Crossfire

6

All I could see of him were his eyes, his cold, black eyes that stared at me from beneath his turban. He showed no emotion but simply raised a rusty Kalashnikov to his shoulder.

I fired at him, but he continued to lift the gun. I fired at him again, over and over, but without any visible effects. I was desperate. I emptied my complete magazine into him, but still he swung the barrel of the AK-47 around towards me, lining up the sights with my head. A smile showed in his eyes, and I began to scream.

I woke with a start, my heart pumping madly and with sweat all over my body.

"Thomas! Thomas!" someone was shouting, and there was banging on my bedroom door.

"Yes," I called back into the darkness. "I'm fine."

"You were screaming." It was my mother. She was outside my room on the landing.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It was just a bad dream."

"Good night, then," she called suddenly, and I could hear her footfalls as she moved away.

"Good night," I called back, too quietly and too late.

I suppose it was too much to expect my mother to change the habits of a lifetime, but it would have been nice if she had asked me how I was, or if I needed anything, or at least if she could come into my room to cool my sweating brow, or anything.

I laid my head back onto the pillow.

I could still remember the dream so clearly. In the last couple of months, I had started to have them fairly regularly about the war. They were always a jumble of memories of real incidents coupled with the imagination of my subconscious brain, unalike insofar as they were of different events but all with a common thread-they all ended with me in panic and utter terror. I was always more terrified by the dreams than I remember ever having been in reality.

Except, of course, at the roadside after the IED.

I could remember all too vividly the terrible fear and the awful dread of dying I had experienced as Sergeant O'Leary and I had waited for the medevac helicopter. If I closed my eyes and concentrated I could, even now, see the faces of my platoon as we had passed those ten or fifteen minutes-minutes that had felt like endless hours. I could still remember the look of shock in the face of the platoon's newest arrival, a young eighteen-year-old replacement for a previously wounded comrade. It had been his first sight of real war, and the horror it can do to the frail human body. And I could also recall the mixture of anxiety and relief in the faces of those with more experience: their anxiety for me, and their almost overwhelming relief that it wasn't them lying there with no right foot, their lifeblood draining away into the sand.

I reached over and turned on the light. My bedside clock showed me that it was two-thirty in the morning.

I must have been making quite a lot of noise for it to have woken my mother from the other end of the house. That was assuming that she had actually been sleeping and not lying awake, contemplating her own troubles.

I sat up on the side of the bed. I needed to go to the bathroom for a pee, but it was not as simple as it sounded. The bathroom was three doors away, and that was too far to heel-and-toe or to hop.

I now wished I'd accepted the hospital's offer of crutches.

Instead, I went through the whole wretched rigmarole of attaching my false foot and ankle just in order to go to the loo. How I longed for the days of springing out of bed ready and able to complete a five-mile run before breakfast, or to fight off a Taliban early-morning attack.

Once or twice I had done just that, half asleep and forgetting that I was sans foot. But I had soon been reminded when I'd crashed to the floor. On one occasion I'd done myself a real mischief, opening up the surgical wound on my stump as well as splitting the back of my head on a hospital bedside locker. My surgeon had not been amused.

I made it without upset to the bathroom along the landing and gratefully relieved myself. I caught a glimpse of my face in the shaving mirror as I clumsily turned around in the enclosed space.

"What do you want from life?" I asked my image.

"I don't know," it answered.

What I really wanted I knew, in my heart, I couldn't have. Flying an airplane with tin legs, even a Spitfire, was a totally different ball game to commanding an infantry platoon. The very word infantry implied a foot soldier. I suppose I could ask for a transfer to a tank regiment, but even then, the "tankies" became foot soldiers if and when their carriage lost a track. I could hardly say, "Sorry, chaps, you'll have to carry on fighting without me," as I sat there with my false leg waiting for a lift, now, could I?

So what were the reasons I had so enjoyed being an infantry platoon commander? And could I find the same things elsewhere?

I went back to my room and back to bed, leaving my prosthesis standing alone by the bedroom wall as if on sentry duty.

But sleep didn't come easily.

For the first time since my injury I had faced the true reality of my future, and I didn't like it.

Why me? I asked, yet again. Why had it been me who'd been injured?

Yes, I was angry with the Taliban, and also with life in general and the destiny it had dealt me, but almost more so, I was frustrated and fed up with myself.

Why had I allowed this to happen? Why? Why?

And what could I do now?

Why me?

I lay awake for a long while, trying to find solutions to the unanswerable puzzles of my mind.

In the morning, I set to the more immediate task at hand: identifying the blackmailer, recovering the papers and my mother's money, and making things good with the tax man. It sounded deceptively simple. But where did I start?

With Roderick Ward, the con man accountant. He had been the architect of this misery, so discovering his whereabouts, alive or dead, must be the first goal. Where had he come from? Was he actually qualified, or was that a lie too? Were there co-conspirators, or did he work alone? There were so many questions. Now it was time for answers.

I called Isabella Warren from the phone in the drawing room.

"Oh, hello," she said. "We're still speaking, then?"

"Why shouldn't we be?" I asked.

"No reason," she said. "Just thought you were disappointed."

I had been, but if I didn't speak to people who disappointed me, then I'd hardly speak to anyone.

"What are you up to today?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she said, "as usual."

Did I detect a touch of irritation?

"Do you fancy helping me with something?"

"No bonus payments involved?"

"No," I said. "I promise. And none will even be requested."

"I don't mind you asking," she said with a laugh. "As long as you don't mind being refused."

I wouldn't ask, though, I thought, because I did mind being refused.

"Can you pick me up at ten?" I asked.

"I thought you said you'd never let me drive you again." She was still laughing.

"I'll chance it," I said. "I need to go into Newbury, and the parking is dreadful."

"Can't you park anywhere," she said, "with that leg?"

"I haven't applied for a disabled permit," I said. "And I don't intend being qualified to."

"What do you mean?"

"I want to be able to walk as well as the next man," I said. "I don't want to be identified as 'disabled.' "

"But parking is so much easier with a blue badge. You can park almost anywhere."

"No matter," I said. "I don't have one today, and I need a driver. Are you on?"

"Definitely," she said. "I'll be there at ten."

I went out into the kitchen to find my mother coming in from the stables.

"Good morning," I said to her, still employing my friendlier tone from the previous evening.

"What's good about it?" she said.

"We're both alive," I said.

She gave me a look that made me wonder if she had thought about not being alive this morning. Was suicide really on her mind?

"We will sort out this problem," I said in reassurance. "You've done the hard bit by admitting it to me."

"I didn't have any choice, did I?" she said angrily. "You snooped through my office."

"Please don't be annoyed with me," I said in my most calming way. "I'm here to help you."

Her shoulders drooped and she slumped onto a chair at the kitchen table.

"I'm tired," she said. "I don't feel I can carry on."

"What, with the training?"

"With life," she said.

"Now, don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not," she said. "I've spent most of the night thinking about it. If I died it would solve all the problems."

"That's crazy," I said. "What would Derek do, for a start?"

She placed her arms on the table and rested her head on them. "It would clear all the problems for him."

"No, it wouldn't," I said with certainty. "It would just create more. The training business would still have to pay the tax it owes. The house and stables would then definitely have to be sold. You dying would leave Derek homeless and alone as well as broke. Is that what you want?"

She looked up at me. "I don't know what I want."

How strange, I thought. I had said the same thing to myself in the night. Neither of us was happy with the futures we saw staring us in the face.

"Don't you want to go on training?" I asked.

She didn't reply but placed her head back down on her arms.

"Assuming the tax problems were solved and the blackmailer was stopped, would you still want to go on training?"

"I suppose so," she said without looking up. "It's all I know."

"And you are so good at it," I said, trying my best to raise her spirits. "But tell me, how did you stop Pharmacist winning on Saturday?"

She sat back in the chair and almost smiled. "I gave him a tummy ache."

"But how?" I asked.

"I fed him some rotten food."

"Moldy oats?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Green sprouting potatoes."

"Green potatoes! How on earth did you think of green potatoes?"

"It had worked before," she said. "When he called the first time and said that Scientific had to lose, I was at my wit's end of what to do. If I'd over-galloped him everyone in the stable would know." She gulped. "I had to do something. I was desperate. But what could I give him? I had some old potatoes that had gone green, and they were moldy and sprouting. I remembered one of my dogs being ill after eating a green-skinned potato, so I peeled them all and then liquidized the peel. I simply poured it down Scientific's throat and hoped it would make him ill."

"How on earth did you get him to swallow it? It must be so bitter."

"I simply tied his head up high using the hay-net hook and used a tube to pour it down into his stomach."

"And it worked?" I asked.

"Seemed to, although the poor old boy was really very ill afterwards. Horses can't vomit, so the stuff had to go right through him. I was really scared that he'd die. So I reduced the amount the next time."

"And it still worked?"

"Yes. But I was so frightened about Pharmacist that I used more again that time. I was worried the potatoes weren't green and rotten enough. I'd had to buy some more."

"Do you have any of them left?" I asked her.

"They're in the boiler room, with the light on," she said. "I read somewhere that high temperatures and bright light make potatoes go green quicker."

"And how many times have you done this altogether?" I asked her.

"Only six times," she said, almost apologetically. "But Perfidio won even though I'd given him the potato peel. It didn't seem to affect him one bit."

"Did you give it to Oregon at Newbury last week?" Oregon had been one of the horses that Gordon Rambler had written about in the Racing Post.

She nodded.

I walked through and opened the boiler room by the back door. The light was indeed on, and there were six neat rows of potatoes sitting on top of the boiler, all of them turning nicely green, some with sprouting eyes.

Would the British Horseracing Authority ever have thought of dope-testing for liquidized green, sprouting, rotten potato peel?

I somehow doubted it.

Isabella took me first to the Newbury Public Library. I wanted to look at past editions of the local newspapers to see what they had to say about the supposed death of one Roderick Ward.

My mother was right. The story of his car crash had been prominently covered on page three of the Newbury Weekly News for Thursday, July 16. Another Fatal Accident at Local Black Spot Police are investigating after yet another death at one of the most dangerous spots on Oxfordshire's roads. Roderick Ward, 33, of Oxford, was discovered dead in his car around eight a.m. on Monday morning. It is assumed by police that Mr. Ward's dark blue Renault Megane left the road in the early hours of Monday after failing to negotiate the S-bends on the A415 near Standlake. The vehicle is thought to have collided with a bridge wall before toppling into the River Windrush near where it joins the Thames at Newbridge. Mr. Ward's car was found almost totally immersed in the water, and he is thought to have died of drowning rather than as a result of any trauma caused by the accident. An inquest was opened and adjourned on Tuesday at Oxford Coroner's Court.

The piece discussed at length the relative merits of placing a safety barrier and/or altering the speed limits at that point in the road. It then went on to report on two other fatal accidents in the same week elsewhere within the newspaper's region. I searched the following Thursday's paper for any follow-up report on Roderick Ward but with no success.

I used the library's computerized index to check for any other references to Roderick Ward in the Newbury Weekly News. There was nothing else about his accident or death, but there was a brief mention from three months before it. The paper reported that a Mr. Roderick Ward of Oxford had pleaded guilty in Newbury Magistrates' Court to a charge of causing criminal damage to a private home in Hungerford. It stated that he had been observed by a police officer throwing a brick through a window of a house in Willow Close. He was bound over to keep the peace by the magistrates and warned as to his future conduct. In addition, he was ordered to pay two hundred and fifty pounds to the home owner in compensation for the broken glass and for the distress caused.

Unfortunately, the report gave no further details, for example, the name of the house owner or the identity of the policeman who witnessed the event.

I searched through the index again, but there was no report of any inquest into Roderick Ward's untimely death. For that, I suspected, I would have to go to Oxford, to the archive of the Oxford Mail or The Oxford Times.

Isabella had been waiting patiently, exploring the fiction shelves of the library as I had been scanning the newspapers using the microfiche machines.

"Finished?" she asked, as I reappeared from the darkened room where the machines were kept.

"Yes," I said. "For the time being."

"Where to now?" she said, as we climbed back into her Golf.

"Oxford," I said. I thought for a moment. "Or Hungerford."

"Which?"

"Hungerford. I think I can probably find what I want from Oxford on the Internet." If I could get onto it, I thought. My mother had to have broadband. Surely it was needed for her to do the race entries.

"So where in Hungerford?"

"Willow Close."

"Where's that?"

"I've no idea," I said. "But it's in Hungerford somewhere."

Isabella looked at me quizzically but resisted the temptation to actually ask why I wanted to go to Willow Close in Hungerford. Instead, she started the car and turned out of the library parking lot.

In truth, I could have easily parked my Jaguar at the library, and I was pretty sure from its name that parking in Willow Close wouldn't be a problem, either. I probably hadn't needed to ask Isabella to drive me, but it felt more like an adventure with someone else to share it.

Willow Close, when we finally found it, was deep in a housing estate off the Salisbury Road in the southwestern corner of the town. There were twenty or so houses in the close, all little detached boxes with neat open-plan front gardens, each one indistinguishable from those recently built in Lambourn. I feared for the individual character of villages and towns with so many identical little homes springing up all over the countryside.

"Which number?" Isabella said.

"I've no idea," I said again.

"What are we looking for?" she asked patiently.

"I've no idea of that either."

"Useful." She was smiling. "Then you start at one end and I'll start at the other."

"Doing what?" I asked.

"Asking if anyone has any idea why we're here."

"Someone threw a brick through the window of one of these houses, and I would like to know why."

"Any particular brick?" she asked sarcastically.

"OK, OK," I said. "I know it sounds odd, but that's why we're here. I'd like to talk to the person whose window was smashed."

"Why?" she asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. "What is this all about?"

It was a good question. Coming to Hungerford had probably been a wild-goose chase anyway. I didn't particularly want to tell Isabella about Roderick Ward, mostly because I had absolutely no intention of explaining anything to her about my mother's tax situation.

"The young man who's been accused of throwing the brick is a soldier in my platoon," I lied. "It's an officer's job to look after his troops, and I promised him I would investigate. That's all."

She seemed satisfied, if a little uninterested. "And do you have a name for the person whose window was broken?"

"No."

"And no address," she said.

"No," I agreed, "but it was reported in the local newspaper as having happened in Willow Close, Hungerford."

"Right, then," she said decisively. "Let's go and ask someone."

We climbed out of the car.

"Let's start at number sixteen," I said, pointing to one of the houses. "I saw the net curtains in the front room twitch when we arrived. Perhaps they keep an eye on everything that goes on here."

I'm not buying," an elderly woman shouted through the door of number sixteen. "I never buy from door-to-door salesmen."

"We're not selling," I shouted back through the wood. "We'd just like to ask you some questions."

"I don't want any religion, either," the woman shouted again. "Go away."

"Do you remember someone throwing a brick through one of your neighbors' windows?" I asked her.

"What?" she said.

I repeated the question with more volume.

"That wasn't one of my neighbors," she said with certainty. "That was down the end of the close."

"Which house?" I asked her, still through the closed door.

"Down the end," she repeated.

"I know," I said, "but which house?"

"George Sutton's house."

"Which number?" I asked.

"I don't know numbers," she said. "Now go away."

I noted that there was a Neighborhood Watch sticker on the frosted glass next to the door, and I didn't really want her calling the police.

"Come on, let's go," I said to Isabella. "Thank you," I called loudly through the door at the woman. "Have a nice day."

We went back to the Golf, and I could see the net curtains twitching again. I waved as we climbed back into Isabella's car and she drove away down towards the end of the close and out of the woman's sight.

"Which house do you fancy?" I asked, as we stopped at the end.

"Let's try the one with the car in the drive," Isabella said.

We walked up the driveway past a bright yellow Honda Jazz and rang the doorbell. A smart young woman answered, carrying a baby on her hip.

"Yes?" she said. "Can I help you?"

"Hello," said Isabella, jumping in and taking the lead. "Hello, little one," she said to the child, tickling its chin. "We're trying to find Mr. Sutton."

"Old Man Sutton or his son?" the young woman asked helpfully.

"Either," Isabella said, still fussing over the child.

"Old Man Sutton has gone into an old-folks nursing home," the woman said. "His son comes round sometimes to collect his mail."

"How long has Mr. Sutton been in a nursing home?" I asked.

"Since just before Christmas. He'd been going downhill for quite a while. Such a shame. He seemed a nice old chap."

"Do you know which home he's in?" I asked her.

"Sorry," she said, shaking her head.

"And which house is his?"

"Number eight," she said, pointing across the road.

"Do you remember an incident when someone threw a brick through his window?" I asked.

"I heard about it, but it happened before we moved in," she said. "We've only been here eight months or so. Since Jimbo here was born." She smiled down at the baby.

"Do you know how I can contact Mr. Sutton's son?" I asked her.

"Hold on," she said. "I've got his telephone number somewhere."

She disappeared into the house but was soon back with a business card but without little Jimbo.

"Here it is," she said. "Fred Sutton." She read out his number, and Isabella wrote it down.

"Thank you," I said. "I'll give him a call."

"He might be at work right now," the woman said. "He works shifts."

"I'll try him anyway," I said. "What does he do?"

She consulted the business card that was still in her hand.

"He's a policeman," she said. "A detective sergeant."

So why, all of a sudden, don't you want to call this Fred Sutton?" Isabella demanded. We were again sitting in her car, having driven out of Willow Close and into the center of Hungerford.

"I will. But I'll call him later."

"But I thought you wanted to know about this brick through the window," she said.

"I do." I dearly wanted to know why the brick was thrown, but did I now dare ask?

"Well, call him, then."

I was beginning to be sorry that I had asked Isabella to drive me. How could I explain to her that I didn't want to discuss anything to do with Willow Close with any member of the police, let alone a detective sergeant? If he was any good at his job, his detective antennae would be throbbing wildly as soon as I mentioned anything to do with a Roderick Ward, especially if, as I suspected, DS Fred Sutton had been the policeman who had witnessed young Mr. Ward throwing the brick through his father's window in the first place.

"I can't," I said. "I can't involve the police."

"Why on earth not?" she asked, rather self-righteously.

"I just can't," I said. "I promised my young soldier I wouldn't talk to the police."

"But why not?" she asked again, imploring me to answer.

I looked at her. "I'm really sorry," I said. "But I can't tell you why." Even to my ears, I sounded melodramatic.

"Don't be so bloody ridiculous." She was clearly annoyed. "I think I'd better take you home now."

"Maybe that would be best," I said.

My chances of any future bonuses had obviously diminished somewhat.

I passed the afternoon using my mother's computer in her office and its Internet connection. She probably wouldn't have liked it, but, as she was out when Isabella had dropped me back, I hadn't asked.

I did have my own computer, a laptop. It had been in one of the blue holdalls I'd retrieved from Aldershot, but my mother hadn't moved into the wireless age yet, so it was easier to use her old desktop model with its Internet cable plugged straight into the telephone point in the wall.

I looked up reports of inquests using the online service of the Oxford Mail. There were masses of them, hundreds and hundreds, even thousands.

I searched for an inquest with the name Roderick Ward, and there it was, reported briefly by the paper on Wednesday, July 15. But it had been only the opening and adjournment of the inquest immediately after the accident.

It would appear that the full inquest was yet to be heard. However, the short report did contain one interesting piece of information that the Newbury Weekly News had omitted. According to the Oxford Mail website, Roderick Ward's body had been formally identified at the short hearing by his sister, a Mrs. Stella Beecher, also from Oxford.

Perhaps Mr. Roderick Ward really was dead, after all.