Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  The kitchen still held the heat of the day. She made tea, then switched on the TV with the sound low, looking for a distraction: she didn’t want to have to think about the letter she was planning to write. A letter because she intended to be gone before Peter knew; she wouldn’t be able to listen to his pleas, or to Ben’s, or to look at their faces.

  She glanced at the TV without really seeing it. In an urban killing field, the incoming took out house walls; smart bombs found cellars and dugouts. Foot soldiers sprinted from cover to cover, yelling instructions, putting down a field of fire as they ran. An embedded reporter spoke of kidnaps and executions. The war-zone sky was lit by flares and burning buildings.

  If it hadn’t been her own voice that woke her, it might have been a memory of his voice as he spoke her name. She pictured herself lying beside him in whatever bed they would find in whatever place they would come to on her first real night of freedom; it was where she most wanted to be.

  Gideon.

  She thought she would stay up and see the dawn in, because then she would feel a day nearer to that moment at the train station, their meeting, their departure, the new life.

  The incoming, smoke, rubble in the streets…

  Stella turned from the white-board to the TV and back again. Men running from cover to cover. Silent Wolf, dressed to kill.

  There was something she recognized in all this but couldn’t isolate; something nagging, like a word on the tip of the tongue or some memory half brought back by a certain smell. It came and went, sometimes almost in focus, then becoming foggier. She closed her eyes, searching for it, and other thoughts crowded in – spoilers – her mother’s face, made sluttish by drink; the book floating down from eighteen storeys; Delaney in the TV war zone.

  Suddenly she felt exhausted, as if something deep inside had been tapped and drawn off. She lay down on the sofa, a cushion under her head, and started to drift into sleep immediately. The TV was still playing softly: soft gunfire, soft explosions. The pictures on the white-board seemed to warp and move, as if the TV images had become transposed.

  Delaney running up the white road. The incoming… smoke… Men in desert-combat camouflage. A house mushrooming. Silent Wolf looking down on the scene, his yellow eyes, his yellow hair.

  She sat up, her mind clearing, the images coming together to make a little narrative, a little story. The killer’s story. Now she remembered: Delaney’s encounter with the border guards in combat fatigues. Davison with the photo of a print left by a combat boot. Sorley speaking of a man on a mission.

  She made a call.

  Gloria clambered sleepily across Harriman, picked up his mobile and put it next to him on the pillow. Without opening his eyes, Harriman said his name.

  ‘He’s a soldier,’ Stella said. ‘He’s a soldier or else he used to be.’

  83

  The white road, the five men. A radio playing music.

  A daylight patrol and nothing much to worry about, because this is more of a goodwill mission, this is a meet-and-greet, no need for helmets, weapons at stand-by, well inside the safety zone. Call it a presence. The locals are friendly: already persuaded. No one expecting to see action, no one expecting to be tested, and Gideon Woolf is glad of that, because he thinks he’s probably had enough. Enough of being under fire, enough of close calls, enough of close-combat stand-offs.

  There’s a shake in his hands and a sick feeling in his gut, this day and every day. He’s ashamed of his fear, but he can’t fight it. Only one person in the world knows about this.

  The girl’s name is Camilla, or so he thinks. Kah-mila, she said. He’s not the only man with a local girl, but he might be the only man with a girl like this: one who listens to his fear, helps him forget, holds him against her body until the shakes stop.

  When he’d relaxed, when the opium had taken the edge off, when he’d had enough of her body, she would ask him when she might be seeing him again, where he would be next day or the day after, where she might find him. She would stroke his feverish head while their whispers went to and fro, her questions, his answers.

  The men walking in single file, music from the radio, the gun-flash. A man goes down, and suddenly the street is no place to be. The three men leading the patrol return fire, while Gideon Woolf finds cover. He knows he should use his weapon, he knows he should engage, but to do that would be to give away his position. He is pressed back in a doorway, hearing the screams and the gunfire. He can see the legs of the man who was shot. Woolf’s chest is constricted, it hurts, and he can’t get his breath. Some detached, some disgusted part of himself registers that he is pissing his pants.

  The other three men should be dead, but it seems the idea is not to kill them. Their attackers want hostages, they want captives. As the men are hustled towards a jeep, Woolf steps out of cover: just a couple of feet or so. He has a clear line of fire and the element of surprise. The attackers number ten, maybe twelve. He could bring some down, scatter the rest. He could draw fire: that would be the tactical thing to do. Maybe his comrades would die, maybe not; maybe he would die; but the opportunity is there.

  One of his comrades sees him and shouts his name. Shouts an order. Even from that distance, it’s easy to see that the man’s eyes are wide with fear. He shouts again, pleading. Woolf’s hands shake, and a gobbet of puke floods his mouth. Things blur, as if he were about to faint, and there’s a noise in his head like white water.

  A moment later… it seems like an hour later… he’s still standing in the street. The jeep has gone. Twenty feet away, a man lies dead. Of his other comrades, no sign.

  The radio is still playing music.

  84

  Maxine Hewitt was a good detective, and one of the attributes of a good detective is an eye for detail and a reliable memory. She went back to her notes from the meeting between herself, Frank Silano and George Nelms’s former headmaster, Richard Forester. She found this:

  MH: What subject?

  RF: Sports teacher.

  FS: Only that?

  RF: Cadet corps.

  Stella took the interview with Pete Harriman. In the headmaster’s office they asked questions that they hoped would get them what they wanted without revealing exactly what that was.

  Stella began: ‘Mr Nelms was in charge of the cadet corps…’

  ‘He felt that some boys were well suited,’ Forester said, then gave a half-smile. ‘Some boys well suited, some good for little else.’

  ‘He encouraged them to join up?’

  ‘Certainly. Look’ – Forester couldn’t see where the line of questioning was going, but he had an uneasy feeling about it – ‘it wasn’t just a case of dumping the no-hopers. There were boys who showed particular aptitude.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The army. Armed services.’

  ‘In what way?’ Stella asked.

  Forester paused fractionally. ‘Leaders of men.’

  Stella noticed the hesitation. Was that it, she wondered, or do you mean an aptitude for violence?

  Harriman said, ‘Did you keep a record?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Boys who were in the cadet corps.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Could we see it?’

  ‘How far back do you want to go?’

  Stella made a quick calculation. ‘Ten years?’

  Forester pressed an intercom button on his phone and asked for the file. He said, ‘There’s no news?’

  ‘The investigation is ongoing,’ Harriman said, as if he normally spoke like that.

  ‘And you’re asking about the cadet force because –’

  ‘All of Mr Nelms’s activities are important to us,’ Stella told him. ‘We might not know what we’re looking for until we find it.’

  Forester looked away, and his mouth trembled very slightly. ‘It’s been a terrible shock. The way he died – what happened to him; the stuff of nightmares.’

  Your nightmares, Stella thought.

  A secretary br
ought in the file and Stella flipped the names. She said, ‘Could I have a photocopy of this? For reference.’

  Harriman saw her expression change, just fleetingly, the way someone looks when they see, in a crowd, a suddenly familiar face. When they got into the car, she handed him the list, folded back to the last page.

  Woolf, Gideon.

  She said, ‘There are coincidences in the world, but this isn’t one of them.’

  It was like hauling something up from deep water: the closer it got to the surface, the quicker it came. From having nothing, Stella suddenly had almost everything. All a matter of record; Sue Chapman’s work made easy. Name, one-time address, age, family history, explanations… even a photograph.

  It was a head-and-shoulders portrait of a young man with a brutal haircut, a beret raked just so, a dress uniform. The man supplying the photo and the history was a Lieutenant-Colonel whose edginess was apparent.

  ‘It was an unpleasant episode,’ he said. ‘He would have been court-martialled had any of the witnesses survived, but the facts were clear enough. A good deal of it came from him, in point of fact; a confession of sorts. Anyway, it was clear that the man couldn’t continue. His breakdown was genuine enough, or so I’m led to believe.’ The Lieutenant-Colonel allowed a touch of scepticism into his voice.

  ‘Not helped by the tabloid press reports,’ Stella guessed.

  ‘That was a leak – shouldn’t have happened, but there were people who wanted him exposed.’

  Sue Chapman had already sourced the front pages: COWARD! GUTLESS! A SOLDIER’S SHAME! BASTARD! and the unanswerable HOW WILL YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF?

  ‘Who told them?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Look…’ The Lieutenant-Colonel’s edginess took on a tinge of aggression. ‘It was a dreadful thing to do. Four men died, three of whom might possibly have been saved if the man had acted as he should. He was a pariah. I don’t approve of the leak – we prefer to keep army business to ourselves – but I can understand why some people wanted him pilloried.’

  ‘Especially since he wasn’t being court-martialled.’

  ‘If you like. It wasn’t just a matter of cowardice in action. It’s likely that collaboration was an issue – if inadvertent.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Some sort of an involvement with a local woman. It’s by no means clear how the kidnappers knew they’d meet little resistance – that it was a small patrol on a routine exercise. It’s entirely possible that pillow-talk was involved.’

  ‘You think this relationship, this involvement, was sexual?’

  ‘I expect so. Isn’t that the usual method for extracting information – a honeytrap?’

  Dirty Girl.

  Stella said, ‘One of the newspaper reports claims that Woolf was hospitalized for a short while after the event.’

  ‘Yes, he was said to be having a breakdown. I mentioned that.’

  ‘Was that before or after the newspapers got the story?’

  ‘He was a coward. His comrades were murdered. Those are the facts that concern me.’

  ‘The point is,’ Stella insisted, ‘that the hospital in question wasn’t for psychiatric patients. One of my colleagues contacted the paper that ran the story, then the hospital. Their patient had sustained some physical injuries. He’d been beaten up.’

  ‘Yes, I know about that. It’s not at all clear where the incident took place. It’s under investigation.’ The Lieutenant-Colonel decided to try a switch-tactic. ‘You say he’s needed to help you in the course of certain investigations.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Investigations concerning what exactly?’

  ‘Like you,’ Stella said, ‘there are certain things we have to keep to ourselves.’ As if it didn’t matter much, she asked, ‘One man was shot during the attack, the others were taken.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did they die?’

  The Lieutenant-Colonel sighed. ‘One was hanged, more or less on the spot. The other two were decapitated.’

  Shoot, hang, chop, chop.

  The wrong order, she thought. As if it made a difference to the dead.

  *

  On her way back she took a call from Tom Davison.

  ‘The Morgan crime scene. The envelope flap. Did you ever have any doubt?’

  ‘Never,’ Stella told him.

  ‘Me neither. And we were both right. He attacked Morgan, he wrote the letter.’ A pause, then Davison said, ‘Are you any closer?’

  ‘Yes and no. He’s a soldier, or used to be.’ Something occurred to her. ‘How come his DNA wasn’t on the database?’

  ‘You’re talking about the police database, which is for bad people,’ Davison said. ‘There is an army database, but it’s not amalgamated with ours: it’s just for soldiers, who are not, de facto, bad people. I know they shoot people, but they do it for Queen and country. What else have you got?’

  ‘We know his name, we sort of know what he looks like, we know where he used to live, we know his mother is dead, that his father sold up and is living in a care-home. We know why he did what he did, we know all sorts of things. But we think he’s stopped; and people can disappear.’

  ‘You know what he looks like?’

  ‘General description.’ Stella didn’t want to talk about Silent Wolf the games hero.

  ‘So post a compufit.’

  ‘You know what that does – it lets the guy know we know, and he goes underground.’

  ‘Okay,’ Davison said, ‘revert to Plan A.’

  ‘We don’t have a Plan A.’

  ‘Yeah, I guessed.’

  85

  A man falls face down on the road, the road white with dust, his combats messed and bloody, blood on his hands where he clutched his chest, a broad seepage of blood coming from beneath his body and puddling by his head, flies already beginning to feast on it, one leg jerking and drumming the ground.

  Gideon Woolf has found cover. He can hear the rattle of gunfire, the cries for help. He stays back, he stays out of sight.

  The man on the ground is unmoving now. There’s an inertness about him that lets you know he’s dead: as if he had fallen from a great height and the dust had settled, his heart had settled, to stillness. Engines rev and roar; there are two jeeps, maybe three. As they drive off, there are bursts of gunfire aimed only at the sky: a celebration.

  A minute goes by, five minutes. Gideon Woolf moves out of cover. There are people emerging from houses, some of them are applauding. Gideon is aware of the wet stain on the crotch of his combats. He throws down his weapon and starts up the street. A kid of about ten picks up the gun and trains it on Gideon’s back. He makes a hacking noise like automatic gunfire. In the distance, but coming in fast, you can hear the clatter of helicopter blades.

  Gideon keeps walking, as if he were following the jeep tracks. Two streets away he finds another man hanging from a street sign. The sign had been hit by mortar-fire and only the pole-framework was left, a perfect gibbet. The man’s hands are tied behind his back, and his feet are tied, and there is a piece of paper tacked to his chest, a sign telling the world that the soldier hanging there is dirt from a dirty country of dirty people.

  The helicopter lands in an uprush of dust. Men run towards Gideon, shouting reassurances. They think he is a survivor-hero. Later, they will come to know him better as a filthy coward.

  The images are a little blurry, a little grainy, because the video equipment isn’t state of the art, but it’s easy enough to see what’s going on.

  Two men in orange jumpsuits sit on the floor, their hands bound, a five-day stubble on their cheeks. Behind them stand three men who call themselves warriors. They are posed, their automatic weapons held at an angle. The hostages have signs pinned to their chests that let the world know that they are no less dirty than the man who was hanged. They are dirty bastards. They are dirty lying bastards.

  The internet sends these pictures to the global village, and Gideon Woolf is watching on his comput
er. He has seen the sequence twenty times before. The first time he watched, he cried, but now his face is like stone.

  One of the warriors steps forward, drawing a long, curved knife from his belt. He grabs the hair of one of the soldiers and yanks the man’s head back, putting strain on the tendons of the neck. He makes a flourish with the knife and calls on his god, then slits the soldier’s throat. The man hops and writhes. A gusher of blood arcs up; it splashes on the other soldier, who knows he will be the next to die. He is sobbing, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving. The warrior keeps cutting until he reaches the neck-bone, then twists and wrenches to tear the ligaments and get his blade between the vertebrae.

  He holds the head aloft in the name of god.

  Gideon watches again, then breaks the internet connection. He puts into the computer a game he has just bought. The hero carries Gideon’s name into the world like a banner, and Gideon is pledged to do the same, pledged to prove himself.

  He buys a pair of plain glasses with a pale yellow tint, he dyes his hair corn-blond, he buys army-surplus desert fatigues and a long, cotton duster-coat. The game becomes an obsession; it becomes a way of life.

  From the vantage point of the scorched room he looks down on the city, his combat zone, his killing ground.

  86

  Sue Chapman had been working to tie Woolf’s victims to the words written on them, the accusations, and events in that street white with dust.

  Once she knew what she was looking for, the task was easy enough and, in Bryony’s case, needed no research at all. She was a hooker and that had been enough to make her a stand-in for the honeytrap. Nelms was simple too: the man who had put Gideon Woolf through his cadet training and, probably, encouraged him to join the army. Turner and Morgan didn’t take a lot more work. Turner’s editorials said yes to war in a loud voice; his paper had been noted for it. Morgan had taken the same view: Sue’s desk was littered with transcripts of radio and TV shows, interviews, articles, all of which carried the same message: send in the troops, do it now, stay till the job’s done.