Scared to Death: A gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down. Kate Medina
across his chest, nothing open or accommodating about his posture.
‘Would you like a drink? Tea, coffee, water?’
Without making eye contact, he shook his head. Jessie grabbed his file and a pen from her desk and took the seat opposite. She had re-read the single typed sheet the file contained shortly before he arrived.
Ryan Thomas Jones
Sixteen and five months
Joined the Army on 2 November last year, the day of his sixteenth birthday
Phase 2 trainee, Royal Logistic Corps
Referred by Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, because of concerns about his mental health
Nothing more than that: a vague, unspecific brief. She looked up from the file. It felt strange to be back in her consulting room, facing another patient who, from his body language and the shuttered look on his face, would give a lot to be somewhere else.
‘Can I call you Ryan?’
A tiny lift of his shoulders, which Jessie translated as a teenager’s ‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for coming in to see me.’
Another weary shrug. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’ A soft regional accent that Jessie couldn’t place. She ploughed on. ‘You’ve been in the Army five months?’
‘Yes.’
‘With the Royal Logistic Corps?’
‘Yes.’
‘How is it going?’
‘OK.’
‘Are you enjoying it?’
‘It’s not an exciting choice, is it, logistics? Not brave.’ There was sneer in his voice.
‘Don’t knock it. An Army runs on good logistics.’ Jessie racked her brains for the famous quote – something about wars being won or lost on the contents of soldiers’ stomachs – but try as she might she couldn’t summon it, or its author, to mind. She still felt vague and headachy, half her brain mid-flight somewhere over the Persian Gulf, the other half in that small, depressing hospital room, hoping with all her heart that Joan Lawson was right when she said her son would never commit suicide, all her professional knowledge, her gut feeling, telling her that the old lady was wrong, the parallels with her own past deeply unsettling.
‘An Army marches on its stomach, Napoleon Bonaparte.’
Ryan’s face remained impassive.
‘Logistics. The importance of logistics. Napoleon Bonaparte?’ Logistics, catering, near enough. ‘Military general, the first Emperor of France, Battle of Waterloo?’
Still no reaction.
‘Never mind. So why did you choose the Logistic Corps then?’
He shrugged, a careless movement that brought to Jessie’s mind a teenaged schoolboy sitting at the back of the class, thinking about smoking behind the bike shed and sticking his hand up girls’ skirts rather than whatever subject the teacher was wittering on about at the front of the classroom.
‘Do you want to be brave, Ryan?’ Jessie asked softly, tilting forward, trying, and failing, to catch his eye.
Kids of this age should be still at school. She didn’t believe that they had the emotional maturity, the mental robustness to handle rigid institutions like the Army, even in relatively soft options like logistics. The Army could be tough and isolating, the necessity of fitting in, of being accepted as one of the lads, stressful, particularly for people who were not natural team players. She suspected that Ryan was not a natural team player.
‘Ryan.’
He had started to fidget, fingers picking at a thread that had come loose from the stitching of his navy-blue beret. His nails had been bitten to the quick, the cuticles raw, Jessie noticed.
‘No.’ His voice so low that it was almost inaudible. ‘Not particularly.’
‘So why the Army? Why did you join?’
He sighed, like a teenager whose mother was hassling him. ‘Because people like me don’t have choices. The Army seemed like a good way of getting out.’
‘Getting out from where? Where did you grow up?’
‘Birmingham.’ The soft accent. Midlands – of course. She should have recognized it.
‘Do you have family?’
‘A mother.’
‘Father?’
‘He died when I was three.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It didn’t affect me. I never really knew him.’
Jessie knew that wasn’t true. Abandonment always affected children, however it happened. She knew that well enough from her own childhood.
‘Does your mother still live in Birmingham?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you close to her?’
The first sign of warmth and light that Jessie had seen in his soft hazel eyes, but the words thrown out insouciantly, entirely at odds with his expression. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’
She felt as if she was butting her head up against a wall. A smooth, featureless, wall, plain white, no finger-holds, nothing to get a grip on. Her office felt oppressive suddenly, a room shut up for too long over winter, which it had been. The shower had passed, sunlight breaking through the bank of grey clouds outside. Standing, Jessie unlocked the window and hauled up the lower sash. Cool, damp air eddied through the gap.
‘Can I go now?’ Ryan asked, narrowing his gaze against the sunlight.
‘Not yet.’
‘Why not?’ he hissed.
The sudden flare of aggression surprised Jessie, gone almost as soon as she’d registered it. He had seemed too distant, too closed down for aggression. She made a mental note.
‘Don’t I get a choice?’ he finished.
‘Unfortunately you gave up your right to choose when you joined the Army.’
His mouth tightened as if she had unwittingly put her finger on a nerve.
‘Ryan, Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, referred you to the Defence Psychology Service. As you can see, there’s not much information in your file.’ She held up the single page. ‘So why don’t you tell me why you think he sent you.’
Jaw muscles clenched under his skin.
‘I’ve never even talked to him.’ He stretched his arm straight above his head. ‘He’s God isn’t he? And I’m down here somewhere.’ The hand moved to graze the carpet. ‘Pond life.’
If he’d had no verbal contact with Wallace, had he talked to someone else about his feelings, or had his behaviour been noticed? ‘Did you talk to someone else at Blackdown about how you’re feeling?’
‘I’m not feeling anything.’
‘There must be a reason that you’re here, that you were referred.’
Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso, but he didn’t reply. Everything about his posture telegraphed intense feelings of discomfort at Jessie’s questions.
‘Who did you talk to, Ryan?’
‘No one.’ His gaze found the window. Jessie let him stare. After a moment, his gaze still fixed on the outside, he murmured, ‘He approached me.’
‘Who approached you?’