(2005) Rat Run (21 page)

dog.

s to get up his nostrils, but he had seen the It had come out with the woman an hour earlier.

She'd pushed the pram one-handed, and had hung on the short leash with the other. It had strained and pulled her and its head had been high as it sniffed the air. She'd been gone twenty minutes, in the direction of the kids' play area.

A television was on in the pensioner's unit living room and the brightness flicked at the curtains and lit the bars.

After she'd come back, the man - the target - had brought a plastic bag out through the door and dumped it in the wheelie on the pavement. He thought of all those who had made the demons. They cavorted in his mind: soldiers, officers, medics and Roz, the retired brigadier, who was his father, and the prim, tall woman, who was his mother. The little man who had owned the estate agents had called up the last of the demons . . . He wondered, crouched in the darkness, whether any of them considered what had happened to him - often, rarely or never - and whether he was a source of amusement or was

forgotten.

With him, Malachy had the sticky-backed binding tape, rope, a length of cloth, the plastic toy and half a packet of digestive biscuits. A mini-bus came to the edge of the estate, the road beside the pensioners'

block.

He watched. Three youths jumped down from the side door. He had seen them, each face lined with terror, as they had been hoisted up, then lowered jerkily over the rim of the flat roof. They would have blinked at the view, bird's eye, of the spinning pavement below. Freed on police bail, Malachy assumed.

There was division among them, sullen argument, as they stopped close to the ground-floor door -

where they would have gone before. But this was another night, after unpredicted change. The door opened. The dealer's voice came sharp to Malachy: 'I heard your bloody voices. Don't come here no more.

Get the message - you're dead, history. Piss off.'

Malachy felt nothing, as if the demons had cauterized emotion, no sympathy for them and no anger. He saw them drift away and one gave a finger to the closing door. Youths joined them. They were jostled, pushed and one fell. Then they ran. He had no concern for their future.

He had gone feral, did not recognize it and none who had known him would have. He wore the

vagrant's clothes, damp and stinking, and the lustre of the shoes was gone, with smeared mud from toe to heel.

It was past midnight. Malachy ached with stiffness as he huddled into the hedge's shadows. A chain was loosened, a bolt drawn, a lock turned. Light flooded the pavement. The dog, off the leash, bounded out, crossed the road and came to the grass in front of the hedge. He saw the man stand in the doorway and there was the flash of a cigarette lighter. The dog came to the hedge, cocked its leg.
If you show fear, the dog'll
recognize it and you're screwed.
He saw the smoke, across the road, rise from the man's mouth. He cooed softly, so gently, and in his hand were biscuits. There was a moment when the hackles on its neck were up and the growl was deep in its throat - then the docked tail swung, wagged and against his hand was the warm wet slobber of the mouth. He gave it
love, tender
loving care.
He stroked the jowl fur of the dog and murmured at its ear.

The snarled shout came across the road and the grass. 'Come on! Where are you? Just get on with it, you little fucker. Hurry up! Do I have to come and get you?'

The sirens had sounded across the estate and there had been a single shot from a low-velocity weapon, muffled and distant. Then Malachy had slept.

He was curled on the living-room floor, his breathing regular. No dreams to toss him. On the carpet, he was a fallen statue. If he had dreamed it would have been of old Cloughie, sixth-form history, the romantic, who broke up the Thirty Years War or the Industrial Revolution or the Rise of Parliament with un-connected poetry. Sometimes Tennyson, more

frequently Keats or Shelley. Hunched, as if broken by exhaustion, he lay without a cushion at his head. If old Cloughie had been with him on level three, block nine, his surrogate parent would have found the relevant passage

Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, and would have recited in his falsetto tone, shrill with excitement. But he did not dream. The images were gone, lost under the shifting sand - he slept deep.

He was naked.

The vagrant's clothing was back in the bin-liner, under the bed in the next room with what remained of the tape, the rope and the plastic toy. When he had come back he had eaten the few biscuits left in the packet and had put the wrapping into the rubbish can.

Then he had begun to clean the shoes. Like a fanatic, fighting off tiredness, he had wiped off the mud that had camouflaged their shine, smeared on the polish and rubbed till they glowed in the dull light. Only that self-given task had kept him awake.

He needed to hear the sirens: they were proof that what he had done was not mere imagination. They had come, finally, before dawn. When the wind had pushed back the curtains and first light had seeped inside, he had heard the shot and had not known what weapon had fired it.

Malachy slept. Far from him, as if briefly he escaped their reach, were the voices that accused. Then . . .

Maybe a door slammed on the walkway. Maybe a car below screamed when the gears failed to mesh.

Maybe the dream was never far enough away. He twisted and jerked on to his stomach.

He woke.

Rubbed his eyes.

Felt the cold of the air on his body.

Hands on his ears, as if that would shut out the voices that dinned in his mind.

His body shook.

'God,' he cried out. 'What do I have to do? What?'

* * *

13 January 2004

'Where's that wretched man now?'

'Outside, sir, sat on a chair.'

'Bloody hell, it's all I need.'

'On a chair, sir, in the sunshine.'

The major, commanding Bravo company, paced his
operations bunker, made a little trail of bare concrete where
the dust was kicked aside. Frustration, not the Iraqi heat,
flushed his face.

'You know, Sergeant McQueen, what I've got on my
plate?'

'A whole load of shit - excuse my vulgarity - sir.'

'Piled up and bloody high with it.. . What's he saying?'

'Nothing, sir. Far as I've heard, not said a word.'

'And lost his weapon?'

'Could say
dumped
his weapon, sir. The section
retrieved his helmet and his jacket, which he apparently
abandoned in the street.'

'No explanations?'

'Not that I've heard, sir.'

Around the major were his second-in-command, his
signals corporal, the platoon commander of the section
involved in the patrol, and his batman, who had brought
him a meal-ready-to-eat supper that he had not touched; he
did not know when he would get a mouthful down him.

Sergeant McQueen was by the sandbagged doorway and,
looking past him, the major could see one of the chair's legs
and one of the wretch's shins and boots. None of the men in
the bunker would offer help or be asked to.

'I can't go on the net on this.'

'No, sir. It wouldn't be wise. Better to put down on paper
what you know. Personal to the colonel. Not clever to broadcast it on the radio. You to the colonel.'

'Where do I find the time to do that?'

'Respectfully, sir, you have to find it.'

'Right now I haven't the time.'

'No, sir.'

T am trying to organize a lift and I have an O Group in
an hour, and the chance of getting in at dawn fast and out
faster is receding by the bloody minute. I am waiting to hear
back from the village elders, who are complaining about the
section's response to a full-scale ambush. Christ, what are
we supposed to do? Chuck toffees at them when we're
taking live rounds? X-ray 12 is reporting barricades going
up round the market and they're gathering for the funeral,
and... And a high-velocity weapon is missing, and I've got
an officer I'm told is a coward.'

'That's what the men are saying, sir.'

'A
coward.
It's about as bad as it gets.'

'The men with him, sir, they're using choicer language.'

'I'll hear it again - warts and all. Makes no difference
that he's an officer ... Wrong, does make a difference
because he is not an eighteen-year-old Jock, first time away
from his mum with eight weeks' Basic behind him and never
out of the UK before. He's a bloody officer, experienced,
supposed to lead from the front. Tell it to me, and don't stop
if I throw up.'

He was told the story for a second time. He recognized
the canniness of Sergeant McQueen: no opinion of his own
offered.
As
he listened, the major cursed the interruption to
his planned lift. He saw the interpreter - a former policeman, not trusted a bloody inch - hovering at the door, and
gestured irritably for his second-in-command to field him.

He thought his section had done well: the corporal had
shown fine leadership, and the Jock who was the marksman
had performed in the best traditions of the regiment. In his
grandfather's war, the wretch on the chair outside the
bunker would have been tied up to a post, blindfolded, given
a lit cigarette and shot. In his father's war, there would have
been a stamp on the file: 'LMF' - dismissal and disgrace for
lack of moral fibre, and a job digging field latrines. The
second-in-command handed him a scrawled note: the elders
would be at Bravo's main gate in two hours, after the O

Group briefing. Then he might get down some of his bloody
meal-ready-to-eat, if the flies had left any.

'... So, that's it, sir, according to what the section
members have said. Do you want me to bring him in, sir?'

I do not.'

'They're all good men, sir.'

'1 think I've heard enough.' He broke the pacing. In his
own war, somewhere buried in a filing cabinet, was a paper
he had never bothered to read: it was titled
Battleshock.

Might as well have been
Bullshit.
He felt no guilt that the
paper was unread. He could not have imagined that one of
his own men, his Jocks, would ever be labelled a coward.

'What's to happen, sir?'

'Put him somewhere in isolation where he can't infect
anyone else. He can be shipped down to Battalion in the
morning with prisoners. We've ivasted enough time on him.

They can sort him out down there.' The major's voice
softened, as if puzzlement caught him. 'It'll run with him
for the rest of his life, won't it? I don't know how you'd ever
get shot of it, being called a
coward.
Can't imagine there's
any way back.' He paused. 'Right, the world moves on -

without him. I'll do the O Group myself

'I'll find him somewhere to sleep, sir,' Sergeant McQueen
said, impassive. 'It's not your worry, sir, what his future is
or isn't, and what he does with it or doesn't.'

Her knee nudged the bucket, spilling it. The water flushed out over the floor and the suds went with the flow. The tiled floor of the first storey of the ministry was, momentarily, awash. Dawn's stockings were soaked, as were the hem of her skirt and her dull green regulation apron.

The bucket, on its side, rolled crazily and noisily away from her. Her supervisor came running.

Dawn should have had a look of humble apology on her face, should have ducked her head in shame at her clumsiness. She had been late to work that morning, and in less than twenty minutes the first of the gentlemen and ladies who occupied the ministry's offices would be pouring through the main door to be confronted by a danger zone of slippery tiles. She laughed, and saw a frown pucker her supervisor's forehead.

The response was icy. 'Perhaps you'd care, Dawn, to share the joke with me.'

She pushed herself up, took her weight on the mop's handle, grimaced, righted the bucket, then began to swab the river and shepherd the suds towards her. She didn't care about the frown and the scowl. She had been with the ministry early-morning cleaning team longer than any of the other women, had a reputation for reliability . . . but that morning she had been late to work, then tipped over her bucket. She laughed again and the echo rang down the corridors off the landing.

'Are you well, Dawn? Do you need to go and lie down?'

Her laughter, infectious, wiped the frown and warmed the chilliness of her supervisor. The young woman squatted beside her. 'Well, you'd better tell me.'

She lowered herself, laughter shaking her body, and sat on the top step. 'I was late, Miss.'

'Correct, Dawn, you were late.'

'I was late, Miss, because I just seen the best thing ever.'

An audience had gathered, the rest of the cleaning women, brought by Dawn's laughter.

'You'd better tell us, Dawn, or the place'll be a tip.'

One more convulsion, then she launched: 'The Amersham is tough. The Amersham is a hard place. I know, I have been there twelve years. The Amersham is the toughest and the hardest. Druggies, thieves, muggers, we've all of them - but what we don't have is police officers. Maybe the Amersham is no-go for them. My friend next door, she is in the hospital and they have pinned her arm because the druggies thieved off her. There is no law on the Amersham.