by James Green
‘And I suppose everybody speaks good English these days.’
Elspeth turned from the mirror.
‘They do in Denmark. That was one of the reasons we chose it, remember? Now get the car out, or we’ll be late.’
Charlie walked to the hall, put on a light overcoat, then went back through the house and out the back door. He stood for a moment looking at the view. At the bottom of their garden, beyond the low fence, was a narrow band of rough grass and beyond that, the beach. It was a calm day with a gentle breeze blowing in from the sea and he could just hear the sound of wavelets gently lapping against the white sand. Beyond the beach lay a blue expanse –the Storebælt, the southern reach of the Kattegat which separated Denmark from Sweden and eventually led into the Baltic.
He loved this view. He loved the whole place. To his left began a wood where the pine trees came down to the beach. To his right was the strand, a favourite summer bathing and picnic resort of locals and visitors alike. Back from the beach was a line of neat bungalows, all looking across the sea to a hazy view of land peeping over the horizon. Beyond the strand, reaching out from the edge of the small town, was the Great Belt Bridge. From where Charlie stood, it looked so thin and fragile; a long ribbon barely above the water, held up by two narrow suspension towers. It grew smaller and smaller as it headed away across the wide channel that separated Nyborg from the neighbouring island of Zealand. The sun shone from a cornflower blue sky. Everything looked perfect on this fine autumn day.
Charlie felt happy. He decided that after Mass they would give lunch at the hotel a miss, come home, walk along the beach or through the woods and have a beer and lunch somewhere. He went round the side of the house to where it faced the road and opened the up-and-over garage door. He got into the car. Elspeth arrived and stood on the drive ready to close the garage door once the car was out. Charlie turned the ignition key. For a split second nothing happened. Then a voice came from the car’s sound system.
‘Bang, you’re dead.’
Elspeth looked round, startled, as the car door banged open and Charlie ran at her shouting.
‘Get back, get away from the car.’
But she just looked at him stupidly and didn’t move.
Charlie grabbed her and began pulling her away from the garage. ‘For God’s sake get away from the fucking car.’
Elspeth tried to pull away from him, shocked by his swearing and frightened by his roughness and his words. She began struggling to free herself from his grip when the garage dissolved in an ear-shattering explosion and they were both thrown to the ground.
The last thing Charlie heard before he hit the floor was Elspeth’s scream. Then a deep black pool opened at his feet, and he slid in.
THREE
Someone was talking to him.
‘Stay with us, Charlie. Come on, stay with us.’
There was someone’s voice inside his head. Then the pain came and he opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on the drive. Three faces were looking down at him out of a background of blue sky. The nearest one smiled.
‘Thank God.’ It turned to the other faces. ‘He’s conscious.’ Then it looked back at him. Suddenly Charlie remembered what had happened.
Elspeth was standing by their neighbour Inga and her husband, Lars, who was kneeling beside him.
‘Look at me, Charlie. Do you know who I am?’
There was concern on Lars’ face and in his voice. Charlie felt like one big bruise but it was the pain in his head which was worst. He forced his brain to clear; he needed to know if he was really hurt.
‘Hello, Lars.’
Lars’ face split with a grin of relief.
‘Welcome back. You had us worried for a minute.’ Charlie tried to move but Lars held him. ‘No, stay there until the ambulance gets here. I don’t think there’s anything serious but don’t take any chances.’
Charlie relaxed. When he had tried to move there had been no serious pain anywhere, he was only knocked about. He didn’t have to worry. He could function, he could think, stay in control. He was going to be OK.
‘How long was I out?’
‘Not more than two or three minutes. We heard the explosion, came out, and there you both were.’
Charlie looked up at his wife. ‘Are you OK, Elspeth?’
Then he saw that she was quietly crying and her eyes had a frightened, faraway look. Inga, who had an arm around Elspeth’s shoulders, saw the look of concern on Charlie’s face.
‘Don’t worry. We think she may have broken her wrist when she fell. Otherwise she seems OK, except for the shock, of course.’
Charlie tried to get up again but Lars eased him back to the ground.
‘No, stay there. You took a bang to the back of your head, you’re bleeding and I think you’ll need stitches. You fell onto the drive but Elspeth fell onto the grass.’ He gave an encouraging smile. ‘She got a soft landing. You lie still. The ambulance will be here soon.’
They all fell silent. No one seemed to have anything to say. What do you say to someone who’s just been blown up? Charlie turned his head and looked at the garage. The whole front of the car was blown open and was burning furiously. But through the smoke billowing out, Charlie could see that the garage looked OK except for the up-and-over door, which was bent and sagging. What the hell had happened? Lars was obviously thinking the same thing.
‘Maybe it was petrol? Did you keep any in there? If it vaporised, then maybe a spark as you started the car ...’
That will do for the time being, thought Charlie. ‘You could be right.’
‘You did keep petrol in there? God, that’s dangerous. It could ...’
Charlie tried to smile. ‘I think it already did, Lars, don’t you?’
Lars forced a smile but didn’t respond. This wasn’t the time to tell someone how stupid they had been. Then they heard the siren.
A small crowd had gathered at the bottom of the drive. They talked in subdued voices and had that air of order that was typically Danish. When the ambulance pulled up they parted and let the paramedics through. Nobody pushed or tried to get closer. Quiet and concerned, the Danish way. There had been an explosion in your street, a neighbour’s car had blown up, but you didn’t make a fuss. Also it was Sunday. Danes still took Sunday seriously, it wasn’t a day for too much emotion. The crowd looked on soberly as the paramedics began their work. Now it was clear that no one was dead, the voices seemed to take on a slightly critical air, giving the impression that getting blown up was not something that a good citizen did on a Sunday.
Charlie listened as one of the paramedics spoke to Lars, finding out what had happened. The other knelt beside him. She spoke excellent English, of course, barely a trace of accent.
‘Are you in pain at all?’
Charlie slowly shook his head. God, it hurt to do that, but by not speaking and closing his eyes as if he was drifting off she wouldn’t ask him questions and he could think. The other paramedic was talking to Elspeth, but Elspeth wasn’t answering. He lay and listened as the paramedics spoke to each other. Danish wasn’t German but it was close enough to follow some of what was said, close enough to get the gist. They were telling Lars to call the police. Charlie lay still with his eyes closed. He would need to be ready when the questions began. The petrol thing wouldn’t hold up. He thought about Elspeth. She was in shock, which meant she might be a problem. He thought about the car and the voice. It had been a neat job, very clean, very efficient.
He felt a support-collar being fitted round his neck, then he was lifted expertly on to a stretcher and carried down the drive. He felt them load him into the ambulance, heard the doors close and then felt the ambulance begin to move. He opened his eyes slightly but the medic wasn’t looking at him, she was too busy. Elspeth was sobbing, she looked very close to hysterics. The medic was doing a good job with her, but it wasn’t easy. Elspeth was going to be a problem. She looked like she might be a basket case. Charlie closed his eyes.
Soon, very soon, somebody would be in charge. When they got to hospital, were checked over and sorted out, the questions would begin. Suddenly Charlie felt his age. Physically he was in good shape, very good shape in fact. He could pass for a man in his early to mid-fifties and he was still strong and quick. He kept in shape. But now, in the ambulance, he felt old and tired. He didn’t want this, he had finished with this sort of thing long ago. Now he lived with his wife by the beach in a small, pretty town on Denmark’s market-garden island and wrote successful cookery books in his wife’s maiden name. He lived a comfortable, quiet life. Until today. Today he had been blown up.
He lay with his eyes closed, rocking gently while the ambulance hurried to the hospital with its siren going.
‘Bang, you’re dead.’
The words in the car had given him enough time to get out and get clear. What did that mean? If you car-bomb somebody you do it so death is certain. That’s the whole point. Nobody survives a car bomb if it’s done right. And this one was done right. It wasn’t any kind of amateur job, not with a relay to the sound system and a delay mechanism. But why the delay?
It didn’t make sense.
The only sense it could make was that someone was sending him a message. Some message. You blow someone up but make sure they get clear if they’re quick and if they recognise what’s happening. Was someone going to kill him and wanted him to know he was going to be killed? Someone who knew he would be quick to recognise what was happening and get out. Someone who knew him. He thought about it. Blow up your car but not kill you?
No, a warning didn’t make any sense. But what else could it mean?
As the ambulance made its way along the quiet Sunday roads, Charlie drew the only conclusion he could think of. It was all going to have to start again. Charlie Bronski was going to have to go back to work or Charlie Bronski was going to be dead.
The ambulance slowed and pulled to a stop. The doors opened and he heard people moving and quietly talking. He would make sure Elspeth stayed in hospital, maybe for a couple of days. He needed time. Then he felt himself moving. He opened his eyes. Elspeth was gone. They had taken her ahead of him, she was the walking wounded.
‘Where is my wife?’
The man pushing the trolley looked at him. ‘Sorry, I not got good English.’
Charlie looked at his face. He was almost certainly a Turk, cheap immigrant labour doing the jobs the locals didn’t want.
He’d get Elspeth kept in hospital, out of his hair for a couple of days so he could get himself organised. A doctor joined the trolley and smiled down at him as they went along.
‘We’ll have a good look at you in a minute. Your wife is with a doctor now. It looks like you’re both going to be all right.’
Charlie smiled his thanks.
Yes, he was going to be all right. He was going to make damn sure he was going to be all right.
FOUR
An hour later he was sitting by Elspeth’s bed in a room off a small ward. Other than a few stitches in the back of his head he was fine, shaken up and bruised but basically OK. Elspeth was in bed with her eyes closed. She had made it easy for him. The hospital medic had lost the battle with Elspeth’s hysteria and she had fallen apart. Now she was asleep, sedated.
One arm lay on the bedclothes with the wrist in some sort of strapping. It was broken. Inga had been right. He’d get his two days. He sat back and looked at her sleeping. Soon the questioning would begin and it wouldn’t just be the police who did the asking. When Elspeth woke she would also begin asking.
How much to tell them? The problem was the delay. Everything hinged on him getting out of the car. Getting out the way he did and pulling Elspeth away meant that he knew there was a bomb. That wasn’t going to be so easy to explain to the police, or to Elspeth.
He looked at her. She was still a good-looking woman. She’d been beautiful when they married ten years ago, the way some women can be more beautiful at forty than they can at twenty. A mature, lasting beauty. How her father, Hugh, had kept her a virgin until they had met, God alone knew. Not that he wasn’t grateful. Hugh might be a selfish old bastard, but he’d done Charlie a favour even if he hadn’t meant to. The trouble was that as well as looks she had enough brains not to swallow any simple lie. Whatever he told her would have to stand up. It might even have to be the truth, or near enough so only he knew it was a lie. The main thing was that she would continue to trust him, to believe in him. That meant there would have to be window dressing, some nice comforting lies, so she wouldn’t be afraid. He didn’t want her to know how dangerous this might be or how much worse it could get. The important thing was for her to feel that everything was under control. That way she wouldn’t become a liability.
Another possibility occurred to him as his mind got back in gear. If someone was putting the frighteners on him, then getting at him through Elspeth might be an option for whoever was out there. You could never be sure. Only one thing was certain, you never expected the one that got you. If they got you.
Charlie’s mind was beginning to function again. The soft years were falling away and dormant instincts were reviving. It was all about self-preservation. Somewhere inside his head he was beginning to get that old feeling. Only Charlie mattered. Everyone else, absolutely everyone, was expendable. You used what you had to hand. Keep Elspeth believing in him, trusting him. Keep her predictable.
A voice came from the door of the room. It was a nurse. ‘How do you feel, Mr Bronski?’
‘OK, thank you.’
‘The policeman who’s been waiting asked if you could talk to him now? I told him you were with your wife but he still wanted me to ask.’
‘Not yet. I don’t want my wife to be alone when she wakes. Tell him I’ll come when she’s awake. I want to be sure she’s going to be all right.’
He turned back to the bed. He wasn’t ready for the police. He still needed time.
‘I understand, Mr Bronski. I’ll tell them.’ Charlie turned back to the nurse.
‘Them? I thought you said it was only one?’
‘Only one who’s been waiting here since you and your wife were admitted. The other one arrived a few minutes ago. I think that’s why he wanted me to see if you’d come now.’
Charlie turned back to the bed and the nurse left.
Two of them. And they’d know for definite by now that it was a bomb, a good one. Also that we were far enough away from the car not to be seriously injured when it detonated. They wouldn’t be stalled for long. With car bombs in the frame there was very little space for courtesy or consideration, even in Denmark, even on a Sunday. They’d soon have a nurse by Elspeth’s bed and it wouldn’t be, ‘Would you be ready to talk now?’ It would be, ‘Now we’re going to talk.’ He had just about run out of time. He moved to the bed and gently but firmly began to shake Elspeth and whisper, close to her ear.
‘Wake up, Elspeth. It’s me, Charlie. Wake up, darling. Wake up.’
Finally her eyes opened. They were dazed and faraway. She looked at Charlie as if he was a stranger. He hoped she wasn’t too drugged to be of any use.
‘Stay with me, Elspeth, stay with me.’
Elspeth eyes slowly began to focus, she was surfacing.
Then the recognition came and with it the fear.
‘Oh my God, Charlie, what happened? Are you hurt? What happened?’
The fear was taking over. He had to be quick and he had to stop her going hysterical again.
‘It’s all right, darling. Don’t worry. We need to talk. Just lie and try to listen. When we’re at home I’ll explain everything, but for now you’re to say you can’t remember anything. Nothing at all. You remember leaving the house and waking up in this bed but between those two things it’s a total blank.’ He hoped there was enough sedative in her to keep her from falling apart again. He took her good hand, bent down and kissed her.
‘It’s going to be all right. Nothing more is going to happen. It was an awful accident but we’re neither
of us badly hurt. I don’t want you being questioned until you’re safe home with me. Then we can answer things together. After all, there’s nothing we can tell anybody. It happened, we don’t know why. It was probably something to do with the petrol. I just don’t want you bothered while you’re in hospital. I want us to be together when anyone talks to you. We don’t know anything and I don’t want you upset.’ He kissed her again. Did she understand? Her eyes were drifting away, she was going under again. ‘You remember nothing, OK?’ He smiled. ‘Nothing until we’re together again, safe at home.’
She returned his smile. ‘All right, Charlie, you know best.’
Thank God for that. He gently stroked her arm then kissed her again.
‘Now go back to sleep and get well. I want you back in your own house, I want us to be together.’ He stood up but kept hold of her hand. ‘I have to go out for a minute to check something with the doctor. I want you sound asleep when I get back.’
Elspeth smiled in a vague, drugged way and nodded. Then her eyes closed. Charlie waited for a few seconds until her breathing told him she was asleep. Now he could talk to the police. He put her hand down gently, left the room and looked around.
Standing at the end of the short corridor were two men. He walked towards them. As he got nearer and saw them more clearly he became sure that whatever they were it wasn’t policemen. He quickly decided which one to talk to first.
They came in all shapes and sizes, men and women. The ones who didn’t look the part were usually the best. This one was anonymous except for the small moustache. The moustache was definitely a mistake. Charlie wasn’t surprised that he was there, a bomb these days almost certainly meant terrorists, so they’d naturally have at least one of the goon squad on hand. Still, start with the muscle, you’re not supposed to know how these things work, so start with the wrong one and see where it goes from there.
He started talking before he reached them. He wanted to be the first to speak, as far as was possible he wanted to control the conversation. When he spoke it was Moustache he looked at.