'There's a surgical team on the chopper,' the adjutant said.
He asked his orderly to cover the gunshot wound, then peeled off the gloves and went to the basin. Disinfectant soap and water. He sluiced his hands together, and when he looked up he saw the man, Mai Kitchen, still in the doorway, still silent. He turned to Fergal. 'What's the story about him?'
'Varnished or unvarnished?'
'Plain bloody truth will be good enough.'
The adjutant hesitated. 'It's all hearsay, of course.'
'Don't fuck me about, what's being said?' He dried his hands with vigour and went to the second trolley, the road-traffic accident. He was worried now – this patient might be a more serious casualty than the gunshot wound.
He boomed, 'Spit it out.'
While he worked, the medical officer listened.
'It's pretty unpleasant… Here goes. He went on patrol yesterday, familiarization with the ground before a lift this morning. He was in place to assist with interrogation and screening of prisoners. The patrol was hit. Two or three rifle positions and an RPG was fired. He was somewhere near the back of the stick when it started. What I'm hearing from Bravo's people is that Kitchen did a runner.'
'You are joking? What -just flipped out and left them?'
'There, and then not there. Gone. The corporal thinks he's been hit. Goes back – puts the whole section at risk, but Jocks don't leave a man who's down – and retraces the ground covered in the ambush site. He's nowhere to be found. Hits the panic button. Then they find his helmet in the street – and his flak-jacket. Bravo's gearing up for a major search-and-rescue operation, loading the Warriors, the full works. Then he's found. He's walking back to Bravo, but without his weapon. Two questions, natural enough.
What happened? Where's his weapon? No answer. Not a word out of him. Up at Bravo, they say he's yellow.'
'Christ Almighty – you serious?'
'Personally, I couldn't stand him. So, does he classify as a medical case?'
'Well, he doesn't get to slide under white sheets, if that's what you mean. I don't call him a patient. This is a patient.'
His fingers moved with extreme gentleness over the ribcage of the casualty. He yearned to hear the thudding of an approaching helicopter's rotors. Sandwiched, long ago, into courses on the treatment of gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries and debridement infection caused by clothing fibres and lead particles, there had been a bare hour on the recognition of what the lecturer had called 'battle shock'.
The medical officer had been with commanders and seconds-in-command, and none had taken seriously what they were told.
He looked up. Maybe anger caught him. Maybe the growing pallor on the casualty's face frightened him. Maybe the helicopter would be delayed too long. He shouted at the man in the doorway: 'Don't just bloody stand there like a spare part. Move yourself Do something. There's a mop. Orderly, give him a mop and bucket. Give him a broom to sweep with. Clean the place.'
When the time came, when the two Jocks on their trolleys were wheeled out from the aid post, the man – Kitchen – still, with mechanical movements, swabbed the floor with the mop and squeezed it out into the bucket.
Later, the medical officer walked briskly back with the adjutant, his pistol bouncing against his thigh, and said,
'I'm not taking responsibility for him. Sunray'll have to see him. He's not mine. Yellow's not a colour I fancy. Kitchen's nothing to do with me.'
Benji met Charlie and together they sipped coffee.
'So, he's up and away, Ricky is.'
'Did he tell you, Benji, what for?'
'Told me, big surprise, nothing.'
'You happy, Benji, with nothing?'
'I tell you why it's nothing – because he doesn't know nothing. He didn't tell me why he was going to Hamburg because he didn't know. I'm straight with you. He got the call and he jumped – and I don't like it. The Albanians are bad news. Does he listen? Does he hell… You heard me, I've told him. I told him two years back' and a year back and six months back that he shouldn't be in bed with those people. Does he listen?'
'You told him, Benji, and I heard.'
'Doesn't listen to us, but listens to them. I take him to the airport. I think he's going to talk plans. He talks about his brat's football. Not till we're there, going through the tunnel into the airport, does he start chattering about the big guy he's going to meet. What worries me, they'll eat him.'
'Worry you bad, Benji?'
'They don't share, the Albanians, they don't do equals. All co-operation until they're ready. They get inside you, a worm in your gut, and the worm bloody kills you when they're ready. Everybody had a share of Soho and King's Cross till they were ready. Now nobody's in Soho or King's Cross except them. Right now, he thinks he's the big number and Timo Rahman wants to share with him.'
'You thinking of bugging out, Benji?'
'Be great. I got enough put away, you have – Davey has… Where to? Nobody bugs out. Sort of on a rope, aren't we? And the rope's got a bloody knot on your ankle and mine. That shit-face, little Enver, he's at the airport door to meet us. He's out of the car and the shit-face takes his bag, like he's Ricky's bloody porter, and they're off and gone. I'd trust the shit-face as far as I could kick him, wouldn't let him carry my bag. You just get that feeling, don't you, when it's all going to finish in grief?'
'You heard, Benji, what Davey said. Petrol.'
'On the dosser's clothes in Bevin Close, the stink of petrol. I heard what Davey said. And petrol done George Wright's place… I don't know what's happening – used to, but I don't now. He went off all trusting, Ricky did, with his bag carried for him, and what I'm thinking about is the claws stuck in him – and I didn't tell him, and I never do and you don't
– and grief.'
'No, Mr Capel, he is not in the hotel. I am sorry. I have paged him and he is not in the restaurants or in the bar. You heard yourself the paging announcement for Mr Enver Rahman, and he has not come. He is not here.'
He sagged. He gazed at the tall, leggy woman behind the desk, who wore the hotel's uniform, its logo sewn over a shallow breast. Nothing that had happened was what he had expected. No answers when he had pumped on the flight as to what business he would be doing with Timo Rahman; questions brushed aside like he was a kid and talking too much and would find out when elders, betters, decided. No chauffeur at the airport to meet them, but Enver had gone to Avis who had held a car for them. No explanations as they had driven into the city. The hotel was a tower of glass and concrete, not in the city centre, and they'd come past gardens to get there; the sort of hotel that did conferences, twenty-six floors of it. He'd checked in. Enver had said that he had phone calls to make and they'd meet up later, had to do the arrangements. No suite for him, no flowers, no bowl of fruit: just an ordinary room. He'd kicked his shoes off and lain on the bed because the one easy chair was dead hard, and he'd flicked the zapper and the channels were all German except one that was American news. Who gave a fuck for American news?
Not Ricky Capel… And he'd waited… and waited some more. .. had waited for the phone to ring and it had not. Maybe he'd dozed off on the bed. Then he'd woken, had worked the phone buttons and called down, had asked to be connected to the room of Enver Rahman, and a dumb cow had told him there was no gentleman of that name resident in the hotel, and she'd checked, and she'd repeated it. It was like he'd been dumped. He'd just assumed that Enver was booking in after he'd gone to the elevator. It wasn't respect. The disrespect was on the plane, was a hire car, was a hotel that was shit, was him being abandoned and Enver bugging out. What wound up Ricky Capel tightest was disrespect. He believed nothing, nobody.
He strode away from the desk, went to the swing doors, pushed them open violently, didn't care that they battered into the back of a man manoeuvring his bags inside, and walked out into the forecourt. He could see where Enver had parked the green VW