by Anna Legat
By the time she returns home, the artist’s impression of the suspect is on the midday news. It is vague and not quite 100%, but that’s the best she could achieve. It was dark and she stood a few yards away from him for only a minute or so. She isn’t sure she would recognise him now. They have run his description by Tommy and other passengers, and they more or less agree with Gillian that the man was short and wiry, in his sixties, and with distinct Asiatic features – particularly the heavily hooded eyes. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many witnesses, and most of them, like Tommy, are unreliable. What Tommy remembered however was the man’s clothes, especially his green gilet with a fur-trimmed hood. That piece of information makes it to the news, too.
‘The identity of this man is as yet unknown, but the police believe the man was working alone. If you see him, do not approach. He is dangerous and may be armed.’
So they didn’t believe her when she said he had accomplices. Oh well...
Gillian turns off the TV. It’s time to go back to the hospital. She puts on the kettle for the coffee and climbs the stairs to wake up Tara and the Outhwaites. Tara’s door is open and her bed is empty. She looks in the spare room. Theresa and Jerry are gone as well. They’ve gone to the hospital without waiting for her. Damn it!
XXIV
He froze. He hesitated.
Hesitation could have cost him his life. Haji is not one for suicide bombing. It’s not his way. He is not religious enough to believe in martyrdom and heavenly virgins. He is a scientist, a rational man. But he froze.
It was the woman – she appeared from nowhere. Her small stature and blonde hair, and her face – from a distance –
He froze because for that one split second he thought Svetlana had come back to him.
Then he heard the woman speak, and the moment was gone.
He wanted to grab it and hold on to it, but it wasn’t there anymore. So he let her go. He had to let her go. And that too could have cost him his life. It still might.
He gave himself – and her – enough time to get away before he detonated the explosives, using the mobile phone remote device. He should have killed her first. He may yet pay the price of his hesitation.
Haji is contemplating the events of last night. Ahmed and Malik must be dead. Their bomb exploded just as he pulled the emergency brake. He knew the train had gone too far. He knew it would add a couple of miles to his trek to the military base. He knew something had gone wrong. Not quite to plan. They intended to die, but not as they had: pointlessly. The train was meant to reach Bath to strike at the heart of it, like a bullet. Not everything goes to plan; that is a hazard of war.
The man who followed him from the train – that wasn’t meant to happen. He clearly had some military training, but still was no match for Haji. Haji lives war. That man stood no chance, hard as he tried. He is probably dead and poses no more threat to Haji. Unlike the woman. She saw his face. She looked him straight in the eye. And now they’re looking for him, high and low. The hunt is on – he can sense it. It is a bit harder in this alien terrain to blend into the background. Haji is no city man. He has to steer away from populated areas. Because of the woman, his face must be plastered on every lamppost. That’s OK. Haji is in no hurry to meet people. But sooner or later, he will have to. He has no provisions. He wasn’t planning for a lengthy time out in the wild. It was meant to be a snake-strike type of operation: quick and light. Back home for dinner.
Only which home? Whose home?
Under the cover of darkness, he waded upstream the river so that any dogs they sent after him would lose his scent. The water was freezing cold and it soaked through Haji’s boots and trousers, slowing him down in his retreat. Once he had put a reasonable distance between himself and his pursuers, he decided to rest. He had to trust his wits. Going back towards the town of Sexton’s Canning was a good idea. Everyone would think he would be heading as far away as possible from the scene. Returning to it was the least risky thing to do. So that’s exactly what he has been doing after a decent day of sleep, holed up in a concrete, bunker-like structure, abandoned in the middle of nowhere. It was a perfect shelter for him.
From the moment the traffic on the nearby road died out and the stars sprang up in the sky to light his path, Haji has been back on the road. He is looking for a quiet, uninhabited woodland – it will be ideal for him to lie low for a few days, maybe weeks. Things are looking up. If they haven’t tracked him down in the first twenty-four hours, his chances are good.
He sees the thick, ragged outline of a wood not too far away. He thinks it is maybe a quarter of a kilometre across fields separated by low, neatly trimmed hedges. He abandons the road and dives into the fields, heading for the wood.
Sounds of a scuffle reach him from beyond a line of brambles on the outskirts of the wood. A woman is crying out, but her scream is muffled and dies out. Haji heads in the direction of the noise. A man is grunting and puffing. There is a commotion and the woman shouts again. She is shouting for help. Haji peers over the thicket. Two people are on the ground; a man is on top, his trousers down at his ankles. Beneath him must be the woman. She is putting up a decent fight: she bit the man’s hand and he had to take it off her mouth. ‘Get off me, you bastard!’ she is panting and trying to push his bulk from her.
‘Shut up, and be a good girl!’ He pins both her hands over her head and wedges himself between her legs. ‘Don’t force me to slap you! We wouldn’t want to rearrange your face, would we now?’
‘Fuck you!’ she spits in his face.
The man chuckles. ‘You may find that it is you who’s being fucked!’ And he gets on with his business.
Haji is about to move on. That man’s business isn’t his after all. He does not want to make his presence known in these parts. It is of course interesting to discover how the Westerners carry themselves on their home turf. It isn’t far from what they got up to in Afghanistan. But then, that was war; this is home. Everyone to his own...
The woman is weeping, ‘Please, don’t do that to me...’
The man doesn’t acknowledge her plea in any way. He pushes into her and huffs with content, his arse rising and falling; the woman crying. She gazes up, away from the man’s face, and this is when she sees Haji. Her plea transfers to him. Just through her eyes, but eyes are often much more expressive than words. Haji cannot stand there and do nothing. What that man is doing is not right.
Without thinking, Haji picks up a fairly large bough that has materialised under his feet as if on cue. He sways it and smashes the man over the head with it. The contented grunting stops and the man slumps face down onto the woman beneath him. Haji regrets it the moment he has done it. This is his second mistake in the last forty-eight hours. More mistakes than he’s made in years. It’s the foreign world. It has disorientated him.
He will have to kill the woman now. She has seen him. The man may live. He is probably unconscious and will come to, but he doesn’t know who gave him the bump on his head. It’s a pity. Haji doesn’t want to kill the woman. It’d be a waste... In a way, he has helped her, and now – she pushes the man’s bulk off and wriggles from under him. She grabs the bough from Haji’s hand and, with a wild howl, starts hitting. Blow after blow at the man’s face and head. It’s a frenzied attack. The man comes to after the first blow, puts up a protective arm to his face, but she smashes it, and goes on until he is perfectly still. She has made mincemeat out of his face. There is blood everywhere. She is covered in blood that sprayed from the man. She even has it on her face. She is wheezing, exhausted with the effort, when she finally discards the bough and collapses next to the body. ‘Done,’ she says, and gazes at Haji. ‘Thanks.’
He is taken aback. He has seen fury many a time before but not from a woman. He wouldn’t want to cross her.
But he’ll have to kill her. Because she has seen him.
He knows what has to be done, but against his better judgment, he waits.
She says, ‘Will you help me bury hi
m?’
‘Is he your husband?’
The woman laughs. It isn’t a jolly laughter. It’s hard and bitter. ‘No,’ she tells him what he has guessed already. ‘He’s a fucking bastard. Deserved what he got. Can you help me hide his body?’
Haji nods. Change of plans. She is not going to betray him. She has just killed a man. She wants to keep quiet about it and so she will have to keep quiet about ever meeting Haji. He and she are bound to secrecy by this. It may yet prove very useful to Haji. The woman owes him. It is her turn to help him.
They start digging: she with the bough with which she has just killed the fucking bastard, Haji with his bare hands. Under the brambles the soil is soft, especially because it has been raining for a few days. It’s easy to excavate a shallow grave, but the deeper they go the harder it gets. There are roots aplenty and the soil becomes compact and rocky. They stop digging.
They get hold of the body, Haji by the arms, the woman by the legs. It is then that Haji sees the man’s boots. Solid boots. Haji’s are wet and heavy, and frankly very uncomfortable. They have been scraping Haji’s feet, opening up old wounds and making him wince with pain with every step.
‘Hold on,’ he drops the corpse on the ground. ‘I need his shoes. And his trousers.’
The woman doesn’t ask any questions. She seems to be on the same page as Haji – practical about things. He is beginning to like her. She helps him pull the man’s trousers off, which isn’t that difficult considering that he has already dropped them to do the deed. Then they take off his boots and his socks, one from each foot. Haji puts on his new attire. The boots feel particularly comfortable. They are good quality, soft leather. Good. Haji can hike a few miles yet in these. He smiles at the woman and she smiles back.
‘Good choice,’ she says.
They bury the fucking bastard, which by all accounts is a very becoming title for the man, in the shallow grave, without his trousers, his dick out. Haji finds that quite amusing. They cover the grave with leaves and moss. Haji has no illusions that sooner or later the body will be found. The question is how soon. How much time does he have to move on?
‘Who is he?’ he asks her. ‘How soon will they start looking for the fucking bastard?’
‘Soon,’ she tells him. ‘He’s the landowner here. A big shot.’
‘Not good,’ Haji shakes his head. ‘I don’t want to be found.’
‘Neither do I. I’ve more to worry about than you – I killed him, not you. But he deserved it.’
‘Yes, you told me that.’ Haji attempts to take the bough out of her hand; she resists and hangs on to it as if the piece of wood has moulded itself into her. ‘We’ll have to burn it,’ Haji explains patiently. ‘Your clothes, too. You are covered in his blood. Where is your home? Do you live alone?’
She surrenders the bough to him and says, ‘Come with me.’ She starts walking deeper into the wood, and Haji follows.
She doesn’t have a home. And she doesn’t live alone. The first thing Haji sees is the light from a camp fire. It’s right in the heart of the wood, in a small clearing. There is one person hunched over the fire, drinking from a beer can and muttering something to himself. Or herself. It is just a lump of a person, wrapped up in layers of grey clothes and a beanie hat drawn over his or her hair. As they approach, Haji discovers that there are caves under a scarp, their entrances covered with all manner of materials: corrugated iron, cardboard, even a blanket. This isn’t the England Haji has expected to find or indeed seen so far. But he thinks it agreeable. In fact, it makes him feel right at home. It reminds him of the network of caves and tunnels in the Pandsher Valley – his home for some years, long years when he fought the Soviets. Who would’ve thought he would find them here, in England? He always thought people here lived in stone castles and glass cities. Not quite. This is a small world after all.
The woman tosses the bloodied bough into the fire, and it flickers with newly found strength. ‘Chuck the stuff in,’ she points to Haji’s old clothes that he has been carrying after changing into the fucking bastard’s garments. He does it. His wet trousers dampen the fire for a bit, but it picks up in an instant.
‘Shit!’ the person hunched over the fire is staring at the woman, shocked at the blood on her face and the wild look in her eyes. ‘What the fuck?’ Haji realises the person is a man, but he is emaciated and narrow-faced, like a ferret. His hair is long. He could easily be mistaken for an old woman, until he speaks.
‘Nothing, Ron. It’s not worth talking about,’ the woman informs him.
‘Yeah?’ he says, his interest extinguished. He takes another sip from his beer can.
The woman starts taking off her blood-stained clothes. She throws her hoodie into the fire. Underneath she isn’t wearing much, just a flimsy top, light green. She is painfully skinny. Haji could count all her ribs if he cared to. She has small breasts, perky, by which he can tell she is fairly young, in her late twenties or early thirties. She has beautiful chestnut-coloured hair, which spills out of her beanie when she chucks that onto the pyre.
‘Have you been to the cemetery?’ she inquires of her friend, Ron.
He nods. ‘There,’ he points towards the entrance to the caves, ‘three gallons. Went with Sally this morning.’
The woman goes and fetches a metal canister. She pours water out of it and washes the blood from her face. She sits in front of the fire and starts rubbing her arms vigorously. She is shaking. She must be cold in that flimsy top of hers. Haji takes off his gilet and throws it over her shoulders. ‘Keep it,’ he says. ‘I don’t like the fur. It makes me think of a dead animal.’
‘Thanks,’ the woman nods. Her eyes are hollow. Perhaps she isn’t shaking because of the cold. Perhaps it’s her emotions. With the light from the fire she looks vulnerable and frightened. Her face isn’t a happy one.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ Ron has spotted Haji.
‘A friend. My friend,’ the woman informs him, and turns to Haji, ‘What’s your name?’
‘A friend and you don’t know his name?’ Ron chuckles. He doesn’t have pretty teeth – rotten.
‘They call me Sandman,’ Haji says.
‘Come and sit with us, Sandman,’ the woman offers him a seat on a log, next to her. He sits down and, instantly feels weary – very weary.
‘Sandman is staying with us for a while,’ the woman says.
Ron nods. ‘Wanna beer?’ he addresses Haji.
‘I don’t drink beer. Water – water would be good.’
The woman pours water from the canister into a tin cup and passes it to Haji. ‘They call me Izzie. Welcome to my home.’
XXV
She had the supper ready for nine o’clock. She had calculated it would take them fifteen minutes: five minutes to catch a taxi and another ten to travel from the train station. There is not much traffic late at night. The lamb chops were ready and kept warm in the oven. Baby potatoes sat in the pot under a lid, on the hot plate. The broccoli and peas would only take a few minutes – she didn’t want to overcook them. Mint sauce was in the fridge, made from fresh mint that Harry had brought from the supermarket that very same morning, before he boarded the train for Heathrow. There was lemon and lime cheesecake that Pippa had made herself, like she used to in the old days, back on the farm. White wine was cooling in the fridge alongside a few bottles of South African Castle lager and Australian Fosters; red wine was on the rack just in case Will preferred it. God knows what he drank. The last time they sat together to a family dinner he was only a youngster. It was a few days before he turned eighteen; he drank Fanta then. Now, sixteen years later, he is a man and Pippa doesn’t know anything about him. This is about to change.
She had dyed her hair, a subtle copper tint. It was one of those do-it-yourself tinctures, but it came out all right; she was pleased with it. She really wanted to look the way Will remembered her, as if time had stood still and nothing had been lost between now and then. She put on an old dress, the one with red flowers, t
he one she used to wear for special occasions back in Zimbabwe. He would remember that dress. The red flowers complemented the copper tint in her hair.
When the key didn’t turn in the door at nine o’clock sharp, Pippa wasn’t alarmed. Not in the least. It was all down to the festive season, with legions of shoppers in Bath and the fever of Christmas... It is near impossible to catch a taxi at this time of year. Maybe they decided to walk home. Maybe Harry wanted to show Will how beautiful Bath was at night, especially with the Christmas lights winking from every window. Harry would be likely to do that. He loved these late-night walks. Both he and Pippa loved them. They would often venture into the night, hand in hand, wrapped in their scarves and mittens – a pair of harmless Peeping Toms, sneaking under the cover of darkness, peering into windows and stealing curious glances into other people’s lives. Harry probably wanted to share some of that magic with Will, which would be perfectly understandable had it not been for the lamb chops getting dry in the oven and the baby potatoes getting cold in the pot. Silly old Harry forgot all about that! She would have to give him a piece of her mind!
She stood in the window lit by the twinkling white fairy lights that Harry had draped around the window frame, and watched the street below. Every new passer-by made her heart beat faster and she clapped her hands only to discover that it wasn’t Harry and Will. She saw a couple stroll along, holding hands and kissing; she saw a group of youngsters fooling around, laughing out loud in their hoarse pubescent voices; she saw a woman with bags of shopping nearly fall as she missed her footing on that treacherous corner with a loose slab; she saw a man jump out of a car and drag out a Christmas tree from the back seat. She kept vigil, her heart leaping from time to time and sinking again to the depth of her stomach. When the grandfather clock struck ten, she felt sick.
She had been avoiding it, some irrational fear stopping her from picking up the receiver, but now she had no choice – she dialled Harry’s mobile phone. He didn’t pick it up and she went to the voicemail. ‘Harry? Harry, where are you? Call me, please. Call me as soon as you get this message!’ she clenched her fist around the receiver. ‘The supper is getting cold. Come home. I really -’ The phone beeped and she was cut short. She had to put the phone down, an idea she found intolerable. A few minutes later she tried again, and again she ended up leaving the same message, only more urgent, more hysterical. She was hurling herself between the window and the telephone in the hallway, breathless and panic-stricken.