Blame The Dead

Lois almost giggled into her cider. 'If wewere committing adultery this would be a great place to get remembered in. The first customers of the evening, my accent and clothes, your city suit – I bet that woman could describe us exactly in court a year from now.'

'Dare say she's done it before. Adulterers probably come from three counties to find somewhere as out-of-the-way and genuinely folksy as this.' It was the true English village pub, all right, with its hard wooden benches, a mean little iron fireplace that was empty anyway, the walls decorated with a bus timetable and the bar with a vase of plastic flowers.

Lois lit a cigarette. 'Where do you live, Jamie?'

'Flat in London. Chalk Farm. Not far from…'

She nodded. 'Why did you leave the Army – you were a career officer, weren't you?'

'Sixteen years, yes. I'd just served my time and I didn't get to bea lieutenant-colonel. I could have hung on, but… promotion gets a bit rare in the Intelligence Corps, after that level.'

'Why?'

'We were specialists; most of our work didn't involve much in the way of command. And the Army wants itself run by people who can command troops. I believe the Air Force has the same bias towards people who can fly aeroplanes – pilots. It makes a sort of sense.'

'What did your wife think of you leaving?'

'That's when we busted up.'

'She wanted you to stay?'

'She wanted me to be colonel.' Then, after a long mouthful of beer-flavoured water, 'I don't know if that's quite fair. I don't think she was all that rank-conscious. Maybe she wanted me to be the sort of person colonels are. Maybe she just married the wrong person.'

'It can happen.'

'To you?'

'Oh, no. Martin was quite right for me – and hope I was for him.'

'Your father didn't think so.'

'Oh, Dad…'

'What had he got against Martin?'

'I think he thought he was a bit of a stuffed shirt. Too English. He wanted me to marry some hot-shot lawyer.' She swigged her cider and changed the subject. 'What else do you do – out of working hours?'

'I visit lovely ladies.'

She laughed her cheery bell-toned laugh. 'I thought that was only in the Une of duty.'

'Strictly above and beyond. And one day I'll finish a commentary on Vegetius.'

'On what?'

So I had to explain about him.

'What makes him so interesting?' she asked.

'He wrote the most complete description of the Roman armies, and that was everybody's ideal army for better than a thousand years after. They all read him: Charlemagne, Richard Coeur de Lion, all the Renaissance princes.'

'Was he a great general himself? '

'No, probably not even a soldier. He was pretty much of a historian in his own day; the Roman army had gone to pieces by this time. Rome itself got sacked a few years later. Prophet without honour and all that.'

'Will you publish this when you've finished it?'

'Oh, yes. I've got a publisher who wants it for a specialist military series. But it'll be a time yet.'

'Will you ever finish it?'

'Course I will.' Maybe I sounded a bit annoyed, because she smiled kindly and put a hand on mine.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I wonder if they've got anything to eat here?'

'A bag of crisps, a pickled egg, and an aspirin, if you're lucky, I should think.'

She laughed again. I said, 'We could find somewhere else to eat.'

'No, let's try here. Are you going back to London tonight?'

The baby-faced innocence with which she could say things like that. I said slowly, 'I suppose not.'

The loving was slower, gentler, calmer. A careful exploration, a memorising of each other's bodies. But at first she was nervous, dodging from shy stiffness to clutching hunger… almost inexperienced, though that couldn't have been it.

And afterwards we lay side by side in her bed, not quite touching each other. The house and the countryside beyond it were very quiet. Funny how I missed the constant noises of the city that you never notice until they're gone, like a forest without birds.

Lois lit a cigarette and the light glowed from her pale soft body. 'Jamie…?'

'Yes?'

'Do you always have a gun with you?' She'd seen me take the derringer off my wrist; she hadn't seen the Mauser in my jacket pocket.

'No – but recently, yes. Things have been getting a bit rough since… Arras.'

'Why was Martin going to Arras? – have you found out?'

'He was being blackmailed, I think. To give up the logbook.'

'What about? Was it little Maggie Mackwood?'

'I think so.'

'Ah.' She sounded quite calm. 'Martin was rather highly sexed. He was a very good lover.'

There's a time and place for comments like that, like some other time and place. But I didn't say anything.

Suddenly, but quite gently, she began to cry. I put an arm around her but she didn't come any closer. She was weeping for memories I would never know, never share.

After a while she got up, leaned over me, and kissed me gently. A few tears touched my cheek. 'I'll sleep in Martin's room,' she whispered. 'Sleep well, Jamie.'

When she'd gone, I pulled the bed apart and remade it and then lay down again. Sleep well. Why not? – I was alone, as usual.

After a time I remembered the half-finished drink I'd brought upstairs and found and finished it. And some time after that, I slept.

Thirty-one

It was still dark, still silent. I didn't know what had woken me but it must have been something positive because I'd come awake with a rush. I lay and listened.

Far away, a lorry made a painful gear-change on a hill and wheezed out of hearing. Nothing else. I lifted my wrist to look at my watch. And a door clicked.

It could be Lois. It could be the wind. In a strange house it could be a dozen things I wouldn't know about. But I wanted to know. I reached for my trousers, my shoes, then the Mauser.

Outside the room I stopped, trying to remember the layout. Stairs to my right. I paused again at the head of them, and a cold draught breathed on my chest. The front door was open.

Down there, the dining-room was ahead on the right, the drawing-room back on the right, the study ahead on the left.

And that was where a faint line of light glowed and Vanished. Somebody was working by torchlight in there. It was the obvious place to begin, just as I had.

I kept right over against the wall where the stairs were least likely to creak and mousied my way down.

Halfway down, the door opened and a pool of torchlight wavered across the hall floor. Two figures, barely more than shadows, followed it. I leaned against the wall and held my breath.

The light shifted around indecisively, the figures blended, and an indecipherable whisper floated up towards me.

Then the torch flashed up the stairs, across me, away, and back, pinning me down like a butterfly in a case.

An incredulous voice said, 'Christ, it's Card!'

A younger voice yelped, 'He's got a gun!'

Something long glinted at the base of the light, the older voice shouted, 'Don't shoot!' and I threw myself against the bannister.

A gigantic double explosion slammed through the house and the air swirled around me. A red-hot fingernail scored across my back.

I got my hand out from under me and fired blindly down into the dazzle of the torch. The little Mauser snapped feebly in the ringing deafness after those bangs.

I'd fired three before I realised what I was doing and stopped. The double bang meant a shotgun, of course, and now an empty one. The torch tilted towards the floor, fell, and went out.

I shouted, 'Hold it! You're a lovely target in that doorway!' Then I stood up carefully and winced at the pain in my back. I could feel a trickle of hot blood slide down it. Behind me, a light went on, and Lois said, 'Jamie, what are you-' Then she screamed.