He walked back to the police car where Briggs was still sitting, and yanked open the door.
“Do you keep guns in the house?” he demanded.
Briggs said, “Is she OK?”
“Tell me about the guns. How many?”
“Three. Duck guns,” he said. “My wife. Is she OK?”
“Christ,” said Breen. He put his head in his hands.
Five minutes passed. “How long before any more police get here?” said Breen.
“Twenty minutes,” said the sergeant.
“The longer he’s in there, the harder it will be to get him out.”
“Not exactly simple right now,” said the sergeant.
On the far side of the Briggses’ house, an elderly man appeared in a red woolen dressing gown. A woman peered out from behind him with a small Yorkshire terrier in her arms. She wore large Wellingtons under her pink dressing gown. “Get back inside,” Breen shouted.
“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” called the old man, wandering towards them.
“Go back,” shouted the sergeant.
The man paused. “Good grief. Is that Chris Briggs in the police car?” the man said. “What’s going on, Christopher?”
Bending low, Breen ran towards them. Putting his arms around the old man, he pulled him back, away from the house.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“There’s a man with a gun. Go back inside and shut your doors,” Breen said.
The man seemed to take orders well. He turned and walked back, taking his wife and their dog with him. Their house was two doors along from the Briggses’, a bigger cottage, but with paint peeling from the woodwork.
The sergeant came up. “Colonel? Do you have a gun?” The man hesitated.
“Of course he has,” said his wife. “Haven’t you, dear?”
It turned out the colonel was a retired military man who kept a revolver in a cigar box. He returned with the box and opened it; the gun was covered by a handkerchief. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? About the gun. Only I never bothered getting a license,” he said, unwrapping it.
“Course not, sir,” said the sergeant.
It was an elderly Webley service revolver. There were a few rounds lying in the box around it. The sergeant released the cylinder latch and pushed four bullets into the chambers.
“It’s been a little while since I used it,” said the old man.
Breen returned to the far side of the house. The barrels of the shotgun had been withdrawn from the door. There was no sign of any movement.
A moth flew into Breen’s face, startling him. He brushed it away. Briggs got out of the car. “What’s going on?”
“Get back in the car.”
“What about my wife? Is she OK? Maybe if I spoke to her?”
“Get back in the car.”
“Frances?” shouted the man. “Are you in there?”
The shotgun emerged from the letter box a second time. “Jesus Christ,” said Briggs. Revolver in hand, the sergeant pulled the professor back towards the police car.
“Sam?”
“Go away, Mr. Breen.”
“Do you have Mrs. Briggs in there?”
The barrels poked out of the door again. “Yes.”
“Have you drugged her too?”
“No. Mrs. Briggs came willingly.”
“That’s a lie,” shouted Professor Briggs.
At that moment there was a sudden commotion behind the house. A man’s scream, followed by a crashing noise. “Help me!”
In that moment the sergeant turned. The revolver’s quick pop was remarkably quiet compared to the shotgun.
“Got the bugger,” the sergeant shouted, still pointing the gun down the alleyway.
Breen ran towards the alley; a man was sprawled on the bare earth, facedown. Breen could see from the gray hairs on his head that it was not Ezeoke. The constable emerged from behind the house, white-faced.
“He came right at me, Sarge. I couldn’t stop him,” he said. “Is he dead?”
They had dragged Okonkwo into the street, away from the side of the house where he had been shot.
He was wearing the same clothes as the day before and was bleeding thickly through them from a wound in the stomach.
“How was I to know there was two of them in there?” protested the sergeant.
“Sorry,” whispered Okonkwo to Breen. His head was propped against a wheel of the police car. Breen took off his jacket and put it over the man. “He is mad. I had not thought he was so mad.”
“He was coming right at me. I thought it was the other one. It’s not my fault.”
Okonkwo’s face looked the color of stone. “I am so sorry.”
“What about Constable Tozer?” Breen asked.
“What about my wife?” demanded Professor Briggs.
“Ezeoke is mad,” said Okonkwo. “Your wife is an idiot, Mr. Briggs.” His breath was shallow. “She thinks Ezeoke is a god. A revolutionary god. He can do no wrong.”
“Shut up,” said Professor Briggs.
“You should have told me where he was yesterday,” said Breen.
“I’m sorry. I thought I should help him.”
Blood was bubbling from his mouth now. Okonkwo did not seem to notice. “I think we will lose the war. What do you think, Mr. Breen?”
Okonkwo’s skin had turned gray.
“What war? What’s he on about?”
Okonkwo closed his eyes. Breen leaned closer.
“What is the layout of the house?” he asked. “Where is Tozer?”
Okonkwo didn’t answer. His breathing slowed. His hand was opening and closing slowly.
“We have to know. Where are they?”
The sound of sirens came from across the marshland, louder and louder, until their wailing filled the air around them.
By the time they had arrived, Okonkwo had stopped breathing altogether.
The policemen complained of the cold. They stamped their feet. “We could take him.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I don’t think.”
“You’re the copper from London. What’s up with your mate?”
“He’s got food poisoning.”
From inside the house, Ezeoke shouted, “What is happening?”
“Eddie Okonkwo is dead,” said Breen.
Ezeoke didn’t answer.
“What’s he going to do?” The local inspector had brought guns. Police crowded round the house with.303s. They were excited. Things like this happened once in a local policeman’s life.
“Shoot the cunt, I say,” said one lanky policeman.
Some police were pushing inquisitive locals down the street. There was an inevitability to what was about to happen now.
He thought of Okonkwo and Ezeoke, men filled with a fervor for politics. The world was suddenly full of people like them, shouting for change, willing to see blood spilled. The kind of men who didn’t run from knives but towards them; who were sure about what the world was and what it should be. Breen could never be like that. For him, the world was a place seen from a distance, a curious puzzle. He thought of Tozer, comatose in the room just a few yards away. He could fight for her, he knew, but never for a country or an idea. Maybe it was just a lack of passion; a lack of imagination. But he only wanted to save one person.
He thought of his dead father and the woman his father had lost. He felt he had never known him as well as he did now. They were not so different.
“Sergeant?”
Breen walked over to the local inspector. He was a round man with a moustache and a mournful expression on his face. He shook hands with Breen. “Nasty old day,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Professor Briggs says you know the man with the gun.”
“That’s right, sir.”
He nodded. “Go and talk to him.”
“Why, sir?”
The inspector looked at him. “Just go and talk. You’ll know the kind of thing to say.”
“Yes, sir.” He knew what would happen now. Darkness filled his chest.
It had started to drizzle. The ambulance man had tried to give him his jacket back but he hadn’t wanted to wear it; it had Okonkwo’s blood congealed on the cloth by the vents.
He looked out towards the gray light on the eastern horizon. A pair of fishing trawlers was setting out from some nearby port. They looked small against the big sea. Waves slapped onto the shingle, out of sight, below the cottage.