If I Should Die (Joseph Stark)

by Matthew Frank

  ‘Where are you going?’ she demanded, but then she rolled her eyes. ‘Not another one.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarge.’ He did seem contrite but made no offer to stay. It was on the schedule he’d submitted and that, Cox had decreed, was that. ‘If I miss it they can bump me off the list. Failure to engage, court-martial offence.’

  ‘People don’t like having their time wasted,’ agreed Fran. ‘Which department today? Detox massage or hot-stones therapy?’

  He ignored the question. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  Fran thought for a moment. ‘Wait, I’ll give you a lift. Alf’s sedatives were withdrawn this morning but he didn’t regain consciousness. I want to speak to his doctors and see for myself.’

  She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she drove. He looked tired. Clearly he was struggling physically. Whether he’d cope, time would tell. Despite herself, she hoped so. Much as he grated on her, he might have the makings of a decent copper. Whether he’d cope mentally was another issue. From the schedule’s lack of disclosure she suspected that one or both of his weekly appointments might be for mind rather than body. She’d given him opportunities to confess but he’d overlooked or ignored them. It bothered her that she couldn’t always tell which. Sometimes you knew he was taking the piss, others you were left guessing.

  The old boy looked like he had nine toes in the grave already. His darkly bruised and stitched face was sunken and yellowed. The doctor on duty put his chances at less than fifty-fifty now.

  Fran seethed. Looking at the poor old sod, imagining his last waking moments, made her angrier than she could ever remember. If he died she was going to make it her personal mission in life to hound Kyle Gibbs to his grave. Stark’s face betrayed nothing.

  ‘What time’s your manicure?’ she asked outside.

  ‘Ten minutes, though they have a rather quantum perspective on time around here.’

  ‘Need someone to lean on?’ She grinned, nodding at the complex hospital map. ‘Help you find the right department?’

  ‘I can make it from here, thanks.’

  ‘Clear off, then.’

  She watched as he limped in, waited a few seconds and followed. Stark was standing right inside, pretending to read the signs. ‘Forget something, Sarge?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘Yes. Don’t be late!’ She spun on her heel and walked out, cursing under her breath.

  Stark smiled but didn’t laugh. He’d been on his feet more in recent days than in any given month since his discharge from Headley Court and his hip ached. He’d finished the previous day with OxyContin and a double, drugged himself asleep with a cocktail of opiate and alcohol. The good folk of Headley Court would not approve. They’d spent weeks getting him ready for the real world and that didn’t include substance abuse. But needs must … He’d slept like a log but woken groggy and, with nothing more than digital filing to stimulate his attention, he’d struggled through the morning on coffee. Fran’s trip to ICU had killed his hopes of eating before his session, and Doc Hazel kept him waiting.

  The sight of Alf had set a fury in him that the shrink predictably pounced on, spending disproportionate energy delving into his anger about something that should make anyone’s blood boil. He fought a constant urge to clam up, but he wouldn’t be accused of failing to engage. It made a change from prodding old wounds, perhaps, but it missed the point, as usual.

  Having exhausted the irrelevant, the good doctor finally asked a pertinent question. ‘Why do you call it “taking the coin”?’

  ‘It’s from the Napoleonic wars, or before. Taking the King’s shilling meant enlisting as a soldier or sailor. A shilling was your daily pay before stoppages.’

  ‘So it’s about being paid,’ said Hazel, making a note.

  Stark sighed, trying not to get angry. Regardless of how it might have been in Napoleonic times, a modern soldier did their duty for the privilege of taking the coin, not the payment. It represented the reciprocal covenant between the soldier or sailor and the monarch they fought for, but the thought of trying to explain that in a way that might be understood was too daunting to attempt and he was relieved when Hazel moved on.

  ‘Tell me about IEDs.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything, I suppose.’

  ‘The clue’s in the name – improvised, so they vary enormously, though on three themes. Most are pressure triggers, often two bits of springy metal held apart at either end with wood or plastic. Push them together in the middle and you make a contact, the battery or batteries send a current along wire to trigger the explosive, which is either strapped on or hidden in something innocent-looking nearby, such as a cooking pot or plastic container. Sometimes they’re buried, sometimes just under an object you might knock or kick aside. Bigger, stiffer triggers can be buried for vehicles. Those are all plant-and-forget, by far the most common. There’s self-detonation “suicide” devices – they’re more commonly used against civilians – and finally remote-detonation devices, operated with two mobile phones or a radio-controlled servo, usually in line of sight.’

  ‘Which kind did you encounter?’

  ‘Encounter?’ asked Stark. He’d encountered plenty, seen them disarmed, seen or heard and felt them detonate, witnessed the aftermath from small anti-infantry to massive car-bomb.

  ‘Okay, which type were you injured by?’

  ‘Remote-detonation. There was no phone coverage, so it was operated by radio nearby, part of the ambush.’

  ‘Was this unusual?’

  ‘Yes and no. In Iraq it was mostly plant-and-forget, and contact was usually just incoming fire from some distant treeline or compound. You hardly ever saw the man shooting at you. We shot back, but even if we made it to their firing point we rarely found bodies. Either we missed or their mates hauled them away. Or we called in an air strike. Either way they were gone. Afghanistan was different. Closer-quarters contact and remote-detonation devices were common. But a close-quarters, three-sixty ambush … that took planning.’

  ‘You saw faces.’

  ‘Not really, no. Not that I remember. Too distant. Too … hectic.’ In his dreams they often did have faces – who knew whose? People he’d met, Afghan civilians, just people off the street? ‘It was a determined assault at close quarters. They pursued when we tried to escape, changed location to keep firing on us, never more than two hundred metres or so away, to begin with right over our heads on the rooftops.’

  ‘More personal, then, than your previous experiences.’

  ‘There’s nothing impersonal about kinetic contact. Even if the arseholes shooting at you are invisible it’s hard not to take it personally,’ Stark joked ruefully.

  Hazel just nodded and made a note. ‘Talk me through it.’

  Stark hesitated, reluctant. ‘All right. Well, it’s hot. Your kit’s heavy and starting to rub. You’re standing in the open in clear sight of numerous buildings, any of which may contain people eager to gun you down and, apart from those with you, the only living thing in sight is a skinny dog too stupid to know better. But it’s going well, you’re getting the job done. Then some shit presses his radio trigger. But his timing is off, inexperienced or over-zealous, he’s impatient and fails to get the vehicle broadside.’

  ‘You were lucky, then.’

  Lucky? Another fine choice of word. Luckier than Walker and Smith, certainly. ‘I truly hope that fuck with the trigger didn’t live out the day,’ he said, with sudden ferocity. At least, he felt the ferocity, but it remained inaudible, as if the anger was being stripped from his words as they left his lips, as if it were somehow remote from him. ‘What does that say about me?’

  Hazel seemed unprepared for direct questions. It was almost fun to see that momentary look of panic. Mostly it added to his sense of futility. She made a contemplative face, playing for time. He was starting to spot her tools. ‘I should say it was understandable to focus thoughts of retribution on the man who struck the first blow, killed y
our colleagues.’

  ‘Comrades,’ corrected Stark, not for the first time. ‘“Colleagues” whine about wives nine to five, then go home and whine about colleagues.’

  ‘You’re not married.’

  Here we go again, thought Stark.

  ‘Your girlfriend split up with you while you were in hospital.’ She pretended to read this from his file, as if it was just occurring to her, but to Stark it seemed she was more comfortable pulling this string than the others. ‘And now you’ve moved away from home, family, friends, to start work at a new job in a strange city. Perhaps we could talk about that for a while.’

  ‘It’s your dime.’ It wasn’t, but she didn’t seem to get that.

  She waited.

  ‘Julie wasn’t my girlfriend. We’d been out a couple of times, shagged a few times more. She came to see me in the hospital because she thought she ought to. I let her off the hook.’

  ‘Did she say that or did you put the words into her mouth?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Maybe she wanted to be there. Maybe you pushed her away for your own reasons.’

  Maybe he had. Then again, maybe the barely concealed relief on Julie’s face as she left was as real as his relief in watching her go. ‘You think I pushed her away. That I’ve deliberately distanced myself from anyone who might care about me, that I’m fearful of intimacy, friendship, love, that I’m scared of getting close to another human being in case I have to watch them succumb to some invisible IED fallout.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’ve done?’

  Stark considered telling her about Kelly, but that would further misdirect her. ‘Perhaps I’m just ashamed of my physical disability.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Or maybe it’s the mental scars I’m hiding. Perhaps I’m afraid of letting someone love me, lest the monster inside ever slips its leash.’

  Hazel frowned. ‘I can’t help you if you don’t take this seriously.’

  ‘I don’t think you can help me all that much either way.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Look, Doc, I’m tired and tetchy. I’m tetchy because I’m tired. All I want is to be able to sleep at night without waking up screaming. I want to dream about something else.’

  ‘And I want to help you with that.’

  ‘Then stop changing the subject just because you can’t handle it. I don’t wake up screaming about imaginary girlfriends or my mother’s passive-aggressive cotton-wool act!’

  ‘Now you’re getting angry.’

  ‘This isn’t angry. Angry is how I feel about the spiteful fuck with the remote trigger. Angry is how I felt when those fuckers kept shooting at me even when I was running away with a wounded man over my shoulder. This isn’t angry, but it’s starting to get there.’

  ‘Perhaps we should call it a day.’

  ‘Perhaps we should.’

  Stark stalked back into the station, hungry and vexed.

  Fran glanced at the clock. ‘Your manicure and facial overrun again?’

  ‘Something like that. Is it okay if I grab some lunch?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Go on then, but don’t dawdle.’

  Stark brought a sandwich to his desk and went back to his filing. Fran went out and he soon found his concentration wavering. He was half asleep when his phone rang. Switchboard announced a Captain Pierson for Constable Stark and put her through before he could respond.

  ‘Hello?’ said the voice to Stark’s silence. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Who’s calling, please?’ he asked, stalling.

  ‘Captain Pierson for Corporal Joseph Stark, is this he?’

  Stark hesitated.

  ‘It’s a simple enough question!’

  Her accent was that clipped kind of posh, every word shaved bald, upper lip genetically inert. That was okay, but the cold, hard certainty in her tone spoke of privilege at its worst. Stark took an instant dislike. ‘We have a Constable Stark,’ he suggested levelly.

  ‘Put him on, then. I don’t have all day,’ said the voice, frostily.

  ‘Can I take a message?’

  ‘He’s not there?’

  ‘Perhaps I could take a message.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said the voice.

  Stark considered putting her on hold for ten minutes but decided he was being childish enough already. Besides, he’d have to talk to her eventually; winding her up further wouldn’t help matters. ‘I shouldn’t like you to waste your time. I’d be happy to take a message.’

  ‘I’ve left several already, for days in fact.’

  ‘Perhaps one more will do the trick.’

  Cold silence flowed from the receiver but stubbornness trumped impatience. She tutted. ‘Very well. Please tell him, for the umpteenth time, to call me at his very earliest opportunity.’ Stark dutifully repeated the number back to her and she hung up without another word. It was a shabby thing to do but Stark was shabby in condition and mood, and with that tone she could wait another day.

  6

  The IED explosion and the sight of the Land Rover teetering above him on two wheels before it crashed back down on to four snapped him awake.

  Lying on his back, waiting for his heart to slow and the phantom tinnitus to fade, he let the memory roll on in his conscious state. So much confusion, shouting, screaming, and cutting through it a cold, lightning certainty of purpose. He remembered feeling absolutely awake in those minutes, utterly conscious, instantly decisive in a way he’d never imagined possible. It was easy to understand how people became addicted to adrenalin, if that was what it was. It was also easy to understand how dangerous it could be, to you and those around you, to let that intuitive purity take over, caution and restraint be damned. How different that day might have been.

  The luminous hands of his watch read 04:10. He swore quietly. So now not only was therapy not suppressing his dreams, it was trawling them up from the foetid depths. He grunted, forcing himself off the bed and away from another round of futile what-if. Save that bollocks for the next show-and-tell with Doc Hazel.

  Later that morning Stark and Dixon were sent back to the council offices to speak to a key officer returned from sick leave. Judy was prematurely middle-aged, heavy-set, both chirpy and slightly defensive in the brittle manner Stark thought stress-induced. She’d seen Alf’s face on TV and come in to work to delve back into her files – she was sure, but she wasn’t, she had found him, but it might not be. She opened a worn, faded file and turned it on the desk to face them. A man, perhaps in his sixties, stared out. ‘Is it him?’ she asked tremulously.

  Dixon looked at Stark, who nodded. There was no mistake.

  ‘Alfred Thomas Ladd,’ he read. ‘Born Deptford, 1932. First appeared on Greenwich social-services homeless radar in August 1996. Previous address unknown. No known living relatives.’ There were several pages of assessment forms filled in by varying hands. He’d been admitted to a care home in 1999 but discharged himself. Hospitalized with pneumonia March 2005, admitted to care again and again refused to stay. A competency assessment at the time described him as fully cognizant and physically able. The scrawl also described him as obdurate, irritable, wilfully independent to the point of irrationality and rude bordering on abusive. Stark smiled.

  There was no further record. Judy’s orbit stabilized once hunch became fact. She happily copied the whole file while they waited and waved them off cheerily. They returned to the station well pleased with their morning’s work.

  Their smiles shattered against Fran’s icy reception. She scanned the name beneath the photo. ‘Alfred Ladd. Well, at least we’ll have a name for the death certificate if he doesn’t survive surgery.’

  Alf’s condition had worsened sharply and the doctors feared internal bleeding. He’d been rushed into theatre.

  Stark felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. If Fran noticed she made no sign, unless, perhaps, there was a softening in her tone. ‘Get yourself up there and wait. Call me when he gets out.�
��

  He almost thanked her, taken off-guard by the strength of his reaction. He rushed off and found Maggie, who dropped the play-acting and found him a car. Twenty minutes later he stood at the operating-theatre department reception desk being told he’d have to wait up on the ward. His response was short and to the point. The nurse yielded.

  He had plenty of time to reflect on the irrational investment he felt in a stranger’s well-being. This was just the kind of thing he should probably discuss with Doc Hazel, dread the thought. It was more than three hours before a grey-haired man in scrubs emerged at speed through the theatre doors. Stark jumped to his feet, startling him. ‘Nurse Adams, why is this person loitering here?’ demanded the doctor.

  Stark held up his warrant card. ‘Are you the surgeon operating on Alfred Ladd?’

  ‘Finally came up with a name, did you?’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘I am the chief of surgery. Mr Ladd, if that’s his name, is alive and not well. He’s being closed as we speak and will likely remain in post-op recovery for an hour or so before returning to Intensive Care. If you wish to speak with him you’re in for a long wait, possibly still a futile one. Now, please step aside.’

  ‘I’m not here to interview him.’

  Maybe something in Stark’s voice betrayed him. The surgeon contemplated him for a moment, weighing him up, or weighing his words. ‘We’ve had to remove a kidney. The other is damaged but salvageable. We’ve realigned the right posterior tenth rib but there was local damage to be patched up. We nearly lost him on the table but he rallied.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘For now. Whether he recovers is out of my hands. I suggest you leave your number with ICU and get some sleep, in which you appear deficient. Now step aside, young man. I have work to do.’

  When he got back, Fran said, ‘Maggie’s looking for you. I do believe she’s moved from huff to strop.’

  Before Stark could wonder why, Maggie stuck her head round the door. ‘Constable, there’s a woman loitering downstairs for you.’

  ‘I’m not “sweetie” today, then?’