34 exercise book contained a record of her expenses, in her neat writing, and she'd collected the drawings Tim had done at school into a folder. Most of them seemed to have violent subjects — tanks exploding, planes being shot down — and it wouldn't have taken a psychologist long to work out where all that came from. But the tidy way in which Tracy operated nearly choked me, because it made me realise how much she'd done for me.
At the time of Kath's death she'd been working as receptionist in the Camp Medical Centre. A week or two before I got posted to Northern Ireland she and her friend Susan had been thrown out of their lodgings in Hereford, so I had suggested they should occupy Keeper's Cottage while I was abroad. Events then speeded up in a direction I hadn't anticipated: Tracy and I fell i-or each other, and she had moved into the cottage for good, taking over Tim as though he were her own son. In a few months she had grown up with incredible speed and developed from a lively, knock about girl into a responsible foster mother. She'd kept on her job for a while, but then, when I went to Colombia, she'd given it up.
Driving away from the cottage wrenched me back to the present. In camp again, I was heading for the Kremlin when I spotted Jimmy Wells, the int officer, coming towards me on a converging path. A scrawny fellow with a narrow face and lank, dark hair brushed sideways over the top of his head, he usually went about with a hunted look, as though he were permanently worried; but his harassed appearance belied him, because he was at heart a cheerful character, always inclined to make the best of things.
'Hi, Geordie,' he called. 'No news yet?'
'Nothing so far.'
'Got time for a natter?'
'Well… sure.'
At the top of the stairs I followed him into his office and sat down in front of his desk. As I quickly found out, he was bang up to speed on the kidnap situation, and I realised that he'd invited me in purely to give some friendly support. He was like that; not being a badged officer — not a member of the SAS, but on attachment to us from Intelligence Corps — he had no hang-ups about regimental priorities or feuds and could afford to be himself with everyone, high or low.
'By the way,' he said in a conspiratorial voice after a pause in the conversation, as though letting fall some tit-bit of local scandal, 'Farrell's on his way back to the UK.'
'What?' I was taken aback. 'Already?'
'Well, more or less — I'm jumping the gun a bit. But the Colombian authorities have agreed to extradite him.' He picked up a sheet of fax paper and scanned it briefly. 'It seems they don't want anything to do with him. Don't blame 'em. He'll be flown out by military transport later today. Apparently he's suffering from gun-shot wounds in the right arm and flank. Flesh only nothing serious. Who shot him? I wonder…'
'No idea.'
I saw Jim smiling. He knew what had happened, of course, because he'd covered the Colombian operation from this end.
'If only I'd aimed a bit bloody straighter,' I said. 'But it was still only half light, and the bastard was running like the clappers.'
I stopped, suddenly remembering something I'd read about a British weight lifter at the opening of the Berlin Olympics in 1936. 'I read once about this bloke who found himself standing right next to Hider in some parade,' I told Jim. 'He realised he could have topped the bugger there and then. And afterwards he said, “What a hell of a lot of time and trouble I would have saved.” I feel like that about Farrell. I could have saved the country millions. What'll they do with him here?'
'Put him in the nick on remand while they sort out a case against him, I imagine.'
'There's any amount of things they can get him for: drugs, kidnapping the rupert, murder…'
We'd been chatting for several more minutes when my eye strayed to a photograph in the in-tray: a blown- up black-and-white mug-shot of a man with a moustache wearing a dark beret. Although the picture was upside-down I felt the hair on my neck crawling, because I was certain I recognised the subject.
It wasn't long before Jim noticed my attention was distracted. 'What's the matter?' he asked, following the direction of my eyes. Then he shot out a hand to cover the 10hoto and said, 'Ah. That's strictly need-to- know…'
'I know it's none of my business,' I said, 'but could I have a proper shufti?'
'You're not supposed to. Why?'
'I think I know the guy.'
'You can't possibly…'
'Let's have a look anyway.'
'Well… I'm not showing it you. You haven't seen it.' Watching me curiously, Jim picked up the photo and flicked it across the desk. The moment I saw it straight, all doubt vanished.
'It's him.'
'Who?'
'Shitface. I don't know his name. But this is the bastard that gave us a hard time in Baghdad. An Iraqi, isn't he?'
'That's right.' Now Jim was looking at me in a yet more peculiar way, as if he was seeing a ghost. 'Geordie, are you certain?'
'Absolutely. He came to the gaol three or four times to interrogate us. There was always a big palaver when he arrived — the guards shouting and saluting as though he was some high-ranking officer. It was this fucker who used to hit the plaster cast on my broken arm with his swagger-stick. That was bloody agonising. But it wasn't the pain that got to me, so much as his attitude.
He started saying that if I didn't give him the information he wanted, he'd open up the plaster, infect my wounds with bugs, and plaster it over again, so that I'd get gangrene and lose my arm. Sadistic bugger! I'll not forget him in a hurry. Luckily for me, the war ended before he could carry out his threat.'
'He sounds a sweetie,' said Jim.
'He is.' I shuddered as I remembered the screams that came from other parts of the gaol. 'He likes to see prisoners jump. To be more specific, he likes to see them convulsed. He's a specialist at administering electric shocks, and favours giving them through wet sponges, so that the prisoner gets high charge but isn't left with tell-tale burns. We called him Shitface because he was always frowning, like here. What's his real name?'
'I can't tell you that.'
'So what's his picture doing on your desk?'
'Classified, I'm afraid. But look: this identification's very important. Can you be absolutely sure you know the man?'
'One hundred per cent.' I saw doubt in the in the officer's face. 'You don't believe me?'
'Well, a lot may depend on it.'
'I tell you what. There's another guy here in camp who was in that gaol with me: Tony Lopez, the American. He'll remember the sod as well as I do.'
Suddenly Jim was all lit up. 'Where is he now?'
'He's on leave, after Colombia. But he'll be around the Lines somewhere. I saw him last evening. If you like I'll go find him…'
'No. I'll ring round and see where he is.'
A flurry of telephone calls ran Tony to earth in the gym, and he said he'd come right up. As we waited, I saw that Jim was in a state of excitement. I realised why he hadn't let me go looking for the Yank myself.“ he wanted to confront him with the photograph before I'd had time to give any briefing.
In came Tony, looking big and brawny in his ash- grey tracksuit, sweat still trickling down his temples.
'Apologies for showing up like this,' he began. 'I was half-way through my weights, but this sounded urgent.'
'No sweat,' said the int officer — and then, grinning at the unfortunate pun, Td just like you to answer a simple question.' He flipped over the mug-shot, which he had turned face-down. 'Do you recognize this man?'
'Goddamn it!' Tony cried. 'It's Shitface, the son of a bitch who gave us third degree in Iraq.'