'I've thought about this every day.'
He was inside her in a moment, but this time she checked him. Slowed him. 'It's so lovely… let's make it last.'
Even so, for him it was over too soon. Too soon.
But she kissed him and held him to her and he heard her soft laugh again.
'What was it Franz was saying?' Breathless beneath him.
He fell asleep and dreamed of a youth named Jamie Wallace who had once been a student at the Guildhall in London. One of the young men with whom Madden had enlisted and trained, he'd been the possessor of a sweet tenor voice and had often entertained the other men with ballads of the day. On the first morning of the Somme he and Madden had found themselves side by side in the forward trench. All night the artillery bombardment had sounded. At sunrise it ceased and a small miracle had occurred. Larks arose from the blasted fields and canals all around and the sky had been full of the sound of them. 'Do you hear that?'
Jamie Wallace had asked, his face lighting up. In Madden's dream his lips framed the same silent question. Do you hear that? A moment later the whistle had sounded for the start of the attack and the men had gone up the ladders into the lark-filled morning.
Madden awoke in tears to find her asleep beside him, her hair spread out over the pillow. Before undressing she had draped her red silk shawl over the bedside lamp and at the sight of her body, naked and glowing in the rosy light, his grief dissolved. As he drew up the sheet to cover them she reached out in her sleep and he moved quickly, easing himself into the circle of her arms, careful not to wake her.
Hefting his leather holdall, Amos Pike climbed over the stile, glancing back as he did so to make sure he wasn't being followed. As always, he was taking a roundabout route to his destination. He had grown up on the edge of a wood where wild things lived — foxes and badgers and a range of smaller predators — and had learned early from his father how skilled most were at disguising their rracks.
When he came to a ditch separating two fields he stepped into it and continued on his way, unseen, walking with long springy strides in the shadow of a hawthorn hedge. Today was Tuesday, not a day he normally had off, but Mrs Aylward had gone to visit her sister in Stevenage for the week, taking the train, and apart from chores in the garden his time was his own until Friday evening. Usually he could count on being free one weekend out of two, though Mrs Aylward would occasionally change her plans at the last minute and when she did so he was expected to conform, cancelling his own arrangements. He did so without complaint. His job had advantages of a rare kind. Unlooked-for opportunities had come his way.
He was approaching a small hamlet, a group of cottages at a crossroads surrounded by fields and orchards, and he paused in the shade of the hedge for several minutes while he scanned the scene. It was nearly one o'clock. Those of the inhabitants who were home would most likely be eating lunch. He didn't wish to be seen by anyone. Satisfied, he walked on and came to a narrow dirt track that led to a gate in the back fence of a small thatched cottage, separated from the rest of the village by an apple orchard and unploughed fields.
He unlatched the gate and went into the garden.
Pausing to run his eye over the small patch of lawn and the bed of hollyhocks and sweet peas growing against the cottage wall, he decided to spend an hour later trimming the grass and weeding the bed. He made a practice of keeping the place tidy, reasoning that if he did so it would discourage others from offering the same service to the occupant of the cottage. Pike had no interest in the garden, or its owner. It was the long wooden shed at the side of the lawn that was of concern to him and he aimed by indirect means to keep others away from it.
Depositing the holdall on the ground beside the door of the shed, he unstrapped it and took out a brown-paper parcel, which he carried across the lawn to the kitchen door. He entered the house without knocking.
'Who's there?' The husky quaver came from a room inside.
Pike didn't reply, but he walked from the kitchen through a hallway into a small parlour at the front of the cottage where an old woman sat by the lace-netted window nursing a fat tabby.
'Is that you, Mr Grail?' The eyes she turned towards him were covered with a greyish film. In spite of the heat she wore a woollen shawl tucked over the shoulders of her faded quilted gown. 'I was expecting you last week.'
'I couldn't come, Mrs Troy,' Pike said, in his cold voice. 'I had to work.'
'I ran out of tea.' The timid voice held a note of apology. 'I had to borrow some from Mrs Church.'
Pike frowned. 'You should have said you were short.' He saw her flinch at his words and tried to check the natural harshness of his tone. 'I brought you a packet. Plus some shortbread. You asked for that.'
'Did you bring me any fish?' She spoke in a near whisper, turning her face away, as though afraid of his response.
'No.' He was losing patience. Her existence meant nothing to him, beyond the fact that it should continue.
'They don't sell fish where I am,' he lied brutally. 'I brought you eggs and bacon and ham. And bread and rice. I'll put it away in the larder.'
A minute later he was outside again, crossing the lawn to the shed. Had Winifred Troy still possessed her sight she would hardly have recognized the structure.
Pike had replaced the former roof with sheets of corrugated iron, boarded over the single window and fitted a new door equipped with a heavy padlock opened by a key, which he kept about his person at all times.
The shed dated from a time, some years before, when Mrs Troy and her husband, who had since died, had let the cottage to an artist from the city. With their agreement he had built a studio in the small garden and had used the cottage as a weekend retreat and holiday home. By far the most radical alteration Pike had made was to knock down the end wall and install a pair of stable doors in its place. These opened on to the dirt track which ran through the fields and orchards for half a mile before joining a paved road.
Wrinkling his nose at the musty, airless smell, Pike latched the door shut behind him. It was dark in the shed and he lit a paraffin lamp at once. In the artist's day there had been ample illumination from a pair of skylights in the roof, but these had gone. Amos Pike disliked the idea of being overlooked.
The space inside the shed was mainly given over to a large object, covered with a dust cloth, which stood in the middle of the cement floor. Pike removed the cloth with a flick of his wrist: a motorcycle and sidecar were revealed beneath.
The shed quickly grew hot, the radiation of the lamp combining with the hot sun on the corrugated iron roof to turn the room into an oven. Pike took off his shirt. His heavily muscled body bore a number of scars, large and small. He put his holdall on a table and took from it a half-gallon tin of red paint and a pair of brushes. He had bought the paint in a hardware store that morning after having been assured by the salesman that it would adhere to metal. He prised off the lid of the tin with a chisel, spread a sheet of newspaper on the floor and sat down cross-legged. He began to paint over the black bodywork.
His movements were precise and, like all his physical actions, governed by a sense of economy and order.
This pattern of behaviour had been acquired at an early age and was the result of an event in his life so catastrophic he had only been able to continue his existence by recourse to a system of interlocking disciplines that guaranteed him control over his every waking moment.
Tormented for years by the terror and anguish of his dreams, he had lately found them diminished both in power and frequency. While he could not have framed such a thought himself, it was as though his subconscious had finally worn itself out and ceded the battlefield to his iron will.