The Recruit

39. Funeral

Ash couldn't decide if he liked Sebastian and Clark. They had a dark side, but that made them interesting to be around. They slept in a rusty panel van next to their mum's hut.

Ash thumped the metal. Clark slid the side door open.

"Get your butt in here," Clark yelled.

Ash bent over to slip off his boots. It had become habit after a few days at Fort Harmony.

"Leave them on," Clark said. "The filth is what gives our van character."

Ash stepped inside. Two gas lamps pushed out gloomy orange light. His hair brushed the roof. Clark's mattress was below the cracked windscreen where the seats used to be. Sebastian lay at the other end, toying with a big hunting knife. The metal floor was wet and had grass poking up through rust holes. Everything was thrown about: dirty clothes, air guns, knives, shredded school books.

"Duck," Sebastian shouted.

Sebastian flung his boot across the van. It skimmed past Clark and clanged into the side, leaving a muddy splat on the wall. The second boot hit Ash in the back.

Ash looked at the muck on his sweatshirt and smiled.

"You're so dead," he said. He hurled the boot back, then dived on to Sebastian and squashed him under the cast on his arm.

"Bundle," Clark shouted and jumped on the pair of them.

The three boys rumbled until they were all red-faced and out of breath. Ash was almost as dirty as Sebastian and Clark by the time they'd finished. Clark passed a bottle of water. Ash took a few gulps and tipped some over his head to cool off.

"Want to go out and do something?" Clark asked.

Ash shrugged. "Long as it doesn't involve killing stuff."

"You're such a girl," Clark said. "I want to go down the hill and shoot one of the cops up the arse with my air pistol."

Sebastian laughed. "That would be so cool. You haven't got the guts."

Clark picked his air pistol off the floor, pumped it and loaded a pellet. "Want a bet?"

"Five quid," Sebastian said, holding out his hand for Clark to shake.

Clark thought about taking the bet, then started laughing.

"I knew you wouldn't," Sebastian said.

"I hate the cops," Clark said. "Fire and World were the best guys around here."

"I hope Mum lets us see them in prison this time," Sebastian said.

"It would have been superb if they'd pulled it off," Clark said. "We would have been related to two of the biggest murderers in British history, and by the time people started getting sick Fire and World would have been gone. Nobody could have touched them."

"Two hundred dead though," Ash said. "They all would have had families and stuff."

"They were rich scum," Clark said.With fat, ugly wives and spoilt kids. The world would have done fine without them."

"Benjamin, you should have heard some of the stuff Fire told us about all the evil shit the big oil companies do," Sebastian said. "This farmer in South America had an oil pipe burst over his land. His whole farm was trashed. So he goes to the oil company and asks them to clean up the mess. They beat him up. He complained to the police, but the police were getting bribes from the oil company. They stuck the farmer in a cell and didn't give him anything to drink until he signed a confession saying he blew up the pipe himself. Once he'd signed the confession he got fifty years in prison. They only let him out when loads of environmentalists complained."