A Deniable Death (63 page)
The other woman caught up. ‘You’re Ellie?’
‘That’s right, and you are . . . ?’
‘Liz – and these are my daughters. It wasn’t a pretty divorce, but I was told this afternoon what was happening – wasn’t told much else. Wasn’t really told anything, except that I might want to be here. I took the girls straight out of college and we hit the road. I’ve moved on but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember the good times with him, and I respect him. You have my deep sympathy.’
‘Thank you, Liz, that’s really kind. I don’t have any answers and I don’t even know where to go to get them. I’m utterly devastated. He was such a wonderful man, so caring and kind. All I feel is emptiness. This is Piers, from the office where I work, Defence, and he’s being very supportive. Foxy was such a generous man and so much loved. What’s happening here tells me he died a hero, and this is the least he can be given, what he deserved.’
So much to tell Beryl, might keep her up half the night. Smug little sod, Piers. He was standing too close to Ellie. The bell sounded. Doug’s line shuffled, straightened, and the bottom piece of the pole went into the leather slot above his privates. His hands, immaculate in the gloves, took the strain of the standard. A policeman had walked out into the High Street and was waving brusquely at a car to go through and leave the road clear, like they always did. He could see, across the High Street, the women, the top man and his minder. Bikers had joined them and they cupped cigarettes, which glowed in the near darkness. Lights were coming on in the upper rooms above Doug Bentley’s line of colleagues and the war memorial. Further up the pavement a man was in a heavy tartan dressing-gown, with his pyjama trousers and bedroom slippers; a woman on the other side of the street had put on a quilted dressing-gown but a nightdress hem peeped free. The bell tolled from the tower of St Bartholomew and All Saints, and more came out. The town seemed to wake. The pavement was well lined opposite him, could have been two deep, and plenty more on his side, but no reporters, no cameras and none of the satellite trucks the television brought.
The blue lights came up the hill, flashing garishly. It would have passed the Pheonix Bar and the Methodist church, the entrance to the Rope Yard and the front of the dental clinic. It would now be level with the Wagon and Horses. The lights were on a police motorcycle. They had the standards high. Doug Bentley was next to a Canal Zoner, and beyond him was a para from their association. A man slipped into place beside him. He gave him a glance, fast. Scruffily dressed, what Doug Bentley would have called out of place, in old cord trousers that had smooth bits above the knees, a T-shirt, a windcheater, and a casual acrylic beanie hat. He hadn’t shaved. The police motorcycle came level with the standards and crawled. He looked again to the side. It was wrong that a man should stand close to their line and be turned out like a vagrant. The blue lights went slowly and lit the face. He blanched and the standard rocked. The face was burned, might have had a blowtorch at it. There were big circles where the flesh was raw and the skin was broken, and they were coated in a cream that glistened. He thought the man had been under attack by mosquitoes or flies. The face was gaunt. The hearse came.
A funeral director walked ahead of it. He had a good stride and swung his stick with practised ease. Doug Bentley recognised him from some of the daylight repatriations. The escort was not what he was used to, no police car, no military Range Rover, no back-up hearse, but in essence it was the same, and the Legion people gave it reality, with the gathering opposite, the crowds who’d abandoned their beds or the late-night stuff on television and the bars. They dipped the standards. He should have hung his head and looked at the pavement, but he could tilt a little and it would not be noticed. He knew who it was – would have been an idiot not to have known. The face was ravaged, as if the man had starved, and the pocked cheeks were sunken. He wondered where it came from, the name ‘Badger’. His neck had the scrawniness of an old man’s, and the coat hung loose. The man, Badger, had his hands in his pockets and kept them there while on both sides of the street men stiffened and stood erect. Doug Bentley did not feel the hands in the pockets showed disrespect. Likely they had been so close that respect was proven.
He could see into the hearse, but only a little of the box was visible. Normal times there was a tight-pinned Union flag on it. It was shapeless and camouflaged. There seemed to be a thousand tags of green and black, soft brown and sand-coloured tabs of material woven into it. The dirt was obvious and the mud stains and . . . The woman, Liz – first wife – held her daughters close to her, all weeping, and Ellie had stepped off the pavement into the road and put the palm of her hand on the glass. Abigail had her face turned away as if she couldn’t halt the tears and didn’t want it known. Len stood tall and the director was at attention, stiff. His man had slipped on an old military beret and saluted. Doug Bentley’s arm was dragged down and his standard shook. He realised he had the weight of Badger to support, and did it. He thought the man so wrecked that he should have been in a hospital bed, not cold on the street of Wootton Bassett.
The stick was swung, the feet pivoted, the top hat went again onto the funeral director’s head, and he walked. The hearse followed him.
There were little shouts, could have been from the bikers: ‘Well done . . . Well done, mate . . . Well done, my boy . . . Well done.’
A few clapped.
The voice beside him was soft, little more than a murmur: ‘Not in your name, Foxy, and not in mine.’
The standards were raised and the order was given for them to fall out. He could take the pole from the slot without toppling the man, but the weight slackened. He separated the pole into its sections, furled the standard and stowed it. He heard little bursts of talk. The blue lights were down the street and moving away, and while he watched them they seemed to speed. The pavements were clearing fast, and there was the roar of Harleys, BMWs and Triumphs as the bikers went. The women were arm in arm, coming back to the Cross Keys and the bar and . . . He’d lost the others, Abigail and Len, the director, and the bodyguard that an important man warranted, and the policeman who had done the traffic control.
The one he had supported, Badger, threaded his way through the thinning crowds and walked badly, as if he had big blisters. He seemed to sway and the light lessened on his back.
Doug Bentley watched him as far as he could, then headed for the car park behind the big supermarket and the library, where his taxi would be waiting. He felt he had been there, wherever it was, and that he had lived through it, whatever had happened there, and was humbled to have been a part of it. He imagined sand and dirt and burning heat.
The clock on the tower struck midnight. A new day had started.
The man was gone, like it was a job done, and the High Street was empty. The night closed on him.
