60
PATRICIA HUNT STOOD by the window overlooking the car park of the South Hampstead Hospital. It was full. Some of the cars had a couple of inches of snow on their roofs and some didn’t. Still hot from the journey in, she guessed. She looked up at the dark sky. Soon the whole city would be covered in a white shroud.
She sat down next to her husband. His breathing was laboured and he had an oxygen mask attached to his mouth. His eyelids were closed but the eyes beneath them moved from side to side, and his body twitched every now and then, like a cat might when dreaming.
In the corridor a team of nurses and a porter wheeled a hospital bed down towards the operating theatre. Drips attached to the patient, and monitoring devices. He had long unruly hair and a bearded face.
Patricia Hunt made the sign of the cross on her forehead and chest and mumbled a prayer.
‘God save us,’ she said. ‘God save us all.’
She picked up the leatherbound notebook she had brought from her husband’s office in the garden, and started reading.
Zambia, borders of Namibia. 1989.
The missionary knelt on the floor of his hut. He ran a finger under his dog collar to loosen it slightly. It was just past dawn, but the light was brightening and the heat was building. It was a simple room. Wooden floor and walls with a pitch roof. The wood had been stained and varnished. He knelt on a simple rug. A single bed lay beside the side window. Netting covered the windows casting a mottled pattern on the floorboards. He had a plain desk and chair opposite the door that led into his hut, and a washstand with a bowl and jug on it. There was a large ceiling fan overhead that, had it worked, might have brought some relief from the growing heat. A heat that would bake the ground even harder by midday. Even at that early hour, it was enough to force beads of sweat on the missionary’s brow, which he mopped with a large, cotton handkercief. Moisture from the night still hung in the air and it reminded him of the time he visited the Butterfly House in Kew Gardens. He mopped his brow once more and tried to shake the memory away.
He looked up at the simple crucifix hanging on the wall and made a sign of the cross.
‘Oh Lord,’ he said. ‘I know I am a sinner, and I know I am not worthy. But make me strong in your service. Make me strong in my faith. Make of my weak body a weapon to fight evil on your behalf. Make of my weak mind a chalice for the purity of your love. Make my heart strong so that I might bring that strength to the weak who falter on the path of righteousness; succour them, Lord, and guide them to your glory.’
And then the screaming began.
The sound of running feet. Shots firing from automatic rifles. The whop-whop-whop of rotor blades as a helicopter came in to land. Shattering the peace of that humid dawn in the way that only man and natural catastrophes can.
The missionary threw his handkerchief to the floor and staggered outside into the village.
White men in black combat gear with no insignia, and black scarves wrapped round their lower faces, were shouting at the terrified villagers who were scattering before the automatic fire of the invaders which mowed them down.
A scream came from the church to the reverend’s left. It was built of plain varnished wood, just like the reverend’s hut, only some twenty times bigger with a tall cross mounted on the apex of the roof above the entrance doors. Entrance doors that stood open.
The missionary ran towards the steps leading up into the church, glad he wasn’t hampered by his service vestments. He was wearing Chinos with a pale blue shirt and a dog collar. The back of his shirt was dark with sweat as he rushed into the building.
At the far end of the aisle his assistant, a young Zambian woman, stood with three young girls whose eyes were wide with horror, as they looked at the man with the automatic rifle pointed straight at them. Another man, thick-set with iron-grey hair, shifted the upturned altar to reveal a plate cover set into the ground. He opened it and brought out a small, white canvas sack.
‘Stay back, Padre,’ said the man holding the assault weapon.
‘What are you people doing here? This is a simple mission. What harm can we do you?’
‘A simple mission,’ said the one holding the sack, hefting it in his hands. ‘Then perhaps you could explain this.’
‘I’ve no idea what it is.’
‘It’s diamonds, Meneer,’ said the thick-set man. ‘Diamonds to fund your so-called bloody People’s Liberation Army. Diamonds stolen from the mines of South Africa by nigger-loving liberals to send bombs and death to the rightful owners of this land.’
‘I know nothing of this.’
‘White men!’ He took off his bandana and spat on the ground. ‘White men fornicating with kaffirs. Lying down like beasts of the field with the black animals.’
The man had an iron-grey beard and moustache to match his hair. There was fury in his eyes. ‘Well, white men bleed,’ he continued. ‘Just as much as the black monkey. White men feel pain and white men talk when hot coals are held to their skin, and their genitals, and their eyes.’ He smiled like a wolf baring its yellow teeth and weighed the sack of stones in his hand. ‘And white men confess,’ he said.
The missionary stepped in front of the children, making an extra human shield of himself.
‘You have got what you have come for. Leave now. I will see no harm come to these children.’
‘You have prayed to a higher power, Reverend,’ said the grey-haired soldier and raised his pistol. ‘And he has failed to listen to your supplication.’
Then he pulled the trigger, the bullet punching a hole into the reverend’s chest, sending him flying backwards.
*
Bible Steve was staring upwards at the ceiling.
The surgical registrar, Dr Lily Crabbe, was gowned and ready as her anaesthetist brought the gas trolley over to the gurney. ‘We’re going to try and help you now,’ she said.
‘I don’t want help. I want to die,’ he replied.
The registrar didn’t respond. She was all too aware that the homeless man might very well have his wish granted.
The anaesthetist lowered the mask over the bearded man’s mouth. ‘Count backwards from ten,’ he said.
Bible Steve didn’t respond, keeping his blood-shot eyes open. After a few seconds, though, they fluttered and closed. When the anaesthetist took the mask away he was already unconscious.
It was as dark as midnight outside now. The snow showed no sign of stopping. The traffic crept along the Harrow Road and the windscreen wipers of Delaney’s old Saab had fallen into a slow, steady rhythm. An almost hypnotic sound, and, given the fact that Delaney had cranked the heating to as high as it would go, Sally was feeling sleepy.
Delaney’s phone trilled in his pocket, waking Sally out of her trance, and she leaned forward concentrating on the road ahead.
‘Hi darling,’ said Delaney. ‘What’s new in Glockemorra?’ He listened for a while. ‘Okay, honey, keep me posted.’
DC Cartwright looked over at him. ‘Bob Wilkinson?’ she asked.
‘Sure if you make me laugh much more today I swear my funny bone will fall out of my body, Sally.’
‘Kate, I take it.’
‘She’s on her way to the morgue’
‘What’s the squeal?’
‘You’ve been reading too many American detective novels, Constable.’
‘No time to read, sir. Catching up on Sky Atlantic.’
‘Well, the squeal is that someone matching the description of the woman Bible Steve says he killed has turned up. Died on Friday night according to Dr Bowlalong Bowman’s best guess.’
‘And Bible Steve?’
‘Being operated on.’