'The doctors don't reckon so,' said Cooksley. 'It's incurable. Both of them are going to die.' He paused, looking down into the mud. 'Sarah's cracking up, I don't know how much longer she can stand it.' He looked around. 'You don't know what it's like, Matt. Think of the worst torture you can imagine, then multiply it by ten. And you still wouldn't even be close.'
Matt started walking again, pushing on through the field. 'If there was any treatment you'd get it on the National Health, wouldn't you? You wouldn't need extra money?'
He could hear Cooksley taking a deep breath, turning something over in his mind. 'There's a doctor in California called Peter Beelah. He's working on a gene therapy. It's completely experimental, and unregulated. Some people think you shouldn't even mess around with genetics. But if it's our only chance, we'll take it. The boys would have to be there for a year, getting treatment every day.'
'How much does it cost?'
'Half a million dollars,' he replied. 'Bugger it, Matt, I'm just an ex-soldier. I sell mobile phone accessories for some crappy little firm in Hereford. I'm making eighteen bloody grand a year, plus commission. But there never is any commission, because the product's rubbish and I'm a rubbish salesman. Where the hell am I ever supposed to get that kind of money?'
'I'm not here to sell you anything,' said Matt. 'You are your own man, and you make your own choices.' He started climbing over the wall they had reached, holding out an arm to help his friend across. He could tell from the way Joe held himself that he was desperate to hear more.
'It's one mission,' he continued. 'It will be illegal, and off the books, but we'll have help from Five, and there will never be any charges. It will take about a month. At the end, the pay-off will be more than enough to take care of both kids.'
Cooksley laughed bitterly. 'Where do I sign?'
Matt rested his hand on his friend's shoulder.
'If it would save my boys, I'd walk through hell,' said Cooksley sharply. 'With a smile on my face.'
Matt stepped into the dark room. A chink of light was shining through a half broken pane of glass, but there was nothing else to illuminate his path. He walked over a beer bottle, and an empty pizza carton. Kneeling down, he shook Reid on the shoulder. 'Wake up, man,' he said. 'We need to talk.'
Reid sat bolt upright, his expression angry, his fists clenched as if he were about to throw a punch. Instinctively Matt ducked away: he'd felt one of Reid's blows on his jaw before — they'd fallen out over a girl — and he'd promised himself never to take another one. He had a punch that would rock Mike Tyson.
Reid looked at Matt, blinked, then grinned. 'What the hell are you doing here?'
'Cooksley told me where to find you,' Matt replied. 'He said you'd be kipping down here for a couple of nights. Clean yourself up and let's go get some food. I want to talk to you.'
Reid struggled up from the mattress and walked towards the bathroom. He was still wearing the jeans and the sweatshirt he'd had on the night before, and Matt could still smell the beer on his breath. Matt looked around the room. He'd known some guys to doss down in some rough looking places for a few nights when they needed to and not let it get to them. But this was a hovel. A small house about five miles from the village, set amid a group of three agricultural buildings, it belonged to a farmer who owned apple estates along the Welsh borders. At harvest time, farmers like that bring in cheap labour to pick the fruit. This was where the labourers would sleep. There was one sofa, two mattresses on the floor, and what only the most optimistic estate agent could call a kitchen — a sink, a kettle and an electric ring encrusted with old baked beans. Paper was hanging loose from the walls, the single uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling was broken, and a bucket in the corner was collecting the water that dripped through the roof. What Reid was doing here, Matt had no idea. But he could see why he was on Alison's list.
Dressed in a fresh pair of chinos, with his chin shaved and his hair combed, Reid didn't look particularly successful or prosperous, but at least he didn't look like a tramp. They drove in silence back to Hereford, parked the car, and headed towards Ascari's Cafe on West Street. Reid had hand-rolled a pair of cigarettes in the car and now he lit one, putting the other in his pocket. It was already nearly noon, but Ascari's served breakfast all day and it was the best fry-up in town. Greasy, protein-rich food was what they both needed. It would settle their minds, and then they could talk.
What's happened? Matt asked himself as they walked through the street. She'd been working as a waitress by night and studying to be a beautician during the day when Reid met her, and Matt had first met her at a squadron Christmas party. Way out of your league, they'd told Reid. This was a woman who didn't need to study beauty, she was already there. But, Matt admitted later, they were jealous as well. Jane was the best-looking woman any of them had ever been out with. Tall, with dark hair and strong cheekbones, she held herself like a princess. Reid had fallen hard, and never so much as looked at another girl after that. So what's happened? Matt wondered. Reid and Jane lived just down the road from Cooksley in Pembridge. They had a lovely house, two kids, Eddie and Chloe. Matt had been with him in Bosnia when Eddie was born, and he'd never seen anyone so happy. When he got the camcorder film from Jane of Eddie taking his first steps, he risked being RTUd by breaking into a UN warehouse to steal the batteries to get the camcorder working. He risked his career just to watch a baby waddling across the floor.
So what's he doing sleeping in a farm labourers' barn five miles from his family? How do our lives get so tangled up?
A plate of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, black pudding and chips landed in front of him. Matt pitched some ketchup on the side of the plate, and loaded the first forkful of sausage into his mouth. 'You've got a lovely wife, and two nice kids,' he said. 'What are you doing kipping down in a place like that?'
'Sometimes the breaks go with you, sometimes against you.'
'But Jane, the kids — you haven't split with them have you?'
Reid put down the fork, a piece of bacon still hanging from it. 'Leave Jane? Are you joking?' He paused, put the food into his mouth and chewed slowly. 'Sometimes I think I love her too much.'
For a moment Matt found himself thinking about Gill, wondering what she might be doing.
'So, this loving her too much,' he said, 'you express it by walking a couple of miles down the road and sleeping in a hovel? Christ, we should have let the Kosovans finish you off when they had the chance.'
'You don't understand.'
'Tell me then.'
'I lost my job,' said Reid. 'I had some work body-guarding a French guy, paid quite well. I lost that, and we ran up some debts. Then I got some work for some South Africans, but they buggered off without paying me, so that was even worse. We were getting more and more behind with the mortgage, taking out loans just to pay for the kids' shoes. Then I get a job looking after a Columbian guy in London, but it fell through after two days. I haven't worked for a month, and I haven't earned any proper money for six months.'
We're all the same, thought Matt. Trying to keep some woman happy. We just have different ways of going about it.
'You told Jane you still had the job, and you were dossing down in the barn, right?'
'You know the kind of woman Jane is,' Reid said. He turned to his cup of tea, stirring in two sugars. 'She's a princess. She expects a man to be able to go out and earn a living and support her and the kids. I can't go home and look her in the eye and say that I'm not able to do that.'
Matt didn't know what to say. 'Sooner or later, you've got to level with her.'