Free Those Who Feel Nothing by Peter Guttridge Page A

restored but people were staying off the streets. The fish and meat market housed in an old Spanish colonial building behind the square was bare of food, the mongers slouched behind their counters, listening to dance music on tinny radios, waiting for the latest official statement.
    You came up from Colombia where you were employed as a mercenary on a special op in Bogota – another city with tanks on the street. Not against the drug cartels, unusually, but against a communist cell operating covertly there, giving tactical support and advice to FARC and other communist guerrillas.
    â€˜First thing you’ve got to recognize is that these fucking FARC bastards aren’t propelled by ideology,’ your friend ‘Will’ Rogers was saying. Big man, good looking, bit of a swagger. ‘They’re criminals, plain and simple. Kidnappers, human traffickers, dabblers in the drug business. They cloak their criminal activities in rhetoric but they are no better than some street-corner hustler with a switchblade or a flashy handgun.’
    He drew the long antenna of a locust from his mouth and laid it on the side of his plate. ‘That’s why I fucking despise them. They’re hypocrites. At least your everyday scumbag doesn’t pretend to be anything else.’ He reached for a toothpick. ‘Still, who are we to judge, eh? We’re not exactly untarnished.’
    He pointed at you with the toothpick.
    â€˜Well, except for Captain America here. Cryogenically frozen in a time when you could tell good from bad, black from white. Brought back to life in the here and now, shield unblemished, outmoded morality intact.’
    Cartwright, Howe and Bartram laughed wolfishly at your discomfort. All moustached, all brawnier than you. These four had known each other a long time and sometimes you felt excluded. They seemed to have something else going on outside of each operation but you turned a blind eye to that. In consequence, you five were a team, knitting well. This was your third operation with them.
    â€˜I don’t have a shield,’ was all you could think of to say. Quietly.
    Rogers prodded at the carapace of one of the locusts. ‘You’ve got a shell, though, laddie. That’s for sure.’
    Now you buy a big bottle of cola as you can’t find a bottle of water with an unbroken seal. You hate cola but it does seem to work as a stomach-settler and you need that. You have a flask of vodka in your hip pocket and the rest of the bottle in your duffel. You leave that alone: you’re trying to stay focused.
    Your bruised ribs are constricting your breathing so you’ve been trying to stay still in the coach. You adjust the strap on the satchel on your lap. Paradise’s men looted your safe but the stuff in there was all decoy. You know how easy it is to break into a battery-operated safe simply by removing the batteries so you’d factored that in. Most of your money and your real passport were in a waterproof bag buried in the little bamboo plantation in the corner of your yard.
    You look out of the window at the passing landscape and think back to the first time you were here.
    When Heap returned to the station Gilchrist took him down to the cells. Gilchrist looked through the window. Bernard Rafferty was sitting upright and perfectly composed on the edge of the concrete bunk. He saw her and mouthed the word ‘lawyer’ then mimed a zip closing over his mouth.
    â€˜He’s here,’ she mouthed back. Not mouthing what she was thinking: asshole.
    Gilchrist and Heap went to the interview room.
    â€˜Time for me to fess up, I suppose,’ Rafferty said cheerfully, when he entered the room.
    â€˜It’s usually best,’ Gilchrist said, struggling to keep the distaste off her face.
    The Royal Pavilion director pointed at Gilchrist. ‘Don’t patronize me, young lady – I know exactly who you are and what you get up to with your chief