Live Fire (24 page)

‘It must cost you a fortune,’ said Shepherd.

Mickey took a swig of his beer. ‘It’s where we live,’ he said. ‘It’s our home.’

‘Even so . . . this is living it large.’

‘You only live once, mate. You’ve gotta seize the day – you’ve gotta go for it because no one’s going to hand it to you on a plate.’ He waved at the pool. ‘Come on, let’s get some use out of it, yeah?’

‘I’ll get my gear,’ said Shepherd. He went back through the bar and outside to his Jeep. When he returned with his gym bag, the rest of the men had joined Mickey at the poolside and were in their trunks.

‘Changing rooms over there,’ shouted Wilson, pointing at a stone building with a teak roof.

Inside Shepherd found a row of showers and toilets, and ten polished steel lockers. He changed into his shorts and wandered back to the pool. Mickey and Mark were in one of the cabanas, drinking Singha and leaning against triangular Thai pillows. Yates was already in the pool, doing a brisk breast-stroke, his head rising high out of the water each time he brought his hands back to his chest.

‘Help yourself to a beer, mate,’ said Mickey, jerking a thumb at a small fridge in the back of the cabana. Shepherd bent down and took out a bottle of Heineken. ‘Bloody hell, mate, what happened to you?’ He was staring at the scar on Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘That’s a gunshot wound, innit?’

Shepherd ran his finger across the scar tissue. ‘Yeah.’

‘Working?’

‘Sort of,’ said Shepherd. ‘Army.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘Knock yourself out.’

Mickey stood up and came over to him. The scar was puckered in a tight circle, darker than the surrounding skin. ‘That was one big bullet,’ said Mickey.

‘Yeah, well, they don’t mess around with Kalashnikovs,’ said Shepherd.

‘No way,’ said Mickey.

‘In Afghanistan,’ said Shepherd. ‘Bastard took a potshot at me.’

‘Let me have a butcher’s,’ said Mark.

‘You were in the army?’ asked Mickey.

‘No, you soft bastard, I was with the Taliban. Of course I was in the bloody army.’

‘You don’t look like ex-army, that’s all.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘Who were you with?’ asked Mickey.

‘The Paras,’ said Shepherd. It was the first lie he’d told. Everything else had been true, but his Ricky Knight legend didn’t include a spell with the SAS.

‘So you jumped out of planes and shit?’ asked Mark. He took a fresh bottle of Singha out of the fridge and used his teeth to prise off the cap. He spat it over his head and took a swig of the beer.

‘That’s sort of what paratroopers do,’ said Shepherd.

‘All paras jump out of planes?’

Shepherd wondered if Mark was joking but it was clear from his earnest expression that he was serious. ‘That’s right.’

Mark looked at his brother. ‘I thought Tel was with the Paras but he never jumped out of a plane.’

‘Tel was a squaddie. He just talks big sometimes,’ said Mickey.

‘When’s he coming back?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Doctors say another week or two.’

‘What was the story with the truck?’ asked Shepherd.

‘The driver was out of his head on booze and amphetamines, hit Tel and went off like a bat out of hell,’ said Mickey. ‘Cops picked him up an hour or two later but he blamed Tel and they dropped the case.’

‘Bastards,’ said Shepherd.

‘Every time a
farang
and a Thai have a run-in, the cops always side with their own,’ said Mickey. ‘That’s the way it is. We’ll have him, though – we know where he lives. We’re just biding our time.’

‘So, have you fired big guns and shit?’ Mark asked Shepherd.

‘Again, that’s what paras do, Mark,’ said Shepherd. ‘They jump out of planes and they fire shit.’

‘And you did that in Afghanistan?’

‘I didn’t jump in Afghanistan, but I fired a lot of shit, yeah.’

‘Like what?’

‘Why the interest?’ asked Shepherd.

Mark grinned. ‘We fire a lot of shit ourselves,’ he said. ‘We go over to Cambodia – it’s real Wild West over there. There’s an army range where they let you fire pretty much anything you want. Machine-guns, mortars . . . You can even throw grenades.’

‘Sounds fun.’

‘It’s a bloody riot,’ said Mark. ‘They give you machine-guns and you can shoot at chickens. Shoot them to bits. And if you want they’ll let you shoot a cow. You’ve got to pay for it, and they keep the beef afterwards, but you can kill it.’

‘Not sure I’d want to shoot a defenceless cow,’ said Shepherd. He sipped his beer and sighed. ‘This really is the life, isn’t it? You’ve got yourselves well sorted.’

‘We’ve worked hard for this,’ said Mark. ‘Bloody hard.’ He went back to sit in the cabana. Mickey and Shepherd joined him on the Thai pillows.

‘Do you go back to England much?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Just for business,’ said Mickey. ‘It’s a shit-hole, these days.’

‘England’s finished,’ said Mark. He leaned towards Shepherd. ‘You know how many Brits pack up and leave England every year? Two hundred and fifty thousand. A quarter of a million. And when I say Brits, I mean English, the likes of you and me. Real English.’

‘Whites, you mean?’

Mark shook his head emphatically. ‘It’s nothing to do with colour, mate. Tel’s as black as the ace of spades but he’s as British as you and me. Even served in the army – did two tours in Afghanistan. His parents came over to England in the sixties and he was born in Brixton. He’s a West Ham supporter, but apart from that he’s a diamond. The point is, Tel’s black but he hates the way England’s gone down the toilet as much as I do. It’s not about colour, it’s about culture. I’m English, so are you. You know how many of my relatives died in the First and Second World Wars fighting for our country? Thirty-seven. Thirty-bloody-seven.’

‘I’m not sure I get your point,’ said Shepherd.

‘The point, mate, is that my family shed its blood for our country. Fought and died for it. But now it’s not my country any more . . . Our mum died five years ago. Stroke.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Shepherd.

‘By the time she died, her and our dad were the only white people in their street. Every other house it was Asians or bloody Taliban refugees. Me and Mickey got him out, got him a villa in Spain. Happy as Larry he is now, playing poker and sitting by the pool. And you know what? The village he lives in, almost everyone’s English. That’s how crazy it is. In London he was surrounded by foreigners. He goes abroad and he’s with his own kind. The world’s gone mad.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Mickey. He clinked his bottle against his brother’s, then Shepherd’s.

‘I wonder how the Spanish feel about it,’ said Shepherd.

‘What do you mean?’ said Mark, frowning.

‘It’s sort of the same, isn’t it? Brits are flooding into Spain and to the Spanish they’re foreigners.’

‘It’s not the same,’ said Mark. ‘Spain is EU. I’ve nothing against the Spanish wanting to live in England if that’s what floats their boat. The Spanish are okay. What I object to is the fact we give passports to Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Serbs, Romanian gypsies, the scum of the earth.’

‘Actually, Romania’s EU,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re entitled.’

Mark’s eyes hardened. ‘What?’

‘I’m just saying, Romania’s in the EU. They can move to the UK if they want, same as you can live in Romania.’

‘Why the fuck would I want to live in Romania? It’s a shit-hole.’

Shepherd put up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m not arguing with you. Forget I said anything.’ He grinned. ‘Just don’t hit me again, yeah?’

Mark didn’t smile and Shepherd could see he wasn’t happy. Mark Moore had a short fuse and Shepherd knew it wouldn’t take much to ignite it.

‘I know what John means,’ Mickey said to his brother. ‘Guys like us go to live in Spain or Thailand, that makes us the foreigners. They probably don’t like it any better than we like Pakis and the rest moving into the UK.’

Shepherd knew he needed to change the subject. The last thing he wanted was a full-blown argument with Mark. Wilson was standing on the springboard over the swimming-pool, bouncing up and down, arms out to the side. He had a line of ornate Thai script running from his left shoulder to his elbow. ‘What does that Thai writing on Barry’s arm say?’ he asked Mickey.

‘It says, “I am a twat”, that’s what it says,’ said Mickey.

Shepherd laughed. ‘No, seriously, what does it say?’

‘It says, “I am a twat”, God’s honest truth,’ said Mickey. ‘He’s going to get it lasered off once he finds a doctor he can trust.’ Mickey took a long pull on his Singha, then wiped his mouth on his arm. ‘He had it done not long after we got to Thailand. We were in Bangkok before we came here and he pulled a dancer from the Long Gun Bar in Soi Cowboy. Fit as a butcher’s dog she was, hair down to her arse – could suck the chrome off an exhaust pipe. Anyway, Barry there bar fines her for a week and on the second day decides it’s a love job.’

‘Bar fine?’ repeated Shepherd.

‘You really are a newbie, aren’t you?’ said Mickey. ‘If you meet a bird in a bar and you want to shag her, you have to pay a fee to the bar. It’s usually about a tenner. Once you’ve paid the bar fine she can go with you.’

Wilson put his hands together and hurled himself inelegantly off the springboard. He hit the water hard, his stomach taking most of the impact. Droplets of water peppered the surface of the pool like rain.

‘Anyway, Barry tells this dancer he wants to get her name tattooed on his arm in Thai,’ Mickey continued. ‘A sign of his love, right? They both get well pissed before they go to see the tattooist and she tells the guy what to write. The next morning Barry wakes up to find she’s done a runner with his wallet, his Rolex, his jewellery, his credit cards and his passport. She’s cleaned him out. So he toddles along to the tourist police and tells them his tale of woe. They’re very sympathetic and ask him if he knows her name. “I can do better than that,” says Barry, and he peels off his shirt to show the tattoo to the cops. That’s when he finds out that he’s got the Thai for “I am a twat” on his arm.’

Wilson pulled himself out of the pool and ran his hands through his hair. He saw Shepherd and Mickey looking at him and scowled. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Just telling him about the love of your life,’ said Mickey.

Wilson rubbed the tattoo. ‘If I ever catch her . . .’

‘What? You’ll have “wanker” tattooed on the other, will you?’ teased Mickey. ‘You soft bugger.’ He tapped his bottle against Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘Word to the wise, mate. Don’t ever let a bargirl get close to you. They look like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths but they’ll rip your heart out, and your wallet.’

Shepherd raised his bottle in salute. ‘I’m not interested in paying for it,’ he said.

Mickey chuckled. ‘Everyone pays, mate, one way or another.’

Paul Bradshaw continued counting the fifty-pound notes. There were five hundred in all, amounting to twenty-five thousand pounds. The cashier picked up the notes and ran them through an electric counting machine that whirred for a few seconds, then digitally confirmed Bradshaw’s total. He took the Western Union form that Bradshaw had carefully filled out and ran it through his computer, then handed him a receipt.

Bradshaw walked out into Edgware Road, past a coffee shop where a dozen men in Arab dress were drinking coffee and smoking aromatic hookahs. He put his hand into his jeans pocket and took out the phone card he had bought from an Arab-run Internet café down the road. There were two phone boxes outside a branch of Woolworths, both covered with lurid postcards advertising the services of local prostitutes. He went into one, lifted the foul-smelling receiver and tapped out the Baghdad number. He knew how easily the authorities could download address books from mobile phones so the phone numbers he needed were committed to memory – he often used mnemonics as an aid.

The number was answered by a timid female voice. ‘It’s me, Farrah,’ said Bradshaw. ‘I’m calling from overseas. Please don’t say my name.’ He knew that the Americans monitored all phone traffic in and out of Iraq and he did not want even his first name to be used on an open line.

‘I understand,’ she said.

‘I’ve sent you money today.’ Her name meant ‘Joyful’ but he knew there had been no joy in Farrah’s life since the death of her husband and unborn child.

‘You do not have to do anything for me,’ she said.

‘It is my duty, and my pleasure,’ he said. ‘I wish there was more I could to make your pain easier to bear. Money is nothing.’

‘You are an angel,’ she said.

Bradshaw laughed softly. ‘No, I’m not, but I’ve sent you money today. You can collect it from Western Union, if you show your ID. Do you remember the restaurant we went to, the last time we ate together?’

‘I remember,’ she said.

‘You can collect the money from the bank next to it. They’re expecting you.’

‘You are my saviour.’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry – I’m sorry for everything.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘No one blames you for what happened.’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘Please, collect the money and remember me in your prayers. I will send you more, I promise.’

He put the phone down. Suddenly he felt giddy, as if the blood had drained from his head, and he put his hand against the side of the phone box to steady himself. He did blame himself for what had happened to Yusuf and his family. When Farrah’s waters had broken, Yusuf had phoned him and asked if he would take him and his wife to hospital but Bradshaw had been due out on patrol and had refused. If he had gone with Yusuf, if there had been a Westerner in the car, the Americans wouldn’t have fired. But Bradshaw had gone out on patrol, and Yusuf and his child had been killed, and Farrah would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Bradshaw did blame himself and would until the day he died. The money he had just sent made him feel a little better, but only a little.

So much had changed since the day Yusuf and the baby had died. Bradshaw had become a Muslim and had come to realise how he’d been misled by his parents, his teachers and his government. He knew now that British soldiers had no right to be killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, no right to be telling other cultures how to conduct themselves. What had happened in Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with democracy, Bradshaw knew, and everything to do with oil and the subjugation of Muslims. That had to end, once and for all, which was why Bradshaw had become a soldier of
jihad
, determined to right the wrongs of his people. The money he had sent to Farrah was a small fraction of what had been left for him in the safety-deposit box in Knightsbridge. And nobody would be asking him to account for every pound he spent. All his paymasters would be concerned about was whether or not he carried out his mission. And Bradshaw was sure he would succeed and that people would die. A lot of people.