Tigerman (25 page)

‘You were asleep? Asleep but hearing helicopters?’

‘It was a very large glass.’

He let Kershaw bitch at him a little more, fostering the notion of chummy, earthy Lester Ferris, a bit vague and a bit hapless, serving out his time. After a few more exchanges Kershaw transparently wanted to get rid of him, reassured and aggravated in just the right measure, and the Sergeant hung on just long enough to appear a bit needy. Then he went to his bedroom and lay down. His bones hurt. His muscles ached. He realised his ears were ringing. On the other hand: full of win. From SNAFU to Mission Accomplished by dint of having balls of steel. Very nice.

So score one for the world,
he told himself.
Score one for kitchens and cats and woolly hats and village green cricket and score bugger all and piss off for men in offices and men in caves making war on one another by selling smack to kids in Liverpool or New York, for the sake of things none of the rest of us give a shit about.

At some point, he slept, and was grateful.

The Sergeant woke late and realised he was stuck to the Consul’s linen. His left forearm was bleeding all along to the elbow, sluggish, grazed, and painful. The sheet was solidly glued to his shoulders where he had been burned above the armour, and he had bruises everywhere. His throat was sore as hell.

‘You are an idiot,’ the Witch said unsympathetically.

She stood at the foot of his bed, a leather bag hanging on a strap across her chest. It pressed her shirt against the centreline of her body, emphasising her curves. He realised that the last time he had seen her she had been naked and gasping, and belatedly averted his eyes.

She leaned away from the bag, hauled it onto the foot of the bed, and rummaged. ‘Don’t move. You’re a mess.’

‘As well as an idiot.’

She shrugged. ‘I said, don’t move. If you pull that off it will hurt more. For longer. Tcha!’ This last in disgust, because he had turned to examine his shoulders and the movement had wrenched a wad of fabric away from his flesh. He grunted.

She stomped up the side of the bed and put her hand flat on his chest below his chin. When he did not lean back she pushed him, not with her arm but with her body’s weight, so that if he wanted to remain half-upright he must effectively carry her. His stomach muscles gave up the fight immediately, strain spiking from his pelvis to his ribs.

She nodded approval. ‘No hernia.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘You’re not screaming.’

She removed a pair of scissors from the bag. The Consul’s linen would suffer, but there was an entire room devoted to it upstairs and none of it would last much longer anyway. She began to cut.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Your little friend came and got me. Said you’d come on a grassfire and tried to put it out. Did it not occur to you to call for assistance? I see you also fell on . . .’ she peered at his back, ‘. . . a dressed-stone wall. From a height of not less than five feet. Congratulations on not being paralysed. No, please do not tell me why it was important that you take on the inferno by yourself. If you tell me I am reasonably certain I will find that “idiot” does not do you justice. Do not answer me unless I say so. It is unwise to annoy or surprise the person who is cutting around the place where your skin is glued to your sheet.’

The scissor blades snipped. He kept silent, listening to the boy’s lies in his mind, turning them over. They were good.

‘Can you feel that?’ the Witch demanded. ‘You can answer.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it painful?’

‘Itchy.’

‘And here?’

He hissed discomfort.

‘You’re very lucky.’ She daubed. A welcome cold spread along his scapula and down his spine.

After an hour of more or less painful ministrations she pronounced him shipshape, at least to the extent that was possible for an idiot. He thanked her and asked how the clarinet was going and she said it was going well. He went upstairs and brought her the sheet music, a little shyly. She took it with thanks, but regarded him with an uncertain expression. She was sensing a shift in his perception of her, could not entirely place it but knew it was a respectful one and did not inquire as to the reason. Perhaps she assumed someone had informed him of her relations with White Raoul.

‘Light exercise is fine,’ she said. ‘More than that and you’ll split something and bleed. The burns are extremely minor but they will be annoying. Don’t pick at them. Don’t get them dirty. Don’t sunbathe. I’ve left you a salve for the bruising, which you should apply morning and evening. You’re nodding! Don’t nod: listen! I cannot count, even on both hands, the number of injuries you have which could’ve been much worse, so don’t do whatever you did last night ever again or you’ll probably die. That’s a medical recommendation, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘You’re an idiot. Tell me there was at least a puppy in a tree.’

‘Just grass. My fault. Having my annual fag. Cigarette. Dropped it in the wrong place.’

He offered her tea, but she had business elsewhere, so he sat on the low red-brick wall and watched her depart. She had a workmanlike stride which spoke of important things to do. He still found her admirable, but his lust had evaporated. He liked her, and he respected the scrivener – insofar as he knew him at all – and he would not for worlds interfere with what they had, which was something he had heard about but never tasted and which he felt the world ought to respect more than it did. The world respected nothing, and in most cases that was fine because not much was worth respect the way some people believed. But love of the sort that uplifted he regarded with something close to religious fervour. The love of family. The love which builds.

He moved his shoulders cautiously, felt the slickness of her creams between his skin and the bandages.

A little while later he realised that he was not alone.

‘Well done with the car,’ he said. ‘And the story. That was sharp.’

The boy sat down. As always when they were close together, the Sergeant felt conscious of his own bigness.

‘It was okay?’

The Sergeant contemplated last night’s events. ‘Yes. It was good work.’

‘You are not arrested.’

‘No. I think . . . the longer I am not arrested, the less likely it is that I will be. Or killed. I suppose that’s the other thing.’

The small head came up fiercely. ‘They had better not!’

‘You’ll sort them out for me, Tigerboy?’ Something flickered in the boy’s face. The question was suddenly unfunny. There were plenty of places where someone his age would be quite old enough to do that. The best guerrilla fighters and commandos in many wars were children this age: small, quick, and desperately loyal. And ruthless, with the clarity of childhood. There were warlords not much older.

‘Joking,’ the Sergeant said quietly. ‘In bad taste, I s’pose. Sorry.’

The boy hung his head. ‘I should have known what was in the cave.’

‘No.’

‘Yes! I totally screwed up.’ Pride. If the car was his own good work, then the cave was also his, with what that entailed. No day without night. No glory without responsibility.

‘All right,’ the Sergeant agreed. ‘Yes. We should have done more work up front. We were sloppy and we screwed up. You and me both. But we didn’t die and, fingers crossed, we got away with it. We just have to be smart. It’s like . . .’ He cast around. ‘It’s like after a bank robbery in the movies. They always get away clean and then someone buys a new car when they shouldn’t.’

‘Yes. That is dumb.’

‘It is. So we go through it. Tell me what you saw last night.’

The boy shrugged. ‘You went into the cave. A few minutes later there was a huge bang, and smoke. I vamoose! Watch from a little way. You – Tigerman – come out. Look strange and scary. (Great mask!) They follow you, very angry. You run. I take the car and dump it where you will find it. Then I re-moose. I go home, erase the video footage.’ Oh, yes. The boy’s video. ‘Which is a shame, because it is the shizzle. Simpson Bruckheimer himself has no shizzle like this shizzle.’

‘Erase how?’

‘Tell the computer to write stuff over – random numbers again and again. Takes a long time. Better-than-DoD-standard.’ This last had the feel of a direct quote from the manual. ‘I was careful all the time. I looked up high for the eyes in the sky! But there was cloud, like this way then that, all the time. I think they can see one minute in every five.’

Let us devoutly hope.

The Sergeant nodded and fell silent. He did not know how to ask his next question, but he did not have the option to put it aside. It had become his habit when talking to the boy. He avoided the things which might cause friction between them, treating their friendship like something very fragile because precious things were, to his mind, always so. But not this one, not today.

‘How did you find out about the cave?’

The boy looked away. ‘It is known.’

‘By who?’

‘Many people. It is not a secret. And in the past it has absolutely been a clubhouse.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘I? No.’

‘Who, then?’

‘Some people.’

‘What people?’

‘Some people that I know.’

They glared at one another. Finally the Sergeant said: ‘Have you spoken to any of these people recently? About the cave?’

‘You wish to know if someone lied?’

‘No.’
Although now that you say it I’m worried about it. Who? And why?

The boy scowled for a moment, and then he brightened. ‘You worry that this person will give us away!’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘She would not.’ With absolute certainty.

She
, the Sergeant heard. Not anonymous people any more. One person. A woman who would never, ever give him away. Someone who for whatever reason would not, could not change her allegiances. Someone bound to him to the point of destruction. Squadmate, family, lover, debtor.

Family.

He nodded acceptance, and made sure it was respectful. They had clashed, and they were still friends. It was only polite to acknowledge it.

The boy saw that his debrief was over. He nodded in return.

‘I am going to the lake,’ he said carelessly.

‘Have fun.’

‘There will be good water.’

‘I’m not allowed to swim. The Witch said.’

The boy nodded acceptance of this overriding command.

‘But,’ the Sergeant added, ‘I might eat later. Maybe at the café.
Kswah swah
.’

Laughter. ‘
Kswah swah
.’ Then: ‘Will you burn the suit?’

The Sergeant nodded. ‘I should.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

The boy seemed to concede this, then shook his head. ‘But you may need it. To prove that you are helping. And if you find it then your DNA can be on it when they test. It is natural. Your fingerprints, the same.’

The Sergeant recognised this as special pleading, and he mistrusted how much he wanted to agree. He did not relish the idea of destroying the suit – it was something they had done together – but it was evidence that could hang him. But then again, yes: what the boy said was true. He might need, down the line, to produce some sort of coup to demonstrate his commitment to good order on Mancreu and to the search for the terrorist in the funny outfit. Assuming such a search ever took place.

‘There is a burn bag,’ he said at last. The boy blinked at him owlishly. He never said, ‘I do not know what that means.’ He just waited until you said it another way. ‘A metal container for the storage of sensitive documents. It is a diplomatic bag, but it has a small bomb inside it. If the wrong combination is used, the contents of the bag are destroyed.’

The boy nodded. ‘The suit goes in the bag.’

‘And then at least only London can find it.’

‘And you are London. In all Mancreu, only you are London.’

True. He would keep the suit, for now. If things got hot, he could always destroy it later. He tried not to feel glad at this decision. It was perfectly rational.

He waited until the boy had gone before he moved the suit. He wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t as if they would somehow be overcome by it and rush out again to foil a bank robbery, but he could not shake the feeling that it was a temptation, somehow, that he should not extend. When he picked the pieces up in his hands, he felt like a man engaged in an illicit affair with someone else’s wife.

He put the whole suit in the burn bag and put the burn bag in the armoury. As soon as he closed the door he remembered the photograph of Shola he had found in the cave. Theoretically there might be fingerprints on it. He might even be able to lift them with talc. Tomorrow. It would have to be tomorrow. He was exhausted, which was natural, and he was aching. A nap would be ideal.

He took ibuprofen, drank Coca-Cola from the cellar, and kept moving. Movement would help, and he needed to be seen. By now, whatever NatProMan was doing about last night was in motion. If the whole thing had been identified as weird bullshit from a crew of fish-thieving East European wideboys then the business would be shelved. If not, investigators would be on the way. He owed London a report, so he went into the house and fired off an advisory:
NatProMan pissed off about something, no military threat apparent, no details yet available at this end
. He made it somewhat less informal, but the sense was that knickers were in a twist for no discernible reason and there was nothing to see here. He’d have to revise that later, but for now it was nicely in character.

He glanced at himself in the mirror.
In character
. When had he started thinking of Lester Ferris as a role to inhabit? He had known, in Iraq, a young man who had realised belatedly that the army life was not for him. The kid had been from some shithole, signed up half-drunk and was now seeing real bullets and bombs and wishing he hadn’t. So he pretended to be mad.

It was simple enough. He went on patrol in a Mickey Mouse hat he’d got from somewhere, and he carried his gun like a swagger stick. He’d never seen
M*A*S*H
, so he didn’t realise he was travelling a well-worn path. And after each patrol he’d push it a bit further until they had to take notice. They’d put him in a secure hospital cell indefinitely, and he’d carried on the game for weeks and months and faked a suicide attempt and bitten an orderly and finally he’d broken down and explained that he was faking it, he just wanted so very much to go home. And the doctors told him: ‘It’s okay. You’re going home, and no one’s going to punish you.’ But he deserved to be punished, he said. He’d faked it. ‘Yeah,’ the doctors said. ‘We always knew you thought you were faking it. But that’s the thing: you never were. It was real, and now you’re better.’ Which was about the most disturbing fucking idea the Sergeant had ever heard, until he came here and it was just life, and then he had the
really
disturbing idea that everyone in the world was carrying on this way all the time.