The explosion had roused him, but it was the screaming that had pulled Husein Bekir from his bed. He sat on the big ash log outside his home. He was wrapped in his overcoat but that was little proof against the frost chill. The explosion had woken him and then he had nearly slipped back to sleep against his wife's warm back. Then, the screaming had started, liven with his damaged hearing, the sound of it had gouged into him. He could not ignore it: it had dragged him up, tugged him out through the door. He knew the sounds that animals made when in great pain. The screaming was not an animal's. It was a noise that went to his heart – and then it had died, had faded. A long time after the screaming had finished and the quiet had returned to the valley, there had been gunfire. The shots had been faint to his ears, but he had heard them.
Others came. They came in coats such as his, or with wool blankets over their shoulders, and they stood beside him and behind him. Because of his position as patriarch of Vraca none stood in front of him.
His view of the black emptiness of the fields over the river was not obstructed, but he could not make out any movement and though he strained his ears he picked up nothing. Some of the men who gathered around him carried double-barrelled hunting guns, but if he had brought his own it would not have protected him against the screaming. It was past three in the morning when Lila brought coffee. He cradled the cup in his hands and felt its heat on his skin.
He held a vigil and waited for the dawn.
When the screaming had started, Dragan Kovac had tossed himself out of his bed, had taken down from the hook the greatcoat from his days as a police sergeant, and his cap. He had gone outside to the shed at the side of the house where wood for the stove was stored, and had groped until he found his axe.
He had leaned against the doorpost, listened to the screams and held tight to the axe handle. They were the most fearsome screams he had ever heard. He thought he was a hard man, conditioned to the suffering of pain. Long after silence had replaced the screams he had stayed on his porch with the axe readied in his hands. There were the lights across the valley, and the lights of his own village behind him, and vehicle lights were at the top of the hill where the track crested the brow before falling down to Ljut, but he had not been able to see into the darkness. Then Dragan Kovac had heard the shots. He had counted the number of discharges and had known that the full magazine was used. The shots had driven him back inside his home.
He bolted the door then turned the heavy key in the lock and wedged a chair of stout wood under the handle. He sat on the bed, did not take off his boots, and his greatcoat and his cap, could not shake from his mind the sounds of the screaming. He held the axe, and waited for first light.
They offered him the flask but he refused it. He could not speak to them, nor they to him, but when Ante held the flask in front of him, he shook his head.
He could smell the brandy. He wondered if brandy had kept them on their feet and fighting when they had come out of Srebrenica, or faith, or desperation
… and he wondered how it went with Mister and if he had faith to fall back on, or if the desperation grew.
He did not know how it would finish, but he thought he had come near to the end of the road, as he'd pledged. When they had finished with the flask, he reached back, tapped on Ante's arm, pointed to the rifle, and it was given him. He looked through the 'scope sight.
He saw Mister, hunched, still, and then at the extreme edge of the tunnelled vision was a gliding movement that came closer to Mister.
It was a grey-dark shadow on the grey-white field.
The shadow flitted in the moonlight.
It came from behind Mister and skirted him warily.
Not for two years, perhaps more, had there been a fox scavenging in the garden of his home near the North Circular Road. By tripping the beams, the fox set off the security lights and bleeped the consoles in the hall and in the bedroom. Several times Mister and the Princess had been alerted by the bleeps and had stood at the window to watch the mature vixen. A cautious creature, which Mister liked – and without fear, which Mister liked more. Alec Penberthy had said she had a breeding den just inside the fence of the school's playing-fields. At night in the garden she had looked magnificent. He recognized the shadow.
It came by him in a wide half-circle.
It gave him space but did not seem intimidated.
Past three o ' c l o c k… The fox was an escape for him.
He had told himself that at three o'clock, when his wristwatch gave him that time, he would make the decision, commit himself, move. Of course, he would move. He was Mister. He did not know fear. He would splay out his hands, sink them down into the grass, use them to push himself up, and then he would walk, with firm strides, towards the river. He had set himself the deadline – three o'clock – and now the minutes ticked past and the watch hands sidled further from the hour. He watched the fox and that was his excuse not to move. It watched him.
Having come past him, so light-footed and so safe against the danger, it settled in front of him, sat. He could see the silhouette of its shadow. When it moved on he would push himself up. That was Mister's promise to himself. When he made a promise it was always kept; his word was his bond. When the fox shifted, he would go. He told himself, repeated it in his mind, that a few minutes did not matter. The fox seemed to study him, as if he intruded into its space. Then it ignored him and scratched. It lashed, with the claws of its back foot, against its neck then under its front leg. Abruptly, it shook itself, then its neck rose and its nostrils pointed up. It sniffed. To have reached where the fox sat on its haunches, he would have had to push himself up, offer his weight to the ground, then take ten strides. He heard its coarse snorting, then it was up. It trotted away. He thought the ground and the grass under its feet would barely have been pressured. It stopped, sniffed again, and then its back sank low, and it went forward.
The fox had located the Eagle, carrion.
It started to circle him. The shadow glided over the grass, and each circle was smaller. He had shot the Eagle, silenced him. And the voice had boomed at him in the night from the tree-line, and he had squirmed. If it had not been for the voice, taunting him – Arc you going to run, Mister? – he would already have gone, started out on the hundred stride paces to the river. It was what Cann wanted, that he should run. Cann wanted his feet, shoes, his weight, pounding down on the earth and grass of the field. Cann wanted the flash and the thunderclap, wanted to hear the scream. Cann was in the trees, waiting on him, a reminder of the consequences of moving: a footfall landing on the antenna of a mine. The fox was close to the Eagle's body.
He could not drag away his eyes.
The Eagle's body was barely visible to Mister. The fox, he thought, investigated the body. He heard the rending of fabric. The fox had found the wound. It pulled on the torn trouser, then began to worry at the leg. He had no more use for the Luger pistol, no further magazine to fill it. He had the PPK Walther pistol in his belt. He saw the shadow of the fox tug at the Eagle's leg. Mister hurled the Luger at the fox. It might have caught the fox's back leg, or its lower stomach, and it yelped shrilly but did not back off. It gazed at Mister. They stared at each other. If the fox had moved away then, Mister would have planted his hands down in the grass, pushed himself up, and started to run or walk towards the river. It did not back off: instead the shadow darted forward. It was a blur against the grass. Mister saw something thrown up into the night air. The fox caught what it had thrown up, then went skittish and ran in tight squares with something in its mouth.
The fox played with the lower length of the Eagle's leg.