Jago (58 page)

‘Nazzy,’ Bernard said, tugging at one of the woman’s necklaces. It came loose, and she murmured in pain as he pulled it away. Harry looked into Bernard’s hand and saw a jewelled swastika.

Ivor whistled. ‘Cert’n’ly a spy,’ he said.

Harry wasn’t sure. He didn’t think a spy would let a swastika within a mile of them. She’d be more likely to come draped in the stars and stripes. The woman was hurt. Her suit was torn in many places, and she was leaking blood.

Bernard carefully put down his shotgun. His Floyd eyes excited, he undid his belt buckle and slid the leather strip free of his pants.

‘Only one way to treat a spy,’ he said, his eyes shining.

‘Hold on there, fella,’ Harry said.

Bernard wrapped his belt around his hand, looping it through the buckle to make a lash. He cracked it in the air. The woman’s eyes, embedded in black smudges, opened at the sound.

‘We should call the cops,’ Harry said. ‘Let them have her. She’ll have to be interrogated.’

Bernard slapped the belt across the woman’s stomach. She sucked a scream into her mouth and half sat up, then collapsed.

‘No coppers,’ Ivor said. ‘Can’t say why we were in the woods, can us?’

Bernard slapped the belt down again, on the woman’s face. She bled from the mouth. The Somerset man was enjoying himself.

‘Deserves ever’thin’ she gets,’ he said. ‘Ever’thin’.’

The curtain of flame stuff had dwindled, darkness pouring through. Only a bubble now, sparks danced in it. A bush nearby burned properly, casting firelight over the clearing. Harry heard shouts and commotion in the woods. People were coming this way, calling to each other. The explosion must have been heard all over the county.

Bernard’s face was dark with disappointment. He stood away from the woman, and strapped his belt back on. Picking up his shotgun, he pulled the hammers back and pointed the barrels at the woman’s head.

Flashlights came out of the night, and voices. Albert Pym’s roaring was immediately recognizable as he shouted orders. Annie’s father, Wilfrid Starkey, was in the party, nose red with cold, and other farmers Harry knew, Geoffrey Coram, Frank Graham. Danny Keough, fourteen and desperate to be old enough to lick Hitler, tagged along, toting a flashlight for Pym. Wrapped up in enough cardigans and scarves to shape her like a pudding was Catriona Kaye, a trim, middle-aged lady who lived in the Manor House. She had shacked up with but not married a guy who was overseas with the War Office just now. Harry heard she was some kind of spiritualist.

‘We’m caught a spy, Mr Pym,’ Ivor said.

‘I’m not sure—’ Harry began.

Pym ignored him and barged through, sticking a boot-toe in the woman’s side as if she were a sick sheep he didn’t want to examine too closely.

‘Had this round her neck,’ Bernard said, handing over the swastika.

Pym looked at the swastika, and made a fist over it. ‘She must have come from the plane we saw,’ he said, ‘along with the bomb.’

‘I don’t think there was a bomb,’ Harry put in.

‘Nonsense. Look at this place. There’s obviously been a bomb.’

‘There was a fire here once, Pym,’ Miss Kaye said. ‘As you know if youd read your local history. Bannerman’s bonfire.’

Pym reined in a shudder. ‘Less said about that the better, as well you know.’

This was over Harry’s head. Coming to Somerset, he’d seen how like his old home it was, secrets passed down from generation to generation, kept away from outsiders. Families still exchanged the shots and blows of some argument dating back to the Civil War. There were incidents everyone knew about, which were never discussed. Back home, Cousin Floyd was one; here, Miss Kaye’s bonfire seemed another.

Danny Keough, a rat-faced kid, was fascinated with the injured woman. There was skin showing through rips in her clothes, but Harry wasn’t sure whether Danny was worked up about white flesh or the streaks of red.

Pym was on his knees, roughly examining the woman. She was barely conscious, coughing burps of blood. He struck his hand in her hair, scratching his skin.

‘Extraordinary,’ he hummed to himself.

The fire was dead now, the cold come back.

‘Did you see anything in the sky?’ Miss Kaye asked him.

Harry wasn’t sure.

‘A man-shape?’ she prompted. ‘Burning? Perhaps with wings?’

‘None of your ha’ant talk. Miss Kaye,’ Pym said. Harry saw at once that Albert Pym and Catriona Kaye weren’t kissing cousins. The red-faced farmer, booze-burst blood vessels around his nose, resented having to talk to her.

She reminded him of Lillian Gish or Jean Arthur, delicate face surrounded by a wrapping of knit scarves, animated features making her seem younger than she was.

‘It’s a pity Edwin isn’t here,’ she mused. ‘He’d be interested.’

She pulled off a glove and took the woman’s pulse with nurselike efficiency, then felt her heartbeat. She found she had blood on her hand. She didn’t look hopeful.

‘Miss?’ she said, waving her fingers in front of the woman’s eyes, ‘can you see these?’

‘Spretchen-zee Doitch?’
Pym shouted.

The woman raised her head, neck muscles standing out, blood dribbling from black lips. Her eyes were open and large.

‘How many fingers?’ Miss Kaye asked, holding up three.

‘Fuck,’ the woman said, through pain-gritted teeth, ‘shit, fuck…’

Exhausted, she slumped back.

‘Well,’ Miss Kaye said, ‘English must be her first language.’

‘What about this?’ Pym said, dangling the swastika.

‘That’s an older symbol than you think. In magic, the crooked cross has always had a multiplicity of meanings’

‘We should hang her,’ said Coram, ‘and be done with it.’

‘Don’t take to her eyes,’ said Graham. ‘They foller youm ’bout.’

Pym said, very slowly, ‘You’re… under… arrest.’

With a growl that rose to a yell, the woman sat up and reached out, grabbing Pym’s handlelike ears. She pulled, screaming in competition with Pym, black-lacquered nails digging in. Harry thought to snatch Miss Kaye out of range, and found himself holding the bundled-up woman, feeling bones through her shawls and cardigans. She was a strong little lady, but didn’t fight him. The woman in black shrieked like a banshee and ripped Pym, long nails raking his face and clothes. One of his ears was torn. She got to his eyes, and he yelled in furious pain. Ivor and Coram stepped in and tried to get a hold on her, but, wounded or not, she fought. Bracing herself against Coram, she kicked like a chorus girl and sank her silvered boot-toe into Ivor’s adam’s apple, sending him back, staggering and choking. Shrugging free of Coram with her shoulders and elbows, she attacked Pym again, punching under his ribs. Pym screamed, his face bloody, and scrabbled backwards on his arse and hands, crab-walking himself out of range. She was still shouting pain and rage, expending the last of her strength in berserk frenzy.

Bernard had his gun up and pulled the triggers, but the woman rounded on him, ducking under the blast. A cloud of shot spattered against the trees a dozen yards away, and Starkey yelped, catching some stray fragments in his arm. Harry realized Bernard was lucky not to have killed someone on his side. His load shot, Bernard hit the woman with his gun, and she had it away from him, whirling it against his head. She prodded Danny Keough in the chest with the gunstock, and shoved the kid over. She wasn’t steady on her feet, but she was going to fight to the last. Bernard had a pitchfork now, grabbed from Graham, and he stepped in, leading with it, thrusting into the woman’s chest. One of the tines bent and broke against a rib; but the others sank in.

The woman collapsed forwards, driving the fork in deeper. Her front was soaked with blood. Danny Keough, too close, got his face speckled red. Bernard got his arm around the woman’s neck, hand against her head. Smiling at his butcher’s professionalism, he broke her spine and dropped her. Miss Kaye was crying. She clung to Harry, warm in her cocoon of wool. Pym, a handkerchief to his eye, was getting his breath back.

‘Gilpin,’ he said, nodding to the body, ‘get rid of that in a ditch.’

Bernard saluted with the best of them, proud to be noticed. Pym hadn’t lost an ear or the eye. He probably just had scratches. And the woman wouldn’t be answering any questions.

‘Nobody says anything about tonight,’ Pym ordered.

The farmers grumbled and grunted agreements. Danny Keough wiped his face with his sleeve, and Annie’s father was scratching the shot out of his hand, cursing viciously.

‘Private Steyning? You know how important it is to keep mum?’

He remembered the jeepload of black-market goods. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Miss Kaye?’

She looked at Pym, expression suggesting she smelled donkey dung.

‘No good can be served by raking this over.’

After a long moment, Miss Kaye gave in, said, ‘Have it your way,’ and shoved her way out of the clearing. There was a path to the Manor House. She’d be home before all of them.

Pym was getting his wind again. ‘I’ll have bottles open at the farmhouse. Conway, you help Gilpin and then join us later. Private Steyning, if you have no more pressing engagement…?’

Harry thought of Annie, and decided not to go along with the party.

Pym smiled and Wilf Starkey, handkerchief around his bloody mitt, pretended not to understand. ‘I thought not,’ Pym said. ‘Good night, soldier.’

Ivor and Bernard had the sagging body between them and were dragging it off, pitchfork scraping ground. Harry was amazed how easily everyone was taking this little problem. Alder worked perfectly, like a military unit, everyone knowing their duty, taking their orders. Except Catriona Kaye, and she didn’t have a say in how things were handled. Not being married robbed her of any vote she might have been entitled to.

The farmers were leaving, already beginning to make jokes. Pym, not hurt at all really, was laughing with the rest of them. ‘This was the Battle of Alder,’ he said, hand ruffling Danny’s hair. ‘We met the enemy, and we prevailed.’

Harry was left alone in the clearing, hearing shingles cool, waiting for the daze to pass. It never would. He’d seen enough people die in the last year for a lifetime. Shot-up crews, burned-out crews, smoke-choked crews, dead-of-fright crews, lung-frozen crews. He didn’t really know what he had seen tonight. Someone had died, but that didn’t explain anything. The woman could have been a German parachutist. She had certainly been hostile, and she wasn’t like anything from around here. Pym had probably been right. It was best not to talk about it.

‘I
’m supposed to be a sensitive,’ she said, ‘so why don’t I feel relieved?’

There were two helicopters coming towards the village, close together.

‘I don’t know,’ said Lytton. ‘Maybe your reception’s on the blink.’

Teddy laughed, obviously not getting the joke.

It was after dawn. All around, people were stirring. From where they were, they could hear but not see the helicopters. For a precious instant there was mist and dew, but it would burn away like butter on a hotplate. Susan strolled up the road, suppressing a chill. Lytton followed, dragging Teddy like a war hero hauling a wounded buddy through a minefield.

‘Perhaps I got through to Garnett after all,’ Lytton suggested.

‘Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…’

Susan sensed spreading calm, and was perturbed by it. Jago was retreating into himself, pulling in his mentacles. His little paradise could chug over on its own for a while.

The helicopters were getting nearer.

The main gate was unmanned. Beth Yatman, swaddled in squaw blankets, was dozing in a makeshift lean-to. If anyone wanted to get in without paying, now was the time to try. Susan walked on to the site. From the gently sloping field, she saw across the moors to the white haze from which rose Glastonbury Tor. It was an Arthurian vista, only slightly marred by the fire-breathing dinosaur flying towards Alder.

‘Fuck,’ breathed Lytton, almost in admiration. If Susan had been less tired, she’d have laughed.

The helicopters were moving in formation, a giant inflatable monster strung, dangling like a barrage balloon, between them. It had red lamps for eyes, and puffs of flame belched from its mouth.

Word spread all over the field, and people were sticking uncombed heads out of tents and blankets. By Susan, a youth whose face was thickly scaled, was down on his knees in prayer, iguana wattles of his throat bulging, red crest of horns swelling his temples.

‘It’s The Heat,’ Lytton said.

That made no sense at all. This was one thing no one could blame on the summer drought.

‘It looks like Godzilla to me.’

‘The Heat,’ he repeated, ‘not the weather, The Heat. The rock group.’

Susan remembered The Heat. Not quite up there with Led Zeppelin, Frozen Gold or Genesis, but a lot more resilient than Mud, Showaddywaddy or the Bay City Rollers. She’d bought their hit single ‘Leaping Lizard’ with her pocket money back when she was a witchy pre-adolescent.

‘…a rock-’n’-roll lizard like meeeee,’ she whined.

‘Yes,’ Lytton said, ‘that Heat.’

‘Didn’t they overdose?’

‘Only the drummer, and they have machines to do his job these days.’

Susan looked up at Godzilla and assumed this was the living end. All around, people scrambled, looking to the skies. It was like expecting the Sermon on the Mount and getting Eddie Murphy live in concert.

Something hung out of the helicopters, where the guns would have been in Vietnam. Directional speakers. The unmistakable thrump-thrump-thrump intro of ‘Leaping Lizard’ was blasting out at the hillside.

‘I dig surfin’ in the sea,’
disembodied voices sang,

‘I dig twistin’ on the land.

My swimming trunks are full of me,

And my sneakers are full of sand…’

People were joining in the words. Some of The Heat must be up there in the helicopters, using power microphones to overdub their old record. Either the crowd was older than she assumed, or ‘Leaping Lizard’ had filtered annoyingly into the oral tradition. Everyone knew the lyric.

‘Please don’t ask me why,’
a hundred voices choired,