McCracken said abliquely. 'That there is,' said Slater. Five hundred yards away
55
The Hit List
a crowd of warmly wrapped spectators was assembling on the touchline of the 1st XV rugby pitch. 'How long have you worked here at Bolingbroke's?' he asked.
The groundsman slipped the bottle thoughtfully into his pocket. 'Twenty-eight years now, it'd be.'
Slater reached into his own pocket. 'Well, I have something for you.'
'You'll not be staying, then?'
Slater shook his head.
McCracken opened the box with unsteady fingers and peered at the chain-linked gold cufflinks. 'You know, I've been meaning to get some of these,' he said.
56
THREE
Jeil Slater looked round the studio flat that, for the being at least, was his home. It was small, and at le point he really had to give it a lick of emulsion, It at least he now had somewhere to unpack his ings. It was a top-floor walk-up in a Victorian terrace i the east of Highbury Park, and Slater had chosen it its proximity to Arsenal tube station. He wasn't a stball fan particularly, but he had heard that the lightly rampage of fans through the area kept rental jfices down.
I- He'd arrived in London a week earlier after ing Christmas with an ex-Regiment friend and wife. Dave and Linda Constantine owned a louse outside Hereford, and had recently Inverted it to provide bed and breakfast. Slater had visions of long walks on the hills and com lionable mealtimes at the scrubbed-pine kitchen isle, but in the event things hadn't worked out like at. The Constantines' marriage had been under strain wmoney problems, mostly, but Dave's drinking came it -- and Slater found himself on the receiving end $ two well-rehearsed sets of grievances.
57
The Hit List
Dave's was a very familiar problem, and afflicted most long-serving SAS soldiers. The time came when you had to move on, when you just couldn't carry the weight of regimental life any more. You looked around and you saw normal people living normal lives and it just looked like the best thing in the world. And so you handed in your warrant card and you walked out of the gates and you tried it, and you discovered that normal life - or what you'd taken to be normal life -- was actually a very difficult, very elusive thing. None of your military experience was any help, you couldn't capture happiness and financial security by lying in wait for it on an icy hillside, and the attributes of toughness and self-reliance that had served you so well now started to seem like crippling deficiencies. You needed a new set of skills; you needed all that touchy feely interpersonal stuff that you'd spent so many years sniggering about with your mates.
Slater himself had attempted to address these issues by applying for the post at Bolingbroke's. He'd come with a glowing letter of recommendation from his former CO (a Bolingbroke's old boy, usefully) and a determination to make a success of his new life. If this involved a few humiliations along the way, then so be it. If some of the parents and teaching staff chose to see him as their social inferior, then let them - it would be their problem, not his. He'd make a new life for himself on the rugby touchline, have his own chair in the staff room, fix himself up with a local girlfriend, become part of the establishment. And if he'd had his doubts - if, at times,
58
Chris Ryan
1 it had occurred to him that he was merely exchanging I one barracks for another -- well, there were worse things I than institutionalisation.
Dave Constantine had laid claim to less modest I ambitions. He had invested his entire twenty-two-year i service gratuity of 37,000 pounds in a private security company named Radfan that another former [ Regiment member was setting up. Things had looked I good for a while, but then the microchip fabrication I plant which was Radfan's biggest corporate client I went bankrupt and defaulted on a large sum owing. | Radfan's financing had been shaky from the start I they had badly overextended
55
The Hit List
a crowd of warmly wrapped spectators was assembling on the touchline of the 1st XV rugby pitch. 'How long have you worked here at Bolingbroke's?' he asked.
The groundsman slipped the bottle thoughtfully into his pocket. 'Twenty-eight years now, it'd be.'
Slater reached into his own pocket. 'Well, I have something for you.'
'You'll not be staying, then?'
Slater shook his head.
McCracken opened the box with unsteady fingers and peered at the chain-linked gold cufflinks. 'You know, I've been meaning to get some of these,' he said.
56
THREE
Jeil Slater looked round the studio flat that, for the being at least, was his home. It was small, and at le point he really had to give it a lick of emulsion, It at least he now had somewhere to unpack his ings. It was a top-floor walk-up in a Victorian terrace i the east of Highbury Park, and Slater had chosen it its proximity to Arsenal tube station. He wasn't a stball fan particularly, but he had heard that the lightly rampage of fans through the area kept rental jfices down.
I- He'd arrived in London a week earlier after ing Christmas with an ex-Regiment friend and wife. Dave and Linda Constantine owned a louse outside Hereford, and had recently Inverted it to provide bed and breakfast. Slater had visions of long walks on the hills and com lionable mealtimes at the scrubbed-pine kitchen isle, but in the event things hadn't worked out like at. The Constantines' marriage had been under strain wmoney problems, mostly, but Dave's drinking came it -- and Slater found himself on the receiving end $ two well-rehearsed sets of grievances.
57
The Hit List
Dave's was a very familiar problem, and afflicted most long-serving SAS soldiers. The time came when you had to move on, when you just couldn't carry the weight of regimental life any more. You looked around and you saw normal people living normal lives and it just looked like the best thing in the world. And so you handed in your warrant card and you walked out of the gates and you tried it, and you discovered that normal life - or what you'd taken to be normal life -- was actually a very difficult, very elusive thing. None of your military experience was any help, you couldn't capture happiness and financial security by lying in wait for it on an icy hillside, and the attributes of toughness and self-reliance that had served you so well now started to seem like crippling deficiencies. You needed a new set of skills; you needed all that touchy feely interpersonal stuff that you'd spent so many years sniggering about with your mates.
Slater himself had attempted to address these issues by applying for the post at Bolingbroke's. He'd come with a glowing letter of recommendation from his former CO (a Bolingbroke's old boy, usefully) and a determination to make a success of his new life. If this involved a few humiliations along the way, then so be it. If some of the parents and teaching staff chose to see him as their social inferior, then let them - it would be their problem, not his. He'd make a new life for himself on the rugby touchline, have his own chair in the staff room, fix himself up with a local girlfriend, become part of the establishment. And if he'd had his doubts - if, at times,
58
Chris Ryan
1 it had occurred to him that he was merely exchanging I one barracks for another -- well, there were worse things I than institutionalisation.
Dave Constantine had laid claim to less modest I ambitions. He had invested his entire twenty-two-year i service gratuity of 37,000 pounds in a private security company named Radfan that another former [ Regiment member was setting up. Things had looked I good for a while, but then the microchip fabrication I plant which was Radfan's biggest corporate client I went bankrupt and defaulted on a large sum owing. | Radfan's financing had been shaky from the start I they had badly overextended
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