Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

The guy was a primary expert in his field, but an audience had been pressed into attending and had thought what he said irrelevant to life in the base. What had faded was what the guy with the hook had said. Foxy struggled for recall, and watched for the fucking cigarette packet to be dragged out of the pocket.

The goon would lurch towards him, drag up his head, get a handhold on his hair or ear, then use the fist on his face.

Foxy struggled to remember what the SERE guy had said, but the memories were gone. The goon, Mansoor, limped. He could give no indication that he understood a word of Farsi. Nor could he give any hint that he had watched the house and listened to conversations. He was in the business of buying time.

The time between each cigarette seemed the most important measure. Not the hands of a clock or watchface, but the time between the last cough on the cigarette, then it being dropped and stamped on, and the next brought out from the pack, put in the mouth, the match scraping the box, sometimes failing to ignite, and the delay while another was pulled out. For fuck’s sake, Foxy, not a fucking laugh. Get out of this fucking place and apply for the franchise to build a decent factory in these parts for the manufacture of good-quality matches, By Appointment to the Ayatollah. A business opportunity – for fuck’s sake, Foxy. The goon had a bad chest and had had, also, a bad wound.

Much had been lost, but not the logic. The view Foxy had of him was difficult through swollen eyelids. The goon leaned on the table and gazed down at his prey, seeming to consider how next to inflict pain and win answers. The pages in the pad stayed clean, the pencils unused. Logic told Foxy that a military casualty was posted away and out of sight. No army unit wanted disabled men hobbling about the garrison. One had ended up with the work of overseeing the security of a bomb-maker, was posted in Nowheresville, off the map, and forgotten. Good name for him: ‘Backwater Boy’. The Backwater Boy wasn’t stupid, was switched on enough to pick up whatever signs had been left for him. He had made the trap and left it on a hair trigger. Foxy had gone into it, led by his bloody chin. Logic said, also, that Mansoor, the Backwater Boy, had been tardy in calling for back-up and the big fellows from Headquarters. He wanted to book into the limelight, courtesy of a prisoner and pages filled with confession. He might have allowed vanity to cloud good sense. But they would come. In the morning, they’d be there. He’d bought a little time, but didn’t see how he could buy enough – needed a sackload of it.

Questions… Who was he?

The struggling English with a pupil’s accent… What was his name?

Temper rising… What was his mission?

And logic said – because the big fellows were not already there – that he would be sweating on his failure. It didn’t help him. It achieved confusion and scrambled clarity. Foxy clung to his silence. There didn’t seem to be an alternative. He couldn’t believe that any crap about being a bird-fancier, an anthropologist or an eco-scientist would carry weight. He’d been caught floundering in darkness close to the home of a security target, wearing a camouflage gillie suit, designed for a sniper or for rural surveillance. He didn’t know for how long he could bottle the admissions.

Not long… He was naked except for his socks. His arms were knotted behind his back; a rope shackled an ankle to a wall ring. He had wet himself and lay in a pool of it. Mucous stuff dribbled from his backside, and among the mosquito bites and tick sores there were the new burn marks from the cigarettes.

The packet came out, was shaken, the filter ends bouncing up…

Foxy cringed away and hugged the wall, twisting his stomach to keep his privates from the goon. He tried to remember what the man with the insignia on his arm – the knife and the split barbed wire – had said of Resistance. He could not, and struggled.

… and the filter went between the lips. The matchbox was out. Foxy felt the scream welling. He was pressed hard against the wall, which gave him no sanctuary. The match flared and the cigarette was lit. The glow came, the smoke billowed, and Foxy saw that the man panted, with anger, tiredness and frustration. He came forward and the bad leg trailed on the floor. There was rage in the eyes. The man, Mansoor, crouched. There was no pity. A big drag on the cigarette and the tip burned. Foxy didn’t have the strength to fight, couldn’t worm clear.

The hand came low. Foxy screamed before the pain, and the scream still had a voice when the pain flushed in him. He didn’t think the scream was heard, and didn’t care.

He’d come late, bad traffic on the road and a meeting that had overrun. The rain had been sluicing on the path. Ellie had shrugged, explained, and he did what was asked of him.

She’d told him where Foxy had stacked the logs when they’d been delivered last August, behind the garage, and she’d given him the basket to fill. When he’d done that, she’d told Piers to fill the coal bucket from the bunker Foxy had spent an afternoon putting together on the far side of the garage. She’d explained she would have done it herself but the rain had been so fierce.

The fire burned.

What had changed that evening was that his car was not down the side of the garage, near the coal and out of sight from the lane. He’d told her he’d have been half drowned if he parked where he had last night. She’d said it didn’t really matter.

There was a meal for two from the supermarket on the table. Foxy didn’t like pre-cooked, packaged meals and bitched if they were offered him and she hadn’t cooked his supper. The bottle had come from the wine store Foxy kept topped up. A pair of candles had been lit. It didn’t really matter if the Noakes woman from down the lane walked her dog last thing, saw the extra car and only a light on upstairs, or if the Davies man went out with his, saw Piers’s car and knew she was being screwed. It didn’t matter: Ellie wasn’t staying.

Would she be going with Piers? Setting up home with him? Maybe, maybe not.

It was a decent Chilean wine: Foxy rated Chilean vineyards and said they were sensibly priced. They ate and drank; their tongues loosened. The storm brewed and rain lashed. Twigs, from the leafless trees, were blown onto the slates and rattled as they fell to the paved path. She said where she would be in the morning and that she’d already phoned them at work, pleaded the throat infection that was her most used excuse, and he’d asked whether they still bought it. She’d shrugged, like it wasn’t important.

Piers asked, ‘You going to pack it in, the job?’

‘I might.’

‘If you wanted out, you could transfer internally. I could – end up at the same place.’

‘Like where?’

‘Edinburgh, Preston, Plymouth? Two wages. Wouldn’t be a place this size. You’d be shot of him.’

‘Worth thinking about.’

‘You could tell him. What’s he going to do? Bite your head off? Just tell him.’

‘When?’ She gazed at the front door and the wind rattled it. For a moment she listened hard, as if expecting the crunch of tyres on the gravel. ‘I might and I might not.’

‘When? When he comes back? Do you know how long it’ll be until.. .’

‘Don’t know when he’s back, or where he is, or why… Are we going to talk about him all night? That what you want?’

Her eyes danced. The candle flames lit them and she held her glass across the table. He filled it and she raised it as if in a toast. It seemed a waste to have lit the fire, then abandon it. She left the plates on the table and led him by the hand to the stairs. She might stay with Piers and she might not. What was certain for Ellie, she would be on the pavement tomorrow, mourning the homecoming of a hero. It seemed important to be there each time, as if it was a drug. She was not ready to wean herself off it. She took him up the stairs and he was pushing her. They almost ran the last few strides into Foxy’s bedroom.