LITMIR.BIZ

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when she’d seen him at his mother’s house, or if he was, he’d been hunched and folded in on himself, both physically and mentally. He was well over six foot, and in the cottage built to house farmworkers from the eighteenth century, average height five foot four, he looked huge, a vision of Gulliver. Slipping off her ballet pumps, Jessie lined them up side by side at the edge of the mat, shrugged off her jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door, straightening the sleeves until they hung parallel, creaseless, aware all the time that Callan was watching, the creaking of the floorboards as he shifted his weight from foot to foot telegraphing his impatience. When she had finished, he bent to untie his shoelaces, kick his trainers off carelessly.

      He straightened and she watched him surveying her sitting room, the pristine cream carpet, minimal furnishings – two cream sofas and a reclaimed oak coffee table, free of clutter – the fitted shelves empty of books and ornaments. Show-home spotless.

      ‘What did you say to Ahmose?’ she asked, when he joined her in the kitchen.

      ‘We were having a conversation about gardening. I told him that your wisteria needed cutting right back. It will flower much better in spring with a decent prune.’

      ‘Ah. That’ll be why he was looking at you as if you were the devil. He does my garden. Takes a huge amount of pride in it. You’ve just driven an articulated lorry through his ego.’

      Callan smiled and shrugged. ‘I wasn’t entirely idle for the past six months. At least my mother now has a flourishing garden, even if her nerves are shot to shit.’

      For an unexpected moment, Jessie’s mind flashed to Wimbledon, to the small sixties house she had grown up in. She had only seen her mother once since last Christmas, she realized, in March, when she had popped in with a present and cake to celebrate her mother’s birthday, taken her for lunch at a local pub. Her own birthday this year spent at home with Ahmose, pleading pressure of work to duck a visit. Guilt at that decision still hanging over her like a shroud, adding to the other accumulated layers of guilt and self-recrimination. Even more reason not to get in touch.

      ‘Coffee? Tea?’ Tugging open the fridge, she pulled out a bottle of Sauvignon. ‘Wine? I’m having wine – lots of it – if that helps your decision.’

      He shook his head. ‘I’m on duty.’

      The words ‘on duty’ surprised her, though she realized that they shouldn’t. He had, after all, come to ask for her help on a case. So he was back at work in the Military Police Special Investigation Branch then. Properly back. She was pleased for him. She glanced around, caught his eye and smiled.

      ‘Dressed like that?’

      He smiled, an easy smile that lit his amber eyes the colour of warm honey. Despite the watchfulness, he seemed relatively comfortable in his own skin, a state that three months ago she would have happily bet a sizeable sum he was too far gone ever to reach.

      ‘I’ve been in the gym. I’m on call. I can work out and I can turn up to a crime scene looking like shit, but I can’t drink. I’d love a coffee.’

      While she put the kettle on, he wandered into the sitting room. Jessie poured herself a large glass of wine, returned the bottle to the fridge with the label facing outward, replaced the kettle on its stand, angling the handle so that it was parallel with the wall, wiped down the work surface, picked up his coffee and her glass and followed him.

      He was standing by the fireplace, studying the pictures on her mantelpiece. Just two. The only personal things on display in her sitting room, the only clutter. One of her brother, the other of Jessie, Jamie and their mother at London Zoo, all three of them happy and healthy looking, an image of her family that seemed so unlikely given what followed, that sometimes she felt as if the photographs had been mocked up on Photoshop.

      ‘Who’s this?’ He picked up the photograph of Jamie.

      ‘My brother,’ she said curtly. She willed him to put it back, leave it.

      ‘Younger or older?’

      ‘Younger by seven years.’

      ‘A lot.’

      She shrugged. ‘He was a late addition.’ A Band-Aid baby. She didn’t say it.

      ‘So he’s … how old now?’

      ‘Nothing.’ She fought to keep her voice even, feeling the tension rise, the electric suit tingle against her skin. ‘He’s nothing. No age.’

      Taking the picture from Callan, she put it back on the mantelpiece. It was her favourite picture of Jamie, taken when he was four, his mouth, ringed by a telltale brown smear of chocolate ice cream, wide open in a beautiful, innocent grin, his eyes clamped shut in the way that small children have of smiling with the whole of their faces. All teeth and gums. She remembered the occasion well. She had taken him down to watch the tourists queuing for entrance to Wimbledon tennis championships, the queue five thick and a kilometre long. Day 1. Back when Andre Agassi was limping out the last of his career. It had been punishingly hot and the atmosphere had felt like a street party, people handing around bottles of wine and juice, sharing golf umbrellas for shade.

      She steadied herself against the mantelpiece, unprepared for the emotional vertigo of Jamie being so close, but not being there, feeling exposed in front of this virtual stranger.

      The picture wasn’t straight. The electric suit was hissing and snapping against her skin. Realigning the picture, she checked the distance between the two photographs. She could sense Callan watching her, knew she should move away and straighten things once he had gone, but couldn’t. Just couldn’t.

      She spun around to face him.

      ‘The case.’ It came out more roughly than she had meant. ‘Did you come to interfere with my things or did you come about a case?’

      He held up his hands in a mock defensive gesture, but the expression on his face held no apology. Only query.

      ‘Can I sit?’

      ‘Sure.’

      She indicated the sofa, curled herself into the chair opposite, folding her legs underneath her, wrapping her arms around her torso. Defensive body language, she knew, but too stressed now to unwrap herself. In the confined space of her living room his presence, those bright amber eyes fixed on her face, his easy confidence, so unexpected, made her feel gauche and claustrophobic in equal measures. The shift in the balance of confidence palpable, to her at least.

      ‘Last week, one of our Intelligence Corps non-commissioned officers, a Sergeant Andy Jackson, died in Afghanistan.’

      ‘He’s not the first and I’m sure he won’t be the last,’ she replied.

      ‘This was different. He was …’ he paused, as if trying to find the right words. ‘Being beasted, I suppose you’d call it, by one of the other Intelligence Corps sergeants, Colin Starkey. They were based at TAAC-South, headquartered in Kandahar Airfield, doing whatever secret squirrel stuff Intelligence Corps soldiers do. They went for a run in the desert around the airfield.’ He paused. ‘You’ve been to Afghanistan, haven’t you?’

      ‘Twice. The first time January to April 2014, to Camp Bastion, before our combat mission in Afghanistan ended and most of our troops were pulled out. The second time was for four weeks in February of this year. I was working with TAAC-Capital at Camp KAIA – Kabul International Airport.’

      ‘So as you know, we still have a few troops out there training, advising and assisting the Afghan Army and Security Forces.’

      Jessie nodded.

      ‘What Starkey and Jackson did was insane given the security situation out there, more so given that it was the hottest time of the day, and even though it’s autumn the temperature would have been hitting the mid-thirties, with fifty per cent humidity. They were both dressed in combat kit and had no water with them.’ He sighed. ‘Jackson ended up dead.’

      ‘Dehydration?’

      He

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