The Baby And The Brandy (Ben Bracken 1) (13 page)

I’m on dangerous ground, mentally and physically. There is an eerie similarity to this scenario, and my last brush with organized crime. I had become too easily seduced, and was badly burned, the reasons for my seduction unclear to me. Every now and then, something in me looks for acceptance and camaraderie from the very people that I have been at odds with. I don’t understand it, and here, now, today, I can feel myself making the same mistakes. What was it I said to Felix just before? It’s those that learn from the consequences of their choices that become worthy. What a hypocrite I’m turning out to be.

But why do I do it? Where is my usual gut instinct? I have absolute faith in my instincts, but every now and then, my instincts abandon me, and I flirt with trouble in a way that astonishes me and would pity anyone else for.

It was that bastard, Terry ‘The Turn-Up’ Masters. He made me angry, made me make mistakes. I was on the run, looking for a problem to solve. He appeared on TV, looking like a repulsive caricature of criminal entitlement, standing outside a court laughing after his trial for armed robbery fell through. His attitude was inflammatory - his treatment of a female reporter sickening. I made a detour to London, to sort him out. Only I didn’t sort him out. I went in half-cocked, with a false sense of invincibility. And when I got close to him, I was seduced by his easy patter, kindness and friendliness. That is, until he set his pitbulls on me, leaving me in a ghastly, bloody survival scrap between man and beast. I had won that round, but he shot my knee out and forced me into a one-armed knife fight against his own son, who had wronged him with his own stupidity. He decided to teach us both a lesson. An accident happened, and his son ended up with a knife in his heart, while I ended up in handcuffs with a murder charge. All because I was careless, and fell victim to his charms.

But what charms? What am I not learning from? I’m open-minded enough to look at myself and know that it’s not physical or romantic attractions that make me do this. Why do I find myself falling under the spell of these older dangerous men? It’s not like -

Shit. That’s it. Pathetic.

The answer is so obvious, so Freudian. It’s about my father.

Ten years ago, I had left these shores and their comforts for the front line, ready to do whatever was necessary to represent my country abroad. As my progression through the ranks blossomed and more and more standing and responsibility was afforded me, I was the toast of my family, a hero in my village, and a source of pride for this country in itself. My father, who I had always had a decent relationship with, was full of that simultaneous worry and pride that soldiers’ parents are forced to carry with them every day, but he knew my viewpoint and that my mind could not be changed. I felt I had found my calling. I was good at it, and if I devoted a couple of decades of my life to it, I would emerge at the other end enriched, happy and fulfilled.

That was a pipe-dream, an ideal that I would never find realized. Duty-bound combat was something that changed me in a way that is indescribable to anyone that has not experienced it. You spend your life in readiness for the use of force, so much so that you live a life in wait. You know a life-changing event is coming, but you don’t know when. It’s a grim eventuality. At some point, you are going to have to do something that you will never be able to take back. You are prepared in so many ways, but none of the ways that matter.

I was an insular soul at the best of times, and had many peaks and troughs in my early army years. I suffered a bleak loss, just before my deployment, and it wrecked me, transforming me from a determined but happy youth into a bitter, churning shell. It was a loss that I have never really come to terms with, and push to the farthest cerebral recesses I can find. One day I hope for another chance at what it was I lost, but, like a lot of things, you never forget the first time.

I went away a mess, and whenever I came home, I was visibly different, augmented a little more every time by the horrors, tensions and stresses I was witnessing on my stints abroad. I was performing well, but grimness was my fuel. I was obsessive, meticulous and organized, with a cold, determined execution - the recipe for the perfect soldier. Hence my progression.

My father tried to council me, in his own way, whenever we were together on my trips home. He was a stoney, stubborn Yorkshireman, but he was not without cracks of caring. I was an only child, the only reason for which being physical complications in my poor mother. After myself, she found she could not carry any more children. I never asked fully about it, knowing that the answers probably haunt my mother more than I could understand, and would not wish to push her any further into sadness. It’s something I understand now, the specter of lost children. My parents would dearly have loved more children, and I would have to do.

I spent much time with my father, in my childhood, playing football and fishing, timeless father-son activities. It gave us something in common, and instead of him trying to engage in idle chit chat with an infant, we could embark on bonding by instruction. I relied on him, and I think in many ways he relied on me.

We lived in Rotherham, near Sheffield. I think my parents are still there now. Sheffield is known historically as the city of steel, thanks to it’s domineering and prolific steel factories throughout the twentieth century. Dad worked in one, then another, then another. He progressed himself to a more managerial role, as he deteriorated physically thanks to years of hard labour, until the economic crash of the late noughties. In 2008, he was offered a redundancy package, and was forced to take it, the resonance of Lehman Brothers’ actions across the Atlantic echoing as intravenously at a little known steel works in the north of England. He was not far from retirement, but not quite ready yet, and it took some serious adjustment.

I knew that during this period, as he tried to realign his day-to-day into something that would give him the same routines and satisfactions as the life that was just taken from him, I was a great source of comfort to him. In his mind, he had spent his life building this country, then created this wonderful son who was giving everything to defend it. I was a mental crutch, and as long as I was doing my job, earning medals and advancing through the army, I was something in his inverted world he could rely on.

Then of course, I was jettisoned from the army spectacularly. I had made a choice that both my head and heart agreed with, but my superiors did not. It was a choice that used to rip and claw at me every day, fraying my subconscious to ribbons until I was angrier and sadder than I had ever been. I was consumed by hate, and resentment, at the shitty hand I had been dealt. And worse of all, I will never know if the decision I made was the right one, even though now I have promised myself to belief wholeheartedly that it was. If I don’t, and the doubts resurface, Pandora’s Box will surely reopen, and my spiral will recommence.

The effect of my dismissal clattered my father in every conceivable way, as everything he felt he knew was snatched from him yet again. He was devastated. I was court-martialed. My medals were wiped from my roll of honor, my title of captain removed from my records, and in their place was a big DISHONORABLY DISCHARGED stamp and a return to a society that would view me with hate if they knew the truth. None of this can change what I have given - the missions I have participated in, the lives I saved, the lives I have taken, the time in harm’s way, the orders I have executed without question, the orders I have given with the best intentions in mind. I always pictured that after my time, I’d be respected, not hated.

When I came home in disgrace, I’d gone back to my mum and dad’s over in our little village in Rotherham, Rawmarsh. The changes were obvious on my arrival. Mum hugged me, destined to love the one child she could have despite his abhorrent actions. Dad was distant from the start, and I knew that our relationship was on shaky ground. When I got in our little house, the pictures of me as a kid were all still there, but anything and everything featuring myself in a uniform were gone. All those dress events that my parents had been so proud and delighted to attend, the images of them smiling with their dutiful, perfect son - gone. It was like the house had been reset to a time when I was still in my childhood. A time when I hadn’t caused them the pain I had so obviously wrought on them.

I only lasted a couple of days, in a horrid bubble of near silence. Dad seemed so unhappy, and even in his rollercoaster years as we sailed through his employment issues and his sub-alcoholic tendencies, I had never seen him like this. I could always rely on him to go for a beer with me, but this didn’t even work. The amount of hours I’d spent of my youth in working men’s pubs, playing with an old Thundercat doll, making friends with various pub dogs and eating salt and vinegar crisps out of dusty ash trays - and now, he wouldn’t even go for a beer with me. Worse still, his excuses were stubborn, ridiculous and hurtful, not that he knew it. In his mind he was doing the right thing, shutting me out like this.

I decided quickly that I’d had enough. They were ashamed and didn’t want me. I felt like they wished I’d never made it home at all. I was desperate to tell them what happened and why, and fill them in on the reasons behind my descent. But I couldn’t, their minds long since made up. I left, and said goodbye. I expected at least a mild protest, at least out of politeness. Dad said nothing. Mum asked if I was sure. That was it. I felt my decision to leave sadly vindicated.

The next time I saw them was at my murder sentencing. I had taken a guilty plea, to keep the prosecution from digging too far into my past, where they would surely find more nails with which to fasten my coffin. They barely looked at me, crippled, I assume, by what I had become - but I detected something else there too. Guilt. I thought they looked as guilty as me, only it was I in the dock. By the time of the trial, in their eyes I was beyond saving, but earlier, before I became just another statistic, when I had come home from war and needed their guidance as a son, they turned their back on me. When I needed them the most, they abandoned me. Our family was fractured, and the prodigal son was jailed for 17 years.

It’s the absence of my family, my father especially, that has caused my current predicament, completely from the perspective that I miss him. We had a far from perfect relationship, but it was our relationship, and in those strict parameters it furnished us both with exactly what we both needed to prosper as a unit. And I feel a chasm in my life where a father figure used to be.

My subconscious had attached to Terry Masters as someone who might fill a role in my life, despite him being both far from suitable and everything I loathe. And here, the same has happened again. I have, without meaning, aligned myself with a senior figure, whose company I have enjoyed. Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is just a big bout of latent homosexuality and it just so happens older men are my thing. That might even be simpler to deal with than being an ex-con with a daddy issue.

It seems that it’s only when I’ve been alone that this has happened. When I was on the run, and now I am on the run again. But what about when I was alone, on the frontline, or when I was in prison? Why not then?

Fatherhood. I’ve always felt ready for that, since I was very young. I can’t explain why, but I long for it one day. And perhaps that’s it. When I was in those places, I was the daddy. I was the one people went to for instruction, for an idea of what to do or where to go next.

Christ it gets worse. The ex-con that needs a daddy whenever he’s not pretending to be a daddy himself.

I don’t understand it, even though I’ve just had a good stab at explaining it. I’m going to take these thoughts, these weaknesses, and bury them down deep. Somewhere I won’t find them, or at the very least, somewhere they won’t jar loose under pressure. Last thing I need on this new lease of life is dregs of a life I should be putting to bed.

I roll over, to the bedside table, and reach up for the sandwich bag that contains my phone. I remove it, and check the screen. Just the time, which reads 4.37am. Nothing, no attempts to contact me. I’m surprised not to have heard from Jack, and I’d like to know where he has got to. Felix told me he had looked after him, and I’ve got no reason not to believe him.

Sparkles’ words are sitting in my head, his vehement denials regarding any involvement in Royston Brooker’s death. Did he get out? If he did, there’s a loose end out there, and I don’t like loose ends one bit, particularly with their uncanny ability to return and haunt me.

15

I am awoken by a roar of muffled laughter. It snaps me alert, and reminds me in an instant where I am. The sunlight squeezes through the gaps in the black out curtains, like rays of fresh glowing orange juice. Sitting up in this bedroom, while people downstairs are having a good time, reminds of an age when I was a moody teenager, hiding upstairs in my room on family get-togethers, deliberately late for their arrival for God-knows-what reason.

I smell pretty appalling, a mix of sweat, and musty river water. I don’t know what’s coming, nor what awaits me downstairs, although it sounds like Christmas morning. My crumpled clothes lie on the floor by the bed, and I catch a whiff of them from here. I notice a white plastic bag over by the closed door. I get up, not as easily as I might thanks to a few dull aches and pains, particularly in my ribs. I don’t feel too bad, but not 100%. I could do a 10k, but no marathon. I check the bag, to see a red t-shirt and some check board shorts, which strikes me as a little strange, particularly as the tags are still on them.

There is an ensuite over in the corner, which is a mighty relief - at least I can get washed up in private and give myself a little team-talk. I take my hastily purchased beach wear, which I can only assume I am to masquerade in, and hit the bathroom, to scrub the smoky exertions of last night firmly off my person.

*

Five minutes later, I am inching open the door decked out in my assigned costume. I can still hear the unmistakable sound of voices from downstairs, and can now distinguish that they are both male and female. The upstairs landing is a cream-carpeted luxury zone, with a series of doors along the landing, and opposite, over the staircase, a vast window overlooking a sun-bathed Salford Quays and the Manchester Ship Canal, with the gleaming, flat crest of the conservatory roof just visible below the sill. I descend, stuffing my old clothes and shoes in the recycled plastic bag as I go. The stink of luxury is everywhere, from the spotless carpets to the touch of cleaning products in the air. The staircase is wooden, but as I reach the bottom I am deposited into a marble reception area, just off what looks like the front door, which in itself is a huge mahogany piece that looks as if it could stop a medieval army. Life has been good to Felix, to which there can be no arguing.