‘Joe…’
‘Pack a bag.’
He didn’t know at what point during his vigil he had come to the decision, but now that it was light he had made up his mind: they weren’t staying here. Maybe someone had tried to kill him last night; maybe it had just been a bunch of pissed-up, joyriding dickheads unable to keep control of their vehicle and the kid with the Coke bottle was just a kid with a Coke bottle. Either way, getting out of Hereford felt like the right move.
‘Where are we going?’ Caitlin asked.
‘JJ’s.’
‘Does he know?’
For Joe and his family, JJ’s meant holidays. Whenever Joe’s mate had any down time – which was hardly ever – he spent his time at the secluded old farmhouse, ten klicks from Berwick-upon-Tweed, that his grandparents had owned. There, he kept his eye in by shooting every last game bird he could find with an old two-bore shotgun. ‘No difference,’ he’d said to Joe just three weeks previously, ‘between a bird and a bad guy.’
‘Joe, does JJ know we’re… ’
‘No!’
‘But—’
‘JJ’s got other things on his mind, trust me.’
Caitlin didn’t much like it up in Berwick, but Joe loved the remote bleakness of the place. And with JJ stuck out in Bagram, he knew the house would be empty. More importantly, he’d be off the radar.
‘Maybe we should just stay here… The Regiment want you to go in and—’
‘
Caitlin jumped. She had that look again. Anxious. A little scared – maybe of him? Perhaps he should tell her what had happened last night.
Or perhaps not. She already thought he was losing it.
Joe took a deep breath to calm himself, then approached her and brushed one hand against her soft cheek. ‘We need some time out,’ he said. ‘Just the three of us. I need to wind down, babe. Get away from it all.’
It was the right thing to say. Joe knew it would be. Caitlin’s eyes softened; she bit her lower lip and nodded at him. Fifteen minutes later she had three bags packed and was back in the front room, standing just behind Conor with her hands on his shoulders.
The boy looked tired. Dark rings. Pale skin. He was wearing a light blue anorak and clutching his DS. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry about it, champ.’
‘Just asking.’
‘We should get moving,’ said Joe.
‘What about school?’ asked Conor.
‘Look, just forget about school, OK?’ Joe snapped. Conor flinched and withdrew a little into his mother’s embrace. Joe pushed past them. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
It was a silent trip north. Conor slept in the back of their silver Mondeo estate; Caitlin removed her shoes and hugged her knees in the passenger seat; Joe put talk radio on to fill the silence. Some arsehole of a shock jock was presiding over a banal phone-in. Joe barely heard what they were saying until two hours into the journey when, snapping out of his driving trance on the M6, he realized the conversation had inevitably moved on to bin Laden. An ‘expert’ – he sounded Middle Eastern – was giving his opinion: ‘… and it’s quite simply wrong of the American government to suggest that Osama bin Laden’s body was disposed of according to Islamic practices…’ Joe slammed the button to turn the radio off, drawing another of Caitlin’s anxious glances. He could tell she wanted to talk to him about what they’d just been listening to. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that ops like the raid in Abbottabad were Joe’s bread and butter. But she also knew it was a waste of breath asking him about what he did when he was on Regiment time.
Joe glanced in the rear-view mirror. His face was still dirty and scabbed, but he wasn’t looking at that. He saw a red Citroen Picasso behind him, and an XK8 behind that. He hadn’t noticed either car before, but he still pulled out into the centre lane and lowered his speed suddenly, forcing them to overtake on the inside before he dropped back into the slow lane behind them. If Caitlin noticed what he was doing she gave no indication of it – she had removed a bottle of nail-polish remover from her bag, along with a wad of cotton wool. She dabbed her nails in silence, while Joe kept his eye on the two cars. The Picasso pulled off at the next junction; the XK8 zoomed off into the distance.
Conor woke at midday. Joe kept driving as Caitlin passed their son sandwiches she’d made before they left. Neither she nor Joe had an appetite for them. He kept his eyes on the road. She kept hers on her nails. From the back came the beep-beeping of Conor’s DS.
They stopped around 3 p.m. to buy food in a dingy supermarket – the closest to their destination, but still thirty klicks south-west of JJ’s. Caitlin didn’t comment on the booze Joe piled into the trolley: a case of Tennent’s, two bottles of Famous Grouse and half a dozen bottles of cheap wine. She concentrated on adding microwave meals – JJ was no Jamie Oliver and his kitchen looked like it. Twenty minutes later they were back in the car. And an hour later they were at their destination.
JJ’s house stood alone at the foot of a hill that was covered with grazing sheep. When he was younger, Conor always used to say that it looked as though it had a face, and he was right. The narrow windows and cracked pebbledash render made it look mournful. It wasn’t helped by the rain that had started the moment they had caught sight of it. An old iron fence, about a metre high, marked the boundary of the property, but it was so covered with bindweed that the metal was barely visible. The grass to the front of the house was a couple of feet high. Their vehicle made a clear track through it as Joe pulled up by the front door, whose green paint was peeling to reveal the white undercoat beneath. The house looked a little shabbier every time they came here.
There was an old coal shed along the right-hand side of the house and it was here, hidden behind a loose brick, that JJ always kept a key. Joe found it immediately and let them in.
‘I’m freezing,’ Conor complained as the door swung shut behind them and they stood in a hallway that was somehow darker than it should have been given it was still light outside. The terracotta tiles on the floor seemed to leach any warmth out of the air, and the woodchip walls had yellow patches of damp rising up from the skirting. Against the right-hand wall stood an old mahogany grandfather clock, its hands stuck at seventeen minutes past twelve. The air was thick with the musty smell of neglect.
Caitlin flicked a light switch. Nothing happened. A minute later Joe had his head stuck inside a corner cupboard in the kitchen, poking around at the fuse board. He flicked a trip switch and heard the beep of the microwave as the kitchen lights turned on.
‘I’ll sort the beds out,’ Caitlin said as Joe emerged. ‘Come on, Conor, you can help me…’
‘I want to stay with Dad.’
Conor was lingering in the doorway. His face was still pale, but the rings around his eyes had faded. Caitlin looked askance at Joe, who nodded. ‘Come on, champ,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a brew.’
Caitlin left them alone while Joe wiped the dust off an old kettle with his sleeve and filled it with water, before turning to look at his son. Conor had moved into the centre of the room, next to the long pine table. He looked troubled.
‘How’s your mum been, champ?’ Joe asked. ‘You been looking after her like I told you to?’
Conor nodded gravely. ‘But sometimes I hear her crying. I don’t think she likes you being a soldier any more.’
There was an awkward silence. Why was it that Joe could hold his own in the testosterone-fuelled hangars of Bagram, but when he was alone with his own son, he could never find the right words to say?
‘Your mum’s fine,’ he muttered.
‘She’s not fine.’ Conor spoke so forcefully, and in such an adult tone, that Joe was taken aback. A memory flashed before his eyes. He saw himself as a kid, standing up to his own dickhead of a father, pretending not to be scared of his strong, tattooed arm. Whenever Joe’s dad came back from a stretch away, he’d been at Her Majesty’s pleasure, not at Her service. But that meant nothing to Conor. Joe wondered if he was pretending not to be scared now.
‘Are you always going to be a soldier, Dad?’
