On the Back Foot to Hell

by Roland Ladley

  She didn’t want to think about it.

  And she really didn’t want to think about the ‘triple-tap’ in the jungle.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  You’re dead.

  Ralph Bell’s mate - in the cell next to the satellite block in Venezuela. Bell was dead, killed by Austin Rogers using a rope and his bare hands. After that Rogers was out of it. Then Bell’s pal. In through the door. Armed. Ready to kill. Sam, sat exhausted on the floor, had steadied her aim.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  The sound of death. At her hands.

  He deserved to die. He did. He would have killed both of them. Her and Austin. But he couldn’t then. Not when he was lying face down, his chest framed by a pool of blood. Not a chance.

  She had killed him. Her first. Her only.

  She didn’t want to think about that.

  Ping.

  Ping.

  The last item was a triple-pack of Asda’s own frozen pepperoni pizza. £2.99. Aisle 3. Bottom freezer. Next to the garlic bread. Barcode number: 908 526 1927.

  Sam pressed the red summary button on the console. The total was £137.79. It lit up in LED-green on a stalk facing the large woman.

  ‘Cash back?’ Sam asked. Business-like. Neither kind, nor direct.

  ‘Uh, no.’ The large woman was already putting her payment card in the slot.

  Tap in the PIN. Get the receipt. Then out of here. As far away as possible from the weird till woman with the intense stare.

  The problem for Sam wasn’t the death. It wasn’t that she had pulled the trigger, three times. No, she could cope with that.

  What dogged and dragged her down was she didn’t feel anything. Nothing. She had taken another person’s life and it hadn’t registered. A void.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Death.

  Couldn’t care less.

  That pressed hard in the back of her skull. It gnawed at her. Made her feel worthless. It coloured everything a shade of grey. It left no vibrancy in her life. Just sludge. Noises were muted. Songs she may have once hummed along to were dirges now. Her taste buds failed to highlight flavour. It was all school food again: mince and potatoes. Semolina pudding. Corn-beef sandwiches.

  Sam had been here before. And before. And before that. She’d had help. Lots of it. Some of it at the insistence of her first SIS boss, David. No help, no job. Doctor Latima was the worst. He knew which questions to ask. He knew how to dig. There were plenty of things Sam had been prepared to talk about. But, no. Latima wanted to talk about Afghanistan. And the mortar rounds. And Chris’s death. Chris. Outside of her family the only person she’d ever loved. But Latima insisted. She declined where she could. Pushed back. Latima didn’t get far.

  And she’d got help after Berlin. Again it was a prerequisite before she took the SIS job in Moscow. Then the doc had been a woman. Kind and sincere.

  And hopeless.

  In tandem Sam had done her own research. Apparently the best thing was to be busy. To have a focus. Something tough. Something that occupies all of your mind. You can’t feel sorry for yourself if a bunch of people depend on you for an answer that might save lives. Even less chance of being morose when you’re running to save your own.

  ‘A good war, that’s what the young‘uns of today need. That’ll sort them out.’ Her Dad’s answer to the woes of just a few years ago. He’d been in the Falklands. A signals operator. Up at the front. There had been shells and shots. He’d lost his boss to an ‘Argie sniper’. He understood war. Although she wasn’t as sure he understood the youth of today.

  For her it wasn’t as simple as PTSD and depression – that’s the label the quacks had stuck on it. Her upstairs was already different from everyone else’s. She saw things others didn’t. She had an eye for detail that hurt. It filled up her head, even today. A face here. A number plate there. The complete Chinese takeaway menu. All beautifully registered and available in an instance. The need for order manifested itself in day-to-day tasks. She worked best in straight lines. She couldn’t leave a pair of scissors open. Her kitchen drawers were works of art.

  But, then again, her mind was crazy enough to warp around problems. She didn’t play chess, but if she did she reckoned she’d be good. She could see ahead – well ahead; around corners. And she learnt quickly, not necessarily by trial and error, although she did that as well, but she picked things up by watching others. As a skier she was parallel-turning at the end of day one. She just did what her instructor did – not as he said. She’d followed him down the slope and mimicked his movement.

  She’d been able to strip the Army’s SA80 rifle to its constituent pieces in under seven seconds - on her second day of training. She learnt that by watching her recruit instructor do it.

  After one demonstration.

  ‘Do that again, Green.’ He was standing on the opposite side of a wooden trestle table. A brown Army blanket laid over the top. The parts of the rifle were set out side by side.

  Sam noticed the main spring assembly wasn’t perfectly in line. She nudged it so it was, and then returned to ‘attention’.

  ‘Put it back together first, Sarge. Please’

  The sergeant looked at her nervously. And then, with his eyes closed and the whole platoon watching, he reassembled the weapon: two forward gas parts inserted; assemble the breach block and firing pin; slide into the body; cocking handle into the small recess in the rifle’s casing; main spring – press and clip; push in the rear holding pin; pull the stock to the body and close; push in the front holding pin. Cock and hold. Feel inside the chamber with your little pinkie. ‘Clear,’ he whispered under his breath. He released the working parts forward and fired off the action.

  Sam hadn’t missed a thing. And she had counted. Nine seconds. Blind.

  The sergeant, whose eyes were now open, thrust the rifle into her hands.

  ‘Do it again, Green.’

  Sam took a deep breath and then breathed out slowly through her nose.

  She closed her eyes. And counted to herself.

  One, one thousand; two, one thousand; three, one thousand; four, one thousand; five, one thousand; six, one thousand; seven, one thousand; eight, one thousand; nine, one thousand; ten, one thousand; eleven, one thousand; twelve, one thousand; thirteen, one thousand; fourteen, one thousand; fifteen, one thousand.

  She handed the fully assembled weapon back to her instructor. Eight seconds earlier it had momentarily been in pieces on the table.

  Disassembled and assembled in 15 seconds. In the dark.

  The military classroom was silent. The sergeant’s mouth was slightly ajar. Then he gave the weakest of smiles.

  ‘You’re going to be a problem, Green, aren’t you?’

  Sam braced up, turned smartly to her right and went and sat back down on her chair.

  Her brain was wired differently. That had proved to be a useful tool. It had helped her through all manner of scrapes and had unpicked and glued together some crucial intelligence. It had helped save lives. But when it wasn’t busy, bothered and tasked by other things, it was a plague.

  It got so bad that three weeks ago she’d gone and seen her GP. Two nights before, she gathered together 48 paracetamol tablets and a bottle of cheap vodka. After a couple of glasses of the spirit, frothed up with some room-temperature coke, she’d fingered at one of the packets of 16 pills, still in their silver plastic wrapping. The underside was two rows of eight little white bumps, like a miniature Lego board. She pushed one of the tablets clear of its wrapping through the silver foil and held it between a thumb and an index finger. She rolled the tablet left and right, a bemused frown on her face. She put it down on the arm of her settee and pushed out seven more. She lined them up in a row, like good soldiers. She poured herself another drink, the coke’s bubbles reaching the lip of the tumbler and then losing momentum. She drank it in two swigs. She took out the other eight tablets and followed the same procedure: row two. Before long she’d have a platoon’s worth. Then a company. />
  Another glassful, and down it went. More vodka than coke.

  Whoops. The room moved a bit.

  Then the same procedure with another pack, although this time the tablets seemed less inclined to escape their wrapping. But she was persistent. Eight tablets. Row three. A shot and some coke. Down in one. The tablets again. She was a bit finger and thumby now, but she prised them free. Eight more. One, two, three … six, seven, wait, there you go: eight. To her frustration she didn’t quite get the row in line. And soon she’d run out of room on the arm. Then one of the tablets defiantly made a break for it, slipped and fell into the crack between the cushion and arm.

  ‘Shit!’

  What the …? God, that’s frustrating. How can that happen?

  How could she have been so careless?

  Man down!

  That’s not like me.

  Hang on. Whoa. Hold still for a second. Stop moving it all about. Concentrate.

  Breathe.

  You can’t have a tablet all on its own down there.

  And this messing about. That’s not like her - at all.

  Mind you, she was in altogether new territory.

  More drink.

  No. Get the tablets sorted first. And careful. One man is AWOL and we don’t want to lose a second.

  Feeling slightly less agitated, even though order had not completely returned to her universe, she gingerly pushed all the pills out from the third board with her right thumb and let them fall into her left hand. She now had too many pills and not enough parade square. She looked around the room. Where now?

  Ahh. The cushion next to her.

  Yup, that’ll do.

  And then something happened that broke through the haze.

  Her Mum was sitting beside her on the sofa. Just there. Sam could’ve reached out and touched her. Her smile. That warmth. The tenderness. The overwhelming love.

  And she was gently shaking her head. She didn’t seem disappointed. Just caring. Helping … and consoling.

  Sam choked. She didn’t know which way to look. Her tongue made an impromptu appearance. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  And then the floods.

  Streaming down her cheeks, tracking over her chin and cascading onto her lap. She didn’t move. And didn’t shake, as some people do when they cry uncontrollably. She just sat there open mouthed, clutching a handful of tablets and within arm’s reach of a half empty bottle of vodka. And a lapful of tears.

  It was a mess. She was a mess.

  Tablets. Vodka. Memories. Pain.

  And nowhere to turn. Nowhere.

  And then her Mum disappeared. Gone. Just like that.

  Sam shook her head, tears sprayed sideward like badly positioned windscreen washers.

  It was a sign. Wasn’t it?

  Her Mum had come to see her. To pass on a message: I’m not ready for you just yet, pet.

  Roger out – to use the military vernacular.

  That had been that.

  She hadn’t mentioned the pills to the doc.

  The kindly Asian female doctor had asked her some straightforward questions.

  ‘Do you have difficulty getting up for work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you feel lethargic. Overly tired?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do tears come easily?’

  Sam paused for a moment.

  ‘No.’

  It was the doctor’s turn to pause.

  ‘Have you ever thought about, maybe, taking your own life?’

  What sort of question is that?

  ‘No.’ She lied.

  The doctor typed something on her keypad. Sam was too polite to look at the screen.

  ‘Well, we don’t have any previous records for you, Miss Green, I’m afraid. I’m not quite sure why that’s the case …’

  Sam knew. SIS were reluctant to release any.

  ‘… and from what you have told me, I think I can rule out clinical depression. But, let me prescribe you some antidepressants. They’re mild, but they may help lift your mood a little.’

  End of consultation.

  Three weeks later she still felt as flat as laminate flooring. But, give the doc some credit, she hadn’t reached for the paracetamol.

  ‘How are you getting on, Sam?’

  It was ‘Tony the Tills’. He was standing behind the DVD rack at the end of her aisle. He was wearing black trousers, a white shirt and an Asda green, logo’d fleece. He was smiling at her and had a thumb up.

  Sam smiled back. Having seen off the large woman, she was currently serving a middle-aged fitness fanatic. Pasta, onions, garlic, lots of leaves, a bottle of top of the range olive oil and a carton of passata. He was obviously carbo-loading for a weekend marathon.

  ‘I’m fine thanks, Tony.’

  The final items pinged through the laser. Sam pressed the red button and the slim man with the shopping bag of goodness put his card in the reader.

  ‘Do you need a break?’ Tony hadn’t moved.

  Bless him.

  She was pretty convinced Tony, who didn’t appear to be married and probably lived with his mum, was keen to get in her jeans. Not in a pushy, insensitive way. Just in a, ‘I’ve only ever kissed one girl before, and that was my cousin at my twelfth birthday party’ manner. Sam reckoned he was early thirties, reasonably well educated and pretty much a gentleman. But he was a bit paunchy, had pallid skin and crooked teeth, and what was left of his hair was held firmly in place by plenty of masculine lacquer. And whilst he was a caring boss to all of the till staff, he lacked social confidence - particularly with the women, some of whom teased him mercilessly. Which was a shame, because Sam liked him despite his teeth and his stuck down hair.

  Frankly, she could do with some kind, bodily warmth. Since the entanglement of limbs in Alpbach two years ago, she’d not been with anyone. The closest she’d got to a date was with a fellow walker whom she’d met up Helvellyn six months ago. They had trekked together for half an hour until they’d reached the summit. Then she had descended one way and her brief partner, another. And that was the end of that.

  Tony was hardly her type – if indeed he were the right gender. But she was sure he would be gentle and giving. So, it was a thought. And it was definitely a better bet than an evening with Mr Vodka, Mrs Coke and their countless paracetamol children.

  ‘No thanks, Tony. I’m fine. I’m off in half an hour. I’ll keep my legs crossed until then.’ Any innuendo was unintended, but she could see Tony struggling with the image.

  ‘OK then, Sam. If I don’t see you, have a safe trip home. Be careful in the dark. You know what the streets are like round here.’

  I will Tony. I will.

  Forty minutes later she had her walking jacket on over her Asda uniform and was ready for the ‘off’. Acknowledging the weather she wore her favourite black beanie – the one she had bought in a rush in Austria. Head down, she strode off into the dim light of afterhours Leicester. Council cuts had switched off the streetlights, and a dank drizzle made her hunch her shoulders and quicken her step. She had some leftover lasagne in the fridge, some bagged salad and a bottle of Asda’s best Malbec which had been picked, pressed, fermented and bottled just for her. She knew the outcome of all of it would be bland, but one of these days she’d taste something.

  After washing up, she’d watch half an hour of the latest University Challenge on BBC iPlayer. She enjoyed watching Jeremy Patronising mock overly intelligent twenty-year-olds. She would get close to 20 questions right. Probably two of the picture ones with some geography on them. And a couple of obscure science questions that she might recall from the back end of a textbook from school. And other irrelevant facts from a brain overfilled with the unnecessary. There were never any questions on military weaponry - or photo IDs of IS terrorists. Or barcode numbers of Asda goods. But she always did OK.

  Her lack of education frustrated her. She’d been rubbish at school, and university was never an option for this working class girl. If she’
d spent some time learning important facts, stuff worth knowing, she reckoned she’d be a polymath. And she’d put Jeremy in his place. No, Jeremy, I think you’ll find you’ve pronounced ‘Fick Dich’ wrong. The local dialect pronounces the ‘ch’, ‘ck’. She mouthed that thought out loud, as if she were really there.

  Of course, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t put Jeremy right. Not really. Not if she were actually on the show. She’d be too embarrassed to press the buzzer in the first place. She’d be the fringe student on the left end of the four, two down from the captain – the one who never answers a question. And if she did, she’d interrupt early, feeling very pleased with herself, she’d get the answer wrong and lose the team a valuable five points. Jeremy would glance up over his question card with a look of withering disdain.

  ‘I’m afraid you lose five points for an incorrect interruption …’

  That would be her. The misplaced geek who blows the team’s chances.

  A polymath? Give me a break.

  Her head was full of useless rubbish. Numbers. Headshots. Car makes and models.

  Useless.

  Just useless.

  After 20 minutes she turned off the main road that linked Asda to the centre of Leicester, into Shaftesbury Road. A few minutes later she turned right into Luther Street – her street. Thirty metres further down on the opposite side of the road was the hairdressers: The Final Cut. Nigel, the owner, had let her the first floor apartment. It was a one-bed and another room affair, with an adjunct of a bathroom. Small, clean and perfectly formed. You got to it through a brick arch between two identical terraced houses. A short, dark passage, followed by a flight of stone stairs with a metal handrail. Then, hey presto: her front door.

  Her road was quiet. It was gone 10.00 pm and tomorrow was another working day. Mums would be doing their best not to scream at the kids to get them to bed. Dads would be watching the news and wondering what new catastrophe had befallen their world since they’d glanced at morning TV over a bacon sandwich and a cuppa. The recent upsurge of minor terrorist incidents across the world seemed out of place. She bet her old SIS boss, Jane, and her analyst pal, Frank, would be scratching their heads.