Throwaways (9 page)

My head felt tight, like it’d been put in a vice. If what Michael said was true – and it seemed too inventive a lie for him – who had I got into bed with? Trusted to cover my back?

Who the hell was the guy calling himself Tommy McIntyre?

I toyed with coming straight out and asking him for an explanation. But unless I had more than Michael’s word to go on, Tommy could brush it aside; blame it on my spiteful ex. And, maybe I’d believe him. Tommy had been there for me when Michael had abandoned me. Without him, I’d have been stuck at the bottom of the Clyde.

But, if I did nothing, the doubts would linger. I’d never be able to trust him.

There was only one thing for it – I’d have to give him the benefit of the doubt for now and ask Michael’s weaselly journalist pal Kyle for help. The thought of having anything to do with that slimy creep made me feel as though I’d been doused in cooking oil. Kyle Cafferty had that effect on me, yet other women seemed to throw themselves at him. They must have been able to see something I didn’t, or, maybe it was his fancy sports car, bulging wallet and penthouse apartment that first attracted them. It certainly wasn’t his sparkling personality or self-effacing nature.

I put in a call to his newspaper and asked to be put through to his line.

His syrupy tone came down the line. “Kyle Cafferty speaking.”

I could hear the cacophony of keyboards clattering and people chatting away in the background and I fought the urge to hang up.

“It’s Nancy.” There was a brief pause. “Nancy Kerr.” Dead air. Either he didn’t remember me or this was some power play. Considering who I was dealing with either was possible.

“Aw, Nancy. You’re Michael’s bird.” His voice dripped with condescension; even the way he said my name made me want to jump in a bath of disinfectant and scrub myself clean.

I resisted the urge to start clucking and instead said, “Not any more.”

“Aw, I forgot, he ditched you for that blonde piece with the pneumatic tits after you had that wee bit of bother.”

Wee bit of bother? Somebody tried to kill me and they murdered my parents. What would he call a big bit of bother? But, I refused to rise to the bait. If only his admiring readers knew what an insensitive prick “The People’s Reporter” really was and how he carried a teddy bear around with him so he could strategically position it in photos.

“Aye, that’s me,” I snorted. “The girl dumped for a pair of fake boobs and bad hair extensions.”

He chuckled. “What can I do for you, Nancy?” He’d adopted a chattier tone.

“I need to ask you about something.”

“Oh, aye. And what would that be? I’m used to people giving me information, not the other way round.” I heard the smile in his voice. “What do I get for giving you this information?”

The bastard was toying with me.

“The benefit of doing the right thing, Kyle. Isn’t that enough for the
Daily Scot’s
ace reporter?” Despite the fact I wanted to reach my hands down the phone and throttle him, I managed to keep my tone light-hearted, almost like I was flirting with the creep.

Let him think he’d a chance of getting a little something, something and maybe he’d help me.

There was a deep intake of breath. “Okay, you got me there,” he said. “I’m all about doing the right thing.” There was a long pause and I heard him tapping away on his keys.

The ignorant swine said nothing for a few minutes before loudly clearing his throat. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“You did a story a while back about a mother who lost both her sons. One was an undercover cop. He was trying to bring Sandy McNab’s empire crashing down – at least before his daughter blew his brains out. He was called Sammy McIntyre.”

“Aye,” said Kyle. “Course I remember that. A major story for me. Major. Got me a pay rise here so I wouldn’t up sticks and head off for the bright lights of London town. Good opportunity for me, but I prefer my own wee domicile up here. Being the king of my own castle.”

I wasn’t interested in his career prospects, so I cut in. “Do you remember his brother’s name?” Whilst I was asking, I was hoping he wouldn’t hear the tremble in my voice.

Kyle let out a long sigh. “Tony. Naw, Tommy McIntyre. That was the brother. He died in Iraq. Blown up by one of those IEDs. Vaporized the poor bastard. They didn’t have anything left to bury. Not even his teeth.” For the first time, there was a trace of humanity in his smug voice. “His mother was a lovely woman; gave me tea and homemade shortbread when I went round. Only two boys she had and they were both gone, just like that. Bloody heartbreaking.”

Before he could say any more, I’d muttered a word of thanks and put down the phone.

My head felt like someone had stuck it in a washing machine and put it on spin.

If Tommy McIntyre was dead, who the hell was the man pretending to be him and what did he want with me?

Kyle Cafferty might have been a womanizer and a sleaze but he was a good journalist with a clutch of awards to prove it. Even I had to concede that. It wasn’t like him to get his facts wrong. But I had to be sure.

There was one last thing I needed to do before I confronted Tommy and I wasn’t looking forward to doing it.

It wasn’t difficult to trace Tommy’s mother; if indeed that’s who she was. Tommy had told me that it was just him and his dad, who was in a nursing home, left and up until now I’d had no cause to doubt him.

I managed to track down the article Kyle Cafferty had written. For the piece, he’d visited Anne McIntyre at her Glasgow home where she was in the process of moving to a small coastal town in Ayrshire called Fairley.

Anne McIntyre wasn’t listed in the electoral roll, so I hatched a plan. Equipped with a clipboard, I went door to door in the town, posing as a market researcher to find her. Fairley was a small place, so it didn’t take me long.

Anne McIntyre lived in a nice cottage on a quiet street. She was trimming her rose bushes when I arrived. A short woman, she looked much younger than 62. She could have passed for 40. Like Tommy, she had black curly hair and a quick smile.

“You look tired, dear,” she said after I gave her my market research pitch and she invited me into her home.

When she went into the kitchen to make some tea, my eyes were drawn to two pictures on the mantelpiece. Once I saw them, all my doubts disappeared. There were two little boys in one of the pictures, standing in front of a caravan. They were both grinning away. One of the boys had a shock of red hair and the other’s hair was curly and black. Apart from the hair, they could have been twins. Next to that photograph was one of them
as grown men. The redhead was wearing a police uniform and a goofy grin and standing next to him proudly wearing an army uniform was Tommy. Seeing the pictures, there was no doubt: the Tommy I knew was the one in the picture.

When Tommy’s mum came back into the room she had a tray with her and I was forced to go through with the charade of pretending to be a market researcher, asking her pointless questions about her shopping habits. All the time, I was asking her such mundane questions as what detergent she used, my head was pounding away. Why the hell was Tommy pretending to be dead?

Once I’d finished my questions, I nodded over at the photographs. “You must be so proud of your sons,” I said.

Her smile dimmed and I hated myself for having to do this, but I wanted to hear her say it so I’d know that there was no mistake: that Tommy was meant to be dead.

“Yes, I am dear. But sometimes I wish they had chosen different paths.” I tried to look surprised. “Both my sons are dead.”

She leant over to the coffee table and removed a hanky from a box and dabbed her eyes. “I miss them dreadfully and with my husband in a care home – he has Alzheimer’s – I’m all alone now. I have friends and I help out at my local church, but it’s not the same.”

Fighting the panic crushing my chest, I gulped down the rest of my tea and told her I had to go.

As I walked towards the gate, I fought the urge to turn back and tell her the truth. To tell her that I didn’t know what he was playing at, but her son was very much alive and that if she came back with me she could see him. But, as selfish as it sounds, I was more concerned with how this all affected me.

Without Tommy, what did I have? My family was all dead. My auntie was M.I.A. If I couldn’t trust Tommy, I was more alone than I thought.

I had to speak to him. He’d help me make sense of all of this.

Tommy was tossing corn on the cob into a stir fry when I came into the kitchen.

“Tommy we need to talk.”

He gazed over at me, brown eyes filled with mischief. “We do? That sound ominous.”

He went over to the chopping board and started chopping up bits of broccoli and cauliflower. He did a good job of it and tossed that in the wok too. Normally the delicious aroma would have had me salivating, but not tonight. I didn’t know the man in the kitchen any more: that’s if I’d ever known him at all.

On the drive over, I’d even debated whether to come back here at all. Whether to just sever all contact with him. Even if he came up with a plausible explanation, how could I ever trust him again?

It was reminding myself that he’d put his life on the line for me that had made me come back. Liar or not, I owed him the chance to explain.

He caught me watching him.

“Dinner will be ten minutes,” he said. “Now, what is it you want to talk about? There was a glint in his eyes; he’d no idea what was coming.

“Tommy,” I paused to swallow. “You might want to take the wok away from the heat.”

Despite my serious expression, he grinned.

“Christ, Nancy. Can’t you keep your hands off me for five minutes? You’re insatiable, darling.”

He knew I hated being called darling.

My scowl cut him dead in his tracks.

“Okay, I get it. You want a serious talk.”

He pulled out one out of the chairs from the table for me and sat down on the other.

“I suppose you want to know if my intentions towards you are noble, Miss Kerr?”

A chuckle stuck in my throat; came out as a snort. If only it were that easy.

“Stop messing around.” I said. “This is serious.”

The tone of my voice surprised him. “Okay, fire away.”

Part of me wanted to tell him to put the dinner back on and we’d watch some nonsense on the TV and pretend I hadn’t said anything, but I had to know who this man I’d trusted was.

What kind of person would let their own mother think they were dead?

He knew my deepest, darkest secrets; why I woke up at night, drenched in sweat, screaming “no” over and over again. Yet he’d hidden something this important from me?

What the hell was going on?

“I went to see your mum today.”

There was no preamble, I spat it out.

He slammed a fist down on the table. “You did what?”

When you’ve stared death in the face, not once, but twice, a man pounding his fist down on a table doesn’t so much as make you flinch even when he’s glaring at you crazy-eyed.

“I visited your mum. Don’t think you’re the only one with the right to be surprised. You told me your mum was dead. But, of course, that was just another lie.”

My heart was a big stress ball that was being squeezed.

Tommy’s shoulders relaxed. “Did you see her? How was she?”

At least he wasn’t going to try and insult my intelligence by trying to deny it.

“Oh,” I shrugged, “she was fine for someone who was meant to be dead; very well-preserved. We had a nice wee chat over tea and she told me about her sons Sammy and Tommy and how they both died.”

Tommy couldn’t meet my gaze. His eyes faced towards the wall as though he was buying time before he spoke.

“What the fuck is going on, Tommy? Why does she think you’re dead?”

“I can’t tell you.” He briefly looked up to say that, met my gaze, steady no wavering. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” I said, dragging my chair across the floor and getting up. “In that case I’m going and I won’t be back.” The blood pounded around my brain. “I’ve had enough lying bastards to last me a lifetime. You won’t be seeing me again.”

I was marching out the door when he called after me.

“Nancy, I’ll tell you everything. Just come back.”

There was something about the way he spoke that made me stop.

“Okay, you’ve got 2 minutes. Talk and don’t leave anything out.”

“How much do you know about the military campaign in Iraq?”

We were sitting at the kitchen table across from one another. We were within touching distance, but we might as well have been thousands of miles apart because I no longer knew the man sitting opposite me. I never had.

“As much as anyone,” I said, answering his question, whilst wondering why the hell it mattered when I was sitting across from a liar. “The weapons of mass destruction were never found. Tony Blair took us into the war on a lie.”

Tommy frowned. “I meant the actual operations on the ground.”

“Same answer,” I snapped. I didn’t need a lesson on the military operation in Iraq. I wanted to know why Tommy had faked his own death.

Tommy reached his hand out across the table as if he was going to place it on top of mine, but the sour look he got from me made him think twice and he withdrew his hand as if a crocodile had snapped at it.

He settled for giving me a sincere look instead.

“I need to explain how things were so you’ll understand why…”

I jumped in; I couldn’t help myself. “Why you let your own mother believe you were dead and she was alone in the world with a husband who can’t even remember her name. You even lied to me about her being dead. How could you do that?” I probed his eyes for a sign that he felt some shame, but there was none. His gaze was steady. “What else have you lied to me about? How the hell could you lie to me after all we’ve been through together? Right now, there’s a lot of things I don’t understand.”

The words streamed out and I knew as I hit Tommy with a barrage that I was being a judgmental bitch without being in possession of the facts, but I was so angry at his lies that I wanted him to hurt, the same way I was hurting. After the hell I’d been through I thought I’d never trust a man ever again, but then Tommy came into my life like he’d been parachuted in by my guardian angel and he saved me from certain death and I trusted him implicitly. There had been a few “wee misunderstandings” along the way, like the time I’d tasered and tied him to the bed, but we’d got past that.

Now I’d discovered the only person I thought I could trust was a filthy liar.

Tommy’s eyes bored into mine. “You asked for an explanation and I’m gonna give you one.” His voice was no nonsense. “But, before I do you’ve got to promise me that you won’t tell a soul about what I’m going to tell you. I mean it, Nancy. If this comes out, I really will be a dead man and so will Eric.”

Now I was confused – what did Eric have to do with it?

Seeing the serious look on Tommy’s face, I decided against making a jibe about me having to sign The Official Secrets Act. “Fair enough.”

It wasn’t like I had anybody to tell. Having your parents and brother murdered had a tendency to repel people. Even my own aunt had abandoned me. The last time I’d seen her I’d been in the
loony bin.

“I wasn’t in the regular army,” said Tommy. “I was in the SAS. A mission went wrong. One of our lot turned, betrayed us. He gave us up for a big payday. We had to pretend to be dead to protect our families. Eric too.”

“I don’t understand.” And I genuinely didn’t. “What kind of mission?”

Tommy eyed me as if I was stupid. “The mission was covert. We were ordered to take out one of the top members of the Iraqi government. He was feeding the enemy intel; intel that cost British lives. We were given the order to take him out of the picture. Our mission was compromised. The target found out what was about to go down from a member of our four-man team and used a decoy. After that, he was going to come after us no matter where we were. That’s why we had to stage our deaths. They had to believe that we were dead. Not just to protect us, but to protect our families. Eric had a wife and two kids he had to leave behind.”

Of all the thoughts that had been trampling through my mind, this wasn’t one of them. To say I was punch-drunk was an understatement.

Tommy gave me a disappointed look. “I know it sounds farfetched. Like something out of an Andy McNab novel, but it’s the truth. Haven’t you noticed the mail that comes here isn’t in my real name?”

What? I hadn’t paid much attention to his mail.

Tommy went on. “Why I never use the name Tommy McIntyre?” We always ordered pizza under my name. “I’ve got a new identity. For all intents and purposes, Tommy McIntyre is dead.”

“But, you gave me your real name. Why did you do that?”

He reached over and used a finger to softly lift a stray hair from my face. This time I didn’t try to stop him. My anger had dissipated, replaced by sorrow at what Tommy and Eric had to
give up.

“As coy as this may sound,” said Tommy, “when I saw you I knew I couldn’t lie to you. You’d been hurt enough.”

Kissing two of my fingers, I placed them on his lips. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

There was no doubt in my mind that he was telling the truth. There was one more question I needed to ask.

Something didn’t add up. “You said you were part of a four-man team. What happened to the guy who wasn’t a rat? Is he still alive?”

Tommy grimaced. “Joey Boy never made it out of Baghdad alive. He was playing football with these kids. One had a suicide vest. It was remotely detonated as soon as the kid got near him.” A cloud came over Tommy’s features. “Don’t let anyone fool you into believing the Taliban are freedom fighters. They strap bombs to kids for Christ’s sake.”

Reaching over, I placed one of my hands on top of Tommy’s. “Shit, I’m sorry, Tommy. I didn’t know.”

And, I genuinely was sorry even though there was no way I could have known.

“Well, now you do.”

There was no reproach in his voice; he spoke as though he was stating a fact.

“Tommy, what happened to the guy who betrayed you? Did you get him?”

Tommy’s lips curled into a sneer. “Aye, we got the mother fucker, me and Eric and we drilled two bullets into his skull.”

“Good,” I said and I damned well meant it. The traitor deserved all he got.

Exhausted by our showdown and feeling that we needed some breathing space, I told Tommy I was going to stay at my place tonight, but he was having none of it.

“It’s out in the open now and you know, so let’s not make a big
deal out of it or have you start acting weird on me.”

“Okay.” I was relieved. After what he’d told me I didn’t want him to be alone.

Tommy put a hand on my arm. “And, Nancy, promise me one thing.”

His face was serious.

“What?” I asked, dreading what he was going to say.

“If anyone comes for me, leave it be. Don’t come for me. Don’t try to find me. If you do, they’ll kill you.”

My head was birling. “What do you mean come for you? Who’s coming for you?”

I probed his eyes for an answer, but I already knew. Men working for the man he was supposed to kill. “Surely they wouldn’t do that? Not on British soil?”

Tommy’s face gave me my answer. “Nancy, those people don’t care about borders or international law. They’ll trample over everything and anyone to get what they want. They won’t care if that means killing you.”

Now I was scared. This was an enemy that even with my training I wasn’t equipped to dealing with. So, when Tommy pleaded with me yet again not to do anything if they came for him, I agreed. But I was lying.

Come hell or high water, he’d saved me and if it came to it, I’d do all I could to save him or die trying.