War Torn (73 page)

‘Aggie, call me when you want to talk.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Darrel, I very sorry. It not your fault.’

‘Yeah.’

She heard him go down the stairs and close the door. She listened for the sound of his feet on the pavement. The house felt cold. She heard, at the bottom of the hill, a car starting. It pulled away rapidly.

Luke started to scream. She went to him. He would not stop. Finally he had a fit.

Maybe that was why she didn’t hear the car. But she heard the doorbell. Darrel. Back to reason with her. She wouldn’t let him in.

She pulled the curtain to one side. It was not Darrel and the car outside was at first unfamiliar. She stared down at the figure on the doorstep. Something very cold, like a splinter of ice, ran through her. It started in her scalp and made the hairs stand on end and, as
it moved down her neck and her shoulders, on down to her toes, the tiny hairs on her body bristled. The Families Officer. On her doorstep in the night. At that moment, the world froze and this time she knew it might never thaw.

DAVE
WENT
TO
1
SECTION’S
TENT
TO
CLEAR
JAMIE’S
THINGS
AND
found Binns and Bacon already hunched over them. Anger rose up inside him as if it had just been waiting for an excuse.

‘What the fuck do you two think you’re doing!’

They looked up guiltily.

‘We’re just sorting something out, Sarge,’ said Binman.

‘Sorting what out, exactly?’

Streaky was embarrassed: ‘Something we were doing with Jamie, Sarge . . .’

Dave could hardly contain his anger. ‘You don’t go through his things! I do that! You’ve got no right to sift through a dead man’s stuff!’

Binman looked too shocked to speak. Bacon said: ‘Sarge, we were making a story with Jamie for his kid, see, so his baby wouldn’t forget his voice. And it was almost, almost done. And we wanted his babymother to have it all finished off so . . .’

‘See,’ said Binns, ‘we didn’t want it to end suddenly. If it ends nicely his kid can listen to it over and over . . .’

‘That’s right, Binman’s right,’ said Streaky. ‘If it’s finished they’ll be able to listen to it and he’ll always have his daddy speaking to him . . .’

Dave felt his angry heartbeat slow.

‘So, what is this story?’

Bacon produced a small digital recorder. He flicked a switch. Suddenly the tent was filled with Jamie’s voice.

‘
And so the little frog hopped towards the place where he knew his mum and dad were waiting for him and would wait for ever if they had to. Just one more mountain to cross and he would be there
.’

Dave sat down on the nearest bed and put his head in his hands. Binns did not move. Streaky turned away, his arm across his face as though shielding himself from a blow. There was a long silence.

At last Binman said, his voice hoarse: ‘See, we do the sound effects and we thought we could finish it by . . .’

‘All right, all right, lads,’ said Dave, getting up. He had to cough to clear his voice and then cough again. ‘You do that. You finish it. I won’t interrupt you. I’ll just take the rest of Jamie’s stuff.’

He left the tent as quickly as he could.

He wanted somewhere private to open Jamie’s personal things. It was an unpleasant but necessary job to remove any letters from girlfriends or pornography or anything else a bereaved widow might not want to see. Not that there would be anything like that here. Jamie had loved Agnieszka and only Agnieszka.

There were letters and photos and a notebook. Dave felt intrusive looking through the notebook. It contained lists and a few sketches: of Luke, of some trees by a river and one of a GPMG. And there was a bit of poetry, love poetry, which he had written or copied from a book.

He delved a bit further in the bag and found some more pictures of Agnieszka. And then something small and hard. Another iPod? It felt like a phone but it couldn’t be. He pulled it out. It was. It was a cellphone.

Dave was shocked. Someone else must have put it there! Jamie, of all people, would never sneak in something that threatened everyone’s safety. Except here it was.

He switched it on.

There were messages to Agnieszka and from Agnieszka. The last one had been sent a few days ago.

He read:
I love another man now
.

‘WE’VE
BEEN
THROUGH
A
LOT
TOGETHER,
ASMA,’
SAID
GORDON
WEEKS.

They were alone in the ops room. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office men had flown out into media frenzy at the hostage rescue, congratulating themselves on a successful mission. The colonel and his staff had gone. Kila and Jean were walking the perimeter together. The OC and the 2 i/c were in the cookhouse and the boss was manning the radio. He hoped there would be no calls.

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘I didn’t like you at first.’

‘Really? How could you not like Gordon Weeks?’

‘Because you were such a prick when we were interviewing those two detainees and I pulled out my pistol. Did you stand there wittering on about the International Convention on Human Rights or did I imagine that?’

He gave her a withering look.

‘You imagined it.’

‘Bet you wanted to, though.’

He could not suppress a smile.

‘I did disapprove.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get to the right place. A bit like your blokes shooting a wounded insurgent in a ditch?’

He decided not to reply. Something was coming through on the OC’s printer and he busied himself retrieving it.

‘Another press cutting from London.
SAS SHOOTS ITS WAY
OUT OF HOSTAGE CRISIS
.’ He put it on top of
UK SPECIAL FORCES RETRIEVE HOSTAGE IN BLAZE OF GUNFIRE.

‘I did tell you that it was a man in my platoon who actually found Martyn?’

She threw back her head and laughed. He watched her happily.

‘You’ve told me at least three times, Gordon. But did I tell you that it was thanks to me we worked out Martyn was at the Early Rocks?’

‘You! No, you didn’t tell me that!’

He was ridiculously pleased and proud, as though he had worked it out himself.

‘It was really exciting but I wasn’t allowed to talk about it at all.’

‘Not even to me?’

‘Not even to you. Remember I said that I kept picking up talk about a holy place and that’s when your blokes went and searched all the mosques?’

‘And then you worked out that the holy place was the Early Rocks!’

‘Yes. Because they said something about a pregnant woman there. That’s how I knew. The last time we saw Asad’ – her voice faltered; Asad had not been mentioned by either of them since their argument after his death – ‘he said the shrine was special for women who wanted a boy child. To Asad it was all unIslamic traditional nonsense, of course. Anyway, we put the place under aerial surveillance and . . .’

The boss beamed.

‘Well done, Asma! Well done!’

‘. . . and the SAS rescued the hostage!’

‘Oh no they didn’t.’

She smiled again. He looked at her face, allowed his eyes to linger on its gaunt beauty, and felt that not seeing her every day was going to be hard.

‘Asma, I hope we’ll meet when we’re back in England.’

She sat very still.

‘If you want to.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘I think you’ll change your mind when you’re back with your friends again,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, I know you will.’

‘No!’ He didn’t want to change his mind. He’d rather change his friends. It was true that Asma wouldn’t fit easily into his circle. But here at the FOB he’d stepped outside that circle for the first time in his life. Now he saw no reason to step back into it.

‘Asma, you live close to London so maybe we could . . . well, perhaps go to the theatre and have a nice meal . . .’

‘I’d like that. I’ve never been to the theatre.’

She watched him try unsuccessfully to hide his surprise. She laughed again and his face lit up with pleasure, even though he suspected the laughter was at his own expense.

She leaned across the desk and, to his amazement and delight, took his hand.

‘Gordon, it won’t be the same in England. Here we’ve been through a lot together and we can see all the things we’ve got in common. Soon as we’re back there, all we’ll see are the differences.’

‘What differences?’

‘C’mon, Gordon.’

‘Before you decide you hate people because they live in a farmhouse, you should come and see it.’

She sniffed. ‘I bet it smells of furniture polish.’

He smiled. ‘Only on Wednesdays when Mrs B from the village has been in to clean.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Yes. Come and see my home. I think you’ll like it. I could teach you to ride . . .’

‘No thanks. And I can guarantee you wouldn’t like my home. Luckily my parents haven’t spoken to me for three years so there’s not much chance you’ll ever see it.’

Her touch was very light and her hand so small he could scrunch it up in his fingers if he wanted to. He held it carefully.

‘I thought you lived in a flat in Luton now.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I might like that.’

‘Well . . . yeah . . .’

‘And I live in the officers’ mess, not my parents’ house.’

‘What are you saying, Gordon?’

‘Can’t we start from here? From who we are now?’

‘Not sure who I am. If I’ve learned one thing from this tour, it’s
that. I was born here in this country. I’m Pashtun. I can leave my family and change my surname but that’s still who I am underneath.’

Weeks said softly: ‘That’s one reason Asad meant a lot to you.’

‘When I met Asad and his family, I realized I sort of knew them even though I’d never met them. At first it was scary. Now I have to live with it.’

She let go of his hand and got up. So he must have blown it. Because she was walking out.

But no, she was walking around the desk to where he was sitting, bending down and kissing him on the lips. It wasn’t a very long kiss. When it was over he wanted more. His lips looked for hers but she pulled back and wagged a finger at him.

‘You’ve had plenty of chances to engage the enemy, Gordon.’

‘But now I’m returning fire.’

Laughing, she turned to go. ‘Got to initiate those contacts sometimes! Let’s see if you do any better in England.’

Dave booked an early slot when the satellite phones were finally reopened after Jamie’s death. He wanted to break the news to Jenny himself. But when she answered he could tell at once that she already knew.

‘Who told you?’

‘Adi, of course.’ She was sniffing back tears. ‘Plus it was on the TV news when they were going on and on about the SAS rescuing the hostage.’