Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, son,’ she said.

Tommy pointed at Harry. ‘He does. He’s not as daft as he looks.’

I looked at Harry, who sat down again and shook his head.

Tommy turned back to me. ‘Did I go visit Mad Maggie? Yes I did. Did I kill her? Yes, I d id. I got in through the back window. It wasn’t locked. I picked up the posser and went through into the living room. She was sitting in the dark. Didn’t even have a wireless. She must have heard me, but she didn’t move. She looked at me just once before I hit her, and I could swear she knew why I was doing it. She understood and she knew it was right. It was just .’

As Tommy spoke, he became more animated and his eyes started to glow with life again, as if his prize were once more within his grasp.

‘Why did you do it, Tommy?’ I asked. ‘What did she ever do to harm you?’

He looked at Harry. ‘She killed my dad.’

‘She what?’

‘I told you. She killed my dad. My real dad.’

Polly flopped back in her armchair, tea forgotten, and put her hand to her heart. ‘Tommy, what are you saying?’

‘He knew,’ he said, looking at Harry again. ‘Or at least he suspected. I told him about the field, about the villagers, the madwoman.’

Harry shook his head. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘You never told me it was her . All I knew was that you were upset, you were saying crazy things and acting strange. Especially when you came in from the raid that night. I was worried, that’s all. If I ever suspected you, that’s the only reason, son, I swear it. When I found her body, I thought if there was the remotest possibility… That’s why I went for Frank. I told him to lay off it, to let the gyppos take the blame. But he wouldn’t.’ Harry pointed his finger at me, red in the face. ‘If you want to blame anyone, blame him.’

‘Calm down, Harry,’ I told him. ‘You’ll give yourself a heart attack.’

‘It’s not a matter of blame,’ Tommy said. ‘It’s about justice. And justice has been served.’

‘Better tell me about it, Tommy,’ I said. The air-raid siren went off, wailing up and down the scale. We all ignored it.

Tommy paused and ran his hand through his closely cropped hair. He looked at me. ‘You should understand, Mr Bascombe. You were there. He was your best friend.’

I frowned. ‘Tell me, Tommy.’

‘Before Dunkirk, a group of us got cut off and we were in this village near Ypres for a few days, before the Germans got too close. We almost didn’t make it to the coast in time for the evacuation. The people were frightened about what the Germans might do if they found out we were there, but they were kind to us. I became quite friendly with one old fellow who spoke very good English, and I told him my father had been killed somewhere near here in the first war. Passchendaele. I said I’d never seen his grave. One day, the old man took me out in his horse and cart and showed me some fields. It was late May, and the early poppies were just coming out among the rows of crosses. It looked beautiful. I knew my father was there somewhere.’ Tommy choked for a moment, looked away and wiped his eyes.

‘Then the old man told me a story,’ he went on. ‘He said there was a woman living in the village who used to you… you know… with the British soldiers. But she was in love with a German officer, and she passed on any information she could pick up from the British directly to him. One soldier let something slip about some new trench positions they were preparing for a surprise attack, and before anyone knew what had hit them, the trenches were shelled and the Germans swarmed into them. They killed every British soldier in their path. It came to hand to hand combat in the end. Bayonets. And the woman’s German lover was one of the last to die.’

Tommy paused, glanced at his mother and went on, ‘He told me she never recovered. She went mad, and for a while after the armies had moved on she could be heard wailing for her dead German lover in the poppy fields at night. Then nothing more was heard of her. The rumour was that she had gone to England, where they had plenty of other madwomen to keep her company. I thought of Mad Maggie right from the start, of course, and I remembered the way she used to burst into French every now and then. I asked him if he had a photograph, and he said he thought he had an old one. We went back to his house, and he rummaged through his attic and came down with an old album. There she was. The same sort of clothes. That same look about her. Much younger and very beautiful, but it was her . It was Mad Maggie. And she had killed my father. He was in one of those trenches.’

‘What happened next, Tommy?’

‘I don’t remember much of the next couple of months. The Germans got too close and we had to make a hasty departure. That’s when I was wounded. I was lucky to make it to Dunkirk. If it hadn’t been for my mates… They carried me most of the way. Anyway, for a while I didn’t know where I was. In and out of consciousness. To be honest, half the time I preferred to be out of it. I had dreams, nightmares, visions, and I saw myself coming back and avenging my father’s death.’

His eyes shone with pride and righteousness as he spoke. Outside, the bombs were starting to sound alarmingly close. ‘Let’s get down to the shelter,’ Harry suggested.

‘No,’ said Tommy, holding up his hand. ‘Hear me out now. Wait till I’m done.’ He turned to me. ‘You should understand, Mr Bascombe. She killed my dad. He was your best friend. You should understand. I only did what was right.’

I shook my head. ‘There’s no avenging deaths during wartime, Tommy. It’s every man for himself. Some German bullet or bayonet had Larry’s name on it, and that was that. Wrong place, wrong time. It could just as easily have been me.’

Tommy stared at me in disbelief.

‘Besides,’ I went on, getting a little concerned at the explosions outside, ‘are you sure it was her, Tommy? It seems an awful coincidence that she should end up living on our street, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sure. I saw the photograph. I’ve still got it.’

‘Can I have a look?’

Tommy opened his top pocket and handed me a creased photograph. There was no doubt about the superficial resemblance between the woman depicted there, leaning against a farmer’s fence, wearing high buttoned boots, smiling and holding her hand to her forehead to keep the sun out of her eyes. But it wasn’t the same woman whose photograph I had found in Rose Faversham’s shoebox. In fact, it wasn’t any of the three – Midge, Rose or Margaret. There were no dimples, for a start, and the eyes were different. We all have our ways of identifying people, and with me it’s always the eyes. Show me someone at six, sixteen and sixty and I’ll know if it’s the same person or not by the eyes.

Another bomb landed far too close for comfort, and the whole house shook. Then a split second later came a tremendous explosion. Plaster fell off the ceiling. The lights and radio went off. I could hear the drone of the bombers slowly disappearing to the south-east, on their way home again. We were all shaken, but I pulled myself to my feet first and suggested we go outside to see if anyone needed help.

I didn’t really think he’d make a run for it, but I stuck close to Tommy as we all went outside. The smell was awful; the bitter, fiery smell of the explosive and a whiff of gas from a fractured pipe mixed with dust from broken masonry. The sky was lit up like Guy Fawkes night. It was a terrible sight that met our eyes, and the four of us could only stand and stare.

A bomb had taken out about three houses on the other side of the street. The middle one, now nothing but a pile of burning rubble, was Mad Maggie’s.