large video camera on his shoulder. ‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ he barked.