The Network - Jason Elliot [9]
My second wish is to bring my legs closer together to reduce the feeling that I’m sinking into the ground, like a sagging beam which is beginning to split under its own weight. Billy is trained to notice this too.
‘Fucking legs apart,’ is his way of putting it. The third time I shift my legs he comes over and kicks my ankles to increase the distance between them, and then slaps the back of my head down for good measure.
‘Fucking head up, I said. You fucking deaf, or what?’
And before too long, after what is commonly called an eternity, not only am I unable to keep my head up for more than a few seconds at a time, but my legs are beginning to tremble with fatigue. Only slightly at first, but visibly later on. Twice my legs simply buckle under me as I fall asleep before righting myself by reflex, and it is perhaps this indication I won’t last much longer that prompts the arrival of a third and unfamiliar voice to enter my deprived world. I cannot hear it distinctly, but I think the words are ‘Take that off, for God’s sake,’ and the tone is more smoothly modulated and unexpectedly deep.
I hear the calculated cheeriness of the Face near my ear.
‘You still in there, Captain?’ The pillowcase is pulled off my head. ‘Nice bit of fresh air for you. All the comforts of home. Don’t say we don’t look after you. Have a seat, there’s a good fellow, and say hello to the CO.’
The Face leads me by the arm towards a folding chair with a torn plastic seat placed several feet from a table where a man in uniform is sitting. He does not look up as I am steadied into the chair but with my good eye I can make out his jumper, the three pips on each shoulder that identify him as a captain, and the rose and laurel cap badge on his distinctively coloured beret that identifies the regiment to which he belongs.
‘Get this over with quickly and you can have that eye seen to,’ he says in a quiet but firm tone. I cannot help but feel, after my treatment by the Face and his friend Billy from up north, a kind of kinship with this fellow officer, but dare not let my hopes rise. I must bring myself to a state of indifference, of greyness, as H would call it. Each breath brings a sharp pain into my side and I am at the edge of total exhaustion. My head falls forward.
‘Head UP,’ screams Billy from behind me at the top of his voice. My head jerks up in reflex, and this is when I notice that the three pips on the officer’s rank slides are not identical. One is a crown. He is not a captain but a full colonel. My mind is struggling to understand the significance of this. Military protocol dictates that only an officer of equal or senior rank may interrogate another officer, but the sight of such a senior officer is disturbing me.
He unscrews the cup of a Thermos, fills the cup, drinks from it and puts it down beside a trio of files. I can smell the coffee. Perhaps the visual metaphor is a deliberate one, calculated to weaken me.
‘Can you confirm that you are Captain Anthony Hugh Taverner, 1st Battalion, Scots Guards, latterly SO3/E2 in Kuwait City serving under the Joint Services Interrogation Wing?’
The big four to which H referred are name, rank, serial number and date of birth. But since they seem to know this and more, I see no reason to speak. Even were I to confirm my identity, I don’t know how it would help him, since I haven’t been in the army for nine years and service law is inapplicable to me as a civilian.
‘Ah,’ he exclaims, as if my silence itself has given him the answer he requires. ‘Nemo me impune lacessit. Good show at Tumbledown, but I suppose that’s before your time.’
The colonel knows my regimental motto and its battle honours, which suggests a level of personal knowledge, or research, which makes me uncomfortable. One of the files is a familiar red colour, and I wonder if it’s my 108, record of service from my stint with the Green Team. I dread to think. He’s probably got eyewitness statements