The Veteran (10 page)

“So I come straight over, din’t I?”

“Want a lift home. Nobby?” The pensioner brightened.

“Aven’t been in a police car in forty years. Mind you,” he added generously, “we ‘ad real rozzers in those days.”

Burns called Luke Skinner, told him to grab the key on the ribbon that was taken from the pocket of the dead man and bring the car to the front.

They dropped Nobby Clarke at his sheltered accommodation, having taken details of the local Social Security office, and went there. They were about to close and the staff was accessible. Burns flashed his warrant card and asked for the supervisor.

“I’m looking for a man. First name, Peter. Surname unknown. Medium height, medium build, grey hair, aged about fifty to fifty-five. Pronounced limp, collected a thirty per cent disability pension. Used to sit ...” He glanced round. There were several seats by the wall. “Over there with Nobby Clarke. Any ideas?”

DSS offices are not very chatty places, at least not between the staff behind their bars and grilles and the applicants outside. Finally one of the female clerks thought she recalled such a man. Peter Benson?

The computer did the rest. The supervisor punched up the file on Peter Benson. Due to extensive benefit fraud, photographs of applicants have been required for years. It was a small passport-sized photograph, but it was enough.

“Address?” asked Burns, and Skinner took it down.

“He hasn’t been in for about three weeks,” said the clerk.

“Probably on holiday.”

“No, he’s dead,” said Burns. “You can close the file. He won’t be coming again.”

“Are you sure?” asked the supervisor, clearly worried by the irregularity of it all. “We ought to be officially informed.”

“He can’t do that,” said Burns. “Inconsiderate of him.”

The two detectives found the address by using the London A-Z and asking a few neighbours. It was another housing estate and the small one-bedroom flat was on the fourth floor. Walk up; lift broken down. They let themselves in.

It was shabby, but neat. There was three weeks of dust and some dead flies on the window sill, but no mouldy food. Washed plates and cups were on the draining rack beside the sink.

A bedside drawer yielded bits of Army memorabilia and five military medals, including the MM, awarded for courage in combat. The books on the shelf were well-thumbed paperbacks and the pictorial decorations were prints. Burns finally stopped by a framed picture on the sitting-room wall.

It showed four young men, staring at the camera, smiling. In the background was what looked like a stretch of desert and the edge of an old stone fort. Beneath the picture was printed “
Mirbat, 1972
”.

“What’s Mirbat?” asked Skinner, who had come to stand beside him.

“A place. A small village. Dhofar, eastern province of Oman, at the end of the Saudi peninsula.”

The young men were all in desert cammo. One wore a local Arab keffiyeh of chequered cloth, held in place by two rings of black cord. The other three had sand-coloured berets with a badge at the front. Burns knew that if he had a magnifying glass he would make out the emblem of a winged dagger with three letters above it and three short words beneath.

“How do you know?” asked Skinner.

“The Queen came to Devon once. I was on Royal Protection duty. There were two from that regiment attached to us. Bodyguard duty involves long periods of waiting. We all began to reminisce. They told us about Mirbat.”

“What happened there?”

“A battle. There was a war going on. A secret war. Communist terrorists were being sent over the border from Yemen to topple the Sultan. We sent down a British Army Training Team, the BATT. One day a force of between three and four hundred terrorists attacked the village and garrison at Mirbat. There were ten men from that regiment and a group of local levies.”

“Who won?”

Burns jabbed a finger at the photograph.

“They did. Just. Lost two of their own, downed over a hundred terrorists before they finally broke and ran.”

Three of the men were standing, the fourth was on one knee at the front; twenty-four years ago, in a forgotten desert village. The one at the front was the trooper; behind him were a sergeant, a corporal and their young officer, or ‘Rupert’.

Skinner leaned forward and tapped the crouching trooper.

“That’s him, Peter Benson. Poor bugger. To go through all that and end up kicked to death in Edmonton.”

Burns had already identified the trooper. He was staring at the officer. The smooth blond hair was covered by the beret and the arrogant blue eyes were creased by the glare of the sun. But that young officer was going to go home, leave the army, attend law school and a quarter of a century later become one of the great advocates of his country. Skinner had made the connection with a sharp intake of breath near Burns’s ear.

“I don’t understand,” said the detective sergeant. “They kicked his mate to death and he went out of his way to get them off.”

Burns could hear the public-school voice murmuring in his ear. “This may surprise you, Mr. Burns ...”

Staring at the faces of the four young warriors of a generation gone by. Jack Burns realized too late that the deceptively languid lawyer was not talking of the justice of the Old Bailey, but of the Old Testament.

“Guv,” said the troubled young man at his side, “with Price and Cornish back on the streets, what will happen if that sergeant and that corporal ever come across them?”

“Don’t ask, laddie. You really do not want to know.”

THURSDAY

A burial took place at the private plot of the Special Air Service Regiment near their base at Hereford. The body of an old soldier was laid to rest. There was a bugler who played the Last Post and a salvo over the grave. About a dozen attended, including a noted barrister.

That evening, two bodies were recovered from a lake near Wanstead Marshes, east London. They were identified as those of Mr. Mark Price and Mr. Harry Cornish. The pathologist recorded that both men had died of ligature strangulation and that the instrument, most unusually, appeared to be piano wire.

The file on the case was opened, but never closed.

THE RAIN CAME DOWN. IT FELL IN A SLOWLY MOVING WALL UPON
Hyde Park and, borne by a light westerly wind, drifted in grey curtains of falling water across Park Lane and through the narrow park of plane trees that divides the northbound and southbound lanes. A wet and gloomy man stood under the leafless trees and watched.

The entrance to the Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom was brightly lit by several arc lights and the endless glare of camera flashes. Inside was warm, snug and dry. Under the awning before the door was an area of only damp pavement and here the uniformed commissionaires stood, gleaming umbrellas at the ready, as the limousines swept up, one by one.

As each rain-lashed car drew up by the awning one of the men would run forward to shield the descending star or film celebrity for the two-yard dash, head down, from car to awning. There they could straighten up, plaster on the practised smile and face the cameras.

The paparazzi were either side of the awning, skin-wet, shielding their precious equipment as best they could.

Their cries came across the road to the man under the trees.

“Over here, Michael. This way, Roger. Nice smile, Shakira. Lovely.”

The great and the good of the film world nodded benignly at the adulation, smiled for the lenses and thus for the distant fans, ignored the few anorak-clad autograph hunters, strange persistent voles with pleading eyes, and were wafted inside.

There they would be led to their tables, pausing to beam and greet, ready for the annual awards ceremony of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

The small man under the trees watched with unrequited longing in his eyes. Once he had dreamed that he too might be there, a star of the film world in his own right, or at the very least a recognized journeyman at his trade. But he knew it was not to be, not now, too late.

For more than thirty-five years he had been an actor, almost entirely in films. He had played in over a hundred, starting as an extra, with no spoken words, moving to tiny bit parts but never being cast in a real role.

He had been a hotel porter while Peter Sellers walked past and on screen for seven seconds; he had been the driver of the army lorry that gave Peter O’Toole a lift into Cairo; he had held a Roman spear, rigid at attention, a few feet from Michael Palin; he had been the aircraft mechanic who helped Christopher Plummer into a Spitfire.

He had been waiters, porters, soldiers in every known army from the Bible to the Battle of the Bulge. He had played cabdrivers, policemen, fellow-diners, the man crossing the street, the wolf-whistling barrow boy and anything else one could think of.

But always it was the same: several days on the set, ten seconds on screen and goodbye chum. He had been within feet of every known star in the celluloid firmament, seen the gents and the bastards, the kindly and the prima donnas. He knew he could play any part with utter conviction and convincingly; he knew he was a human chameleon, but no-one had ever recognized the talent he was sure he had.

So he watched in the rain as his idols swept past to their evening’s glory and later to their sumptuous apartments and suites. When the last had gone in and the lights had faded he trudged back through the rain to the bus stop at Marble Arch and stood, dripping water in the aisle, until he was deposited half a mile from his cheap bedsitter in the hinterland between White City and Shepherd’s Bush.

He stripped off his soaking clothing, wrapped himself in an old towel robe liberated from a hotel in Spain (Man of La Mancha starring Peter O’Toole and he had held the horses) and lit a single-bar fire. His wet clothes steamed quietly through the night until by morning they were merely damp. He knew he was flat broke, skint. No work for weeks; a profession vastly overcrowded even with short, middle-aged men, and nothing in prospect. His phone had been cut off and if he wished to speak to his agent, yet again, he would have to go and visit in person.

This, he decided, he would do on the morrow.

He sat and waited. He always sat and waited. It was his lot in life. Finally the office door opened and someone emerged whom he knew. He jumped up.

“Hallo, Robert, remember me? Trumpy.”

Robert Powell was caught by surprise and clearly could recall nothing of the face.

“The Italian Job. Turin. I drove the cab; you were in the back.”

Robert Powell’s unquenchable good humour saved the day.

“Of course. Turin. Been a long time. How are you, Trumpy? How are things?”

“Pretty good. Not too bad, can’t complain. Just popped by to see if you-know-who might have something for me.”

Powell took in the frayed shirt and shabby mac.

“I’m sure he will. Good to see you again. Good luck, Trumpy.”

“Ditto, old boy. Chin up, what?”

They shook and parted. The agent was as kind as he could be, but there was no work. A costume drama was going to shoot at Shepperton, but it was already cast. A very overcrowded profession whose only inexhaustible fuel was optimism and the chance of a great part tomorrow.

Back at his flat Trumpy forlornly took stock. Social Security provided a few pounds a week but London was expensive. He had just had another confrontation with Mr. Koutzakis, his landlord, who once again had repeated that rent was in arrears and his patience not quite as limitless as the sun of his native Cyprus.

Things were bad; in fact things could not get much worse. As a watery sun disappeared behind the tower blocks across the yard the middle-aged actor went to a cupboard and retrieved a package wrapped in hessian. Over the years he had often asked himself why he clung on to the dratted thing. It was not to his taste anyway. Sentiment, he supposed. Thirty-five years earlier, when he was a stripling of twenty, a bright and eager young actor in provincial repertory convinced of stardom to come, it had been bequeathed to him by his great-aunt Millie. He unwrapped the item from its hessian swathes.

It was not a large painting, some twelve inches by twelve, excluding the gilt frame. He had kept it wrapped through all the years, but even when he got it, it had been so dirty, so crusted with grime, that the figures in it were vague outlines, little more than shadows. Still, Great-aunt Millie had always sworn it might be worth a few pounds, but that was probably just the wishful romanticism of an old woman. As to its history, he had no idea. In fact the small oil had quite a story.

In the year 1870 an Englishman of thirty, seeking his fortune and having some knowledge of the Italian language, had emigrated to Florence to try his luck with a small endowment from his father. This was at the pinnacle of Britain’s Victorian glory and Her Majesty’s gold sovereign was a currency to open many doors. Italy by contrast was in its habitual chaos.

Within five years the enterprising Mr. Bryan Frobisher had achieved four things. He had discovered the delicious wines of the Chianti hills and begun to export them in great vats to his native England, undercutting the accustomed French vine-vintages and laying the foundations of a tidy fortune.

He had acquired a fine town house with his own coach and groom. He had married the daughter of a quite minor local nobleman, and, among many other decorations for his new house, he had bought a small oil painting from a secondhand shop on the quay near the Ponte Vecchio.

He did not buy it because it was well known or well presented.

It was covered in dust and almost hidden at the back of the shop. He just bought it because he liked it.

For thirty years, as he became British Vice-Consul to Florence and Sir Bryan, KBE, it hung in his library and for thirty years, each evening, he smoked his after-dinner cigar beneath it.

In 1900 a cholera epidemic swept Florence. It carried away Lady Frobisher, and after the funeral the sixty-year-old businessman decided to return to the land of his fathers. He sold up and came back to England, buying a handsome manor in Surrey and employing a staff of nine. The most junior was a local village girl, one Millicent Gore, who was engaged as a parlourmaid.