PART THREE
1
‘Hereford.’ A finger prodded me in the shoulder. ‘You wanted to know when we got to Hereford.’
I struggled to open my eyes. I hadn’t realized the train had stopped. Lucky I’d asked the old lady opposite to give me a shout, or I’d have woken up in Worcester.
I thanked her and headed for the door, feeling like a zombie. After a two-and-a-bit-hour journey from Paddington, I’d changed at Newport for the local commuter to ‘H’, as it was known to guys in the Regiment. Before we’d even left London, my lids had been drooping and my chin was on my chest. Too many time zones and twelve thousand miles in cattle class were against me.
My conscience was weighing pretty heavily, too. I felt bad about lying to Silky. ‘Going to the station to see if he’s left anything in the wagon’ was hardly the same as ‘I’ve spoken to the broker and it sounds like he’s accepted a job offer somewhere, so I’m flying halfway across the world to find out more. You know that bit about being back here tonight? I’ll actually be thirty thousand feet over Singapore by then, but apart from that, everything I said was true and we can trust each other always, honest.’ But what else was I supposed to do? The only way to find out where Charlie had gone was to put in a personal appearance. The broker wouldn’t help me. His job was to match guys and work, not tell them to go home. The only way I was going to be able to fetch him back to his family was to physically grab hold of the silly old f*cker and find out exactly what the problem was, and then see if I could help.
Maybe it was being separated from her for the first time in three months that did it, but I had a terrible feeling I was missing Silky already. She had a stupid accent and an irritating habit of understanding people much better than I did most of the time, but I’d got used to her being around, and it wasn’t at all a bad feeling. The lying thing wouldn’t go down well, of course, but Hazel would explain and I’d make it up to her somehow when I got back. Whenever that was. And if she was still there.
As I stepped onto the platform, carry-on in hand, I had a go at wiping off the dribble soaking into the front of my leather bomber jacket. The old lady must have thought I was pissed.
I wandered out to the taxi rank. Not much seemed to have changed. There was a new superstore opposite the station, but that was about it.
I climbed into a cab and asked for Bobblestock. The driver, a guy in his mid-fifties, eyed me knowingly in the rear-view of his old Peugeot 405. ‘Been far, have you?’ The locals loved the Regiment being based in their town, and not just because of the amount of money they spent. This guy was drawing all the wrong conclusions from a bloke with a tan who looked like he’d slept in a hedge.
‘Yeah.’ I tried to rub my face back to life. ‘I can’t remember the name of the road but I’ll show you where it is when we get there.’
I spotted a new pub and a couple of shops that hadn’t been there long, but otherwise Hereford was exactly as I remembered it. I’d left the Regiment in 1993, and I’d never been back since. The only thing I’d left behind was my account at the Halifax. I wondered how much interest I’d made on ￡1.52.
Bobblestock had been one of the first of the new breed of estates that sprang up on the outskirts of towns in the Thatcher era. The houses were all made from machined bricks and looked as if they were huddled together for warmth. With 2.4 children inside, a Mondeo on the drive, the minimum of back garden and front lawns small enough to cut with scissors, these places had about as much character as a room in a Holiday Inn. The developers had probably made a killing, then bought themselves nice period mansions in the outlying villages.
Crazy Dave lived on the high ground of Bobblestock, which he proudly told me had been Phase Three of the build. That was the only landmark I had in my head, but it was good enough.
‘Just here, mate.’
We stopped outside a brick rectangle with a garage extension that looked as if it had been assembled from a flat-pack. The house to its right was called Byeways, the one to its left, the Nook. Crazy Dave’s just had a number. Typical. Crazy Dave had been in Boat Troop, A Squadron. I knew him more from the café downtown than from work. We both used to spend our Sunday mornings there, drinking coffee, eating toast and reading the supplements. Him because he was trying to avoid his wife; me because I didn’t have one.
Crazy Dave had earned his name because he wasn’t; he was about as zany as a teacup. He was the kind of guy who analysed a joke before saying, ‘Oh yeah, I get it. That’s funny.’ In all the time I knew him, he never understood why shitting in someone’s Bergen was funny. But for all his faults, being as straight as a die made him perfect for his new job. Discretion was everything. When I’d asked him about Charlie over the phone, he’d admitted the old f*cker was on the books, but wouldn’t give me any wheres or whens. He did invite me round for a brew, though, any time I wanted to chat; so, well, here I was.
There was no car outside, but I could see movement through the living-room window. I paid the driver and walked up the concrete ramp that had replaced the front steps.
I rang the bell and the door was opened almost at once by two guys on their way out. They looked young and fit, obviously either having just left the Regiment, or being about to. They were both dressed, like me, in Timberland boots, leather jacket and jeans.
I closed the door behind me as the two guys walked away. The staircase was dead ahead, and fitted with one of those stairlifts that Thora Hird used to flog in the Sunday supplements.
Dave’s voice came from down to the right somewhere. ‘Straight through, mate. Out the back.’
I walked into a no-frills living room; laminate flooring, three-piece suite, a large TV and that was about it. The rest was open space. French windows opened onto the garden.
‘I’m in the garage, mate.’
I crossed a small square of lawn to where another ramp led up to a pair of doors set into the garage wall – a recent addition, judging by the fresh mortar and brick edging.
The garage had been converted into an office. There was a stud wall where the up-and-over door would once have been, and no windows. Crazy Dave was sitting behind his desk. He didn’t get up. He couldn’t.