sorry to call you at this hour, but I’d appreciate a meeting,’ Davies said.
Docherty raised his eyebrows. It did sound like a pub in the background. He tried to remember which of Hereford’s hostelries Barney Davies favoured. ‘OK. What about? Can it wait till after Christmas?’
‘Tonight would be better.’
‘Where are you?’ Docherty asked.
‘In the bar at Central Station.’
The CO was in Glasgow. Had maybe even come to Glasgow just to see him. What the fuck was this about?
‘I’m sorry about the short notice, but…’
‘No problem. In an hour, say, at nine.’
‘Wonderful. Can you suggest somewhere better than this?’
‘Aye, the Slug & Sporran in Brennan Street. It’s about a ten-minute walk, or you can take a cab…’
‘I’ll walk.’
‘OK. Just go straight down the road opposite the station entrance, then left into Sauchiehall Street and Brennan Street’s about three hundred yards down on the right. The pub’s about halfway down, opposite a pool hall.’
‘Roger.’
The phone clicked dead. Docherty stood there for a minute, a sinking heart and a rising sense of excitement competing for his soul, and then went back to his fish and chips. He removed the plate which Isabel had used to keep them warm. ‘He wants to see me,’ he said, in as offhand a voice as he could muster. ‘Tonight.’
She looked up, her eyes anxious. ‘Por qué?’ she asked.
‘He didn’t say.’
Lieutenant-Colonel Barney Davies, Commanding Officer 22 SAS Regiment, found the Slug & Sporran without much difficulty, and could immediately see why Docherty had recommended it. Unlike most British pubs it was neither a yuppified monstrosity nor a noisy pigsty. The wooden beams on the ceiling were real, and the polished wooden booths looked old enough to remember another century. There were no amusement machines in sight, no jukebox music loud enough to drown any conversation – just the more comforting sound of darts burying themselves in a dartboard. The TV set was turned off.
Davies bought himself a double malt, surveyed the available seating, and laid claim to the empty booth which seemed to offer the most privacy. At the nearest table a group of youngsters sporting punk hairstyles were arguing about someone he’d never heard of – someone called ‘Fooco’. Listening to them, Davies found it impossible to decide whether the man was a footballer, a philosopher or a film director. They looked so young, he thought.
It was ten to nine. Davies started trying to work out what he was going to say to Docherty, but soon gave up the attempt. It would be better not to sound rehearsed, to just be natural. This was not a job he wanted to offer anybody, least of all someone like Docherty, who had children to think about and a wife to leave behind.
There was no choice though. He had to ask him. Maybe Docherty would have the sense to refuse.
But he doubted it. He himself wouldn’t have had the sense, back when he still had a wife and children who lived with him.
‘Hello, boss,’ Docherty said, appearing at his shoulder and slipping back into the habit of using the usual SAS term for a superior officer. ‘Want another?’
‘No, but this is my round,’ Davies said, getting up. ‘What would you like?’
‘A pint of Guinness would probably hit the spot,’ Docherty said. He sat down and let his eyes wander round the half-empty pub, feeling more expectant than he wanted to be. Why had he suggested this pub, he asked himself. That was the TV on which he’d watched the Task Force sail out of Portsmouth Harbour. That was the bar at which he’d picked up his first tart after getting back from Mexico. The place always boded ill. The booth in the corner was where he and Liam had comprehensively drowned their sorrows the day Dalglish left for Liverpool.
Davies was returning with the black nectar. Docherty had always respected the man as a soldier and, what was rarer, felt drawn to him as a man. There was a sadness about Davies which made him appealingly human.
‘So what’s brought you all the way to Glasgow?’ Docherty asked.
Davies grimaced. ‘Duty, I’m afraid.’ He took a sip of the malt. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in beating about the bush. When did you last hear from John Reeve?’
‘Almost a year ago, I think. He sent us a Christmas card from Zimbabwe – that must have been about a month after he got there – and then a short letter, but nothing since. Neither of us is much good at writing letters, but usually Nena and Isabel manage to write…What’s John…’
‘You were best man at their wedding, weren’t you?’
‘And he was at mine. What’s this about?’
‘John Reeve’s not been in Zimbabwe for eight months now – he’s been in Bosnia.’
Docherty placed his pint down carefully and waited for Davies to continue.
‘This is what we think happened,’ the CO began. ‘Reeve and his wife seem to have hit a bad patch while he was working in Zimbabwe. Or maybe it was just a break-up waiting to happen,’ he added, with all the feeling of someone who had shared the experience. ‘Whatever. She left him there and headed back to where she came from, which, as you know, was Yugoslavia. How did they meet – do you know?’
‘In Germany,’ Docherty said. ‘Nena was a guest-worker in Osnabrück, where Reeve was stationed. She was working as a nurse while she trained to be a doctor.’ He could see her in his mind’s eye, a tall blonde with high Slavic cheekbones and cornflower-blue eyes. Her family was nominally Muslim, but as for many Bosnians it was more a matter of culture than religion. She had never professed any faith in Docherty’s hearing.
He felt saddened by the news that they had split up. ‘Did she take the children with her?’ he asked.
‘Yes. To the small town where she grew up. Place called Zavik. It’s up in the mountains a long way from anywhere.’
‘Her parents still lived there, last I knew.’
‘Ah. Well all this was just before the shit hit the fan in Bosnia, and you can imagine what Reeve must have thought. I don’t know what Zimbabwean TV’s like, but I imagine those pictures were pretty hard to escape last spring wherever you were in the world. Maybe not. For all we know he was already on his way. He seems to have arrived early in April, but this is where our information peters out. We think Nena Reeve used the opportunity of his visit to Zavik to make one of her own to Sarajevo, either because he could babysit the children or just as a way of avoiding him – who knows? Either way she chose the wrong time. All hell broke loose in Sarajevo and the Serbs started lobbing artillery shells at anything that moved and their snipers started picking off children playing football in the street. And she either couldn’t get out or didn’t want to…’
‘Doctors must be pretty thin on the ground in Sarajevo,’ Docherty thought out loud.
Davies grunted his agreement. ‘As far as we know,
