Fortress Read online

  ‘I think we’re going to have to take some soundings before I let you off the leash. All right?’

  14

  Newland Hall, Malvern Hills, Worcestershire

  Mary Buckingham brushed a few crumbs off the ancient oak table as she put his coffee in front of him, black, no sugar. Tom had appeared at the door without any warning. She hadn’t even known he was back in the country. Usually she got a call to say that he was on his way. She touched his shoulder, felt the tension in it, then sat down and tried not to make it too obvious that she was watching him intently.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ He smiled at her, then let his gaze drift back to a vacant space on the kitchen wall.

  She was torn. Every homecoming was a cause for celebration, a huge wave of relief that brought the knowledge he was safe and in one piece. But she had learned to keep her joy to herself, just as she hid her tears whenever he left. She used to think that it would get easier, that the heart-aching wrench of seeing her son, so recently a child to her, going off to dangerous places – he could never say where – would diminish over time. In fact, it was the opposite, as if a malign calculator in the back of her mind was totting up the probability that the longer he stayed in the Regiment the more likely it was that the worst would happen. She had accepted that she couldn’t know where he was going or what he was doing, knew that it was probably better that way. But she still tensed when the news came on, or if Hugh paused when answering the phone, even held her breath. So the relief when he reappeared usually made her almost light-headed with joy.

  But not today. Something was wrong.

  ‘How was the flight?’

  There were a million other questions she lacked the courage to ask.

  ‘Fine. Flew back with a young lad from Brum.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Was that nice?’

  Tom said nothing.

  She couldn’t remember a time when he had been so distant. When Delphine had lost the baby, he had been full of sorrow, but he’d handled it, talked about it. He wasn’t one to push things down. But something had sucked the energy out of him.

  Of course he had grown out of overt displays of emotion at a young age. Seared into her memory was the first time they’d left him at school, aged just seven, trussed up in his stiff new uniform. In the car on the way and again when they’d arrived, he had given her strict orders: Just a quick hug, okay, Mum, and NO TEARS. And the same had applied to school holidays. After a few days he would let his guard down – but then, as if he was preparing her for what was to come, he would terrify the life out of her by climbing the tallest trees and crossing the lake when it froze. Once he’d come back drenched and half frozen, almost hysterical with delight after the ice had cracked. Nothing had fazed him even then. He simply had no sense of fear.

  But now that he was sitting at the table with the untouched coffee in front of him, that was what she was seeing in his face: fear.

  He scanned the familiar kitchen landscape, the timeless Welsh dresser with the blue and white ‘Old Luxembourg’ Villeroy & Boch dinner service, passed on by his grandmother and, miraculously, still complete, though one of the soup bowls displayed multiple joins from its surgery when, aged four, he used it as a soldier’s helmet. He looked at the clock, a rectangular Dutch antique with a twisted barley-sugar pole on either side of its face, and a soft chime that measured out life at home in reassuring quarter-hours, the parquet floor, pleasantly worn but good for another century, and the black retriever resting its chin on his thigh: Horace, one of a long line of more or less identical animals that had graced the Buckingham kitchen since he’d been in a high chair. Thank God some things never changed. Except that everything just had.

  He looked at her. ‘I’m done – it’s over.’ There was something cold in his gaze that Mary didn’t recognize. She was bewildered – she had no idea what he was talking about. ‘The Regiment – I’m out.’

  As she took this in, two opposing emotions went into battle inside her. This was the day she had secretly prayed for, that one day he would just outgrow it and there would be life beyond all the anxiety. She had hoped at one point that Delphine would bring it about, but the relationship hadn’t changed anything.

  So she was happy – for herself. She knew the Army was his whole world. He’d always made it clear that was where he was headed, that nothing else would do – so if he was quitting, something completely unprecedented must have happened. Unless it was quitting him – in which case he would be devastated.

  ‘Well, that’s …’ now she had started she had to finish ‘… it’s – I’m sure you know when the right time—’

  His face darkened. He brought the mug down hard, sending some of the coffee splashing over the table. The dog yelped, equally confused. ‘There’s nothing right about it.’

  Now she was scared. On the few occasions she had ever seen him angry he had been truly alarming – when a neighbour had run over a previous Horace, and when he had surprised some burglars to whom he gave such a beating that the police nearly charged him with GBH. Only Hugh’s measured intervention, and the fact that he and the policeman were both on the board of the football club, had saved him.

  She opened her mouth to speak, still not sure what she was going to say. But he put up his hand. ‘Let’s talk about something else – anything.’

  She went into conversation autopilot: the neighbours’ flood; the campaign to save the row of poplars that lined the main road, beyond the pheasant woods; the youth club his father had championed, but the locals were opposed to. None of it required him to do anything other than listen – if he was hearing any of it. She couldn’t tell. ‘But all we seem to be talking about at the moment is what’s happening in the cities. Your father says he can’t remember a time like it. Even the miners’ strike wasn’t anything like this, he says. He thinks they might declare a state of emergency.’

  ‘Where is he, anyway?’

  ‘Up in town, staying at the club.’

  If only Hugh was here, he and Tom could have gone off to the pub and Tom could have unloaded. But she was alone and that made the atmosphere more intense. Maybe she could get him to come back on some pretext.

  ‘I’m going to get cleaned up, then go and see Delphine.’

  She put a hand on his. He flinched slightly but she left it there. He frowned at her.

  ‘Haven’t you spoken to her?’

  ‘Her phone was off so – no. Why?’

  His voice trailed away: he could see his mother had something to say.

  ‘Darling, she’s gone home – to France. She came by to tell us. She said she thought she needed a bit of time at home. All the trouble here – and everything else.’

  They both knew what ‘everything else’ meant.

  ‘She didn’t want to just disappear without saying goodbye.’

  ‘To you! I need to see her.’

  ‘Darling, I think you should let her be – for now. Just let her know you’re safe. I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear that.’

  He got up, his jaw set. Was he even listening?

  ‘She’s had so much to deal with. Losing the baby – it’s something a woman doesn’t really get over. I’m not saying it doesn’t affect men too. But it can be devastating.’

  He stared at her vacantly. No Regiment and now no Delphine. His whole life had just ground to a shuddering stop.

  15

  Doncaster

  Sam was soaked through. His linen jacket and even the T-shirt under it had fused themselves into a sodden outer skin. His backpack was a limp wet lump drooping from its straps. He hadn’t bargained on a walk from the station. At the taxi stand he had given the address and the cabbie’s face had contorted with dismay.

  ‘You ’avin’ a laugh?’

  The second had just taken off.

  ‘Forget it,’ said the third.

  He’d tried waiting for a 42, the bus he used to take to school, but a passer-by told him he was wasting his time. ‘All suspended cos of the riots. Four buses were torch
ed. Where have you been – Mars?’

  He didn’t have to walk far to see it: the bright orange glow to the east, and emanating from it, the almost continuous shriek of sirens, though the streets near the station were eerily empty.

  Twenty-five rain-soaked minutes later, he reached the foot of Trap Hill. A cordon stretched along the east side of Farley Street. The side door of a police van slid open and a PC in riot gear poked his head out. ‘Oi, you. Get over here.’ After four days of semi-continuous battle pleasantries were unlikely to be forthcoming. Inside the van were several more cops – all in various stages of sleep.

  Sam set his face to reasonable, accompanied by a small enquiring smile. ‘How can I help, Officer?’

  The cop glanced at one of his mates, who leaned out to look at him, then exchanged glances with his colleagues in the time-honoured fashion, as if to say, We’ve got a right one here.

  ‘You lost or summat?’

  ‘No, I’m not, actually.’

  ‘You’re not from round here.’

  Sam pointed to Jimmy’s Kebabs, halfway up Trap Hill, still intact, albeit with a plywood front window. ‘See the kebab shop? That’s where I grew up.’

  They stared at him. He knew what they were thinking. His hair was black, but his skin was pale and he’d always made a point of staying out of the sun. The linen suit – albeit drenched – along with the designer backpack, was what he considered to be the uniform of an ambitious young academic. No one round here looked like this.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kovacevic, Dr Kovacevic.’

  Sam was a convenient Anglicization. His mother had protested but eventually given way and, apart from her, no one called him Sahim.

  The cop raised his eyebrows. ‘Hospital’s that way.’ He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the orange glow. He snorted. ‘They’re a bit short right now.’

  ‘Not a medical doctor, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Criminology.’

  They burst out laughing.

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place.’

  They continued to laugh, sharing the news with the others in the van.

  ‘Here, your mam won’t be at home, son. The street’s been evacuated.’

  All he’d had from her was a text from an unknown number. Help – they’ve taken me refuge. Help. Mamina. By the time he’d tried to call back a recording said the number was disconnected.

  A cop got out and lifted the police tape for him to go through. ‘Try the Krypt. They’ve put some of them up in there.’

  Sam frowned.

  ‘The church hall, as was.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Thanks for your help.’

  Again, the cops looked at each other. Probably the first thanks they’d had in quite a few days, he thought, as he plodded up the empty street towards his old home.

  It was six weeks since he had spoken to his mother, a year since he’d seen her, and that was only when she’d got herself admitted to hospital after his brother had taken off. I think it’s her heart – it’s broken, explained a weary houseman, a fellow Muslim, who said he had tried his best to find a medical explanation for her condition. ‘Best treatment? Get your brother back. He’s all she talks about.’

  All his life, it seemed, he had been at the mercy of her pleas: help Karza with his homework, fetch him back from friends, help him find a job, get him from the police station. And all the while Sam had got top marks, never got drunk or mixed with the wrong people, and had got into a good university, with no acknowledgement from her. Always it was Karza. What does she still see in him – after all I’ve done? The unfairness was infuriating.

  He had been in Oxford when the riots kicked off, giving a lecture on gang culture: how was that for timing? When the community is undermined by the exodus of wealth and skills caused by lack of opportunity, setting off a downward spiral, and the traditional authorities – family, male role models – retreat from their stabilizing role or are absent, gangs fill the vacuum. The young seek protection; ancient concepts of revenge and the preservation of honour become paramount again.

  He had been applying for a lecturing post. He’d thought it was his for the taking. He had already made a name for himself with appearances on TV. His lines about self-help and responsibility made good sound-bites, and he had just the right tone to appeal to every kind of audience.

  But this lot had looked bored and none of the faculty had even turned up. The applause was tepid, just a few desultory questions. For the first time in a long while, he had felt the cloak of inferiority wrap itself around him. Once attached, it was hard to shake off. When the board had finally convened to interview him he could tell that they were just going through the motions, and when the professor had started texting during one of Sam’s answers, he had stopped mid-sentence, picked up his bag and walked out. On the bus to the station, still fuming, it had occurred to him that now he knew what it felt like, the incoherent rage some of the thugs he’d studied talked about.

  The former church hall stank like the refugee camp they had stayed in when they’d first arrived in England, of sweat, boiled veg and unflushed toilets. Inside was a sea of camp beds, mostly mothers with small children. He approached a huddle of women in scarves, in the midst of which, holding forth, in a tacky fake-fur coat and ankle boots, was his mother.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  They stopped talking and gazed up at him. He smiled back. He knew what they were thinking. Here comes Sammy the doctorate. Too bad his mother couldn’t share in the admiration.

  ‘Ah, good,’ she said, as if he had just come back from the shops.

  Eighteen years ago, just a few months after they had settled in Doncaster, his father had stepped out for a pint of milk and never come back. Recently Sam had done some digging and found out that he had gone back to Bosnia and started another family.

  She got up, took his hands and kissed him purposefully on both cheeks. He noticed that, despite the privations of the last few days, her makeup was still being liberally applied. Wherever she was, she always had a mirror.

  ‘So wonderful of you to spare the time to come all this way.’

  He looked at the crowd. Not exactly starved of attention. Was this new-found appreciation of him mainly for their benefit? ‘So, what happened?’

  She smacked her forehead as if dispatching a mosquito. ‘Ugh! They came down the street, smashing everything. Oh, it was terrible, terrible! Jimmy’s away so I was all on my own.’

  ‘Did they hurt you?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’d put the shutters down. But they stood there and banged and banged. And the dreadful things they shouted. It was just like Bosnia.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think there’ve been any massacres.’ It was an ill-chosen remark but he couldn’t help himself. She was adept at exaggeration.

  ‘After they’d gone the police came, asking if I was okay. I told them how traumatized I was alone so they said I’d better come here. Can you take me to the airport?’

  Fuck – had she gone senile?

  ‘You don’t want to go home?’

  ‘No, silly boy! Jimmy’s booked me a flight to Málaga tomorrow. He says we should stay there where it’s safe.’

  ‘In Spain?’

  She shrugged, as if it was what any sensible person would do. ‘He has a sea-view flat.’

  ‘Oh, fine, then.’

  He could feel the familiar simmering irritation. She had dragged him back from Oxford to book her a minicab.

  Suddenly her face crumpled.

  ‘What is it, Mum?’

  She turned her eyes up to him, wide, full of love and longing. ‘It’s Karza.’

  ‘Right.’ His heart sank.

  ‘They still don’t know where he is. Jimmy’s been onto the Foreigners’ Office again—’

  ‘Foreign Office, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, and they wash their hands of him.’

  She didn’t need to say any more. A year ago, his brother and
two of his equally useless and misguided mates had boarded a flight to Istanbul, made their way to the border, crossed over to Syria and enlisted with the rebels. Knowing Karza, Sam expected he’d be back in three weeks. But after a month they’d got a photo of him holding an AK47, a pair of bandoliers crossed over his shoulders. And for the first time in as long as Sam could remember, Karza was grinning. He had found his calling.

  ‘Have you asked Bala?’

  She threw up her hands and clasped her forehead. He had heard that Bala, one of Karza’s fellow fuckwits, had come back four months earlier with a serious leg wound. ‘He stays in his room twenty-four out of seven. Says nothing to his mama, not even please and thank you for his foods. So I go there myself. I ask, I beg, “Where is Karza?” He tells me to – I can’t say the dreadful words. Sammy, please, can’t you do something?’ His mother tilted her head to one side and looked him up and down, as if his drenched linen suit was a uniform that conferred on him some official status.

  ‘Now you are a doctorate, can’t you at least do that one thing?’

  From as early as he could remember he and his brother had gone separate ways. While Karza had stuck resolutely with the other Muslim kids, Sam had made a point of courting English friends, copying their habits and manners, like a method actor studying for a role he intended to play for the rest of his life. He had adored Britain from the moment they arrived. He couldn’t believe his luck to have been exiled from what he saw as a backward place, a cauldron of prejudice and religious dogma. He loved school, and his teachers loved him: he gobbled up knowledge as if it was ice cream. He had had no time for Karza and his friends, who seemed bent on denying themselves any hope of advancement.

  And yet their mother doted on his brother.

  ‘Mum, he’ll be lucky if he’s allowed back without a struggle. He can’t expect to go off to Syria and just come home when he’s had enough.’

  ‘But he has passport. He’s British citizen.’

  Before he could reply, she shut her eyes and shook her head as she always did when she wanted to warn him that she would be deaf to whatever he said. Then, just as he was cursing himself for having made the journey, she reached up to him. He sighed, lowered himself into her embrace and just for a moment let himself go – felt the soft warmth that he had so loved as a boy.