This Is Not Forgiveness (10 page)

He spends his time staring at weapon sites, wishing for his old life, wanting to be looking through his Schmidt and Bender standard sight, targeting the bad man, getting the cross hairs on the Taliban. He’s only happy when he’s hanging out with his mates, but there’s a space between him and them now. Soon, they will be leaving, going back to a life he can no longer share.

I turn away quickly. I wouldn’t want him to see me looking. It feels like spying. He wouldn’t want me to see him that way. From down the long hall, he’s just a dark shape receding, sitting motionless, silhouetted against the strong sunlight like a man in a photograph. His face is as familiar as my own in the mirror, but he looks like someone I no longer know.

Chapter 12

Jimbo was here just now peeking at what I was doing – you do – don’t you, when someone has a laptop open in front of them. Can’t help it – human nature. He’s thinking I’m looking at porn. That’s what soldiers do, right?

But it’s not what I’m looking at – I’m looking at the Barrett. I’m thinking what it would be like to use it – to be up on a ridge sighting on something a mile or more away in the rocks and sand and little scrubby trees covered in dust, everything milky brown or shades of grey – with the dust and the wind blowing gritty in your mouth and in your eyes. Always the wind blowing – sometimes hard – sometimes soft – have to compensate for that. Sighting in the cross hairs – hearing the sound of my breathing, then the loading and the shot booming even through the ear defenders – sending birds scattering up into the sky so he looks up to see why and in that beat of a second the bullet rips right through him – pieces of him flying everywhere. He’s blown right off the ridge like a suit of clothes. Then the echoes are bouncing off the mountains further and further – growing smaller and smaller until there’s only the wind again and me lying still – part of the landscape – wrapped in a sniper smock sprayed to look like the terrain – stuck with dust and sand and dead twigs and branches that rattle as you move into position like a ghost in a ghostly land. No moving around – just hours and hours of keeping still and waiting – then POW!

Yeah that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m a sniper – that’s what I do.

Sniping is a special thing. You have to be a good shot – that’s a given – and it’s not like you can’t see the target – can’t see his eyes and that. You can. Sights you got now – you can see his acne scars. You watch ’em so long you get to know ’em – but you have to be able to separate yourself off – not think of him as another human being. He’s the target – that’s it – tough shit. It’s like hunting – you have to enjoy the tracking and the killing – but I don’t think that you are supposed to enjoy it quite as much as I do.

Best thing is when the target don’t know you are there – one minute him and his mates are milling about their camp brewing up chai and he’s standing there with his AK in his mitt – the next the side of his head goes fitzz in a cloud of red mist. He don’t even have time to look surprised and the others haven’t got a clue. The shot is echoing all around – or you’ve used a silencer so no one knows where the fuck the fire is coming from – and they all start running about and as they do you drop another one and another and they’re going down like puppets with their strings cut before they can find any kind of cover.

I love it when that happens.

That’s not always how it goes of course. It can go the other way. Sometimes the operation goes to shit.

The bad guys have got some useful kit.

You could be set up in a position and the guy right next to you gets blown away by one of theirs with a Russian Dragunov. Or could be you get caught in the open. Nothing you can do as the steel core bullet rips right through the helmet and takes off the top of the skull and half his face with it so it’s no longer Lt Johnny Boy Williams I’m looking at just a mess of blood and white chunks of bone. We’re on patrol – a hearts and minds mission. He’s been showing me pix of his girlfriend on his phone – she’s hot. I look up to the compound we’re supposed to visit. There’s an old doris chucking out water and kids playing and goats wandering about. Seems safe enough. We get out and suddenly there’s no one about. Even the goats have buggered off. Johnny Boy is still grinning – thinking about his girlfriend no doubt – and there’s a crack like wood snapping and he’s thrown back and away from me. Could’ve been you. That’s all I’m thinking to myself, cos it’s not him any more, is it. And I’m glad it’s not me. So glad. I drop down on one knee. He was a good lad and a good mate not like the other Ruperts. The interpreter ain’t got out of the Land Rover – he’s lying flat in the back. I don’t blame him for that. Silly fucker who slotted Johhny bobs up to see if he’s done damage – so I get him right enough, then another has a look – they are so fucking stupid. I get him, too.

I figure there’s a nest of them in there and I leave Johnny where he’s fallen. No help for him now and I’m charging up the hill towards their mud shithole of a compound and it’s like I’m Kevlar-coated. I can hear bullets zipping all around me – see them kicking up the red dust and splintering rocks – but I keep firing. I kill every fucker in there because they knew.

It’s quiet now. I go back to Johnny and wait until Bryn and the rest of them find us. Bryn goes up to the compound. When he comes back he says nothing at all but calls in a strike and it all don’t matter because next minute a Spectre gunship flies over and none of them are there any more. There’s just a big ball of flame billowing out and nothing left but a black hole in the ground. But when I sleep they are alive again – the old man in the corner and the women with their faces covered whimpering and the little Taliban snappers with their soft sad eyes looking.

I don’t sleep very often. We don’t talk about that – never talk about that. Sleep like a baby, me. That’s what we say to each other. Nothing about what we see when we close our eyes at night. Bryn knows though – he knows what I see because he was there.

Him and the lads are still here but they will soon be going. I don’t want them to go. When they’re here – it’s like there’s a barrier between me and what I fear. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t fear no one. Nothing outside me. What’s frightening is what’s inside myself – that’s why I want them to stay. But then part of me can’t wait to see them going out the door so I’m left on my own again – cos that’s the only way to be.

Bryn says that I need treatment – to go back and get help. Joking like – always joking – we are always joking – but I know he’s serious. Been there done that I tell him – and it’s no help because there is no help.

You can’t be with your family no more – they just get on your nerves. No matter how much you want to be home, when you’re there everyone drives you mental. They don’t understand – can never understand. People become unreal – life becomes unreal. The only answer is to go back and be with your mates cos they’re the only ones who can understand you. But if there’s no going back there’s nowhere to go and you don’t even want to be with them any more – you don’t want to be with anyone. It’ll take more than counselling to stop me from going where I’m heading.

Chapter 13

‘This fascist state means to kill us all!

We must organise resistance. Violence is

the only way to answer violence.’

Gudrun Ensslin

I took his phone. It was lying on the bench between us. He was pretty much out of it and it must have fallen from his pocket. I could have given it to his brother, but I didn’t. I put it into my bag.

That was careless, leaving it on a bench like that where anyone might find it. You can tell a lot about a person from his or her phone: what apps are there, photographs, texts sent and received, whose numbers they have in the directory, favourites, websites they access, emails, depending on what kind of phone it is, even what kind of tariff someone is on, all these things are very revealing, the photographs and video footage especially. A mobile phone is personal, your life in a capsule. You should look after it. He hasn’t even locked it and it isn’t password-protected which is unforgivably sloppy of him. I look at the photos he’s got. The video clips. Interesting stuff. He’s a killer. They all are. I transfer what I want on to my laptop.

The only phone I’ll own now is a cheap pay-as-you-go. No numbers. They are in my head. No photographs. I delete every message that I send or receive.

I hadn’t seen Charlie for a while. He tells me that getting sacked was the best thing that could have happened to him. Made him focus on his art. Now he’s a Real Artist, not just a part-time teacher, and he’s doing well. Beginning to sell. He suggests we go back to his place, so he can show me the work he’s been doing. That’s what he says but I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that there will be more to it. I go along anyway. He’s got a new flat. A loft space in a converted granary.

He shows me the studio, the work he is doing now. It’s very political. Photographs from the London demonstrations merge with images from other countries, burnt-out tanks and buildings, car bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan. The Palestinian flag, the Star of David and the Stars and Stripes merge into one another, torn, blackened and scorched. One huge canvas shows soldiers, their faces erased, bleeding into a reddened landscape, surrounded by scenes of dereliction and devastation. A closer look shows a row of burnt out high street shops; British fields turned into barren no-man’s-land, a dead waste ground ribboned with black seeping oil.

‘That’s oil. See?’

‘Yeah. I get that.’ I nod slowly, walking up to the canvas and stepping back again, in a suitably admiring way. ‘Powerful stuff.’

He grins, arms crossed. Pleased with the effect his work is having, my response.

‘I want to show what’s happening in the world and what’s happening here. Fuse the two together. Literally bring it home to people. What we are doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza – the Intifada – the destruction and violence we are causing.’

That’s enough preliminaries. He pours some wine and we take it through to the bedroom. Maybe he’s drunk too much, but it takes him a long, long time. I drift off, and I’m thinking about my appointment with Armani guy. I tell him I want to study Politics. Not here, abroad somewhere. I’ve opted for History, Economics, French and German. ‘Can you do it in a year?’ he enquires, fingers steepled, head on one side, looking doubtful. ‘Your previous subjects were Art, English and Drama.’ Mother looks impatient, like my new choices are just a fad. What does she care? If I fail everything, she’d be glad.

‘Of course I can,’ I say and go on to tell him exactly why. He taps a few notes into his Mac but he’s not really listening. He sits back, manicured fingers steepled again.

‘By opting for us, you’ve made a wise choice. We now have Academy status and will soon have a splendid
new
sixth form and community college, the best in the area. Let me give you the virtual tour of the facilities . . .’

He turns his Mac round and starts a promo video of what it’s going to be like. The virtual tour sweeps up to the new Academy buildings off to the right, all smoked glass and wood cladding. The sixth form college will occupy a space on the other side of the drive, so the school reaches almost to the main road. The school is on a rise. The grand front entrance is up a flight of steps (ramp to the side), all glass and chrome. Impressive. Over his shoulder, out of the window, it appears to be a building site. He sees me staring.

‘It will be finished by the end of the summer,’ he says, reassuring. ‘Ready for the opening ceremony on the first day of term. We are expecting a very important visitor . . .’

He mentions a name and sits back in his chair with this self-satisfied look, like we are supposed to be impressed. It’d take more than that, I think to myself and smile. I can hear the chants, like a chorus in my head:
Shame on You, Shame on You, Liar, Liar, Out, Out, Out . . .

That’s when I have the idea.

It’s like a vision, wonderful in its purity. It’s a gift. I play it in my head and want to laugh out loud.

Fantasy? Maybe. But I can see a way to make it a reality.

Charlie always falls asleep directly after and I’m as far from sleep as it is possible to be without chemical assistance. I never sleep in the same bed as someone else, that’s too high a level of intimacy for me, so I leave him and walk back through town. It’s after midnight. I quite like it at this hour. I like the sense of dislocation. The difference between daytime and now.

The traffic lights turn from red to amber to green and back again, but apart from the occasional taxi, there is no traffic to stop. The pedestrian alert sounds out and the green walking sign flashes, although there are no pedestrians as such, just gangs of lads and girls walking up and down the middle of the road, laughing, shouting, talking loud, carrying on some kind of running argument that will probably develop into a fight.

‘Who you lookin’ at?’ a girl shouts at me from across the street, her mouth slack, her eyes black holes inside her sooty make-up. She’s big. One strap of the skimpy top she’s wearing hangs down showing her breast bulging out of her black bra. The rest has ridden up during the long night exposing rolls of flab, livid white in the orange street lights.