Even the prospect of being reunited with Delphine didn’t lift his mood. He was in limbo, his world pulled from under him. Yet he’d been in dark places before. Collecting body parts of men he’d been playing poker with the previous night. Coming upon an entire house of dead — a village wedding feast, the guests lying sprawled, mixed up with the dead livestock. He needed to reach into wherever he kept the resources to deal with bad stuff — if he still had any. In the meantime, however, he needed a distraction.
On a stretcher surrounded by aeromedics was Rifleman Cliff Blakey. Tom thought he might prefer to be left alone, but Blakey tipped his head, indicating for him to come nearer. The whites of his eyes were completely red from conjunctival haemorrhages, which gave him a vampiric appearance, but other than that he looked all right.
‘Never die a virgin.’
Tom surveyed the apparently intact frame beneath the sheet. ‘Why?’
‘Cos in Heaven they’ll make you fuck a suicide bomber.’
Blakey managed a wheezy giggle at his own joke. Tom laughed. Blakey had an audience.
‘What you call a gay suicide bomber? A poof.’ More laughing that descended into a cough.
One of the aeromedics gave him a weary look.
‘Hundreds more where that came from. Was gonna be a stand-up comic — but now… Geddit?’
Tom grinned. ‘Still got your right hand, then. That’ll be a relief.’
Blakey liked that. But as the medics finished changing his drip they rolled him onto his side, and Tom saw that his body — though visually unmarked — was, from the chest down, a lifeless sack. ‘Fuckers didn’t finish the job did they, eh? Just shattered me spine. Fuckin’ useless twats.’
The blast of the IED had pulverized several vertebrae and severed his spinal cord.
Blakey winced, a jolt of pain in the part where he could still feel.
‘Sorry, Cliff, be done in a jiffy.’
Blakey was doing his level best to put a positive steer on his situation but Tom wondered how long he would keep it up. He lifted his head to free his hand and pointed at a laptop balanced on top of his bergen. Tom picked it up, opened it and put it on Blakey’s chest as he indicated. Then he tilted the screen towards Tom and stroked the track pad. The image sprang to life: a flaming car being pushed down a half-destroyed street towards retreating mounted police.
Blakey’s expression changed and his eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s my fucking estate. How’m I gonna protect my mum from that? And they’re letting even more in! It’s totally fucked up.’
Tom tried to think of some consoling words, discarding them as they came to him. It was one thing to be facing a life in a wheelchair, another when the home you were coming back to had become a war zone. ‘It can’t go on like this. It’ll run out of steam.’
That was the line he had taken with Delphine, to no avail. With Blakey it also fell wide of the mark. He snorted, his face reddening with rage. ‘And where’s the cops? I’m like this from fighting these bastards — and now they’re fucking taking over at home. They don’t deal with them, someone else is gonna have to.’
12
Tom’s plan, as soon as he touched down at Brize, was to hire a car and get to Hereford to see Delphine. But she wasn’t picking up. Perhaps she didn’t want to talk on the phone. Soon she’d see him face to face; that would start to mend things. The Lines could wait. For the first time in his military life he had no desire to touch base. It shocked him. He also wanted to go and see Dave’s girlfriend. He would have to work out what to say to her but he owed her a visit at the very least.
But he was knackered after the flight and grimy with the Afghan dust. He’d go home first, clean up. As he walked away from the Starlifter into the gloom of the English evening he wasn’t expecting any kind of reception. Least of all to see his CO.
Ashton was leaning on the bonnet of a Range Rover, arms folded. Despite the too-young hoodie and trackies, he exuded authority, having risen quickly from squadron commander to the Regiment’s CO. They were a tribe and he was the leader, all knowing, all seeing, whose word was law. But for all Tom’s love of the Regiment, there had always been a flicker of tension between the two men. As if Ashton threatened him in a way none of the others did, or something about Tom’s background rubbed him up the wrong way. There had been an unspoken understanding between them that they would ignore it and get on with the job.
But now was different. Ashton put out his hand. Tom took it, gave it one curt shake. ‘Thought we should check in before you head home.’
‘I’ve given a full account in Bastion. If you want me to go over it all again—’
Ashton cut him off. ‘I’ve read it. A few things have come up since.’
Tom held out a slim hope that the fragment of Qazi’s fatigues had tested positive for Dave’s blood.
‘The ANA’s conducting their own investigation. Seems they’re still suspicious about the nature of Dave’s death.’
‘I bet they are.’
‘But not in the way you’d expect. They’re focused on the fact that you were the last one to see him alive.’
‘So?’
‘They found your prints on his face and neck, and one of your hairs on his MTP.’
Tom felt his chest tighten as Ashton’s words sank in. ‘Of course they did. I’m the one who found him.’
There was an uncomfortable pause.
‘What — so I’m a suspect?’
‘They want to know if you’d argued, had some kind of disagreement over something.’
‘Like he beat me at cards so I cut his throat. What planet are they on?’
Ashton held up a hand. ‘It doesn’t help that we shipped you home in double-quick time before they had a chance to talk to you.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ Tom smashed a fist on the bonnet of the Range Rover.
‘Steady. Just suck it up. There’s also the fact that you pointed the finger at one of theirs. Right now, this is the last thing the Regiment needs.’
‘So the ANA are claiming I ran amok, killed one of our own for no reason, helped defend the base against an attack and then tried to have a go at Qazi — again for no reason.’
Ashton didn’t reply. His look said it all.
‘This is so fucked up.’
‘The MoD agree with you on that one for sure.’
‘I should fucking hope they do.’
‘Not in the way you think. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. The DSF is in the midst of trying to win the argument for us to be part of the lot that stays behind to help the Afghans try to keep a lid on things, stave off the cuts that are most likely coming our way. Trouble is, the Yanks have the same agenda. They see all this kicking off and are whispering in Kabul’s ear, saying they should give the job exclusively to them.’ Ashton shrugged.
‘You’re going to be RTU’d. You go back to the Rifles as a WO2.’
Tom felt as if the ground under his boots had just turned to mush. ‘You taking the piss?’
Ashton shook his head. ‘It’s just come down from Whitehall. If I had my way it’d all be different — but you know how it is. You have a month’s leave — it’ll give you time to get the idea bedded in.’
‘Or just bin it altogether.’ Tom thought he detected a flicker of satisfaction in Ashton’s face as if a dark part of him was enjoying this. He couldn’t help but admire the CO’s toughness, his focus, how he never flinched or cracked, and the care with which he tended the camaraderie that held them all together, but now they were alone, the void between them was all too plain.
Ashton eased himself off the Range Rover. ‘Give you a lift?’
‘I’ll make my own way.’
‘Suit yourself. Oh, one more thing. Steer clear of Dave’s girl. She’s understandably… very upset.’