and we didn’t see or hear anything. Do you understand me?’
Andrew and Tilley nodded.
‘Don’t say anything. Leave it all up to me.’
‘He had no right to be there anyway,’ mumbled Andrew. ‘He never was one of us.’
‘Shut up, Andrew! Don’t say another word or I’ll drag you back out there and give you to the Iceman as well.’
Tilley said nothing. Her mouth was clamped tight in complete shock and disgust at what her cousin had done and what Clyde was prepared to do to cover up the crime. Deep down, she knew that she would never know peace while she remained in Henswytch. To be forced to look at Andrew and Clyde each day would remind her of the evil that she had been a witness to and she knew her own guilt in helping to cover up would haunt her forever.
Chapter 1
Tom Briggs
I
awoke long before either my alarm clock or the wailing of the imam calling the faithful to prayer.
While showering I leaned forward and placed my hands on the wall to allow the hot water to run over the scars on the backs of my thighs and legs. I noted that time was gradually allowing the angry red hue to subside into a more regular colour. In a few more months I hoped that they would be like all the other scars I had accumulated in my youth.
I soaped myself thoroughly and stretched languidly under the water while allowing the kinks in my aching knees to ease as the suds washed away.
The wounds hadn’t been life threatening, but they had been bad enough for me to have been airlifted out of Afghanistan to a military hospital in Germany. After a period of convalescence I had been cleared by the doctors and shipped home to England for a long course of physiotherapy and to recuperate. And so my second tour of duty had ended along with my hope of playing a part in the defeat of the Taliban. I missed my men and had hoped to be with them when our mission was completed, but I wasn’t fooled about our chances of ultimate success. In my heart of hearts I knew that it would take nothing short of a miracle to achieve peace by military means in that dusty country, and so I was more than glad to arrive home to my wife and young son.
The biggest disappointment had come after months of physiotherapy when the doctors had pronounced that I would no longer be marked fit for active duty. ‘You’re a commando, Sergeant Briggs,’ said my CO, ‘and you know even better than I do that a ninety per cent fit soldier is a burden to his unit in the field.’
Reluctantly I had to admit that he was correct and I had been forced to accept the job offered to me in the regiment’s armoury. It meant that I could stay with the regiment and that was important to me. I was not a qualified armourer so my tasks consisted in the most part of shuffling papers with the occasional visit to super-vise firing parties at the rifle range to break up the monotony. I soon tired of it and when my enlistment was up I had chosen not to continue with the sham existence.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asked my perplexed wife as she cradled my young son.
I shrugged. ‘I’m entitled to a pension. I’ll look around. There’s bound to be something out there that I can do.’
Half a year later I had been through a variety of jobs all of which I found to be of mind numbing uselessness and left them all quickly, convinced that the next one would be better, but they weren’t.
‘You could always re-enlist,’ offered Maria, knowing that that was where my heart lay.
‘They don’t want me on active duty and I don’t want a desk job.’
‘Well, you can’t go on the way you’re going. You’ll destroy yourself,’ she said, wrapping her arms around me and kissing me lightly on the ear.
I sighed and drew her into me, kissing her lips and breathing in her scent. ‘I’m a soldier. It’s all I know. It’s all I’ve ever known.’
Maria looked up at me. ‘Then do what you have to do. It will hurt me to have you go away and it pains me that I’ll have to spend my nights praying that you’re safe, but I can’t stand to see you the way you are.’
I nodded and knew that she was right.
So it was that I had done what many ex-soldiers do nowadays.
Wrapped in a towel, I padded on bare feet back to my small room. As I did so I heard the wailing call from the nearby minaret commence and I prepared for action.
After donning the company’s uniform of desert camouflage fatigues, I walked over to my open window and looked out over the Green Zone of Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein’s palaces had been appropriated by the ‘liberating’ forces and now nearly five thousand foreigners lived amongst his lush parks and gardens. A further five thousand Iraqis had also moved into the zone. Most of these were the very poorest people in Iraq who had taken the opportunity to avail themselves of Saddam Hussein’s plush apartments when he had fled ahead of the liberating forces.
Now the Green Zone was an enclave of relative peace in the tur-moil of a Baghdad trying to come to terms with life after Saddam’s regime. It was surrounded by high concrete blast walls, T-walls and barbed wire with numerous heavily manned guard posts.
I had arrived in Iraq some nine months before and was now due some home leave. Each day I looked forward to the day when I arrived at Heathrow to be reunited with my son Jason for a short time and then dropping him off with his grandparents and whisking his mother off to a romantic resort in Spain.
‘Good morning, Sergeant Briggs,’ smiled the cook as I loaded my plate with bacon, eggs and toast in the company canteen.
‘Good morning, Corporal Jones,’ I replied.
Even though none of us were still in the armed forces old habits die hard and our former rank continued to define us. A retired officer was therefore accorded executive status while former enlisted men were the workers with sergeants equated to a civilian foreman in both rank and pay bracket.
At this early hour the canteen was still empty. ‘Are you going out today?’ asked Jones as I sat down not far from him.
I looked at my watch. ‘A couple of hours. Enough time to catch a bite to eat and check the vehicles.’
‘I’m glad you’re on the ball. Some of the contractors they’ve taken on lately aren’t worth feeding. Not a combat soldier among them.’
I nodded and concentrated on my food while silently conceding that Jones was correct. Much to my annoyance many of the men I now had to work with had as little as one period of enlistment under their belts. As soon as their first tour of duty was up they ditched the military and signed up for company work where they could earn many times the army’s rate of pay for performing much the same duties; however, I knew that receiving higher pay did not equate in any way to being a better soldier.
I finished my breakfast and walked outside to find that our armoured carriers
