Exit wound ns-12 Page 3

  One look at Tenny, and Red Ken binned whatever plan he’d had to hide the Stasi boys. ‘Fuck ’em. Let’s go.’

  We loaded Tenny into the Gaz and the contact pressed his foot to the floor. I got on the radio to Dex.

  Tenny was less worried about his guts than about what had happened.

  ‘It was so quick. I sparked up the radio to give Dex a sitrep and they went for it. I-’

  Red Ken placed his hand on Tenny’s forehead, like a father with a sick child. ‘It doesn’t matter. Getting you back is all that does. Not long now, mate.’

  Spag just sat there with his bag of tricks on his lap. I didn’t blame him keeping out of it.

  When we reached the field, Dex’s props were already turning.

  PART TWO

  10

  Lincoln

  14 April 2009

  Judging by the number of lads packing the bars around the cathedral, the funeral was going to be a big one. I recognized a few of the faces knocking back the pints as they sheltered under awnings and patio heaters.

  I pulled up my jacket collar, and not just against the wind and rain. I was hoping they didn’t recognize me back. I didn’t want to be pulled into any of the groups and have to waffle about jobs and families and how much hair we’d all lost. I’d only get agitated. I wanted to be here as much as I had to be here, but I couldn’t stand the garbage people spouted at reunions. Maybe I was just jealous of them for having normal lives. There were a couple of lads I was looking for in the sea of faces. They were the only ones I wanted to waffle with.

  ‘Oi, Nick!’

  I turned. He wasn’t one of them. I didn’t know the guy from Adam – except that I don’t remember Adam eating all the pies. He was surrounded by other beer bellies and red faces, throwing down the pints like they were still nineteen-year-old squaddies. Many were thinning on top; some were bald or grey. All of them were bullshitting about how great it’s been since they got out. Great house, great car, everything’s gravy.

  Some wore their Green Jacket blazers and ties over crisp white shirts and neatly pressed slacks. Others were in their best suits. Me? I was in a Tesco shirt, washable trousers and cheap leather jacket. Most of them would have been lorry drivers, security guards, painters and decorators, firemen or policemen. That was what normally happened with the lads. The odd one would be on the circuit, fucking about in Iraq or Afghanistan, but today it really didn’t matter who or what you were. The one thing everyone had in common was that they knew Tenny.

  Tennyson had spent the best part of a year sorting out his gut before marrying Janice and taking up his commission in the Green Jackets – which had become the Rifles in the next shakeup. He never did make general, but was promoted to full colonel in command of media ops at Camp Bastion in Helmand province. It was a plum job, making sure reporters and news crews got where they were needed, and managing the PR output. Until he got zapped again, this time in the head by a 7.62mm short from an AK.

  The voice called again: ‘Nick! Nick Stone!’

  I still didn’t have a clue who he was, but shook his hand anyway. I didn’t have much choice: he’d gone for it big-time. He pumped my arm so vigorously my shoulders shook.

  ‘Good to see you, mate.’

  Maybe he’d had more hair the last time I’d seen him.

  ‘Graham – Graham Pincombe. How you doing, mate?’

  Still none the wiser. ‘Ah, yeah, fine… mate…’

  My brain whirred into hyperspace as the very thing I was trying to avoid started to happen.

  ‘What you been doing with yourself? The last time I saw you…’ At last his hand released mine and for some reason headed for the tip of his nose. ‘Ah, yeah. Germany – remember when we were on exercise in Germany?’

  No, not a clue. ‘Shame about Tenny, eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What exactly happened – anybody know?’ I scanned the group for a face that might give Mr Pincombe some context.

  He shook his head. ‘He kept wanting to go out on the ground with the rifle companies. I heard he was next on the list for a cabby on the Javelin. That’s when he got zapped.’

  I smiled, and he smiled back. We both knew what that meant. The Javelin anti-armour rocket was a great bit of kit, and there was always a queue of guys wanting to have a go. Originally designed to take out tanks, it was now antipersonnel, anti-car, anti-bicycle, you name it. No job too small. And over long distances, too. Its optics and second-generation thermal-imaging technology could see in the dark or through rain and smoke. It was an infantryman’s dream. Once you’d acquired a target and locked it on, you kicked off the rocket and that was that. Most brilliant of all, it cost seventy-six grand a pop.

  Everyone wanted to lob the military equivalent of a Porsche at the enemy. There was a list, and everybody put their name up. When it was your turn, it was your turn, whether you were an eighteen-year-old rifleman or a forty-eight-year-old colonel. If there was nothing between you and a target up to 2,500 metres away, it kicked off and flew line-of-sight, with pinpoint accuracy. If you had a moving target, say a car, you could select top attack mode and the missile went up into the air, climbing 150 metres before striking down to penetrate the roof – just as it would do to a tank, hitting it at the point of least armour protection.

  Pincombe took a mouthful of Stella. ‘He got up onto the wall, took aim, and was just about to kick it off when…’ He supplied the impact site with his finger. ‘Taliban round, straight through the launch unit and into his nut. Simple as that.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and came out with the predictable, ‘At least he died the way he would have wanted.’

  No, Tenny. I bet you didn’t, mate.

  A photographer walked past and took a couple of shots. All he got of me was the back of my head.

  A bell tolled. Shoppers stopped and nodded at the drinkers. They all knew whose funeral it was. The local media had made it a big deal. I doubted a rifleman would be getting the same attention, or his local cathedral.

  I turned away as another flash kicked off. ‘I’ve got to go and meet up with a mate before we go in. See you there, yeah?’

  ‘You going to the wake?’

  ‘Nah, haven’t got time. Besides, I’m driving.’

  The bit afterwards was what I hated most. That was when the storytelling started. Everyone would swap memories of Tenny’s awesome talent with anything from a PlayStation to forty-kilo dumbbells – just how he would have wanted it – but also of his courage and compassion, which he would have hated. Then, at round about the five-pint mark, everyone would start admitting to each other how shit their lives really were. Divorces, child support, mortgages… and a longing to return to the days when no one gave a fuck, except about each other.

  Graham Pincombe went back to his beer, and I still couldn’t place him. I walked down the hill, took a left and paralleled the main road to avoid any more pubs. I followed the line of guys, wives, friends and everybody else Tenny had collected over the years snaking along the pedestrian walkway towards the cathedral.

  11

  I was early, but I could already see that by the time Squaddies Reunited rolled out of the pubs and got themselves up the hill it was going to be standing room only. Lots of guys were in number-twos, their best dress. Boots and medals gleamed around me. Off to one side, I spotted a bugler blowing nervously into his mouthpiece to keep his lips up to the mark. It was a huge responsibility, playing the Last Post. If you fucked up, it was the only memory people took away with them.

  ‘Oi, lard-arse…’

  I spun round. ‘Pikey, mate – how’s it going?’ I had to keep my voice down to control how happy I was to see him.

  Pikey had joined the battalion back in the late seventies, the same time as me. We were both scabby seventeen-year-old riflemen. He was South African and, I soon discovered, a total nightmare. For the first six months I couldn’t even understand what he said. All I knew was that every time I went down town with him, I woke up the next
day with a hangover and black eyes.

  For this lad, fighting was recreation. Provoking a brawl and getting filled in was his equivalent of going to the pictures. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing now. One, he was still in the army, and two, it was now Major Pikey. He had more medals hanging off his chest than a Soviet general on May Day. And he still looked as fit as a butcher’s dog, the fucker.

  I grinned. ‘Should I say “sir”? Well done, mate!’

  A group of senior officers filed past. Any rank above full colonel confused me. I’d never understood all that scrambled egg even when I was in. The American system of one to five stars was easier on the brain.

  Pikey whispered, ‘It’s a fucking nightmare.’

  I thought he was talking about the promotion.

  ‘I’m on rear party. I’m the lad who has to go and give the families the bad news. I’ve got four kids myself and two of them are older than the last two we buried.’

  A couple of the scrambled-egg brigade nodded at him and he nodded back. ‘I go and break it to them but they’re the ones making me cups of tea. Even reading the eulogies, I start to crack up, man. Just send me back out there, I can’t hack all this. My youngest, the girl, every time the mobile rings she flinches. She thinks it’s someone else in the battalion who’s got zapped.’

  My eyes followed the officers as they took their reserved seats in the first three rows on the left. Tenny’s family filled the opposite side of the aisle. Near the back of the church, a guy who’d just come in removed his raincoat to reveal an immaculate dark grey suit and well-pressed shirt. Pikey had also seen him – and noticed me noticing. ‘Who’s he?’

  The closely cropped hair, clean shave and glowing ebony skin made him look like a Premiership footballer from Senegal. ‘No idea.’ I turned back to Pikey. ‘I didn’t even know Tenny came from up here. All the time you’re with someone, and it never occurs to you to ask where they come from…’

  ‘That’s because it doesn’t matter where you come from, man. It’s where you are that matters.’ He slapped me on the back. ‘Good to see you, mate. Now I’ve got to fuck off and sort out the bearers.’

  His George boots clicked off down the aisle and I squashed myself into a seat at the end of the very last row. I liked being at the back. It had something to do with my schooldays. People can’t see or hear you there. And I’d be able to ping everyone as they came in.

  I picked up the order of service. Tenny stared out from the cover in his Green Jacket kit and, for some reason, a moustache. Maybe it was part of the uniform. Whatever, he looked very much the colonel. But some things never changed. I felt myself grin. His rusty Brillo pad hair was still trying to fight its way out from under his cap.

  Dex, Red Ken and I had told him that when he was prime minister we all wanted a peerage, something that would set us up for life. Tenny promised he would, if only to make us shut up: Lord Ken of t’Pit, Lord Dex of Cards, and Lord Stone of Stony Broke.

  The smile left my face. It couldn’t disguise the grief I felt that someone like him, a man with a future and a purpose, had got zapped – while someone like me… well, I just plodded on.

  Another flurry of toe- and heel-caps clicked along the flagstones as a group of officers and warrant officers made their way to the front pews. Then Dex and his girlfriend appeared, looking sharp in their immaculately tailored outfits. He was decked out in a black suit, crisp white shirt and thin black tie. She was in a short black dress and very high heels. Even her hair was jet black, in honour of the occasion. She still had her sunglasses on.

  I recognized Dex straight away, even though he’d shaved off all his hair. It looked like his new thing was Buddhism. He didn’t see me. He was too busy feeling pleased with himself – every squaddie within a fifty-metre radius had leant across to cop a good look at his companion, elbowed his neighbour in the ribs and muttered what a lucky bastard he was.

  Just a few paces behind – and dressed just as sharply – strutted the roll-up king. ‘Nicky boy, all right, son?’

  He gave me a quick wink and carried on going with the flow. ‘The do…’ He raised an imaginary glass. ‘We’ll see you there, yeah?’

  I nodded and grinned. These were the only two I wanted to spend time with today.

  12

  The lads at the back were packed shoulder to shoulder. Those who hadn’t been able to make it that far had to jostle for room on the cobblestones outside. The bugler fidgeted in one of the side chambers, now nervously flexing his lips. A dozen or so rows in front of me, Dex and Ken stood for a hymn. I could just see the shiny top of Dex’s head now and again when those behind him moved. The choir was really going for it, and so was he. Ten years of starting school with chapel every morning probably got you into the swing of things. The tall bird next to him didn’t seem to share his gusto. Now she’d removed her glasses I could tell she was bored out of her perfectly shaped skull.

  The only thing Dex seemed to have changed was his hairdo and the ribbon on his chest. He’d won the DFC in Iraq four years ago, just before he got out of the RAF. Dex’s dad would have been really proud. When Hitler marched on Poland, Dex’s dad, the seventh son of a maharajah, was just graduating from one of the poshest private schools in India. The moment Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany, so did the Viceroy. He didn’t consult the Indian Army, of course, but that’s colonialism for you. Thousands rallied to Lord Linlithgow’s call, and Dex Senior’s headmaster, an Old Etonian, made sure that when all his lads left for England they carried letters of introduction to an old schoolmate of his, an air vice marshal in the RAF.

  Dex’s dad took to the skies over London and Kent in a Hurricane, and if he was anything like his son, he’d have flown with a white silk scarf sticking out behind him on a coat hanger. After the battle of Britain, he fought in North Africa and Burma, winning the DSO and ending his career as a group captain. He stayed in England, made a fortune, inherited a couple of others, and sent his only child to Eton in honour of his old headmaster. The only downside to the Khattri story was that Dex’s dad must have been as mad as he was. When he died, most of the cash went in death duties.

  The Berlin ponytail had been about Dex keeping the RAF on their toes. He said his dad had flown in a turban and kept a spare in his flying jacket in case he became a PoW, and he was keeping up the tradition. The high command couldn’t make up their minds whether he was honouring a sacred tradition or taking the piss, and that suited him just fine. He’d liked to keep people guessing.

  The madness and the hair weren’t Dex’s only claims to fame. He was such a fine athlete that he beat all-comers at the 100 metres when he was at Eton – despite having had to stop and put his massive dick back into his shorts after it popped out in all the excitement. Sports Day had never been the same there since.

  Red Ken had gone totally grey, and the extra creases in his face had moved him on from basset hound to deflated barrage balloon. His nickname had originated during the miners’ strikes in ’84 and ’85. His family had been down t’pit for generations. His dad and two brothers had fought the police from the picket lines. Red Ken, along with quite a few others from mining families, had refused to meet Maggie Thatcher when she took time off from haranguing Arthur Scargill to visit Stirling Lines.

  The great and the good from the MoD trooped up and gave their addresses, then a couple of Tenny’s sisters got to their feet. One of them read a poem, the other extracts from letters he’d sent from Afghanistan. There wasn’t a dry female eye in the house, apart from the tall one’s, of course. I even saw a couple of guys’ hands go up and brush away a tear.

  The big moment came. The six pallbearers, all bulled up in their number-twos, moved up the aisle at a slow march. Pikey was one pace behind. The bugler got his lips in gear. Every man and his dog kept their fingers firmly crossed.

  As the hymn finished, the coffin was slowly raised from its cradle. Pikey stood at the head, his hand touching the wood. He guided its ascent onto six shoulders with a comb
ination of reverence and precision that had us all reaching for the Kleenex now.

  The cathedral fell silent. There was a muffled sob from the family seats, then the squeak of perfectly synchronized boots as the crew carried their heavy load. With Pikey leading, Tenny was marched slowly back down the aisle. The first mournful notes of the Last Post sounded across the nave. Every head swivelled as the coffin passed. Immediately behind it, the family huddled together, supporting each other as they walked, followed at a respectful distance by the lads with the scrambled egg.

  Janice looked as beautiful as ever, and so did the teenage twins. Their mother pushed one in her wheelchair and a much older man pushed the other. They wore identical long black velvet dresses that didn’t quite conceal the sheepskin-padded straps that held their ankles. They had bibs around their necks to catch the saliva, but nothing could stop their heads moving rhythmically from side to side. Tenny and Janice’s perfect world had collapsed around them when the girls were born – but their care had become the only thing that mattered.

  As the coffin reached the courtyard, the bugle call faded. It had been note perfect. The organ sparked up, which seemed to be the signal for everyone to exchange a few hushed words.

  The cathedral began to empty from the front. Red Ken and Dex filed past. Red Ken gave me another little nod and gestured discreetly to meet outside. Dex didn’t seem to understand protocol. He grinned from ear to ear as the tall one slid her sun-gigs back on, and gave me a big slap on the shoulder. ‘Great, wasn’t it? Splendid selection of hymns. I wouldn’t mind the same when I crash. Looking forward to the wake.’ He made a coming-for-a-drink? gesture.

  I nodded and waited for my turn to leave.

  By the time I got outside, the hearse was pulling away. Everyone in uniform saluted the coffin and the people in three black limos leaving for the private burial.