'No.'
Dom hadn't checked in so he certainly hadn't gone airside — if there was an airside. I didn't know how it worked in this place.
Fuck it, I'd stay right here until the flight left and see if he turned up.
I moved off and sat on one of the millions of vacant chairs, waiting for him to show.
Flicking through Pete's gear, I found nothing that gave me any clues about what had happened. There was just the normal stuff in his wallet. Two Lloyds debit cards, organ-donor card, that sort of thing, with about sixty dollars.
Filming helicopters, my arse.
I got out my mobile.
'It's Nick Stone in Basra. I need to talk to Moira Foley. It's important.'
I was waiting for Kate to answer, then go to find Moira, but the boss herself came straight on. 'Hello, Nick. It's Moira, how are you? I've been so worried…'
I knew she hadn't so she didn't have to sound so concerned. 'Pete… you know?'
'God, it's fucking awful. They called me at home and—'
'Where's Dom? You know where he is?'
'With you. He filed with Pete, then called me after Pete was shot. He said he'd told you what happened.'
I held the mobile away from me and checked the display for messages. The thing was always on silent as it was a big no-no to have a mobile go off in the field.
'Nick, hello? Hello?'
I didn't need to move it back to my ear to hear her.
'I need him to call me back soon, Nick. Tell him we need a report to go with the film. It's great footage and we really need to—'
I cut her off, sat back and waited.
PART TWO
23
My arse was numb. I'd been parked on a hard plastic chair in A and E for the best part of four hours and still hadn't been called to see a doctor. Maybe I shouldn't have told the triage nurse I'd gouged my arm at work with a chisel. I should have been more upfront about being brassed up by a 7.62 short. At least it was getting a rest in the foam sling they'd given me in the land of Pizza Hut delivery.
The only entertainment left after London Lite and a couple of Sunday supplements people had dropped under the chairs was the flat-screen TV on the wall above the reception desk. It played without sound, and there's only so much BBC 24 tickertape reading you can take. Besides, I didn't like what I'd been seeing.
Two Polish builders were sitting next to me, one with half a finger hanging off and the other making more noise than if it was his injury and he'd lost a whole hand. Two teenage girls with huge earrings and their hair scraped back went on much too loudly about who was having who on their estate, and who'd had whose kid.
I stared down at the Bergen between my feet, getting even more angry with Dom as I thought about Pete's few possessions stuffed into my side pouch. It hadn't been an attack while filming, and it couldn't have been an ND (negligent discharge). The rumour mill would have exposed it by now.
But I'd find out who had done it and why, and Dom was going to tell me the truth if it was the last thing he did. But the fucker had evaporated.
The Big Mac and fries I'd blocked my arteries with at the on-site McDonald's an hour ago were making me thirsty. A kid came in with a bloodstained T-shirt wrapped round his hand. Within minutes, he was called to the only free cubicle. There was time to go and get a drink.
I checked the dressing wasn't leaking as I'd ripped the wound open on the way back to the UK. My Bergen strap had scraped down my arm as I took it off and its weight had ripped the stitches from the skin.
Trolleys lined both sides of the corridor, loaded with old people coughing up shit. I couldn't tell if they were waiting for A and E or were just overspill from the wards.
The two Poles got very excited about something on the TV. I looked up to see, for maybe the tenth time since I'd been sitting there, the crystal-clear, black-and-white images of me tumbling into the sewage and Pete being my hero. Of course, the part where he'd killed people had been cut. Cameramen don't do things like that.
It was being played over and over again, not only because it was great bang-bang but also because it was being pushed out as a tribute to Pete — and to Platinum Bollocks, of course, for filming it. As for me, being security, thankfully I didn't get a mention. I was just 'a member of the crew'. No TV company wants it known that they have protection. It isn't good for the image.
I watched as I got hit and dropped like a bag of shit. The Poles were loving it. Real live bang-bang, filmed by a real live Polish hero.
I'd booked myself on to the next day's two p.m. Royal Jordanian to Amman. The flight had had the world's most obvious sky marshal sitting in the galley by the cockpit door. Kitted out in a very sharp suit and some of Russia's finest steel sticking out of his holster, he was even scaring the flight attendants.
We landed at three thirty, but there were no useful connecting flights till the morning. I'd spent last night on an airport bench because I wanted to be sure of a ticket for the nine a.m. BA to Heathrow the moment the desk opened — only to discover when it did that the airline will put you up in a hotel if you're waiting overnight for a connecting flight.
It had been last night that I fucked up my arm again. I sort of let them think I was a wounded soldier and they upgraded me to business all the way through to London.
I'd taken the fast train to Paddington, jumped into a cab and got the driver to take me to Guy's. I could have walked round the corner to St Mary's, but south London was more my stamping ground. Going to Guy's was a trip down Memory Lane.
Besides, it was closer to Brockwell Park.
24
I tried Dom's mobile for the fifth time since landing. Still only voicemail.
I rang Moira again. 'Has he called in yet?'
'No. Have you heard anything?'
'Nothing. I'm in London.'
There was a long pause. Something not very good was about to happen.
'Listen, Nick, with Pete gone and Dom missing, there isn't any reason to keep you on. That's it, I'm afraid. Send me an invoice for the days worked and I'll get our accounts department to sort it out.'
She wasn't one to mess about, was she?
'Nick, I have to go.'
So, that was it, then. No more pay cheques from TVZ 24.
A very pissed-off voice paged a doctor on the Tannoy. They might have installed CCTV since the 1970s, but some things about the place hadn't changed. The woman's voice sounded exactly the same as the reception staff had when I'd been there as a nine-year-old leaking red stuff.
I lived on the Tabard Estate, a few streets away, in a block of council flats thrown up after the war. They'd been built on a newly vacant site. Demolition had been cheap, courtesy of the Luftwaffe.
All the houses were given names associated with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Apparently the pilgrimage had started from the Tabard Inn or somewhere. We ended up in Eastwell House: Eastwell was one of the stops along the pilgrims' route, they'd said. I'd never read the Canterbury Tales. I'd thumbed through the Canterbury Messenger once while waiting for a train back to Shorncliff barracks when I was a boy soldier, but that probably didn't count.
I went to a primary school near the chocolate factory, which for some reason us kids thought was owned by Bob Monkhouse. Another rumour flying round was that the sweet shop in Kirby Grove had a shed behind it stacked with Coca- Cola and R. White's lemonade. One dinner-time, a gang of us set off to scale the wall. Like a dickhead, I volunteered to be first up. I hadn't taken account of the broken glass set into the concrete along the top. I fucked myself up big-time. Blood poured from my lacerated hand, but I knew Guy's was just a couple of minutes away. I ran all the way there. They did their stuff, and told me to go home. I didn't argue. After that I was forever grazing my knees and elbows and taking myself off to Guy's, then home for the rest of the day.