The Watchman

by Chris Ryan

  "What are you flash buggers doing back here?"

  "Big turnaround after the hostage-rescue," said Andy Maddocks.

  "They're sending another squadron out next week."

  "And the RWW team?"

  Lance Wilford shrugged.

  "You disappeared, Don's dead, Ricky Sutton's having his arse mended in hospital... I guess they felt they ought to send in a new lot. Give the SL government their money's worth."

  Alex nodded.

  "They pulled me out for a liaison job," he told the other two men in answer to their unspoken question.

  "I'm up here for Don's funeral tomorrow."

  The others nodded soberly and then, brightening, Maddocks turned to Alex.

  "Why notjoin us for a few bev vies. And possibly a chat about the weather with a trio of nymphomaniac nurses, preferably still in their uniforms?"

  "And suspender-belts," added Lance wistfully.

  "Sounds good to me," said Alex.

  A few minutes later they were crammed into a smoky corner table with pints in front of them. Andy, unwilling to waste time, was craning his head from side to side, looking for spare women.

  "I thought you were married, Andy," murmured Alex.

  "Separated. Wendy bin ned me when the squadron got back from Kosovo."

  "Any particular reason?"

  "Mental cruelty's what she told the lawyer. Which I suppose is as good a way as any of saying that she was shagging a foot baller

  "A foot baller. You're kidding?"

  "No, she and some friend of hers who goes out with one of the reserves took to going to all the United home games. With predictable fucking consequences.

  "Manchester United?" asked Lance.

  "No, you womble, Hereford United."

  Lance reflected.

  "I was going to say, if it'd been a Man U player it'd almost've been worth it. I'd let Ryan Giggs shag my wife."

  "You haven't got a wife. Giggsy wouldn't want to shag any woman that'd marry you. What'd he want to bother with some slag from..."

  "Are you calling my future wife a slag?"

  "Well, she is, isn't she? Be honest."

  They all laughed, Lance loudest of all.

  This is good, thought Alex. This is real.

  "So, do you reckon you'll be getting any Hereford United tickets?" Lance asked, after a short drinking break.

  He ducked just in time to avoid Andy's fist.

  "Where did the mental cruelty come in?" asked Alex.

  "Told Wendy I didn't want kids," said Andy.

  "Couldn't bear the thought of having a son or a daughter who lost its dad. It's one thing being killed, it's another lying there knowing you're going to break your child's heart.

  "So why d'you marry her in the first place?"

  "Price she put on her virtue. No white dress, no snakeysnakey."

  Alex nodded.

  "Where did you go on your honeymoon?"

  "Belfast," said Andy.

  "With the rest of the squadron... Lance, mate, I think we're in business. Go and ask those three to come over. Her in the blue top and the two with her."

  "Why me? You go!"

  "You're a fucking corporal, now get your arse over there." Alex would have said it was impossible to get anyone else round the table but somehow the three managed to jam themselves in. One of them, a cheerful, round-faced girl with what Frank Wisbeach would without question have called 'comfy tits', was practically sitting on his knee.

  "Whassat?" she asked, squirming uncomfortably.

  "My mobile," said Alex apologetically.

  "What's your name?"

  "Gail," said the girl, snapping her lighter beneath a king-size Pall Mall. She smelt of make-up and Pernod and synthetic perfume and her hair inches from his face was a curtain of wheatish blonde, as flat as if it had been ironed. Next to him, Andy Maddocks was very seriously informing the girl in the blue top that the three of them were gay.

  "Bollocks!" said the girl in the blue top.

  "We know what you are. We sussed you ten minutes ago from the tans."

  "And the muscles," said Gail, reaching across the table to tweak Lance's tattooed bicep.

  "And the crap haircuts," volunteered the third girl to shrieks from the other two.

  "We're not fucking stupid."

  "It was worth a try," said Andy.

  "I was going to suggest you try and convert us to heterosexuality."

  "And just how would we do that?" asked the girl in the blue top.

  "Well..." began Andy.

  For an hour the six of them sat, drank and laughed. Alex could feel himself getting drunker and drunker but the fact didn't worry him in the least. He had never been a regular pub- goer but right now he was having the best time that he could remember. This was the reality, this smoky bar corner and the press of the crowd and the laughter of his mates and the weight of Gail's thigh against his and the tableful of empty glasses. If he was going to take his officer status seriously, he supposed glumly, he was going to have to wind this sort of activity down.

  So how should he play it? Up or out? Stay with the army in the knowledge that the best was behind him or bale out and take his chances in civvy street? The latter sounded more tempting but what would his life actually consist of, given that soldiering was the only trade he knew? Babysitting overpaid celebrities who at best would treat him as a paid accessory? Waiting in the rain outside the fashionable restaurants where Sophie and her friends went? He couldn't see himself taking that route. He didn't want to end up like Frank Wisbeach, taking his frustrations out on delinquent teenagers.

  Contract soldiering, perhaps. Working for the highest bidder. Fucking up the lives of third-world citizens on behalf of multinationals like Shell or Monsanto?

  All in all, he thought, he'd rather go back to Clacton and take the garage off his dad's hands. But then he couldn't quite see Sophie hunched up against the sea wind eating haddock and chips from the bag, or chucking a rubber bone for the dog, or watching Eas tEnders

  Sophie. He should give her a bell.

  "You're a quiet one, aren't you," said Gail.

  "You haven't said a word in ten minutes."

  "Sorry," he said.

  "I was thinking."

  "What about?"

  "The future, I suppose.

  "Well, we could start off with another drink." She glanced at her two friends, who were subtly but definitely paired off with Andy and Lance.

  "Same again?" he asked her.

  "Pernod and black?"

  "Yeah. I'll come with you."

  On their unsteady way to the bar, he found his arm encircling her waist and her body moving into alignment with his. He felt her hip-joint articulating beneath his hand, the soft weight of her breast against his side.

  "You're an officer, your mate said."

  "Er, yeah."

  "You don't sound like an officer."

  He grinned.

  "What do I sound like?"

  She frowned and pouted up her lips.

  "Oh... I don't know. Like the others, I s'pose."

  "Well, that's what I am like."

  "You're not, though. They're, like, dead lad dish and up for a laugh, and you're not like that at all. You just pretend to be." She narrowed her eyes, leant against him and lowered her voice.

  "I bet you're a right hard bastard. Have you got a girlfriend? Don't answer that of course you have. Just don't tell me about her."

  "As long as you don't tell me about your boyfriend."

  "I haven't got a boyfriend." The crowd propelled them forward against the bar.

  "I've got a bloody husband, worse luck."

  Alex turned to stare at her but at that moment the barman materialised in front of them, eyebrow raised. Alex ordered himself a sixth pint and ajameson's whiskey chaser, and Gail her fifth Pernod and black currant

  "Married?" he asked flatly.

  "He's away. With someone else." She glanced up at him.

  "Don't ask, just be nice
to me.

  She was pretty, he thought. Pretty eyes. And a mouth and body to chase the ghosts away. He slipped his hand under the bottom of her sweater, felt the taut waistband of her jeans and the warm flesh above.

  The drinks arrived and they backed away from the bar.

  "Where d'you live?" he asked her.

  "I don't want to go there," she said. She touched his cheek with the back of her fingers.

  "What about you?"

  "Walking distance."

  In the flat he bolted the door and closed the curtains as she walked slowly around, touching things.

  "There's dust everywhere." She smiled.

  "I've been away. Coffee? And I've got some Bushmills somewhere?"

  "Sounds good."

  In the kitchen area the strip light was on the flicker. Alex was kissing her against the wall and she was running her hands up his back when the kettle boiled.

  In the bedroom there was a jumble of mostly green kit against the wall waterproofs, thermals, medical packs, a water purifier, sleeping bags and stuff sacks into which, earlier that day, Alex had tossed the shoulder-holstered Glock pistol and accessories he'd signed out of the armoury at Credenhill.

  If Gail noticed this, she made no comment, just lowered her drink and kicked off her shoes.

  "Music?"

  In answer Alex directed her to the miniature sound system and pile of CDs that sat, as dusty as everything else, on a shelf.

  "This is the strangest collection I've ever seen," she said wonderingly.

  "Miles Davis, Britney Spears, Johann Sebastian Bach, the Teletubbies, Bridget Jones's Diary.

  "It belonged to a guy who got killed last year," said Alex.

  "I think there were some Christmas presents for his family among it.

  She shook her head.

  "The lives you people lead." She switched the system on and selected the Britney Spears CD.

  On the bed, or rather on the double mattress that served Alex as a bed, they undressed each other. She was wearing a tight lilac sweater which she pulled away from her face as he took it off so as not to smear her make-up. Beneath it, she amply filled a black lace bra. Smiling, she allowed him to search behind her back for a moment before pointing to the rosebud clasp at the front. He undid it and lowered his head. Her fingers knotted in his hair.

  Finally they were both naked. She was pale-skinned and soft as ice cream, and there was a dreamy-eyed passivity about her which he found a vast relief after Sophie. She was his all of her, unconditionally and for as long as he wanted.

  Breathing in her muskily synthetic aura part pub, part Boots perfume counter he ran his hands over the impossible softness of her breasts. When he reached the inside of her thighs she gasped and drew her knees apart.

  She tasted, in some curious way, of Alex's memories of his childhood, of sweat and closeness and sea spray, of the time before he had killed anyone. She moved like the sea too -slowly and from somewhere deep within herself After a time he moved back up her body, manoeuvred himself inside her and forgot about Sophie altogether.

  SIXTEEN.

  She left early, while he pretended to be asleep. He woke for a second time to find a note on the pillow and a daytime telephone number a work number, he guessed.

  Why had she left? Not wanting to spoil things with the awkwardness of a morning after? He smiled in many ways theirs had been the perfect relationship.

  He shook his head and immediately wished he hadn't. It felt as if there was a cannon ball rolling around in it. The inside of his mouth was parched and sour, his stomach felt uneasy and he had a morbid thirst. Not for the first time he reflected that it wasn't the drinks that made you pissed that fucked you up, it was the completely unnecessary ones that you drank when you were already pissed. It was those Scotches that you ended up with just because it felt right, somehow, to wind the evening up with a glass of spirits in your hand.

  The thought of whisky made his gorge rise, and he staggered to the bathroom and the cold tap. On the way he trod heavily on his old Casio Neptune watch it had survived worse and arrived at the sink just in time to throw up. Don Hammond, an enthusiastic drinker who had always tried to persuade Alex to put in more pub hours, would have been proud of him.

  It wasn't until he had showered and dressed that he remembered the Glock. It was still there, thank God, as were all the heavy little boxes of 9mm ammunition.

  What would have happened if any of it had left the flat in the pocket of a girl he'd picked up in a pub, he shuddered to think. He'd always been the first to take the piss out of those Box clowns who had their laptops nicked from their cars.

  The Glock that he had chosen was the model 34. In the past he'd used the 17, the most popular 9mm Glock model. It held up to nineteen rounds, hardly ever jammed and in general was a dream to use. The 34, developed for competition use, was basically the same gun but with the accuracy advantage of another inch of barrel. It wasn't the easiest weapon to conceal, but it still weighed in at just under two pounds fully loaded and if it came to aimed shots, Alex had decided, that extra inch between the sights might just make all the difference. He had fired off a few magazines on the range and had been stunned by the weapon's performance, given that the general rule for automatics was that at a range of more than twenty yards you were lucky if you could hit anything smaller than a front door.

  From the armoury he'd also drawn a silencer and a laser dot-marker sight, which he reckoned ought to cover most eventualities.

  And a knife. A standard-issue Government Recon commando knife with a 6.25-inch blade. The instinct that Alex had about Meehan was that he wasn't a firearms man. Firearms were crude, noisy and remote he would regard it a failure to have to resort to them. Meehan, Alex was sure from his modus operandi so far, was a close-up man. A blade man.

  Retrieving his watch, he saw that it was almost 9.30 and rang Dawn. She was no party girl. She would be up and about.

  Her mobile rang twice and then she answered it.

  "Up and about, Miss Harding?" he asked her.

  "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?"

  "Is that Captain Temple?" she enquired in a brisk, businesslike way that told Alex immediately that she was not alone.

  "Yes. It is. Can I talk, or are you .

  "No, I'm not. What do you want?"

  "I just wanted to make sure you were enjoying this' he peered through the curtains 'rather damp morning. And not fooling around in bed. Did you tell me what his name was, by the way?"

  "Look, Captain Temple, if you've got something to say..

  "I thought I'd let you know where I was. In case you were missing me."

  "In your dreams. Where are you?"

  "Hereford. I'm chasing up one of our man's ex-teachers."

  "You think that'll be useful?"

  "I think it's all we've got, for the moment. I'll keep you abreast."

  "You do that. Oh, and, um, the object we found. It was the age we thought it might be. And bearing the right prints. Congratulations, Captain."

  The phone went dead. Why did he have this irresistible desire to wind Dawn Harding up? Alex wondered. Because she was such a straight arrow? Such a company girl? And whom had she been sleeping with, anyway? Some keen young computer buff from Thames House, no doubt. Some pillar of the Orienteering or Mountain Biking Club. Alex could just see him, weedy and pale, leaning back against the pillows, having a moody post-shag Dunhill. Except that he wouldn't smoke. He'd probably be a vegetarian. A vegan. Drink ground-up acorns instead of coffee.

  By ten, having gulped down a half-pint glass of lager from the store in the fridge (an old morning-after trick of Don Hammond's) Alex was feeling a little better. Ready, in fact, to undertake part two of the standard hangover cure a full English fried breakfast.

  More cheerful now, and gratified that the fingerprints on the pencil stub had conclusively linked Meehan with the killings, Alex made his way to a cafe. The downside to the discovery was his certainty that the find had been intended by Meehan. It ha
d almost been a greeting to his pursuer.

  For all his instincts concerning the Watchman, Alex mused, he really had no idea where the man might be holing up. One possibility was that he was moving around the fringes of one of the larger cities with transients and unaccountables squatting, perhaps, or moving between cheap hostels and bed-and breakfast houses, or hanging out with travellers. If in trouble, the rule went, seek out those who also have something to hide. The Watchman, however, also had to avoid the Irmh Catholic communities among whom visiting PIRA players moved, so perhaps he was avoiding the cities.

  A second possibility was that he had constructed himself a completely false identity driving licence, bank accounts, credit cards and the rest of it and was living in a rented flat and passing himself off as a salesman or some other itinerant professional in a small provincial town.

  But something told Alex that this was not the man's style. Frank Wisbeach's words reinforced the idea of Meehan as the victim of some grandiose delusion. A man of unwavenng seriousness, the old NCO had said. No detectible sense of humour. A 'true believer'. Alex had met 'true believers' before. The phrase was used to describe soldiers who believed that the purity of their calling somehow singled them out from the rest of humanity. They tended to subscribe to ideas of 'the warrior's path' and 'the mediocrity of civilian life'. "Green-eyed boys' they'd called them in the Paras. This didn't stop them being good soldiers quite the opposite in many cases but it did mean that their behaviour could get a bit weird if unchecked. The Watchman's murder project definitely had the 'true believer' edge to it and it was for this reason that Alex didn't quite believe that the man was pretending to be Mister Average and driving a Ford Escort. It didn't go with the apocalyptic nature of his actions. If he saw himself as some mystical bringer of vengeance (as so many of these nutters seemed to) then he would ensure that his surroundings were appropriately Gothic and elemental. A forest, perhaps.

  Something like that.

  Did he own a vehicle? Probably, but Alex guessed he would use it only sparingly. Vehicles showed up on CCTV, people noticed and remembered them and they were powerful transmitters of forensic evidence. Stolen cars were especially bad news if you wanted to keep your head down.

  Alex addressed his breakfast black pudding, bubble and squeak, eggs, beans, mushrooms, two fried slices and a mug of tea. The business.