by John Harvey
“You look knackered,” Anderson said. “Tired out. Why don’t you get your head down? Get a bit of sleep while you can.”
When she opened her eyes, not so many minutes later, he was sitting cross-legged at the far side of the tent, rifle close beside him, painstakingly cleaning his knife.
***
Not wanting to stand around like a spare part, waiting, Kiley had walked into the city, found a halfway-decent place for breakfast, and settled down to a bacon cob with brown sauce and a mug of serious tea and tried to concentrate on his book. No such luck. Jennie had rung him earlier on his mobile and he’d hesitated before giving her a truncated version of what little they knew, what they surmised.
“Don’t say anything to his mother,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“What d’you take me for?”
“I’ll call you if I know anything more definite.”
“You promise?”
Kiley promised. Breakfast over, he wandered around the city centre. The square in front of the council building was going through some kind of makeover; maybe they were turning it into a car park. The pavements were busy with early shoppers, people hurrying, late, to work, the occasional drinker with his can of cider clutched tight. He walked up the hill towards the Theatre Royal. Duncan Preston in To Kill a Mockingbird. All next week, The Rocky Horror Show. Big-Time American Wrestling at the Royal Concert Hall. He was halfway down King Street, heading back towards the square, when his mobile rang. It was Resnick. They’d found something.
There was an OS map open on the table when Kiley arrived, the blurred image of a van frozen on the computer screen. Nighttime. Overhead lights reflected in the road surface. There were several other officers in the room.
“Two sightings of the possible van,” Resnick said.
One of the officers, dark hair, dandruff on his shoulders, set the CCTV footage in motion.
“The first here, junction 27 of the M1, leaving the motorway and heading east towards the A608. And then here-see the time code-not so many minutes later, at the roundabout where it joins the 611. Turning south.”
“Back towards the city?” Kiley said, surprised.
“Could be,” Resnick said, “but for my money, more likely heading here. Annesley Forest.” He was pointing at a patch of green covering almost two squares of the map.
“Why there?”
“Couple of years back, just north of here, Annesley Woodhouse, this man was found dead outside his home, ex-miner, lacerations to the head and upper body, crossbow found close-by.”
“Robin bloody Hood,” someone remarked.
“According to what we heard,” Resnick continued, “there’d been one heck of a row between the dead man and a neighbour, all harking back to the miners’ strike, ‘eighty-four. When we went to talk to the neighbour, of course he’d scarpered, gone to ground right there.” Resnick pointed again. “Two and a half kilometres of woodland. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, a second man, wanted for turning a shotgun on his own daughter, went missing in the same area. Bloody nightmare. We had extra personnel drafted in from all over, round five hundred all told. Dog teams, helicopters, everything. If that’s where Anderson ’s gone, he could stay holed up for weeks.”
“But we don’t know for sure,” Kiley said
“We know next to bugger all,” one of the officers said.
Resnick silenced him with a look. “There’s forest all around,” he said, “not just this patch here. A lot of it, though, is criss-crossed with trails, paths going right through. Sherwood Forest, especially, up by the Major Oak, even at this time of the year it’s pretty busy with visitors. But this is different. Quiet.”
Looking at the map, Kiley nodded. “How sure are we about the van?” he said.
“Traced the number plate. Citroen Berlingo. Rented from a place in north London -Edgware-two days ago. Name of Terence Alderman. Alderman, Anderson, TA, close enough. Paid in cash.”
“If he’s gone into the woods…” Kiley began.
“Then he’ll have likely dumped the van. We’ve got people out looking now. Until that turns up, or we get reports of a sighting, it’s still pretty much conjecture. And, as far as we know, nobody’s been harmed.”
“I doubt if he’s taken them for their own good.”
“Even so. I need a little more before I can order up a major search. Request one, at least.”
By which time, Kiley thought, what they were fearing, but not yet saying, could already have happened.
“I thought I might take a ride out that way,” Resnick said. “Want to come along?”
***
While Rebecca watched, Anderson had talked both children into a game of hide and seek, warning them not to stray too far. Billie giggled from the most obvious hiding places, waving her arms, as if the point of the game was to be found. Once, Keiron skinnied down inside a hollow oak and stayed there so silent that his father, fearing maybe he’d run off, had called his name in anger and the boy had only shown himself reluctantly, scared of a telling-off or worse.
They picked at the corned beef, ate biscuits and cold beans, drank the sweet syrupy peach juice straight from the cans.
“We should have done this more often,” Anderson said.
“Done what?” said Rebecca sharply.
“Gone camping,” he said and laughed.
Sitting on the ground outside the tent, he showed his son how to strip down the rifle and reassemble it again.
“Can we go after some rabbits?” Keiron asked.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Will we still be here tomorrow?”
He left the question unanswered.
Just out of sight, beyond some trees, Anderson had dug a latrine. Walking back, Rebecca was aware of him watching her, the movement of her body inside her clothes.
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.
“Seeing?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No.”
“No man then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I’m just not.”
“You should.”
She went on past him and into the tent.
***
The day was sealed in with grey. Low hedgerows and mudded tracks and the occasional ploughed field. Why was it, Kiley asked himself, they didn’t seem to plough fields anymore, ploughed and left bare? Londoner that he was, he could swear that was what he remembered, travelling north to visit relations in Bucks. Mile after mile of ploughed fields. That rackety little train that stopped everywhere. What was it? Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley, Abbots Langley, Berkhamstead, Tring? His uncle, red-faced and-now, he thought, looking back-unreal, waiting outside the station at Leighton Buzzard, to take them home in a Rover that rattled more than the carriages of the train.
Resnick had opted to drive, the two of them up front as they made a careful circuit: Newstead, Papplewick pumping station, Ravenshead, south of Mansfield and back again, the A611 straight as a die from the corner of Cauldwell Wood, across Cox Moor to Robin Hood’s Hill and the supposed site of Robin Hood’s Cave. Then back down towards the forest, the trees at first bordering both sides of the road and then running thickly to the left.
“Do you ever miss it?” Resnick asked, out of nowhere.
It took Kiley a moment to respond. “Playing?”
A grunt he took to mean yes. What answer did he want? “Sometimes,” Kiley said. “Once in a while.”
“Like when?”
Kiley smiled. “Most Saturday afternoons.”
“You don’t play at all?”
“Not for years. Helped a friend coach some kids for a while, that was all.”
Resnick eased down on the brake and pulled out to pass an elderly man on a bicycle, raincoat flapping in the wind, cloth cap pulled down, bottoms of his trousers tied up with string.
“Up and down this road, I shouldn’t wonder,” Resnick said, “since nineteen fifty-three or thereabouts.�
��
Kiley smiled. “How about you?” he said. “County. You still go?”
“For my sins.”
“Perhaps we’ll catch a game sometime?”
“Perhaps.”
Resnick’s phone rang and he answered, slowing to the side of the road. “We’ve found the van,” he said, breaking the connection. “Aldercar Wood. No more than a mile from here. Off the main road to the left.”
It had been driven beyond the end of the track and into some trees, covered over with bracken, the inside stripped clear. The main area of forest was clearly visible across two fields, stretching north and west.
“Looks like your surmise was correct,” Kiley said.
Resnick nodded. “Looks like.”
***
Anderson had gone silent, drawn back into himself. No more family games. Once, when Keiron had run over to him, excited about something he’d found, his father had just stared at him, blank, and the boy had backed nervously away, before running to his mother and burying his face against her chest.
Billie fretted and whined until Rebecca plaited her hair and told her the story of Sleeping Beauty yet again, the little girl’s face lighting up at the moment when the princess is kissed awake. She’ll learn, Rebecca thought, and hopefully before it’s too late.
“How did the prince find her?” Billie asked, not for the first time.
“He cut his way through the undergrowth with his sword.”
“Perhaps someone will find us like that,” Billie said.
Rebecca glanced across at Anderson, but if he had heard he gave no sign.
A light rain had started to fall.
Without preamble, Anderson sprang to his feet and pulled on his cagoule. “Just a walk,” he said. “I’ll not be long.”
A moment later, he was striding through the trees.
Keiron ran after him, calling; tripped and fell, ran and tripped again; finally turned and came limping towards the tent.
“He isn’t coming back,” the boy said, crestfallen.
Rebecca kissed him gently on his head. “We’ll see.”
An hour passed. Two. Once Rebecca thought she heard voices and called out in their direction, but there was no reply and the voices faded away till there were just the sounds of the forest. Distant cars. An aeroplane overhead.
“I told you,” Keiron said accusingly and kicked at the ground.
“Right,” Rebecca said, making up her mind. “Put on your coats and scarves. We’re going.”
“Where? To find Daddy?”
“Yes,” Rebecca lied.
Billie fussed with her buttons and when Rebecca knelt to help her, the child pushed her away. “I can do it. I can do it myself.”
“Well, get a move on.”
“I am.” Bottom lip stuck petulantly out.
Calm down, Rebecca told herself. Calm down.
Billie pushed the last button into place.
“All right?” Rebecca said. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”
They were a hundred metres away, maybe less, heading in what Rebecca thought was the direction they’d originally come, when they saw him just a short way ahead, walking purposefully towards them.
“Come to meet me? That’s nice.”
As the children went into the tent, he pulled her back. “Try that again and I’ll kill you, so help me.”
***
There were only a couple of hours of daylight left. By the time they had got a decent-sized search party organised there would be even less. Best to wait until first light.
“I’ve been talking to the Royal Military police,” Resnick said. “Seems as though one sergeant going AWOL isn’t too high on their list of priorities. Too many of them, apparently, done the same. Not too keen on hurrying back to fight for someone else’s democracy. More interested in tracking down a batch of illicit guns, smuggled into the U. K. from Iraq via Germany. Bit of a burgeoning trade in exchanging them for drugs and currency. Cocaine, especially. Still, they’re sending someone up tomorrow. If we do find Anderson, they’ll want to stake their claim.”
“Till then we twiddle our thumbs.”
“Do better than that, I dare say,” Resnick said.
Tony Burns was up from London, sitting in with a local band at The Five Ways. Geoff Pearson on bass, the usual crew. Last time Resnick had heard Burns, a good few years back, he’d been playing mostly baritone, a little alto. Now it was all tenor, a sound not too many miles this side of Stan Getz. Jake McMahon joined them for the last number, a tear-up through the chords of “Cherokee.” By now the free cobs were going round, end of the evening, cheese or ham, and Kiley was having a pretty good time.
Resnick had called Lynn and asked her if she wanted to join them, but instead she had opted for an early night. She’d left him a note on the kitchen table, signed with love.
Resnick made coffee and, feeling expansive, cracked open a bottle of Highland Park. They sat listening to Ben Webster and Art Tatum and then Monk fingering his way through “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” Kiley not without envy for what seemed, in some respects, a fuller, more comfortable life than his own.
“Well,” said Resnick, finally, levering himself up from his chair. “Early start.”
“You bet.”
The bed was made up in the spare room, a clean towel laid out and, should he need it, a new toothbrush in its plastic case. He thought he might manage a few more pages of The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes before dropping off, but when he woke in the morning, the book had fallen to the floor, unread.
***
Wherever he’d gone in those two hours, Anderson had come back with a bottle of vodka. Stolichnaya. Perhaps he’d had it with him all along. He sat there, close to the entrance to the tent, drinking steadily. Rebecca tried to get the children to eat something but to little avail. She forced herself to try some of the corned beef, though it was something she’d never liked. The children drank water, nibbled biscuits. And moped.
The rain outside increased until it began seeping under one corner of the tent.
Billie lay down, sucking her thumb, and, for once, Rebecca made no attempt to stop her. If Keiron, huddled into a blanket near her feet, was asleep or not she wasn’t sure.
The bottle was now half empty.
Anderson stared straight ahead, seeing something she couldn’t see.
“Terry?”
At the softness of her voice, he flinched.
“How long is it since you got any sleep?”
Whenever she had awoken in the early hours after they’d arrived, he had been sitting, shoulders hunched, alert and keeping guard.
“How long?”
“I don’t know. A long time.”
“What’s wrong?”
For an answer he lifted the bottle to his lips.
“Perhaps you should talk to someone? About what’s troubling you? Perhaps…”
“Stop it! Just shut the hell up!”
“Stop what?”
“Wheedling round me.” He mimicked her voice. “‘Perhaps you should talk to someone, Terry?’ As if you gave a shit.”
“I do.”
“Yeah?” He laughed. “You don’t give a shit about me and I don’t give a shit about you. Not anymore.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Because of them. Because they have to know.”
“Know what?”
He moved suddenly. “Wake them. Go on, wake them up.”
“No, look, they’re exhausted. Let them sleep.”
But Billie was already stirring and Keiron was awake.
Anderson took another long swallow from the bottle. His skin was sallow and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead and his temples. When he started talking, his voice seemed distant, even in the confines of the tent.
“We were on patrol, just routine. There’d been a firefight a couple of days before, so we were more on our guard than usual. Against snipers but also for explosives. IEDs. We were passing this house a
nd this woman came out, just her face showing, part of her face, the eyes, and she’s waving her arms and wailing and pointing back towards the house as if there’s something wrong, and Sean, he jumps down, even though we’re telling him not to be stupid, and the next thing we know, he’s followed her to the doorway, and the next after that he’s been shot. One gets him in the body and knocks him back, but he’s wearing his chest plate, thank Christ, so that’s all right, but the next one takes him in the neck. By now we’re returning fire and the woman’s disappeared, nowhere to be fucking seen, Sean’s leaking blood into the bloody ground, so we drag him out of there, back into the vehicle and head back to camp.”
Beside Rebecca, Keiron, wide-eyed, listened enthralled. Billie clutched her mother’s hand and flinched each time her father swore.
“He died, that’s the thing. Sean. The bullet’d torn an artery and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. By the time we reached camp, he was dead. He was our mate, a laugh. A real laugh. Always saw the funny side. Just a young bloke. Twenty-one. And stupid. Young and stupid. He’d wanted to help.” Anderson took a quick swallow and wiped his mouth. “Two days later, we went back. Went back at night, five of us. We’d been drinking beforehand, pretty heavily, talking about what had happened, what they’d done to Sean.”
Rebecca shivered and hugged the children close.
“We went in under cover of darkness. There was no moon, I remember, not then. Sometimes it’d be, you know, huge, filling half the sky, but that night there was nothing. Just a few stars. Everyone inside was sleeping. Women. Men.” He paused. “Children. Soon as we got inside one of the men reached for his gun, he’d been sleeping with it, under the blankets, and that’s when we started firing. Firing at anything that moved. One of the women, she came running at us, screaming, and Steve, he says, ‘That’s her. That’s her, the lyin’ bitch.’ And, of course, dressed like she was, like they all were, he had no way of knowing, but that didn’t stop him all but emptying his magazine into her.”