War Games

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘Can we help you, sir?’ The words came from fat boy on the left, who turned out to be as Scottish as Yorkshire pudding. I tried to make like a tax inspector’s tea boy, but even in an anorak it’s not easy when you’re six two and have the kind of lived-in face I’m stuck with. Fortunately, Dewar had warned me that these events were more or less invitation-only and I pulled out the poster he’d given me and as plausible an explanation as I’d been able to come up with at short order.

  ‘A mate from my old regiment said I might be interested, so I thought I’d come along.’

  It sounded about as lame as you’d expect and he looked me up and down for a while before gesturing me forward to the gate. ‘Any cameras, recording equipment . . .?’ He didn’t actually say weapons but we both knew what he meant. ‘You don’t mind if we take a look.’

  I shrugged my shoulders and raised my hands so he could pat down my pockets. It wasn’t very professional; I could have had a flick-knife taped to my inner thigh and he was a little coy thereabouts, but I guessed he was just making sure I wasn’t a suicide bomber, or worse a proper journalist. Violence they could handle; it was the truth that scared them.

  When I walked up a set of concrete steps to a narrow door in the front of the building another minder looked me over before ushering me to the rear row of a line of recycled church pews. I’ve been in colder halls, with better company; I remember watching ice form in the folds of my camo smock in a wool shed on East Falkland while lice cha-cha-cha-ed up and down my spine to stay warm. On balance, I’d rather have been back there.

  Then, we were being prepped for the march on Stanley; here the target was Holyrood – or more correctly Westminster, because this was a peculiarly non-Scottish Scottish Defence Association, despite all the references to local heroes like Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. The main speaker, a pasty-faced zealot with thinning hair and a suit manufactured in a fetching shade of rat brown, hailed from Wakefield or Worthington, and was flanked by a petite blonde in a short skirt whose glamour model looks were belied by the mad light in her eyes.

  At first, and if you didn’t listen closely, he might have been talking some sort of pie-in-the-sky sense. Too many people were on the dole; the SDA stood for a return to full employment. Workers in the new Scotland would live in an industrial golden age where they’d build ships and railway engines no one wanted to buy and be employed on sustainable energy schemes. I imagined all those energy producers queuing up at their hamster wheels and I remembered another politician with similar ideas, only it was an agricultural golden age and it began on a date called Year Zero.

  The SDA were against crime and for hanging. Scotland’s kids would get a better education in schools I recognised from Dickens’ novels, where the teachers could hit the pupils as long as it taught them something, even if it was only humility. Then we got to the best bit. Scotland for the Scots. That was when the ears pricked up. When the little old lady in the blue rinse perm began to nod appreciatively, and the three neds along from me frowned as they tried to understand words of more than one syllable. A couple of men in dark suits and dark ties shouted ‘hear, hear’. By now I realised I was probably the nearest thing to a serial killer in the audience or on the stage.

  The blonde girl smilingly unveiled a large poster showing a long queue of men and women in turbans and saris, their skin ranging in colour from black through various shades of brown to what some people call yellow. At the front of the queue a gent in a full-face mask carrying a rocket launcher subtly made the point that immigration wasn’t working and that these people were the Devil on our doorstep. The girl said her name was Julie and in a soft voice she told us that Scotland would soon have lost its ethnic identity and the party’s policy was to send all the two million illegal immigrants in Britain back where they came from and deport any dodgy characters who ended up in court. Anyone who had come here legally would have their papers checked to see if there was a way to make them illegal, whence they could join the queue for the boat. Oh, and anyone born here, but of suspect parentage, would be ‘encouraged’ to go back where they didn’t come from.

  All this I listened to surrounded by a growing red haze. I’ve noticed that the older I get, the shorter the fuse I have, and my fuse was never very long. Eventually I couldn’t take any more and rose to head for the door, where fat boy from the gate stood in my way.

  ‘Anything wrong, sir?’ he asked. He said it politely enough, but I was beyond polite.

  ‘I made a mistake. I thought my friend said the Salvation Army, not the Barmy Army.’ I made to shove past him, but he took my arm in a grip like an industrial vice and steered me towards a door in the side of the hall.

  ‘If you’ll just come this way, sir.’ I saw the other goon in the doorway and he grinned so I knew what was coming. I allowed fat boy to propel me through the door before I shrugged him off. He shut the door behind him and there we were, all cosy, just the three of us in a small anteroom off the main hall. It had a separate door to the outside and I moved towards it.

  ‘Not so fucking fast, pal.’ The tall minder grabbed me by the left arm and swung me round, which was a mistake, because my fist came with it in a vicious right hook that took him low in the gut with enough force to double him over and loosen his grip. He was big, and he thought he was tough, but my fist sank deep and he collapsed with a loud groan. By now, I knew, the guy behind me would be making his move, so I allowed the momentum of the punch to carry me round and away from whatever damage he meant to do me. The rabbit punch he’d aimed for the base of my neck might have paralysed me for life, but it only struck my shoulder a glancing blow. When I used the opening to make a rush for the door, fat boy turned out to be quicker than he looked and stuck out a foot that left me sprawling. A shiny toecap, which fortunately wasn’t steel, connected just below my right eye and as the lights went out I heard the heaven-sent words ‘Not his head!’ which meant I was probably going to live.

  The first time I came to, I was lying on my back with a bright neon street lamp shining in my eyes. A bearded face appeared in front of mine.

  ‘Not your lucky night, is it, Mr Savage?’

  The second time, I woke with the scent of hotel pillow in my nostrils and a vague sensation that my body wasn’t my own. A few minutes of quiet contemplation confirmed it. The Glen Savage of yesterday definitely hadn’t been an old man whose muscles shrieked every time he even thought of moving. My ribs and my back seemed to have fused in one great mass of torment, which might or might not be connected to my shoulders and neck which, in turn, felt as if they’d been dislocated and then put back in place by a heavy-handed horse doctor. My chest was constricted by an all-encompassing band of pain, a bit like one of those things they take your blood pressure with, and when I tried to breathe I thought I was going to implode. I opened my eyes more in hope than expectation, but whatever the question, it was clear inertia was the only answer. I had a vague memory of Gulam putting me in a taxi and a vaguer one of arriving back at the hotel staggering like a drunk. I’d no idea how I got back to my room. Not for the first time I reflected that I must be losing my touch. I didn’t think they’d broken anything, but a few completely numb areas were still a mystery. Once my brain had comprehended all this it took the only sensible course of action and ordered me to be sick. Fortunately, the body didn’t have the wherewithal and I lay there alternately retching and groaning and wishing I was dead.

  When the hotel phone rang I had an inkling it wasn’t for the first time. I was tempted to leave it, but it was close enough to my right hand to bring to my ear with the minimum of movement.

  ‘Savage,’ I croaked.

  ‘There’s been another one.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Friday, 15 June 2007

  The location was near Stirling. The body was male.

  For once, I didn’t see any point in rushing, because I knew the cops wouldn’t let me within a mile of the crime scene this time. Instead, I gave myself the weekend to recover from t
he hammering I’d been given.

  Aelish looked me over as I prepared for bed. ‘You should have gone to hospital for a check-up,’ she said, running her hand over the tenderised flesh of my ribs. ‘You look like De Niro after he does ten rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson inRaging Bull.’ I laughed, but that was a mistake. If this was her idea of Florence Nightingale it was going to kill me. I felt like one of those guys the Romans pulled apart with four horses.

  *

  On the Sunday, I was lying back on the couch in our living room trying to remember the last time I hadn’t been in pain when Aelish wheeled herself in. I’d eventually told her about Shoaz Ahmad’s missing heart and my researches and she decided to dig a little deeper into the ritual side. In the meantime, she switched on the television.

  All the warmth drained out of me the moment I heard the funereal tone of the presenter contrasted with the strident brass of a military band. How could I have forgotten? The images on the screen didn’t seem to connect to any reality of which I was part. Middle-aged men in civilian clothes with medals on their chests marching down a crowd-lined London street. Christ, were we really that old now? I’d been twenty-four when we landed on the Falklands. Twenty-fucking-four. In two months I’d be fifty years old. I reached for the remote, but she snatched it away.

  ‘I want to see this, Glen.’

  ‘Video the fucking thing, then.’

  She stared at me with hurt in her eyes and I’d have given anything to take the words back.

  ‘I’m sorry, love, it’s just . . .’ They’d reached Horse Guards Parade now and I could feel the familiar gritty surface beneath my feet. The veterans formed an enormous empty square alongside servicemen in dress uniforms. Maroon berets. White-topped sailors’ hats. Dark bearskins and scarlet tunics. There were speeches, but I didn’t hear them. I felt Aelish’s hand in mine.

  They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.

  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

  We will remember them.

  I remembered. Discarded Argentine helmets lying like seashells on a beach. The mixture of joy and bewilderment and sadness that is the true meaning of the word victory. The unhelpful awkwardness of a dead human being. Another man’s face when he realised I’d shot him through the heart. And something I hadn’t even realised twenty-five years ago; thinking ‘At least I’m fucking warm’ while I fought chest to chest with an Argentine marine whose knifepoint was about an inch from my right eyeball.

  When a young woman who’d lost her father on theGalahad sang a beautiful, mournful song, Aelish and I held each other close and let our tears mingle.

  Aelish MacDonald saved my life. I came back from the Falklands a bona fide hero and an emotional wreck, haunted by the faces of dead enemies and dead friends alike. A couple of years playing word games with a shrink only replaced self-loathing with self-pity. We met at a time when I was trying to drown myself in forgetting. Other women had tried to help but I’d ended up hurting them, rejecting them. Aelish was different. She recognised something in me worth fighting for. When the whisky demons burrowed their way into my head and screamed out to me to join them in a place called Insanity she was always there to chase them away and whisper words of comfort and love.

  But there are some places where we are always profoundly alone. The human head contains its own torture chamber; a hidden room where the weak and the ruined retreat to seek martyrdom at the hands of their cruellest inquisitor – themselves. I’d been there often, in that hellish pit buried deep beneath the flimsy façade that masqueraded as Glen Savage, and I knew if I did not escape it I would be sucked down to the next level, and the next, until the only exit would be the barrel of the Ballester-Molina .45 calibre automatic I’d smuggled back from Port Stanley. Yet the one thing I learned from my time on the couch is that even in the darkest recesses of the deepest pit, there is another place inside your mind where the light of hope still burns. It could be a moment of childhood joy or the memory of an unexpected smile. For me it has always been Aelish.

  *

  Monday, 18 June 2007

  It was early Monday morning when I drove up to Stirling and the village of Bannockburn, where Dewar had informed me a boy had been found dead on the local playing fields. A long time ago Bannockburn was a separate community, but now it forms the southern fringe of the urban sprawl spreading out from the castle, which crouches over the town like a leopard ready to spring. Until now, Bannockburn had been famous for one reason and one reason only, the battle in 1314 where Robert the Bruce annihilated an English army and sent King Edward the Second homeward to think again, as the old song goes. It was about to be famous for something else.

  I was brought up in a one-horse, one-pub mining village not five miles away on the other side of the Forth so I didn’t have any trouble finding the place. The landmark I sought is probably one of the ugliest buildings in Britain. They built Bannockburn High School in an era when featureless was the height of fashion and concrete the medium of choice. Even that might have been almost acceptable – except for the colour scheme. Someone decided it would be a good idea to paint the whole thing an eye-catching shade of orange.

  As I drove past the school, the playing fields were on my right, identifiable by a couple of sets of rugby posts and the cops still crawling all over the place. I cursed when I saw them. The last thing I needed was another night away from home, but I knew I’d have to find somewhere to stay if they hadn’t gone by the afternoon. In the meantime, I decided to grab some food and kill a few hours before I returned for another look. A local pub just off the main street provided a passable steak pie and a medicinal pint of Guinness and when I was done I browsed through a tourist leaflet looking for something interesting to do. Stirling Castle looked a possibility, but I’d visited it before. My eye was drawn to an advert for the Bannockburn Heritage Centre, less than half a mile away and hosting an exhibition commemorating the battle.

  I parked behind a curious, drum-shaped building just off the main road between the motorway and Stirling. Some fresh air seemed a good idea so I took a walk through the park next to the centre before I visited the museum. Tall lime trees lined the tarmac pathway and led to a broad, grassy meadow dominated by the biggest flagpole I’d ever seen. The pole was crowned by an enormous Saltire and stood at the centre of a partially walled circle. From it, a path led directly north to an equestrian statue set on a twelve-foot stone plinth. I could see the Trossachs in the background and Stirling Castle on its hill. Seven hundred years ago it must have looked just as impregnable to the Scots and English who fought and fell on the earth I walked across. I’m not easily impressed, but I felt something grow inside as I approached that statue. Here was a true warrior. Whatever Robert the Bruce had looked like in life, the sculptor had captured his essence in the massive bronze figure staring grimly towards the enemy from his warhorse. Man and beast radiated the cold determination that is the mark of the soldier before battle. I know that look, because I’ve worn it myself. Bruce carried a short battle-axe ready in his right hand and wore a hooded shirt of tight-linked chain mail. A long sword hung from the belt at his left hip. An iron helm circled by a crown protected his head and he surveyed the field with a look of implacable resolve I imagined could mask the potential for merciless savagery. You didn’t get anywhere in the Middle Ages by being nice.

  I left Robert the Bruce, reflecting that there hadn’t been enough of his kind in Scotland’s history. Then I remembered he’d actually been a French-speaking turncoat whose ancestors had arrived with William the Conqueror and who’d murdered his rival for the throne in cold blood on the altar of a church. Nobody’s perfect.

  I stumped up the £3.50 entrance fee to the museum and was a little disappointed to be directed through a giftshop full of cheap souvenirs and guide books. My mood improved when I reached a gallery dominated by a scarlet and yellow lion rampant banner where a dummy dressed in the armo
ur of a medieval knight threatened visitors with an enormous two-handed sword. Beyond it stood a tableau depicting Bruce’s coronation in 1306 and another showing the drafting of the Declaration of Arbroath, the letter of 1320 asking the Pope’s support for Scottish independence.

  ‘It was signed by fifty of Scotland’s great and the good, but I’m afraid it didn’t have a major impact at the time,’ said a quiet voice from behind. I turned to find a small, dark-haired girl in a National Trust jumper looking up at me. She introduced herself with a smile as Sarah. ‘Robert the Bruce remained excommunicated and the Pope backed Edward. But the wording is wonderful, do you know it? “For, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”’ Her lilting voice reminded me of Aelish and the pride glowed in her bright eyes.

  ‘Did you see the statue?’ she asked. I said I’d been impressed and she smiled. ‘It’s very powerful and meant to be close to the place where the Bruce met Sir Henry de Bohun.’ I’d heard the story. How Bruce, on a horse much smaller than the one he was riding on the statue, had defeated an English knight who’d fancied his chances against him by bashing his head in with an axe. She lowered her voice. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but no one really has any idea where the battle was. It might have been across at the High School or closer to Stirling.’