The Walking Dead

  He came off the dual-carriageway and Luton was signed bearing left, and the turning for the airport was right off the roundabout. The lights of the town, an amber glow nestling against the cloud base, were ahead. He had never been there. Knew it had a reputation for being as crap as the car he drove. Knew it had an airport, knew it had a car factory, knew it had a railway station where the four Seven-Seven bombers had taken the train into London.

  'Go into the town. Keep the railway on your right. You'll see the shopping centre on the left. Sign will be for the town hail. We're off to the right, short of that. It's Inkerman Road.'

  Banks did not reply, just nodded, as if he was staff and took instructions.

  The spit came harder. 'There is–I'm afraid–Mr Banks, a small and inconsequential difficulty'

  Banks kept his eyes on the road in front.

  'Not much point in putting it off, not sharing it…'

  Banks saw the raised lights of the railway station to the right.

  'I regret it, but I told you an untruth. Silly of me, but if I hadn't we wouldn't be here.'

  The bulk of the shopping centre's outer wall was to his left. Banks followed the main route, and the town hall was arrowed from a sign.

  'It's not my parents. They're in the pink–probably fitter, healthier, than I am…Sort of regular, you know, any weekend I can get away, I come up here and my parents are the excuse. It's where my wife thinks I am, and my kid. The sob story was a smokescreen–well, a lie. The answer? Of course, it's a woman…'

  Did not answer, and saw a turn-off to the right: Inkerman Road.

  'That's where we are. I told an untruth so I could get away for a weekend's shagging. And there's one more untruth, so don't be thinking shagging's due reward for a hero. I'm not. Personally, I would have taken the cash that was dumped on me. Would have done if my wife hadn't found it in the wardrobe. We're broke, in hock. We're in final-demand country, and that cash would have taken off the pressure. My wife found it. She said that if I didn't report the approach, she would–and I would have been up a creek with no paddle. My wife scuppered me, and I'm not a hero with a sense of civic duty…just so you know–but a louse, a cheat, a creep, not a hero. But, and I mean this very seriously, if you turn me round then I'm not in court on Monday. So, what's to do?'

  Inkerman Road stretched away up a hill, and he saw the pub's sign, the squat block of flats below the pub and the line of houses past it. He could have told his Principal of a course for detectives that identified the body language of a liar…did not. Could have told his Principal that this Protection Officer was washed up, useless, and was putting in a resignation letter on the next working day…but didn't want to waste his breath. He changed down, eased his foot on to the brake pedal.

  'Mr Wright, I really don't give a damn. Please, just tell me where to stop.'

  Chapter17

  Friday, Day 16

  Banks read a newspaper, learned the ground. Big print screamed at him:

  SAVAGES! A Man's Face Has to Be Rebuilt After Horrific Attack by Yob Gang'.

  And 'Date Rape Warning on Drinks'.

  And 'Drunk Yobs in Street Battle'.

  Nothing here that was remarkable, that was not ordinary.

  And 'Woman Victim of Daylight Robbery Near Bus Stop'.

  And 'Teen Yob Terror Hits Shop and Doc's Surgery'.

  The same as anywhere. The streetlight above him blazed into the car.

  Lucky, really, to have seen him in the mirror before he was past the car. A kid had bicycled up the pavement and had had the big bag on his shoulder with the town's News/Gazette logo on it. He'd lowered his window and asked if there was anything local. He'd been given a News/Gazette from the bottom of the bag, two days after publication. He'd given the kid a pound coin for it, when the price on the masthead was thirty-four pence. He'd sent him off happy.

  He could have gone up the road to the pub, where live music played. Instead, he turned pages, moved on from crime, found another issue. The News/Gazette was big on race: 'Fresh Race Hate Probe' and 'Police Chief in Race Plea' and 'Town Muslims on the March for Moderation' and 'Live Together or the Radical Groups Win', and he gutted the articles.

  His man had rung the doorbell, given him a last glance and a grin, like the deceit was enjoyed, and a woman–attractive, middle thirties, bobbed brunette hair, strikingly similar in appearance to the Principal's wife–had opened the door. Wright must have given some sort of a curtailed explanation of a car in the street and a man left in it, and she'd gazed from the step at him, shrugged, and the door had closed on them. It was part of his life–a part that had less than seventy-two hours to run–to be left in cars outside doors. So, Luton had a crime problem with a race problem thrown in–so, Luton was pretty damn ordinary. He read about street muggings and the arguments over the appropriate dress for Muslim girls at school, and about a campaign to deface advertising nudity and about drug-addiction clinics that had opened in the town and were swamped. He wondered why the good folk who weren't thieves, activists or addicts bothered to shell out thirty-four pence and face that litany of misery, of hate. He turned the pages in search of something else.

  Banks found another 'Overdose Death' and skipped on. Better, so much better, 'Citizenship Classes' were fully subscribed: 'New Citizens Queue Up to Take Oath of Allegiance'. The football team was challenging for promotion, 'The Hatters March On'. Most of what he knew of two dozen towns and a dozen cities had come from sitting in cars reading local newspapers. He'd gone through the misery of the first handful of grim news pages, and it was like the sunlit uplands beckoned him. A 'New Crèche Opens', three bloody cheers. An 'Extra Budget Available for Town Square Clean-up', hip, hip bloody hurray. 'All Welcome at Saturday Town History Walk'–worth throwing a cap into the air. Couldn't abide the small ads–dating agencies, televisions going cheap, rooms to let–and scrambled through them. Last was the two-page spread: 'Bargains, Give-Away Prices, Monster Sale, Come Early, Doors Opening At Nine, Shopping Centre Bonanza'. It did not affect David Banks, but it humoured him as he sat in the car and the dark closed round his windows. He thought, at last, he had found a trifle of cheerfulness, and he pictured crowds gathering on a warm morning, tomorrow, with the forecast optimistic, and a lightening of the dreariness imposed by muggers, zealots and junkies.

  The trouble with having the warrant card was that it placed a man outside the loop of normal life, and the Glock, 9mm calibre, in a pancake holster, at his hip was even further outside it. When the letter was in, with the card and the firearms authorization, and most of his possessions from the bedsit were gone to a skip or a charity shop, the rest to his mother's garage, and he was at the airport for the flight to Auckland, Sydney or Toronto, with a rucksack on his back, he would need nothing that a shopping centre, Prices Slashed, could offer him. He seemed to see those valleys and the tumbling streams, the endless expanses of desert, great inland seas, and he chucked the newspaper behind him. There, somewhere, he might find peace.

  He reached into his jacket pocket, where it hung loose over the holster. His hand fastened on the notebook.

  He lifted it out, felt the worn, roughened leather of its cover in his fingers. Only three pages remained to be read. He turned one.

  David Banks, the streetlight spilling inside the car, saw that the writing was looser, a tiny scrawl–as if more laboured–and that the paper was tainted with a dried dark stain.

  The newspaper had been an excuse, a diversion, a palliative as temporary as an aspirin. He was drawn to the page, a moth to a damned flame.

  He read.

  27 July 1938

  I have been shot by a sniper.

  I knew nothing.

  I felt a weight hit me. A hammer blow. I was lifted up, then thrown down. There was no pain, not at first, only numbness.

  Our officer had warned of the sniper three days ago. Then the sniper shot and killed a boy from Wolverhampton. He was not a friend–I have none left–but a good lad, and had been a factory machinist before he ca
me to join the International Brigade volunteers, was always cheerful. He was going back to the latrine from the front-line trench when he was hit in the back of his head. But the sniper had not fired for three days. I had forgotten him. I was sent back to the rear to bring forward food, and there was a place where the parapet was lower, where I should have ducked to my knees, but then it would have been hard to carry all the food for our platoon. I did not duck.

  I was hit in the chest.

  Dear Enid, other men–some I have never spoken to, all to whom I have given no love–risked their own lives to come and carry me back to the second and third trenches, and safety.

  I have been taken to a field hospital. At first, I was carried by two men, one holding my arms and one my legs. That was when the pain came.

  Further back, I was put on to a cart that a donkey pulled. If I had been an officer, or a commissar, I would have been brought to the field hospital by lorry. I went all the way, several miles, on the cart.

  This is a charnel house, it is a place of Hades. I think it was a place like this where Ralph died.

  I must be thankful that I am able to write.

  I am waiting to be examined. The doctors, one is Austrian and another is Polish, have a process that is called triage. Ralph told me about triage when the wounded were taken back from Suicide Hill. When the doctors come to me they will make an assessment of my condition. They decide, in triage. if I will live, or might live, or not. The priority goes to those who will live, and if they have the time and opportunity they will treat those who might live, and they put a black spot of dye on the forehead of those who will not live. There are many casualties here, and I believe it will be a long time before they reach me. A nurse–I think she was French–has put a new field dressing on my wound.

  It is difficult to write. I am weaker, and breathing is harder. The effort of moving the pencil on the page is almost beyond me.

  I think of the sniper. He did not choose me. It was an opportunity, my chest visible for two or three seconds where the parapet was low. I chose him, presented myself. But for those two or three seconds he would have seen my face, magnified in the lens of his rifle sight. When he saw me go down, did he rejoice? Or was shooting me meaningless to him? I do not know.

  I cannot hate him.

  He is a soldier, as am I. I do not think that, with my rifle, I have ever harmed an enemy, but I have tried.

  I have thought of him…Perhaps he is a good man, perhaps he has a family, perhaps he has no hate for me…Perhaps, already, he has forgotten the image of my face.

  Our officer said–when the boy from Wolverhampton was hit.–that the sniper was likely to be German. I think of him as being as far from home as lam.

  For now, dear Enid, I cannot write more.

  There was one page remaining. He closed the notebook, slid it back into his pocket.

  Stunned and quiet, not moving, David Banks was not aware that the outer door of the block had opened. He did not see the wash of light on the step and the pavement.

  The window was rapped. He was jolted. His hand, instinct, dropped to the pistol's butt and he had half drawn it.

  'Steady, you silly bugger, don't bloody shoot me.'

  He loosed his grip.

  'You hardly need that damn thing here. Where were you–Never-never Land?'

  He shrugged.

  'Put it down to my lady. She says it's ridiculous having you sat out here in the bollocks-numbing cold. She says you're to eat with us.'

  'My thanks to her and to you, Mr Wright, but I'm fine.'

  'She won't have any of that. And I'm to tell you that there's enough cooked for an extra plate.'

  'I get an allowance for food, and I buy it.'

  'God, Mr Banks, you make a virtue out of awkwardness. She also says that I'm not permitted back in her bed if you're stuck outside in a bloody car. Come on, shift yourself.'

  'I suppose that tilts the argument. Just remember what I've said. I'm not a friend.'

  'Made a good imitation of one this evening. I'm grateful.'

  He checked his pockets, then the holster. Thought of the yob gangs of the News/Gazette. Climbed out and went to the boot, lifted out the holdall with the kit in it–magazines, the thunderclap grenades, the ballistic blanket and the first aid…Not making it easy for the yob kids to get a bonus from a stolen joy-ride vehicle. He crossed the pavement, went up the steps and inside, heard soft music and felt the warmth.

  Said, side of mouth, 'What does she know?'

  Had the whisper back: 'There's been a jury scare. All of us have a Protection Officer, nothing particular about me.'

  'Are you always so economical with the truth?'

  'Offer it up when there's no alternative, only then. Story of my life, and it's worked so far.'

  She'd had careful makeup on her face when he'd first seen her, her hair had been neat and brushed, and her blouse had been pristine.

  In the living area, from the kitchenette alcove, she smiled with warmth and held out her hand. 'Good to meet you. I'm Hannah.'

  The cosmetics at her eyes, the lipstick on her mouth, were smudged, the hair less neat. The white blouse was creased, and fewer buttons were fastened.

  'My name's Banks. Detective Constable Banks.'

  Wright grinned. 'Or, love, you can call him Mr Banks. In these matters we retain formality and he is not a friend, better believe it.'

  'I've done a lasagne, there's plenty. A drink?'

  'No, thank you.'

  'He's on duty. Mr Banks is working.'

  Her laughter trilled. 'I doubt organized crime–desperadoes–reaches this dump. Are you going to take your jacket off?'

  He did, and gave it her. She hung it on a hook. She was staring at his waist, at the pancake holster and the butt of the Clock. 'But not that, you don't take that off?'

  'No.'

  She frowned, and mischief twinkled. 'I suppose you get asked it often–have you ever fired it, gone serious?'

  'I get asked it very often. I haven't.'

  A place was laid for him. They ate. The lasagne was excellent, and Banks told her so, felt a shyness. There was white wine on the table, Tuscan, and Wright drank but she drank more. Banks sipped a glass of tap water. They talked among themselves, the weather and the politics at her office, some more about the weather, heating problems in the block. He had no place there. Maybe he should have stayed in the cold of the car. Black coffee was brought him.

  She leaned forward. Because of the undone buttons, he could see the shape and fall of her breasts. 'Jools said you'd told him your colleagues in a unit thought you were useless, that they'd bumped you.'

  Banks wondered whether he'd been discussed before, during or after sex.

  Wright flapped a hand. 'A bit below the belt, love. Christ, I was only–'

  Banks said, 'Shouldn't have told him. But it's about right.'

  'Why did they say it?'

  Wright drained the last of his glass. 'You can't ask him that–God…'

  'Why?'

  When would he speak of it again? Never. When would he meet with this woman again? Never. He struggled to articulate the words that jumbled in his mind. He said quietly, 'I don't think it's anything covered by the Official Secrets Act. The team I was with guarded the elite, the principal figures of the state. They're not important in themselves, but as symbols…It's a sitting-on-your-backside job, not one when you can judge whether you've done well or badly–nothing happens…So, we talk. We talk about the threat on the streets, talk about it every day since Seven-Seven. We talk about suicide-bombers, have done every day since Twenty-two-Seven and the tube killing. We talk about what we would do if confronted with the reality, a bomber, face to face–or a supposed bomber.

  'If you're going to shoot a man, take his life–do something you've never done before–you have to believe that your cause is good, that his is evil. We talk about indoctrinated scum-bags and fanatics, and put horns on them, scales and tails. We're in cars and canteens, hotel foyers and rest
aurant kitchens, and we talk about us being right and them being wrong, us being brave and them being cowards and we think that having doubt is weakness. To be weak is to be useless. If you pause, the half-second, and lose sight of scum-bags and fanatics and cowards, the shot hasn't been fired and the street is full of casualties. To doubt is unacceptable…I doubted. I spoke the heresy, said that it was perfectly possible for a suicide-bomber to be brave and principled. If the world hadn't caved in then, I would have added, "But wrong." The caveat was never said. I lost the respect and trust of my team, and didn't fight hard enough to get it back. There you have it–I'm bumped and I'm going and I regret nothing.'

  'Are you running away from making that judgement?'

  'You could say that–going where I don't have to make the judgement, ever.' The silence hung round him, and he thought he'd screwed their evening, but she poured him more coffee.

  Many thoughts jangled in Dickie Naylor's head as he oversaw the digging of the grave. He needn't have. He had waved a flashlight and chosen a place a dozen steps behind the Nissen hut, but his men had gone to it, had rejected it, had pointed out politely that there would be concrete foundations skirting the building, and they wouldn't be able to go deep. They had moved further away, in an opposite direction, and the chosen place was where the weeks of rain had made the ground soft in the angle between the last surviving runway and the old aircraft stand. They had told him, again politely, that they did not need the flashlight. They were two indistinct shadowy figures. They grunted with the effort of their work, and talked quietly between themselves, as if he were not present.

  He could have spewed up, bent, and coughed bile from his belly. A man had died under the excess of inflicted pain. His men, he believed, would go back to their island without a second thought.

  Did the ghosts hear the two men, both in the pit–only their shoulders now visible in the half-light thrown down by a quarter-moon–hear them as they watched? The ghosts would have been of the young. There was a stone beside where the old camp gate had been, where the woman had walked her dogs and not known that what was done was in her name, and they'd gone past it fast, but he had seen the faded print of names carved there, and had not thought of them. Perhaps a bomb, a five-thousand-pound grotesque canister, had exploded as it was loaded into the undercarriage of a Lancaster. Perhaps an aircraft, cruelly damaged by the flak artillery on the way back from its target, had not been able to set down its wheels, belly-flopped and caught fire. Perhaps a pilot, navigator or rear-gunner, shattered by the stress of a never-ending tour, had drawn a Webley pistol from the armoury, walked to the trees and put the barrel into his mouth.