‘I’m scared that something’s happened, Nick. He wasn’t himself when he came to bed. You sure he didn’t say anything?’
Silky was back in the doorway. ‘Hazel, the telephone’s ringing. Do you want me to—’
Hazel was already moving. Silky stared at me quizzically but I wanted to listen, not speak.
I started through the door, but Hazel was already on her way back. ‘That was Julie. The Land Cruiser’s at the train station. What’s happening, Nick? Everything’s going to fall apart again, I just know it…’ She buried her face in the front of my shirt, and clung to me like a woman drowning.
At last she raised her head. ‘Please help me find him, Nick. Please…’
5
Even with the door closed, the racket Julie’s kids were making carried into her father’s office. Then the TV came on, and cartoon voices took over from their shrieks and the clatter of small feet across wooden floors.
I looked up from Charlie’s desk. ‘He won’t have done anything stupid, Hazel. You know that’s not his style.’
She nodded as if she wanted to believe me, but couldn’t quite bring herself to. ‘I pray you’re right, Nick. I want him home.’
She’d already told me Charlie had been suffering from depression over the last few weeks, and the episodes had been getting worse and more frequent. She wanted so much to convince herself he wasn’t off in the bush having a final dark night of the soul.
‘Promise you’ll try to find him for me?’ She sounded lost, bewildered. She had changed out of her dressing gown but her hair was still a mess, and she’d given in to little bouts of weeping over the last hour. I’d never seen her look so vulnerable, and I wanted to do whatever I could to make her smile again.
She leaned down and switched on the worn, stained-plastic PC for me. I listened to the modem shaking hands with the server on the line. I certainly wasn’t going to admit to what Charlie and I had talked about. Maybe without realizing it I’d said the wrong thing and got him all sparked up. ‘You go back to Julie, Hazel. I’ll give you a shout if I find anything.’
As she left the room, the PC played the Windows music and went into msn. It was a very uncluttered office; the desk, the swivel chair I was sitting in, a filing cabinet, and that was about it. A venetian blind over the window cast big wedges of light and shadow. There was a strong smell of wood.
The monitor sat in front of me, covered with kids’ stickers. Shrek had a starring role on the mouse mat. A glass tankard full of sharpened pencils and pens, engraved with a winged dagger, doubled as a paperweight.
Family pictures were Blu-tacked to the walls. It didn’t surprise me to see that there were none of Charlie’s SAS days. There’d always been two types of guy in the Regiment: the ones who displayed nothing to do with their past, no certificates or commendations, no bayonets or decommissioned AK47s dangling off the wall. Work was work, and home was home. Then there were the others, who wanted it all to hang out for the whole world to see.
I picked up the tankard. Everyone got presented with one when they left. I couldn’t remember where mine was. The squadron sergeant major had handed it to me almost as an afterthought when I gave him my clearance chit. ‘Hold on,’ he’d said. ‘Here, I think this one’s yours.’ He’d fished around under his desk and given me a box, and that was that. ‘See you around.’
Fair one. I was the one who’d chosen to leave. When you’re out, you’re out. There isn’t a Good Lads Club or annual reunion or any of that malarkey.
I read the engraving and had to laugh.
I went through the paperwork it had been keeping in place; unpaid bills for fencing posts and animal feed, and two or three utility bills that had reached the red stage.
I started to mooch around on the PC. The only documents on the desktop were one about poultices for horses’ feet, and something about the exchange rate between the Australian dollar and Turkish lira. I knew they’d honeymooned in Cyprus. Maybe Charlie was planning a surprise return trip. Maybe he’d just gone into the city to pick up the tickets.
The email folder didn’t yield much either. The bulk of it was Hazel’s daily exchanges with Julie and the kids, even though they lived within spitting distance. I wondered what it must be like to be part of such a strong family unit. Maybe it was a bit too claustrophobic at times. Maybe Charlie had just gone off to find himself some space. Enough of that; I was starting to sound like Silky.
I spent the next hour searching all his document folders, but found nothing. I went online. The browser’s history had been cleared. What did that mean — that Charlie was hiding something, or just that he was a good housekeeper? Whatever, if he’d been planning something he didn’t want Hazel to know about, he would hardly have left a sign saying THIS WAY on his PC.
The filing cabinet had four drawers. I opened the bottom one, P — Z, and pulled out the folder marked T. Charlie had done himself proud. The last couple of years’ phone bills were not only in date order, they were itemized. I pulled out the last couple of quarters and ran my eye down the lists.
It didn’t take long to spot a pattern.
Over the last month or so, and with increasing frequency, there had been several long calls to an 01432 number in the UK.
I looked at my watch. It was just after 9 a.m., so still well before bedtime back home.
I picked up the phone and dialled.
PART THREE
1
‘Hereford.’ A finger prodded me in the shoulder. ‘You wanted to know when we got to Hereford.’
I struggled to open my eyes. I hadn’t realized the train had stopped. Lucky I’d asked the old lady opposite to give me a shout, or I’d have woken up in Worcester.
I thanked her and headed for the door, feeling like a zombie. After a two-and-a-bit-hour journey from Paddington, I’d changed at Newport for the local commuter to ‘H’, as it was known to guys in the Regiment. Before we’d even left London, my lids had been drooping and my chin was on my chest. Too many time zones and twelve thousand miles in cattle class were against me.
My conscience was weighing pretty heavily, too. I felt bad about lying to Silky. ‘Going to the station to see if he’s left anything in the wagon’ was hardly the same as ‘I’ve spoken to the broker and it sounds like he’s accepted a job offer somewhere, so I’m flying halfway across the world to find out more. You know that bit about being back here tonight? I’ll actually be thirty thousand feet over Singapore by then, but apart from that, everything I said was true and we can trust each other always, honest.’ But what else was I supposed to do? The only way to find out where Charlie had gone was to put in a personal appearance. The broker wouldn’t help me. His job was to match guys and work, not tell them to go home. The only way I was going to be able to fetch him back to his family was to physically grab hold of the silly old fucker and find out exactly what the problem was, and then see if I could help.
Maybe it was being separated from her for the first time in three months that did it, but I had a terrible feeling I was missing Silky already. She had a stupid accent and an irritating habit of understanding people much better than I did most of the time, but I’d got used to her being around, and it wasn’t at all a bad feeling. The lying thing wouldn’t go down well, of course, but Hazel would explain and I’d make it up to her somehow when I got
