By Any Other Name (31 page)

Tim W-P has been scrambled out to see us and we’re waiting for him to arrive while the local witness protection are covering our backs with extra security and a total media blackout of the
incident so news doesn’t get out. The crash killed the men in the car. One of them was alive when the ambulance got there, but they pronounced him dead when he arrived at the hospital. Zach
had been shot in the head and died instantly.

The police were all over Matt until the witness protection information got through to them and then their attitude changed. Full investigation under way and all that business, but they
didn’t arrest him. Joe’s still here with me and he explains to one of the officers how they found me.

‘My Aunty Jenny rang my mum to tell her to keep a lookout. They were searching in the village for a little girl who’d gone missing from the special school, and she might have
wandered off on to farm land. When she told Mum the girl’s name was Katie, I went straight out to go round to Holly’s to see if I could help. You know, looking for Katie or something.
Matt wanted to come too but,’ – and he grins ruefully here – ‘he’d only just come home today, only been back a few hours, and I didn’t think he was up to it, so
I told him I’d call him if we needed him. Dad was out at a cattle auction or I’d have got him to help look too.’

‘Did you know Matt was coming back today? You never said.’ I interrupt.

‘No, typical Matt – he never told us. Just turned up on the doorstep in a taxi, grinning his head off and showing off how well he could walk on his new legs. We all thought he was
going to be at the rehab centre for at least a few more weeks, but he’d been leading us on so he could surprise us.’ He laughs and goes on with his story. ‘When I went out to head
over to Holly’s, I saw her going up our top field to the lane. I shouted at her, but she was too far away and couldn’t see me, so I sent her a text and when she didn’t answer I
ran up there after her. I thought she might have seen Katie or something at first, but then I saw her get into the back of a white van. And I saw her face as she did. That’s when I guessed
what was going on.’

Tears sting in my eyes because if he hadn’t been so smart neither Katie nor I would be here now.

‘I saw the van driver too, you see, and his hood was up so you couldn’t see his face. I hid behind the hedge and watched the direction the van took and I called Matt. He got
Dad’s shotguns out of storage and made the 999 call while I ran back to the farm. We were lucky – from the lane they turned up, I had an idea where they might be going and the ground
was wet after the rain so they left tracks when they went off-road. It’s been dry for days before today so theirs were the only tracks up on the hill.’

‘Your father’s shotguns –’ the officer begins.

‘He’s licensed. They’re for game shooting, but he doesn’t use them much, though he taught both me and Matt to shoot when we were kids. Obviously Matt learned properly in
the army so he’s a way better shot than me.’

They ask me if I have any idea how the hitmen found us. I tell them about the Camilla Facebook hate page and wonder if they could have seen that, even though it seems like a remote possibility.
Then they ask me if I’ve had contact with anyone. I go red and I know I can’t hide it. I tell them about Tasha and they take my laptop away to look at it.

Just when I think I’ll fall asleep with exhaustion at the table, Tim W-P arrives. He’s already been briefed on what happened. He tells me I’m brave again, and I tell him I
wasn’t. At crunch time, when it came to saving Katie, I stood there screaming and crying. But he says I was brave when it counted and nobody could watch their autistic little sister go
through what Katie did and stay as focused as somebody who isn’t related to her. Especially as focused as someone who’s fought in a war zone. And then Tim says something strange. He
says, ‘It’s the same attitude as those hitmen really. Same thing – trained to kill. But your friend there is operating for the right side.’ His words keep repeating in my
head. They feel horrible and wrong. To think of Matt and those men as being the same in any way . . . no . . . that’s just wrong! But then a tiny part of me sees how it’s right too. And
I want to close my mind off to that part.

One thing I still don’t understand is why they took Katie, not just me. And Tim says very gently, ‘Your kidnapper was a sick man. He’d do that to make you suffer more. Even his
own men – the ones from the Chernokov incident – turned on him as soon as they got the chance. Even they were afraid of him.’

It’s nice of Tim to try to make me feel better, but it’s not until I’m lying on my bed with Joe curled round me that I begin to calm down. Mum says he can stay over until I
fall asleep. That would surprise me if I had the energy, but I’m too tired.

His arms are round me and I feel safe within them, like he can keep the bad dreams away.

He kisses my ear and I lie still and breathe him in.

I don’t let myself think that without him, and Matt of course, Katie and I would be dead.

It’s not a time for that now. It’s a time to let him hold me and keep the bad stuff at bay.

I
n the days that follow, Tim W-P is torn between trying to persuade us to move, with a distraught Katie who keeps having nightmares, and being
patient while the police track our kidnappers’ trail. Although they never could find the man the other hitmen called Zach when they searched for him after Katya was taken, this time he left
an important clue – his phone. When the police took it from his body, they found a route map programmed into it from his home location to our village that allowed them to track him back to
base. And there they found the final answers they were looking for.

It was my fault he’d found me.

He’d hacked into Tasha’s Facebook account and used it to watch our messages, hoping it’d lead him to me. When I’d sent her the farewell message, it was him who sent me
the final response with a little animated cartoon . . . one that carried a tracking cookie that embedded into my laptop and fed back information on my location. He’d traced me to the
approximate area and then it was easy – a special school for autistic kids only a mile away . . . yes, wait and follow whoever picked Katie up from school. Very clever.

But what the police found also gave Tim the reassurance he needed that our cover wasn’t blown. Zach or whoever he really was hadn’t told his bosses where I was – he’d
sent them an email to say he’d located me and he’d be bringing them back my body in a bag. But he worked independently and it seems they trusted him to do that, or too much information
from him would incriminate them . . . no one was quite sure which.

So the only people who knew where we were died in that car. Tim said we could take a chance if we wanted and stay. They’d keep a heightened police watch until after the trial, which was
only a couple of weeks away. Like I said to Mum and Dad, if they were going to find us here now then they’d find us anywhere, so why move again. Fortunately they agreed with me. I don’t
think any of us could have stood to start over another time.

On the day I give evidence in the trial, they clear the court of members of the public. The prosecution team tell me that’s essential for my safety and I’m entitled
to it being an under-eighteen in the witness protection programme. I would have been allowed to use the video link, but I want to give evidence in court. It feels important to actually be there and
not hide away. They shield me from view with a screen. The judge is a woman and much younger than I expected her to be. That makes me feel better.

All this time I’ve built the trial up to be some huge spectre of awfulness in my mind, but I guess what happened in July changed that. The worst has happened and Zach Alias-Whatever
can’t ever hurt anyone again. Telling my story on a witness stand is nothing compared to that. Besides I keep remembering what Matt said.

The night before we left for the trial he came round with Joe to see me. While Joe played with Katie, he took me aside for a chat.

‘How’re you feeling about testifying?’ he asked.

‘Nervous. I hope I don’t screw up. I don’t want to let anyone down.’

He smiled wryly. ‘That’s exactly what I said before I got deployed for the first time.’

‘I guess it’s not as scary as that.’

‘Not necessarily. If that’s how you feel then –’

‘No, Matt, it really is not as scary as that! I’m not stupid. I see the news. Standing in a courtroom talking is not as bad as going to war. It’s not as if I’ll be in any
danger there with police everywhere.’

Katie was making Joe burp her baby doll and Matt struggled to keep his face straight when I pointed to them.

‘I’m going to take the piss out of him so bad later,’ he said, before turning back to me. ‘But it’s OK to be scared, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Just imagine them all naked on the bog and you’ll be fine.’

Joe turned round in surprise at my shout of laughter. He grinned at me. ‘Did he just tell you the naked on the bog thing? He always says that to me.’

‘Yeah, your brother is gross.’

‘Ah, shut up, it works.’ Matt leaned back in the chair and stretched out his prosthetic legs like he still had flesh and blood there that needed to be stretched. Was that habit? Or
was it really more comfortable?

I wondered if he knew that I’d think of him when I was on the stand and then I’d just have to be brave even if I didn’t feel like it. Because some people had to face far worse
than me and they could still grin about it.

He looked at me and his eyes narrowed. Had he guessed what I was thinking? ‘Did Joe ever tell you what I was like when I woke up in hospital?’

‘No, what were you like?’

‘I woke up screaming. I thought I was still out there. When I found out I had no legs, I mostly lost it again. The medical team had a hard time with me, and the poor sods paid to sort my
head out had a worse one. The way I saw it, I’d never be a real person again without my legs, and definitely never a man again.’

‘I wouldn’t have known any of that when I met you.’

‘Yeah, well, the family don’t want to see you like that so you man up and don’t let it show.’

That’s when I swore to myself that I would not lose it or break down on that witness stand. I would not. I would think of Matt and hang in there.

‘The thing is, you helped with that.’

‘I did? How?’ I couldn’t see how anything I’d done could possibly have helped him.

‘Because coming and dragging yours and Katie’s asses out of that mess was the best thing that could have happened to me. It showed me I was still a man. One with a couple of limbs
missing, but still a man. And it showed me I didn’t have to be a defeatist, self-pitying crock of shit. When I had to do something like getting you two out of there, I could still do it. I
just have to do it a bit differently to before.’

Katie waved at us and he beamed at her and waved back.

‘So you see, I got to thinking after all that business . . . I shouldn’t be giving up on anything I want to do. If I want to help my old man out with the farm, I will. I just have to
do it like I did it back there and think around the problems. And whatever it is, I’ll find a way. I’m already back doing the milking again.’

‘Really? That’s amazing . . . no, totally it is.’

Joe looked over. ‘You’re right, it is totally amazing. Considering how often he used to duck out of it when he had both legs.’

Matt threw a sofa cushion at his head. It hit hard – there was spin on it – and Katie made a face at him as Joe rubbed his head. She stomped over and picked up Matt’s hand and
bit it hard.

‘YOWCH! She’s vicious.’

Joe gave him a sickeningly smug smile.

‘You wait till she’s not around, little bro! I’ll get you back. Anyway, Holly, what I was trying to say, before my brother stuck his nose in, was thank you, in a way, because
if it hadn’t been for you I don’t know if the penny would have dropped for me yet.’

I think about Matt as I give my evidence and I get to the difficult parts where I start to shake and my eyes sting. His quick, sly grin flashes through my mind and I blink back
the tears and hold myself steady. He’s doing the milking today while Joe’s down here with me, and I’m manning up.

I guess we both gave each other a helping hand.

Later, we’re in a Thai restaurant that Mum and Dad promised me we’d go to after the trial – I love good Thai – and Joe whispers in my ear, ‘You were mega brave
today.’

It’s not bravery
, I want to tell him.
It’s just getting on with it.

And that’s how I’ll manage day after day. They could still come after me, the friends of all the guys who’ll get sent down as a result of what I did. I guess they could try to
trace me and keep trying until one day one of us messes up again. We’ll never be able to come out of witness protection. But I’ll keep on keeping on. I’m not going to spend my
life worrying someone will find me one day and put a bullet in my brain. I could just as well get run over by a bus.

I’ve got Mum and Dad and Katie and Joe. And I’ve survived so far. I just have to keep on doing that.