War Games (A Glen Savage Mystery) by Douglas Jackson

Author:Douglas Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Murder, Thrillers & Suspense, Psychological Thrillers, Thriller & Suspense, Psychological, Teen & Young Adult, Crime Fiction, Thrillers, Crime, Literature & Fiction
Published: 2014-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Friday, 15 June 2007

The location was near Stirling. The body was male.

For once, I didn’t see any point in rushing, because I knew the cops wouldn’t let me within a mile of the crime scene this time. Instead, I gave myself the weekend to recover from the hammering I’d been given.

Aelish looked me over as I prepared for bed. ‘You should have gone to hospital for a check-up,’ she said, running her hand over the tenderised flesh of my ribs. ‘You look like De Niro after he does ten rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson inRaging Bull.’ I laughed, but that was a mistake. If this was her idea of Florence Nightingale it was going to kill me. I felt like one of those guys the Romans pulled apart with four horses.

*

On the Sunday, I was lying back on the couch in our living room trying to remember the last time I hadn’t been in pain when Aelish wheeled herself in. I’d eventually told her about Shoaz Ahmad’s missing heart and my researches and she decided to dig a little deeper into the ritual side. In the meantime, she switched on the television.

All the warmth drained out of me the moment I heard the funereal tone of the presenter contrasted with the strident brass of a military band. How could I have forgotten? The images on the screen didn’t seem to connect to any reality of which I was part. Middle-aged men in civilian clothes with medals on their chests marching down a crowd-lined London street. Christ, were we really that old now? I’d been twenty-four when we landed on the Falklands. Twenty-fucking-four. In two months I’d be fifty years old. I reached for the remote, but she snatched it away.

‘I want to see this, Glen.’

‘Video the fucking thing, then.’

She stared at me with hurt in her eyes and I’d have given anything to take the words back.

‘I’m sorry, love, it’s just . . .’ They’d reached Horse Guards Parade now and I could feel the familiar gritty surface beneath my feet. The veterans formed an enormous empty square alongside servicemen in dress uniforms. Maroon berets. White-topped sailors’ hats. Dark bearskins and scarlet tunics. There were speeches, but I didn’t hear them. I felt Aelish’s hand in mine.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

I remembered. Discarded Argentine helmets lying like seashells on a beach. The mixture of joy and bewilderment and sadness that is the true meaning of the word victory. The unhelpful awkwardness of a dead human being. Another man’s face when he realised I’d shot him through the heart. And something I hadn’t even realised twenty-five years ago; thinking ‘At least I’m fucking warm’ while I fought chest to chest with an Argentine marine whose knifepoint was about an inch from my right eyeball.

When a young woman who’d lost her father on

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