‘You can’t do it, Brian.’ Miriam had moved forward, tugging at his arm, trying to push her way between them. ‘He’s your father. You can’t goad him like that.’ She was half-sobbing, her voice vibrant. The saws started up again. The feller had moved and was bending down by the next tree, the saw labouring under full power as the blade cut into the base of it.
Tom pushed Miriam away, his eyes fixed on the man as though mesmerized, watching the first cut made, Brian silent now, and Miriam standing there, her mouth open, her eyes wide. ‘No!’ I heard her cry that, and then the blade was making the slanting cut, her voice drowned.
Slowly, like a man in a trance, Tom moved out into the open. For a moment he stood there, the gun held ready across his body. The saw laboured, both men intent on what they were doing, the one felling, the other trimming. At last the guide wedge was finished, the feller straightening up, pushing it out with the tip of his saw, the motor idling. Then he was moving round to the rear of the tree, and the sight of him settling himself into position to begin the main saw cut that would fell the tree seemed to trigger something off in Tom’s mind. He suddenly started forward, shouting at the man to stop.
The man didn’t hear him at first. Neither of them seemed to hear him. By then he was half-running towards them, yelling to them at the top of his voice. The laboured sound of the saw ceased abruptly, the blade withdrawn and the engine dying as the man straightened up, staring at Tom. ‘Drop that saw! Drop it!’
‘Who are you?’
Tom told him his name and the man laughed. ‘You don’t give orders around here.’ And he bent to the base of the tree again, the note of the saw rising.
I suppose it was the man’s manner, his deliberate, almost contemptuous ignoring of him, that touched off the rage that had been building in Tom, so that it became a desperate hepped-up madness. He raised his gun and fired, a snap shot. But the man had seen it coming; he ducked round the end of the tree, slipping the saw blade out from the cut, so that it was held in both his hands as he stood up, flattened against the still-standing stem. The other had also stopped sawing, both of them watching as Tom stumbled forward, working the bolt.
Then he had stopped and was fumbling in his pocket. ‘Oh God!’ Miriam was close beside me, Brian just starting to move, and I stood there, staring, as Tom started forward again, reversing the gun so that he held it by the barrel to use as a club.
‘No!’ The exclamation, forced out of her by fear of what was going to happen, rang out in what seemed a desperate stillness, everything happening in slow motion, Tom running forward, and the man stepping out from behind the tree, the engine of his saw revving and the chain of it screaming on the blade.
Tom shouted something, the gun rising in his hands, ready to strike, and the man swinging his saw up so that the blade was stuck out in front of him. Whether Tom stumbled, or whether the man thrust the blade forward and he ran straight onto it, I shall never know. All I recall is the sight of him lunging forward, the rifle coming down and then the thin scream as the blade bit into his chest, bone and flesh flying, blood streaming from it where before I had seen only sawdust, and the poor devil pitching forward, the scream cut off, his body almost ripped in half.
And at the same instant the rifle I was holding was plucked from my hands and Brian had fired it, the crack of the shot followed by the man with the saw being slammed round. His hand clasped at his shoulder. Then he had ducked behind the tree again.
Suddenly all was still, the saws silent, both fellers hidden, and Tom’s body lying there, the green of his anorak merged with the green of lopped branches, and Miriam standing beside me, her eyes wide with horror, a low moaning sound coming from her open mouth.
‘You got any ammunition for this thing?’ Brian’s voice sounded half-choked, his face white against the black of his hair.
I shook my head, remembering how Tom in the euphoria of his singing had plucked it out of Camargo’s hands.
The fool! I never thought…’ He had turned to Miriam, trying to exonerate himself, and she just stared at him in blank horror, glassy-eyed.
The man Brian had wounded was crawling into the forest, dragging his chainsaw behind him. I thought at first he was merely trying to get away from us, but then I saw he was making for the place where they had left their anoraks and their lunch packs.
Brian had seen it, too. He raised his gun, though there was nothing in it, shouting at the man to stop. But at that moment Miriam started forward. He reached out, catching hold of her arm. ‘There’s nothing you can do for him.’
‘How do you know?’ She wrenched herself free, moving fast as she ran the thirty yards or so to where Tom lay, face-down on the ground, his body still. And when she reached him, she called out to him, bending down and turning him over. ‘Tom!’
I can see it so clearly, the ripped clothing and the gaping wound, blood still flowing and his eyes fixed and staring. You didn’t need any medical training to know that he was dead. Miriam had taken his head in her hands, kneeling there, her face gone paper-white and a sort of croon issuing from her mouth — of love, or horror, I don’t know which it was as she clasped that poor, mangled body to her.
At what point Brian and I had moved forward I don’t know, but we were there beside her, standing with our heads bent. In such circumstances, it seems, one is too shocked to say a prayer. I had seen injuries before, car accident injuries, dead bodies, too, but always in the cold isolation of a mortuary or a funeral parlour. To see violent death at the instant of dying, the eyes so wide and the teeth bared, the skin of the face still flushed with the exertion of that final rush… My limbs seemed suddenly paralysed, my mouth dry as I swallowed desperately.
‘Drop it!’ Brian’s voice was harsh and high, the gun raised. He was pointing it at the man who had been crawling to where they had left their things. He had a walkie-talkie in his hands and in the stillness I heard him say, quite distinctly, ‘Hurry! They’re armed.’ And then he dropped the radio onto the ground, sitting up and placing his hands on top of his head.
I walked over to him. ‘My name’s Redfern,’ I said, ‘and I’m an English lawyer.’ Lawyer always sounds stronger than solicitor. ‘The man you have just killed is my client and the owner of the trees you are illegally felling. You’ll be charged with murder.’
‘Yeah?’ The hard, leathery face cracked open to reveal a row of broken teeth. ‘You saw what happened. An unprovoked attack …’
‘It was murder,’ I repeated.
‘He stumbled, fell right onto the saw, didn’t he?’
‘Time we were moving.’ Brian had picked up the walkie-talkie handset. ‘Wolchak will be here in a moment.’
‘Then he can take us up to his office,’ I said. ‘He’ll have an R/T set there and we can get onto the police, maybe get that Coastguard cutter back.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Philip.’ It was Miriam. She had got to her feet, her hands covered in blood, and there was blood all over her skirt, her lips a tight line, her eyes frozen. ‘Nothing you can do for Tom. Nothing any of us can do.’ There was no emotion in her voice. ‘All we can do now is try and get out of here, alive.’
I started to argue with her, but she cut me short, her manner quiet and very controlled. ‘I don’t think you understand. Either of you. This isn’t about forestry. It’s nothing to do with trees.’ She looked towards the two men sitting there and staring at us. Then she turned abruptly. ‘We’ll go back up to the lake now.’