Knots And Crosses

shiver run through him: this was power, power total and irreducible. He could do anything with his patients, anything.

‘Michael,’ whispered Gill, ‘ask him why he left the Army.’

Michael swallowed, lining his throat with saliva. Yes, that was a good question. One he had wanted to ask John himself.

‘John?’ he said. ‘John? Why did you leave the Army, John? What happened, John? Why did you leave the Army? Tell us.’

And slowly, as though learning to use words strange or unknown to him, Rebus began to tell his story. Gill rushed to her bag for a pen and a notepad. Michael sipped his whisky.

They listened.

Part Four THE CROSS

22

I had been in the Parachute Regiment since the age of eighteen. But then I decided to try for the Special Air Service. Why did I do that? Why will any soldier take a cut in pay to join the SAS? I can’t answer that. All I know now is that I found myself in Herefordshire, at the SAS’s training camp. I called it The Cross because I’d been told that they would try to crucify me, and there, along with the other volunteers, I went through hell, marching, training, testing, pushing. They took us to the breaking point. They taught us to be lethal.

At that time there were rumours of an imminent civil war in Ulster, of the SAS being used to root out insurrectionists. The day came for us to be badged. We were given new berets and cap-badges. We were in the SAS. But there was more. Gordon Reeve and myself were called into the Boss’s office and told that we had been judged the two best trainees of the batch. There was a two-year training period in front of us before we could become regulars, but great things were predicted for us.

Later, Reeve spoke to me as we left the building.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard a few of the rumours. I’ve heard the officers talking. They’ve got plans for us, Johnny. Plans. Mark my words.’

Weeks later, we were put on a survival course, hunted by other regiments, who if they captured us would stop at nothing to prise from us information about our mission. We had to trap and hunt our food, lying low and travelling across bleak moorland by night. We seemed destined to go through these tests together, though on this occasion we were working with two others.

‘They’ve got something special lined up for us,’ Reeve kept saying. ‘I can feel it in my bones.’

Lying in our bivouac, we had just slipped into our sleeping-bags for a two-hour nap when our guard put his nose into the shelter.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he said, and then there were lights and guns everywhere, and we were half-beaten into unconsciousness as the shelter was ripped open. Foreign tongues clacked at us, their faces masked behind the torches. A rifle-butt to the kidneys told me that this was for real. For real.

The cell into which I was thrown was real enough, too. The cell into which I was thrown was smeared with blood, faeces, and other things. It contained a stinking mattress and a cockroach. That was all. I lay down on the damp mattress and tried to sleep, for I knew that sleep would be the first thing to be stripped from us all.

The bright lights of the cell came on suddenly and stayed on, burning into my skull. Then the noises started, noises of a beating and a questioning taking place in the cell next to me.

‘Leave him alone, you bastards! I’ll tear your fucking heads off!’

I slammed at the wall with fists and boots, and the noises stopped. A cell door slammed shut, a body was dragged past my metal door, there was silence. I knew my time would come.

I waited there, waited for hours and days, hungry, thirsty, and every time I closed my eyes a sound like that of a blaring radio caught between stations would sound from the walls and the ceiling. I lay with my hands over my ears.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

I was supposed to crack now, and if I cracked I would have failed everything, all the months of training. So I sang tunes loudly to myself. I scraped my nails across the walls of the cell, walls wet with fungus, and scratched my name there as an anagram: BRUSE. I played games in my head, thought up crossword-puzzle clues and little linguistic tricks. I turned survival into a game. A game, a game, a game. I had to keep reminding myself that, no matter how bad things seemed to be getting, this was all a game.

And I thought of Reeve, who had warned me of this. Big plans indeed. Reeve was the nearest thing I had to a friend in the unit. I wondered if it had been his body dragged across the floor outside my cell. I prayed for him.

And one day they sent me food and a mug of brown water. The food looked as though it had been scooped straight from the mud-crawl and pushed through the little hole which had suddenly appeared in my door and just as suddenly vanished. I willed this cold swill into becoming a steak with two veg, and then placed a spoonful of it in my mouth. Immediately, I spat it out again. The water tasted of iron. I made a show of wiping my chin on my sleeve. I felt sure I was being watched.

‘My compliments to the chef,’ I called.

Next thing I knew, I was falling over into sleep.

I was in the air. There could be no doubt of that. I was in a helicopter, the air blowing into my face. I came round slowly, and opened my eyes on darkness. My head was in some kind of sack, and my arms were tied behind my back. I felt the helicopter swoop and rise and swoop again.

‘Awake are you?’ A butt prodded me.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now give me the name of your regiment and the details of your mission. We’re not going to fuck around with you, sonny. So you better do it now.’

‘Get stuffed.’

‘I hope you can swim, sonny. I hope you get the chance to swim. We’re about two-hundred feet above the Irish Sea, and we’re about to push you out of this fucking chopper with your hands still tied. You’ll hit that water as though it was fucking concrete, do you know that? It may kill you or it may stun you. The fish will eat you alive, sonny. And your corpse will never be found, not out here. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

It was an official and businesslike voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now, the name of your regiment, and the details of your mission.’

‘Get stuffed.’ I tried to sound calm. I’d be another accident statistic, killed on training, no questions asked. I’d hit that sea like a light-bulb hitting a wall.

‘Get stuffed,’ I said again, intoning to myself: it’s only a game, it’s only a game.

‘This isn’t a game, you know. Not anymore. Your friends have already spilled their guts, Rebus. One of them, Reeve I think it was, spilled his guts quite literally. Okay, men, give him the heave.’

‘Wait …’

‘Enjoy your swim, Rebus.’

Hands gripped my legs and torso. In the darkness of the sack, with the wind blowing fiercely against me, I began to feel that it had all been a grave mistake.

‘Wait …’

I could feel myself hanging in space, two-hundred feet up above the sea, with the gulls shrieking for me to be let go.