Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'You went into the minefield when you stepped over the yellow tape, Mister.'

The voice was flat-toned and without pleasure or triumph and it cleared the ringing from Mister's ears.

He sank down. He put his buttocks' weight onto the wet grass where his shoes had been, and then he tucked his feet as close to his buttocks as he was able

… It started as a whimper… He had only once before heard the voice, but he recognized it. There had been seven words spoken by the voice, then small, not nasal and amplified. The words dinned at him: That was a mistake, Mister, a mistake… From the whimper came a low sob… He had his arms tight around his body. A light breeze rustled in the grass close to him, waved it. Because he was low down on the ground the lights seemed further distant than before, where a car would have been, beyond the river he would have swum… Where he thought the Eagle lay, the sobbing turned to a high-pitched scream that pierced Mister's skull… Cann hadn't screamed when Mister had beaten him. He sat hunched in the grass and he could not escape the Eagle's scream. The scream was a knife that sliced into him, the sound of a dying animal. He took his hands from his chest and slapped them over his ears and pressed the palms against his skull, but he could not lose the sound of it. The scream eddied in the grass around him, burrowed in the ground under him, it was around him – as the mines were.

Mister did not know what a mine looked like. He must have seen them on television but if he had he did not remember it. There had been no mines at the fair he had gone to with Atkins. He did not know whether they were square or round, black, green or white…

God, would the screaming not stop? Finally, it did.

It died to a sob and then to a whimper. He eased his hands from his ears.

'Mister, are you there? Tell me you're there.'

' I'm here, Eagle.'

'Can you come near?'

'We're in a minefield, Eagle.'

The voice choked: 'I can't feel my leg, Mister.'

'There's nothing 1 can do.'

' I want you close to me, Mister. There's the pain everywhere, except in my foot – C h r i s t… '

' I can't move. I can't come.'

'Close, so's you hold me – I'm so fucking scared, Mister, and the pain… '

'Don't you listen, Eagle? It's a minefield… ' He said it like he was speaking to an idiot. His voice was quiet.

It was always quiet when the anger surged in him.

When he was angry, men had to lean forward to hear him. 'If I come to you I could be blown up myself.'

'Yes, M i s t e r… bloody h e l l… of course, Mister. I'm your burden – isn't that right, Mister?'

Mister knew what was said of him at the Church and the Crime Squad and at the Criminal Intelligence Service: they said that he was careful. It was grudging but it was said of him, 'careful', with sour praise. He did not gamble. Everything was planned before he moved. Only fools gambled. He owned clubs that had rich takings from roulette wheels, but he never played. He never backed horses or dogs unless the names of the winners were guaranteed to him… The last time he had not been careful, had taken an action that had not been weighed, he had walked from Monika Holberg's vehicle to the blue van and had taken Cann to its rear doors and had kicked, punched the little weakling creature until his feet had hurt and his hands had bled, and the small voice down on the ground had called it his mistake. To move on the field in the darkness would be to gamble.

'What are you going to do, Mister?'

' I don't know.'

'Mister, I need you… please.'

' I can't help you.'

'No, Mister, you mustn't risk yourself…'

In the moonlight, above the waving grass, he could see, just, the shape of the Eagle's hip and his shoulder, twenty yards away or maybe thirty. The Eagle was on his side, had his back to Mister. The pain must have come as a spasm. There was a low moan and the upper arm thrashed. The Eagle's leg, in the pain spasm, was lifted at the hip. There was no foot. Mister blinked. The raised leg's trouser was shredded to nothing at the knee. Mister did not know what a mine looked like, but he knew what it did. He needed to think. He was beyond anything of his experience, and he had no instinct to guide him. He checked his watch. The time was fifteen minutes past ten o'clock.

There was at least eight hours of darkness to cover him. By midnight he hoped that he would know what he should do, and how far he should gamble.

Frank had come through the trees. They'd heard his approach and Salko had flashed the torch to guide him, and the dog had growled. He'd found them.

'What happened?'

Joey pointed down in front of him. At the level of his knees was the yellow tape. Frank whistled, sucked in his breath. 'We heard the explosion – which one is it? Then the screaming… God.'

Joey reached across and tapped Ante's arm. He gestured for the rifle to be given him. He let the butt rest against his shoulder, levelled the aim and had his eye to the moulded endpiece of the night sight. He had never been a marksman. The gamekeepers on the estate were expert, but Joey hadn't been. It was a dozen years, when he was a teenager, since Joey had last had a firearm against his shoulder. There was a clinical weight to the Kalashnikov, and it was made heavier by the sight. The cross-hairs wavered. If he'd fired he would have missed because he could not hold the aim steady, but he could see. The image was a grey-white wash, and he tried to hold the cross-hairs on the nearer spreadeagled shape. Target Two was total white – face, body, clothes, and was prone. He shifted the aim and the image in the sight blurred. It went over the trees at the bank of the river, jerked up, caught the lights of the far village, and it burned out.

He moved the aim down, raked across the ground, and then saw his Target One. Mister sat, and his arms were around his knees, his head was down and rested on them, but Joey couldn't hold the aim. He passed the weapon to Frank.

He saw Frank's hands move expertly over it, in the near darkness, to check it, then it was at his shoulder, locked there, as if it were a part of him.

'Don't bother to ask,' Frank said, and there was a grimness about him that Joey hadn't heard before.

'Yes, I've handled one, and I've fired one. Have you seen your Target Two? He's short of a leg.'

' I couldn't hold it that well. I didn't know he hadn't a leg.'

' It's off just below the knee. Full weight must have gone on it.'

Frank stared into the rifle sight, and Joey thought him mesmerized by what he saw.

'What happens?'

Frank said, 'Nothing happens, nothing can happen.

It's dark, if you hadn't noticed. Any man who goes walkabout in a marked minefield in darkness is certifiable. We could call the people out but they'd only be losing their beauty sleep – if they deigned to come. They won't move before daylight. Looks like he's fainted or something, best thing for him. The solicitor, right?'

Joey took the rifle. He peered into it a last time, then handed it back to Ante. The moon was at its highest point, and its brightest, but it was difficult for him to see either of the men in the field in front of him. 'Will he survive?'

'What do you want, the best bedside manner or the truth?'

' I don't give a damn whether he survives.'

'You have, Joey, a bucketful of humanity… I've been with de-miners, some of the foreign ones. They go to the Irish bar up by the Kosevo Hospital at weekends, they get pissed up, and they talk. Try stopping them. You have to move a casualty fast. Right now, in the wound, are the chemicals from the explosion, half a tonne of earth and the shrapnel that's been in the ground for five, seven years – and old cow shit, sheep shit, fox shit, rabbit shit. That's all in the wound. He should be in hospital in two hours, but he won't be.