down and tear you limb from limb… you worthless, gutless, psychopathic piece of shit.’
Tyzack let the words sink in, and then he laughed again. ‘Well done, defiant to the end! But how are you going to hunt me down if you’re dead on the end of a rubber rope? How does that work? Do yourself a favour…’ Tyzack had walked round behind the metal table while he was talking and shifted it fractionally towards Carver. ‘… See if you can reach it now.’
Carver had no choice. His only hope of staying alive long enough to find a way to beat Tyzack was to do as he said. So he got up and stepped gingerly towards the table until he felt the pulling on his neck. Then he stood with one foot in front of the other, the front leg slightly bent at the knee to brace him, took a deep breath, and leaned forward, hands outstretched.
He pushed his head and shoulders forward till the pressure on his throat was so strong he felt as though his windpipe and larynx would be crushed. He stretched his arms till they were almost pulled from their sockets. He held his breath until his chest felt close to bursting and sparks danced before his eyes. But still his fingertips were nowhere near the top of the water bottle.
He stepped back and crouched, bent over, hands on his knees, desperately dragging air down into his lungs.
‘I don’t think you’re really trying,’ said Tyzack with an exaggerated air of disappointment. ‘I believe you need some encouragement. An incentive, so to speak.’
He walked away to the wall of the barn. Carver raised his eyes and noticed something else, lying on the floor: a thin, flexible bamboo cane, five or six feet long. Tyzack picked it up. He strode back towards Carver and stood calmly as Carver turned to face him. Then Tyzack lunged his left foot forwards so far that he was almost down on one knee and brought his right arm round in a fast, low, whipping motion.
The cane lashed into Carver’s legs, just below the knee. He screamed in pain, lost his footing and then the screams were transformed to retching gasps as he fought against the cord and the collar pulling yet again at his unprotected neck.
Tyzack stood up straight and almost danced round Carver, as agile as a boxer. The next lash of the cane ripped into his lower back, the excruciating agony of a blow to the kidneys made even worse by the knife-tear that it reopened.
Carver screamed again… and again as a third strike of the cane cut into his shoulders.
‘Try again,’ said Tyzack, quite calmly, almost encouragingly. ‘See if you can reach the bottle.’
Carver tried.
He pulled and choked and strained every muscle, while Tyzack flayed his back with the cane: once, twice, half a dozen more times.
Still he could not reach the bottle.
Finally Tyzack lowered the cane.
Both men were breathing heavily now, a sheen of sweat glistening on their faces and soaking their shirts.
‘I think we’ve established that it’s still not close enough. I’ll make it a little easier for you,’ Tyzack panted.
He shifted the table forward another few inches. Then he gave a sudden exhalation of breath, as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Who’s a silly boy?’ he said. ‘I almost let you get away with it. Can’t have a cap on the bottle, can we? That way, you’d only have to pull it off the table once, pull it towards you and keep it at your feet. Can’t have the choccies in a box, same reason.’
He unscrewed the top of the water bottle and threw it away. He also detached the white plastic carrying handle. Finally he emptied the box of Japp bars on to the table.
‘Knock the bottle off now, and you’ll be in serious trouble,’ Tyzack observed. He picked up the cane. ‘Now, let’s try again.’
It took barely ten minutes. But it felt like a lifetime of pain beyond anything Carver had ever known, an eternity of craving as he begged for breath, living on the very edge of unconsciousness, the blood and sweat mingling and stinging as his back became a pulpy intersection of cuts and welts etched and slashed across his skin. He pissed himself at some point, he didn’t know when. But finally the table had been moved to a point where he could – just, if he went beyond the point where his body was telling him it was about to black out, into a new realm of agony – reach the water, and the chocolate bars, and even lift the lid of the chemical toilet.
‘You’ll be able to pee,’ said Tyzack, who seemed strangely calmed by his physical exertion, his tensions temporarily released. ‘You won’t be sitting down on it, though, sadly, so it could get a touch Bobby Sands in here, if you catch my drift. Still, I’m glad we got that sorted. Now, why don’t you sit down?’
Tyzack winced as he saw Carver’s reaction to the contact between his flayed skin and the chair back. ‘Oh, that’s got to hurt,’ he sympathized. ‘Can’t be helped though, eh? So… let’s have a little talk.’
The sting of Damon Tyzack’s hand slapping against his cheek cut through the fog of pain that was clouding Carver’s mind.
‘Wake up,’ Tyzack insisted. ‘We’re going to chat, talk about old times. Ironic, though, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t what?’ Carver mumbled.
‘Me dragging you from the water. I mean, the helicopter, the ship – there’s a certain symmetry to it all. The only difference is, I’m in charge now.’
Carver forced himself to straighten his whipped and bleeding back and look Tyzack in the eye. ‘I never wanted to take you. Didn’t think you were up to it. Trench disagreed. He denied it, but the truth is he’d got a soft spot for you because of your father…’
‘I really don’t think we need to talk about him.’
‘Maybe, but he was ten times the soldier you’ll ever be.’
This time, when Tyzack hit Carver, it wasn’t just a slap.
Carver spat the blood from his mouth. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘But the fact remains, I didn’t want you. Trench did. Afterwards, of course, he admitted I was right.’
‘Oh really, is that so? Well, I tell you what, since you’re so keen to tell your side of the story, why don’t you do that? And then we’ll examine the evidence, compare it with my account, and see who’s telling the truth…’
56
Back then he was not yet known as Carver. He was still Paul Jackson, the name given to him by his adoptive parents. His friends and brother officers in the Special Boat Squadron, the waterborne arm of British Special Forces, used his nickname, Pablo. So did Quentin Trench, Carver’s commanding officer.
‘Pablo, I want you to take Damon Tyzack along with you as your second-in-command on the Maid of Dumfries job,’ he’d said one evening at SBS headquarters in Poole while they were in the officers’ mess, drinking their after-dinner coffees.
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ Carver replied. ‘He’s never had a job like this before.’
‘Well, he’s got to start somewhere. This should be a pretty straightforward operation. Tyzack’s fully trained for it. And you’re just the man to make sure he doesn’t let himself or anyone else down.’
Carver stuck to his guns. ‘You know how I feel about him. It’s a character issue. I don’t trust him to react the right way under pressure. Don’t think the other men do, either. He’s not well liked.’
‘Well then, it’s a good thing this is a military unit, not a bloody popularity contest,’ Trench snapped. ‘Your reservations about Second Lieutenant Tyzack’s character were noted during the selection course. But so were the rest of his results, and they were superb. His powers of endurance are remarkable. He’s a first-rate swimmer- canoeist, his marksmanship is outstanding and he breezed through all the technical, tactical and theoretical aspects of the course. Scored rather better than you did when you first got here, as a matter of fact.’
That was a cheap shot and Trench knew it. ‘Look,’ he continued, trying to smooth things over, ‘I know there are other issues. I served under Tyzack’s father, best commanding officer I’ve ever known. But I’m sure you don’t think I would favour a man just because I knew his dad…’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. Take Tyzack. Give him some responsibility. Let’s see how he handles it.’
Three days later, Carver and Tyzack were both among the six men seated in the cabin of a Westland Sea King helicopter, flying low over the black waters of the Bay of Biscay. The wind was blowing about fourteen or fifteen
