21

Kathleen Finn had wanted a quiet funeral service for family and close friends. A week to the day after his lunch with Towers, Black found himself among the modest gathering of mourners in St Martin’s, the regimental church that stood on the busy Ross Road, less than half a mile from Finn’s home and close to the Regiment’s former HQ on the southern outskirts of Hereford. Like most things associated with the Regiment, the church was low-key and unobtrusive: a Victorian construction most wouldn’t give a second glance. An appropriate last resting place for the country’s most secretive warriors.

The congregation was spread across half a dozen rows of pews. Kathleen, dressed in black, sat at the front with her sister and brother-in-law and their respective broods of restless, upset children. Finn’s relations were few: an elderly aunt and uncle and a distant cousin or two. He had been an only child and both parents were long since dead. A coffin draped in a Union Jack flag sat in the centre of the nave. There were only a handful of men in uniform present – junior officers appointed to the Regiment since Black had left – but there was no sign of Towers. A dozen or so men from A Squadron, all now retired from active service, sat grouped together several rows ahead of Black. He had never been told what had been said about him after his sudden departure, but from their cursory nods and muted greetings he sensed suspicion.

The priest, a cheerful character with a full and ruddy face, delivered a eulogy that painted Finn as a quiet, sober family man who having served his country had settled to a workaday existence. There were elements of truth to the story but no hint of the real life he had lived. The blood, the stink, the fear, the exploded brains or the crunch of bayonets through ribs. Finn had out-fought and out-killed all of them. The guts he had spilled would fill a slurry pit. That was the truth, but the truth of combat was seldom spoken of, not even between soldiers. People preferred to enjoy their peace and liberty without reference to its origin, just as they preferred not to dwell on the realities of the slaughterhouse while eating their lunch. The priest, Black thought as his mind wandered over these things, was a man who clearly enjoyed a good lunch.

Black had lost count of the number of funerals he had attended in this place, all of them for men cut down in their prime. The white walls and plain windows seemed somehow to sharpen the divide between life and death more acutely than the worn stone and stained glass of medieval churches in which the living and the dead seemed somehow to unite in the sepulchral gloom. As the service moved through the penultimate hymn to closing prayers his sense of loss grew sharper. It was a new and disconcerting experience, as if he had been stripped of the outer layers that used to shield him from the emotions that afflicted other people. As the priest approached the coffin and recited, ‘Go forth, Christian soul, from this world,’ he felt a lump form in his throat.

He fought back against the sensation, dismayed at himself.

But Black wasn’t the only battled-hardened soldier who had been touched by the proceedings. The clique of former troopers and NCOs who had eyed him suspiciously before the Service tacitly accepted him into their circle as they gathered in the graveyard for the interment, bowing their heads in solemn silence. Kathleen and the children sobbed as the coffin was lowered jerkily into the ground and hit the earth below with a muffled thud. A young captain in crisp uniform placed a hand on her shoulder and looked briefly across the grave to the men who had served alongside Finn, several of whom, including Black, owed their lives to him. No words were needed. The message passed between the former comrades as clearly as if the RSM had bellowed it. There but for the grace of God.

Black was standing alone at the bar in the tired function room of the nearby pub when Kathleen appeared from amidst the chatting mourners. Her eyes were still red and swollen. ‘Aren’t you going to talk to the men? I know they’d like to say hello to you.’

‘Of course.’ He felt a stab of guilt and as if he had offended her. The truth was that he had needed a few drinks inside him before launching into reminiscences. ‘How are the children?’

She shrugged. ‘Up and down.’

‘I spoke to Freddy Towers. He mentioned Megan –’

‘People make you sick,’ Kathleen shot back. ‘And the police are useless. I know what Ryan would have done. She’ll be all right.’ She glanced away, then turned sharply back towards him. ‘I had a visit from someone at the Foreign Office. They said I may never know why it happened – not if there’s national security involved. The coroner said he can’t do anything until the French police have closed their case. It could be months, or longer.’

‘You know I’ll do what I can, Kathleen.’

‘Why the bodyguard? If they’d already got away with the woman he was looking after, why wait for him? And if they wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to come after them, why not shoot him? It doesn’t make sense.’ She swallowed, determined not to spill any more tears. ‘He’d talk to me, Leo. Tell me things he wasn’t meant to. I’ve learned enough over the years to know there’s more to this.’ She looked at him with eyes that seemed to cut through his mask of feigned ignorance. ‘What do you think …? In my shoes would you let it go?’

Black met her gaze, seeing the strength and resilience that would have made her a match for Finn. She would survive, but he was certain she would never rest until she knew. He tried to find words that wouldn’t leave him a hostage to fortune but she beat him to it, as if sensing his weakness.

‘Thank you for coming, anyway. You’ll stay in touch?’

‘Of course.’

She managed a smile of sorts and nodded towards the group he’d been avoiding. ‘They’re all good blokes. Ryan only stuck with mates he could trust.’ She touched his arm and went back to the relatives minding her children.

Black drained his pint, ordered another from the bar and ventured towards some of those he had stood among at the graveside. The faces were older, most of them now well into their forties, but their names came rushing back to him: Corporal Robbie Hines, Sergeant Con Tyler, Troopers Dave Blunt and Jed Salter and Lance Corporal Dan Hart. Helped by the alcohol, Black greeted them with a warm hello and without further comment was absorbed naturally into their conversation.

The talk among the old soldiers was mostly of friends and colleagues, who, like them, had made the difficult transition out of the army. Most had found themselves niches in the world of private security and close protection, but others they mentioned had taken up regular trades. The Special Forces, it seemed, turned out a healthy crop of plumbers and electricians. Some hadn’t had it so easy and had turned to drink or worse. A couple had found religion. A former corporal had joined a Buddhist commune in Cornwall and a trooper Black had known from a boy was training for the priesthood. Listening to their stories, he was struck by how mild and unassuming these men were compared with the preening and neurotic academics he now called colleagues. Every last one possessed an aura of calm self-containment that bordered on the monk-like. With the singular exception of Freddy Towers, there had been no place for big egos or attention-seekers in the Regiment.

They ordered another round of drinks and were joined by two younger men who introduced themselves as Chris Riley and Ed Fallon, both of them serving troopers who had worked with Finn during his last years in uniform, much of which were spent in Syria and Yemen. Riley was a stocky Yorkshireman with a mischievous smile and a glint in his eye. Fallon was a taller quiet type with the wiry frame and quiet intensity of a mountaineer. Just the kind of combination Finn would have selected to make up a small team for operations in the desert.

Riley ventured the fact that the three of them had spent a lot of time on obbos and sab missions behind enemy lines, the kind of work that tests nerves and friendships to their limits. ‘Finny was a good boss, though I’ll not miss sharing a dugout with him.’

His joke raised a laugh from all of them. One of the joys of covert observation was sharing the same hole for days on end, urinating into bottles and defecating into plastic bags. There were some men who could be civilized about it and those like Finn who coped with the squalor by revelling in it.

‘He only spoke well of you, sir,’ Riley said to Black. ‘Said you went back fifteen years.’

‘Felt like thirty,’ Black said, raising another laugh. ‘He was there the day I joined and still there when I left. Thought he’d outlive us all.’

There was a brief, respectful silence.

‘Finn said he had you down for the big time.’ The comment came from Riley. ‘Thought you could go all the way to general. He could never understand why you left.’

The question was innocent enough but caused all eyes to turn on Black. It occurred to him that he had never formulated a truthful answer. He had left on impulse, not for a thought-out reason. The words that came out of his mouth were entirely new to him.

‘If you’d asked me five years ago I’m not sure I could have told you, except to say I probably felt there was more to life than the army. Now, well … I wonder if underneath it all I wasn’t thinking that my luck couldn’t hold for ever. All that door kicking we did in Iraq, I should have been under the sod a dozen times. I could have sat behind a desk somewhere, I suppose, but it never appealed.’

‘You didn’t lose your marbles, then, sir?’ The flippant remark came from Robbie Hines, a Geordie with arms like capstans.

Black smiled. ‘Is that what they said?’

‘And the rest,’ Dave Blunt chimed in. ‘I heard you’d run off with a ladyboy.’

‘That was after I left.’

More laughter. Black felt a weight lift from his shoulders and sensed that he was being greeted back into the fold.

‘Kathleen told us you went to Paris, sir,’ Hines said quietly, careful not to be overheard by any of Finn’s relatives. ‘Heard he got cut up pretty bad.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Do we know who the perp is?’

Black shook his head.

‘I’ll bet you Towers does.’ The speaker was Con Tyler, a squat, shaven-headed man from Staffordshire with still, black eyes. ‘Finn was on the phone to me a couple of weeks back saying Towers had got him a job in France. Looking after some scientist.’

‘I’ve spoken to Towers,’ Black said. ‘He doesn’t know.’

‘So what’s he doing about it?’

Black hesitated. The five men looked at him, all of them assuming that he had inside information.

‘Obviously his work was classified. I don’t know details, but I do know Towers is on the case.’

‘Still mates with Fireballs, are you?’

‘Not really, no. He got in touch with me, after Kathleen asked me to go to Paris to identify the body. He’s working with the French authorities trying to piece together the evidence.’

‘If he needs a crew, he knows who to ask,’ Hines said. ‘We’d be out there tomorrow.’

The others murmured in agreement.

‘I’m sure he knows that,’ Black said. ‘And I know he feels like the rest of us.’

‘It would have been nice of him to show up,’ Jed Salter said.

‘I understand he’s been to pay his respects to Kathleen,’ Black said, feeling an inexplicable need to defend Towers’ absence.

‘Afraid to show his face,’ Salter said. ‘Might have had some questions to answer.’

Black remained silent, aware that Riley and Fallon, the two in the group still in the thick of their careers, were listening intently.

‘He was livid when you left, sir,’ Tyler said. ‘Didn’t have any officers lunatic enough to carry out his crazy fucking orders. Had to start behaving like he cared if we got to go home. Best thing you ever did for us, buggering off.’ He laughed, breaking the tension.

‘I’m glad some good came of it,’ Black said and caught sight of Kathleen glancing over at him as she leaned down to comfort her two girls.

He watched her stroke their hair and kiss their foreheads and knew that he couldn’t desert them.