Deep Black - Andy McNab [121]
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Would he really kill a child, Nick? How’s he get it done? He have some sick fuck on call or what?’
There was no way he was getting any of that kind of information from me. ‘You don’t need to know, because it won’t happen.’
‘Why? Why do it when I’ve fucked you over, man?’
I kept my eyes on the road. ‘I used to work for George. That’s why Kelly’s dead.’
I could feel his stare drilling into the side of my head. ‘George killed Kelly? Fuck.’
I turned. His eyes were glazed, as if he was elsewhere. I knew that look very well: I’d seen it in the mirror often enough.
‘She’d been snatched by some fuck-ups. George was holding me back, not telling me where she was because he didn’t want me going into the house and fucking things up for him. He knew they’d probably kill her, but the job, the fucking job came first. By the time I got there and found her, well . . .’
I felt a jolt in the centre of my chest. The image of her dead body I described to Jerry was as vivid as a photograph.
Jerry wasn’t looking good. ‘Oh, fuck . . .’
I rubbed my hair and cupped my hand over my nose. ‘I took her body back to the States, and Josh and I buried her alongside the rest of her family. It was standing room only in the church.’ I rubbed my hands on my soaked jeans, trying to get rid of the smell. I needed to get back into the real world. ‘I don’t know if she would have been proud or embarrassed.’
I wished I could have fished in my wallet and pulled out a photograph like any other proud parent, but the simple fact was that I didn’t have one. Not one she would have been proud of anyway. Just the one from her passport: her face had been covered in zits that day and I’d had to drag her to the photo booth. There were others from her house, of course, but they were in storage. One of these days I’d get round to sorting all that stuff out.
‘Fuck it, it’s all history now.’ I pushed the gearshift into third as we headed uphill. ‘I don’t want anyone else to have those nightmares. No one deserves them. Except George – but that’ll never happen.’
We both just stared at the road as it was hoovered up by the headlights.
‘Listen, I’m sorry for fucking up your face. I saw the location device, the phone number, the camera thing at the al-Hamra and my head just kind of exploded.’
He had bigger things to worry about. ‘I deserved it. You know, Renee told me once that Buddha said we all have two dogs inside us, one good, one bad, constantly fighting each other. Which one wins depends on which one’s fed.’
‘You don’t have to come, you know. Everybody gets scared when they’ve got things to lose. You’ve still got your family, all that gear – I’ve got fuck-all. I’ll take you back to the barn and go on my own.’
‘Nah . . .’ He gave me as much of a grin as he could manage. ‘It’s just like old times . . .’
I checked the dial. Another three and a bit Ks and we should be hitting our first landmark. The frost was setting in with a vengeance: what had been a light dusting on the tarmac was now more or less solid ice. I just kept it in third and hoped for the best.
I thought about Renee’s dogs, and I knew this was one whole can of chunky Pal I didn’t want to open again.
91
Salkic had said the forestry block was just over two Ks long, and the next marker to look out for was a firebreak.
I glanced at Jerry, who was so close to the heating vents he nearly blocked off the supply. ‘We’re going to hit it soon, a group of “bomb-blasted” trees on the right.’ I’d liked Salkic’s description.
I slowed down and he wiped his side window with his wet sleeve, but there wasn’t just a group of devastated trees, there were scores of them; some splintered trunks were five or six feet high, some no more than stumps. Salkic had been wrong – they hadn’t all been blown up: most looked as if they’d been