The Devil`s Feather Read Free Page B

teach others how to do it. He had a Rhodesian ridgeback patrolling his compound which was even more aggressive than he was. He trained the dog to kill by throwing stray mongrels at it.”
    Surtees stood up and held out his hand. “Good day,” he said pleasantly. “If there’s anything else I can help you with, feel free to phone.”
    I pushed myself to my feet and shook the proffered hand. “I can’t afford the time,” I said equally pleasantly, tossing my card onto the table in front of him. “That’s my mobile number in case you feel like talking to me. ”
    “Why would I want to?”
    I rested my kitbag on my hip to fasten the straps. “MacKenzie broke a drunk’s forearm in Freetown. I saw him do it. He took it between his hands and snapped it against his knee like a piece of rotten wood.”
    There was a short silence before the man gave a sceptical smile. “I don’t think that’s possible, not unless the bone was so brittle that anyone could have done it.”
    “He wasn’t prosecuted,” I went on, “because the victim was too frightened to report him to the police…but a couple of paratroopers— your regiment—forced him to pay some hefty compensation. You don’t get broken bones set for free in Sierra Leone…and you sure as hell don’t get benefit if you can’t work.” I shook my head. “The man’s a sadist, and all the ex-pats knew it. He’s not a type I’d choose to instruct raw recruits in Baghdad on how to do their jobs properly…certainly not in the present climate.”
    He stared at me with dislike. “Is this a personal thing? You seem very intent on destroying a man’s reputation.”
    I walked to the door and flipped the handle with my elbow. “Just for the record, MacKenzie’s victim was a half-starved prostitute who weighed under six stone…and I bet she did have brittle bones, because every cow in the country had been slaughtered for food by the rebels and calcium-rich milk was a luxury. The poor kid—she was only sixteen years old—was trying to earn money to buy clothes for her baby. She was tipsy on two beers which another customer had bought her, and she jogged MacKenzie’s elbow by accident. As retribution, he dislocated hers and fractured her ulna by wrenching her arm open and snapping it backwards across his leg.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Do you have a comment on that?”
    He didn’t.
    “Have a nice day,” I told him.

     

    I N THE END I never wrote the piece. I managed to get an interview with a bodyguard from a different security firm, but he’d only recently left the army and Iraq was his first freelance operation. As my original idea had been to show how demand for mercenaries far outweighed supply, with compromises being made in the vetting of recruits if numbers were to be met, a single novice didn’t make a story. Also, the public appetite for “war” stories was wearing thin. All anyone wanted was a solution to the mess, not more reminders that the coalition’s grip was slipping.
    With the help of a translator, I toured Iraqi newspaper offices and went through three months of back copies, looking for stories about raped and murdered women. Salima, the translator, was sceptical from the outset. “This is Baghdad,” she told me. “The only thing anyone’s interested in is death by suicide bombing or, better still, acts of sadism on the part of the coalition. Women are raped all the time by husbands they never wanted to marry. Does that count?”
    I pointed out that it would take twice as long if she conducted a running commentary all the way through.
    “But you’re being naïve, Connie. Even assuming a European could get close to an Iraqi woman without being spotted—which I don’t believe—who’s going to report it? Some parts of Baghdad are so dangerous that the Iraqi journalists won’t go into them—it’s not as if the bombing and shooting have stopped—so how’s the death of a single woman going to grab anyone’s attention?”
    I