He considered the question for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Old folks, I guess.’
It was time for us to get that bag of bones out of the rear turret.
I showed Hudd how the door in the back of the turret opened. It didn’t, so we had to take a hammer to it. When it eventually moved aside the thing in there fell back towards us. I instinctively jumped back. Hudd didn’t. It had desiccated in the sun for so long, and the turret was ventilated of course, that it didn’t smell too bad. Just that dusty putrefactive smell that grabs at the back of your throat. He was curled up like a homunculus: there hadn’t been much room for him. He had no shoes on, and one copper-brown foot was three times the size of the other. Snakes two, humans nil. Hudd must have thought the same.
‘Snake-bit; but he’s been up here a year at least. Recognize the uniform?’ He was dressed in plain KDs without any markings, and hadn’t been too old. His shrunken face had been younger than mine when he died. Dark crinkly hair, which was falling out in clumps – it looked as if something was getting at it – and bad teeth. I shook my head.
‘No. What do you want to do with him?’
‘Find out who he was, mate; then bury the bugger. Maybe he can tell us where the dosh has gone.’
We found an ID bracelet on his wrist. The metal had discoloured, but it was possible to make out the writing on it, which wasn’t in a Western script.
‘Arabic?’ Hudd asked.
‘Dunno. It’s quite like the Egyptian Arabic, but not quite right. Keep it; we’ll check it later.’
Watson did not take the news well. I’d forgotten he used to be an operator himself in the cat’s-whisker days. The Morse came back from him like machine-gun fire. I told Hudd, ‘He thinks it’s our fault.’
‘No, he doesn’t . . . but he’s got to take it out on someone. We’ve lost one man already, and we haven’t found the money. That’s not going to look very good in his memoirs, is it?’ I re-examined this statement in my head and came to the conclusion that I didn’t like the word already. Nor would you.
I sent back, ‘If you can’t be civil, be quiet,’ and pulled the aerial out. That would give Watson apoplexy. ‘I’ll try him again in an hour,’ I told Hudd, ‘. . . after he’s calmed down. He’s bound to think of something for us to do: he hates idle staff.’
He looked at me quizzically.
‘Aren’t you taking a bit of a chance talking to your SO like that?’
‘Not really. He got me out here under false pretences – I was already time-expired, but didn’t know it – and, despite the bluster, I think the only thing he can do with me is send me home in disgrace.’
‘What if you’re wrong?’
‘I’ll end up in the nick again. My old man’s probably inside even as we speak: it goes in the family.’
I may have been wrong, but after that I think Hudd looked at me with a new respect. Well done, Dad! We buried the dead soldier alongside Hudd’s man. Hudd wanted me to sing the same words over him, but I turned him down.
‘He wasn’t one of us: besides he probably had some dago religion and wouldn’t have appreciated it.’
‘You’re all heart, Charlie: as sensitive as a fucking brick.’
I thought that was a bit rich coming from him. So I flung back, ‘That’s what all the girls say,’ and showed him my pearlies.
While we were brewing up he asked me, ‘Show me that bracelet again: I’m sure I’ve seen writing like that somewhere.’
I looked from where we were sitting in the shade of the black bomber towards the two graves, and for the first time took in that it was just me and him now . . . and this fucking wilderness. I asked myself what my dead pal Tommo would have done in this situation, but the answer that came back was that he didn’t know, either. All he could come up with was that I’d better watch out for myself. Thanks, Tommo; I could have worked that out for myself.
Hudd threw the lees of his tea on the fire, stood up and stretched. While I had brewed up he had been sorting his man’s effects. He gave me a small pair of binoculars and a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger. I still have them: throwing your history away isn’t that easy. I’m looking at the knife as I write, right now.
He said to me, ‘I want you to go around the other side,’ he gestured at the Stirling, ‘. . . and examine the countryside carefully, from the foothills of the mountains right up to where we’re standing.’
‘What will you be doing?’
‘This side: I’ll take the south and east, you take the north and west.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Horses: small horses. Wild ponies maybe, or wild asses.’
‘Why? We haven’t seen any so far.’
‘Nah, but we seen their tracks; all over the shop. Some small hoofs have been chopping up the ground: didn’t you notice?’
‘No. Show me.’
He did. In places the signs were clear. I was angry with myself that I hadn’t noticed, and he must have picked up on that.
‘Don’t fret, Charlie: it’s my job – just like the radio’s yours.’ It didn’t help. I was determined to do a decent job now, so I scanned the brush and the mountains for at least twenty minutes. When I walked back, he was waiting for me. ‘Anything?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither. You know what that means?’
‘No.’ Again.
‘That maybe they weren’t wild. Maybe somone rode them up here, or maybe they were pack animals?’
‘And they were used to carry the money away on.’
‘Right. Getting a vehicle up here would be bloody nigh impossible.’
‘How old are
