Recoil Read online

  But that wasn’t what made me uncomfortable. I closed the paper, sat back and shut my eyes.

  Sometimes, if a child caught my gaze and stared at me, the way kids do, I saw that little boy’s eyes – scared and wide, desperate for me to lift him up as if he were air. I’d wanted that to happen just as much as he had. I didn’t realize it until maybe ten years later, but it was as if saving him would have made up for all the others.

  And that was nothing compared with what I felt about leaving Sam and the rest of them to the fuck-up that was spread all over the scrubland that day.

  My cappuccino turned up and we went through the being-served routine.

  ‘Grazie mille.’ It was nice to be nice.

  He smiled back at me. ‘Prego.’

  My thanks weren’t so much for the coffee, as for helping me cut away from the look in the boy’s eyes as he’d slipped from my grasp. The image had burned into my brain, and haunted me whenever I was stupid enough to let myself remember him. The waiter had helped me do what I always did when thinking about the shit end of my life – cut away and get back to the more practical parts of it.

  It had been a hot refuel. Both helis had kept their rotors spinning, and marines ran up to us with the hose from the Sea Knight and shoved the nozzle into our tank. By then I had settled myself against the boxes, watching Standish and the general continue to congratulate each other on a job well done.

  Once we were safely on board the carrier fleet I’d been separated from the other two, and eventually flown to Nigeria. From there, armed with a new passport by the embassy, I was sent back to Hereford.

  I never saw Sam again. The moment he’d got back to Kinshasa, he’d thrown his hand in and left the Regiment. After that, he disappeared off the radar.

  Annabel had landed head first and broken her neck. She’d died immediately. The boy had managed to stay alive somehow, but he wasn’t expected to see his next birthday. That was if he knew when it was.

  All in all, a shit job. But fuck it, that was a long time ago. Now there wasn’t any scrubland, dead kids or Milo. There was a beautiful lake, a beautiful girl and the best cappuccino in five hundred miles.

  But still I couldn’t get the boy’s pleading stare out of my head. I hated it when this happened. I knew what was coming next.

  I leaned forward over the table to sip my brew, feeling as if it was wrong, somehow, to be enjoying the view. I couldn’t help but think about Sam. I knew it wasn’t my fault that I had been stranded on board when the heli took off. I knew I’d done my best to save the boy. But did Sam? Did he know how much I’d wanted to be back on the ground with him and the team?

  It wasn’t the only thing that kept me awake at night, but it had a nasty habit of sneaking under the wire when I was least prepared.

  Fuck it, so what? Next time, I’d stop at the headlines. I made myself sit back and soak up the surroundings as I checked my watch again. It was a cheapie from Australia, but it always made me smile. Silky had given it to me because I was always asking her the time. The dial was black and a kangaroo‘s paws were the hands. It didn’t have a strap. It hung off a small karabiner key-ring that I hooked on to one of my belt loops. It was well after one. Normally she’d have called by now.

  My mobile vibrated. I smiled as I saw the number. I still had her +41 country prefix in my address book. I stopped smiling when I opened up the text.

  Can’t make lunch. Sorry. x

  I folded up my paper, paid the bill, and went over to the desk to apologize. Could they make it dinner instead? No problem. They knew us. Or, rather, they knew her stepfather.

  My mobile kicked off again: And I’m sorry about this morning. xx

  I was sorry about this morning too, but I was fucked if I’d dwell on it. She’d been acting a bit strange these last couple of weeks, but it was a small cross to bear.

  I jumped on my borrowed moped and headed up to the high ground where the really stinking money hung out.

  2

  The soles of my trainers squeaked on the marble floor like some sort of intruder alarm. Watch this fucker: he’s not in Gucci loafers . . .

  The sun was low, about to disappear over the mountains. It was half six, and Silky should have been home a good hour ago. She never stuffed envelopes for the do-gooders much past five, or signed begging letters or whatever it was she did. I hadn’t quite got round to asking: I was just happy that this beautiful woman still didn’t mind being seen around with me and that her stepdad’s fridge was full of cold Peroni.

  Ten-foot-tall statues of Greek gods filled recesses on either side of the hall, each one bathed in its own pool of moody downlighting. Between the recesses, small mahogany tables displayed gem-encrusted ornaments and photographs in crystal frames. When Stefan had furnished this place, the Louis XIV repro department at Harrods must have emptied overnight.

  I reached the staircase that swept down to the kitchens. Stefan’s palace was more like a five-star hotel than a home, teeming with staff ready to cook me dinner or polish my shoes and press my suit, if only I’d had one. Even so, I wanted to make my own sandwich if I could get away with it. It felt too weird picking up a phone and having Giuseppe ask the chef to stick a slice of cheese between two hunks of bread.

  A lad hurried up the stairs on his way to the front door. I turned and waited in case he was opening it for Silky. That was the sort of thing they did round here.

  Just about the whole front of the house was glass, and all I could see to either side of the solid front door was mountains, and at the bottom of the valley, the lake and the financial district. I sometimes wondered if the only reason Stefan had chosen this house was because his money lined a bank vault down the road and he could sit at a window all night and watch it piling up the interest.

  The lad opened the door and I heard the crunch of tyres on gravel. The big wrought-iron gates had opened automatically. The radiator grille and solid gold Flying Lady on Stefan’s Rolls-Royce were nosing through.

  Now I really was worried. Not only was my girl late home and I had a ring to give away, but I was going to have to spend time with this shit-head. Stefan wasn’t renowned for his small-talk at the best of times, unless it involved leveraged buyouts and P/E ratios, which wasn’t my strong suit. And whenever he spent more than five seconds with me, the look on his face said loud and clear that he wished he was anywhere else.

  The highly polished Roller with darkened windows swept up to the house and the lad ran across to open the passenger door.

  Out he stepped, olive-skinned and grey-haired, hands like shovels even though they’d never held one. He wasn’t fat, but definitely well-dined. His dark features betrayed his Lebanese roots, but otherwise he looked every inch the European tycoon in his navy blazer and yellow tie.

  I took my chance and disappeared downstairs.

  ‘Yes, Mr Nick, can I help you?’

  Shit – I wasn’t going to get away with slicing my own bread. Giuseppe, the butler, was waiting, arms folded. He was the big cheese round here. Well, sort of. He was five foot five on tiptoe. His soles never squeaked on any surface: he sort of glided around the place and materialized wherever he was needed.

  ‘Hello, mate.’ I hated this Mr Nick business. ‘I’m only after a cheese sandwich. I didn’t want to bother anyone.’

  This was his domain, and I was trespassing. ‘It’s no bother, Mr Nick. It’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘I know, it’s just—’

  ‘Let me show you something, Mr Nick. Come.’

  A mischievous grin spread across his face as he led me to a table loaded with groceries. With his long thin nose above a greying moustache, and large brown eyes, which crinkled up with the rest of his face when he laughed, he reminded me of a cartoon Italian papa in a TV advert for pasta sauce I’d seen over the past couple of months. He should have been playing Papa on TV for real.

  ‘I ordered a special delivery from Fortnum & Mason. Look.’ He rummaged in an immaculately packed and padded box and pull
ed out a small jar.

  ‘Branston Pickle!’ I slapped his shoulder. ‘You’re a great man, Giuseppe. So – has the time come for me to show you how to make a cheese sandwich my way?’ I’d asked him for the stuff every time I’d come down here. It was the highlight of my day, watching him not having a clue what I was asking for, but turning up his nose at it anyway.

  I still remembered the mozzarella masterpiece the chef had run up last time, and how Giuseppe had shaken his head in disbelief as I picked out all the green stuff, then looked at me like I was talking Swahili when I asked for pickle. But that was before I overheard Stefan bawling him out yet again a couple of nights ago.

  It was par for the course around here for the staff to be treated like dirt. A day or two back, Stefan was kicking off because he’d caught Giuseppe mimicking him. He took off the boss so well – the rest of the staff had almost had a heart-attack when they’d congregated below stairs to honk about him, and Giuseppe boomed at them from the hallway. I was down there myself at the time, making some toast. I’d been so sure it was Stefan that I’d thrown the toast in the bin before he accused me of thieving. This time, Stefan was going ape-shit that the thirty-year-old malt in the decanter seemed to be evaporating and he was pointing the finger. I went in, told the stupid fucker it was my fault, and said I’d be happy to replace what I’d drunk, if it was a problem. I was Giuseppe’s new best mate overnight, and I hadn’t even had to tell him what I’d done. He’d had his ear to the door. Nothing went on in this house without him knowing about it.

  ‘Why do you stay and take his crap? Why don’t you just hose down all the whisky and walk out the gate?’

  Giuseppe pulled a bag of sliced white bread and a packet of processed cheese from the box. The people at Fortnum & Mason must have cringed. ‘I have my reasons. But I’m going home to Lazio soon, Mr Nick.’ He allowed himself the kind of smile that meant there was a lot more going on in that head of his than his eyes were prepared to give away. ‘Very soon. But, please, do not tell Mr Stefan.’

  I peeled off a couple of slices of processed cheese and put them on a slice of dry bread – no butter or spread.

  ‘Miss Silke seems happier than she’s been for a very long time.’ Giuseppe seemed disgusted by my culinary efforts. ‘And she’s stayed here much longer than usual.’

  I opened the Branston and spread a thick layer over the cheese. ‘How long is that?’

  He closed his eyes, as if he was doing mental arithmetic – or maybe he didn’t want to see any more food massacres in that kitchen. ‘She comes back maybe once a year, and stays only a week or two. She and Mr Stefan, well – let’s say she’s travelled a lot since her mother died.’

  I added another slice of dry bread to the sandwich. ‘How long ago was that?’

  I knew Stefan had married her mother in 1976. Silky had been an only child, just two, when her father’s car had wrapped itself round a lamppost in West Berlin. Her mother had moved back to her native Zürich and opened a bookshop. Stefan went in one day to buy a business book – ‘Probably Swimming With Sharks,’ Silky laughed – and came out with her phone number. They had married, and she gave up the bookshop because Stefan couldn’t stand the thought of his wife working. All in all, she’d suffered twenty years of loveless marriage with him in Lugano before she detected a lump in her breast. Two years later, despite the best medical treatment Stefan’s wealth could provide, she was history.

  ‘It’s like the drapes have been drawn for eight years. Miss Silke travels a lot, as I said, and comes back here in between. She does her charity work, which Mr Stefan sneers at but tolerates, and he is away on business so much that he sees more of Shanghai than he does of Switzerland.’

  I lifted the sandwich and held it out for him to admire. ‘Giuseppe, my friend, the great British sarnie. Want to get amongst it? Better than all that fancy gear you conjure up down here.’

  He threw up his hands in mock horror and I headed for the stairs.

  3

  I was squeaking my way back along the hallway as Stefan came out of the large sitting room that led off it. I sometimes wondered if he had the whole place bugged.

  ‘So, how did you enjoy lunch?’ His accent was German, with a hint of Middle Eastern rug trader – quite a feat for a little Italian guy to pull off. His expression, as ever, was bored, with more than a hint of ‘You still here, you gold-digging, freeloading lump of English shit?’

  I followed him back into the large, impersonal sitting room with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake and two enormous red sofas that faced each other across a wooden coffee-table big enough to sleep two. ‘We didn’t manage to meet up.’

  Stefan spent most of his time in this room. Giuseppe spent most of his in the one adjacent, with his ear to the large dividing doors. I wondered if he was there right now.

  ‘No, I can imagine.’ He turned his back to study the drinks table. ‘I saw her when she left this morning.’

  How could I respond to that without admitting we’d had a row? I couldn’t, and he knew it. Everything he ever said to me was designed to put me on the back foot. When we first met he even got my name wrong deliberately. Maybe that was how he’d made it to the top of his shitheap.

  He looked back. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Still at work.’ I peered at my watch. Fucking hell, ten to seven. Where had she got to? It wasn’t as if Lugano got gridlocked in the rush-hour. And, anyway, she was on a moped.

  He tutted. ‘This volunteering thing, it’s such a . . .’ He let it hang while he took the top off the whisky decanter, as if inviting me to say something he could later use in evidence.

  ‘Credit to her? Worthwhile thing to do?’

  He poured the thirty-year-old single malt into a glass. ‘Waste of time. Finance and business, that’s how you effect change.’

  The top went back on the decanter and the decanter went back on its tray. Lucky I didn’t like the shit; I wasn’t going to be offered any.

  He picked up the glass and took an appreciative sniff. ‘I will show you what changes the world.’ He shook his head disdainfully. It was hard to tell which he was sneering at more, the thought of people doing something for others for free, or my Branston doorstep.

  He removed a slim leather wallet from his jacket, and produced an all-black credit card. He flicked it up and down between his forefinger and thumb as if I was supposed to salivate or burst into applause. This card wasn’t the kind that plebs like me used. I had seen one or two before: they were for the über-rich. Thicker than the run-of-the-mill, they incorporated a swipe fingerprint identifier and a small LCD display. ‘This is what matters, Nick.’

  Once he had swiped his finger over the identifier, the LCD displayed six numbers that tumbled like lines of matrix. They settled to show a six-figure code. A password generator at the bank would sync with Stefan’s card. It would change every day, maybe with every transaction.

  ‘I can cash five million dollars with this one piece of plastic. That is what the world is all about. The bottom line.’

  He gave it an admiring glance before it went back into his pocket. No wonder he felt superior – if I tried to take out more than a couple of hundred dollars a day I got referred to my branch.

  ‘Still.’ He studied me over the top of his glass as it headed for his lips. ‘At least she’s using the seven years of expensive medical education I paid for.’ He watched my face carefully. He knew full well that this was the first I’d heard of it.

  I couldn’t pick him up on it. How could I admit I didn’t know such fundamental stuff? My mobile vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and stared at the text.

  wont make it home tonight – work – really sorry – ill email.

  I waved the phone at Stefan. ‘She sends her love.’

  His lip curled. ‘I see.’ He took a sip. ‘So, you think she will be back, do you? You really think you know her that well?’

  ‘She’s just working late.’

  He scoffed. ‘Welc
ome to the wonderful world of Silke. You two clearly had a – what shall we call it? – an exchange of views this morning, and now she doesn’t come home. Well, fancy that. I’ve had this for thirty years. She’s gone again to God knows where.’ He turned to look out of the window. ‘I wanted her to do law here, then work with me in my companies, so she went and did medicine at Cambridge instead. She finished at Cambridge, and did she start practising? No, she went travelling.’ He faced me. ‘Something doesn’t go the way Silke wants, she runs away. That’s how she’s always been. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. So, excuse my scepticism, but if I were you I wouldn’t expect to see her any time soon.’

  I waved the phone again. ‘She’s working.’

  ‘If you say so.’ He took a long sip. ‘Do say if she’s not coming back. Giuseppe will have you driven down the hill to a bus stop tonight. Or maybe the autostrada. You seem quite proficient in securing free rides.’ He looked me up and down. ‘I don’t imagine it will take you long to pack.’

  Fuck him. He was the least of my problems right now.

  I walked out and headed for her room, taking the stairs two at a time as I tapped her number into my mobile.

  4

  All I got was voicemail.

  ‘It’s Nick, I’m sorry too. Please call me. I miss you.’

  For the first time in years I cared enough about someone to feel upset. Had she really gone? Didn’t she like me any more?

  I logged on to Hotmail. Nothing yet.

  I picked up my mobile again and dialled the Mercy Flight office. I knew the guy on the desk. We’d bumped into each other a few times when I’d picked her up after work. On the phone, he’d always gob off in French till he realized who I was, then switch to fluent English at the drop of a hat. Silky could do the same. German, French, English, Italian. It was all the same to her.