Stephen Leather - The Double Tap

‘No. We are not being followed.’

‘Good. So now we can talk?’

‘Soon.’

A narrow alleyway led off the street and Monsieur Rolfe stepped to the side to allow Chaillon to walk in first. Chaillon nodded his thanks and stepped into the darkness. There was a stack of cardboard boxes to the left and an abandoned bicycle with one wheel missing. Chaillon noticed a damp, cloying smell about the place, as if something had died there and been left to rot. ‘Surely this can’t be. .?’ said Chaillon, but before he could finish Monsieur Rolfe’s arms came down either side of his head and something tightened around Chaillon’s neck. It was a wire, Chaillon realised, and the only thing that was stopping it biting into his flesh was his wool scarf. He tried to speak but the wire was pulled tighter and he couldn’t even gasp for breath. His fingers grasped at the wire but it was too tight. He felt a nail break and a sharp pain and then his chest began to heave. He fell forward, his face slamming into the cold concrete floor and then a knee pressed into the small of his back and the wire was pulled even tighter. Chaillon’s lungs began to burn and his eyes bulged and then it all went black. The last thought in his mind was what a pity it was that he would never get the chance to make love to Theresa.

The boy stood by the sink and rinsed the plate clean before putting it on the draining board. He winced as he heard his mother moan upstairs. The boy had asked his father why the doctor didn’t take her into hospital, and his father had said that it was because there wasn’t anything more that could be done. The boy had spent hours on his knees, praying to God, praying for Him to end his mother’s torment, but it hadn’t done any good. The boy didn’t believe in God any more. He didn’t believe in God and he didn’t believe in doctors.

His mother’s medicine was wrapped in a dish cloth at the back of the larder. The boy had seen his father put the bottle of tablets there after taking out his mother’s night-time dose. The boy had asked his father why he didn’t give her more of the tablets so that she wouldn’t cry so much, and he had explained that it was because too many would be bad for her.

The boy wiped his hands on a tea-towel, poured milk into a tall glass and put it on a tray. Upstairs his mother groaned, a deep, throaty sound that made the boy shiver. He opened the larder door and took out the bottle of tablets. He weighed the bottle in the palm of his hand as he read the label. It warned that no more than twelve tablets should be taken each day. He tried counting how many there were but he kept losing track. There were at least sixty. He put the bottle on the tray next to the glass of milk and carefully carried it upstairs.

His mother looked towards the door as he walked into the bedroom. She had her knees drawn up to her chest again and was hugging a hot water bottle to her stomach. The boy took the tray to the bedside table. His mother stared at the bottle of tablets as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing. She slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, grunting with each movement. The boy watched silently. She didn’t look like his mother any more. There were dark bags under her eyes, her hair was damp and sticking to her face and her lips were crusted with brown stuff. And she was thin, thinner than the boy thought a person could be without being a skeleton. He handed her the glass of milk and she took it with her left hand. Her eyes stayed on the bottle of tablets as he unscrewed the cap and poured a dozen or so into the palm of his hand. She reached over and put a claw-like hand on his arm. The nails were yellow and brittle and the skin was so pale he could almost see through it. He held out one of the tablets and she took it from him. He watched as she put it to her lips. The tablet disappeared into her mouth and she swallowed. He gave her another tablet. And another. After the fifth she took a sip from the glass of milk. She smiled and he gave her another tablet. ‘How many do you want?’ he asked. It was the first time he’d spoken since entering the room.

His mother shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. He held out another one and she took it. She swallowed six more before taking another drink of milk.

‘Do you feel better?’ he asked as he shook more tablets into his hand.

She nodded and took another tablet. The boy watched her eat the tablets as if they were sweets and wondered why he didn’t feel sad any more. The bottle was half empty. His mother sighed and leaned back on the pillows. ‘You’re a good boy,’ she said. ‘You’re a good boy for helping me.’ There were deep lines around her mouth that made her look like the old women whom he saw sitting in the park feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons.

‘Dad’s going to be mad,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

‘He won’t be mad,’ she said. Her eyelids seemed heavy, as if she was having trouble keeping them open. ‘Will you do something for me?’ she asked, holding out the glass.

‘Of course,’ he said, taking it and putting it on the tray.

‘Tell your dad that I love him,’ she said. Her voice sounded suddenly stronger, more like the mother he remembered, more like the way she was before she got sick.

‘I will,’ the boy promised. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ He crossed himself solemnly.

‘You’re not going to die,’ she said, and swallowed another tablet. ‘Not for a long, long time. Just tell your dad what I said, okay?’ The boy nodded and held out more tablets. His mother took them and touched them one at a time as if she was counting them. ‘Why don’t you go downstairs and watch television?’ she said.

‘But. .’

‘I’ll be okay now,’ she said.

The boy leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled of sick and something else, something he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t his mother’s normal smell.

‘It’s time for you to go now,’ she said. She slurred her words and she was having to fight to keep her eyes open. He slid off the bed and left the room without looking back.

Martin guided the large Mercedes to a stop at the intersection with the main road and waited for a gap in the traffic. A red Golf was parked by the side of the road and the couple inside were bent over a map and arguing. Cramer smiled to himself as he remembered what a struggle map-reading and navigation had been for him. Compared with negotiating his way across the Falklands in total darkness, a drive through the Welsh countryside was an absolute breeze. A truck full of sheep rattled by and Martin turned right and followed it.

Cramer had a sudden thought. ‘Allan, where exactly are we?’ he asked.

‘A couple of miles from Swansea Airport,’ Allan replied.

‘So the Brecon Beacons are where?’

Allan shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Thirty miles or so to the north-east.’ He turned around and grinned. ‘Do you want to go back and relive old times?’

Cramer snorted softly. ‘I don’t think I could finish the Long Drag these days, never mind do it on time. I was just wondering. I guess I’d lost track of where I was, that’s all.’ Cramer sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Hell, it was a lifetime ago. The Brecon Beacons was where the SAS tested its men almost to destruction. Deaths weren’t unknown on the barren, windswept mountains, and the most demanding of the tests was a sixty-kilometre solo march which had to be completed in under twenty hours. The Long Drag, they called it, or the Fan Dance, after the highest peak, Pen-y-fan. It wasn’t just endurance that was tested, but navigation skills and something deeper. Without an inner drive, without a burning desire to succeed, the Long Drag was an insurmountable barrier. Cramer had completed his solo march in a little over eighteen hours, despite getting lost twice. So much had changed since he’d arrived at the final checkpoint and been slapped on the shoulders and told that he’d earned his winged dagger badge. They’d poured hot coffee down his throat and helped him into the back of a truck and he’d never been happier, never been prouder of what he’d achieved. So much had changed since then. He’d seen men die, he’d been tortured, and he’d killed. The young man who’d fought back the tears of joy at being allowed into the regiment hadn’t cried for more than ten years. It was hard for Cramer to determine exactly what emotions he did feel these days. Anger sometimes. Certainly not happiness. Fear? No, he wasn’t afraid. He’d been through too much to be afraid. He wasn’t scared of death, he was sure of that. He’d faced death before and he’d been responsible for the deaths of others, and he knew he was being honest when he said that the thought of no longer being alive didn’t worry him. What scared him was dying. He didn’t want to die a shrivelled husk of the super-fit human being he’d once been, a lifetime ago. He would always be grateful to the Colonel for offering him that, the chance to die like a warrior.