“Stop,” Rebecca said. “Please stop. They don’t need to hear this.”
“Yes, they do! Yes, they do!”
Keiron was not looking, refusing to look, pressing his face into his mother’s side.
“We all knew what was going to happen. Steve’s standing over her, pulling off the last of her things, and she calls him a name and spits at him and he leans down and punches her in the face, and then he’s on his knees, unzipping himself, and we’re all watching, a couple cheering him on, give it to her, give it to her, clapping like it’s some game, and that’s when I tell him, I tell him twice to stop and he just carries on and I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t just stand there and watch-she was just a child!-and I shot him, through the back of the head. Blood and gunk all over the girl’s face and she wriggles out from under and grabs her clothes and runs and we’re left standing there. All except for Steve. He was my mate, too, they all were, and I’d killed him over some girl who, even before that happened, would’ve happily seen us blown to smithereens.”
He wiped away some of the sweat that was running into his eyes. Tears were running soundlessly down Rebecca’s face.
“We all agreed, the rest of us, to claim he’d got caught in the crossfire. After what had happened, no one was going to want to tell the truth.”
“Except you,” Rebecca said.
“This is different.” He nodded towards the children. “They needed to know.”
“Why?”
“So they can understand.”
And his hands reached down towards his rifle.
Not long after first light, a police helicopter, flying low over the forest, reported a woman and two children standing in a small clearing, waving a makeshift flag.
Armed officers secured the area. Rebecca and the children were escorted to the perimeter, where paramedics were waiting. Anderson was found lying inside the tent, a dark cagoule covering his face, his discharged weapon close at hand. At the hospital later, after she had rested and the medical staff had examined her, Rebecca slowly began to tell Resnick and a female liaison officer her story. The children were in another room with a nurse and their maternal grandmother.
Later still, relishing the chance to stretch his legs, Resnick had walked with Kiley the short distance through the city centre to the railway station. Already, a rush edition of the Post was on the streets. It would be national news for a moment, a day, page one beneath the fold, then a short column on page six, a paragraph on page thirteen. Forgotten. One of those things that happen, stress of combat, balance of mind disturbed. Rebecca had told the police her husband’s story, as well as she remembered, what he’d seen, the attack at night, the confusion, the young Iraqi girl, the fellow soldier caught in the crossfire and killed in front of his eyes. He hadn’t been able to sleep, she said, not since that happened. I don’t think he could face going back to it again.
“Not what you wanted, Jack,” Resnick said, shaking his hand.
The 15:30 to London St. Pancras was on time.
“None of us,” Kiley said.
“We’ll catch that game some time.”
“Yes. I’d like that.”
Kiley hurried down the steps onto the platform.
He phoned Jennie Calder from the train. In a little over two hours’ time he would be crossing towards the flats where Mary Anderson lived and climbing the stairs, “Welcome” on the mat, but not for him, her face, when she opened the door, wet with tears.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Any Notts County supporters reading this will forgive me, I trust, for playing fast and loose with the details of the club’s highly successful FA Cup run in 1990/91. Manchester City not Charlton Athletic. Come on, you Pies!
