Authors: Gerald Seymour
A woman, African, stared at him. Her chest bulged in a halter-top and her thighs were bare below the short, tight skirt. She sucked at her cigarette, then blew the smoke at him but the wind snatched it away.
He smiled, but shook his head. The recruits in Basic Training had talked sex - talked sex, described sex, gloried in sex. Had sat around the TV while the videos played sex, had boasted sex. Malachy Kitchen's first sex had been with a girl from a farm, in a barn, on the edge of the Devon village where his parents had moved to. Second sex had been with a corporal's wife, and he'd washed for a week afterwards, had scrubbed himself and prayed there wouldn't be a rash to show for it. Third sex had been with a girl at the end of a ball at the Royal Military Academy: he hadn't known her name, had been half-cut and it had been under a tree across the grass from the Old Building. Fourth sex had been with Roz. He gestured, he hoped politely, to the prostitute from Africa that he wanted to pass by her and she moved aside with reluctance. He went inside and there was a man at the counter, small, wiry, with plastered hair, and he asked in the correct German, as taught him, for a room.
'For one hour or for two hours?'
He shook his head.
'For a half-day?'
He said he wanted a room to stay in, and sleep in -
alone.
'For how many nights?'
Malachy was about to say that he did not know, but that seemed inadequate. For three nights. He was given a price. No haggling, no dispute. The key was handed to him, and then, as an afterthought, a residents' book was opened on the counter and a pen pushed forward.
He thought of giving the name Ricky Capel, and the address Bevin Close. He shook his head, heaved the black plastic sack on to his shoulder and started to climb the stairs. On the first landing, in one of the rooms that would have been hired for an hour or two he heard a bed's springs whine. On the second landing a man came by him still pulling up his zip. He was wondering how long it would be before the African girl took a client to the first or second floor. He went on up.
The room allocated to Malachy was bare but for a bed, a basin and a faded print of a mountain scene. He crossed a worn rug over linoleum and dropped his sack.
He was there because of what had been said to him, and said of him - none of it yet wiped.
14 January 2004
'Is it a crisis? That's what I'm asking.'
'Way outside my loop of experience. What I can tell you,
he's not a mark on him.'
'I've got a gunshot wound, a PI category, and a road-traffic accident casualty - and a Jock with a scorpion sting.
Where in that does Kitchen figure?'
'For God's sake,'Fergal said, 'I'm the adjutant. You're the
MO. You want my judgement - pretty far down, propping
up the heap, I'd say . .. From what they said at Bravo,
maybe a bit lower than propping it up.'
The medical officer was bent over the trolley. The gunshot
victim was dosed with morphine. It was an ugly wound,
but a challenge for him. He had to stabilize the man before
he could be shipped out by helicopter. Not much else he
could do. What struck him, as he probed to get the worst of
the detritus from the wound - fragments of the bullet,
fragments of the camouflage trouser material - was the
consummate bravery of the young guy. Not a whimper, not
a scream, not a shout. Trust in his watering eyes ... A
damn good soldier. And alongside him, flat out on the
second trolley and waiting patiently for his turn, was the
casualty from the road-traffic accident. Oh, God - and there
was the I Corps captain, who stood remote from them in the
doorway and had not spoken since Fergal had brought him
to the aid post.
'What's the latest on that bloody chopper - or are the blue
jobs on a day off?'
The adjutant peered over his shoulder. 'You wouldn't
think so much stuff could get in there . . . Extraordinary.
They had a dust storm back at Brigade, but the RAF are up
now. The chopper's ETA is just down from thirty minutes.
Is that going to be time enough?'
The medical officer growled, 'Have to be, won't it? For
both of them.'
As a captain, the
MO
had the qualifications of a general-duties doctor. He had trained at medical school in London
and had then thought that any future was better than an
inner-city practice so he'd joined the army and been posted
to the Scottish regiment. The work gave him swagger and
was not demanding. Back in the UK, at the regiment's
barracks, he spent his time patching up injuries from training and sports. In Iraq, his duties varied between extremes:
from gunshot wounds to the complicated childbirth
problems of local women. He was accepted: his skills were
admired from Sunray down to the youngest soldier, and he
revelled in it.
With minute tweezers he lifted clear threads of cotton
cloth matted in the blood. He stood to his full height. 'Not
much more I can do.'
'There's a surgical team on the chopper,' the adjutant
said.
He asked his orderly to cover the gunshot wound, then
peeled off the gloves and went to the basin. Disinfectant
soap and water. He sluiced his hands together, and when he
looked up he saw the man, Mai Kitchen, still in the doorway, still silent. He turned to Fergal. 'What's the story
about him?'
'Varnished or unvarnished?'
'Plain bloody truth will be good enough.'
The adjutant hesitated. 'It's all hearsay, of course.'
'Don't fuck me about, what's being said?' He dried his
hands with vigour and went to the second trolley, the
road-traffic accident. He was worried now - this patient
might be a more serious casualty than the gunshot wound.
He boomed, 'Spit it out.'
While he worked, the medical officer listened.
'It's pretty unpleasant... Here goes. He went on patrol
yesterday, familiarization with the ground before a lift this
morning. He was in place to assist with interrogation and
screening of prisoners. The patrol was hit. Two or three rifle
positions and an RPG was fired. He was somewhere near
the back of the stick when it started. What I'm hearing from
Bravo's people is that Kitchen did a runner.'
'You are joking? What -just flipped out and left them?'
'There, and then not there. Gone. The corporal thinks he's
been hit. Goes back - puts the whole section at risk, but
Jocks don't leave a man who's down - and retraces the
ground covered in the ambush site. He's nowhere to be
found. Hits the panic button. Then they find his helmet in
the street - and his flak-jacket. Bravo's gearing up for a
major search-and-rescue operation, loading the Warriors,
the full works. Then he's found. He's walking back to Bravo,
but without his weapon. Two questions, natural enough.
What happened? Where's his weapon? No answer. Not a
word out of him. Up at Bravo, they say he's yellow.'
'Christ Almighty - you serious?'
'Personally, I couldn't stand him. So, does he classify as
a medical case?'
'Well, he doesn't get to slide under white sheets, if that's
what you mean. I don't call him a patient. This is a patient.'
His fingers moved with extreme gentleness over the ribcage
of the casualty. He yearned to hear the thudding of an
approaching helicopter's rotors. Sandwiched, long ago, into
courses on the treatment of gunshot wounds, shrapnel
injuries and debridement infection caused by clothing fibres
and lead particles, there had been a bare hour on the
recognition of what the lecturer had called 'battle shock'.
The medical officer had been with commanders and seconds-in-command, and none had taken seriously what they were
told.
He looked up. Maybe anger caught him. Maybe the growing pallor on the casualty's face frightened him. Maybe the
helicopter would be delayed too long. He shouted at the man
in the doorway: 'Don't just bloody stand there like a spare
part. Move yourself Do something. There's a mop. Orderly,
give him a mop and bucket. Give him a broom to sweep
with. Clean the place.'
When the time came, when the two Jocks on their trolleys
were wheeled out from the aid post, the man - Kitchen -
still, with mechanical movements, swabbed the floor with
the mop and squeezed it out into the bucket.
Later, the medical officer walked briskly back with the
adjutant, his pistol bouncing against his thigh, and said,
'I'm not taking responsibility for him. Sunray'll have to see
him. He's not mine. Yellow's not a colour I fancy. Kitchen's
nothing to do with me.'
Benji met Charlie and together they sipped coffee.
'So, he's up and away, Ricky is.'
'Did he tell you, Benji, what for?'
'Told me, big surprise, nothing.'
'You happy, Benji, with nothing?'
'I tell you why it's nothing - because he doesn't know nothing. He didn't tell me why he was going to Hamburg because he didn't know. I'm straight with you. He got the call and he jumped - and I don't like it. The Albanians are bad news. Does he listen? Does he hell... You heard me, I've told him. I told him two years back' and a year back and six months back that he shouldn't be in bed with those people. Does he listen?'
'You told him, Benji, and I heard.'
'Doesn't listen to us, but listens to them. I take him to the airport. I think he's going to talk plans. He talks about his brat's football. Not till we're there, going through the tunnel into the airport, does he start chattering about the big guy he's going to meet. What worries me, they'll eat him.'
'Worry you bad, Benji?'
'They don't share, the Albanians, they don't do equals. All co-operation until they're ready. They get inside you, a worm in your gut, and the worm bloody kills you when they're ready. Everybody had a share of Soho and King's Cross till they were ready. Now nobody's in Soho or King's Cross except them. Right now, he thinks he's the big number and Timo Rahman wants to share with him.'
'You thinking of bugging out, Benji?'
'Be great. I got enough put away, you have - Davey has . . . Where to? Nobody bugs out. Sort of on a rope, aren't we? And the rope's got a bloody knot on your ankle and mine. That shit-face, little Enver, he's at the airport door to meet us. He's out of the car and the shit-face takes his bag, like he's Ricky's bloody porter, and they're off and gone. I'd trust the shit-face as far as I could kick him, wouldn't let him carry my bag. You just get that feeling, don't you, when it's all going to finish in grief?'
'You heard, Benji, what Davey said. Petrol.'
'On the dosser's clothes in Bevin Close, the stink of petrol. I heard what Davey said. And petrol done George Wright's place . . . I don't know what's happening - used to, but I don't now. He went off all trusting, Ricky did, with his bag carried for him, and what I'm thinking about is the claws stuck in him -
and I didn't tell him, and I never do and you don't
- and grief.'
'No, Mr Capel, he is not in the hotel. I am sorry. I have paged him and he is not in the restaurants or in the bar. You heard yourself the paging announcement for Mr Enver Rahman, and he has not come. He is not here.'
He sagged. He gazed at the tall, leggy woman behind the desk, who wore the hotel's uniform, its logo sewn over a shallow breast. Nothing that had happened was what he had expected. No answers when he had pumped on the flight as to what business he would be doing with Timo Rahman; questions brushed aside like he was a kid and talking too much and would find out when elders, betters, decided. No chauffeur at the airport to meet them, but Enver had gone to Avis who had held a car for them. No explanations as they had driven into the city. The hotel was a tower of glass and concrete, not in the city centre, and they'd come past gardens to get there; the sort of hotel that did conferences, twenty-six floors of it. He'd checked in. Enver had said that he had phone calls to make and they'd meet up later, had to do the arrangements. No suite for him, no flowers, no bowl of fruit: just an ordinary room. He'd kicked his shoes off and lain on the bed because the one easy chair was dead hard, and he'd flicked the zapper and the channels were all German except one that was American news. Who gave a fuck for American news?
Not Ricky Capel . . . And he'd waited . . . and waited some more . . . had waited for the phone to ring and it had not. Maybe he'd dozed off on the bed. Then he'd woken, had worked the phone buttons and called down, had asked to be connected to the room of Enver Rahman, and a dumb cow had told him there was no gentleman of that name resident in the hotel, and she'd checked, and she'd repeated it. It was like he'd been dumped. He'd just assumed that Enver was booking in after he'd gone to the elevator. It wasn't respect. The disrespect was on the plane, was a hire car, was a hotel that was shit, was him being abandoned and Enver bugging out. What wound up Ricky Capel tightest was disrespect. He believed nothing, nobody.
He strode away from the desk, went to the swing doors, pushed them open violently, didn't care that they battered into the back of a man manoeuvring his bags inside, and walked out into the forecourt. He could see where Enver had parked the green VW
Passat that had been his lift from the airport. There was a BMW 5 series, black, where the Passat had been.
He strode back inside and anger pounded in his head