Assassin

58

Carver took a second gulp of water and went back to the story of the Maid of Dumfries.

'Even when I was topsides I knew that the weapon I'd heard was an MP5 set to automatic fire – one of ours. So I went below decks, came through the door of that cabin and your oppo, McWhirter, was standing there saying something like, "Oh Jesus… what the fuck have you done?" This tough Glasgow bastard, seen it all, done it all, and whatever he'd just seen, it had shocked him to the point he was almost in tears. Then you caught sight of me and said – no, that's wrong, you whined: "He had a weapon."'

Tyzack stepped back, away from Carver's chair, and started pacing up and down the floor of the barn. He looked agitated, twitchy, on the brink of another loss of control.

'Would you like me to stop?' Carver asked, the victim briefly inflicting more damage than his torturer.

'No,' snarled Tyzack. 'Keep going. Tell me the lies you told Trench and the rest.'

'Whatever you say. So, I was looking for a man with a weapon. And I was puzzled, because I couldn't see him anywhere. And then I noticed something. There was a padded bench, ran most of the way round the cabin wall. And something had been flung on it. At first I thought it was a pile of dirty rags. And then I realized that the dirt was blood and the pile of rags was this little kid. God knows how many rounds you'd put into him because you'd practically cut him in two, poor little beggar.'

Now the anger was rising in Carver too and it was emotion that constricted his voice, not the collar round his neck as he said, 'And next to the kid was the weapon, except it wasn't a weapon, was it, Tyzack? It was a plastic toy gun. And in front of the kid, on the floor, was a woman, the mother. She'd tried to protect her baby, and you'd given her a burst too. Once I'd seen that, what else did I need to know?'

'You could have asked me what happened?' said Tyzack, still pacing up and down. 'You could have let me explain.'

'All right then, explain. Tell me why you couldn't tell the difference between a grown man with a gun and a small child with a toy.'

'Because it was dark down there. We were all using goggles, remember? No lights on at all, just the flame from that gas hob in the corner. There was a cooking pot on top, so I reckoned there had to be someone there. Plus, we'd been told to expect a minimum crew of three, and there were only two down, both of them armed. And I didn't see a kid. I just saw something moving across the room, I saw a gun barrel, and I heard the sound of firing-'

'Do me a favour,' Carver interrupted. 'You heard the sound of the kid's toy. He probably thought it was all a big game. And if you think a toy gun sounds anything like the real thing, you need your ears examining, as well as your head. How about muzzle-flash, see any of that? Notice any bullet holes anywhere, any ricochets? You were in a cabin no more than eight foot square. If he had been firing a real gun, you'd have known all about it.'

'I didn't have time to work that out, did I?' Tyzack protested. 'I don't know, maybe I thought he had a suppressor. And there was at least one adult in the cabin. They could have been armed, too. I couldn't afford to take chances.'

'Bollocks,' said Carver, quite calmly. 'I'll tell you what happened. You were on your first mission. You'd just had your first kill and you were practically coming in your pants with excitement. You couldn't wait to do it again. So when you saw two people in that cabin you let rip. And all the training you'd ever done went right out the window. How many hours had you spent in the Killing House, training for exactly this kind of moment? That's why we did it, so we didn't kill the wrong people. And if you really want to know, what pissed me off was not just that you were such a blatant bloody psycho, it was that you were a total amateur. You're just a fucking awful soldier.'

Whatever scenes Tyzack had played out in his mind, that hadn't been in the script. He came to a halt, turned to face Carver and there was outrage in his voice as he protested, 'That's not true! You said it yourself, my assessment scores were better than yours. I was just inexperienced. If I'd been given a chance, I wouldn't have made mistakes like that again. But you never gave me the chance. You humiliated me in front of the other men, and then you had me kicked out.'

Carver shook his head in disbelief. 'That's what all this is about, is it? I'm sitting here because I'm the man who got poor, misunderstood Damon Tyzack his dishonourable discharge? You moron. You'd still be in prison if it wasn't for me. I didn't ruin your life. I saved your bloody neck. '