Dead Centre - Andy McNab [2]
Worst of all, he fancied Mong’s wife, and didn’t mind letting him know. BB had few scruples when it came to horizontal tabbing. He was plenty stupid enough to try it on with her. He’d tried it in the past, before Mong was on the scene, but Tracy soon cottoned on that he wouldn’t be giving her what she needed.
Of course, BB wasn’t the only one who fancied her. We all did. She was a good-looking girl. She had the kind of smile that belonged on an infant-school teacher. Everything about her was close to perfect – the way her dark hair brushed her shoulders, the way she dressed. We called her Racy Tracy, but it wasn’t really true.
For everyone apart from BB she was off-limits. She was somebody else’s wife. And that somebody was a mate.
This new fight had been brewing since the moment we’d met up a week ago in the UK. BB hadn’t seen Mong for a couple of years, but got stuck straight in with the same old banter: ‘Any time she needs a real man, just give her my number.’ And he hadn’t stopped there.
I gave Mong a prod. ‘You all right, mate?’
‘Yeah.’ He lifted his head, held a finger to each nostril and blew out a stream of sand and snot. He nodded at the waves pounding in ten metres away. ‘I suppose I’d better get cleaned up.’
His accent was West Country, borderline pointy-head. It didn’t fit with how he looked. Mong was a big unit; he could have been a poster boy for the World Wrestling Federation. He was tall and thickset, with crinkly dark blond hair. He never went to the gym or lifted weights, but still shat muscle. It was how he was made.
He really did have a huge arse. Each cheek was plenty big enough for those hands. From behind, with his kit off, he looked like a crime scene. After a few beers at a party, he’d drop his trousers and work his muscles so it looked like they were shuffling cards. His biggest pick-up line was ‘Stick or twist?’ There was still a bit of the Royal Marine in him, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. Any excuse, any piss-up, those lads couldn’t wait to get their kit off.
With BB it was a totally different story. To keep his bulk he had to hit the weights non-stop and take supplements by the fistful. His day sack was filled with protein powder.
3
MONG BEGAN TO ease himself up. There wasn’t a mark on him.
‘He’s full of shit, Mong. You know that, don’t you?’
He grabbed a fistful of sand and let it run through his fingers. ‘He still gets to me. After all these fucking years.’
‘What did he say this time?’
Mong looked away. He blinked hard, like he had sand in his eyes. ‘He came out with the wedding-photo thing. The cunt. He said I’d better keep checking.’
When BB targeted a married woman, it wasn’t about shagging her, or even liking her. It was about conquering her, and having one up on her husband. When he was pissed once he told me that every time he was in the new conquest’s home he always asked to see the wedding photograph. As soon as he was alone, he’d ease it out of the frame, grab a pen and write ‘J was here’ halfway down the front of the bride’s dress. If he was in a bit of a rush, he’d just scrawl it on the back, like a dog cocking his leg to mark his territory. If it was all going tits up, he’d say to her, ‘Go and look at your wedding pic.’
That hadn’t happened to Tracy. She was a Hereford girl who’d hung around with Regiment guys from the time she was seventeen. She and her sister had been trying to snag one for years. Why not? They got a house out of it, and a well-paid husband who was away for most of the year. For girls like Tracy, it was life as per normal, but with cash and security. She wasn’t mercenary, just realistic. And it meant that once she’d got Mong, she wouldn