I was thirty-one years old when I understood what it was like to watch someone die. A Pashtun taxi driver, with psoriasis on his joints, expired as I watched. We had made him stand for five days until his feet swelled to the size of footballs and the shackles cut into his ankles. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat.
This is an approved ‘stress and duress position’. It’s in the manual. Look it up. SK 46/34.
His name was Hamad Mowhoush and he’d been arrested at a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan after a roadside bomb killed two Royal Marines and wounded three others, including a mate of mine.
We put a sleeping bag over Hamad’s head and bound it with wire. Then we rolled him back and forth and sat on his chest. That’s when his heart gave out.
Some folks claim torture isn’t an effective way to get reliable information because the strong defy pain and the weak will say anything to make it stop. They’re right. Most of the time, it’s pointless, but if you act quickly and combine the shock of capture with the fear of torture, it’s amazing how often the mind unlocks and all sorts of secrets tumble out.
We weren’t allowed to call the detainees POWs. They were PUCs (persons under control). The military loves acronyms. Another one is HCI (Highly Coercive Interrogation). That’s what I was trained to do.
When I first saw Hamad someone had sandbagged and zip-tied him. Felini gave him to me. ‘Fuck a PUC,’ he said, grinning. ‘We can smoke him later.’
To ‘fuck a PUC’ meant to beat him up. To ‘smoke’ them meant using a stress position. Felini used to make them stand in the sun in hundred degree heat with their arms outstretched, holding up five-gallon jerry cans.
We added some of our own touches. Sometimes we doused them in water, rolled them in dirt and beat them with chem lights until they glowed in the dark.
We buried Hamad’s body in lime. I couldn’t sleep for days afterwards. I kept imagining his body slowly bloating and the gas escaping from his chest, making it seem like he was still breathing. I still think about him sometimes. I wake at night, with a weight on my chest and imagine lying in the ground with the lime burning my skin.
I’m not scared of dying. I know there’s something worse than lying underground, worse than being smoked, or fucked over with chem lights. It happened to me on Thursday May 17, just after midnight. That’s when I last saw Chloe. She was sitting in the passenger seat of a car, still in her pyjamas, being stolen from me.
That was twenty-nine Sundays ago.
Ten things I remember about my daughter:
1. The paleness of her skin.
2. Yellow shorts.
3. A homemade Father’s Day card with two stick figures, one large and one small, holding hands.
4. Telling her about Jack and the Beanstalk, but leaving out the bit about the giant wanting to grind Jack’s bones to make his bread.
5. The time she tripped over and opened up a cut above her eye that needed two and a half stitches. (Is there such a thing as a half-stitch? Perhaps I made this up to impress her.)
6. Watching her play an Indian squaw in a primary school production of Peter Pan.
7. Taking her to see a European cup tie in Munich, even though I missed the only goal while retrieving the Maltesers she dropped beneath her seat.
8. Walking along the seafront at St Mawes on our last holiday together.
9. Teaching her to ride a bicycle without training wheels.
10. Putting down her pet duck when a fox broke into the pen and ripped off its wing
The phone is ringing. I open my eyes. Heavy curtains and blackout blinds make the room almost totally dark. I reach for the telephone.
‘Yeah.’
‘Is that Gideon Tyler?’ The accent is pure Belfast.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Royal Mail.’
‘How did you get this number?’
‘It was inside a package.’
‘What package?’
‘You posted a package to a Chloe Tyler seven weeks ago. We were unable to deliver it. The address you provided appears to be out-of-date or incorrect.’
‘Who are you?’
‘This is the National Return Letter Centre. We handle undeliverable mail.’
‘Can you try another address?’
‘What address, sir?’
‘You must have records… on computer. Type in the name Chloe Tyler, see what comes up. Or you could try Chloe Chambers.’
‘We don’t have such a capability, sir. Where should we return the parcel?’
‘I don’t want it returned. I want it delivered.’
‘That has not been possible, sir. What action would you like us to take?’
‘I paid the fucking postage. You deliver it.’
‘Please don’t swear, sir. We have permission to hang up on customers who use abusive language.’
‘Fuck off!’
I slam the handset down. It bounces on the cradle and settles again. The phone rings again. At least I didn’t break it.
My father is calling. He wants to know when I’m coming to see him.
‘I’ll come tomorrow.’
‘What time?’
‘Afternoon.’
‘What time in the afternoon?’
‘What does it matter- you never go anywhere.’
‘I might go to bingo.’
‘Then I’ll come in the morning.’