Severed (23 page)

'Well, the way we were ambushed caused a lot of anger in the unit,' I explain. 'The thing is, Northern Ireland was a really frustrating place to serve. You knew who the enemy were. You knew them by name - the gunmen, the bombers, all of them - but there was nothing you could do about it.'

She looks puzzled. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, it wasn't like a proper war, and that was the problem. Our regiment, the Paras, were trained as shock troops. We were meant to fight in proper wars, but Northern Ireland wasn't like that. There, we were just surrogate police officers. It didn't matter if you knew someone was IRA, you had to wait until they actually tried to kill you before you could fight back; and even then, because they used roadside bombs and snipers, you never really got the chance actually to take them on. So, when the guys from our unit heard that the RUC knew the identities of the people who'd attacked us but didn't have enough evidence to bring charges, everything just spilled over.

'There was a pub about half a mile away from where the bomb went off which was a well-known haunt for IRA sympathizers, and the bomber was one of the regulars. So one night not long afterwards, the remaining members of our unit led by our OC, Major Ryan, raided the place. It was meant to be an official operation to gather evidence about IRA activities, but the whole thing degenerated into a brawl. I don't know how it started. I think one of the customers started getting really irate, demanding to know on what grounds the place was being searched - that sort of thing. Apparently, he got hit in the face with a rifle butt, and then everything just kicked off. I think a lot of the guys in the unit had been looking for just this sort of excuse to come down hard, but the problem was they came down too hard, and they started laying into everyone, including the man they reckoned was the bomber. From what I heard, they spread-eagled him face down on the floor of the pub, with one man sitting on his legs, another on his back, and a man holding each of his arms, and then smashed his fingers one by one with their rifle butts. Then they took it in turns to stamp on his hands until they were
pretty sure everything was broken, before picking him up and chucking him over the bar and into all the spirit bottles.

'Before they left, they warned their victims not to say anything, otherwise they'd be back, but something like that was never going to stay quiet. If nothing else, it was a tremendous propaganda coup for the IRA: civilians beaten and savaged by the Paras as they enjoyed an evening out. Apparently, four or five people required hospital treatment, with the bomber the most seriously injured. In no time this huge political firestorm broke out, and the barracks were swarming with military police and army investigators. The whole unit was suspended from duty, and a major inquiry began to root out those responsible.

'All this time, I was in a hospital bed on the mainland. The first I heard about what happened was on the news. It wasn't the lead story, thank God, but it was big news, and they kept it going for a week. In the end, five guys from the unit got court-martialled, and they all ended up serving long prison sentences. They were all people I knew well. Friends of mine. No-one from the other side ever got charged
with the attack on our patrol. I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not justice was done, but like I said, serving in the army was never quite the same after that.'

'And what's happened to those five men now?'

Once again, Maxwell and Spann, the bodyguards apparently killed by the Vampire in a Paris hotel room, spring to mind. 'Two of them are dead. The others have just got on with their lives. We don't really keep in touch any more.'

'So you're not working on behalf of any of them today, then?'

'Why would I be?' I ask, wondering suddenly why she's asking such probing questions.

'No particular reason,' she answers with a shrug. 'You just said you were hired by someone to deliver the briefcase to Marco. Since you're an ex-soldier, I thought you might work with your former colleagues. How did you find Marco's flat today, by the way? Because it's not registered in his name.'

'Detective work,' I answer, thinking that she's just turned things round quite smoothly.

'A man of many talents,' she says, getting up
from the bed and going over to a chest of drawers on the other side of the room.

She hunts around in one of the drawers, then returns with a photograph. Clambering onto the bed, she hands it to me. It's a black and white six-by-four showing an attractive dark-haired young woman in her late teens. The girl is smiling self-consciously at the camera, showing a row of white teeth. It looks like she's wearing a school uniform. She's pretty, but not striking, and looks nothing like Alannah.

'Your sister?' I ask.

She nods. 'You must find out where she is, Tyler. Do you promise me you'll do that?'

She moves in close, and I can feel her warm breath on my face. I notice a cute smattering of faint freckles running along the bridge of her nose. They're almost invisible against the backdrop of her golden skin. Once again I'm reminded of Leah, and I move away a little.

'I'll see what I can do, I promise you that. Have you got one of Cosick?'

She shakes her head. 'He doesn't like to be photographed, but he's in his middle fifties, going bald, and quite short and fat.'

'He sounds lovely.'

'He also has a scar about an inch long on his chin where someone tried to stab him once.'

'And where does he live?'

'A place called Notting Hill. Not far from here. If you go there tonight, I may be able to help you break in. I've learned how to get into places from some of the criminals I've arrested.'

'You know quite a lot, don't you?' I say. 'At the moment I'm unarmed, so how am I going to get any answers out of Cosick?'

'You could take a knife. I'm sure if you put it to his throat it would jog his memory.'

I nod slowly. 'I'm sure it would. Anyway, if you think you can break into his place, why haven't you done it already?'

'I told you. Because Cosick has a lot of security. Or he did, anyway. And up until now I've been on my own.'

I don't say anything, and she looks at me with just a hint of accusation.

'Are you going to go?'

'I'll visit Cosick, yes. And I'll find out what happened to your sister too, if I can. But I'm not going to go tonight.'

'If you don't, I will.'

'Don't be foolish, Alannah.'

'I'm not being foolish, Tyler. I want to find my sister, and I'm running out of time.'

We sit there staring at each other for a couple of seconds, the earlier desire replaced now by a mutual mistrust. I fully intend to visit Eddie Cosick tonight, but I don't want her to know about it. You see, I'm beginning to get a bad feeling about Alannah. I get the distinct impression she's trying to manipulate me, and I don't like it.

'I need to think things through,' I tell her, at last.

She sighs and gets up from the bed again. 'I'm going to take a shower, OK?'

'Sure,' I say, watching her leave the room.

For the next few minutes I lie on the bed, not moving. I'm tired, and I could almost go to sleep, but I'm uneasy. I suddenly don't like the fact that Alannah's out of sight. I remember her telling me she showered this afternoon, after she left the brothel. Maybe she's just a very clean person, I tell myself, but I'm not convinced.

Something's wrong.

And then it hits me.

When we were driving here in her Alfa Romeo and we introduced ourselves, I said my
name was Tyler and she immediately referred to me as Mr Tyler. Now, if she'd just arrived in the UK for the first time, she wouldn't know that Tyler wasn't an obvious Christian name, would she? So there'd be no reason for her to put a 'Mr' in front of it. Which suggests she's pretty familiar with the culture here. Which also means she could have been here a lot longer than a few weeks.

It's something small, insignificant perhaps, but then I think about the way she speaks. Her knowledge of English isn't just good, it's fantastic. She even uses colloquialisms. And she didn't ask me who the RUC were when I was telling her the story of the court martial . . . It all points to the fact that she's a lot more clued up about things than she's letting on. For all I know, she may not even come from Serbia, although I've got to say the accent seems pretty authentic. But I'm certain she's not who she says she is, which means that I'm taking a big risk staying here. I'm going to have to move, because if she's lying, she's lying for a reason, and whatever that reason is, it's not going to be good for me.

I slide off the bed, moving as quietly as
possible, and tiptoe from the room. The door to the bathroom's shut, and I step over and put my ear against it. I can hear the hiss of the shower but nothing else.

I creep down the stairs. It's dusk now, and as I step into the living room, looking round for my clothes, I see that the street lights have already come on.

I see something else as well. Figures on the other side of the street, three or four of them, dressed in bulky, dark clothing, moving rapidly and purposefully across my field of vision. I can just make out the fact that they are white males, and that they look like they're here on business, before they temporarily disappear from view. And I say temporarily, because if I'm not very much mistaken, these men are coming here.

And shoeless and unarmed is really no way to meet them.

There's movement outside the front door, and hushed voices, and then a face appears at the living-room window. I duck down fast behind the threadbare chair I was sitting on earlier and tug on one of my grimy Timberlands. I grab the other one and sneak a peek over the chair. The face has gone so I pull on the other Timberland and half-creep, half-run out into the hallway.

I can see the figures bunched up behind the patterned glass of Alannah's front door, but I'm hoping they can't see me, although that quickly turns out to be irrelevant because a split second later I hear the telltale bang and angry splintering of wood that tells me I'm not the only person who's got access to an Enforcer today.
It's a cheap house made with cheap materials, so it's really no surprise that the lock gives straight away and the door flies open in one sudden movement, hitting the wall with an angry clap that sounds like a gunshot.

Ten feet separates me from the intruders; maybe twelve separates me from the back door. I turn to run, but then I think of Alannah. Can I really simply run out the back door and leave her here? I know she's been bullshitting me, but that doesn't matter. Earlier today, she saved my life. No question. And what if these guys are after her, not me?

With this in mind, I decide that rather than take route one out of here I'm going to be chivalrous, and I turn and run up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. I hear the sound of footsteps in the hallway behind me, but no-one speaks, and that's what's really worrying, because it means they want to make as little noise as possible, and there's only one reason for that. They're here to kill.

I run onto the landing, keep going, and launch a flying karate kick at the bathroom door. It opens just as easily as the front door and makes pretty much the same noise.

The room's dark. And empty. The shower's going, but there's no-one in it.

'Oy, stop!' yells someone from the bottom of the stairs as I turn round and make a dash for the bedroom, the accent as cockney as jellied eels and Jack the Ripper, most definitely not Eastern European. 'Police!'

Jesus, what the hell are
they
doing here?

I run through the bedroom, fling open the window, and clamber out.

They're coming up the stairs fast, but the garden's empty, and for the second time today I slide down a wall until I'm hanging by my fingers, then jump the rest of the way, landing on my feet and rolling over. As I get up, I can hear the angry tugs of someone trying, without success, to open the back door, and I realize that if I'd gone that way I'd have been trapped, so clearly an element of chivalry pays.

I don't look back but keep running towards the seemingly impenetrable mess of brambles at the end of Alannah's garden. I charge straight through them, ignoring the scratches and the sound of the cotton of Lucas's polo shirt tearing. A set of rusty iron railings appears out of nowhere, and I vault over them,
getting a faceful of brambles in the process.

I land on a narrow footpath that runs parallel to a high mesh fence topped with barbed wire marking the border of railway property. The fence is covered in tangled foliage and a sign says
KEEP OUT
in bold lettering with a picture of a menacing black skull on each side of the wording. There's no immediately obvious way in, so it becomes a choice of left or right.

Unfortunately, the choice is made for me when I hear the unmistakable sound of dogs barking - big dogs, too - followed a second later by the rapid tattoo of paws on concrete. Getting closer.

I just have time to bemoan the fact that even my favourite animals have now joined the ranks of my enemies, then I'm off in the opposite direction, knowing there's no way I'm going to outrun them. I run across the road the viaduct crosses and keep going along the footpath on the other side. It begins to rise steadily, which does not bode well, and I can hear the barking getting closer, partly drowned out by the sound of an oncoming train. Through the mesh in the fence I can see that it's a slow-moving freight pulling cart after cart filled with building
aggregates. The path's getting pretty steep now and my lungs feel like they're burning up. I'm fast over short distances, even uphill, but I'm not going to be able to keep up this pace for much longer.