(2005) Rat Run (40 page)

'My name is Malachy David Kitchen, and my date of birth is the twenty-fifth of May 1973.'

She said, 'And your passport lists your occupation as government service.'

The German said, 'Your military number is 525 329.

It is late, I want my bed, and you should tell me why you were at the house of Timo Rahman.'

She yawned. 'What government service requires a man with British military identification to be at the home of Timo Rahman?'

'My name is Malachy David Kitchen and my DOB

is the twenty-fifth of May, '73.'

The tags swung faster, their shapes blurred in front of him. His passport was now closed, held behind her back. His scratches from the barbed wire were not cleaned and they made little stabs of pain on his palms and thighs.

He did not know their names because he had not been told them but he could assume the man was senior. They had taken him fast out of the car and had dragged him up the steps of a monstrous glass and concrete building. Police had hurried out of the protected reception area and had shown acute deference to the man, but had been waved away. He had been taken down two flights of stairs, along a corridor, then pitched headlong into a cell. They had followed him inside and the man had kicked the door shut behind him. He had half fallen to the bed, then had settled on the mattress. The storm of questions had begun. Over and over again, a repeated litany.
When
had he come to Germany?
What
was his business in Hamburg?

Why
had he broken into the grounds of the residence of Timo Rahman? He had taken as his focus point the barred ceiling light.

'It's a simple enough question, Malachy.' She could not suppress another yawn. 'Come on, don't mess with us, not at a quarter past three. Why were you there?'

The German had come close to him, knelt in front of him and swung the tags. 'What "government service"

brings a British citizen to the home of the
pate
of organized crime in Hamburg, when that citizen has military identification but is dressed like a derelict and stinks of sleeping on the streets? What?'

'My name is Malachy Kitchen, my—'

'Oh, for Christ's sake! Don't you know how to help yourself?' Her shoes thudded on the cell floor in theatrical exasperation.

'—date of birth is the twenty-fifth of May, 1973.'

'You are in debt to us,' the German grated. 'If we had not been there to help you, they would have killed you. Killed you and dumped you where your body would never be found.'

'Who sent you, Malachy?'

'Who put you against Timo Rahman?'

At the light on the ceiling, a fly came close to the bulb. For minutes it had circled the brightness, and he had watched it. His mentor at Chicksands, Brian Arnold, used to talk - if an audience could be found -

on resistance to interrogation, and the stories were of time spent at Gough Barracks, County Armagh, and the experts he spoke of were not the relays of questioners from Special Branch but the men from the

'bandit country' of Crossmaglen, Forkhill and Newtown Hamilton. The best of the prisoners took a point on the ceiling, a wall or the tiled cell floor, and locked their eyes on it. Sometimes a hundred questions and not one answer. He'd learned well over coffee in Brian Arnold's room.

'My name is Malachy Kitchen .. .'

She said she was dead on her feet.

' . . . and my date of birth is the twenty-fifth of May, 1973.'

The German pushed himself up off the cell floor, strode to the door, swung it back and allowed the woman through. It was heaved shut and the lock fastened.

Why was he there? Why had he levered himself on to the top of the fence and jumped down clear of the wire at the home of Timo Rahman? Why had he

climbed, in desperation, higher on the ladder? Images surged into his mind, like a nightmare. Worse than the insults had been the cloying kindness, the bloody syrup stuff, the understanding.

16 January 2004

'You've been very helpful, Mal, most co-operative, and I
don't want you to think that your silence at most of the
questions I've put to you in any way jeopardizes your
position in the army. Your inability to answer is quite predictable and you show the well-known symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder. We are not in the Stone Age,
so we don't give elbow room to expressions such as

"cowardice", or to "lack of moral fibre". We accept - it's
taken us psychiatrists long enough to get there, and we've
walked a hard road - that PTSD is a medical condition.

Now, and this is very important to your peace of mind,
there is only a remote possibility that you could face a court-martial and a charge of desertion or dereliction of duty. A
slight and remote possibility but I'll do my damnedest to see
it doesn't happen. My report will say this is as clear a case
of PTSD as I have come across. Is there anything you'd like
to ask me?'

In civilian life, the psychiatrist worked for a health trust
on the south coast of England, but for more than thirty
years he had been a member of the Territorial Army. God
alone knew now how his regular patients, back home, were
surviving his six-month absence. In the medical unit
attached to the division's headquarters outside Basra, he
had the rank of colonel and headed the Battleshock Recovery
Team, a small empire of a lieutenant, who was less than half
his age, and two orderlies who typed and doubled as nurses.

In the sprawling hospital in the seaside town, his caseload
was overwhelming; in Iraq it was minimal. When a general
or a brigadier came to inspect the BRT he'd sometimes joke
that he felt like travelling round the combat units and
touting for trade, but patients came infrequently.

'Nothing to ask me? Well, that's not unusual. You've had
a hard time and probably suffered some pretty cruel cuts but
that's because of soldiers' ignorance of mental disturbance.

It's all behind you. My promise is that we're going to get
you right, get you back on track. You're not the first, and
you won't be the last, but we're going to deal with it. You
are not abnormal. Most importantly, Mal, you're not a
failure. I emphasize it. Not an outcast or a pariah. You've
had an horrendous experience but with time and care, and
with the love of your family, you're going to come through
it ... I'm going to ask you to wait outside a few minutes
while I draw up some papers that need your signature, and
when that's done I'll call you back in. I urge you to remember very clearly what I've said - not a pariah or an outcast,
but a patient with post-traumatic stress syndrome, not a
failure.'

He watched the captain stand and go, a stilted step,
towards the door .. . Fascinating. In the last month he'd
had an RAF corporal who had been spooked by night guard
duty on the airstrip perimeter, and a lance-corporal chef
from the Catering Corps who had been pressed into service
for patrol and had frozen; two months before him there had
been a clerk from Logistics who had sat on a Portakabin roof
and refused to come down claiming that local cleaners,
heavily vetted, intended to kill him . . . This fellow was the
real thing, what the textbooks described.

'Right, let's get some notes down, Donald.'

His duty orderly settled at the computer, and the psychiatrist dictated a skeleton analysis.

' "From field reports, the patient seems to have suffered
initially from convertive collapse, with consequent loss of
limb movement. Brackets, I do not believe we are dealing
with a malingerer or a faker of symptoms, close brackets.

This became dissociative collapse, loss of contact with his
environment and inability to relate to it." Take a paragraph.

Donald, what did you make of him?'

'I'd be going with what they said at Bravo, Colonel.

Sounds to me like he just flipped his bottle.'

'Hardly a medical statement. No, he's most interesting
because he's a classic case. Could even be a paper in it,
might get to be a lecture subject - no names, of course. Next
paragraph. "From outside the family of the regiment he was
serving with, so beyond the 'buddy' network. Probably,
worth checking, poorly trained for being alongside an
active-service unit. Asked whether his home domestic
relationship was satisfactory, patient flushed and made no
reply - all three make PTSD a top starter." I'm actually
quite excited. People back home would kill to get their hands
on him. We're rather lucky.'

'Boot him out, won't they? Don't mind me saying it,
Colonel, but where's he going to go? Who'll have him, with
this lot in his knapsack? You soft-soaped him, sir, but he's
on the outside, long-term.'

'Getting science into your skull, Donald, is a labour of
Sisyphus.'

'Beg pardon?'

'He had to roll a stone up a hill - Homeric legend, father
of Odysseus - and each time he reached the top it rolled back
down and he had to start again. Next paragraph. "Patient's
silence during consultation is compatible with a current
state of dissociative fugue. Brackets. Only basic self-care
maintained, but refusal to acknowledge familiar locations
and life structures. Close brackets." What you have to
understand, Donald, is that cowardice is no longer a word
in our lexicon. In the modern environment, PTSD explains
everything.'

'The guys with him won't buy that, Colonel. You dressing it up won't change it, with respect. To them, he's just
a coward. No escape from that reputation, being called a
coward.'

'You'd tax the patience of a saint, Donald. More's the pity,
I won't have enough time with him -going to damn well try,
though. Paragraph. "Treatment of patient is handicapped by
the delay in his movement from a forward area to my
Battleshock Recovery Team unit. Valuable time has been lost,
with consequent onset of acute stress reaction. The - capitals,
PIE, close capitals - principle has been negated. Proximity,
Immediacy, Expectancy cannot now apply. In a more ideal
world than provided by combat in Iraq, the patient should
have talked his actions through with a qualified expert at the
location, within hours of it happening, and should then have
been assured he would be subject to fast recovery from a 'one-off' behavioural incident." That's about it.'

'But the PIE principle didn't happen, sir, did it?'

'It did not.'

'Which is why, Colonel, he's shafted. He's labelled a
coward, and big-time he'll believe what's written on that
label.'

It was the moment when he realized the flimsy nature of
the plywood walls and the lightweight door that divided his
consulting room from the waiting area beyond. He cursed
softly and felt a little moment of shame.-

'Perhaps, Donald, you could get those consent forms out.

Make some coffee, then get him back in.'

Ricky had asked, 'What you got? A dozen passengers for the boat?'

Timo had said, 'One.'

'No, not the boat, one boat. What I asked was, how many passengers is it carrying? Twelve?'

'One passenger.'

They had been at the table, now cleared by the Bear, and the map was unfolded to its full size and lay spread across the mats.

Ricky had laughed in surprise. 'What? One

passenger? The boat comes all that way for one body?'

'I see nothing to laugh for. The boat comes now for one passenger. The purpose of the boat's journey is not to fish. It is to carry back across the sea the one passenger.'

Because he was bent over the table, because his eyes were set on the island marked on the map, Ricky had not seen the piercing brightness of the eyes of Timo Rahman or the narrowed lips that signified his annoyance. 'You know what it costs, Mr Rahman, to put that boat to sea? A bloody fortune. It costs . . . '

A hand had slipped on to his shoulder and fingers had squeezed tighter into the flesh and the bones, and the voice had been silkily smooth: 'You bring the boat now, Ricky, for one passenger. Not next month or next week but
now.
That is very easy for you to understand, yes? And you will remember the many favours I have shown you, yes?'

'Yes, Mr Rahman.'

And the hand had loosened but had left behind it the pain of the pressure on the nerves, and there had been the first shout from the kitchen, and the chaos had followed.

Ricky Capel, far from home, had sat for close on two hours in the dining room. Had not spoken, had not moved, had not known what the fuck had happened.

He had heard the yelled commands and questions, the staccato orders given down the telephone in a language he knew not a word of. He had sat motionless with the map in front of him. Twice the Bear had come through the dining room, like Ricky wasn't there, with a Luger pistol in his hand. Now, from the kitchen, among the savagery of voices, a woman sobbed.

In the door was Timo Rahman. He hurled a heavy coat across the room - an overcoat, brown and with a fleck in the material. It hit the table and slithered half its length. The coat was in front of Ricky. 'You know that coat?'

'Not mine.' Ricky giggled, not from mischief or cheek but fear.

The voice was soft. 'I asked, Ricky, do you know that coat?'

'No - no, I don't.' The smell of the coat was under his nose, and made the fear acute. 'How could I?'