Major Stuart Poulter.
Poulter used a brass Zippo to fire up his second cigarette since the interview had begun and leaned back in his chair. “I still think it would make more sense for the Met to liaise with the RMP on this.” He had a soft, comforting voice, like someone who might read out a weather forecast on the radio. “But, ours is not to reason why. Correct?”
Once tea had been delivered and they’d got down to business, it became apparent that the system of tracking regimental personnel was every bit as complicated, every bit as arcane, as the command structure itself.
“We only keep any sort of record on soldiers who are still serving,” Poulter said. “That’s the first thing, and it’s purely practical. Once they leave here, they’re no longer my concern, and I can’t really care anymore. You should really talk to the AP Centre at Glasgow…”
Kitson told him that they knew all about the AP Centre. She explained that they simply needed the names of those who had served alongside Christopher Jago. She gave a brief and relatively vague outline of exactly why those names were so important. The existence of the videotape was not so much as hinted at.
“It’s basically about tracing the other three on the crew,” Holland said. “We just need to know how we can get that information.”
“Which crew are we talking about, though?” Poulter asked.
“Like we said, it’s the Gulf, 1991…”
“I’m clear about that, but this Jago might have been part of any number of crews. Do you understand? Just in that single campaign.”
“Right…” Kitson was starting to sense that this wouldn’t be straightforward. That even though, this time, they’d come armed with all the relevant information, they were as far out of their depth as they had been when they’d interviewed Rutherford and Spiby at the Media Ops Office.
“I’ve been all over the U.K.,” Poulter said, “and to most parts of Europe, right? I’ve been to Malaysia and Hong Kong and Belize; to Bosnia, the U.S.A. and Australia. And I’ve been to the Gulf. All in just the last ten years. Do you see what I’m driving at? Soldiers move around, all the time. Not only do they change location, but they also get shifted from troop to troop and from squadron to squadron.”
“What gets done with their records if that happens?” Kitson asked.
“It’s fairly standard… unless, of course, the soldier in question has served at any time with one of the intelligence-based units. The SAS, the Special Boat Service, 14 Int, or what have you.. .”
“What happens then?”
“Well, those records can have a habit of disappearing, or at the very least of a few chunks going missing. Normally, though, each man has a P-File, which is confidential and contains all the basic info: the courses he’s been on, names and dates, his disciplinary record, that kind of thing. That file goes with him if he switches squadrons. There’s also his Troop Bible, which gives admin details-passport number and so forth-but, again, that travels with the soldier.”
“So the paperwork is as mobile as they are,” Holland said.
Poulter turned, blew smoke out of the window he’d opened behind him. “That’s about right. And again, it’s purely practical. We’d be swamped with the stuff otherwise. I guess you lot have got much the same problem, right? Filling every bloody form in three times.”
Kitson smiled politely, acknowledging the moment of levity. “Why might a soldier move?”
“Any number of reasons. Troops go where they’re needed, basically. You might be going to assist another regiment, right? To backfill wherever it’s necessary. On a tank crew, say, you might have trained as a driver, and if a driver on another crew falls ill or whatever, you get shunted across and someone else is moved into your crew and trained up. You work as crew and you also work as engineering support for crew, and if that expertise is required elsewhere, you go to plug that hole. Some commanders like to move their crews around as a matter of course and some don’t, but either way it’s all change once the ORBAT comes through.” Poulter saw the confusion on Holland’s and Kitson’s faces and explained: “Order of Battle. That’s any troop movement order, peacetime or wartime, right? Once that comes through, you go. Simple as that.”
Holland had begun by taking notes, but had realized fairly quickly that there was little point. Even so, he drew a line on his notepad, as if underscoring something of great importance. “I understand all that, but surely when there’s a conflict, like there was in the Gulf, it’s a good idea to have some… continuity.”
“It’s certainly a good idea, ” Poulter said. He looked vaguely pleased, as if Holland had asked the predictably stupid civilian’s question. “When the regiment’s deployed, that’s when people really start to get switched around. Troops are reorganized all over again in accordance with battle regs.” He stuck the cigarette into his mouth and began to count off these regulations on his fingers: “You can’t go if there are any medical issues, any at all; you’ll get left behind if you’ve got so much as a toothache, right? You can’t go if you’re underage…”
“I’m not with you,” Kitson said. “How can you be underage?”
“You can join up when you’re sixteen and a half, right? After basic training and what have you, we get them at around seventeen, but you cannot be sent to war unless you’re eighteen years of age. You’re a gunner on a tank crew and the regiment gets deployed to a combat zone, right? If you’re a week short of your eighteenth birthday, somebody else is going to get brought in to do your job.”
Kitson nodded. She couldn’t help but wonder if the Iraqi army had been subject to the same regulations…
“Then, once you’re actually out there, everything can change again. People get injured; that’s the most obvious thing. And I don’t just mean as a result of enemy action.” He pointed out of the window toward the line of tanks that Kitson and Holland had seen earlier. “You take a tumble off the back of one of those wagons and you’re going to know about it. These things have a knock-on effect as well. One tanky breaks his arm, half a dozen crews can get shifted around.”
In his notebook, Holland circled the full stop beneath a large and elaborately shaded question mark. “What about soldiers who were in the Gulf and are still with the regiment?” he said. “Could we perhaps just talk to them? From what you said before, there should be a list of those people somewhere.”
“Yeah, I think that would be very useful,” Kitson added.
Poulter thought for a moment, before rolling his chair back and tossing his cigarette butt out of the open window. “I’ll go and have a quick word with someone about what you’re suggesting,” he said. “If you’d like to wait there, I’m sure I can rustle up some more tea.. .”
Holland closed his notebook before Poulter walked past him on his way to the door.
NINETEEN
Spike had found him within half an hour of Thorne’s release from custody.
“Fat Paul, who sells the Issue outside Charing
Cross, saw you coming out. How was it?”
“Bailed for a fortnight,” Thorne said. “Gives ’em time to decide if they want to go ahead and charge me.”
Spike looked surprised, as Thorne knew he had every right to be. “I don’t know how you managed to wangle that. Can’t see there’s much to decide, seeing as how you decked a copper.”
“They’re waiting for medical reports or something.”
“Right…”
“Plus, if they do me for assault, they know they might have to do one or two of their own.” Now Spike thought he understood. “Good thinking, mate. We’ll get one of them disposable cameras, make sure we get some photos of your face. It’s a right mess, like.”
Thorne had finally got a good look at himself in the gents’ back at the station after Brigstocke had finished with him. He looked every bit as worked over as he felt. One eye was completely filled with blood, while the other was half-closed above a bruise that was plum-colored and blackening at its edges. There were scratches down one side of his neck, and a graze, livid against his forehead, from where he’d been pressed against the wall.
“Yeah, well.” Thorne could feel the air, cold on his wounds, and the pain that still sang along his shoulder
