Chapters (50)
Joseph would have to find his own food in the evening. The landlady had made this clear. He’d given up looking for his phone, closed the door of the cramped room, walked down the carpeted stairs and turned up his collar against the wind before heading to The Ship. It was quiet apart from a group of men drinking by the bar. He ate in silence by the fire before ordering himself a beer. Their laughter seemed infectious and after a while one of them invited him to join them for a cigarette. Some of them worked on security at the base. They were talking about beer being so much cheaper at the barracks bar, but they just needed to get away sometimes. One or two of them he half recognized from around the place, and then there was the fair-haired man he had seen in The Ship before. Joseph was drinking hard tonight, the talk turning from women to money to football. They started drinking spirits, teasing the girl behind the bar enough for her eventually to call in some help. Two men arrived, told them to keep it down, to behave themselves, to leave. The fair-haired man squared up to one of them and Joseph felt something in the room change. He couldn’t remember who threw the first punch, but he remembered the feeling of freedom. Of lashing out. The commotion. The getting thrown out, loud and swearing, on to the harbourside, where most of the younger men staggered home. Joseph shared a cigarette and laughter with the fair-haired man on the harbour wall. They laughed because Joseph’s collar was torn, and the fair-haired man’s lip was bleeding. They exhaled blue smoke into the dead night, the string of lights around the harbour blurry. The man confided that he had something better to smoke. So they smoked that, too. Relaxed. They were friends now. And he could tell Joseph a secret. Because they were brothers. He was a soldier at the barracks, and he’d almost been sacked because of a filthy fucking terrorist. The adrenaline was still warming both their bodies and the high of unleashing was still strong in their minds. He was out there. He knew it. They were looking for him on the quiet but it would only be fair if he found him first. Get some justice at least. Because he’d kill him, he said, if he found him. He’d fucking kill him.