TWENTY-EIGHT
I knew Bobby would want to hear this kind of news right away. I went straight round to his house.
‘First Geordie Cartwright now Jerry Lemon,’ he said in disbelief. He walked over to the drinks trolley, picked up the bottle and poured himself several fingers of scotch. He found an empty glass tumbler and held it up to me. I shook my head. I realised that lately I’d not seen him without a glass in his hand.
He took a sip of his whisky then sat down on his big old Chesterfield couch and took another mouthful.
‘I’ve know these men for years,’ he said, ‘right back to when we first started out. We’ve been through some stuff… ’ And he shook his head at the magnitude of it all, ‘and now someone’s killing them off, one by one, just like that.’ He clicked his finger and thumb together. I thought for a second he might even be getting a tear in his eye but then his face reddened like he was fighting his emotions, his teeth set into a snarl and he growled the words, ‘I want whoever is behind this dead.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘But I want to look them in the eye first,’ he told me, ‘I want them to suffer before they die. I owe Jerry Lemon that much.’
‘I think you should keep Finney with you for a while,’ I told Bobby, ‘until we get this sorted. I know you don’t like the idea of him moving in but look at it as extra insurance.’
‘I dunno,’ he said then fell silent, like he was affronted by the suggestion that he, Bobby Mahoney, might actually need a little extra protection.
‘Bobby, seriously, no one is saying you can’t handle yourself, but we still don’t know who we are up against and it’s my job to keep you secure. You used to say Jerry Lemon was a hard man but they got to him. Whoever did it knows if they can get you out of the way then they’ve won.’
He thought about this for a long while, ‘okay,’ he said finally, but I could tell he still didn’t like it, ‘send him round – but what are you going to do for protection without Finney shadowing you?’
‘I figure it’s time Palmer earned his money.’
‘I hope he’s as good as you say he is,’ Bobby told me.
‘So do I.’
‘Trouble is, nobody in the city knows him.’ said Bobby.
‘And that’s just the way I like it.’
I’d thought it might be a good idea to get the two of them together, sort of like a blind date for ex-squaddies but, after a shed load of beer I was beginning to wonder if it had been such a wise move. Both of them could drink, my brother Danny and Palmer. I mean really drink.
Palmer and I had downed a few pints straight after Jerry Lemon’s funeral but I didn’t want to sit in my flat moping. We’d talked to everybody we knew in the city but we were still drawing blanks. Nobody had any info on our Russians, so we had to assume they were coming into the city to attack us then melting away somewhere. I was starting to think we would have to wait for them to show themselves again. The trouble being that, every time they did, our people got hurt or killed.
We’d bumped into my brother in the Bigg Market and I just thought fuck it, let’s have a beer. Now it was late and we were back in my flat, with three stubby glasses in front of us, looking at a half-empty bottle of scotch.
‘I hear you were in the Paras?’ asked Danny, ‘before you joined the Regiment.’ Like Palmer, my brother never called it the SAS, only the Regiment.
‘Yeah,’ said Palmer.
‘How come you left then?’
‘Danny,’ I warned him.
‘It’s alright,’ said Palmer, ‘I’m not touchy about it. I got RTU’d.’
‘Oh,’ said Danny.
‘Don’t you want to know why?’ asked Palmer. Danny shrugged, ‘course you do. Everybody always does.’ Danny shrugged again but this time the twinkly little smile was an admission. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you, since we’ve had a good drink up,’ he sipped his whisky. ‘It was nothing spectacular though, quite the reverse in fact.’
‘Go on then,’ said Danny, ‘tell us. I could use a laugh.’
‘Fuck me,’ I said, ‘is this how you army boys discuss each other’s hardships?’
‘Aye,’ said Palmer, ‘that’s about right.’ He took another sip of his drink and said, ‘it was the daftest thing. Like you said, I was in the Paras, made a hundred and twelve jumps, no bother at all, never a moment’s hesitation. Then one day, I was out on a routine top-up jump to keep my wings. I shuffled up to the front of the line no different to normal, but something strange happened.’
‘What?’ asked Danny.
‘I didn’t jump.’
‘You didn’t jump?’
‘I didn’t jump,’ he repeated patiently.
‘Why?’
‘I wish I knew. To this day I can’t even explain it to myself. It wasn’t like I was suddenly terrified, just that I didn’t want to go out the door. Not then, not that day, at that point.’
‘What? You mean you had a premonition your chute wasn’t going to open or something?’ asked Danny, ‘you thought you were going to die?’
‘No, nothing so… dramatic. It was more like, out of the blue, after all those jumps, it suddenly seemed…’
‘What?’
‘A bloody stupid thing to be doing.’
‘Christ almighty,’ said Danny laughing, ‘what did they do to you?’
‘Made me sit down in the plane, everybody else went out. They landed the plane and I was returned to unit.’
‘Just like that?’ I asked. ‘Could they not have given you a second chance to go?’
‘Nope, that’s the rule, if you don’t jump,’ he said, ‘there are no second chances. That’s the army.’
‘So is that why you left?’ Danny asked, ‘because you were RTU’d?’
‘Well, yes and no.’
Danny was laughing again, ‘go on,’ he urged, ‘what happened?’
‘It was a while after. I think by then I’d lost my love of the army and, well, me and the missus had split up and I think I was going a bit mad at that point. Then they gave me this shitty guard duty, driving round the perimeter one Friday night and, by this point, I just really didn’t want to be there so… ’
‘What did you do?’ asked Danny.
‘I drove the jeep into the mess.’
‘Through the door!’ laughed Danny, his eyes like saucers.
‘Through the plate glass, locked, double doors and right across the room,’ we were all laughing now, ‘I cleaned out a few tables, everybody was diving out of my way. They were having curry. I remember because I knocked over a massive pan of it, it went all over the floor.’
‘You sure that was the curry?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ said Danny, killing himself laughing now, ‘a fucking jeep’s flying straight at you across the mess hall!’ and he put a hand under his arse and made a long wet farting noise, ‘me? I’d shit all over the floor and say “it’s just the curry, honest!”.’
‘I bet they gave you a right kicking when the jeep finally stopped,’ I said.
‘There were a few harsh words exchanged,’ he admitted, ‘then they chucked me in a cell and before I knew it, I was out of the army.’
It didn’t surprise me that Palmer had done a little time. They reckon about ten per cent of the prison population is ex-forces. Of course, you don’t see that statistic on the recruitment posters.
You always need a bit of luck. I don’t care who you are or how clever you think you might be, if you don’t get
