She’d practically stood over me while I’d thrown some suitably sober clothing into a bag and borrowed a black coat from my mother that contrived to make me look bulky without actually keeping me warm. Then we’d headed north.
As we’d crawled across the Pennines in freezing fog, Madeleine had filled me in on how she’d come to be involved in Kirk Salter’s life and the aftermath of his death.
“He came into the office to see Sean in early November,” she explained. “He was back in civvy street and looking for a job.”
Somehow I wasn’t surprised at the news. Since he’d left the army himself, Sean had moved into close protection work. If you’re ex-Special Forces and you’re an expert in your field, there aren’t many alternative career choices open to you. Sean had, it seemed, found immediate success, and Kirk had certainly been big enough to have been useful as a bodyguard.
“So what was he doing in Germany?” I asked. When she’d initially told me the location and manner of his death, I’d automatically assumed it was military. “Was he on a job for Sean?”
“Sort of,” Madeleine said. “He’d gone to do a VIP protection course over there. Since they banned handguns in the UK most of the bigger training schools moved to either Holland or Germany, as you probably know.”
I hadn’t known it, but I wasn’t inclined to correct her. “So what happened?”
Madeleine flicked her eyes to the rear-view mirror before she pulled out round a slower moving truck in the centre lane. “We’re not entirely certain,” she said, off-hand. “I’m sure Sean will fill you in.”
I watched the gloomy humps of other cars appearing out of the fog alongside us and reflected idly that Kirk should have been too experienced a soldier to get himself shot so carelessly. Well, hell, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.
I hadn’t always felt that way about him, of course. When we’d been undergoing Special Forces training together everyone wanted big Kirk on their squad for any exercise. Particularly if there was any heavy lifting involved. I’d have sworn he was solid, dependable, one of my comrades. Someone to trust your life to. Mind you, I’d have sworn that about the others, too.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
I almost winced as the list unrolled inside my head. I’d managed to go without thinking about my quartet of attackers for a couple of months and now it was like they’d never been away.
The four of them were part of the same intake of trainees. We were supposed to form the kind of bond that would see us all attending reunions together in fifty years. Then one night they’d drunk enough to tip them over into macho bravado and I’d taken on the shape of prey.
After they’d raped me, they’d sobered up enough to realise I could finish them, if they didn’t finish me first. I remember lying there, half-senseless from the beating and the pain, and listening with remote interest while they’d discussed the best method of disposing of my body.
And that’s when Kirk had stumbled upon us.
He may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was certainly one of the heaviest. Even four to one, the others hadn’t had the courage to go against him.
Kirk had stayed with me like a big dog, holding my hand until the medics arrived, until they’d scraped me up and poured me into the ambulance. I never dreamed for a moment that when it came to the court martial he would deny everything he’d seen and heard.
But he did.
My shoulder blades gave an involuntary shudder and I shook myself out of it. A junction sign flowed past my window like a wraith, but I couldn’t recall the last few miles.
I twisted back in my seat. “Madeleine,” I said, my voice level, “you must know I didn’t give a damn about Kirk Salter, alive or dead. Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me exactly why Sean wants me at his funeral?”
She gave a rueful half smile. “I wondered when you’d ask,” she said, “but the truth is, I don’t know. Sean rang me from Germany yesterday morning and said he needed to talk to you urgently. Something to do with Kirk. He didn’t say what.”
She was concentrating on the road too hard to notice the twitch her words provoked. It occurred to me for the first time that Kirk might have told Sean more than I realised about my shambolic eviction from the army. What other reason could there be?
I fixed my attention on the slap of the wipers across the glass in front of me. I’d had the opportunity once before to explain to Sean the full tawdry details of my attack. I’d bottled out. He already had the bare bones, but when it came to the true extent of my injuries I’d been rather more economical with the truth.
He knew I’d been beaten up, but he didn’t know it had gone so much further than that.
What if Kirk had told him the rest?
***
Madeleine had booked rooms at a small hotel on the outskirts of Harrogate and that’s where we spent the night. The following morning we drove the rest of the way through pretty but desolate countryside. The rain had started almost immediately, slashing in sideways across the landscape, turning it icy grey. Even the sheep looked cold.
Sean was already at the church when we arrived. I hadn’t seen him since we’d climbed out of a riot together two months before. He was looking good, on the whole, with no sign of the shoulder injury that had so restricted him then.
He’d favoured me with a brief nod as we’d walked into the tiny church, but his eyes, dark enough to be almost black, were cool and flat. There was something formidable about the set of those wide shoulders that made me instantly wary. I knew that look. It meant nothing but trouble.
Question was, who for?
He’d spent his own Christmas in Germany, Madeleine had told me, untangling the inevitable shroud of red tape that had delayed the retrieval of Kirk’s body. That would have been enough to piss anyone off, but I had the nasty feeling there was more to it than that.
A burst of alarm flashed through my system, translated as a sudden warmth despite the bone-numbing chill. It was only a degree or so above freezing inside the church but at least it wasn’t raining much in there. The whole place smelt of mildew and mothballs like my grandmother’s wardrobe.
Madeleine and I trailed after the coffin as it was carried out. I hung back purposely, but there were no faces I remembered among the pallbearers.
There were none I’d tried hard to forget, either.
By the time we got to the graveside the ground was slick with mud. The tracks of the Bobcat mini digger they’d used to scratch out the requisite pit had left gouges in the surrounding earth that were deep enough to make you stumble. They’d lined the edges of the void with strips of artificial turf, its harsh bright green the only splash of colour against the greys and blacks.
Someone was fighting to hold an umbrella steady over the vicar’s head, but the wind lashed the rain in under the side of the canopy, the spray coating his glasses. “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery,” he croaked, with an uncommon depth of feeling. “He cometh up and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
As they put Kirk into the ground Sean stood in the second row back with his head bent, staring at nothing. He didn’t seem to notice the rain sliding in rivulets along the angles of his cheekbones.
Afterwards, when clods of sodden earth had been shovelled in on top of the coffin, he spoke only briefly to Kirk’s parents. They thanked him without any sign of resentment for bringing their boy back to them so quickly.
Their intensely grateful manner disturbed me. If Kirk had been working for Sean at the time of his death, as Madeleine had implied, I would have expected a reception that held more bitterness, more blame.