The Missing Hours (13 page)

Another figure follows, bigger, broader. Beck Chambers.

My breath catches. He is a mountain, has danger written right across him.

But it’s strange. The way he is walking, the way he holds himself, it seems off. His head is bowed, a child on his way to time-out. He is watching Dominic, expectant, fearful almost.

He waits. I wait.

Dominic marches away from the station, towards the limits of the camera’s reach.

‘No,’ I mutter. ‘Stay there!’

Then, like something has occurred to him, he spins, marching back towards Beck until they are toe to toe, Dominic the smaller of the two, but swollen with an inarticulate fury. He waves his arms, hands flung up into the air, and you can feel the anger through the screen, the frustration.

I watch his lips. Wish to hell I could lip-read.

But all I can do is watch, mute, as Dominic Newell expels his anger.

I want to shout a warning. Because I can see the shift happening, the change in Beck’s posture, his head coming up, shoulders moving back. And I think, this is it, this is where it happened, where Dominic placed himself within death’s grasp.

Wait for it. Wait for it.

Then there is a movement, Beck Chambers’ hands flying upwards, planting themselves on Dominic’s shoulders, shoving him. Dominic stumbles back, and for a moment I think he will fall. But he saves himself, catching his balance at the last possible instant.

He looks shocked, like he had thought his client would simply stand there and take it, like he hadn’t expected his own anger to come at a cost. But that cannot be true. Can it? Because Isaac said that Beck had been causing trouble. That he represented a danger. So what the hell would possess a solicitor, a man used to being around the worst of the worst, to act like that, to put himself squarely in the path of danger?

Beck stands there, his hands still high, like he is warding off attack. He isn’t looking at Dominic; his head is down, like he is trying to pull the fury back together, keep things from tumbling further apart. Then he turns, spins on his heel and is gone.

I watch Dominic Newell, standing on the pavement outside the police station, scant hours from death. Watch him rub his hands across his face, like he is exhausted, has nothing left in him. His hands come up, a hopeless, helpless gesture, and his mouth forms a word.

I lean closer, stare at the screen.

I think what he says is ‘Beck’.

Posted to service personnel forum

Corporal Beck Chambers

Pathfinder Platoon

16 Air Assault Brigade

I still see Musa Qala in my sleep. The sounds, the constant snap, snap, snap, boom. I wake up covered in sweat, and I think I’m still there, that I’m sweating because I am in this piece-of-shit town in an Afghan summer and that I’m about to die.

That’s what I remember the most about Musa Qala, the feeling that at any moment I would have to die, that no other outcome made sense.

When I wake up like that, I can taste goat’s milk. Isn’t that weird? I can’t stand the stuff. But I was glad enough of it once we had run out of food, water. I taste it now whenever I get afraid. I drink to get rid of the taste of it, prefer vodka to where goat’s milk takes me.

They sent us in for ‘a couple of days’. Just hold it until we get backup to you. We went in thinking we were doing some good, setting up security, sorting out the town’s sanitation. But when the Taliban came, they came with the thunder. They were determined, I’ll give them that. Pushed us and pushed us and pushed us, until it seemed that every waking moment was full of the sound of gunfire, mortar attack. Their losses, they must have been devastating. Should have been devastating, but they just kept on coming.

They had the roads, knotted us up tight, so that the resupply missions couldn’t get through, so we were pinned, alone in this northern Helmand town. A couple of days. Yeah, right. Fifty-two days. That’s how long it took for us to battle our way back out.

Meanwhile, there’s twenty-five of us trapped in this town. Waiting.

We ran out of food. We ran out of water. Counting every round we fired, because you had to make every single one count; who knew when more would come. We didn’t sleep. Not for fifty-two days. We survived on catnaps, taken holding on to our weapons, broken by the sound of more goddam gunfire.

It was the end of the world.

It gets dark in a place like that. You get the feeling that death is standing next to you, biding his time. You know that rescue will come eventually, because you are aware that there are people just like you on the outside, fighting to get to you but being pushed back and pushed back. That there are deaths occurring amongst those who are attempting to back you up, even as you sit in your armoured bunker levelling your weapon at the sniper who has been taking potshots at you all day. You’ve got to have faith. You wouldn’t survive a day in that without faith in your brothers, the ones who are coming for you.

But still, you get to the point where it seems like all that is left in the world is you, the guy standing next to you, the guy standing next to him, and a whole galaxy full of Taliban.

What happens then when you come home? When it’s over and you’re supposed to go back to being this normal guy, just slotting into life alongside everyone else like you didn’t spend every hour of every day waiting to die?

I wake up, sometimes, shoot out of bed like my backside is on fire. Because I see one of them standing in the corner of my bedroom, an RPG aimed at me. I know it’s not real. That Musa Qala is done, that I survived where others didn’t. But in those moments when I wake and my heart is beating like a drum, it’s hard to believe that’s true.

That’s when I have a drink. Because it makes the remembering a little easier, makes my guy with his RPG a little fuzzier round the edges.

I drink. I drink every day. For a little while there, I was just waiting for the drink to take me, figuring that cirrhosis, a sniper, it’s all the same when you come right down to it. But the Coles, they saw it. They figured out just how low I had sunk. Ed took me in, gave me something new to live for, a career that wasn’t just about waiting to die. Selena … the thing with Selena is that you don’t even have to say it. She looks at you, and just by her looking at you, you know that she understands. That she knows men like me, our nightmares, the demons that sit right on our shoulders, the ones that we just can’t seem to shake loose. Without Selena Cole, I would be dead. No doubt about it.

But death, he’s a mean sonofabitch. You watch for him, you wait, and then he comes at you from a direction you just weren’t expecting. When I lost Ed, I lost everything all over again. You start to wonder what the hell it was you were fighting for. And after Ed, it all fell apart. Death took the Coles from me as surely as if he’d put them both in the grave.

Why don’t I just give up? Get it the hell over and done with?

Because of Selena. Because of Ed. They fought for my life. Twice, actually. I figure the least I can do is try and hang on to the thing they fought so hard to save.

Survivors

DC Leah Mackay: Wednesday, 12.30 p.m.

THE HALLWAY IS
dim still, weak sunlight filtering in through the glassed front door. Seth closes the kitchen door firmly behind us, offers me an uncomfortable smile, his lip puckering into scar tissue. I’ll see you out. His voice firm, an offer or an order, I am unsure. I saw Orla’s gaze flick up to her husband, her mouth opening like she wanted to object, then closing again, her lips compressing into a thin, tight line. And Selena, sitting still at the kitchen table, composed, calm. A family pieced back together. Not by me, even though I would love to say that it was. But by some strange intercession of fate.

I hear the click as the kitchen door closes and take it for what it is, my goodbye to this case. I turn, begin to walk along the hallway, think that I should never have come here. I don’t know why I did; what it was that I was seeking. Closure? For a case that has been with me for twenty-four hours? But we don’t get closure. That’s not part of what we do. We come into a tragedy, a murder, a vanishing, we play our part, we find the answers or we don’t, and then we move on, leaving the main players behind to pick up the pieces.

Seth glances back at me, smiles. I can hear voices from behind that kitchen door, and think that they sound lighter now that I have left.

‘You’re Selena’s business partner?’ I ask, a useless question to fill in the silence.

Seth clears his throat, a strangled sound coming at the end of the breath, and I wonder if his throat too has been damaged, like his face, his arm. ‘Took over as managing director after Ed’s death. I do the day-to-day running of the company, make all the major decisions.’ His gaze catches mine. ‘Better for Selena that way, gives her more time here, with the girls.’

Or to vanish, I think. But I don’t say it.

He clears his throat again, rolling the words across his tongue. ‘Lot of travel, of course. But you expect that with a business like this. Got in from New York yesterday. Was in Caracas a couple of weeks ago. Venezuela,’ he adds, helpfully. ‘Couple of oil workers down there had been held for over eight months.’ He pulls open the front door with his damaged hand. ‘Tough job. Lots of moving parts. But we got it. Managed to work out a ransom that was acceptable to all parties. Hostages are probably eating bacon sandwiches with their families as we speak.’

A chill wind whips through the open door, tearing at the leaves that remain on the apple tree, and I step outside into the grey day.

‘It must be a fascinating job.’ The thing to say when there is really nothing to say at all. A shiver runs through me and I tuck my hands into my coat pockets.

His smile broadens, arms crossing over his concave chest as he leans against the frame of the door. ‘I tell you, it never gets old. You just never know what will come next. And the thing is, it’s such a mystery to most people. Not the kind of thing that’s talked about generally, you understand.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Insurance companies aren’t keen to advertise the fact that they pay ransom demands.’

I pull my coat closer around me, turn my face into the wind. It scours me, making me gasp for breath. ‘I can imagine,’ I say. ‘I have to admit, I struggle with the idea of paying criminals. But then,’ I add, ‘I’m police. Don’t really fancy paying for the crime I’m supposed to be preventing.’

He compresses his lips, the scars joining together to form a perfect matching set, and for a moment I wonder if I have angered him. ‘It’s not an easy balance,’ he says. ‘Reality is, though, people are still getting kidnapped. In some areas of the world, travellers are more likely to get kidnapped than not. And whilst the principle is sound, it’s not so easy to say you wouldn’t pay when it’s your child that’s been kidnapped. Or your spouse.’ He looks over at the apple tree, watches as the last remaining leaf gives up its fight to stay and is torn away by the wind, spiralling to our feet. ‘Truth of the matter is, military rescues are dangerous. People die in them. Our best chance of getting a hostage back alive is to pay a minimal ransom.’

He looks back at me, smiles. That crinkle again, that unevenness on the edges as the scar tissue pulls at his lip. I feel myself staring, yank my gaze away, a heat rising through my cheeks.

‘Not the prettiest, is it?’

He gestures at his face, his arm, and I feel my face flushing.

‘No, I …’

‘It’s okay. It’s just a part of me now. Scars, I find, make you who you are. Don’t you think?’

I think about sitting on the cold kitchen floor, a bottle of wine between my knees. I nod.

‘It’s not just me. Not by a long chalk. Lots of boys I served with, they suffered worse. Plenty never came back.’ He smiles an off-centre smile. ‘You do what you can with it, you know?’

‘This was before you joined the Cole Group?’

He grins. ‘This was back in the old days, in Basra. Before the Cole Group was even a twinkle in Ed’s eye. You been to Basra?’ He looks at me like he expects an answer, then laughs. ‘Kidding. It’s a shit hole. Nah, we were just regular old boys back then, still all put together the way nature intended, without the cosmetic changes insisted upon by the Jam.’

‘The Jam?’

‘Jaish al-Mahdi. Insurgents.They didn’t like us very much.’ He glances down at his arm, laughs again. ‘They didn’t like us much at all. Understandable, I guess. Anyway, in my case, they expressed their disdain for me in the shape of a roadside IED. Damn thing took out our Warrior. Armoured vehicle, you know. Thought it had killed me. Did kill a couple of others.’ He watches the barren branches of the tree, skeletal fingers waving and pointing. ‘Flipped us right over. I managed to get out, although not without paying the piper, as you can see. Managed to find my way back in to get Fuzz … ah, Jason was his name, but we called him Fuzz. Dragged him out.’

‘He’s lucky you were there,’ I offer.

Seth shrugs, still watching the tree. ‘Not so lucky. RPG took him out, right after I rescued him.’

What do you say? What is there to say?

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You get on with it, don’t you? We all have our crosses to bear. This one just happens to be mine.’

‘And losing Ed, after everything.’

‘Yes,’ he says quietly. ‘That’s … yes.’

We stand there like that, the wind wrapping its way around us. I look out to the street. It is empty today, no cars, just crisp autumn leaves tumbling along the gutter.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I say.