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Our-young-’un and me headed west across the city. I was driving as fast as I dared but I still had to be careful because I couldn’t run the risk of being pulled over by the police, not with a gun on me.
‘I need to know I can rely on you,’ I told Danny, ‘because of what’s happened, you and Palmer are just about the only people left I can trust.’
‘Of course,’ he sounded almost offended. ‘You can rely on me man,’
‘I mean it Danny. You used to say that you and your mates in the army were like brothers, you’d do anything for each other, well I’m your real brother and I need to know what you are prepared to do for me.’
He mulled that over for less than a second, ‘anything, name it.’
‘Even if it’s dangerous.’
‘Well, yeah, no sweat like.’
‘Even if it means killing.’
He thought that one over for a moment. ‘You wouldn’t ask me unless it was the only choice. I know that. I owe everything to you man, everything. Don’t know where I’d be without you but it sure as hell wouldn’t be here.’
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, feeling grateful and uncomfortable at the same time.
‘Anyhow,’ he said quietly, ‘killing’s not as hard as you might think.’
He was right there.
‘I’ve never asked you this before,’ I told him, ‘and I wouldn’t ask it now but I’ve got to because I’m trusting you with my life and the lives of the people who work for me. What happened to you in the Falklands that made you the way you are?’
‘The way I am?’ he asked as if he didn’t comprehend me.
‘You know what I mean,’ and he fell silent for a time.
‘Aye,’ he said quietly, ‘I know what you mean.’
‘Was it at Goose Green?’
He just nodded.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I admitted, ‘but I have to know that, whatever it is, it won’t stop you from being on top form when I need you.’ I was starting to think this might have been a bad idea, that I should have left Our-young-’un in his flat and done this on my own, except I didn’t know how.
‘It’s alright,’ he said, ‘I was only eighteen,’ and he shook his head as if he couldn’t imagine being that young in a war zone, ‘eighteen but I can remember most of it like it was yesterday,’ then he let out a bitter laugh, ‘and I can’t remember yesterday.’ He leant back in his seat, against the headrest. ‘When the battle started we got pinned down, they had more men and about a dozen trenches with machine guns zeroed in. We couldn’t get through them and it looked like we were in the shit big style. I thought we were all going to die, I really did. Then Colonel H, he got up and led the way, went after a couple of machine guns with two of our NCOs and well, you know what happened.’
I nodded, ‘that’s how he got his VC,’ I knew the tale of Lieutenant Colonel H Jones, Commanding Officer of 2 Para, well enough to recite it myself.
‘Posthumous VC,’ Danny corrected me, ‘he went straight at them but the machine guns got him in the end. Bravest thing I ever saw. It was his example that got the boys up the hill that day.’
I could see how much Danny respected bravery and I was starting to get a sick feeling like he was going to admit something to me that I might not want to hear. All these years I’d took it as read that my brother was a hero who went into battle in a hail of bullets, against awful odds. I didn’t think I’d be able to cope with it now if he suddenly told me he was a coward. Having one in the family was quite enough.
‘So what happened?’
‘I did my job,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t do enough,’ his voice faltered, ‘I found cover when I had to, I went forward when the NCOs ordered me to, I fired my rifle, I even killed a man, shot him from a distance and found his body when we went forward again. He didn’t look any older than me, but. . .’
‘But what?’
‘That’s all,’ he said, ‘I didn’t distinguish myself. I kept my head down when some of the others were running through the bullets. I moved after they moved. I fired after they fired, I was never the first to get up that hill. I made sure I didn’t get my head blown off. I came out the other side without a scratch. We lost seventeen men. Seventeen dead and sixty four wounded and I didn’t even stub my toe on a rock. When I look back on it now I sometimes feel like I wasn’t really there, the fear stopped me from performing the way I know I could have, the way they’d trained me to. I should have been quicker. I should have been stronger. I should have been first.’
‘Christ!’ I shouted in exasperation, ‘is that it?’
‘What do you mean is that it?’ he looked at me like I was crazy.
‘I thought you’d seen something awful or done something awful. All these years I thought maybe you’d accidentally shot one of your mates, or murdered some Argie prisoners or run away or something.
‘Run away?’ he asked me, ‘Course I didn’t fucking run away. What do you take me for?’
‘I don’t know Danny, maybe not run away but I thought it was something worse than. . . well what you’ve just told me. Jesus, your whole life,’ I couldn’t comprehend him, ‘you’ve been so messed up since then and that’s all it’s been about? Just because you weren’t bloody Rambo?’
‘I did see something awful,’ he told me calmly, ‘the whole battle was awful, people having their arms and legs blown off, mates from my company getting shot in the head, of course it was awful.’
‘But that wasn’t what kept you awake at night?’ I said quietly, ‘was it?’
‘No,’ he told me, ‘you don’t get it, you weren’t in the army. The thing that gets you through it is your mates and the fear of letting them down. That’s worse than being shit scared of dying or ending up paralysed or a vegetable. Worse than all the god-awful horror of a battle is how scared you are that you are going to let your mates down when it comes to the crunch. That’s the code. I can’t tell you how it feels when you are standing in the pissing rain next to one of those big, open graves full of body bags, while the padre reads out the names of your friends and all you can think of is “I could have done more”,’
‘Did someone say something to you?’ I asked him, ‘afterwards. Did someone say you’d let your mates down, that you’d not done enough?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘no, nobody said anything, but I knew I had and that’s all that matters.’
‘Shit Danny, you didn’t fuck up. You did your job. It’s not like you dug a hole and hid in it crying. You moved, you fired your gun, you engaged the enemy and you killed one of them. You weren’t Audie Murphy but Jesus man, who is? If you’d done any more they’d have been burying you on that bloody hill. You were 18 for Christ’s sake. Everybody I know still thinks you’re a total hero just for being there and walking through that. You didn’t fuck up and you have no reason for feeling like a failure. The only thing you really feel guilty about is surviving and I can understand it, but that’s just the luck of war. Thank God you weren’t one of the poor bastards who didn’t come back. We did. Me and ma, we thanked God.’
‘I thought you were an atheist?’
‘I am but back then I was only a wee bairn, so I prayed anyhow, every night.’
‘I know you did and I’m grateful but I tell you there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t relived that bloody battle in my head and wished I’d done better, wished I’d been the soldier I know I could have been.’
I thought about this for a moment that seemed to stretch out in front of us.
‘You still can be Danny,’ I told him firmly, ‘you still can be.’
The front door to the Gosforth mansion was hanging off its hinges when we got there. I held the gun out in front of me, in case the fifth Russian was still there with Sarah, and walked inside. Danny followed me in. I hadn’t forgotten there were meant to be five of them. I’d been dialling Sarah’s mobile number on and off with Palmer’s phone since he picked me up outside the railway station. No answer. I was worried sick but I couldn’t let that distract me. I’d be no use to her dead.
The only sign of a struggle was in the hallway; an up-ended table, the phone lying redundantly on the carpet next to it. We gave the downstairs a quick once-over and found nothing. There wasn’t a sound. I left Danny watching the door and slowly inched my way up the stairs, not bothering to call out because I didn’t want to warn anyone who might still be up there keeping a guard on Sarah. I could feel my heart thumping. I’d have sworn the sound was audible it was pounding so fast.
The landing was clear, the door to Sarah’s room open. It was empty, the posters from her pre-college days seeming absurdly innocent, all pop stars and cute animals.
There was a light on in what I took to be the master bedroom. I could see it beneath the crack in the door. I listened intently but heard nothing. I began to feel too vulnerable on the landing. This Russian could drop me through the door before I even saw him, but it was too late to go back now. I had to find Sarah. I took a few quick steps towards the door and kicked it open, pointing the gun out in front of me Jack Bauer-style as I stepped through.