'Oh God, Lee?'
He raised his hands to his face and a flash of white bandage caught the scarce light. His right arm ended in a mass of bandages.
Someone had cut off two of his fingers.
I gulped the coke gratefully but soon remembered why it was a drink for sipping; the bubbles burned my parched throat and I let out a mighty belch.
'I'm sorry,' said Brett after he'd massaged my damaged shoulder more securely back into its socket. 'We've got no painkillers left. It's just going to have to heal at its own pace. You'll have restricted movement for a while.'
I laughed. 'I broke my other arm about six weeks ago and I still can't quite use it one hundred per cent. I'm going to look like Frankenstein's monster.' I tried to lift both my arms straight in front of me, but it hurt too much. 'Maybe not.'
Brett smiled and went back downstairs. I remained on the roof with Tariq, sprawled on a tatty old sofa that had been dumped up here, enjoying the soft, shapeless, smelly cushions; after a week in the cockpit of a light aircraft it felt like the Ritz.
Tariq looked at me thoughtfully. Nineteen or twenty, the Iraqi was about five seven, with short black hair, dark skin and brown eyes. His geeky T-Shirt ('what, you don't know Jonathan Coulton?' he said, amazed, when I asked about it), Converse sneakers and jeans, not to mention his improbably white teeth, brilliant colloquial English, and the shoulder holster with sidearm nestled snugly beneath his left arm, sent out a confusing mass of signals that I couldn't quite decipher.
'So Brett's a Yank,' I said, 'but you and your friends are fighting the Yanks?'
He nodded.
'And even though the Yanks and the Brits were allies, my dad has been fighting with you?'
Tariq nodded again.
'And you're not Islamic fundamentalists?'
Tariq shook his head, grinning.
'What are you then?'
Tariq thought about this for a moment then he shrugged and said: 'Brett is a hockey fan from Iowa, Toseef has a thing for thrash metal, and I'm a celebrity blogger.' My confusion must have been obvious. Tariq laughed. 'We're a family,' he said simply.
I thought of Norton and Rowles, the dinner lady and Matron, and all my friends back at the school. I nodded. I understood that. 'And the guy who attacked me? The one who died?'
He shook his head sadly. 'Jamail. Good kid but hotheaded. A shoot first, ask questions later kind of boy. He was hard to control, and he made me crazy. But he would have grown into a fine man. He was the one who shot you down, even though I ordered him not to.'
'I didn't kill him, you know. The plane exploded, there was shrapnel.' It suddenly occurred to me that word was way too obscure, so I added: 'that's metal that goes flying around after a big bang.'
He looked at me like I was an idiot. 'I know what shrapnel is.'
'Sorry. Of course you do.'
'I've lived in a fucking war zone the last eight years.'
'Of course, I'm sorry. It's just that it's not a word we use every day in England.' I suddenly felt very embarrassed. 'Your English is really good,' I added, lamely.
He beamed, his face transformed into a mask of boyish glee. 'I know. I studied very hard. I wanted to go to university in England. Your father was going to help me with my applications.'
'You knew him before The Cull, then?'
'Everyone knew your dad. Most people kept their distance. It was not wise to be too friendly with the occupying forces. But it was his job to make friends with local people, and I decided to become his friend. I was a liaison. I got good books and DVDs that way. And these sneakers which you fucking well threw up on.'
'Sorry. But you did tie me to a chair and threaten to decapitate me.'
'It's a traditional Iraqi greeting.' He was so stony faced as he said this that, for a moment, I didn't realise he was joking.
'Very funny,' I said. Only the tiniest twinkle in his eye betrayed his amusement. A big, gun-carrying geek with a desert-dry sense of humour.
'My name's Lee,' I said, holding out my hand. 'I think we're going to be friends.'
'I would like that,' he replied, taking my hand.
'I don't have any DVDs though.'
'Oh. Sod off then.'
In the fetid darkness of the cell, I looked at him. And he looked at me. And neither of us knew who we were looking at.
'But…' Dad shook his head and blinked his eyes as if he couldn't believe what was happening.
'Your time was up,' I said. 'I told you I'd come and get you if you didn't come home within a year. So here I am.' I laughed and gestured at the dry concrete walls. 'I've come to rescue you.'
His shoulders hunched and he gritted his teeth.
'You think this is funny?'
'No, I…'
'You think this is a fucking joke?'
'Dad, listen…'
'You were safe! I told you to go to school and stay there. You were safe! Christ. Everything I've been through, everything I've done here, the one thing, the one thing I held on to as my friends were dying, was that at least you were out of it, at least you were safe. What the hell are you doing here, Lee? Why couldn't you just do as you were told, eh? Just this fucking once, why couldn't you do what I told you?'
My stomach tied itself in knots as he shouted at me, just as it always had. When you hero worship your dad, the last thing you want to do is let him down, make him angry, give him a reason to shout at you.
It had been a long time since I'd felt the shame of a child who's let down a parent, and it took me by surprise.
'Safe? Jesus, Dad, I'm safer here!' I protested.
'Do you have any idea what's going on here?' He shouted. 'What you've come running in to the middle of?' Then suddenly the anger just drained out of him. His shoulders slumped as he closed his eyes and bowed his head. 'Oh God, Lee,' he whispered. 'What have you done? What have you done?'
I felt the shame slowly change and build into the kind of self-righteous anger unique to teenage boys having a fight with their dads.
'What have I done?' I hissed. 'I'll tell you what I've done. I've shot and killed my history teacher, shoved a knife into the heart of a prefect, shot three others, slit the throat of one of my friends, watched my best friend murdered right in front of me. I've been complicit in torture, executions and gang rape. I've been shot, stabbed, strangled, blown up and hanged. I've seen battles and massacres and all of it's on me. My fault, my doing. All the bloodshed, all the death, all of it on me. And through all of it, all the shit, all the killing, all I kept telling myself, over and over again, was 'Dad'll be here soon, he'll sort this out'. But you never came. You left me on my own in a fucking nightmare and you promised, you swore you'd come and find me. Where were you, Dad? Where the fuck were you?'
Hot, furious tears were streaming down my cheeks as I shouted terrible things at the person I loved most in the world.
'You left me, you bastard' I shouted. 'You fucking left me!'
My anger gave way to impotent sobbing. And then he was holding me, like I'd held him on the bed all those years before, and he was saying softly: 'It's okay, I'm here, everything's okay now.'
And despite everything, it was. It really was.
'Your dad was on the last plane out,' Tariq explained. 'Part of his job was to liaise with local people, and he stayed as long as he could, trying to see that everyone he knew was taken care of. I lost count of how many people he helped when things got bad; bringing food and medicine, persuading the army doctors to visit the sick, even looking after some people himself when the withdrawal began.
