Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘It was… according to what we heard, it was like he’d forgotten you had to stop. Couldn’t understand why anybody was even questioning his attitude. I believe there were other occasions when his… common humanity was called into question.’

‘How?’

‘Not going any further down that road. The guys on the end of it, they’re mainly still around. And it wasn’t like he was the only one.’

‘Can you explain that a bit more?’

‘I can’t explain it at all, Merrily.’

‘You said before that even the Regiment couldn’t alter a man’s personality. Something did.’

‘Yeah,’ Barry said. ‘Something did. What it meant, of course, was that nobody in his right mind wanted to be in Byron’s gang any more. Which was causing a bit of upset so, in the end, he had to go. He was given an admin post. And then he went.’

‘Where did Syd come into this?’

‘He didn’t. Syd had gone before it got tense.’

‘Because I’m wondering if this could be a reason for the rift between Syd and Byron. Liz and Fiona both think it was something to do with Syd getting ordained, but they could be wrong.’

‘All I can tell you, Merrily, is Byron wasn’t popular, the last years.’

A wary stillness around him now. Merrily had the feeling that while he’d been talking he’d worked something out. Something he was still unsure about. It was becoming clear that anything she pulled from this was going to have to be worked for. She looked around the bar. James Bull-Davies had come in, with Alison. Amanda Rubens and her partner, Gus. Still no sign of Lol.

‘In view of all this,’ she said, ‘it seems more than a bit odd that Byron should want to come back and live near the new camp at Credenhill.’

‘You asking me if he had a grievance to work out? No way. That don’t happen. More likely it’s just business. If he’s running an adventure centre for SAS-fantasists, nowhere better to put it than near the SAS.’

Merrily shook her head, had a drink of water.

‘He seems to have virtually cleaned out his bank account just buying the land.’

‘Well, it’s paid off if he’s bringing in the punters.’

‘Syd was in this history club that Byron started, right?’

‘Was he?’

‘Do you know any of the others – who might be prepared to talk to me?’

‘No.’

Too quick, too casual.

‘But you must know a bit about the history club, Barry, because it was you who first told me about it.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you know who was in it – at least some of them.’

Barry took a long resigned breath.

‘I knew them, yeah.’

‘ Knew them.’

‘Yeah,’ Barry said. ‘ Knew. You satisfied now?’

The clouds had sunk to the horizon in layers of brown, like the sediment in cough mixture. An early yellow moon was floating free, very close to full. The night was saying, just do it.

Lol had driven slowly along what the map had identified as a Roman road, right through the centre of Magnis, where you turned right for Kenchester and then back towards Brinsop Common. He’d reversed the truck tight up against a field gate, the kind of place you’d never leave a vehicle in the daytime, but at least it was out of sight.

Bax was right, you couldn’t see the place from the road, only the recently planted woodland, a black cake of conifers at the top of a slow rise, Credenhill hard behind it like a prison wall.

There was an entrance with a cattle grid but no barrier except, about thirty paces in, a galvanized gate, ordinary farm-issue, closed, with a padlock hanging loose. Nothing to suggest private land.

Except the sign. Quite a modest sign, black on white, mud around the edges.

THE COMPOUND TRAINING CENTRE TRESPASSERS UNWELCOME

The night that had said just do it went quiet.

Lol stood and looked around.

He’d put on his walking boots. He had the mini-Maglite in his jeans, but there was still enough light to see where you were going, so he left it there. He didn’t have a jacket. His sweatshirt was worn thin; he had to push up the sleeves because he could feel the cold through a hole in one elbow.

He climbed over the gate, but left the track, stepping into a thicket of low spruce. There was a caravan at the side of the track. Derelict, long abandoned, a coating of mould, rags at the windows. Further along, an old cattle trailer, its tyres long gone, was held up on concrete blocks.

A little scared? Maybe. But fear wasn’t the worst of emotions. Fear could be a stimulant, while shame and regret could destroy you. Letting things slide, forgetting what was important.

Lol walked close to the hedge. Couldn’t see far ahead now, and then something splintered under his boot. He patted his pockets in case he’d dropped the torch, but no, it was there. He turned the top to switch it on, shielding the beam with a hand. Something made of grey metal lay between his boots. He bent down. A grey panel, the words Digital Interface printed along it.

Part of a CCTV camera, smashed. He looked up and saw a pole from which it might have fallen. He picked up the camera. Metal. Sturdy, professional. Industrial-quality. No need to worry about showing up on a monitor in Byron Jones’s study, then. Lol carried on up the side of the track. Wasn’t going to be stupid about this. He’d go as far the wire fence and just…

‘ Uh…! ’

The pain had come from several places almost simultaneously.

It ripped up through both legs, and Lol stumbled to his knees, then lost his balance, fell over, threw out a hand to push himself up, and it was snatched and stabbed all over.

He tried to roll away, and dragged his hand free and made it to his pocket and the Maglite. Its light showed rusting metal tendrils wound around his lower legs like a manacle of thorns. Oh God, this was the fence.

Had been. He looked up and saw double strands of barbed wire stretched between poles like arched lamp-posts. Between the strands he could see where a hole, man-sized, had been cut. Where he’d walked into the wire cuttings coiled on the ground, brutal metal brambles.

Someone had done this. Someone had been and smashed the CCTV cameras and then taken wire-cutters to the fence. Someone had broken into Jones’s training facility.

Breathing through his teeth, Lol began to unwind the wire, barb by barb, until he could stand up. He stayed there for a while, as though if he moved it would go for him again. Slowly, he pushed his hands down his legs: damp jeans fused to the skin by warm blood and cold dew. His hands hurt: he found three more deep cuts on fingers that wouldn’t be holding down a chord for a while. Danny would be furious.

He found a ragged tear in the wrist. A dark cord of blood unravelling into his palm. As he stepped away from the barbed wire, a severed strand whipped past his eyes and he realised that, without wanting to be, he was now inside Byron Jones’s compound, bleeding all over it.

Lol crouched behind a bush. Everything here seemed to come with spikes and barbs and thorns, and the metal had seemed more alive than the winter-brittle foliage. A filmy moonlight exposed a space surrounded by conifer woodland, like the exercise yard in some old POW camp. Half-cindered, huts around the perimeter, an oil tank on concrete blocks. Close to the centre, a barn-sized building of galvanized metal with no windows. Nearest to him, a Nissen hut, half buried in bushes and brambles.

When a small, tight creak came from the hut, Lol almost threw himself back into the wire.

One of the doors. One of the doors had moved. He sank down again, breath slamming into him like a punch. He waited… must’ve been five minutes. Nothing happened, nobody came out. But he knew the doors were open. Someone had left the doors open.