John Carré - A Delicate Truth

‘And it was the presence of mercenaries that he didn’t like about Wildlife ? He said that of this particular operation?’

‘Just generally. Just mercs. Get them off his back, he hated the buggers. “It’s another merc job, Brigid. Makes you wonder sometimes who starts the wars these days.”’

‘Did he have other reservations about the operation?’

‘It sucked but what the hell?’

‘And afterwards? When he came back from the operation?’

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she seemed to become a different woman – inward, and appalled:

‘He was a ghost. Washed out. Couldn’t hold a knife and fork. Kept showing me the letter from his beloved regiment: thank you and goodnight and remember you’re bound for life by the Official Secrets Act . I thought he’d seen it all. I thought we both had. Northern Ireland. Blood and bone all over the street, the kneecappings, bombings, necklace killings. Holy God.’

She took a couple of deep breaths, collected herself and went on:

‘Till he gets the one-too-many. The one they all talk about. The one that’s got his name on and won’t let him go. The one-too-many bomb in the marketplace. The lorryload of kids on their way to school that gets blown to kingdom come. Or maybe it’s only a dead dog in a ditch, or he’s cut his little finger and it’s bleeding. Whatever it was, it was the straw that broke his back for him. He’d no defences. Couldn’t look at what he loved best in the world without hating us for not being covered in blood.’

Again she stopped, her eyes this time opening wide in outrage at whatever she was seeing, and Toby wasn’t:

‘He fucking haunted us!’ she blurted, then clapped her hand to her lips in reproach. ‘Christmas, we’d set the bloody table for him. Danny, me, Harry. We’d sit there gawping at his empty place. Danny’s birthday, the same. Presents on the doorstep in the middle of the fucking night. What the hell have we got that he’s going to catch if he comes in? Fucking leprosy? It’s his own house, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t we love him enough?’

‘I’m sure you did,’ Toby said.

‘How the fuck would you know?’ she demanded, and sat dead still with her fingers jammed between her teeth while she stared at something in her memory.

‘And the leathercraft?’ Toby asked. ‘Where did Jeb get his leathercraft skills from?’

‘His fucking father, who d’you think? A bespoke shoemaker, he was, when he wasn’t drinking himself into oblivion. But that didn’t stop Jeb loving him rotten, and laying out his fucking tools in the shed there like the Holy Grail when the bugger died. Then one night the shed’s empty and the tools is all gone and Jeb with them. Same as now.’

She turned and stared at him, waiting for him to speak. Cautiously, he did:

‘Jeb told Paul he had a piece of evidence. About Wildlife . He was going to bring it to their meeting in Cornwall. Paul didn’t know what it was. I wondered if you did.’

She spread her palms and peered into them as if reading her own fortune, then sprang up, marched to the front door and pulled it open:

‘Harry! Mr Bell wishes to pay his respects so’s he can tell his friend Paul. And Danny, you stay over with Jenny till I call you, hear me?’ And to Toby: ‘Come back after without Harry.’

The rain had returned. On Harry’s insistence Toby borrowed a raincoat and noticed that it was too small for him. The garden behind the house was narrow but long. Wet washing hung from a line. A man-gate led to a patch of wasteland. They passed a couple of wartime pillboxes covered in graffiti.

‘I tell my pupils they’re reminders of what their grandparents fought for,’ Harry called over his shoulder.

They had reached a dilapidated barn. The doors were padlocked. Harry had the key.

‘We don’t let Danny know it’s here, not at the moment,’ said Harry earnestly. ‘So I’ll trouble you to bear that in mind on your return to the house. We plan to offer it on eBay once the hue and cry’s died down. You don’t want people put off by the association, do you?’ – giving the doors a shove and releasing a squadron of jubilant small birds. ‘Mind you, he did a good conversion, did Jeb, I’ll give him that. Slightly obsessive, in my private opinion. Not for Brigid’s ear, naturally.’

The tarpaulin was fastened to the ground with tent pegs. Toby looked on while Harry went from peg to peg, easing the cleat, then lifting the loop off the peg till one side of the tarpaulin hung loose; then sweeping the whole tarpaulin clear to reveal a green van, and the scrawled inscription, gold on green, JEB’S LEATHERCRAFT in capitals, and beneath it in smaller letters Buy From Van .

Ignoring Harry’s extended arm, Toby mounted the tailgate. Wood panelling, some panels removed, others dangling open. A flap table, raised and scrubbed, one wooden chair, no cushion. A rope hammock taken down and neatly rolled. Bare, scrubbed shelves, craftsman-fitted. A smell of stale blood not quite overcome by the stink of Dettol.

‘What happened to his reindeer hides?’ Toby asked.

‘Well now, they were best burned, weren’t they?’ Harry explained brightly. ‘There wasn’t that much could be saved, frankly, Toby, given the extent of the mess the poor man made of himself. No alcohol involved to help him on his way, which they say is unusual. But that’s Jeb for you. Not a man to let his hair down. Never was.’

‘And no farewell note?’ Toby asked.

‘Just the gun in his hand and eight bullets left in the magazine, which makes you wonder what he thought he would do with the others after he’d shot himself, I suppose,’ Harry replied in the same informative tone. ‘Same as him using his wrong hand. Why? you ask yourself. Well, of course there’s no answer to that. There never will be. He was left-handed was Jeb. But he shot himself with his right, which could be described as an aberration. But Jeb was a shooter by trade, they tell me. Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? If Jeb had put his mind to it, he could have shot himself with his own foot, could Jeb, according to what I’m told by Brigid. Plus the fact that when you reach that point you’re not accessible to rational argument, as we all know. Which is what the police said, very rightly, in my opinion, me not being an expert by a long chalk.’

Toby had found a pockmark as wide as a tennis ball but not so deep halfway up the wood cladding and midway down one side, and was tracing its outline with his finger.

‘Yes, well now,’ Harry explained, ‘a bullet like that has to go somewhere, which is common sense, though you wouldn’t believe it watching some of the films they make these days. It can’t just vanish into thin air, can it, not a bullet? So, what I say is, fill the hole with your Polyfilla, rub it down, paint it over, and with any luck it won’t notice.’

‘And his tools? For his leathercraft?’

‘Yes, well that’s an embarrassment to all concerned, his father’s tools are, Toby, same as his ship’s stove, which was worth a bob or two of anybody’s money. First on the spot was the fire brigade, I’m not sure why, but clearly somebody summoned them. Then along come the police, then the ambulance. So you don’t know whose light fingers were to blame, do you? Not the police, I’m sure. I’ve great respect for our guardians of the law, more than what Brigid’s got, to be frank, her having been one. Still, that’s Ireland for you, I suppose.’

Toby supposed it was.

‘He never grudged me, mind. Not that he had the right. You can’t expect a woman like Brigid to do without, can you? I’m good to her, which couldn’t always be said for Jeb, not if we’re honest.’