'Take my advice, son, save it. Let the army look after you for as long as it wants to and then find a woman with a comfy pair of tits on her and a bit of money of her own, and hang your fucking boots up.
'Sounds good,' said Alex.
'It is good, mate,' said Wisbeach, one-handedly rolling himself another cigarette.
'It is good.'
The deftness of the gesture reminded Alex of the skilful combat instructor that the older man had once been.
'You taught me a lot, Frank.'
Wisbeach shrugged and put a match to his roll-up.
'You were a good soldier, son. Saw that straight away.'
'That's not what you said at the time!'
'Well, you've got to dish out the old bollocks, haven't you. That's what you're there for on Training Wing.'
Alex smiled.
'I guess. Do you remember a guy called Joe Meehan?'
Sparks of wariness appeared in the other man's eyes. He seemed to sink into his cigarette smoke.
'It's a long time since I heard that name mentioned. A very long time.'
'You trained him, didn't you?'
'Who wants to know?'
'Bill Leonard suggested I speak to you.'
Wisbeach nodded slowly.
'Did he indeed. What's the whisper on the lad you mentioned, then?'
Alex wondered how much to confide. Sober, Wisbeach retained the Special Forces' soldier's habit of discretion. He hadn't even admitted to knowing Meehan.
But pissed-up . 'The whisper is that he went over the water and they turned him.'
Wisbeach looked Alex in the eye and Alex saw from the slow freeze of his expression that the former NCO had guessed what he had been ordered to do.
Knew that he was looking for Meehan in order to kill him.
For several moments neither man spoke. Above their heads, a pseudo-Victorian fan paddled stale cigarette smoke around the ceiling. On the jukebox, All Saints sang in mournful harmony.
'I'm sorry for the both of you,' Wisbeach said eventually, regarding his nicotined fingers with a kind of depthless exhaustion.
'There's no fucking end to it all, is there?'
'No,' Alex agreed.
'There isn't.'
'How will you ..
'I don't know,' Alex said.
'I just have to locate him.' Wisbeach seemed to come to a decision.
'Joe Meehan was very good,' he said briskly.
'Technically you couldn't touch him. He was one of those people weapons always worked for. I was the same, so I knew it when I saw it. Mentally, too, he was very tough. Not in a laugh-it-off sort of way like most Regiment blokes more like one of those Palestinian or Tamil Tiger suicide bombers. He was a true believer, if you know what I mean.'
'Was that a strength or a weakness?'
'Well, you wouldn't have wanted to go out on the piss with him, put it like that.
He was a total loner and dead serious all the time. But then we weren't training stand-up comedians, we were training secret agents and assassins. In fact, I felt sorry for the poor bastard.'
'Why?'
'Because guys like that always destroy themselves in the end. They just bash on and on, never giving up, until there's nothing left of them.' He stared at the huddle of customers near the window and took a deep swallow of his beer.
'I'm told they're burying young Hammond in the morning.'
'That's right,' Alex confirmed.
Wisbeach shook his head.
'Africa, eh. What a fucking dump of a place to cop it. Get you another?'
'Yeah. Same again please.'
Wisbeach made his way to the bar. As he returned with the two full glasses three teenagers wearing earrings and flashy sports gear pushed roughly past him, spilling both drinks. None bothered to look round or to apologise.
'Excuse me, lads,' said Wisbeach mildly, turning to them.
'Bit of an accident.
Do you mind filling up these glasses?'
The three looked round, incredulous and sniggering.
'Fuck off, Grandpa,' said the heaviest, whose doughy features were topped by a greasy centre parting.
Bloody hell, thought Alex. Here we go.
'Forget it, Frank,' he called out across the room.
But the ex-NCO was not of a mind to forget it, and placed the spilt drinks carefully on the bar.
'Come on, lads,' he said, the ghost of a smile touching his features.
'Don't let's spoil the evening with bad manners.
At waist level, where the barman couldn't have seen it even if he'd been looking, there was the flash of a blade.
'You heard me,' said greasy-head.
'Now fuck oil!'
Wisbeach frowned, as if disappointed. Then a heavy-knuckled hand shot out, grabbed the knife-wielder's neck and squeezed hard. There was a moment's absolute stillness. The Baha Boys boomed on the jukebox.
Wisbeach's knuckles tightened. The knife dropped to the floor and its owner's mouth snapped convulsively open, issuing a spray of half-chewed potato crisps and phlegm on to Wisbeach's sleeve.
The ex-NCO grinned.
'Good here, isn't it?' he said to the other two louts. His tone was conversational. For the first time that evening, thought Alex, the old bugger looked genuinely cheerful.
As anoxia kicked in, greasy-head's eyes crossed, the shiny nylon of his Adidas track pants darkened with urine and he sank half-conscious to his knees.
When Wisbeach finally released him he lay retching and sobbing on the floor beneath the bar. If the barman had noticed anything, he showed no sign of having done so.
'Two pints please, lads,' Wisbeach said quietly, addressing the two survivors of the incident.
'You can bring them over to our table.'
Stunned by the sight of their leader's humiliation, they nodded their agreement.
'Better?' Alex smiled when they had taken delivery of their drinks.
'Much,' said Wisbeach. He leaned forward.
'Listen, son, don't go around saying you got this from me, but if you really want to know about Joe Meehan, the person to talk to is Denzil Connolly. Denzil was on one of those Khmer Rouge RWW training packages with me a really shit-hot instructor and he was in charge of Meehan at Tregaron before they dropped him over the water or whatever the hell they did with the poor sod. The two of them spent two or three months living in each others' pockets. So if anyone knew him...'
'Any idea where I'll find Connolly?'
'Sorry, mate. Not a clue.'
Alex nodded and the two men drank their beers in silence.
'Want another?' asked Alex eventually.
'I won't, thanks,' Wisbeach replied.
