Phone

by Will Self

  Trooper? TROOPER CARR (tipsily enthusiastic): Y-You qu-question

  them, sir – interrogate them to see if they’ve any operationally

  significant intel’ … sir. COLONEL THOMAS: That’s right – you

  question them, which is what Captain Cambell and his colleagues

  in the int’ cell should be doing, not this … this … bullshit. Now,

  you men: I know you’re all shaken up by what happened today –

  Bessie’s a good lad and one of our own. He’s our first casualty – but

  almost certainly won’t be our last. Think of those poor bastards

  who were brought down in the Herc’ by all means, but don’t get

  any ideas about doing a Beharry – tinware only gets handed out

  once in a blue moon. Okay (he raises his voice), fun’s over, lads –

  off you fuck to beddy-byes. (Gawain stands watching the men’s

  fag-ends as they firefly across the compound towards the squadron

  lines. He turns back and, approaching the metal door of the TeeDeeEff,

  knocks on it. It’s opened immediately by CAPTAIN

  CAMBELL, a tall man in his early thirties with a flat pie-dish of a

  freckled face, split-ends to his red hair and dandruff on his collar.

  From behind him come the sounds and smells of a number of distressed

  humans in a confined space: muttering, sobbing, keening

  and stinking. Gawain tries to speak, but can’t – he just stands there

  because everything’s … lagging.) CAPTAIN CAMBELL: All right,

  Boss – everything all right? Any news from Main? COLONEL

  THOMAS: Ah, yeah – same as, Dave: detainees’ll have to be down

  to Shaibah asap tomorrow – which is a pain, given the rugger’s due

  to kick off. Convoy’ll need to be fairly hefty – couple of aypeesees

  for the detainees, at least four Wimmiks for Force Protection. You

  can go along if you like – get a decent shower, kip in a proper

  bed for a night. Those pod-thingies have all mod cons and a hard

  cover. CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Thanks, Boss – who knows, I might

  have some stuff to give to the slime at Main as well. COLONEL

  THOMAS: You did the course at Chicksands, didn’t you, Dave?

  CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Yes, sir, that’s right. COLONEL THOMAS:

  Interrogation – that sorta thing? CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Teaqueue,

  sir. COLONEL THOMAS: Tea queue? CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Tactical

  questioning, sir – designed to get them singing, so we can find

  out who’s Jam, who’s Badr, who’s in it just for the sheer badness.

  COLONEL THOMAS: So that’s why you formed a choir, is it – so they

  could sing the truth? CAPTAIN CAMBELL (flicking sweat-damp

  hair from his shadowed eyes): Well, that’s really just the warm-up,

  Boss – the singing. Gotta get them sorta … in tune. Then Myerson

  brings ’em through to me and Marty for the proper do. COLONEL

  THOMAS: The proper do, eh … I hope there’s nothing iffy going

  on here, Dave? CAPTAIN CAMBELL (smiling): By the book, Boss,

  by the book. COLONEL THOMAS: All right, then – better let me

  have a butcher’s … (CAPTAIN CAMBELL swings the door open

  with more hideous screeching, and admits COLONEL THOMAS to

  the grim little vestibule. He unlocks a large padlock and opens

  the cell door. The odour of piss, sweat and fear is palpable – but

  it’s dark, and difficult to make out anything beyond bulbous

  shapes and lumpy shadows.) COLONEL THOMAS: How many of

  these blokes are there, Dave? CAPTAIN CAMBELL (reading from

  a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard he bought for himself at

  the Ryman’s in York): Ibrahim Gattan Hassan al-Ismaeeli, seven-seven-four,

  Kadhim Abbas Latifah al-Bendali, seven-seven-five,

  Hussein al-Almari Gibarian, seven-seven-six, Abdul Sayyid al-Lami,

  seven-seven-seven, Mahdi Ahmed al-Rashid Hameedawi,

  seven-seven-eight, Amir Ali al-Jabbar, seven-seven-nine, Mahdi

  Mohammed al-Baghri Noor, seven-eighty. All detainees present

  and correct, sir. COLONEL THOMAS (wiping his face with the scrap

  of camouflage netting he uses as a cravat): That’s seven, Dave –

  minus the women and kids we scooped up, eight. Where’s the

  eighth? CAPTAIN CAMBELL: He’s in the rap, Boss – touch of heat

  exhaustion. COLONEL THOMAS: I’m not bloody surprised – it’s hot

  as hell in here. (Having gained his night-sight, he walks the length

  of the detainees, who sit or kneel on the floor, hands plasti-cuffed

  behind their backs. They’ve been hooded with pillow slips, and

  the loose cloth transforms them into cowering Elephant Men.)

  Now, Dave, your back-up ’terp … CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Marty?

  COLONEL THOMAS: Up to the job, is he? CAPTAIN CAMBELL

  (thinking about his girlfriend, who he’d left on a bench outside

  the Jorvik Centre while he went to buy the clipboard): We-ell, he’s

  all right, Boss – but you know the drill: he’s just a stab so I gotta

  brace him a bit. Keeps saying he’d rather be out with his whippets.

  COLONEL THOMAS: Whippets? CAPTAIN CAMBELL (he knows

  his sexual technique isn’t that good – she flinches when he touches

  her): Yeah, he’s got a kennel outside Uttoxeter, Boss – but he did six

  months at Aldershot with some Iraqi exile. One-to-one conversational

  Arabic. COLONEL THOMAS: So, enough to understand what’s

  going on – and, more importantly: make them understand him?

  CAPTAIN CAMBELL (who’s been bored rigid by MAJOR MCADIE):

  Yeah, well enough – frankly I sometimes wish I couldn’t understand

  him, he’s always banging on about scran. COLONEL THOMAS:

  Explain, Cambell? CAPTAIN CAMBELL (she was narked when he

  came back, but he told her: Mad, I know – but I’ll get out there

  and I’ll have to proff everything: pillowslips for hoods, Bill Haynes’s

  boom-box so’s to give ’em the mega-mega white noise – and a

  clipboard’s fucking essential if you’re gonna run an improvised-bloody-torture

  chamber): Marty went up to Baggers last week,

  Boss – some ’terp refresher thing the Yanks organised. Anyway,

  he got to eat in their deefac, came back banging on about the delights

  therein. COLONEL THOMAS: Enlighten me further, Captain

  Cambell. CAPTAIN CAMBELL: ‘Parently YouEss government makes

  a pledge to its servicemen and women – not to give them the right

  equipment for the job, that’s a given, but to supply them with surf-and-turf

  every Friday evening. COLONEL THOMAS: Every Friday

  evening? CAPTAIN CAMBELL: That’s right, fresh-bloody-lobster –

  not frozen. And fresh-bloody-steak – or crayfish tail at the very

  least. Had some of that myself once, on hols in Orlando – yabba

  they call it, and they yabba-dabba-do get their grub in, come what

  may. You can be plotted up in Falujah, Boss, warming your backside

  on deeyou ordinance and they’ll get it to you – together with a

  couple of cans of soda –. COLONEL THOMAS: Soda? CAPTAIN

  CAMBELL: Coke, Pepsi – Doctor Pepper or Tab. You don’t get a

  choice, but it really is the real thing – not some Freedom Cola

  bullshit – and you always get your two cans, that’s their two-can

  rule, Boss. COLONEL THOMAS: Extraordinary – ‘specially when

  you consider the logistics. CAPTAIN CAMBELL (manipula
ting the

  buttons of a cheap calculator he bought at the same time as the

  clipboard and has clipped to it – she wouldn’t give him a blow-job

  before he went overseas, which was surely the whole point of going

  to war): I have, Boss – look, it’s actually two cans per meal, which

  makes six every day. They’ve got what? Somewhere between a

  hundred and thirty and a hundred and fifty thousand combat

  troops in theatre – same numbers of support. Round it down to

  two-fifty kay and that makes one and a half million cans being

  brought in for the occupying forces every single day. COLONEL

  THOMAS: It’s impressive, certainly – but then you don’t get to be

  the world’s only super-power without a certain amount of … fizz.

  (Both men laugh – COLONEL THOMAS stops first: he’s looking at

  the detainees’ plasti-cuffed hands, the complicated meshing of their

  blue and bloodless fingers. He sees the detainees’ hands amputated

  and armoured – sees them fumbling in two long files along the

  sandy bed of the Shatt al-Arab, trails of bubbles purling from their

  knuckles up to the silvery surface.) But Marty – he can handle this,

  can he, Dave? CAPTAIN CAMBELL: No need to worry, Boss – he

  did the same course as me. Knows the drill: go in clean and act just

  a little bit … dirty. COLONEL THOMAS: Well, he’s not one of us,

  Dave – he’s not a Ram, and, frankly, I find him to be a bit of an

  arrogant buffoon. CAPTAIN CAMBELL: No doubt about it, Boss –

  but for now he’s our arrogant buffoon, and he’s well integrated

  into the hum’ int’ team –. THE CHOIR: Hum’ int’, hum’ int’, hum’

  int’! THE METAL DOOR: Scrrrreeeaaalllarrrk! MAJOR MCADIE

  (enters carrying a BOOM BOX – he’s a paunchy man in his fifties,

  with male-pattern baldness): Boss – Dave. THE BOOM BOX: Got

  me lookin’ so crazy like now, your touch, Got me lookin’ … COLONEL

  THOMAS: Is that Bill’s boom box thingie? MAJOR MCADIE:

  That’s right, Boss – I see you’ve met the choir. (He walks along the

  line of cowering Iraqi detainees, stooping to yank each pair of

  plasti-cuffed hands in turn.) THE CHOIR: Ooh! Aah! Eek! Arr!

  Incomprehensible Arabic oath! Fuck you! Aah! MAJOR MCADIE:

  Hear that? If I could just get them to be a bit more bloody consistent,

  I could sorta … play ’em – like an instrument, sorta human

  synthesiser-type-thing. THE BOOM BOX: … Your love’s got me

  lookin’ so –. COLONEL THOMAS: That one – he said fuck off, take

  his hood off, McAdie. MAJOR MCADIE: Ooh, no, Boss – no can

  do. COLONEL THOMAS: Why the fuck not? CAPTAIN CAMBELL:

  Marty’s right, Boss – proper teaqueue requires following exactly the

  same cycle for all the suspects –. COLONEL THOMAS: Let me stop

  you right there, Dave – you called these men suspects. Strictly

  speaking, since we’ll be handing them over to their own legitimately

  elected authorities soon enough, and won’t be charging them ourselves,

  is it right to even think of them as suspects? MAJOR MCADIE:

  Well, Boss, saving your feeling for the finer points, we definitely

  suspect one of these rag ‘eads of shooting Trooper Bessemer – and

  either him, or one of his greasy little pals of slotting Asif –. CAPTAIN

  CAMBELL: And we happened to like Asif – liked him a great fucking

  deal! (He moves in on the detainees and shouts at their shapeless

  heads.) A! Great! Fucking! Deal! THE BOOM BOX: Uh-oh, uh-oh,

  uh-oh, oh no … COLONEL THOMAS: Gentlemen, would you mind

  stepping outside for a moment, please? (The three British officers

  retreat from the darkened chamber with its hooded occupants

  stinking of sweat, piss and fear. In the vestibule MAJOR MCADIE

  knocks on the door opposite, and they’re admitted by a dark haired

  and overweight Lance-Corporal wearing a khaki T-shirt. This

  chamber isn’t as large as the one the detainees are being held in.

  Extension cables worm in through the crudely barred window-openings,

  piping juice to orange-blooming light bulbs. A pair of

  mismatched tables sit in the middle of the concrete floor – one

  trestle, the other an ancient gate-leg. On them are a digital recorder,

  an IRON BAR, a hank of electrical cabling, a NOKIA mobile phone, a

  canvas bag, some mineral-water bottles and a beach-bloated copy

  of HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS.) MAJOR

  MCADIE: Everything all right, Lance? LANCE-CORPORAL MYERSON:

  Boss … (seeing the SeeOh, and saluting smartly) … Sir!

  COLONEL THOMAS: Were you abbreviating his rank, Marty, or

  calling him by his Christian name? CAPTAIN CAMBELL: We-ell,

  it’s a bit of a laugh, really, Myerson’s Christian name actually being

  Lance – unusual one for this day and age. What was the deal with

  your old people? LANCE-CORPORAL MYERSON: Dunno, sir – me

  da’ passed away when I was little, and me mam thinks it might’ve

  been a family thing on his side, but she isn’t sure. COLONEL

  THOMAS: I tell you one thing that’s for sure, Myerson. LANCE-CORPORAL

  MYERSON: What’s that, sir? COLONEL THOMAS:

  You haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of further promotion.

  LANCE-CORPORAL MYERSON (crestfallen): Why’s that, sir?

  COLONEL THOMAS: Because as things stand you’re almost certainly

  the only Lance Lance in the entire bloody army – an army which,

  thanks to the perfidy of our political masters, is called upon to do

  more and more with less and less. So, don’t imagine I’d dare to

  degrade such a precious asset as you, Myerson, especially in a conflict

  situation. THE OFFICERS: Ha, ha, ha, ha! LANCE-CORPORAL

  MYERSON (his submissive expression a mask behind which his true

  features are twisted with impotent rage): If you say so, sir. THE

  BOOM BOX: Hisssssssshhhhhhh … COLONEL THOMAS (who was

  bullied quite badly at all his schools, and especially savagely when

  he was sent back to the YouKay to board. A variety of epithets

  were used to denigrate him, although, a lack of imagination being

  characteristic of tormentors, they all sooner or later settled on John

  Thomas, Prick Thomas, Cock Thomas, Dick Thomas or abbreviations

  thereof: Prick, Cock, Dick – dirty-fucking Dick … cummere.

  Wanna game of slaps? Beat me at slaps like a man, an’ I’ll stop calling

  you dirty-fucking Dick, Dick): Can’t you turn that bloody thing off?

  CAPTAIN CAMBELL (depressing the relevant key): Sorry ‘bout that,

  Boss – loud noise, white noise … all part of the conditioning.

  COLONEL THOMAS: Conditioning, eh – whassat, then? CAPTAIN

  CAMBELL (leaning back against the table with THE IRON BAR on

  it, crossing his arms and speaking with added pedantry): All part of

  maintaining the shock of capture, Boss, which is our best chance

  of getting these murdering tossers to cough up the goods. See, your

  Arab feels terrible shame when he’s been nabbed – reflects poorly

  on his manliness, his fitness as a soldier of Allah. Makes him feel

  sorta useless … weak –. COLONEL THOMAS: Impotent. CAPTAIN

  CAMBELL: That’s the whatsit – impotent. Well, we build on that

  impo
tence, Boss – that and the detainee’s fear, ‘cause he hasn’t a clue

  what we’re gonna do with him. For all he knows, we’re worse than

  Saddam’s goons – take a chainsaw to a bloke’s nuts without so much

  as a by-your-leave. (THE IRON BAR leaps from the table as CAPTAIN

  CAMBELL speaks, and jigs about in mid-air, giving the comical

  impression it’s conducting him.) THE IRON BAR: Confessiamus!

  CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Anyway, important thing is to keep ’em confused

  – disoriented: cuff ’em, hood ’em, crank up the mega-mega

  white noise, don’t let ’em sleep – keep ’em on their toes with a sorta

  non-stop peetee kinda thing. Lads’ve been taking it in turns at that

  end of the cycle – then Marty and me, we make our entrance with

  our usual flair. MAJOR MCADIE: Go in clean and hard, Boss – give

  ’em a good old harshing. Sorta spit-shower you’ll remember from

  the Academy. COLONEL THOMAS (who is once more recalling the

  taste of SeeEssEmm Rowley’s spittle at oh-seven-hundred hours on

  a chilly February morning as the drill inspector boiled over into his

  open mouth: You fucking ghastly little bum-boy! You nasty, perverted,

  wanking Welsh git! You blond-haired nancy – you’ll never have what it

  takes to be an officer in Her Majesty’s armed forces! Why? ‘Cause you’re

  too busy tossing yerself off and THINKING ABOUT ALL THE

  COCK YOU’D LIKE TO SUCK!): Hmm, I hardly think that’s

  likely to intimidate these men that much, Dave – whoever they may

  be, they’ll all’ve suffered under Saddam, and most likely lost close

  relatives to the regime – in the war with Iran, in ninety-one and

  after. Anyway, the important thing is you’re sure of your lines.

  μCADIE and CAMBELL: Boss? COLONEL THOMAS: I don’t want

  you acting like a couple of clowns in there – the men from Bessemer’s

  squadron were hanging around outside. CAPTAIN CAMBELL:

  They’re understandably upset, Boss, Bessemer was a popular member

  of the team –. COLONEL THOMAS: Was? He isn’t dead, Dave.

  CAPTAIN CAMBELL: Slip of the tongue, Boss. COLONEL THOMAS:

  Well, see you don’t slip up again, ‘specially in front of the men –

  what’s that phone doing here? NOKIA THREE-THREE-ONE-OH

  (with Wireless Access Protocol): Diddle-ooh-doo, diddle-ooh-doo,

  diddle-ooh-doo-dooo! MAJOR MCADIE (picking up the phone and