Who Dares Wins (7 page)

‘. . . telling them all sorts of rubbish to keep their interest up,’ Elaine continued as though she hadn’t heard. Her eyes widened mischievously. ‘What’s he been telling you?’ she teased. ‘Let me guess – his dad’s a squillionaire and he’s going to inherit as soon as the old boy pops it!’

‘
Elaine!
’

‘I know, I know!’ She was warming to her subject now. ‘He’s on the run from . . .’ She looked around the room, as though it would give her some sort of inspiration, her eyes finally settling on the Italian behind the counter. ‘The Mafia!’ she decided. ‘He can’t go back to his house because Al Pacino’s sitting there waiting for him with a – oh, I don’t know, name a kind of gun . . .’

With that, the two women dissolved into giggles. ‘Seriously though, love,’ Elaine said when their laughter had subsided. ‘Don’t let the geezer take you for a ride. You know what men are like. Bone idle, most of them. He should be taking you out a bit, treating you right. And I’m not just talking between the sheets.’

Kelly blushed for a third time. She eyed Elaine over the brow of the cup. Her friend was right. Jamie Spillane had some explaining to do. She wasn’t going to be taken advantage of. Not by him, or by anyone.

She would bring it up with him, Kelly Larkin decided, that very night.

*

For the first time in weeks, Sam felt clean. The second he’d got back home he had stripped off and walked straight into the shower. The Afghan dust seemed to have soaked into the very pores of his skin and a once-a-day wash with a few baby wipes in the field hadn’t made any difference. There was black shit under his fingernails and his hair was matted in thick clumps, glued together with blood and sweat.
Fuck Afghanistan
, Sam thought.
I won’t be going back there on holiday any time soon
. He scrubbed himself vigorously, but no amount of soap would get rid of the dirt of his latest operation. Only when the water started to run cold did he step out. The mirror in his small bathroom was clouded over. He wiped away the condensation, then smeared shaving gel over his dishevelled beard and started to hack away at it. It took a good half-hour for his face to become smooth-skinned again. Looking in the mirror as he shaved he was surprised to see a tightness around his eyes. In his mind, Sam was still the fresh-faced kid who had signed up at seventeen at his brother’s insistence, more to keep him on the straight and narrow than anything else. But that was a long time ago and the mirror didn’t lie: Sam looked a lot older than the mental picture he had of himself.

Looking down at his torso, he saw that it was cut and bruised. Out in the field you never noticed stuff like that. It was only when you got home that the scars of a mission became apparent. He slung the razor into the sink, grabbed a towel and used it to wipe his face, before stepping back into his bedroom and finding a clean shirt and a pair of jeans. Only when he’d put these fresh clothes on did he really feel like he was home.

His car keys were just where he’d left them before he’d gone out to Afghanistan – in a little wooden box in the front room. The room itself was largely bare – a sofa, a TV, a few shelves with nick-nacks on them. It was the space of a person who didn’t spend much time there. A space that lacked the softening touches of a female influence. It wasn’t that Sam’s flat hadn’t played host to plenty of women. It had. They just hadn’t been given the opportunity to stay around long enough to get stuck into the soft furnishings. As Sam took the keys from their box his attention was caught by a photograph. His brother looked young in the picture. To his side was the black Labrador that had been his constant companion whenever he was at home. More than once he’d heard people wonder out loud if Jacob preferred dogs to people. Sam hadn’t seen him for six years and the photo had been taken some time before that. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Sam missed his brother, but he was angry with him too. Not a word for all these years, nowhere to be found – and Sam had certainly tried. For all he knew, Jacob could be dead.

Sam suppressed a shudder at that thought. Clutching the car keys he turned and left.

Sam’s flat might have been small and barely furnished, but he had not applied the same restraint to his choice of car. The black Audi was parked up outside his front door, gleaming and immaculate. He clicked the doors open, climbed inside and drove off without bothering about the seatbelt. Normally he’d drive hard, but today he was in no hurry. Far from it. He had been dreading this little trip ever since they touched down at Brize Norton. Out on ops, he could forget about what he had left back home; back on British soil he knew what his duty was, even though it was a chore to have to fulfil it. It took twenty minutes to reach the institutional building he was headed for – even the slowest old granny in a Robin Reliant could have made it in fifteen.

It didn’t matter what part of the world Sam had been to or for how long; nor did it matter what had happened while he’d been away. This place never changed. The red brick of the building was always immaculate; there was always a fair smattering of cars in the car park that surrounded it; and as he walked into the main reception there was always that faint, hospital-like smell of antiseptic.

This wasn’t a hospital, however. At least not quite. It called itself a residential care home and the brochure made it look like a place of great luxury; the reality, however, was quite different. With places like these, Sam had found out, you get what you pay for. And on a military pension with precious few savings, Sam’s father couldn’t afford much.

The nurse sitting behind the wooden reception desk recognised Sam as he entered. ‘He’ll be looking forward to seeing you,’ she said pointedly. ‘It’s been a while.’

Sam grunted and hurried on, down the institutional corridor and up the stairs which clattered and echoed as he climbed them. He walked past the emergency exit, doing his best to ignore the old lady who tottered along with the aid of a frame. The very fact of her presence there made him scowl. It just brought home to him the reality of the place where his father was forced to live. The reality of his condition.

The door to his father’s room was closed. He knocked, but didn’t wait for a reply before opening it and stepping inside.

Very little had changed since his last visit. His father lay in a hospital bed with high sides staring blankly at the television. His pyjamas hung loosely from his body. Sam remembered, when they were growing up, thinking his dad was the strongest, most muscular man in the world and he probably wasn’t far wrong. Now he looked like a scarecrow that had been dressed up in clothes too big for him. Hanging to the side of a bed was a colostomy bag, half filled with deep brown liquid.

The small room smelled of the uneaten lunch that sat on a tray by his bed: a perfect sphere of mashed potato and a pool of brown stew. It was bland and barely furnished, with just one threadbare armchair for visitors and a small table for the kettle and tea-making facilities that were checked every morning by unenthusiastic care workers. Not that they had to replenish the supplies very often. Dad never had visitors. Just Sam. He’d lost count of the times his doctors had said that visitors would do him good, help keep him alert; but Sam knew his father better than that, and he accepted that the last thing the old man wanted was for anyone to see him like this.

‘Hi, Dad,’ he announced as brightly as his glum mood would allow. ‘It’s me, Sam.’

Ever so slowly, his father turned his head. ‘I might be a fucking cripple,’ he replied, ‘but I’m not blind.’

Nobody who knew Max Redman in the old days would ever have been able to imagine him in this state. A giant of a man with a personality to match, there was a time when he filled the room with his personality and his stories of a life in the Regiment. He had travelled the world and seen things only a soldier could see and his name still came up in conversation among some of the older guys back at base.

‘No, Dad,’ Sam replied, trying to keep his voice level. ‘I know you’re not blind.’

‘Well that’s something, I suppose.’ Max weakly turned his head back to the television.

‘You should eat some lunch.’ Sam dug a teaspoon into the mashed potato on his father’s plate. It had a dry crust around it – Sam started to raise the spoon to Max’s mouth, but his father raised a bony wrist and pushed it away.

‘I’m not a fucking kid, either.’

Sam let the spoon fall back on to the plate.

Father and son sat in awkward silence.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Max asked finally.

‘The Stan,’ Sam replied quickly, grateful that the silence had been punctured. And then, more quietly, ‘You knew that.’

Max remained expressionless.

‘Nasty,’ Sam continued. ‘Taliban crawling all over the place like ants. Nail one of them and another two pop up in his place. We could have used Jacob out there.’

At the mention of his other son’s name, Max’s eyes closed briefly. In his private moments, Sam wondered whether it was Jacob’s disappearance that had sparked all this off. The doctors had said no – it was a purely physical condition, a gradual wastage of the muscles that would eventually leave him too weak to breathe. But Sam had seen it happen. When Jacob had left the country it had hit both their parents hard. Their mother had died two years later; by that time Max was already having difficulty walking. His subsequent decline was sudden and steep.

‘Jacob was a real soldier,’ Max muttered.

Sam didn’t say what came into his head – that if Max had only told Jacob that, just once after he’d been kicked out of the Regiment, his brother might never have done a runner. Instead he took a deep, steady breath. ‘We’re all real soldiers, Dad.’

‘Not like him. None of you.’ Max turned to look at his younger son again. ‘Especially not you, Samuel Redman. If it wasn’t for your brother, God knows where you’d have ended up, so you can stop talking about him like that for a start.’

Like what?
Sam wanted to say, but he knew better than to carry on with this childish argument. Jacob had always been Dad’s favourite. Since his disappearance, he’d achieved almost mythical status in the old man’s eyes. ‘Look, Dad. I just wanted to see how you were, but you’d obviously prefer it if I wasn’t here . . .’

‘Don’t be so fucking touchy, Sam. Pass me a ciggie.’

By Max’s bedside there was an opened packet of cigarettes. His habit of smoking in the room infuriated the nurses, but they had learned not to complain too heavily. Sam placed a cigarette in his father’s mouth and lit it using the orange lighter stashed away in the packet. Max took several deep drags and appeared to relax a little. With difficulty he lifted his arm and waved the burning cigarette in the direction of a photograph in a tarnished silver frame that sat by the TV at the end of the bed.

‘Pass me that,’ he instructed. Ash fell on the sheets.

Sam did as he was told.

Max was in the middle, flanked by his two boys who stood on either side of him. Jacob and Sam looked younger there. Sam’s unruly blond hair was a little longer than it was now – this was taken before his Regiment days – and there was a heaviness around his face. Puppy fat, some people might call it. His eyes twinkled and he looked like he was not taking the whole thing entirely seriously.

Jacob was a different matter. His features were quite different to Sam’s, even though anyone would be able to tell that they were brothers. Jacob’s hair was jet black, his eyes gun-metal grey. His eyebrows were dark and heavy and he had a dimple in his chin that made him look not cheeky but intense.

‘Remember when this was taken?’ Max asked.

‘Of course,’ Sam replied. It was the day he’d passed selection for the Paras. It had been Jacob’s suggestion. ‘You’ll like them,’ he’d said archly. ‘Bunch of fucking lunatics, like you.’

‘He always looked out for you, Sam.’ For once, Max’s voice did not sound accusatory.

‘You talk about him like he’s dead.’

Max turned to look at his son. His tired eyes narrowed and they were suddenly piercing. ‘He probably is dead.’

‘Why?’

Max’s cigarette had burned to a stub. He awkwardly waved it in the air, not knowing where to extinguish it. Sam took it from his father’s shaking hands, stubbed it on the bottom of his shoe and threw it into the waste paper bin. ‘Why do you think Jacob’s dead, Dad?’

Max’s thin face hardened. ‘You know what those bastards are like,’ he replied cryptically. ‘Jacob was an embarrassment to them. We both know how easy it is to get rid of people who are an embarrassment.’

Sam closed his eyes. ‘Come on, Dad,’ he said softly. ‘Why would they bother? Jacob took the rap. He wasn’t going to blurt anything to anyone. None of us were.’ He paused. ‘You hurt him, Dad. You and mum. More than you think. When they kicked him out of the Regiment you refused to even see him.’

‘Shut up, Sam. You don’t know what you’re talking about. So we argued. Happens all the time. We’re arguing now – doesn’t mean you’ll never come and see me again.’ His breathing was weak and shaky. ‘If your brother was still alive, what’s the one thing he’d do if he knew I was cooped up in this shit hole, pissing into a pipe and wasting away to a fucking skeleton? What’s the one thing he’d do?’

Sam looked at the floor. He knew the answer, of course – argument or no argument, Jacob would come to his father’s bedside. Nothing would stop him. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it, because then he’d have to come to the same conclusion Max had arrived at. The conclusion which, in his darkest hours, had always nagged at the edge of his mind. Jacob dead? That didn’t bear thinking about. It would leave a hole in their life too big to be endured.

The silence was strained and uncomfortable. Max stared at the photograph in his hands and for a moment Sam felt as though his father had forgotten he was there.

‘I’d better be going, Dad,’ he muttered quietly. ‘I’m back for a bit. I’ll come again soon.’

Max didn’t answer. He was still looking at the photograph as Sam left the room and closed the door quietly behind him.