The Watchman (20 page)

"Don't let's spoil the evening with bad manners.

At waist level, where the barman couldn't have seen it even if he'd been looking, there was the flash of a blade.

"You heard me," said greasy-head.

"Now fuck oil!"

Wisbeach frowned, as if disappointed. Then a heavy-knuckled hand shot out, grabbed the knife-wielder's neck and squeezed hard. There was a moment's absolute stillness. The Baha Boys boomed on the jukebox.

Wisbeach's knuckles tightened. The knife dropped to the floor and its owner's mouth snapped convulsively open, issuing a spray of half-chewed potato crisps and phlegm on to Wisbeach's sleeve.

The ex-NCO grinned.

"Good here, isn't it?" he said to the other two louts. His tone was conversational. For the first time that evening, thought Alex, the old bugger looked genuinely cheerful.

As anoxia kicked in, greasy-head's eyes crossed, the shiny nylon of his Adidas track pants darkened with urine and he sank half-conscious to his knees.

When Wisbeach finally released him he lay retching and sobbing on the floor beneath the bar. If the barman had noticed anything, he showed no sign of having done so.

"Two pints please, lads," Wisbeach said quietly, addressing the two survivors of the incident.

"You can bring them over to our table."

Stunned by the sight of their leader's humiliation, they nodded their agreement.

"Better?" Alex smiled when they had taken delivery of their drinks.

"Much," said Wisbeach. He leaned forward.

"Listen, son, don't go around saying you got this from me, but if you really want to know about Joe Meehan, the person to talk to is Denzil Connolly. Denzil was on one of those Khmer Rouge RWW training packages with me a really shit-hot instructor and he was in charge of Meehan at Tregaron before they dropped him over the water or whatever the hell they did with the poor sod. The two of them spent two or three months living in each others' pockets. So if anyone knew him..."

"Any idea where I'll find Connolly?"

"Sorry, mate. Not a clue."

Alex nodded and the two men drank their beers in silence.

"Want another?" asked Alex eventually.

"I won't, thanks," Wisbeach replied.

"I've got a couple more hours' driving."

He stood up, gaunt and tall, and extended a hand to Alex.

"Fuck of a business, son.

"Yours or mine?"

The ex-NCO smiled.

"Watch yourself, OK?"

FIFTEEN.

Five minutes later Alex was walking towards Hereford city centre. The encounter had depressed him, Don Hammond's funeral was tomorrow and he felt like cheering himself up.

As he left the outskirts of the city the streets got busier. There was a slight drizzle but this hadn't deterred the good-time crowd and noisy groups were swinging from bar to bar along the shining pavements, anxious to pour their salaries down their throats as rapidly and with as much shouting and laughter as possible. As the noise and the Friday night smell of beer and cheap perfume swallowed him up, Alex felt his spirits lift. A fat blonde girl winked at him and her friends giggled and screeched he recognised them as part of the troopy-groupie crowd that often hung out at The Inkerman in the hope of being 'trapped' by young SAS troopers.

"Yo, Alex!" It was Andy Maddocks from "D' Squadron and Lance Wilford of the RWW, dressed to kill in their civvy going-out clothes.

"Hey!" said Alex, moving out of the way of the lurching crowd on the pavement.

"What are you flash buggers doing back here?"

"Big turnaround after the hostage-rescue," said Andy Maddocks.

"They're sending another squadron out next week."

"And the RWW team?"

Lance Wilford shrugged.

"You disappeared, Don's dead, Ricky Sutton's having his arse mended in hospital... I guess they felt they ought to send in a new lot. Give the SL government their money's worth."

Alex nodded.

"They pulled me out for a liaison job," he told the other two men in answer to their unspoken question.

"I'm up here for Don's funeral tomorrow."

The others nodded soberly and then, brightening, Maddocks turned to Alex.

"Why notjoin us for a few bev vies. And possibly a chat about the weather with a trio of nymphomaniac nurses, preferably still in their uniforms?"

"And suspender-belts," added Lance wistfully.

"Sounds good to me," said Alex.

A few minutes later they were crammed into a smoky corner table with pints in front of them. Andy, unwilling to waste time, was craning his head from side to side, looking for spare women.

"I thought you were married, Andy," murmured Alex.

"Separated. Wendy bin ned me when the squadron got back from Kosovo."

"Any particular reason?"

"Mental cruelty's what she told the lawyer. Which I suppose is as good a way as any of saying that she was shagging a foot baller

"A foot baller. You're kidding?"

"No, she and some friend of hers who goes out with one of the reserves took to going to all the United home games. With predictable fucking consequences.

"Manchester United?" asked Lance.

"No, you womble, Hereford United."

Lance reflected.

"I was going to say, if it'd been a Man U player it'd almost've been worth it. I'd let Ryan Giggs shag my wife."

"You haven't got a wife. Giggsy wouldn't want to shag any woman that'd marry you. What'd he want to bother with some slag from..."

"Are you calling my future wife a slag?"

"Well, she is, isn't she? Be honest."

They all laughed, Lance loudest of all.

This is good, thought Alex. This is real.

"So, do you reckon you'll be getting any Hereford United tickets?" Lance asked, after a short drinking break.

He ducked just in time to avoid Andy's fist.

"Where did the mental cruelty come in?" asked Alex.

"Told Wendy I didn't want kids," said Andy.

"Couldn't bear the thought of having a son or a daughter who lost its dad. It's one thing being killed, it's another lying there knowing you're going to break your child's heart.

"So why d'you marry her in the first place?"

"Price she put on her virtue. No white dress, no snakeysnakey."

Alex nodded.

"Where did you go on your honeymoon?"

"Belfast," said Andy.

"With the rest of the squadron... Lance, mate, I think we're in business. Go and ask those three to come over. Her in the blue top and the two with her."

"Why me? You go!"

"You're a fucking corporal, now get your arse over there." Alex would have said it was impossible to get anyone else round the table but somehow the three managed to jam themselves in. One of them, a cheerful, round-faced girl with what Frank Wisbeach would without question have called 'comfy tits', was practically sitting on his knee.

"Whassat?" she asked, squirming uncomfortably.

"My mobile," said Alex apologetically.

"What's your name?"

"Gail," said the girl, snapping her lighter beneath a king-size Pall Mall. She smelt of make-up and Pernod and synthetic perfume and her hair inches from his face was a curtain of wheatish blonde, as flat as if it had been ironed. Next to him, Andy Maddocks was very seriously informing the girl in the blue top that the three of them were gay.

"Bollocks!" said the girl in the blue top.

"We know what you are. We sussed you ten minutes ago from the tans."

"And the muscles," said Gail, reaching across the table to tweak Lance's tattooed bicep.

"And the crap haircuts," volunteered the third girl to shrieks from the other two.

"We're not fucking stupid."

"It was worth a try," said Andy.

"I was going to suggest you try and convert us to heterosexuality."

"And just how would we do that?" asked the girl in the blue top.

"Well..." began Andy.

For an hour the six of them sat, drank and laughed. Alex could feel himself getting drunker and drunker but the fact didn't worry him in the least. He had never been a regular pub- goer but right now he was having the best time that he could remember. This was the reality, this smoky bar corner and the press of the crowd and the laughter of his mates and the weight of Gail's thigh against his and the tableful of empty glasses. If he was going to take his officer status seriously, he supposed glumly, he was going to have to wind this sort of activity down.

So how should he play it? Up or out? Stay with the army in the knowledge that the best was behind him or bale out and take his chances in civvy street? The latter sounded more tempting but what would his life actually consist of, given that soldiering was the only trade he knew? Babysitting overpaid celebrities who at best would treat him as a paid accessory? Waiting in the rain outside the fashionable restaurants where Sophie and her friends went? He couldn't see himself taking that route. He didn't want to end up like Frank Wisbeach, taking his frustrations out on delinquent teenagers.

Contract soldiering, perhaps. Working for the highest bidder. Fucking up the lives of third-world citizens on behalf of multinationals like Shell or Monsanto?

All in all, he thought, he'd rather go back to Clacton and take the garage off his dad's hands. But then he couldn't quite see Sophie hunched up against the sea wind eating haddock and chips from the bag, or chucking a rubber bone for the dog, or watching Eas tEnders

Sophie. He should give her a bell.

"You're a quiet one, aren't you," said Gail.

"You haven't said a word in ten minutes."

"Sorry," he said.

"I was thinking."

"What about?"

"The future, I suppose.

"Well, we could start off with another drink." She glanced at her two friends, who were subtly but definitely paired off with Andy and Lance.

"Same again?" he asked her.

"Pernod and black?"

"Yeah. I'll come with you."

On their unsteady way to the bar, he found his arm encircling her waist and her body moving into alignment with his. He felt her hip-joint articulating beneath his hand, the soft weight of her breast against his side.

"You're an officer, your mate said."

"Er, yeah."

"You don't sound like an officer."

He grinned.

"What do I sound like?"

She frowned and pouted up her lips.

"Oh... I don't know. Like the others, I s'pose."

"Well, that's what I am like."

"You're not, though. They're, like, dead lad dish and up for a laugh, and you're not like that at all. You just pretend to be." She narrowed her eyes, leant against him and lowered her voice.

"I bet you're a right hard bastard. Have you got a girlfriend? Don't answer that of course you have. Just don't tell me about her."

"As long as you don't tell me about your boyfriend."

"I haven't got a boyfriend." The crowd propelled them forward against the bar.

"I've got a bloody husband, worse luck."

Alex turned to stare at her but at that moment the barman materialised in front of them, eyebrow raised. Alex ordered himself a sixth pint and ajameson's whiskey chaser, and Gail her fifth Pernod and black currant

"Married?" he asked flatly.

"He's away. With someone else." She glanced up at him.

"Don't ask, just be nice to me.

She was pretty, he thought. Pretty eyes. And a mouth and body to chase the ghosts away. He slipped his hand under the bottom of her sweater, felt the taut waistband of her jeans and the warm flesh above.

The drinks arrived and they backed away from the bar.

"Where d'you live?" he asked her.

"I don't want to go there," she said. She touched his cheek with the back of her fingers.

"What about you?"

"Walking distance."

In the flat he bolted the door and closed the curtains as she walked slowly around, touching things.

"There's dust everywhere." She smiled.

"I've been away. Coffee? And I've got some Bushmills somewhere?"

"Sounds good."

In the kitchen area the strip light was on the flicker. Alex was kissing her against the wall and she was running her hands up his back when the kettle boiled.

In the bedroom there was a jumble of mostly green kit against the wall waterproofs, thermals, medical packs, a water purifier, sleeping bags and stuff sacks into which, earlier that day, Alex had tossed the shoulder-holstered Glock pistol and accessories he'd signed out of the armoury at Credenhill.

If Gail noticed this, she made no comment, just lowered her drink and kicked off her shoes.

"Music?"

In answer Alex directed her to the miniature sound system and pile of CDs that sat, as dusty as everything else, on a shelf.

"This is the strangest collection I've ever seen," she said wonderingly.

"Miles Davis, Britney Spears, Johann Sebastian Bach, the Teletubbies, Bridget Jones's Diary.

"It belonged to a guy who got killed last year," said Alex.

"I think there were some Christmas presents for his family among it.

She shook her head.

"The lives you people lead." She switched the system on and selected the Britney Spears CD.

On the bed, or rather on the double mattress that served Alex as a bed, they undressed each other. She was wearing a tight lilac sweater which she pulled away from her face as he took it off so as not to smear her make-up. Beneath it, she amply filled a black lace bra. Smiling, she allowed him to search behind her back for a moment before pointing to the rosebud clasp at the front. He undid it and lowered his head. Her fingers knotted in his hair.

Finally they were both naked. She was pale-skinned and soft as ice cream, and there was a dreamy-eyed passivity about her which he found a vast relief after Sophie. She was his all of her, unconditionally and for as long as he wanted.

Breathing in her muskily synthetic aura part pub, part Boots perfume counter he ran his hands over the impossible softness of her breasts. When he reached the inside of her thighs she gasped and drew her knees apart.

She tasted, in some curious way, of Alex's memories of his childhood, of sweat and closeness and sea spray, of the time before he had killed anyone. She moved like the sea too -slowly and from somewhere deep within herself After a time he moved back up her body, manoeuvred himself inside her and forgot about Sophie altogether.