The bed was made up in the spare room, a clean towel laid out and, should he need it, a new toothbrush in its plastic case. He thought he might manage a few more pages of The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes before dropping off, but when he woke in the morning, the book had fallen to the floor, unread.
Wherever he’d gone in those two hours, Anderson had come back with a bottle of Vodka. Stolichnaya. Perhaps he’d had it with him all along. He sat there, close to the entrance to the tent, drinking steadily. Rebecca tried to get the children to eat something but to little avail. She forced herself to try some of the corned beef, though it was something she’d never liked. The children drank water, nibbled biscuits and moped.
The rain outside increased until it began seeping under one corner of the tent.
Billie lay down, sucking her thumb, and, for once, Rebecca made no attempt to stop her. If Keiron, huddled into a blanket near her feet, was asleep or not she wasn’t sure.
The bottle was now half-empty.
Anderson stared straight ahead, seeing something she couldn’t see.
Terry?’
At the softness of her voice, he flinched.
‘How long is it since you got any sleep?’
Whenever she had awoken in the early hours after they’d arrived, he had been sitting, shoulders hunched, alert and keeping guard.
‘How long?’
‘I don’t know. A long time.’
‘What’s wrong?’
For an answer he lifted the bottle to his lips.
‘Perhaps you should talk to someone? About what’s troubling you? Perhaps-’
‘Stop it! Just fucking stop it! Shut up!’
‘Stop what?’
‘Wheedling fucking round me.’ He mimicked her voice. ‘Perhaps you should talk to someone, Terry? As if you gave a shit.’
‘I do.’
‘Yeah?’ He laughed. ‘You don’t give a shit about me and I don’t give a shit about you. Not any more.’
‘Then why are we here?’
‘Because of them. Because they have to know.’
‘Know what?’
He moved suddenly. ‘Wake them. Go on, wake them up.’
‘No, look, they’re exhausted. Let them sleep.’
But Billie was already stirring and Keiron was awake.
Anderson took another long swallow from the bottle. His skin was sallow and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead and his temples. When he started talking, his voice seemed distant, even in the confines of the tent.
‘We were on patrol, just routine. There’d been a firefight a couple of days before, so we were more on our guard than usual. Against snipers but also for explosives. IEDs. We were passing this house and this woman came out, just her face showing, part of her face, the eyes, and she’s waving her arms and wailing and pointing back towards the house as if there’s something wrong, and Sean, he jumps down, even though we’re telling him not to be stupid, and the next thing we know, he’s followed her to the doorway, and the next after that he’s been shot. One gets him in the body and knocks him back, but he’s wearing his chest plate, thank Christ, so that’s all right, but the next one takes him in the neck. By now we’re returning fire and the woman’s disappeared, nowhere to be fucking seen, Sean’s leaking blood into the fucking ground, so we drag him out of there, back into the vehicle and head back to camp.’
Beside Rebecca, Keiron, wide-eyed, listened enthralled. Billie clutched her mother’s hand and flinched each time her father swore.
‘He died, that’s the thing. Sean. The bullet’d torn an artery and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. By the time we reached camp, he was dead. He was our mate, a laugh. A real laugh. Always saw the funny side. Just a young bloke. Twenty-one. And stupid. Young and stupid. He’d wanted to help.’ Anderson took a quick swallow and wiped his mouth. ‘Two days later, we went back. Went back at night, five of us. We’d been drinking beforehand, pretty heavily, talking about what had happened, what they’d done to Sean.’
Rebecca shivered and hugged the children close.
‘We went in under cover of darkness. There was no moon, I remember, not then. Sometimes it’d be, you know, huge, filling half the fucking sky, but that night there was nothing. Just a few stars. Everyone inside was sleeping. Women. Men.’ He paused. ‘Children. Soon as we got inside one of the men reached for his gun, he’d been sleeping with it, under the blankets, and that’s when we started firing. Firing at anything that moved. One of the women, she came running at us, screaming, and Steve, he says, “That’s her. That’s her, the lyin’ bitch,” and, of course, dressed like she was, like they all were, he had no way of knowing, but that didn’t stop him all but emptying his magazine into her.’
‘That’s enough,’ Rebecca said. ‘Enough.’
‘There was a girl,’ Anderson said, ignoring her, ‘hiding in one of the other rooms. Twelve, maybe thirteen. I don’t know. Could’ve been younger. Steve grabbed hold of her and threw her down on the floor and then one of the others started to tear off her clothes.’
‘Stop,’ Rebecca said. ‘Please stop. They don’t need to hear this.’
‘Yes, they do! Yes, they do!’
Keiron was not looking, refusing to look, pressing his face into his mother’s side.
‘We all knew what was going to happen. Steve’s standing over her, pulling off the last of her things, and she calls him a name and spits at him and he leans down and punches her in the face, and then he’s on his knees, unzipping himself, and we’re all watching, a couple cheering him on, give it to her, give it to her, clapping like it’s some game, and that’s when I tell him, I tell him twice to stop and he just carries on and I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t just stand there and watch — she was just a child! — and I shot him, through the back of the head. Blood and gunk all over the girl’s face and she wriggles out from under and grabs her clothes and runs and we’re left standing there. All except for Steve. He was my mate, too, they all were, and I’d killed him over some girl who, even before that happened, would’ve happily seen us blown to smithereens.’
He wiped away some of the sweat that was running into his eyes. Tears were running soundlessly down Rebecca’s face.
‘We all agreed, the rest of us, to claim he’d got caught in the crossfire. After what had happened, no one was going to want to tell the truth.’
‘Except you,’ Rebecca said.
‘This is different.’ He nodded towards the children. ‘They needed to know.’
‘Why?’
‘So they can understand.’
And his hands reached down towards his rifle.
Not long after first light, a police helicopter, flying low over the forest, reported a woman and two children standing in a small clearing, waving a makeshift flag.
Armed officers secured the area. Rebecca and the children were escorted to the perimeter, where paramedics were waiting. Anderson was found lying inside the tent, a dark cagoule covering his face, his discharged weapon close at hand. At the hospital later, after she had rested and the medical staff had examined her, Rebecca slowly began to tell Resnick and a female liaison officer her story. The children were in another room with a nurse and their maternal grandmother.
Later still, relishing the chance to stretch his legs, Resnick had walked with Kiley the short distance through the city centre to the railway station. Already, a rush edition of the Post was on the streets. It would be national news for a moment, a day, page one beneath the fold, then a short column on page six, a paragraph on page thirteen. Forgotten. One of those things that happen, stress of combat, balance of mind disturbed. Rebecca had told the police her husband’s story, as well as she remembered, what he had seen, the attack at night, the confusion,
