Bosnian Inferno

Docherty continued sipping his beer, wondering how many other households there were in Glasgow where all four occupants often moved back and forth between English and Spanish without even noticing they had done so. He had become fluent in the latter during the half year’s compassionate leave he had spent travelling in Mexico after Chrissie’s death. Isabel had acquired her bilingual skills before meeting him, during the seven years of her enforced exile in England.

Still, their linguistic habits were hardly the strangest thing about their relationship. When they had met he had been a ten-year veteran of the SAS and she one of the few surviving members of an Argentinian urban guerrilla group. If the Sun had got hold of the story their marriage would have made the front page – something along the lines of ‘SAS Hero Weds Argie Red’.

In the public mind, and particularly on the liberal left, the Regiment was assumed to be a highly trained bunch of right-wing stormtroopers. There was some truth in this impression, particularly since the large influx during the eighties of gung-ho paras – but only some. Men like Docherty, who came from families imbued with the old labour traditions, were also well represented among the older hands, and among the new intake of younger men the SAS emphasis on intelligence and self-reliance tended to militate against the rightist bias implicit in any military organization.

On returning from the Falklands, conscious of Isabel’s opinions, Docherty had thought long and hard about whether to continue in the Army. Up to that time, he decided, none of the tasks allotted him by successive British governments had seriously troubled his conscience. When one arrived that did, then that would be the time to hand in his cards.

So, for most of the past ten years he and Isabel had lived just outside Hereford. Her cover during the mission in Argentina had been as a travel-guide writer, and a couple of enquiries were enough to confirm that the market in such books was expanding at enormous speed. She never finished the one she was supposedly researching in southern Argentina, but an offer to become one third of a team covering Chile was happily accepted, and this led to two other books on Central American countries. It meant her being away for weeks at a time, but Docherty was also often abroad for extended periods, particularly after his attachment to the SAS Training Wing. Whenever possible they joined each other, and Docherty was able to continue and deepen the love affair with Latin America which he had begun in Mexico.

Then Marie had arrived, and Ricardo two years later. Isabel had been forced to take a more editorial role, which, while more rewarding financially, often seemed considerably less fulfilling. Now with Ricardo approaching school age, and Docherty one week into retirement from the Army, they had big decisions to take. What was he going to do for a living? Did they want to live in Scotland or somewhere in Latin America? As Isabel had said, there was no urgency. She had recently inherited – somewhat to her surprise – a few thousand pounds from her mother, and the house they were now staying in had been virtually a gift from Liam McCall. The priest had inherited a cottage on Harris in the Outer Hebrides, decided to retire there, and offered the Dochertys an indefinite free loan of his Glasgow house.

No urgency, perhaps, but much as Docherty loved having more time with Isabel and the children, he wasn’t used to doing nothing. The military life was full of dead periods, but there was always the chance that the next day you would be swept across the world to face a challenge that stretched mind, body and soul to the limit. Docherty knew he had to find himself a new challenge, somehow, somewhere.

He got up to collect plates, salt, ketchup and vinegar. Just in time, for the ever-wonderful smell of fish and chips wafted in through the door ahead of his wife.

‘Cod for you, haddock for me,’ she said, placing the two bundles on the empty plates. ‘And I bought a bottle of wine,’ she added, pulling it out of the coat pocket. ‘I thought…’

The telephone started ringing in the living-room.

‘Who can that be?’ she asked, walking towards it.

Docherty had unwrapped one bundle when she returned. ‘It’s your old CO,’ she said, like any English military wife. ‘Barney Davies. And he sounds like he’s calling from a pub.’

‘Maybe they’ve realized my pension should have been twice as much,’ Docherty joked, wondering what in God’s name Davies wanted with him.

He soon found out.

‘Docherty? I’m 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.’