A Darker Shade of Blue (41 page)

‘I told you,' Keiron said accusingly and kicked at the ground.

‘Right,' Rebecca said, making up her mind. ‘Put on your coats and scarves. We're going.'

‘Where? To find Daddy?'

‘Yes,' Rebecca lied.

Billie fussed with her buttons and when Rebecca knelt to help her, the child pushed her away. ‘I can do it. I can do it myself.'

‘Well, get a move on.'

‘I am.' Bottom lip stuck petulantly out.

Calm down, Rebecca told herself. Calm down.

Billie pushed the last button into place.

‘All right?' Rebecca said. ‘Come on, then. Let's go.'

They were a hundred metres away, maybe less, heading in what Rebecca thought was the direction they'd originally come, when they saw him just a short way ahead, walking purposefully towards them.

‘Come to meet me? That's nice.'

As the children went into the tent, he pulled her back. ‘Try that again and I'll fuckin' kill you, so help me.'

*

There were only a couple of hours of daylight left. By the time they had got a decent-sized search party organised there would be even less. Best to wait until first light.

‘I've been talking to the Royal Military Police,' Resnick said. ‘Seems as though one sergeant going AWOL isn't too high on their list of priorities. Too many of them, apparently, done the same. Not too keen on hurrying back to fight for someone else's democracy. More interested in tracking down a batch of illicit guns, smuggled into the UK from Iraq via Germany. Bit of a burgeoning trade in exchanging them for drugs and currency. Cocaine, especially. Still, they're sending someone up tomorrow. If we do find Anderson, they'll want to stake their claim.'

‘Till then we twiddle our thumbs.'

‘Do better than that, I dare say,' Resnick said.

Tony Burns was up from London, sitting in with a local band at the Five Ways. Geoff Pearson on bass, the usual crew. Last time Resnick had heard Burns, a good few years back, he'd been playing mostly baritone, a little alto. Now it was all tenor, a sound not too many miles this side of Stan Getz. Jake McMahon joined them for the last number, a tear-up through the chords of ‘Cherokee'. By now the free cobs were going round, end of the evening, cheese or ham, and Kiley was having a pretty good time.

Resnick had called Lynn and asked her if she wanted to join them, but instead she had opted for an early night. She'd left him a note on the kitchen table, signed with love.

Resnick made coffee and, feeling expansive, cracked open a bottle of Highland Park. They sat listening to Ben Webster and Art Tatum and then Monk fingering his way through ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea', Kiley not without envy for what seemed, in some respects, a fuller, more comfortable life than his own.

‘Well,' said Resnick, finally, levering himself up from his chair. ‘Early start.'

‘You bet.'

The bed was made up in the spare room, a clean towel laid out and, should he need it, a new toothbrush in its plastic case. He thought he might manage a few more pages of
The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes
before dropping off, but when he woke in the morning, the book had fallen to the floor, unread.

*

Wherever he'd gone in those two hours, Anderson had come back with a bottle of Vodka. Stolichnaya. Perhaps he'd had it with him all along. He sat there, close to the entrance to the tent, drinking steadily. Rebecca tried to get the children to eat something but to little avail. She forced herself to try some of the corned beef, though it was something she'd never liked. The children drank water, nibbled biscuits and moped.

The rain outside increased until it began seeping under one corner of the tent.

Billie lay down, sucking her thumb, and, for once, Rebecca made no attempt to stop her. If Keiron, huddled into a blanket near her feet, was asleep or not she wasn't sure.

The bottle was now half-empty.

Anderson stared straight ahead, seeing something she couldn't see.

Terry?'

At the softness of her voice, he flinched.

‘How long is it since you got any sleep?'

Whenever she had awoken in the early hours after they'd arrived, he had been sitting, shoulders hunched, alert and keeping guard.

‘How long?'

‘I don't know. A long time.'

‘What's wrong?'

For an answer he lifted the bottle to his lips.

‘Perhaps you should talk to someone? About what's troubling you? Perhaps—'

‘Stop it! Just fucking stop it! Shut up!'

‘Stop what?'

‘Wheedling fucking round me.' He mimicked her voice. ‘Perhaps you should talk to someone, Terry? As if you gave a shit.'

‘I do.'

‘Yeah?' He laughed. ‘You don't give a shit about me and I don't give a shit about you. Not any more.'

‘Then why are we here?'

‘Because of them. Because they have to know.'

‘Know what?'

He moved suddenly. ‘Wake them. Go on, wake them up.'

‘No, look, they're exhausted. Let them sleep.'

But Billie was already stirring and Keiron was awake.

Anderson took another long swallow from the bottle. His skin was sallow and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead and his temples. When he started talking, his voice seemed distant, even in the confines of the tent.

‘We were on patrol, just routine. There'd been a firefight a couple of days before, so we were more on our guard than usual. Against snipers but also for explosives. IEDs. We were passing this house and this woman came out, just her face showing, part of her face, the eyes, and she's waving her arms and wailing and pointing back towards the house as if there's something wrong, and Sean, he jumps down, even though we're telling him not to be stupid, and the next thing we know, he's followed her to the doorway, and the next after that he's been shot. One gets him in the body and knocks him back, but he's wearing his chest plate, thank Christ, so that's all right, but the next one takes him in the neck. By now we're returning fire and the woman's disappeared, nowhere to be fucking seen, Sean's leaking blood into the fucking ground, so we drag him out of there, back into the vehicle and head back to camp.'

Beside Rebecca, Keiron, wide-eyed, listened enthralled. Billie clutched her mother's hand and flinched each time her father swore.

‘He died, that's the thing. Sean. The bullet'd torn an artery and the bleeding wouldn't stop. By the time we reached camp, he was dead. He was our mate, a laugh. A real laugh. Always saw the funny side. Just a young bloke. Twenty-one. And stupid. Young and stupid. He'd wanted to help.' Anderson took a quick swallow and wiped his mouth. ‘Two days later, we went back. Went back at night, five of us. We'd been drinking beforehand, pretty heavily, talking about what had happened, what they'd done to Sean.'

Rebecca shivered and hugged the children close.

‘We went in under cover of darkness. There was no moon, I remember, not then. Sometimes it'd be, you know, huge, filling half the fucking sky, but that night there was nothing. Just a few stars. Everyone inside was sleeping. Women. Men.' He paused. ‘Children. Soon as we got inside one of the men reached for his gun, he'd been sleeping with it, under the blankets, and that's when we started firing. Firing at anything that moved. One of the women, she came running at us, screaming, and Steve, he says, “That's her. That's her, the lyin' bitch,” and, of course, dressed like she was, like they all were, he had no way of knowing, but that didn't stop him all but emptying his magazine into her.'

‘That's enough,' Rebecca said. ‘Enough.'

‘There was a girl,' Anderson said, ignoring her, ‘hiding in one of the other rooms. Twelve, maybe thirteen. I don't know. Could've been younger. Steve grabbed hold of her and threw her down on the floor and then one of the others started to tear off her clothes.'

‘Stop,' Rebecca said. ‘Please stop. They don't need to hear this.'

‘Yes, they do! Yes, they do!'

Keiron was not looking, refusing to look, pressing his face into his mother's side.

‘We all knew what was going to happen. Steve's standing over her, pulling off the last of her things, and she calls him a name and spits at him and he leans down and punches her in the face, and then he's on his knees, unzipping himself, and we're all watching, a couple cheering him on, give it to her, give it to her, clapping like it's some game, and that's when I tell him, I tell him twice to stop and he just carries on and I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't just stand there and watch – she was just a child! – and I shot him, through the back of the head. Blood and gunk all over the girl's face and she wriggles out from under and grabs her clothes and runs and we're left standing there. All except for Steve. He was my mate, too, they all were, and I'd killed him over some girl who, even before that happened, would've happily seen us blown to smithereens.'

He wiped away some of the sweat that was running into his eyes. Tears were running soundlessly down Rebecca's face.

‘We all agreed, the rest of us, to claim he'd got caught in the crossfire. After what had happened, no one was going to want to tell the truth.'

‘Except you,' Rebecca said.

‘This is different.' He nodded towards the children. ‘They needed to know.'

‘Why?'

‘So they can understand.'

And his hands reached down towards his rifle.

*

Not long after first light, a police helicopter, flying low over the forest, reported a woman and two children standing in a small clearing, waving a makeshift flag.

Armed officers secured the area. Rebecca and the children were escorted to the perimeter, where paramedics were waiting. Anderson was found lying inside the tent, a dark cagoule covering his face, his discharged weapon close at hand. At the hospital later, after she had rested and the medical staff had examined her, Rebecca slowly began to tell Resnick and a female liaison officer her story. The children were in another room with a nurse and their maternal grandmother.

Later still, relishing the chance to stretch his legs, Resnick had walked with Kiley the short distance through the city centre to the railway station. Already, a rush edition of the
Post
was on the streets. It would be national news for a moment, a day, page one beneath the fold, then a short column on page six, a paragraph on page thirteen. Forgotten. One of those things that happen, stress of combat, balance of mind disturbed. Rebecca had told the police her husband's story, as well as she remembered, what he had seen, the attack at night, the confusion, the young Iraqi girl, the fellow soldier caught in the crossfire and killed in front of his eyes. He hadn't been able to sleep, she said, not since that happened. I don't think he could face going back to it again.

‘Not what you wanted, Jack,' Resnick said, shaking his hand.

The 15.30 to London St Pancras was on time.

‘None of us,' Kiley said.

‘We'll catch that game some time.'

‘Yes. I'd like that.'

Kiley hurried down the steps on to the platform.

He phoned Jennie Calder from the train. In a little over two hours' time he would be crossing towards the flats where Mary Anderson lived and climbing the stairs, welcome on the mat, but not for him, her face when she opened the door ajar with tears.

FOOTNOTE

Any Notts County supporters reading this will forgive me, I trust, for playing fast and loose with the details of the club's highly successful FA Cup run in 1990/91. Manchester City not Charlton Athletic. Come on, you Pies!

London

January 25 2007

 

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edited by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, New York, 2008. Reprinted in
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edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, Tyrus Books, Madison, 2009.

‘Snow, Snow, Snow'. First published in
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edited by Robert J. Randisi, Carroll & Graf, New York, 2005.

‘Promise'. First published in
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‘Billie's Blues'. First published by Rivages, France, 2002. Reprinted in
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Minor Key,
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edited by Martin Edwards, The Do-Not Press, London, 2002. Reprinted in
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edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Allison & Busby, London, 2003.

‘Smile'. First published in
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edited by Joel Lane & Steve Bishop, Tindal Street Press, Birmingham, 2002.

‘Chance'. First published in
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edited by John Harvey, Heinemann, London, 2003. Reprinted in
The Best British Mysteries 2005,
edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Allison & Busby, London, 2004.

‘Well, You Needn't'. First published by Otava, Finland, 2004. Reprinted in
Minor Key,
Five Leaves, Nottingham, 2009.

‘Home'. First published in
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edited by James Urquhart, Five Leaves, Nottingham, 2005. Reprinted in
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine,
December 2005, in
The Best British Mysteries IV,
edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Allison & Busby, 2006 and in
Minor Key,
Five Leaves, Nottingham, 2009.