Refuge

by Richard Herley

  ‘Think!’

  Suter couldn’t just leave. Much as he wanted to.

  If Muriel wasn’t already dead, they would soon find out about her cork-faced Quixote. It was too late to care about that: what mattered now was that they didn’t find out where he lived. They might after all be able to track him to his home. If he ran for it now he would not know whether anyone was following. On the other hand, if Muriel remained for one reason or another silent, or if at any rate no search party were seen to start for the place where he had met her, he could retreat in a more orderly fashion.

  Mind working furiously, he punished himself with maniacal exertion. He drove himself uphill, at the edge of a rough pasture, keeping close to the hedgerow on its side farther from the village. Three hundred yards on he plunged once more into woodland. From the pocket on his trouser-leg he snatched out the map case and with a trembling forefinger traced the route he needed to take.

  Circle round to the south-west. Get up on that scarp above the Manor House. Make sure no one sees you. Imbecile. Fucking imbecile.

  ‘You’ve killed that woman.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault! She should have done what I told her!’

  ‘No excuse.’

  Entirely predictable, a third voice remarked.

  ‘God, O God!’ Suter groaned, starting off again.

  This time he kept to the footpaths. He told himself that the shooting would have attracted back to the centre of the village anyone who might have been out here, and it had now become imperative that he should leave no obvious tracks. Last night he had covered the moulded soles of his boots with canvas galoshes, making his footprints anonymous and difficult. Even so, he did his best to avoid treading in open mud.

  About fifteen minutes later he had circled the village and brought himself within sight of the Manor House on its south-western side. He was looking down from the edge of a high copse, through the wire strands of an ancient sheep-fence. The copse, mainly of hazel and oak, laid here at its edge with bracken, overlooked much of the valley and the trackway leading from the church to the river. That was the way a search party would probably go. If it hadn’t already gone.

  ‘Calm down. Just calm down.’

  He shed his pack, dropped to the ground and, crawling backwards on his stomach and dragging his equipment with him, retreated into the bracken so that he was almost completely hidden from view. Stuffing bits of fern under the netting on his hat, he remembered his camouflaged mittens and pulled them on.

  Suter became invisible.

  This was how he provided himself with venison: red and roe deer, muntjac, Chinese water-deer, the occasional fallow. As part of his new education he had read everything he could find about fieldcraft, about tracks and signs, about wind and rain and snow and mud. Ten years of theory and practice had made him an expert in concealment. Even the binocular he had chosen for this expedition, a Zeiss Dialyt 8×30, was covered in olive-green rubber.

  He took it from inside his jacket and studied the Manor House. The soft, Tudor brickwork was just as he remembered it. So too were the leaden guttering, the uneven tiles of the roof, the fantastically carved and twisted chimneys, each unique. The oak-framed casements all remained firmly shut. No one was visible on the broad, flagstoned terrace, on the lawns or pathways.

  Nothing.

  He looked at his watch. One thirty-three.

  The people in the village had lovingly maintained the Manor House gardens, the parterre, the topiary, the intricate hedges of box and yew. Beyond the pear orchard, at the rear of the walled kitchen garden, the ice-house was still there, and beside it the large, ornately carved dovecot, upon the shingled roof of which three white doves were sitting in the rain.

  Despite his remorse, his constant thoughts of what Muriel must have done, it was perhaps the sight of the doves that brought the first stab of personal pain to Suter’s heart. Seeing the Manor House like this made him realise what for the past twelve years he had gone without. He thought of the overgrown gardens of his own abode. He never tended them. Not only could he not spare the labour but, more important, there was no one to admire his handiwork. No one but himself. And he didn’t count.

  It was an extraordinary sensation to look at the Manor again after all these years, to find it intact, barely changed. He still could not absorb the idea that survivors had been living their lives no more than six miles from his domain. He had imagined himself an emperor, when he had been no more than a hermit.

  For a moment or two he returned his gaze to the house, then looked again at his watch. ‘If nothing happens, wait here for an hour.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then depart, that’s what.’

  He continued his reconnaissance.

  The other dwellings in the village had for the most part been allowed to decay. He had seen no more than about twenty which seemed to be occupied. These were the better houses, those occupied at one time by those with money. The rectory was in use, likewise the converted mill whose extensive lawns had once been stalked by peacocks, but the labourers’ cottages facing part of the green and along the overgrown course of the Chesham Road had returned almost entirely to nature.

  Sweeping round to the south-east, Suter turned his lenses on the well-kept buildings of the village school.

  7

  What remained of Redmond was lying where it had fallen. Reeking of cordite, the air in the white drawing room had been obscured by a drifting, particulate fog of pulverised plaster. Lines and spots and spatters of crimson seemed to be everywhere: on the walls, the carpet, the pictures, the curtains.

  ‘Where did you get the gun?’ Bex said, for the fifth or sixth time.

  The old woman looked up at him blankly. She was naked. Danzo had already knocked her about a bit, but she could still talk.

  Bex examined the Glock again. How long would it be before Pinch or Matt or any of the others understood that one of his disciples had not been invulnerable, after all? What should he tell them about Redmond? That he had broken the Covenant? If so, in what manner?

  Bex ejected the used clip and took up the fresh. Somehow, this old bag had shot Redmond. Somehow, she had got her claws on this top-grade, superbly maintained, special forces machine pistol, and with it had torn Redmond apart, ripped him into ten or fifteen ragged chunks and splattered the rest in all three dimensions behind and beyond the place where the silly little tosser had been standing. The place where, grappling with Muriel in his role as humble ordinand of the Golden Dawn, he had successfully deflected this most grievous and unexpected scathe from the sacred person of his leader. During which time, Bex had prudently dived behind the massive upholstery of the sofa, emerging only to disarm said Muriel before she could reload.

  He drove home the magazine.

  He wanted to blow her head off.

  To Danzo, he said, ‘Take her outside.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  While studying the church, Suter heard raised voices from the Manor and, simultaneously, a crash of splintering wood and breaking glass. One of the French windows had been flung open. By the time he got the terrace in focus, three or four men, young, energetic men in brightly coloured clothes, had spilled out. Still unused to the sight of people, his brain struggled to assimilate the movement of legs and arms and heads. More men emerged. The two or three who came last were pulling something heavy across the threshold: a naked human being, perhaps a body. An elderly woman. Muriel.

  She was face-down. The way her feet and toes were dragging across the terrace, down the balustraded steps to the lawn, gave him a moment’s hope that she was already dead, but then something in the tension of her arms and shoulders told him that she was not only alive, but conscious.

  Passing among specimen yew-bushes, the group was descending towards the river. Satanists, she had said. Cannibals. Degenerates. Believers in who-knew-what. Which of them, if any, was Bex? There was no obvious leader. Maybe he was already dead or wounded.

  Suter counted them: nine. Despit
e their disparate heights and build, they looked remarkably similar, as, he supposed, they would. Their heads were all closely shaven. Two or three had beards. Each wore more or less baggy trousers and lumberjack shirts in shades of red, yellow or green. The shirts were worn over pale T-shirts or sweaters.

  ‘Like a uniform.’

  Suter did not realise it, but he was already in the grip of rage.

  They must have been at more than the Halton armoury. The one in front was carrying an assault rifle, an FN FAL with a fixed butt. Two others had bullpups, infantry-model Enfield L85s, by the look of them. Another had what seemed to be a Kalashnikov AK47. The rest were apparently unarmed.

  Given the whole arsenal of southern England to choose from, they couldn’t know anything much about weapons.

  Already, surreptitiously, ominously, part of Suter’s mind began to draw comfort from this observation.

  He watched them dragging Muriel across the lawn and down towards the river. It was obvious what they were going to do. There was no more painful torture than drowning. She would divulge everything they wanted to know. Who had given her the Glock? Where had he given it to her? What other guns did he have?

  He wouldn’t blame her if she had told them already. On the contrary: he hoped she had. Now, perhaps, they were just going to punish her. Execute her. Nine men, one elderly woman.

  They reached the bank. He saw some of them full-face as they positioned themselves and pulled her head over the water. He heard a shouted question, a demand for information, to which there was no reply. A boot was placed on Muriel’s neck and she went under.

  ‘I’m not having this,’ Suter said.

  He quickly lowered his binoculars and busied himself with the rifle case.

  ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘She’s dead, whatever happens.’

  As he extended the bipod he tormentedly wondered whether he must shoot Muriel or leave her alive. He didn’t know, had not decided, even as he cocked the rifle, got down behind the neoprene hood of the eyepiece and focused. He had brought the zoom sight, which he now adjusted for windage and elevation and turned up to full, ten times, magnification.

  ‘I’m warning you, don’t do this! It’s her fault!’

  Suter wasn’t listening. He prepared to fire. He supposed there was a remote chance that Muriel could yet survive. What she needed was a diversion.

  ‘You’re first, Mr Kalashnikov,’ he silently informed the face in the graticule.

  The bullet entered the youth’s head below the left eye, a couple of centimetres from the nose. Suter’s retina just had time to register there a small, dark hole. The target may have moved slightly, in the quarter of a second it had taken the match-grade, mercury-charged 7.62 millimetre round to travel the two hundred metres from the muzzle of Suter’s rifle.

  Instantaneously, the head exploded in a shower of pulp.

  Thanks to the built-in flash hider, there was nothing but the noise of the report to reveal his position. He cocked the bolt again.

  ‘You next.’

  The group had not yet had time to react with anything but incredulity. Suter took aim at the one with his boot on Muriel’s neck, the graticule centred now on his chest, since a head shot would no longer be reliable. He compressed the trigger.

  The victim fell forward into the water, a huge pit blown in the front of his T-shirt.

  By now a number of the group had realised what was happening. Suter heard desperate shouting and saw some of them dropping to the ground, slithering down the bank to gain what cover they could.

  He had eight rounds left, one in the chamber and seven in the magazine. Were it not for the weapons they were carrying, he could easily have killed the lot of them. As things stood, Suter had only a very short time in hand. The two L85s were equipped with telescopic sights, probably the infantry’s standard four-power SUSATs.

  ‘One more. You. You with the earrings.’

  As Suter squeezed the trigger, the target half turned to get down the bank. The shot drew only a plume of water.

  Suter swore.

  With that, the first return fire came up from the Enfields. He saw both muzzles flashing, heard the whiz of two or three bullets, and the stuttering reports reached his hearing. Impacts were riddling the vegetation all around him.

  ‘Holy shit!’

  They had a more accurate idea of his position, and were very much better shots, than he had supposed. One round had already trashed the middle of the nearest fencepost, three feet from his head. If he stayed here, within a few seconds, at most, he would be hit.

  He did not know what had happened to Muriel and could not wait to find out. He was already crawling backwards at maximum speed, keeping as low as he could, dragging the rifle with one hand, his shotgun and pack with the other, his progress terrifyingly hampered by the bracken. The rifle case with its precious night sight he had, perforce, abandoned.

  The Enfields had been joined by the AK47 and the FN FAL. They could obviously see the bracken tops moving. Branches and trunks above and around him were splitting, shredding, splintering in the torrent of automatic fire. He shut his eyes, expecting a ricochet. With every movement backwards he was getting further and further below the enemy horizon and there was no longer any possibility of a direct shot.

  A couple of yards more and the bracken started to thin. The shooting had become intermittent, as if they knew they were now wasting ammunition. With the front of his clothing filthy and with wood fibres, chunks of bark and fragments of leaves and bracken adhering to his back, Suter rose to a crouching position and moved, crabwise, deeper into the copse.

  ‘Can’t leave the pack.’ Much as he wanted to. But the rifle was too heavy, and pretty useless, really, under the trees. And in the open it would be no match for assault rifles.

  A better plan had already started to form.

  ‘Think what you’re doing.’

  ‘Just for a change.’

  Still crouching, he stopped and contemplated the rifle.

  It would take him too long to remove the bolt. Although they had 7.62×51 millimetre NATO ammunition, it was most unlikely that they would have a magazine to fit an AW. He unfastened the magazine from the receiver and slipped it in his pocket.

  In a few minutes’ time they would feel confident that there was to be no more sniping from the hillside. Very soon after that they might come after him.

  No, not ‘might’. Would. He had left them no choice. Absolutely none.

  Five hours to nightfall. Map, compass. Binoculars damaged, eyepieces crammed with dirt. Might wash out.

  Suter rose to his full height as he scrambled into his pack. Except in the direst straits of self-defence, he had until this hour never killed another human being in cold blood. ‘Never in cold blood,’ he breathed, seeing again the youth’s head exploding, his co-victim folding, collapsing, into the river. ‘Never like that.’

  ‘But my blood wasn’t cold.’

  ‘Yes it was.’

  He refused to answer himself.

  ‘Isn’t that why you gave her the Glock?’

  He fastened the pack-buckle at his waist.

  This time, Suter knew he had gone too far. His death was coming. It was imminent, the long slithering slide down the scree-clad slope to the end. That’s why he had given her the Glock, why he had squeezed the AW’s trigger and shot, killed, murdered those two. As precisely engineered as the sniping rifle he had been hoarding all these years, his mind had known exactly what it was doing. It had known what he wanted, what his soul craved, and in the last split-second before his headlong run began, it gave vent to this ambiguous, exultant whisper of self-encouragement:

  ‘Go!’

  8

  When the cellar door burst open, Davies understood at once that they had not come this time with food or water or a change of bucket. There were two of them, one carrying a sub-machine gun.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Get
up!’

  Though Davies struggled to obey, he was not quick enough for their liking. They dragged him to his feet.

  ‘What is it? What do you want?’

  With the muzzle of the gun pushed into his back, they forced him up the steps. For some reason they were not going to do it in the cellar. He wondered which of the villagers had been killed already, in the firing he had heard earlier. He hoped Helen … Helen … anything, as long as she was spared.

  Reaching the top of the steps, Davies realised he would never climb them again. Still wincing against the unaccustomed light, he looked around him at the passing view of the scullery, the kitchen, the corridor.

  Bex was seated at the head of the dining table.

  The patina of its surface was now almost everywhere scratched and pitted with ground-in dirt. Here and there it was scorched, or puddled with candlewax.

  Davies raised his eyes. The small, dark goatee Bex had sported when first they had met had grown longer and more luxuriant. He was still wearing his gold pirate’s earrings. He was the only one of the group to have them, like a badge of office.

  ‘Hello,’ Bex said flatly.

  Davies again lowered his eyes, confused by the turn events were taking. Five other youths were standing behind and beside Bex’s chair. The ones called Stolly and Pinch, two of the most volatile and dangerous, were among them. More were over by the windows: Davies had not yet dared to look at them directly.

  Bex calmly, menacingly, spoke again. ‘I’ve got some questions I want you to answer.’

  Davies knew then that something had happened that was bad for Bex, for all of them. What? Resistance? Had one of them been attacked? Killed, even?

  Over his shoulder, to Stolly, Bex said, ‘Bring her in.’

  A moment later, from the door behind him, accompanied by Stolly and Carl, Helen entered the room.

  Davies started forward, was restrained. Helen tried to force a smile. She seemed to be uninjured, though her hair, her beautiful dark hair, had been crudely shorn, hacked away, and her face looked wan, smudged with exhaustion. But what distressed Davies most, what pained him beyond belief, was her expression. The light had gone from her eyes.