watched it. His mentor at Chicksands, Brian Arnold, used to talk – if an audience could be found – on resistance to interrogation, and the stories were of time spent at Gough Barracks, County Armagh, and the experts he spoke of were not the relays of questioners from Special Branch but the men from the
'bandit country' of Crossmaglen, Forkhill and Newtown Hamilton. The best of the prisoners took a point on the ceiling, a wall or the tiled cell floor, and locked their eyes on it. Sometimes a hundred questions and not one answer. He'd learned well over coffee in Brian Arnold's room.
'My name is Malachy Kitchen…'
She said she was dead on her feet.
'… and my date of birth is the twenty-fifth of May, 1973.'
The German pushed himself up off the cell floor, strode to the door, swung it back and allowed the woman through. It was heaved shut and the lock fastened.
Why was he there? Why had he levered himself on to the top of the fence and jumped down clear of the wire at the home of Timo Rahman? Why had he climbed, in desperation, higher on the ladder? Images surged into his mind, like a nightmare. Worse than the insults had been the cloying kindness, the bloody syrup stuff, the understanding.
16 January 2004
'You've been very helpful, Mal, most co-operative, and I don't want you to think that your silence at most of the questions I've put to you in any way jeopardizes your position in the army. Your inability to answer is quite predictable and you show the well-known symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. We are not in the Stone Age, so we don't give elbow room to expressions such as
'cowardice', or to 'lack of moral fibre'. We accept – it's taken us psychiatrists long enough to get there, and we've walked a hard road – that PTSD is a medical condition.
Now, and this is very important to your peace of mind, there is only a remote possibility that you could face a court-martial and a charge of desertion or dereliction of duty. A slight and remote possibility but I'll do my damnedest to see it doesn't happen. My report will say this is as clear a case of PTSD as I have come across. Is there anything you'd like to ask me?'
In civilian life, the psychiatrist worked for a health trust on the south coast of England, but for more than thirty years he had been a member of the Territorial Army. God alone knew now how his regular patients, back home, were surviving his six-month absence. In the medical unit attached to the division's headquarters outside Basra, he had the rank of colonel and headed the Battleshock Recovery Team, a small empire of a lieutenant, who was less than half his age, and two orderlies who typed and doubled as nurses.
In the sprawling hospital in the seaside town, his caseload was overwhelming; in Iraq it was minimal. When a general or a brigadier came to inspect the BRT he'd sometimes joke that he felt like travelling round the combat units and touting for trade, but patients came infrequently.
'Nothing to ask me? Well, that's not unusual. You've had a hard time and probably suffered some pretty cruel cuts but that's because of soldiers' ignorance of mental disturbance.
It's all behind you. My promise is that we're going to get you right, get you back on track. You're not the first, and you won't be the last, but we're going to deal with it. You are not abnormal. Most importantly, Mal, you're not a failure. I emphasize it. Not an outcast or a pariah. You've had an horrendous experience but with time and care, and with the love of your family, you're going to come through it… I'm going to ask you to wait outside a few minutes while I draw up some papers that need your signature, and when that's done I'll call you back in. I urge you to remember very clearly what I've said – not a pariah or an outcast, but a patient with post-traumatic stress syndrome, not a failure.'
He watched the captain stand and go, a stilted step, towards the door… Fascinating. In the last month he'd had an RAF corporal who had been spooked by night guard duty on the airstrip perimeter, and a lance-corporal chef from the Catering Corps who had been pressed into service for patrol and had frozen; two months before him there had been a clerk from Logistics who had sat on a Portakabin roof and refused to come down claiming that local cleaners, heavily vetted, intended to kill him… This fellow was the real thing, what the textbooks described.
'Right, let's get some notes down, Donald.'
His duty orderly settled at the computer, and the psychiatrist dictated a skeleton analysis.
' 'From field reports, the patient seems to have suffered initially from convertive collapse, with consequent loss of limb movement. Brackets, I do not believe we are dealing with a malingerer or a faker of symptoms, close brackets.
This became dissociative collapse, loss of contact with his environment and inability to relate to it.' Take a paragraph.
Donald, what did you make of him?'
'I'd be going with what they said at Bravo, Colonel.
Sounds to me like he just flipped his bottle.'
'Hardly a medical statement. No, he's most interesting because he's a classic case. Could even be a paper in it, might get to be a lecture subject – no names, of course. Next paragraph. 'From outside the family of the regiment he was serving with, so beyond the 'buddy' network. Probably, worth checking, poorly trained for being alongside an active-service unit. Asked whether his home domestic relationship was satisfactory, patient flushed and made no reply – all three make PTSD a top starter.' I'm actually quite excited. People back home would kill to get their hands on him. We're rather lucky.'
'Boot him out, won't they? Don't mind me saying it, Colonel, but where's he going to go? Who'll have him, with this lot in his knapsack? You soft-soaped him, sir, but he's on the outside, long-term.'
'Getting science into your skull, Donald, is a labour of Sisyphus.'
'Beg pardon?'
'He had to roll a stone up a hill – Homeric legend, father of Odysseus – and each time he reached the top it rolled back down and he had to start again. Next paragraph. 'Patient's silence during consultation is compatible with a current state of dissociative fugue. Brackets. Only basic self-care maintained, but refusal to acknowledge familiar locations and life structures. Close brackets.' What you have to understand, Donald, is that cowardice is no longer a word in our lexicon. In the modern environment, PTSD explains everything.'
'The guys with him won't buy that, Colonel. You dressing it up won't change it, with respect. To them, he's just a coward. No escape from that reputation, being called a coward.'
'You'd tax the patience of a saint, Donald. More's the pity, I won't have enough time with him -going to damn well try, though. Paragraph. 'Treatment of patient is handicapped by the delay in his movement from a forward area to my Battleshock Recovery Team unit. Valuable time has been lost, with consequent onset of acute stress reaction. The – capitals, PIE, close capitals – principle has been negated. Proximity, Immediacy, Expectancy cannot now apply. In a more ideal world than provided by combat in Iraq, the patient should have talked his actions through with a qualified expert at the location, within hours of it happening, and should then have been assured he would be subject to fast recovery from a 'one-off' behavioural incident.' That's about it.'
'But the PIE principle didn't happen, sir, did it?'
'It did not.'
'Which is why, Colonel, he's shafted. He's labelled a coward, and big-time he'll believe what's written on that label.'
It was the moment when he realized the flimsy nature of the plywood walls and the lightweight door that divided his consulting room from the waiting area beyond. He cursed softly and felt a little moment of shame. 'Perhaps, Donald, you could get those consent forms out.
Make some coffee, then get him back in.'
Ricky had asked, 'What you got? A dozen passengers for the boat?'
Timo had said, 'One.'
'No, not the boat, one boat. What I asked was, how many passengers is it carrying? Twelve?'
'One passenger.'
They had been at the table, now cleared by the Bear, and the map was unfolded to its full size and lay spread across the mats.
Ricky had laughed in surprise. 'What? One passenger? The boat comes all that way for one body?'
'I see nothing to laugh for. The boat comes now for one passenger. The purpose of the boat's journey is not to fish. It is to carry back across the sea the one passenger.'
