Berserk (2 page)

They had gone to Salisbury Plain once since Steven’s death, on its first anniversary. It was still a military firing range back then, and they had not been able to get anywhere near to where the accident had happened. They had to imagine from a distance; the RAF Tornado swooping in across the hills, unleashing the air-to-surface missile, its pilot pulling up when he realised his mistake.
He thought he was firing at a target vehicle,
they had been told,
not an actual troop carrier.
Steven was one of fifteen men killed. They had been returned to their families in sealed coffins with Union Jacks splayed across the lids, a yearly ‘pension’ payment to the next-of-kin, and no real answers.
Accident,
they were told.
It was an accident.

“We could,” Tom said, “if you really want to.”

Jo shrugged. “I’m not sure what I want.”

“I’d like to go,” Tom said, nodding. The men’s talk in the pub had re-ignited a deep-felt scepticism about what he and Jo had been told about their son’s death. Much as Tom realised how ridiculous it was to link the two – the men’s strange conversation could have nothing to do with Steven, not after so long – there was always that doubt in his mind to play on. Any small mention of military accidents, mistaken identity, friendly fire, always set his mind running again, turning over the few facts they had been given and creating whole new truths to fill in the gaping blanks.

The inquest had been long. The media had covered it extensively, and following the ‘misadventure’ verdict newspapers had run interviews with relatives and pressure groups. There had been several TV programmes about the incident, and two investigative journalists had spent a year trying to discover the ‘real truth’. They had come away smug and victorious with what they had found: a few obscure facts about live weapons training policy, and a closet full of skeletons connected to the inquest’s presiding officer’s sexual preferences. But nothing concrete. After a year in which the fact of Steven’s death had been hammered home to them each and every day, Tom and Jo knew little more than they had the day he died.

Tom had no faith in the inquest’s findings, and even less in the papers and TV programmes that used it to promote their own sales and ratings. He had no doubt whatsoever that the story they were told was nowhere near the truth, but the glare in which the enquiry took place had swayed many people into believing that the real story was being fully uncovered. What was actually revealed at the end of that long, painful year was yet another skewed version of the same account. More names to blame, rules to change, heads to roll, many apologies made to hungry TV cameras and a public so used to being deceived that they no longer recognised the self-satisfied smiles of their deceivers.

Cover-up,
Tom’s father had whispered at the funeral.

Tom had always been angry, but the anger was tempered by a grief so all-consuming that he had barely known himself. For that year he was a stranger living in his own body, existing purely to suffer the memories of his only son. He recalled many occasions that he had not thought about for years, random moments in time, as if his mind were searching for remnants of Steven. Everywhere he looked he saw his son riding a tricycle, kicking a football, leaving home at seventeen to join the Army. There came a point when Tom wished he could go even a day without memories, but those were the times when loss hit him hardest. His anger, though rich and deep, was also useless. It would gain him nothing. And he knew that through it all, the most important thing was that he and Jo were there for each other.

He had never forgotten, nor forgiven, but in a way he supposed he had given in. And eventually life moved on.

They kept monsters.

“Yes,” he said again, “I’d like to go. I think it would do us some good.” Jo lowered her head and looked down into her mug. “Jo? You all right?”

She nodded, looked up at him with sad eyes. She rarely cried anymore. Somehow this look of wretchedness was worse. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s only an anniversary. Not really a day different to any other.”

“Yes.” Jo looked at him and smiled. “It’s like a birthday, except this is Steven’s deathday. Is that sick, Tom? Will people think we’re weird?”

Tom grasped her hand across the table and felt the stickiness of butter and jam between her fingers. “You think I give a flying fuck what people think?” he asked.

Jo laughed. He liked that sound. It reminded him that they still had a life together, and sometimes he reminding.
needed

“I’m going to work,” he said. “I’ll check out the Internet at lunchtime and see if I can find us a nice cottage somewhere nearby.”

“I think just a weekend,” Jo said. “Any longer may not be very nice.”

“Just a weekend,” Tom agreed. He stood and kissed his wife, hugged her, tickled her ear and stepped back as she aimed a slap at his arm. “See you later. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she said, already standing to prepare for work. “I’ll be home a bit later tonight, I need to finish this design before the end of the week.”

“I’ll cook tea,” Tom said. He smiled, and when Jo gave him a smile in return he saw the real, sad depth to her that no banter or play could ever hide.

* * *

That lunchtime at work, Tom booked a cottage on the edge of Salisbury Plain for the second weekend in October. It was a remote location, set just outside a little village, an old cottage with two bedrooms, a downstairs toilet, an open log fire and a cold-room beneath the kitchen where occupants had once stored their meat and other perishables. It was a ten-minute walk from the nearest pub and restaurant, and a half-hour drive from the military areas of Salisbury Plain. If Steven’s ghost haunted the Plain, Tom and Jo would be within shouting distance.

Tom often wondered about ghosts.
Steven is always with us,
Jo said, but she meant as a memory, the reality of him retained by their never letting his moment in life fade away. But when they were dead and gone, what then? Would their son become nothing more than a number in an Army report, a photograph, an occasional thought for his surviving friends? And after that . . . nothing. How could someone so alive suddenly become so dead? Tom hated this way of thinking, yet he had always had a mind prone to exploring the more esoteric areas of life, and Steven’s death encouraged that rather than lessened it. Some nights, napping on the settee next to Jo, he found himself wandering the moors, drifting above those dark acres of fern and grass, skipping across marshland, passing through occasional small woods where animals lived from year to year without ever seeing a human being. And occasionally, in the darkest moments, he saw Steven roaming the Plain, confused at his sudden death, crying . . . crying for his mother and father . . . because he was far too young to die.

Tom would open his eyes, stare at the familiar four walls of his home, and despair at the brief but intense sense of hopelessness that always followed.

It was a bad afternoon. He sat at his desk and stared out the window, occasionally shuffling papers or opening up new files on his computer to convince himself, at least, that he was working. Steven was there as always, but there was also the huge chasm of emptiness and regret that threatened to swallow Tom whole; regret at a life wasted behind a desk, watching his ambitions and drive rot beneath an assault of nine-to-five indifference; and the emptiness in his own mind, where once had dwelled such grand aspirations. He had always regarded his job as a means to an end, but he had never come close to achieving that end. He sat at his desk for five days each week crunching numbers and paying for his mortgage, forever mourning the career in music that continued to elude him. So many opportunities taken up and blown away, so many deals scuppered because of bad luck or his own stupidity. The fact that he had barely played a note since his son’s death did little to quell his regrets.

In their third bedroom Tom’s instruments sat on their stands, monuments to lost dreams. They had once been the means by which he hoped to make his mark on the world, but now they merely took up space and drew dust, all potential long since echoed away to nothing. These walls had heard wonderful music, but they gave none back. He would stand in that room sometimes and wonder whether he had changed anything at all. Had a bird heard him playing and changed its course? Had the molecular make-up of the house been subtly altered by the vibration of his double bass, the sweet serenade of his guitar? Was there, anywhere in the world, evidence of the talent he had squandered?

Sometimes he believed that the ghost of his music wandered the Plain with the lost spirit of his only son.

But today, with autumn sunlight making beauty from dying leaves, there was something else on his mind. That doubt, risen from its uneasy grave. And the old anger at the lies they had been told, still tempered by grief, but no longer quashed by its intensity.

By the end of that afternoon, Tom needed to do something productive. He left work early and walked to the pub, hoping against hope but realising how foolish and naïve he was being. And yet he was still not completely surprised to see Beer-Gut sitting at the same table he had shared with his friend that previous Friday, alone this time, pensive and scared.

* * *

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Oh shit, I didn’t think you’d be here!” Beer-Gut stood at his table, wide-eyed. He looked toward the door as if searching for an escape.

King did not echo the sentiment, and Tom realised that this was probably the very last place he wanted to be right now. His whole manner – the shifting eyes, tapping fingers, frequent sips from his glass – projected nervousness and disquiet.

“Let me get you a refill,” Tom said. At the bar he took a few moments to compose himself, and he was suddenly hit by a cool, inexplicable terror.
I may discover something terrible now,
he thought.
Something I haven’t known for ten years, and something it may be best I never know. Nothing will bring Steven back. We have a life, Jo and I. We deserve to live it in peace.
He paid for the drinks and carried them back to the table, and his deeper inner voice spoke up, the one that occasionally rose to see past the bullshit.
Truth deserves a chance,
it said.

Tom sat down opposite Nathan King and prepared to have his life changed again.

* * *

It took King several minutes to begin speaking.

The two men sat there silently, letting life wash by in the swish of coats and the waft of end-of-the-day body odour. Tom watched the barmaid drop her tips into a glass behind the bar, smiling at each customer and making them all think they were special. He listened to the bland pop song whispering from the jukebox. He smelled the sharp tang of fatty burgers and chips cooking in the kitchen, a haze of smoke blurring that end of the big room. In one corner an elderly couple sat next to each other without speaking, the contact of their arms communication enough. The man was drinking stout, the woman wine, and Tom wondered how many children and grandchildren they had. People lit cigarettes, laughed, coughed, drank, stared, and none of them were aware of the tension between him and King.

At last King finished the pint Tom had bought for him, placed the glass carefully on the table, sat back and sighed. “I didn’t know your son,” he said.

Tom frowned, his expression question enough.

“But though I never met him, I’m not here to waste your time. You don’t need to know anything about me, but for me to decide if what I know is of use to you, need to know about
I
you.
And your son. And how he was killed.”

Tom sat back in his chair, feeling a peculiar release now that Nathan had initiated conversation. will
Maybe I
hear things I don’t really want to,
he thought,
and maybe they’ll change my life. But if so, then that’s only right.

* * *

“I’ve always suspected the story the Army gave us was false,” Tom said, watching King for any reaction. There was none – he was stony-faced – and Tom realised that he wanted the whole story. Whatever King had to reveal demanded that, at least.

So he continued, and it was the first time in years that he had spoken in such depth about his son’s death.

“They said he was in a training exercise on Salisbury Plain, involving the Army and RAF. It was Steven’s first major exercise since joining up, and he told us how much he was looking forward to it. Who wouldn’t? He was still a kid really, and playing war games for real was exciting as hell for him. He didn’t know what it would involve other than having to spend three weeks on the Plain, though he did say he’d be out of contact for that time. He told us not to worry. Of course he did. He was twenty, indestructible, and it was us that had become more aware of death as time crept on. Having children does that to you. He was dreaming of the parachute drop, the march across the moors, the camaraderie, the triumph of achieving their objective for the day, the smoke and noise and the excitement of knowing that there was nothing
really
there to do them harm. We were thinking about failed chutes, tanks sinking in the marshes, live rounds when blanks should be used . . . we were doing our parenting bit, for every day he was gone. But I was still thrilled for Steven. He was fulfilling an ambition he’d had since before he was a teenager. Making a life for himself. I’ve never really done that, though I’ve tried, and the fact that my son was doing it . . . I think I was living vicariously through him. Relishing his success, revelling in the joy he felt, because it was something I rarely experienced myself.”