(2005) Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

In civilian life, the psychiatrist worked for a health trust on the south coast of England, but for more than thirty years he had been a member of the Territorial Army. God alone knew now how his regular patients, back home, were surviving his six-month absence. In the medical unit attached to the division's headquarters outside Basra, he had the rank of colonel and headed the Battleshock Recovery Team, a small empire of a lieutenant, who was less than half his age, and two orderlies who typed and doubled as nurses.

  In the sprawling hospital in the seaside town, his caseload was overwhelming; in Iraq it was minimal. When a general or a brigadier came to inspect the BRT he'd sometimes joke that he felt like travelling round the combat units and touting for trade, but patients came infrequently.

  'Nothing to ask me? Well, that's not unusual. You've had a hard time and probably suffered some pretty cruel cuts but that's because of soldiers' ignorance of mental disturbance.

  It's all behind you. My promise is that we're going to get you right, get you back on track. You're not the first, and you won't be the last, but we're going to deal with it. You are not abnormal. Most importantly, Mal, you're not a failure. I emphasize it. Not an outcast or a pariah. You've had an horrendous experience but with time and care, and with the love of your family, you're going to come through it ... I'm going to ask you to wait outside a few minutes while I draw up some papers that need your signature, and when that's done I'll call you back in. I urge you to remember very clearly what I've said - not a pariah or an outcast, but a patient with post-traumatic stress syndrome, not a failure.'

  He watched the captain stand and go, a stilted step, towards the door .. . Fascinating. In the last month he'd had an RAF corporal who had been spooked by night guard duty on the airstrip perimeter, and a lance-corporal chef from the Catering Corps who had been pressed into service for patrol and had frozen; two months before him there had been a clerk from Logistics who had sat on a Portakabin roof and refused to come down claiming that local cleaners, heavily vetted, intended to kill him . . . This fellow was the real thing, what the textbooks described.

  'Right, let's get some notes down, Donald.'

  His duty orderly settled at the computer, and the psychiatrist dictated a skeleton analysis.

  ' "From field reports, the patient seems to have suffered initially from convertive collapse, with consequent loss of limb movement. Brackets, I do not believe we are dealing with a malingerer or a faker of symptoms, close brackets.

  This became dissociative collapse, loss of contact with his environment and inability to relate to it." Take a paragraph.

  Donald, what did you make of him?'

  'I'd be going with what they said at Bravo, Colonel.

  Sounds to me like he just flipped his bottle.'

  'Hardly a medical statement. No, he's most interesting because he's a classic case. Could even be a paper in it, might get to be a lecture subject - no names, of course. Next paragraph. "From outside the family of the regiment he was serving with, so beyond the 'buddy' network. Probably, worth checking, poorly trained for being alongside an active-service unit. Asked whether his home domestic relationship was satisfactory, patient flushed and made no reply - all three make PTSD a top starter." I'm actually quite excited. People back home would kill to get their hands on him. We're rather lucky.'

  'Boot him out, won't they? Don't mind me saying it, Colonel, but where's he going to go? Who'll have him, with this lot in his knapsack? You soft-soaped him, sir, but he's on the outside, long-term.'

  'Getting science into your skull, Donald, is a labour of Sisyphus.'

  'Beg pardon?'

  'He had to roll a stone up a hill - Homeric legend, father of Odysseus - and each time he reached the top it rolled back down and he had to start again. Next paragraph. "Patient's silence during consultation is compatible with a current state of dissociative fugue. Brackets. Only basic self-care maintained, but refusal to acknowledge familiar locations and life structures. Close brackets." What you have to understand, Donald, is that cowardice is no longer a word in our lexicon. In the modern environment, PTSD explains everything.'

  'The guys with him won't buy that, Colonel. You dressing it up won't change it, with respect. To them, he's just a coward. No escape from that reputation, being called a coward.'

  'You'd tax the patience of a saint, Donald. More's the pity, I won't have enough time with him -going to damn well try, though. Paragraph. "Treatment of patient is handicapped by the delay in his movement from a forward area to my Battleshock Recovery Team unit. Valuable time has been lost, with consequent onset of acute stress reaction. The - capitals, PIE, close capitals - principle has been negated. Proximity, Immediacy, Expectancy cannot now apply. In a more ideal world than provided by combat in Iraq, the patient should have talked his actions through with a qualified expert at the location, within hours of it happening, and should then have been assured he would be subject to fast recovery from a 'one-off' behavioural incident." That's about it.'

  'But the PIE principle didn't happen, sir, did it?'

  'It did not.'

  'Which is why, Colonel, he's shafted. He's labelled a coward, and big-time he'll believe what's written on that label.'

  It was the moment when he realized the flimsy nature of the plywood walls and the lightweight door that divided his consulting room from the waiting area beyond. He cursed softly and felt a little moment of shame.-

  'Perhaps, Donald, you could get those consent forms out.

  Make some coffee, then get him back in.'

  Ricky had asked, 'What you got? A dozen passengers for the boat?'

  Timo had said, 'One.'

  'No, not the boat, one boat. What I asked was, how many passengers is it carrying? Twelve?'

  'One passenger.'

  They had been at the table, now cleared by the Bear, and the map was unfolded to its full size and lay spread across the mats.

  Ricky had laughed in surprise. 'What? One

  passenger? The boat comes all that way for one body?'

  'I see nothing to laugh for. The boat comes now for one passenger. The purpose of the boat's journey is not to fish. It is to carry back across the sea the one passenger.'

  Because he was bent over the table, because his eyes were set on the island marked on the map, Ricky had not seen the piercing brightness of the eyes of Timo Rahman or the narrowed lips that signified his annoyance. 'You know what it costs, Mr Rahman, to put that boat to sea? A bloody fortune. It costs . . . '

  A hand had slipped on to his shoulder and fingers had squeezed tighter into the flesh and the bones, and the voice had been silkily smooth: 'You bring the boat now, Ricky, for one passenger. Not next month or next week but now. That is very easy for you to understand, yes? And you will remember the many favours I have shown you, yes?'

  'Yes, Mr Rahman.'

  And the hand had loosened but had left behind it the pain of the pressure on the nerves, and there had been the first shout from the kitchen, and the chaos had followed.

  Ricky Capel, far from home, had sat for close on two hours in the dining room. Had not spoken, had not moved, had not known what the fuck had happened.

  He had heard the yelled commands and questions, the staccato orders given down the telephone in a language he knew not a word of. He had sat motionless with the map in front of him. Twice the Bear had come through the dining room, like Ricky wasn't there, with a Luger pistol in his hand. Now, from the kitchen, among the savagery of voices, a woman sobbed.

  In the door was Timo Rahman. He hurled a heavy coat across the room - an overcoat, brown and with a fleck in the material. It hit the table and slithered half its length. The coat was in front of Ricky. 'You know that coat?'

  'Not mine.' Ricky giggled, not from mischief or cheek but fear.

  The voice was soft. 'I asked, Ricky, do you know that coat?'

  'No - no, I don't.' The smell of the coat was under his nose, and made the fear acute. 'How could I?'

  Timo Rahman's arms were folded across his
chest, seemed to make him stronger, more powerful. Looming behind him was the brute of the man who had driven him to the house, who had served him at the table, who was always close, who still held the pistol. Rahman said, a gentle sing-song pitch, 'From England, Ricky, you come to my house as my guest. At my house, Ricky, you are given my hospitality. We agree?'

  'Yes, I agree.'

  'I say to you, Ricky, and you should believe me, that never has a thief or an intruder come to my house since my family and I moved to Blankenese. Any thief or intruder would prefer to attack the home of the police chief of Hamburg than risk my anger and retribution. You come, and my house is attacked, and this coat is left on my garden fence.'

  'Never seen it before, Mr Rahman, never.'

  On the coat, faint but recognizable, was the smell of petrol.

  'My housekeeper had hold of his coat, but he slipped from it and went over the fence - and you have never seen it before?'

  'It's what I said, Mr Rahman.'

  'And the label of the coat is from Britain. I think Harris tweed is from Britain, and in the lining under a hole in the pocket, in two pieces, is a train ticket, Victoria to Folkestone, and they are in Britain. Ricky, what should I think?'

  'Don't know, can't help you -1 never saw that coat before, honest.' His voice was shrill. 'That's the truth.'

  'As your grandfather would have told you, Ricky, in Albania we live by a code of besa. It is the word of honour. No Albanian would dare to break it. It is the guarantee of honesty. Can you imagine what would happen to a man whose guarantee of honesty and truthfulness is found to fail?'

  'I think I can,' Ricky said, breathy. 'Yes.'

  'And you do not know who wore the coat?'

  He seemed to see, from the doorway of his home in Bevin Close, the short-arm jab that dropped the man at Davey's feet, seemed to see the bundle of the man on the pavement made larger by the size and thickness of the brown overcoat. Seemed to hear Davey: Some bloody vagrant scum, Ricky. Seemed to feel the recoil in his shoe when he had kicked the face above the overcoat's upturned collar . . . seemed to hear, clear, Davey: On his coat, he had the stink of petrol.

  Seemed to see George Wright's place, burned, and heard what George Wright, his leg fractured, had yelled about kids on the Amersham estate and a dealer, and a line from bottom to top: I want to be there, watch it, when it's your turn. He hadn't Davey at his back, and he hadn't Benji and Charlie at his shoulder

  . . . Had no one to tell him what sort of crazy idiot, a mad dog, went after pushers and a dealer, a supplier and an importer, and turned up at the place of an untouchable who ran a city. If he had stood, his legs would have been weak and his knees would have shaken. Anyone knew, Ricky Capel knew, what

  Albanians would do to enforce a contract. Himself, he had Merks on hire, from shit-face Enver, with baseball bats to kill a man who was late with payment, had seen them used on a man strapped to a chair.

  'I swear it. I never seen that coat, not on anyone . . .

  First thing, I'll do the boat, like you said. I'll get it over here.'

  With their second bottle of Slovenian wine, their favourite, which they had carried off the ferry, the couple from Dusseldorf discussed their ill luck. Both had taken a week away from work to travel

  to their holiday home on the island of Baltrum.

  The man, a chemist, said, 'The forecast is foul. You have to book vacation days away. Of course it is chance, but you are entitled to look for breaks in weather even before Easter. I spoke to Jurgen at the shop, and he says it is only storms that we can expect.

  I tell you, the day we go home, it will change.'

  She, the principal of a school for infants, said, 'You can't go on the roof, clear the gutters and check the tiles in this wind. You cannot paint the window-frames and the doors, which need it, in the rain. I cannot air the bedding and the rugs. It's hopeless.'

  It had been the intention of the chemist and his teacher wife to open up their home and let the fresh air waft through it after its winter closure; each spring it was necessary to add a fresh layer of paint to the outside woodwork.

  She drank, then grimaced. 'Have you seen him?'

  His face, already sour from the prediction of the weather, cracked in annoyance. 'Sadly, he has survived the winter. I have not seen him, but have heard him. He came back through the rain after dark.

  The door slammed. That is how I know he is there.'

  They tried hard, both of them, to ignore their neighbour, who was one of the few twelve-months-a-year residents on the island. It was four years since they had bought the perfect home to escape from the pressure-cooker life of the city. The first summer there they had brought with them their grandchildren, two small, lively kids, who had kicked a football on their little patch of grass at the back and each time the ball had crossed the wire fence dividing their property from their neighbour's garden there had been increasing rudeness when the chemist had asked permission to retrieve it. The children had been reduced to tears and had not come during another summer.

  He said, 'I wonder what he does all those months when we are not here, who he insults.'

  She said, 'I think we are a recreation for him.'

  'He is a man of misery, he takes happiness from it.'

  'Death, when it finds him, will be a blessed relief -

  for us.'

  They laughed grimly, chiming a cackle together.

  The second summer they had left a note on Oskar Netzer's door inviting him to join them for a drink that evening. He had come, had filled their bijou furnished living room with the odour of a body long unwashed, and they had shown him the architect's plans drawn up in Dusseldorf for an extension of a garden room topped by a third bedroom and a shower cubicle. He had refused the drink, then had refused to endorse the plan - they had thought it commensurate with every environmental and aesthetic consideration. He had rubbished the architect's drawings.

  Through the rest of that summer, the following winter and into the third summer, their neighbour had fought the plan in Baltrum's Rathaus committees: its size, its materials, its concept. Last summer they had consigned the plan to the rubbish bin, had given up on the project. Last year when they had been at their house, if he came out into his garden they went inside.

  They had nothing to say to him, and he made no secret of his opinion that they were intruders and unwelcome - but his death would come, and their liberation.

  He said, 'I cannot imagine a life so detached from reality. They say that even when his wife was alive he was no different.'

  She said, 'That woman, she must have suffered. It is not possible she could have been the same.'

  'You never see newspapers outside the house for the rubbish, you never hear a radio. There is no television. He must know nothing of the world he inhabits.'

  'Would not know about the economy, its down-

  turn? The unemployment...'

  'Would not care, isolated here.'

  'Would not know about the war, in Iraq? Not know about the terrorists . . . '

  'Ignorance - stubborn, obstinate, hate-filled ignorance. So pathetic, to be at the autumn of life and to realize, deep in your heart, that you will do nothing in your last days that is valuable, nothing that is respected.'

  A memory for both of them, when they had packed up the house at the end of the last summer and loaded the trolley to wheel it to the ferry, had been the lowering and gloom-laden face of Oskar Netzer behind a grimy window. At home in Duisseldorf, each time they spoke of their neighbour, anger grew, and they had to stifle it or accept that he hurt their love of the island and their small home.

  He poured the last of the wine from the second bottle into his wife's glass. 'You are right, my love. He would reject any action that made him loved, respected.'

  She drank, then cackled in laughter and the drink spurted from her lips. 'Sorry, sorry . . . His ducks will love him. The bloody ducks will mourn him when he's dead, no one else.'

  The wind hit their windows and
the rain ran

  on them, and the curtains fluttered, and next door to them - unloved - their neighbour slept.

  'You can take him. Please, get him out of here.'

  'Don't know that I want him.'

  'Remove him, Miss Wilkins.'

  'If you say so.'

  She had sent her signal, encrypted on the laptop.

  Coffee had kept her awake while she'd typed. She followed Johan Konig out of the side room and back into his office.

  'Squeeze it from him, why he was at the Rahman house.'

  'Without your help?'

  'If I hold him I have to charge him and put him before a court. It is not a road I wish to follow.'

  'Understood.'

  He passed her the plastic bag, then turned his back on her. For a moment she looked around the bare room, which, she had decided, displayed a man's aloneness and a life without emotion. She fastened on the one item that showed humanity - a photograph of a hippopotamus in a muddied river with a white bird on its back. In her imagination, she delved into Konig's past. Perhaps a holiday in east Africa with a wife or a partner, and that was a favourite picture.

  Maybe the wife or partner had now left him or had died. She reckoned it involved a sadness. She betrayed herself, her eyes lingered too long on it.

  'It is the better to understand them,' Konig said.

  'What do you mean?'

  'The better to understand them in Berlin, now in Hamburg.'

  She said quietly, 'I assumed it was something personal.'

  'God, no . . . The better to understand the men who control organized crime, to understand Rahman. The hippopotamus is the society in which we live, and the bird is the godfather. The egret, the bird, is not the enemy of the hippopotamus. Instead it fulfils a need of that great creature by picking off its back the parasites that will damage its skin. It is a symbiotic relationship - the hippopotamus provides sustenance for the bird, the bird returns gratitude by cleaning the hippopotamus's back. They need each other. Society wants drugs, prostitutes and sex shows, and the godfather gives it. He does not leech the blood of society, he merely provides a service that is demanded. That is why the picture is there, to remind me of reality.'