War Games

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘Hello, love.’ None of your sloppy production numbers for the Savages. ‘How’re you feeling today?’ I bent low and kissed her, my lips lingering just a little too long on hers. She pushed me away with an embarrassed grin. I grinned back and allowed a waiting porter to pick up her suitcase and hold the door for me as I wheeled her chair out into the sun-dappled garden.

  ‘God, I can’t wait to get home.’ She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the trees and early summer flowers. Her right hand reached out to stroke the petals of a powder-blue iris beside the path in a way that might have made you think she’d never touched a flower before. You had to live with her to understand the impulse that made her do it. To Aelish, this flower, feeding from the earth, the air and the sun, meant freedom and life.

  I bought the Range Rover when it became clear Aelish was losing her mobility, because, with the back seats folded down, it’s big enough to take her wheelchair. But we enjoy each other’s company when we’re travelling, and it didn’t seem right to have her tucked away in the back like a piece of luggage. So we invested in an ingenious chairlift contraption that allows Aelish to sit up front beside me like any normal passenger. It cost a fortune, but it gives her a sense of freedom not many MS sufferers are allowed. Once she was settled, we instinctively turned towards each other and our heads met, not in a kiss, but in a moment of mutual physical contact; a gentle coming together that combined need and relief and comfort, and something deeper than love. We stayed like that for a full minute. Not breathing. Not seeing. Not thinking. Just complete.

  Aelish broke the contact, drawing her head away and studying me closely. At the same time she let out a long breath. ‘Glen Savage.’ I reached out for her again, but she shook her head, and I recognised the old weariness on her face. ‘Take me home, please, Glen.’

  We drove in silence, west through Corstorphine and out of the city towards the bypass. I kept my eyes on the road, but I was as aware of her presence as if I was staring directly at her. When you’ve lived with someone for so long – and lived with the disease – you develop a sense of them that is nothing to do with being psychic. It’s about the way they hold themselves, the pattern of their breathing, the little mannerisms that reveal what’s happening inside them. The tiniest twist of the lips as pain bites. The tremor of clutched hands. A black cloud of melancholy that is invisible but exists just the same. Maybe, you even subconsciously measure the beat of their heart. I monitored all of this as my hands moved automatically on the steering wheel and my eyes flicked between parked cars and traffic lights. Gradually, I came to realise how different she was from the first time I’d brought her here.

  It was less than a year since she’d lost the baby, an awful ordeal that had sucked all the physical and mental strength from her, maybe from us. The Aelish I’d delivered to the hospital all that time ago had been a fragile, exhausted creature who gave the impression that the slightest pressure might break her. The Aelish seated next to me had all of my Aelish’s inner strength – the spirit that had kept her alive and in control when the disease wanted neither – but she had more, too. Where previously she would have slumped in her chair, weighed down by the awareness of what was happening to her and the fact that she could never change it, now she sat straight-backed and alert. Slight movements of her head as she glanced from the passenger window were proof of a new-found strength in her neck muscles I hadn’t noticed when we were at home. Previously, her only interest would have been in the scene directly in front of her, because the effort would have outweighed any satisfaction she had from the view. There have been times when we have jointly come close to despair: the times when Aelish has been in danger of losing one of her freedoms. You have to understand the importance of the few freedoms she has left. The freedom to do insignificant things with her hands she might someday be unable to achieve. Freedom to read a book or a newspaper in the knowledge that the disease could one day take her sight. Freedom to enjoy the companionship of her fool of a husband on a drive to some unremarkable destination. To the able-bodied these things are nothing. To Aelish, every experience is a memory to be hoarded for the day it is not there; a treasure. All of those freedoms have, at one time or another, been in the balance. But not today.

  I drove on, through the quick-quick-slow traffic of the bypass, then south through the suburban sprawl of Dalkeith, before the shackles fell away and I hit the open road. I wanted to say that I loved her. I wanted to say that whatever my troubles were, I’d forgotten them the moment I saw her again. I wanted to say to hell with my career, and to hell with serial killers. We would survive. Gurya’s father could keep his money. Dorward could find Shoaz Ahmad’s murderer and he’d have Glen Savage’s best wishes when he did. I wanted to say it, but when I turned to her, Aelish was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 14

  She opened her eyes as we were crossing Soutra Hill, with its ever-spreading crop of wind turbines that would have had Donnie McLeod foaming at the mouth. She turned to me and her lips twisted in a tiny grimace. ‘I noticed in the evening paper that they’d charged some Edinburgh drug dealer with Eddie Dunn’s murder. Did those things his cousin told me help?’

  ‘The stuff about his tattoos came in handy.’ I nodded my thanks. ‘And I hinted that he’d been involved in some kind of gang trouble. Hopefully that will help our friend Mr Dorward take a few of them off the streets.’

  That started an earnest discussion about how the drug dealers had wormed their way into the quiet Borders towns since we’d moved to the area. It started harmlessly enough with cannabis, but more recently they were pushing heroin and crack, sometimes selling it openly on street corners in the housing estates of Hawick and Galashiels. Given that Aelish smokes hash every night, there was a certain element of hypocrisy in her argument, but she believed what she was saying.

  We were still talking about it as we approached Leaderfoot and the majestic arched railway viaduct over the River Tweed that acts as a spectacular signpost for the turn-off to Savage Mansions.

  ‘Is that Maria?’ She was pointing to a small dark-haired figure standing by the roadside. Maria Bronowska ran an arts and crafts business from a former gate lodge near the road junction. A serious, confident Polish girl who lived with a lad who played rugby for the local team, her work was wonderfully delicate and she often donated items to the fund-raisers Aelish organised. I saw instantly that something was wrong. Her hands were held tight to her mouth and panic on her face. Her head jerked frantically from left to right as if she was searching for something but I sensed that she was beyond seeing. When I rolled to a halt beside her she scrabbled for the passenger door and wrenched it open.

  ‘Help me. Please, help,’ she sobbed, clutching at Aelish. ‘Have you seen Janna? She was walking the dog. It came back without her, carrying this.’ She held out a knitted green woollen hat. ‘She sometimes goes by the roadside up to the woods. Please God, do not let her have been taken.’

  Janna was her daughter, an elfin-featured eight-year-old made in her mother’s image. I knew we hadn’t seen her and I said as much. She shook her head. ‘Dani came back about five minutes ago. I didn’t know what to do.’ She flinched at every car flashing past on the road. ‘Please, sir . . . you must do something.’

  ‘Glen . . .’

  I got out of the car and ran round to the kerbside where Maria was close to collapse. I sat her down on the grass and prised the green hat from her twitching fingers. It was small, and I could see the glint of saliva where the dog had carried it in its mouth, but it still had the heat of its wearer in it. I held it to my face, covering my eyes and inhaling the essence of Janna into my senses. Sometimes the dreams are crystal clear, sometimes blurred and grainy, in cinema slo-mo, or fast-forward, and sometimes they’re not dreams at all, just single freeze-frame flashes of life caught in the explosion of a star-shell or an exploding round from a 66mm rocket. This time it was instant. I saw and I felt, and when I took the hat from my face Janna’s mother wailed when she saw my des
olation. In that same instant I realised that everything wasn’t as it had seemed; there was something there, a tiny spark that meant . . .

  I was already running over the grass verge to the cottage, through the gate and across the garden. I hurdled the wire fence into the woods beyond and crashed through the undergrowth diagonally down the slope towards the river. Dani had chased a rabbit and Janna had lost her grip on its lead. She had run after the dog through the trees. Here was the place where she had slipped at the top of a sheer slope where the earth had fallen away. I leapt down ignoring the brambles clawing at my jacket. There was the rock beside the foaming torrent where she had hit her head before rolling unconscious into the water. The freezing current tore at my legs as I splashed through the shallows fighting my way downstream and slipping on the submerged stones towards the long pool. When it was too deep to run I dived forward letting the current carry me down, driving myself on with powerful strokes that took me swiftly across the surface towards the rocky overhang where the salmon rested in the autumn before continuing their run to the spawning beds. When I was six feet away I took a deep breath and jack-knifed my body to slip smoothly below the surface and pull my way down towards the bottom. The river was running a deep brown, but visibility was still about five or six feet. I could see where the rock plunged into the river and the pocket below it where the fish sheltered. The jagged stump of a big elm tree had jammed against it and at first I could see nothing, then I noticed a pale flash among the branches. Frantically I hauled my way through the water, dragging at the branches to get to the tiny figure caught in their embrace. Janna’s eyes were closed, her dark hair floated in strands across her face, drifting in the stream like smoke, and her body floated lifelessly, trapped by a splintered limb that had become entangled in her rain jacket. I knew I had one chance to free her and I tore at the coat with my hands, using my feet on the trunk to give me purchase. Eventually I made a small rip and worked at it until the material came free and Janna with it. The air in my lungs was running out and I could feel the pressure on my chest. The freezing water forced its way into my nose and mouth. To get her out of the pocket I had to take her close to the river bottom and back up again. I put my feet against the tree and kicked downwards, pushing Janna’s body ahead of me. I’d only travelled a foot when my progress was stopped with a jerk. Still holding the girl I looked back and my mind exploded with terror. When it had been washed into the river the tree had carried with it the barbed wire of an old fence. Now a strand of that wire was wrapped around the bottom of my leg. Panic almost paralysed me as I remembered the dying feeling of the dreams, trapped in a sinkingQE2 with a hundred other men all clawing for the door as the sea flooded into a tiny room turned upside down. Think. I tried to ignore the growing pressure in my throat. Keeping Janna’s arm in one hand, I felt down at my feet with the other. Only a single strand, thank Christ, but it was wrapped tight just above the ankle. I worked at the wire, but all it did was tighten. My fingers scrabbled for the zip of my boot and pulled it down, allowing me to kick the boot off. I tried to ease the wire over my ankle, but the barbs caught my skin. My vision was going, the urge to give in and open my mouth almost visceral. Roaring inside, I hauled at my leg, dragging the barbs through my skin, the pain lancing through my leg. Free. It didn’t seem possible. I was free. I kicked away from the tree, forcing us under the lip of the boulder and with a roaring in my head and chest clawed my way one-handed up to break the surface. Drawing in painful breaths I pulled Janna’s head up close to mine and put my lips against hers, trying to force air into her lungs, but there was no response. I pulled my way to the bank and laid her small body down on a mud bank, immediately putting two hands palm down, one on top of the other on her chest. She was dead, but there had been a spark of life there a few moments ago. On winter exercises in Norway I’d seen a man revived who’d been under for more than ten minutes. Push, but not hard enough to break the sternum. I got into a rhythm. One, two, three, four, rest. One, two, three, four, rest. One, two, three, four, rest. As I pumped, my mind reached out to her. Come on. Don’t give up, Janna. Never give up. One, two, three, four, rest. It was like working on a slab of cold, dead meat. One, two, three, four, rest. Logic told me I was wasting my time, but I screamed at logic to fuck off. One, two, three, four, rest. Don’t give up. Only now I wasn’t talking to Janna. Don’t give up. Gurya Ali was out there somewhere. Somehow, I knew that if I lost Janna, I would lose Gurya Ali, too, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. One, two, three, four, rest. A shudder ran through the body beneath me. Had I imagined it? One, two, three, four, rest. One, two, three, four, rest. Her eyes opened wide. Janna Bronowska gave a prolonged, gasping groan and vomited a column of brown water into my face.

  *

  Three hours later I turned the car into the tarmac drive in front of the house. We were too emotionally exhausted to move when I parked. The valley spread out before us and the river curved into the distance. I like rivers a lot, but if I was being honest I’d seen more than enough of them for one day. Aelish savoured the view for a few moments more.

  ‘I thought of this while I was lying in hospital,’ she said. ‘Every field, every hill, every tree. The way the river shines silver in a certain light and gold in another. There are times when I’ve thought I wouldn’t see it again.’

  We’d rushed Janna and her mother to the Borders General Hospital at Melrose, a bare couple of miles from where I’d pulled her from the River Leader. While the doctors examined her and put her on a drip we waited with Maria, trying to give her what comfort we could as a nurse bandaged the cuts on my leg.

  ‘She will pull through won’t she?’ It was more a statement than a question.

  I tried to look more confident than I felt. ‘She was unconscious for about ten minutes and she was suffering from hypothermia, but the cold might have saved her. If she went into shock when she hit the river everything would have slowed down and she’d have used less oxygen. She’s young and strong.’ I shrugged. ‘I think she’ll make it.’

  She nodded and her eyes locked on mine. ‘I wish we could’ve had a baby, Glen.’

  It was something we discussed now and again, but there was really no answer so I wheeled her into the kitchen. She looked the place over with a nod of approval. ‘I see you’ve been keeping busy, but what else have you been up to? It wouldn’t be like you not to get up to mischief while I was away.’

  ‘Washed the car, dug the garden, climbed the odd hill.’ Well, the last bit was true.

  She gave me the look that said she didn’t believe a word. ‘And how’s your work?’ She spoke over her shoulder as she wheeled her way smoothly towards the living room. ‘Anything new?’

  I followed her through the house. She parked her chair and lifted herself expertly onto the sofa, using her arms for support. Again I was struck by a new-found strength and confidence. She patted the seat beside her and I sat down and put my arm around her, feeling the warmth of her body through the wool of her sweater. She allowed her head to drop onto my shoulder.

  ‘Anything new?’ she repeated, and I realised I’d forgotten to answer her question.

  ‘Bits and pieces.’ I explained about Gurya Ali and she frowned. ‘And Willie Dewar put me onto something interesting.’ As I told the story of Shoaz Ahmad, I was careful to leave out the disreputable part about conning my way in to the investigation.

  ‘That’s awful,’ she said. ‘And Willie thinks he may not be the killer’s first victim?’

  ‘Nothing concrete, just a hint in the police canteen. He’s working on it.’

  ‘And the girl might have been taken by the same person?’

  I shrugged. ‘Given the similarities it must be a possibility, but so far I don’t have any evidence to back it up. Maybe Donnie McLeod is right and her father’s had her carted off to an arranged marriage in Pakistan. I just can’t read the guy. He comes across as this smooth business exec, very successful and very western, but I have the impression he could be hard on the women in his
life. It’s confusing. And sometimes I have a sense that Assad Ali is as confused as I am about who he is.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s just your old-fashioned, white, working-class prejudices coming out?’ I remembered Pete, the stonemason, and wondered if she had a rose-tinted view of white, working-class prejudices, but I knew what she meant, and there was more than that. By birth, Assad Ali was as Scottish as I was, even if he had been torn between two cultures all his life. But he was also rich, and I’d been brought up to believe rich people were only rich because they made sure poor people stayed poor. I could still smell the coal dust from when my old man taught me that truth as I sat on his knee after he’d finished his shift. Forty-odd years later, part of me still believed it.

  ‘Maybe I can help? If Shoaz Ahmad’s killing is linked to another death it will be out there somewhere.’

  ‘The doctor said you should take it easy,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she exploded. ‘I’ve spent half my life taking it easy. I almost died of boredom in that place. All I did was read, sleep and eat. Give me something to do, Glen, or my brain will shrivel up and die.’

  I squeezed her tighter. ‘Okay love, it’ll be a big help, but leave it till tomorrow. I plan to go through to Glasgow. I’ve asked Ann Pringle to stop by to keep an eye on you.’

  I expected the usual outburst about not needing a babysitter, but she said she’d be pleased to see her friend. We discussed dinner and I went through to prepare it while she leafed through one of those women’s magazines that men don’t understand the point of.