Who Dares Wins (6 page)

‘That’s the last time you use my car,’ she stated as she slammed the door shut, more to make it clear that she was still pissed off than anything else. Jamie was helping himself to a beer from the fridge in the kitchenette area that formed part of the main room. She noticed that the surfaces were considerably less tidy than they had been when she left for work that morning. Jamie had clearly been there for most of the day and hadn’t bothered to do much cleaning up after him. Kelly put her large, fashionable handbag down on the cheap blue sofa and turned to face him. ‘I said, that’s the last time you use my car, Jamie. I’m sick of you driving it like bloody Lewis Hamilton.’

Jamie took a pull from his beer. ‘Thought you
liked
me picking you up from work.’

Kelly bristled. Now was hardly the time to admit it, but she did like the way the other secretaries at the law firm where she worked would congregate not very subtly in the foyer whenever she happened to mention that Jamie was meeting her at home time. He was several years younger than her – than any of them, in fact – and was, by all appearances, a Good Catch. Of course, she had kept quiet about the down side of being with Jamie: the constant sponging. Kelly even found that she would fool herself, whenever her purse was light, that it was down to her own scattiness. But Kelly wasn’t scatty by nature. She was methodical and thrifty. If she thought there were two twenty-pound notes in her purse, there
should
be two. Not one. Deep down she knew that, but she chose to ignore it. She chose to ignore, too, the time when she had searched through his jacket while he was in the bath. Kelly’s intention had been to flick through the messages on his mobile phone, but instead she had found something else: a thick wad of notes – two or three hundred pounds by the look of it. A lot of money for a young man who was ‘between jobs’.

‘Anyway,’ Jamie continued as he walked louchely up to her, ‘what would you rather be doing? Putting on a nice pair of slippers like all those other boring old cows you work with?’ He hooked his free arm around her waist and lightly kissed her neck. ‘Watching
Gardener’s World
?’ He said it in a mock high-pitched voice that made Kelly smile despite herself.

‘No,’ she breathed, her voice still a bit surly. And then, ‘You just scared me, Jamie.’

‘Don’t you like being scared?’ he asked.

He kissed her on the neck once more. This time it sent a little shiver of pleasure down her spine. Her boyfriend pulled away, then looked at her with an obviously fake little-boy-lost look. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said with an irresistible half smile. ‘I’ll
never
do it again.’

‘Liar,’ she whispered.

And then he kissed her again, on the lips this time as his free hand formed an arc around the curve of her buttocks. It was a serious kind of kiss and she could not help but close her eyes. Her tense body became softer, more compliant. Though their mouths were still locked in a kiss, she heard herself gasp.

Jamie was far from gentle as he removed her clothes, but for some reason she didn’t mind that. It took almost no time at all for her trouser suit, blouse and underwear to be relegated to a crumpled pile on the floor. She kept her fashionable glasses on, as well as her bead necklace, because she knew he liked that.

Jamie took a step back and surveyed Kelly’s body. It flashed through her mind that she had gone from utter fury to absolute desire in minutes; a small corner of her brain wondered how Jamie had done that, or what she should think of herself for being so easy. But she didn’t really care that much. She liked the way her young lover looked at her. She liked being desired. She liked the way she could now pretend to be in control.

She gave him a steady, cool stare, then turned and walked into the bedroom, making very sure to sway her naked hips seductively as she went.

An unmarked white minibus stopped at the entrance to RAF Credenhill. The MOD policeman on duty spoke briefly with the driver, glanced into the vehicle, then nodded and allowed the barrier to open. The bus drove into SAS headquarters and came to a halt. Eight men spilled out.

They crossed the courtyard to the main building, each of them carrying a heavy bergen and walking with the slow gait of soldiers who had been in the field for a long time. Their calves were beasted, their clothes baggy from the muscle mass they had lost on op. Sam Redman was at the back of that little group, his friend Mac alongside him. Both men had deep tans, their skin weathered by several weeks of harsh sunshine. Their beards were bushy – almost comically so – and Sam was looking forward to shaving his off. They’d had twelve hours at Bastion, during which time he’d been able to clean up a bit and wolf down a few platefuls of nosh – hardly Gordon Ramsay, but better than the biscuits brown and Panda Colas they got with their ration packs. Now he needed scalding hot water, rough soap and a proper fry-up from his favourite greasy spoon in Hereford. And after that, come evening, a few beers. Quite a few. It had been a rough two months.

One of the lads in front of them, a young Cockney boy new to the Regiment, turned his head. ‘Keep up, you two,’ he called. ‘They’ll be pensioning you off if they think you can’t keep up with the young ’uns.’

‘Don’t you ladies worry about us,’ Mac replied quickly. ‘We’ve got all the energy in the world. Just ask your mum. It were only last week we were taking turns giving her a Bombay Roll. Gave her a right good fucking seeing to. Tell her I said hello, won’t you?’

A few of the guys laughed. Mac just looked at Sam and rolled his eyes before looking around at the bleak, utilitarian surroundings of Credenhill. After the bright blue skies, golden desert and lush vegetation of Afghanistan, it was drab and grey, this featureless compound under a Tupperware sky. ‘Nice to be home,’ he observed without a trace of sarcasm.

‘Too right,’ Sam replied. Unlovely though it was, it was a hell of a sight better than being in the green zone of Helmand Province, not having to worry about some black-robed, bearded bastard taking potshots at you or your mates. ‘Too damn right,’ he repeated.

An hour later, Sam had finished the process of dumping his kit in his single-bunked room and checking his weapons back in. There were no messages for him in the squadron office and he was looking forward to getting to the ground-floor flat on the outskirts of Hereford that he called home. Passing through the mess room, however, he saw Mac again. Unlike Sam, Mac was already cleaned up and shaved. Like many of the troopers they’d just returned with, Mac was bunking down at Credenhill. For the rookies it was because they were relatively new to the Regiment and had not yet bought themselves a place in the town; for Mac it was because his missus had kicked him out of the house for the umpteenth time. Some indiscretion with a Regiment groupie, no doubt – Sam had long since given up asking.

His friend was sitting alone at a table with a broadsheet newspaper spread out in front of him. Sam sat heavily opposite him. ‘What do you think you are?’ he asked, flicking the newspaper with his forefinger. ‘A fucking intellectual?’

Mac ignored him. ‘Listen to this,’ he said before reading from the paper in a mock-posh voice. ‘“Questions are being asked as to how long the SAS can continue operating at such an intense level. ‘There is concern in the Regiment that if they keep going at this high tempo it won’t be long before they suffer a big loss,’ one source said.”’

‘One source?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac scoffed. ‘Your mum probably.’ Then, realising what he had said, he looked up. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Forget it,’ Sam replied, reaching to another table and grabbing a tabloid paper. It was the usual stuff, none of which interested him much. His eyes lingered briefly on the topless model on one of the inside pages; he read a report about the war in Afghanistan which used phrases like ‘brave heroes’ and ‘our boys’ – phrases that would never be uttered within the confines of Credenhill, or any other regimental barracks for that matter. His attention was caught by the story of some kid who’d been found dead in his London flat with a plastic bag over his head and a laptop full of porn. Death by misadventure, the coroner had said.

‘Dirty fucker,’ Sam mumbled.

‘What?’

Sam folded up the paper and tossed it on to another table. ‘Nothing,’ he said. He stood up. ‘I’m out of here. Catch you later, yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac replied. ‘Later.’

Sam was about to walk away from the table when someone else entered the mess room. No one could say that Mark Porteus, the burly CO of 22 SAS was a particularly friendly man, but there weren’t many who held that against him. He wasn’t supposed to be likeable. His cropped hair was almost completely grey, his face deeply lined. He had a scar on the left of his chin where the skin was completely white – a souvenir from Northern Ireland – but somehow his features wouldn’t be complete without it. A Sandhurst graduate, Porteus was a career soldier from the tip of his boots to the top of his head and was held in respect by every man in the Regiment – and in awe by quite a few of the younger ones. He was wearing combats – Sam couldn’t remember when he’d last seen the CO out of them.

‘Boss,’ Sam greeted him across the room. He liked Porteus. He’d known him for years.

Porteus appeared to see him for the first time. His eyes narrowed and, for a brief moment, he looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Sam,’ he nodded in their direction. ‘Mac.’

And then he turned, leaving the mess as suddenly as he had entered it.

Sam’s brow furrowed and he looked over at Mac. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he demanded. Normally Porteus would always stop to talk.

Mac shrugged. ‘It’s the beard,’ he replied. ‘Makes you look a bit dodgy. I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but the Mullah Omar look’s not really that hot right now.’

Sam looked back over towards the entrance to the mess room, his eyes narrowed. ‘If I want fashion tips,’ he said vaguely, ‘I’ll buy
Cosmo
. I’m off.’ He gave his friend a smile and walked out of the mess. Tempting though it was to stay and shoot the shit with Mac, he had a job to do. And putting it off wasn’t going to make it any easier.

*

Kelly Larkin glanced up at the clock. Twelve thirty. A bit early for lunch but what the hell. She was still bleary eyed and could do with getting out of the office. All morning her mind kept flitting back to the previous night: the stupid car journey, making love before getting drunk and making love again. She blushed. The boy had stamina, there was no doubt about that. Kelly pushed back her chair, grabbed her bag and headed out of the little typing pool she shared with four other secretaries.

She was waiting for the lift when one of her colleagues – a dark-haired girl from up east with a voice like a thousand cigarettes – hurried after her, her coat only half on. Her name was Elaine and she was good fun – Kelly had even shared a few drunken confidences with her in the past. ‘Going for lunch?’ she gabbed. ‘Mind if I come?’

Kelly inclined her head. ‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘I’m not much company today, though.’

Elaine gave her a sly look. ‘Yeah, you look a bit peaky. Keeping you up all night, is he?’

Kelly opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment the lift arrived with three of the law firm’s suited partners inside. The two secretaries clamped their mouths shut and Kelly could sense they were both doing their best not to laugh as they all silently took the lift to the ground floor and spilled out into the foyer. Elaine lit up the moment they were outside; by the time they had walked thirty metres down Chancery Lane to the sandwich bar where they regularly went she had smoked the whole cigarette and stamped it out on the pavement.

The sandwich bar wasn’t busy yet. Kelly wasn’t hungry either, but she ordered a panini anyway from the camp Italian who called all his female clients
belissima
. She and Elaine sat quietly for a minute or two, munching mouse-like at their lunch. It was Elaine who broke the silence. ‘So . . .’ she began, her gravelly voice cheeky and inquisitive. ‘What
did
you get up to last night?’ It was an innocent enough question, but the piercing look she gave Kelly made it quite clear she was after some juicy gossip.

Kelly shrugged. ‘Not much,’ she replied. ‘Just stayed in with Jamie.’

Elaine raised an eyebrow and nodded, not taking her gaze from Kelly, who felt herself blushing again. ‘You know what they say, darling,’ Elaine observed. ‘You’re as old as the man you feel. He must be taking a good ten years off you.’

Kelly thought of the car journey. ‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘Or putting it on.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean, then?’

Kelly’s brow furrowed. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There’s just something . . . something a bit
shifty
about him. I never meet any of his friends and he doesn’t even mention his family. He
says
he’s got a place of his own, but he never seems to go there. He’s been living with me practically since we met. He hasn’t got a job or anything . . .’

‘What does he do for money?’

Kelly shrugged and avoided her colleague’s eye.

‘Fucking hell, love,’ Elaine retorted to Kelly’s silence. ‘Don’t tell me you’re bankrolling him and all.’

‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Just now and then.’ She didn’t mention the missing twenties from her purse, or the wad of cash she had once found, or her suspicion that Jamie might even be involved in dealing drugs. But even so she realised how foolish she must sound.

Elaine’s demeanour had changed, from gossipy girlfriend to resolute ally. ‘Just don’t let the bastard take you for a ride, all right love? Sounds like he’s stitching you up like a kipper.’

Kelly smarted and it must have shown in her face, because Elaine clearly felt the need to justify her comment. ‘Well,’ she continued forcibly, ‘you hear about it, don’t you? Young men giving older women what they want in the sack . . .’

‘I’m not that old!’ Kelly protested.