Hard Knocks

whatever might be lurking in the trees. He asked where we were from, and I learned that Elsa was born in Bochum, and had lived most of her life there. Declan’s family owned land outside Wicklow.

“Before you arrived we were swapping our life stories,” he said to me then, grinning suddenly in the silvery light. “So, Charlie, what do you do in the outside world that bores you so much you want to be a bullet catcher?”

I returned his grin. It was difficult not to. “I work in a gym,” I said. Supervising weight training programmes was something I’d only begun in the last year. It kept me occupied and fit, although lately I’d found the monotony suffocating. Sean had warned me against telling anyone about my army background, or the women’s self-defence teaching I’d done after that.

“Keep it simple, but keep it light,” Sean had said. “Invent as little as possible, just leave a lot out. They’ll be watching the best and the worst more closely than the middle ground. You’re just going to have to hold back a little, and keep to the centre of the pack.”

“What if they check up on me?” I’d fretted.

“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “Madeleine will make sure they only find out what we want them to.”

“So what’s your story, Declan?” I asked now.

“Oh, my old man is in this business – works out in the States wet-nursing rock stars. He wanted me to join up first. You know, see the world, meet lots of interesting people, and kill them.” He laughed. “I thought I’d miss out the rough-arsed bit where you have to spend four years cleaning out lavatories with your toothbrush, and go straight to baby-sitting the Hollywood babes.”

“What about you, Elsa?”

She inclined her head slightly. “I was a policeman here in Germany,” she said, and although I caught the dim flash of Declan’s smile, we neither of us corrected her. “I left to get married, hoping to have many babies but, my marriage did not work out.” She shrugged. “And so, here am I.”

The simple words belied a good deal of pain, I considered. Even the Irishman didn’t come back with a smart remark to that one, and for a few minutes we trudged on in silence. Until Declan put his foot into a particularly deep pothole, and picked up a bootful of cold dirty water for his pains.

“Oh Jesus, will you look at that?” he complained. “What the feck do they think they’re doing leaving us to wade through this shit? And to think I’ve paid out good money for this.”

“Don’t whine, Declan,” Elsa said calmly, “it will probably be the same for everyone.”

“So, Charlie,” he went on, ignoring her, “what’s your story? I’m escaping from dead boredom, Elsa here is escaping from a dead marriage – what’s your little dark secret?”

I didn’t get the chance to think up a believable lie.

“Ssh!” Beside me, I almost felt Elsa tense and come to an abrupt halt. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Declan said, although I, too, could have sworn I caught the quiet crackling of dried branches, somewhere off to our left in the trees. “Oh don’t start getting paranoid on us now, Elsa,” he said, but there was a nervous tickle to his voice, “you’ll be giving the lot of us the jitters.”

He went on a few strides, moving close to the edge of the track. “Hello, hello,” he called, out into the forest. The trees took his voice and sucked the power out of it, handing it back to him somehow small and lonely. “Are there any ogres, wolves or bogeymen out there?” He turned back towards us. “You see, fair ladies, noth—”

Out of the blackness a dark shape flowed up. In less than a second it seemed to utterly engulf the Irishman, taking him down like an animal kill. He fell as a dead weight. The only sound made was the breath exploding from his body as he hit the ground.

Memories and images I’d thought were buried deep reared up, vivid as a nightmare. Shock and fear clutched at me, and it was the fear that held on hardest. It gripped my heart, my throat, my gut, with steel-tipped talons. Just for a second it stopped my breath, and froze my limbs.

Then, almost in unison, Elsa and I dropped our bags and started to turn. Instinct made me keep low as I spun round and I felt the slither of something sweep across my back. An arm. It gave me a bearing and I lashed out, chopping the side of my fist into a leg at the knee. I was rewarded by a grunt of pain.

I dived sideways, hearing the German woman’s wrenched-off cry as she was overwhelmed by the shadows. They seemed to swallow her up whole.

And then there was just me.

I rolled to my feet, tensed into a crouch, eyes raking the darkness. My blood was thundering through my veins, scrambling oxygen to my muscles. Every nerve and instinct told me to flee while I still had the chance.

Then, in the back of my head a tiny thought flared. “They like to play mind games with you,” Sean had told me. “Like seeing how you react . . .”

Another heartbeat. The shapes surrounding me converged another step. The edge of the tree-line was less than two metres to my right. I could still make it . . .

I straightened up, stood still, and let them come and get me.

***

They were rough, I reflected a short while later, but they were efficient, I had to give them that. Declan, Elsa and I were rolled onto our stomachs in the mud. I could feel the dampness of the ground leaching insidiously through each layer of my clothing. Our hands were fastened tight behind our backs with thin cord. Thick cloying hoods were dragged over our heads so that hearing became my only available sense.

Beside me, Declan was swearing under his breath, running through a list of saints and curses. Over the top of our heads someone else was muttering through clenched teeth. Probably the man I’d hit.

Well, good.

Up ahead, an engine vibrated resentfully into life, a big commercial diesel. Somebody grated the gears badly as they engaged the clutch. It was difficult to judge distance because of the muffling effect of the trees and the hood, but it seemed close by, and getting closer, rumbling the ground under us. So, they were waiting for us. This was always going to be an ambush. Somehow, the thought made me feel better.

Hands grabbed and hoisted us quickly into the back of the truck. It seemed a long way off the ground, with an iced bare floor that shivered as the lumbering engine was revved. I heard a flapping noise like a slack sail, and realised the truck had a canvas tilt. An army truck. I’d been in plenty of those.

“Where the feck are we going?” Declan demanded.

“No questions!” A boot scraped across the steel, connecting with the vulnerable softness of a body. Declan groaned and went back to cursing under his breath again.

I lay on my side with my head resting on somebody’s shin and concentrated on finding a position that lessened the pain in my chest. Two months previously I’d cracked my sternum. The injury had been without undue complications and had largely healed, but having my arms forced back like this made my ribcage feel as though it was being slowly torn apart up the middle. I closed my mind to the possibilities of what might happen if they were planning on manhandling us at the other end.

After only a few minutes the truck swung round in a half-circle, the engine cut before we’d stopped. Doors opened, people jumped down, doors slammed. The latches of the tailgate were shot back and we were hauled out.

I managed to roll so that I landed mostly on my feet, going down onto one knee. I was dragged upright and hurried over gravel, concrete, and up a short rake of steps at such a rate that I tripped blindly over my own feet. Then I was being forced to my knees. Someone jostled into me and I heard a hiss of indrawn breath that sounded like Elsa.

The change in temperature was enough to tell me we were indoors, never mind the squashy layer of carpet under me. Even through the hood I could tell the light level had gone up dramatically. I tried to prepare my eyes for the change I knew was coming, but it couldn’t be done.

When the hood came off, the brightness stung like when slicing strong onions. I screwed my eyes shut for a moment or so, then opened them cautiously. In front of me were probably twenty-five people, including another two women. They were all watching the three of us as we knelt there coated in filth and anxiety. There were some smiles, but it was mostly sympathy I saw spread among them.

A man was standing in front of us, wearing immaculately-pressed khaki trousers and a green army jumper with a regimental belt over the top of it. He had smartly brushed back fair hair, a long aristocratic neck, and the kind of crinkled up eyes that he would like you to believe are more suited to staring out over a battlefield, or an