by Robert White
The boy didn’t move. He cocked his head quizzically “Are you a soldier?”
“Aye, kindae, I am I suppose,” I said.
He flexed a skinny wee bicep and gave me a broad smile. “My dad’s the toughest soldier in the world.”
On what I’d seen, I couldn’t disagree. “He is so, Kaya.”
The boy seemed pleased with my response and shot out of the door.
I peeled off my stinking clothes, and stepped gladly into the piping stream of water.
I returned to the lounge to find Grace, JJ’s twenty-seven-year old wife, cleaning and stitching his hands.
There was no TV blaring away, no bad news or shite celebrity bollocks disturbing the peace of the household. Turkish music played quietly from an old radio left somewhere in the kitchen, and a wonderful concoction of smells wafted around me as garlic, lamb and basil simmered. I felt as if I was warm for the first time in a lifetime and my heart longed for what JJ had.
Wife, family, love.
Grace knelt at his feet, doing an expert job, without a single question as to how her husband had ended up so badly injured. Kaya watched intently showing no signs of squeamishness. His father must have been in agony as Grace passed her needle through his skin without anaesthetic, yet he never flinched.
My stomach flipped again as I was reminded that the people closest to me, the people that I cared for so deeply, were under the surgeon’s knife at best.
JJ jutted his chin toward the upstairs. “Evelyn?” he asked.
Grace didn’t look up from her task.
“Gone…she chose the other path. “
For the first time, I noticed JJ’s wife was Irish, from the south; that beautiful lilting accent.
The Turk’s head dropped. He blew air from his nostrils and nodded in resignation.
Grace finished stitching and began the bandaging of her husband’s hands.
“The moment it came on the news that bastard Maxi was dead,” she said.” She was gone, back to her life, if you can call it that.”
Evelyn had been one of Maxi’s street girls, hooked on hard drugs, selling herself outside Piccadilly for a pittance, for her next ten-bag.
JJ had persuaded her to tell us the layout of Maxi’s club and in return he and Grace would help Evelyn get straight.
As it turned out, we never got to use the intel, and now Evelyn was probably in the back of some car earning her next fix. Sometimes, in a heartbeat, life can turn from bliss to bollocks eh?
JJ caught my eye. His glance was as cold and dark as hell itself. “At least she can’t go back to that evil man, Maxi eh? I take my knife and gut him like a fish.”
Not for the first time, I was glad JJ Yakim was on my side.
Grace stood, smoothed down her clothes and looked at me. Actually it was less of a look, more an examination. It was as if she’d done what was needed, and now she could take a glance at her company. How I’d initially missed her accent was beyond me, for as she took me to pieces with her eyes, the voice was pure blarney.
No more than five foot four in bare feet, trim as a gymnast, she was pretty as a picture and hard as nails. It took me a moment before it came to me. The lack of questions, the no-nonsense repairs to her husband, the calm way with her. Our Grace was from travelling stock.
If young Kaya took after both his parents he’d be a man to avoid in a fight when he was older, that was for sure.
“Yer a soldier so?” she said, her face softening into a smile.
“Was.”
“Yer a handsome man there, Desmond, for a squaddie I mean, don’t yer think that there, JJ? He’s a good-looking fella eh? For his age like?”
JJ caught my increasingly uncomfortable gaze. He knew his wife.
“Don’t show our guest up with your talk, Grace.”
Her smile grew into a beam and she locked her sparkling green eyes with mine
“You brought JJ home, Desmond. You brought my man back with no more than a scratch or two, an’ I’ll be thanking you for that.”
I shrugged, not knowing what to say.
“Let’s eat,” she said. “I’ve made Turkish lamb tagine…you’ll like it.”
She was right.
Queen Elizabeth’s was in Selly Oak, close to Birmingham University. A brand new unit was in the process of being built nearby and it loomed large in the distance as we drove around the old hospital’s carpark looking for a space. By the time we located one, it was just before midnight. For obvious reasons, the areas containing our injured servicemen and women had its own security. After all, it wouldn’t do for some nutter with a suicide vest to wander into the place and finish the job they’d started in Iraq or Afghanistan, would it?
As we pushed open the main doors two burly RAF MP’s eyed us with suspicion, and I instantly clocked two more further along the corridor that led to the wards themselves.
The reception area was little different to any other hospital. Lines of orange plastic chairs were screwed to the floor, and a drinks machine was wedged in next to its snack-dispensing cousin on the wall behind them. Two low tables covered with old newspapers and magazines completed the picture.
Off to my left, sitting bolt upright behind a high desk, was an old guy with a grey crew and a drinker’s nose. Peering over half-moon glasses, he sported a neatly trimmed moustache which matched his hair. It twitched as he muttered quietly to himself, obviously irritated by our presence, and the late hour.
As I got closer, I could see that the guy’s clothes were as shipshape as his facial hair. He was a civvy, the epaulettes on his tunic announcing the private security firm he worked for, but he’d been in the job, no danger. He had the look of my old Regimental Sergeant Major who had made my life such a misery when I was a young squaddie in training. The guy was well past retirement age, one of those blokes determined to work till they dropped.
Getting closer, I spotted his medal ribbons stitched onto his tunic. Malaya, Aden and Ireland. He had a small tattoo that announced his blood group on the inside of his left wrist. The old boy had done a bit, that was for sure.
When he spoke, he had the deep low London growl of a heavy smoker. “It’s too late for a visit, son,” he said, sharply.
I’d managed to keep my nerves in check all the way to Birmingham, but the moment I looked into the old soldier’s watery eyes, my stomach started again. I asked the question.
“I know that, sir. We’re just looking for an update on a couple of colleagues of ours.”
He studied me briefly before tapping at his computer.
“Names?” he said.
“Fuller” I said. “Richard Fuller… and Lauren…Lauren North.”
He tapped some more.
“No one here by that name, son.”
JJ stepped in, his short temper instantly up. “Look again, old man, they are here, we know this.”
The old boy was unimpressed by JJ’s aggressive attitude. He stared straight into the Turk’s eyes.
“Relatives, are we?”
JJ turned away and cursed in his native language. We all got the message, including the two meat-head MP’s who were making their way over.
The old soldier raised a hand in their direction and shook his head. He was perfectly capable of handling this one.
He stood, pulled down the hem of his tunic and switched off his computer. “That’s me for the day,” he said. “Now, you two lads look like smokers to me, why don’t you join me for a fag outside?”
JJ reluctantly nodded and we shuffled out of the door feeling pretty dejected.
The night sky had turned clear, and frost formed on the windscreens of the parked cars still dotted around the hospital. I stepped out onto the old tiled pavement, pulling my collar up against the chill and fumbling for my pipe as I walked. JJ stayed by the door, leaning against the wall one-footed. Dressed in tight faded jeans, baseball boots and leather jacket, with his gelled hair scraped behind his ears, he wouldn’t have looked out of place in some American movie from the
Fifties.
“I don’t like this, old man,” he muttered, finding his lighter.
“Let’s just wait a minute, pal,” I said.
We didn’t have a minute to wait.
The guy strode from the door, ramrod straight. He’d added a very expensive looking Crombie overcoat covering his tunic, and finished the look with a black trilby. He pulled a pack of Benson’s from his pocket, slipped one between his pale thin lips and lit it with a gold Dunhill that cost more than our BMW.
His voice was pure London gravel. “Before we go any further, boys…I’ll put you out of your misery…Fuller and North are alive.”
I considered kissing the old fucker.
He pointed. “Now…you, and I take it you are Cogan?
I nodded.
“You work for the Firm.”
“Well, not exactly…”
“Don’t argue…I think it appropriate not to fuck me about. In addition to being on your side, I’ve seen it all, and done it twice, soldier... or should I say, trooper?”
I nodded. Fair enough.
He took a deep drag. “As soon as your two unfortunate colleagues were flown in here tonight, I got the call. It’s about all they use me for these days…the Firm that is… keeping friends and relatives happy. You never quite retire from the British Secret Service, see?”
He stubbed his fag under his brogue and went to light a second.
“Now… assuming, the James Dean lookalike leaning on the wall behind me isn’t about to cut my throat…?”
The old boy turned to JJ, gave him a grin and offered his hand.
“Turkish Special Forces I believe? Yakim, isn’t it?”
The Turk reluctantly took the old guy’s hand.
“I am, most definitely, on your side, son,” he said reassuringly.
JJ managed a smile and the ice was broken.
We huddled under the ageing hospital canopy and chain-smoked. It turned out Terry, or Tel to his mates, had served twenty-two years as a Royal Marine Commando, He did his first job for the Firm a month after he allegedly retired and was still in the swim at a spritely sixty-nine.
His deep, broad Cockney accent, made him sound like an old East End gangster.
“You lads must be very fuckin’ important to old Cartwright, or you wouldn’t be here on this little mission of mercy.”
JJ took a sharp drag.
“What you mean, Tel?”
“Well…what I mean is…If you weren’t such VIP’s, the guys that jumped from the Medevac, the ones that picked your pals up from whatever job you were doing, would have been carrying SLP’s rather than syringes, and you’d all be in the same body bags as the rest of the poor sods you left behind.”
He was right of course. We were off guard at the time the chopper arrived, and if the Firm had wanted everything cleaned up all nice and bonny, me an’ JJ would have been expertly double-tapped to the head. Rick and Lauren would have been left to bleed out in the snow, and the Firm’s bean counters would have simply stepped over our corpses to take stock of the horseflesh.
That said, as impressed as I was with Terry’s knowledge of the workings of the British Secret Service, I still needed more info on Rick and Lauren. I stuffed my pipe into my pocket and felt for the car keys.
“Well if we can’t see them tonight, pal, can you give us some kindae idea when we can get a visit? And what condition they’re in?”
Terry turned down the corners of his mouth. “You like a drink?”
I nodded.
He pointed toward the car park. “I’ll take you to the man who knows.”
As we walked over to the Beamer, the old boy shook his head and made some derogatory comment about the car and how we looked more like drug dealers than soldiers. However, he settled himself into the front seat right enough, lit another Benson without asking the question, and began directing us out of Selly Oak, and toward Cannock, cool as the proverbial.
Tel was taking us to a pub called The Lamb and Packet. Apparently, the consultant surgeon who had operated on Rick and Lauren used the place as digs when in the Midlands. The doc was allegedly very keen on his tipple, and equally enamoured with the landlady of the establishment, a reported beauty by the name of Beyza.
JJ sat up and took notice the moment the woman’s name was mentioned.
“She is Turkish?” he asked.
Tel turned and gave JJ a cheeky wink.
“Skin like a princess, my friend.”
JJ was impressed. “You know this name Beyza? You know what it means?”
“The pale one,” Tel answered.
JJ sat back in his seat, pulled his knife from his back pocket and ran it between his bandaged fingers like an old gambler would a dollar.
“The whitest child,” he said absently.
Tel turned his head and faced the road.
“She’s that alright…Come on, Jock, get your foot down, I don’t like working after midnight, it interferes with my valuable drinking time.”
The Lamb was apparently notorious in medical circles for staying open until the wee small hours. This enabled member of the emergency services to seek solace in a pint after their shift. The doc would be there. Tel was sure of it.
As we pulled up outside the Thirties-built, yellow-tiled corner boozer, my heart sank. It was in darkness.
Tel was undeterred and set off at a marching pace around the back. The old Marine leaned into the door and we were instantly bathed in light and warmth. The place wasn’t just open, it was bouncing.
The old boy pushed his way through to the crowded bar as ACDC’s Whole Lotta Rosie blasted out from unseen speakers. There were dozens of uniforms dotted about. Paramedics, nurses, cops, lots of blue and green. This was a place to relieve your stress, a place to feel at home.
I squeezed in beside the old boy.
“What yer havin’ then, Tel?”
He removed his hat. “Well as you’re paying, I’ll have a pint of Bombardier and a Ballantyne’s on the side, son.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Where’s the doc?”
He pointed. “With the beauty.”
Beyza was indeed pale, her skin was in total contrast to her raven hair and large almond eyes. One look at her and you could understand why any man would travel twenty miles out of town to stay in her rather tired backstreet boozer.
She was in deep conversation with a curly-haired guy in his thirties who just had to be the doc. Crisp white shirt, tweed jacket, deffo the upper-class medical type.
I turned to Tel. “That him?”
He nodded and pushed past me. “Get the beers in, Jock. I’ll get you an introduction.”
I stopped just short of slapping the old git. Instead, I gave our drinks order to a young barmaid with enough facial piercings to start a jeweller’s, and watched Tel saunter over to Beyza and the good doctor.
There was some finger pointing in our direction and the doc looked a little deflated. We were, of course, interfering with his precious time off, and probably more importantly, his window of opportunity with the beautiful Beyza.
I’d have been pissed too, believe me.
Finally, Tel waved us over.
ACDC had given way to Whitesnake as I stumbled across the bar doing my best not to spill my Guinness.
The second I got to the doctor, Tel was off to enjoy his drinks, his job done.
JJ squeezed in alongside me. The doc looked us both up and down before raising his glass. Pissed as the loudest fart in Birmingham, he boomed,
“To the British Secret Service.”
Lauren North’s Story:
One hundred and eight stitches to repair my leg and thirty-seven to my abdomen.
The curly headed Irish doctor that had ‘fixed me’ as he put it, was confident that my abdominal injuries caused by Dougie McGinnis’s final bullet, were ‘minor’ and would ‘sort themselves out’.
Easy for him to say…my gut was agony, the merest sideways movement in my bed sent lightning bolts of pain through me, and I
began to dread toilet visits.
My leg was easier to deal with as I couldn’t feel most of it, but according to the most flirtatious doctor I’d had the misfortune to meet since my thankfully ex-husband, this was ‘more of a worry’.
They’d managed to get my renal system up and running to somewhere close to ninety percent after my kidneys failed, and I was still drinking my own bodyweight in bottled water to keep the nurses happy.
Rick visited me two or three times a day in his wheelchair.
He didn’t care for my Ironside jokes and failed spectacularly to remember our kiss.
I, however, had not.
He was having issues with both his hip and just like me, his intestines. The flexor area where the round had shattered against his pelvic bone was giving him untold grief. However, just like my good self, this was nothing compared to the pain in his abdomen. Unfortunately, the damage to Rick’s intestines had warranted the fitting of a colostomy bag. The flirty doctor had assured him that this was a temporary measure, but Rick looked so ashamed of it, I thought he may tear it out.
By the end of week seven, we were both physically on the mend. Rick moved us to a private clinic on the outskirts of Farnborough to finish our recuperation. He had a yearning for Egyptian cotton sheets and lobster bisque. The place was a palace in all but name.
I’d like to have said I was as good as new, but I’d have been lying. Yes, my stitches were out, and I was walking short distances with the aid of a stick, but nothing prepares you for capture, and for the first time in my life, I understood how sometimes, for some prisoners, survival becomes harder than the alternative.
As I’d dangled by my wrists, slowly bleeding to death in that barn, Seamus and Dougie lewdly fondling my naked body, I almost begged for the end.
There were times when I thought |I would be raped repeatedly; times when the pain was just too much.
If I’m being truly honest with you, some days in rehab, I felt so broken inside, that nothing would ever fix me.