The monitor sat in front of me, covered with kids' stickers. Shrek had a starring role on the mouse mat. A gla.s.s tankard full of sharpened pencils and pens, engraved with a winged dagger, doubled as a paperweight.

Family pictures were Blu-tacked to the walls. It didn't surprise me to see that there were none of Charlie's SAS days. There'd always been two types of guy in the Regiment: the ones who displayed nothing to do with their past, no certificates or commendations, no bayonets or decommissioned AK47s dangling off the wall. Work was work, and home was home. Then there were the others, who wanted it all to hang out for the whole world to see.

I picked up the tankard. Everyone got presented with one when they left. I couldn't remember where mine was. The squadron sergeant major had handed it to me almost as an afterthought when I gave him my clearance chit. 'Hold on,' he'd said. 'Here, I think this one's yours.' He'd fished around under his desk and given me a box, and that was that. 'See you around.'

Fair one. I was the one who'd chosen to leave. When you're out, you're out. There isn't a Good Lads Club or annual reunion or any of that malarkey.

I read the engraving and had to laugh. To Charlie. Good luck. B Squadron To Charlie. Good luck. B Squadron. By Hereford standards, that was emotion running amok.

I went through the paperwork it had been keeping in place; unpaid bills for fencing posts and animal feed, and two or three utility bills that had reached the red stage.

I started to mooch around on the PC. The only doc.u.ments on the desktop were one about poultices for horses' feet, and something about the exchange rate between the Australian dollar and Turkish lira. I knew they'd honeymooned in Cyprus. Maybe Charlie was planning a surprise return trip. Maybe he'd just gone into the city to pick up the tickets.

The email folder didn't yield much either. The bulk of it was Hazel's daily exchanges with Julie and the kids, even though they lived within spitting distance. I wondered what it must be like to be part of such a strong family unit. Maybe it was a bit too claustrophobic at times. Maybe Charlie had just gone off to find himself some s.p.a.ce. Enough of that; I was starting to sound like Silky.

I spent the next hour searching all his doc.u.ment folders, but found nothing. I went online. The browser's history had been cleared. What did that mean that Charlie was hiding something, or just that he was a good housekeeper? Whatever, if he'd been planning something he didn't want Hazel to know about, he would hardly have left a sign saying THIS WAY on his PC.

The filing cabinet had four drawers. I opened the bottom one, PZ, and pulled out the folder marked T. Charlie had done himself proud. The last couple of years' phone bills were not only in date order, they were itemized. I pulled out the last couple of quarters and ran my eye down the lists.

It didn't take long to spot a pattern.

Over the last month or so, and with increasing frequency, there had been several long calls to an 01432 number in the UK.

I looked at my watch. It was just after 9 a.m., so still well before bedtime back home.

I picked up the phone and dialled.

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 cla.s.s 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.u.c.ker 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 p.i.s.sed.

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 a.s.sembled 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 cafe 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 a.n.a.lysed a joke before saying, 'Oh yeah, I get it. That's funny.' In all the time I knew him, he never understood why s.h.i.tting 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.u.c.ker 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 s.p.a.ce. 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.

2

I went over and shook his hand. 'What the f.u.c.k did you do to yourself?'

Crazy Dave wheeled his way round in front of me, in a very high-tech aluminium go-faster chair. 'Not what you think. Got bounced off my Suzuki on the M4 by a truck driver from Estonia and took the scenic route. Did a tour of the central reservation, then checked out a fair amount of the opposite carriageway. Six months in Stoke Mandeville. My legs are f.u.c.ked. I'm still in and out of hospital like a bleeding yo-yo. Plates in, plates out; they don't know what the f.u.c.k they're doing.' He looked me up and down. 'f.u.c.k me, you don't look too good yourself. Fancy a brew?'

Not waiting for my answer, he spun the wheels past the sink and towards the kettle in the corner. 'So that was me out of the Regiment. Too handicapped even to be a Rupert. I get disability pension, but it hardly keeps me in haircuts. Then this landed on my plate. Madness not to.'

There had always been a broker knocking around Hereford. He had to be ex-Regiment because he had to know the people who was in, who was getting out and if he didn't, he had to know a man who did.

There was a clink of mugs. 'Had to turn the garage into a fortress, of course. The doors have drop-down steel shutters. Got to be firearm secure because of all that gear.' He nodded at the desk. All he had was a phone, a notebook, and two boxes of plain postcards, but to people wanting to know which companies were doing which jobs, they'd have been worth more than a whole truckload of AK47s.

'How's it all work, Dave? I've never been to a broker.'

'Guys come in, or phone me and say they're looking for work. I bang their details down on a card and put them into the box marked "Standby". See the other box? That's for "Bayonets". They're the boys who are actually working.'

I hoped the kettle was going to boil soon. Admin stuff might be fascinating to Dave, but I now knew all I needed to.

No such luck. A light started to burn in his eyes. Maybe he was crazy after all. He was like a trainspotter who'd just been asked to give a guided tour of the Orient Express. 'The system's simple. A company calls and asks for four medics, say, and a demolitions guy. I go into the Standby box and shuffle through the cards from the front, until I've got the requirement. They get a call. If they want the work they get moved from Standby to Bayonets. If they don't, their card goes to the back of the box. Once they've finished that job, if they still want to be on the books, they go into the back of the Standby box.'

What could I say? I gave him the sort of look that I hoped he'd mistake for total fascination.

The kettle finally rescued me. Crazy Dave busily squashed teabags as I settled in the chair the other side of his desk. He wheeled himself across to me with two mugs in one hand.

The choice was Smarties Easter Egg or Thunderbird 4. I settled for Smarties; it wasn't quite so chipped and stained.

'So, what do you want to know about Charlie?'

'He's a dinosaur, Dave; he's far too old to be f.u.c.king about. Hazel wants him home.'

He manoeuvred his way back to his side of the desk. 'She still putting up with the old f.u.c.ker then?'

I nodded. 'Talking of which, your kids OK?'

He sat back in his wheelchair and had a sip of the brew. 'Married and gone, mate. The boy's in London, f.u.c.king about with some Polish model, and the daughter's married a pointy-head. Got a nice place in town.'

Dave had lived here for over thirty years now, but he still called everyone a pointy-head, as if he'd just turned up.

I took a sip of my own tea and nearly choked. It was three parts sugar.

He grinned from ear to ear. 'Even the exmissus has married a pointy-head. One of the local coppers. What about you, Nick? Married? Divorced? Kids? The whole catastrophe, I shouldn't wonder...'

I shook my head and smiled. 'I think I may still have a German girlfriend back in Australia, but I had to leave her in a hurry because of you. She isn't going to be impressed.'

He grinned again. 'Them box-heads have always got the hump about something or other.'

We could have waffled on. I could have told him about Kelly he'd known her dad, Kev. But we'd done the social bit, and I was here to find Charlie.

'Can you give me some idea where the old f.u.c.ker's gone? I promised Hazel I'd give him the lecture. You know how it is.'

Dave gave a smile that told me he did, and he'd heard it a hundred times. 'You know I can't tell you anything, mate. It's the deal with the companies: they don't want anybody knowing what jobs they've got going on. And if everybody went home as soon as their wives started honking, there'd be hardly any f.u.c.ker working.'

He put down his mug and gripped the arms of his wheelchair. He lifted himself a couple of inches out of the seat and held himself there; maybe something to do with circulation, or to stop pressure sores developing on his a.r.s.e.

'What about yourself, Nick? I haven't heard your name mentioned on the circuit; what you doing?'

'Oh, you know... Stuff.' I shrugged and smiled. 'Look, Dave, I don't need to know what Charlie's up to. I just want to be able to phone up Hazel and say I spoke to him.'

He put his tea down and wheeled himself back alongside me. 'Sorry, mate, but you're f.u.c.ked. Apart from security, what if you convinced him to head back for the pipe and cocoa? I'd have to find a replacement. And anyway, he was gagging for a job. I didn't make him come to me, did I?'

He swivelled the chair and headed off towards the door. 'Tell you what, I'm going for a dump. I've been trying to put a toilet in here, but planning won't let me, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.' He whistled through the French windows and down the ramp.

'Hey, Nick, watch this!'

I got up and went to the door just as he lifted his front wheels and did a 360. 'I've got to close up, mate. Want to wait in the front room and finish your brew? What about a pint, later?'

I followed him outside and watched as he locked the garage doors with one of a bunch of about half a dozen keys.

We went into the living room and he carried on to the bottom of the stairs. As I sat down he transferred himself onto the lift. Then he selected another key from the bunch, pushed it into a control box on the wall, and gave it a turn. The chair glided slowly upwards.

'You need a hand, Dave?'

'Nah, it's rigged up like a monkey's climbing frame up here.'

The moment I heard the bathroom door close, I was on my feet and heading for the kitchen. No sign of the fuse box. I tried the cupboard under the stairs. There were two rows of cutout switches encased in a neat rectangle of plastic, but not one of them was labelled. f.u.c.k it; I turned the whole lot off at the master switch.

I went to the control box, grabbed the bunch of keys, and headed for the garage.

Charlie's card was right at the front of the Bayonets box. It didn't say who for, where, or what the job was, just that Dave had booked him a hotel room in Istanbul.

I locked up and went back to the living room.

'Nick! The f.u.c.king power's gone. Nick, you there?'

'Coming, what's up?'

I got the key back in the box just as Dave eased himself off another wheelchair at the top of the stairs and onto the lift. He hammered away at the down b.u.t.ton like a lunatic.

'See? I can't even have a f.u.c.king dump in peace. Try a light for us, see if the power's gone.'

I hit the hall switch. 'Where's the fuse box?'

Dave told me and I headed for it. A few moments later the microwave in the kitchen buzzed a power-cut warning and he started to make his way back down.

'Dave sorry, mate, but I can't stay for that pint. If Charlie's in touch, tell him to phone home Hazel's lost something and he's the only one who knows where it is.'

3