by Craig Thomas
'A nice solution to our problem. Is it deserted 'Christ knows. It certainly looks it.' Waterford scanned the silent village once more through the glasses, then put them at his side, and stretched himself, shifting his prone body. 'We are going to have to find out. Fancy volunteering?' There was no longer a sneer in the voice, and Davenhill felt no offence. Their relationship had become anaesthetised in work; they were part of the same mission, and that sufficed for both of them. They relied upon each other now. Davenhill nodded.
'Come on then. I don't fancy this place after dark. We'd better go in now.' Davenhill was still smiling when his tone darkened and he added: 'Softly, softly is the word, Alex. You keep close to me, you take the safety-catch off your gun, and you keep your eyes swivelling like those on a bloody chameleon. Savvy?'
'OK. You're the expert. What do you expect?'
'The dead lying on their beds, hands across the chest,'
Waterford said. 'Or mere emptiness. I don't know. What I don't expect is to find Russian soldiers — but then, I don't want to be surprised.' He lifted his head, raised the glasses, scanned, then said, 'The big house — village headman that will be. We'll make for that. Just follow me.' He looked at Davenhill, and the younger man saw the features tauten, the eyes seem to become shallow yet intent. It was as if he were looking at a sharp monochrome picture of the man, without shadows or highlights. Something etched, yet flat.
'Watch yourself,' Waterford said quietly. 'No heroics, and no panic. If — if there's anyone nasty down there, it'll be the time to remain normal in the abnormal situation. That's what it's about, son — being ordinary when the world goes mad.'
'I'll try.'
Waterford nodded, seemingly satisfied; yet Davenhill thought he caught something in the twitch of the lips that might have been pity, or disappointment. Then the bigger man got up, into a crouch, and dusted off his waterproof trousers.
'Ready?'
'Ready.'
Davenhill followed him down the slope, keeping to a crease in the land as to a path, his body balanced inwards towards the slope, his eyes on the path Waterford was making through the restraining, glutinous snow. Waterford, he knew, was ceaselessly scanning the village as their viewpoint dropped lower, to the level of the ground floor of the house that steadily, jerkily seemed to move towards them.
Beneath them then was what must be the garden, or at least the strip of land belonging to the house. There were no footprints in the snow, but it had snowed that previous night, and Davenhill dismissed the relief that threatened to bubble up in him. He felt the tension, withdrawing into himself, unaware of Waterford except when he touched the body in front of him whenever the man stopped, or as he watched the sunken footprints. A little narrow frightened world that was Alex Davenhill.
Ordinary.
He understood what Waterford meant. Like entering the club, or the new bar, this should be.
No, not even that. Like the washing-up, or mowing a lawn.
Christ, he wondered, how does he manage it, to be like that when a bullet might tear the life out of him at any moment?
Davenhill tried breathing deeply, regularly.
'Do your exercises later,' Waterford snapped in a whisper. They were almost at the rear door of the house, and Davenhill saw, as Waterford pointed, the chipped whiteness against the door and the frame around it; the absence of a lock. He said nothing, however, moving instead to the window to the left of the door. He rubbed at the frost, and peered in.
'Well?' Davenhill asked after what seemed like minutes of Waterford craning and bobbing his head.
'It's very tidy,' Waterford observed. 'Very houseproud. And not what you might expect from someone having to leave their home suddenly.' He moved back to the door, abstracted, and Davenhill felt more than ever outside what was taking place. This was a celluloid reconstruction of events — a demonstration film.
Waterford touched the handle of the door with a mittened hand. Then he suddenly had the Parabellum in his hand, and Davenhill clutched inside his pocket for the Walther. It was an instinctive, clumsy gesture. It was years since he had fired a gun, and never in anger. Unless grouse counted. He almost laughed at the idea, and hated the nerves that bubbled dose to hysteria. Ignoring them for something like a minute had only made them multiply, like ameoba.
The door swung open soundlessly. Waterford glanced at him, shrugged, and put the gun to his lips for silence. Then he opened the door suddenly wide, and ducked inside. Davenhill waited for a moment, as if forgetting a cue, and feeling foolish. Then he went through the door.
Waterford was already in the big main room of the house where Folley had sat. It was empty, tidy, clean. Waterford wiped his ringers over a mirror, then along the edge of a table.
There was no dust. His face was creased into a dramatic, abstracted frown.
'There is no one here,' Davenhill said, and his voice was very loud.
'Possibly. But the evacuation is recent, and perhaps temporary. I wonder — ?'
Swiftly, he checked the bedrooms, all on the one floor. Then he paused before the cellar door.
'Is that the cellar?' Davenhill asked. 'What — do you expect?' He was suddenly assailed by a Gothic imagining which was stupid, and only served to emphasise the unhealthy state of his nerves.
'Not the corpses — I hope.' He pushed open the door, which creaked, and reached for the light. There was only the usual slight mustiness of a cellar, and the smell of stored animal fodder. He went down the steps. Davenhill waited, again with the foolishness not so much of reluctance but of incompetence. In this water, he could not swim. And he knew it before he dipped his toe.
He joined Waterford at the bottom of the steps.
'See?' Waterford said, holding a Kalashnikov rifle up for his inspection. It was neatly stacked, with three others, against one wall. Looking at them, Davenhill noticed the uniforms hanging from fresh pegs, the boots — then, near the stacked hay, a military cot.
Are they Russian uniforms?' he asked.
'Not the Lapland Fire Brigade, that's for certain.'
'What does it mean?'
Waterford was patient, probably because he conceived no immediate danger.
'A special detachment, left to guard the village.'
'And — the villagers?'
'Settled — elsewhere.'
'Well, where are they?'
Davenhill pursued, determined not to move ahead of the answers he elicited from Waterford.
'Out and about — looking for us, or someone like us.'
'What?'
'Folley must have come here, or been brought. They found him, and they'd expect another enquiry of the same sort. That's why the uniforms are here. And I bet they speak Finnish.'
It was not a voice that they heard next, but footsteps on the bare floorboards above their heads. Waterford saw Davenhill's eyes roll comically in his head, and almost laughed inwardly at the way in which real fear hadn't even begun for the clever queer. He felt him an encumbrance, and pitied him at the same moment.
'What do we — ?' Davenhill's whisper was a squeak.
Waterford covered his lips again with the gun barrel, then listened. A voice called out in Finnish, and Waterford smiled. He motioned to Davenhill to put the gun away, and slipped his Parabellum back into the shoulder holster. Again the voice called out, then the footsteps began on the stairs, and they watched two legs above high boots come into view. There was an assuredness about the unhesitating steps.
Waterford called out, 'I say — can you help us?'
He moved swiftly to the foot of the steps, looking up into the face of the young man before he could leave the steps. The man, dark, thin-faced, was smiling openly, and yet contrived to appear surprised. 'You speak English, old man?' Waterford added.
Davenhill remained where he was, confused and withdrawn. He could no longer fathom motive, even identity. He wasn't sure who the young man on the steps was, but he believed, with difficulty, that he must be Russian. And his ignorance screamed
that Waterford had betrayed them by addressing the man in English.
'A little?' the young man said, and the accent was no longer Scandinavian.
'Ah, how lucky, eh, Alex?' He turned momentarily to Davenhill. 'We're electricity board surveyors from England — our jeep broke down about a mile from here. Do you think the chaps here might help us?'
It was ridiculous, Davenhill had time to think. Then the young man said, with difficulty, 'I saw you — come here? Why are you in the cellar?'
'Couldn't find anyone, old man. Thought there might be someone down here. Not your cellar, is it, old man? Awfully sorry.'
'No — I live — other house. You come up now?' There was nothing of menace in the voice, perhaps only anxiety that they come quickly.
There were wet footprints on the stone floor of the cellar, next to the uniforms and the leaning rifles. It was stupid, a farce that they should be pretending to be innocent travellers. Davenhill felt something in him collapsing. His breath smoked round him in the cold.
The young man had stood aside on the steps. Waterford, with a charming, bland smile, was passing.
He turned and said, 'Come on, Alex — this chap will give us a hand with the jeep!'
He went up the steps quickly, and Davenhill, seeming to himself to be moving through an element more glutinous than the thick snow behind the house, followed. He hardly glanced at the young man, then, aware of admission in his averted gaze, stared at him, grinning foolishly; hating his inadequacy, already sensing Waterford's scorn.
That, more than the fear as soon as he was above the young man, and his unguarded back was to him.
At the top of the steps, Waterford, relaxed, smiling, was waiting for them. His hands were in the pockets of the heavy anorak. There was, incredibly, nothing to fear. Ridiculous.
The young man was alert — Davenhill saw the tension in his frame. An inappropriate image of nakedness, remembered just for a moment, then he was standing between Waterford and the Russian who was still pretending to be a Laplander.
'Why are you here?' the young man said then.
Waterford smiled, disarmingly. 'Ah — hydro-electric power.' His hands went into a mime, his voice into a pedantic deliberateness, head moving in emphasis. 'Water — dams, using the power of the water — we are investigating for the British electricity industry…' Pausing, while the vocabulary caught up.
Davenhill was tempted to laugh, and admire. 'What can we learn from your country? You understand?
'Ivalo?' the young man said.
'Yes. Doing a bit of sightseeing — tourists? — on our own.' Waterford had moved away from the young man and was looking out of the window. Davenhill saw now how lean the Russian's frame was, how fit the man must be underneath the assumed civilian clothing. He remained near the Russian, as if a token of good faith or an emblem of peace.
'Where is your jeep?' the young man asked, moving too.
'Just outside the village,' Waterford said, apparently unconcerned, looking up the main street of the village. The young Russian approached him. Davenhill could see the menace in the movement, but could not be objectively certain — hating the impotence that made him a spectator of the tiny events, and concentrating, as if afraid of missing something — but Waterford seemed oblivious.
When he turned from the window, he was holding a knife, glimpsed briefly by Davenhill, and the young man's back flexed convexly as he bucked his stomach away from the point of the blade.
'One move, sonny, and I'll kill you, just one move or sound — understand?' Davenhill knew sufficient Russian to understand what Waterford had said.
Then the older man moved closer to the Russian, turning him with apparent ease, knife now across the stretched white throat above the check shirt and the collar of the anorak.
'Don't kill him — !' Davenhill blurted out, as if disturbed by events on a screen that were unexpectedly real.
'Shut up!' Waterford snapped, and Davenhill almost failed to recognise the voice, as if a trick of ventriloquism had made the man's lips move. Alien…
Then Waterford pushed the man so that he stumbled, slipped on a loose thick rug, a splash of bright colours, and even as he turned over on his back Waterford kicked him in the thigh, near the groin, bent and pulled him to his feet, drew the gun with the right hand and hit the Russian across the cheekbone with the barrel.
Davenhill found his long fingers at his quivering lips, and a strange voice saying, 'For Christ's sake, what are you doing to him?' It was his own voice, and that was horrible, too.
'Disorientate!' snapped Waterford, as if reciting some lesson. 'Get a bucket of water — now!' There was no resistance in Davenhill. He turned and went out into the long kitchen.
He heard the sounds of tearing cloth, then slapping, and he hurried, as if afraid to be rebuked, filling the plastic bucket from beneath the sink with ice-cold water. He slopped it back from the kitchen, along the bare corridor to the main room, where Waterford snatched it from him, and flung the contents over the dazed, bleeding Russian in the armchair where he had been pushed. The man was naked, except for his boots and long socks. His torn trousers were in a stiff, degrading pool around his ankles. The check splash of the shirt was beside the armchair.
The body jerked as if from electricity as the water cascaded, shocked, froze. There was a strangled cry, and then Waterford was on him, knee on his chest, gun beneath the point of the jaw, forcing the flopping head with the lolling black hair up, to look into the grey, flat eyes.
'Where are the others?' he barked, shouting almost, jerking the gun in his hand so that the Russian's jaw grated, and the head snapped up and down. Puppet, thought Davenhill, with appalled fascination.
There was no sound from the Russian.
'Where is the Englishman? Where is he?' Again the pressure of the gun — then he saw Waterford lean away, and the Parabellum exploded. Davenhill found his hands about his face, plucking at his lips, wanting to cover his ears. There was nothing he could do; the Russian was dead. He heard Water-ford's voice, distantly: 'Where is the Englishman?' Why ask a dead man? 'Where is he — you're not dead yet!' The command in the voice was — terrible.
And then Davenhill saw the head flop, as if alive, and Water-ford said again. 'Where is he? Did you bastards kill him? Answer me!' There was a choking sound, as if the young man was still swallowing the water thrown over him, and the head moved again, and over the hunched shoulder of Waterford he saw the eyes roll in the head, whites rather than pupils, and another groan.
Only then did he realise that Waterford had not killed the Russian.
'Speak! Now! When did you kill him? When?
A silence. Then:
'No — not kill…' the voice was awful, something already dead trying to get back from somewhere impossibly far. 'He — was taken back.'
'I don't believe you, you little Russian shit! He's dead!'
'No, no!'
'Yes!'
'Beg you…' Davenhill heard, and braced himself, hands fluttering at his sides, uncertain.
'You killed him!' Each syllable broken, precise with menace.
'No! They took him back over the border with them!'
'Who!'
The voice was easier now, lubricated by some whiff of possible life.
'The tank regiment — when they went back.'
'When?'
'Two — days.'
'Why are they here?'
'I don't know. Invasion!' The last word was shrieked as the gun drew back from the jaw, then pressed against the temple. Davenhill saw the terrible eyes swivel in the head, following the gun. All whites.
Then Waterford, as if some conjuror or magician releasing a spell, stepped back, slipped the gun into its holster. Then, his back to the Russian, he put on his gloves.
'Right,' he said. 'Let's get this young man outside and back to the jeep, shall we, Alex?'
Davenhill was immobile with shock, disorientation.
'Come on, Alex,' he heard Waterford say, almost cringing as
the bigger man came towards him. But his voice was kindly. 'We haven't got any time to waste. Get him dressed.'
He left the room abruptly, exuding a confidence more appropriate to a Ministry corridor, an officers' mess, than to their present situation.
Then he realised that the peculiar sound in the room was the Russian's teeth as they chattered uncontrollably. The young man was hunched in the armchair, arms wrapped across his chest, moaning through the noise of his teeth. He moved to him, helping him slowly to his feet. The young man flinched from him, and his body began quivering as soon as it abandoned the mould of the chair. The eyes were still now, receded.
His nakedness was upsetting, humiliating. Davenhill bent down, and pulled the trousers up to his waist. The buckle was missing, and the waistband was torn. He gently guided the young man's hand until it held the trousers in place. Then he picked up the shirt, saw its condition and abandoned it, then pulled the anorak across his heaving shoulders. The chattering noise had gone. Sobs, irregular and heaving, were the only sounds now.
Waterford came back into the room.
'The back way,' he said. 'Get him moving.' Precise, clipped tones; army manoeuvres. The voice enraged Davenhill.
'You bastard! He'll freeze to death before we can get back!'
'Rugs, blankets in the jeep. He won't freeze — if he runs fast enough!' He glared theatrically at the Russian, who bowed his head, his mouth opening and closing, fish-like.
Davenhill stared Waterford out for a long moment, then capitulated. The man was right — always bloody right. And the Russian had talked. Folley was alive, somewhere in Russia.
And, he realised, they had a witness.
He bundled the young man in front of him, out of the main room, down the corridor, through the kitchen. It was already getting late in the afternoon, and the weak sun low on the horizon, a bleary, tired eye. Waterford went ahead of them, moving quickly, and Davenhill found the gun in his hand again, and he prodded the Russian in the back. He moved like an automaton, and Davenhill snarled, 'Pick your feet up!' in Russian. And shuddered as if he had caught some infection.
They almost walked into Waterford, because the man stopped suddenly.