The Watchman (8 page)

The stewardess directed him to a seat next to an amply proportioned woman, some fifty years old, who smelt strongly of coconut tanning oil.

She looked him up and down.

"Well," she murmured purposefully, noting the uncomfortable tightness of his trousers.

"Aren't I the lucky one!"

Alex's spirits sank. How long was this fucking flight? Eight hours?

"Are you all.. . together?" he asked, indicating the other passengers.

"Well, it'd probably be true to say that we're all here for much the same reason," the woman said with a small smile.

"Which is?"

"To meet Gambian boys, of course. Bit of the old Shirley Valentine."

"Ah," said Alex.

"Right."

"Africans are properly appreciative of the fuller figure, you see. And they know how to woo a girl without ever mentioning DIY or football."

"Or their jobs?" ventured Alex.

"Or their jobs she agreed.

"Quite right. I'm Maureen, by the way.

"Alex."

"So what brings you to the Gambia, Alex?"

"Oh, I never talk about my job. Too boring."

"You came here for .. . work?"

Mistake. Serves me right for being a sinartarse, he thought.

"I'm in, er, travel," he explained.

"So you.. . get around a bit?"

"Here and there." He shrugged.

She nodded. Taxiing into the oncoming breeze, the big 777 started its long race to take-off.

"And do you like big girls, Alex?"

Blimey, he thought. Talk about cutting to the chase.

"Did you have a good holiday, Maureen?" he asked her, with what he hoped was professional-sounding interest.

In answer she fished a polaroid photograph from her purse. It showed a young Gambian man, nude except for a pair of sunglasses. He was about seventeen, slender and leaning backwards to counterbalance his evident enthusiasm. The plane hurtled into the air, pressing them back into their seats.

"There s my answer, Alex. Now can I please have yours? Do you like big girls?"

He turned to her, took in the painfully sunburnt flesh, the hennaed hair, the small hopeful eyes.

"Maureen," he said.

"I do like them. But I've got one waiting for me at home."

"Hm," she said, unconvinced.

An hour or so after take-off, breakfast was served.

Uncertain of what was waiting for him at Heathrow, Alex ate the lot. With a bit of luck there'd be some lunch, too. Trouble, as every soldier knew, was best faced on a full stomach. And with a well-rested mind.

The adrenalin rush that accompanied violent action was invariably followed by exhaustion and Alex slipped gratefully into sleep. One of the few advantages of his present situation perhaps the only advantage was that he would be able to see Sophie again and he didn't want to appear completely knackered when he did.

For a long while, scenes from the previous night replayed themselves before his eyes. The smell of rotting mangoes and the river, the clicking of that severed windpipe, tracer scorching across the clearing, the screams of the maimed RUF men, the stillness of the Puma pilot as his aircraft danced beneath him, the Puma enfolded in flame against the sodden grey of the jungle, Don Hammond pitching forward, the smack of SLR rounds impacting into Steve Dowson's shoulder and Ricky Sutton's thigh... The images faded. They were not ready to join the longer established nightmares in the vault of Alex's memory it would be weeks and perhaps months before that happened but they had been faced. He had always tried to make horror his friend.

It showed, Sophie told him, on his face.

FIVE.

Sophie Wells was the sister of Jamie Wells, who had been an officer cadet at Sandhurst with Alex and was now a Coldstream Guards lieutenant.

Jamie and Alex had met towards the end of the course. It had been a Friday night and with his ten year-old Kaman-Ghia out of commission, Alex had been looking for a lift into London, where he had arranged to meet a mate for a few beers.

Jamie had not only been driving to London but to Chelsea, which suited Alex perfectly. Dave Constantine, the colleague in question, had recently been posted as Permanent Staff Instructor to 21 SAS and Alex had arranged to meet him at the bar in the territorial battalion's King's Road HQ. Jamie, meanwhile, was going to a party in Cadogan Mansions, behind Sloane Square.

On their arrival in London Alex stood Jamie a drink at the bar at the Duke of York's HQ, where Alex was handed a note. Dave Constantine, he discovered, had been called away at the last moment to replace one of the other PSIs on an escape and evasion exercise on the Brecon Beacons.

Jamie had suggested that the SAS man come with him to the party, which was being given by his sister.

Alex hadn't been keen; to spend the evening with a hundred braying Sloanes was very low on his wish list

"What does your sister do?" he asked doubtfully.

"You'll have to ask her." Jamie grinned.

"Right." Alex smiled grimly.

"I get it. It's a survival exercise. You've had to survive the beatings and the bollockings, so now I've got to survive the Taras and Tamaras."

Jamie returned his gaze.

"Think of it that way if you like," he said equably.

"But you might also enjoy yourself."

"Yeah, right."

"What have you got to lose?"

Alex conceded defeat.

The party was on the third floor of a nineteenth century mansion block, and seemed to be taking place on the stairs and in the lift as well. Alex had expected an uncomfortable roomful of red-faced young men in corduroys and tractor-tyre shoes; what he actually encountered was the best part of an acre of dizzyingly beautiful women.

He had also expected to look out of place; in fact, although some of the handful of men present were expensively dressed, most looked as if they had bought their gear off an Isle of Dogs market trader.

The look was as fake as their cockney accents and movie-gangster rhyming slang, but Alex reckoned that his cropped military haircut, Essex Stock Cars T-shirt and old Levis would probably pass muster among them.

Alex's first hint of Sophie Wells's existence was when a gold and turquoise whirlwind blew past him trailing scent, silk and male admirers. She came to rest briefly in front of Jamie for just long enough, in fact, to present her brother with a kiss and an introduction to a dewy-faced teenager in a chiffon micro-skirt 'she's the new "face" of Prada, so I want you to make absolutely sure she's in bed by 10.30!" then was suddenly right there in front of him.

"So." She smiled.

"It's Alex, isn't it? A friend of Jamie's from Sandhurst? How lovely of you to come!"

For a moment Alex gazed at her, taking in the short chestnut crop, the cool grey-green eyes, the Italian silks, the flimsy and very visible lingerie beneath.

Where did you begin with a creature like this?

"I'm Sophie," she continued encouragingly, swiping a couple of glasses of champagne from a passing waiter's tray and handing one to Alex.

"And these dreadful people' she gestured vaguely around her 'are my friends. Aren't they ghastly?"

Alex managed a smile.

"You should see mine," he said.

"Is this party to celebrate anything?"

"My twenty-sixth birthday," said Sophie.

"My entry into middle age."

"You look well on it," said Alex, wishing he could have found something cleverer to say.

"Do I? God, I don't deserve to. You look.. ." She hesitated.

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-four."

"I was going to say that you look older than this lot' she waved vaguely at the people around them 'but you don't. You just look... different.~ She held his gaze, Alex noticed, rather than darting her eyes about the room in search of the next flirtation, the next conversational fix. So steady was her regard so intimate, somehow that they might have been alone together.

"Well, there probably aren't too many other soldiers here."

She laughed.

"That's certainly true. But I've met a few soldiers in my time and they didn't have what you've got that sort of wary look behind the eyes."

She dropped her voice to an enquiring murmur.

"How did that get there?"

Alex looked away, momentarily uncomfortable, breaking the cocoon that they had briefly spun about themselves. Sophie watched him patiently.

"Jamie wouldn't tell me what you do," he said eventually.

"I'm supposed to ask you in person."

She shrugged.

"Oh, I'm a fashion PR. I get column inches in the glossies for designers."

"I bet some of those designers are grateful for a few inches," said Alex.

"Alex!" shrieked Sophie in mock outrage. She turned to a man in a canary-yellow biker's outfit and Alex, taking his cue, drifted away. By one of the windows he saw Jamie, glass in hand, talking to the Prada girl. Alex caught his eye and winked, and Jamie flushed a slightly deeper shade of pink than usual.

These are nice enough people, thought Alex, but what the fuck am I doing here, precisely?

He wandered into a large kitchen, fitted out with tiny laser-like spotlights and vast brushed-aluminium units and appliances.

The placed looked like a safe depository he'd once guarded. Opening the walk-in fridge, he found himself a cold Mexican beer. The champagne went down the sink.

At one end of the room was a large picture window, looking out over Sloane Street. For several minutes Alex stood there in unmoving silence, watching the northward crawl of red taillights towards Knightsbridge. At that moment, it seemed that he was disconnected from everything and everyone that he knew. His SAS career had separated him from his family, promotion had lifted him out of the orbit of his fellow NCOs, and he guessed that both age and background would set him apart from most of his brother officers. He didn't particularly regret any of this except possibly the distance that had grown between himself and his family. This was as much a matter of logistics as anything else: Hereford was a long way away from the Essex coast and London stood between them. He just didn't make it down there often enough.

Nor had he ever been married. He'd had lots of girlfriends over the years but had always held back from proposing to them. There was plenty of time for family life, he'd always reckoned, when he wasn't being yo-yoed around the world by the Regiment.

Ireland had discouraged him, too. He'd seen brave soldiers fall apart when their wives and children were threatened. What would it be like, Alex wondered, planning a future with someone? And what sort of person would that someone have to be if they weren't going to end up at each other's throats?

Far below, in Sloane Street, an articulated lorry straddled the traffic where it had jackknifed while attempting to turn into a side street. Long lines of cars had built up on both sides of the road and the faint blare of their protest was audible through the heavy plate glass. Behind him Alex heard the suck of the opening fridge.

"You must be Jamie's friend. Sophie thought you'd done a runner."

He turned to find a pretty fair-haired girl in jeans and a floaty top jacking open one of the Mexican beers.

"Still here, I'm afraid." He extended his hand.

"I'm Alex."

"I'm Stella." She looked at him appraisingly and grinned.

"She'll be really glad you're still here. She was like oh no, he's gone, we've completely freaked him out. Not that I'm supposed to tell you that, of course.

"I can keep a secret," said Alex.

"Yeah, I'll bet you can," said Stella, drawing alongside him.

"Interesting view down there?"

They peered down through the summer twilight.

"Fashion's not really one of my special subjects," Alex told her. Stella nodded.

"Unlike most fashion ista babes, there's a lot more to Sophie than her job."

"I'm sure," said Alex.

"Are you a PR too?"

"Nah. Sophie does the London PR for my company.

I'm a designer."

Behind them there was a sudden overexcited hubbub. Alex glanced over his shoulder to discover a tall, anxious-looking girl chopping lines of white powder on one of the polished aluminium draining boards. A half-dozen other modelly looking boys and girls crowded impatiently round her. Banknotes were produced and small hoovering sounds ensued. One evenly tanned young man whom Alex vaguely recognised had a violent sneezing fit into a paper kitchen towel. There was nervous laughter from the others, but by the sixth sneeze the blood spatters were clearly visible.

"You don't disapprove?" asked Stella, watching him watching them.

"Me? No." Alex held up his beer and squinted at the label.

"Personally I'd rather go this way than that way, but .. ." He shrugged.

"Each to his own?"

Alex looked over at the powder-nosed models.

"Or her own.

The kitchen was filling up. Stella introduced Alex to a film director named Danny Biggs, for whose latest project she was designing costumes.

"What's the picture going to be about?" Alex asked.

"Bunch of geezers turning over a bank," said Danny.

"Working title "Hair of the Dog"."

"Why do you need a fashion designer to dress bank robbers?" Alex asked him.

"Most villains I've come across are fat, middle-aged white men in dodgy gold jewellery and knocked-off sports gear the sort of stuff you can pick up in any high street."

"Well, we 'ave to improve on reality," explained Danny.

"Dress 'em in ruffled shirts an' Gucci whistles."

At that moment Jamie appeared with the Prada girl and touched fists with Stella.

"You'd better watch out," he told her, indicating Alex.

"This man gave us a lecture, yesterday on ambushes and surprise attacks.

Keep him in view at all times!"

Stella raised an eyebrow.

"I thought you were one of the... what do you call them, students? Cadets?"

"I am," said Alex.

"But I came up through the ranks for ten years first, hence my advanced age. From time to time us old lags get called on to address the Ruperts that's Jamie and his friends and pass on a few dirty tricks."