Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Only when he lay quite still was the pain numbed. He had his back to Mister, couldn't see him and wouldn't risk the pain of trying to twist and look at him. Where his head lay, on his lower arm, there were no lights for him to look at, but the moon's glow showed the stretch of the field and then the black line of the trees.

'Does anyone know we're here?'

'Cann knows. He's in the trees. He's close. He knows.'

'Has he sent for help?'

' It's dark, Eagle, and we're in a minefield. No one's going to come and help.'

' I don't have much time, Mister, if I'm not helped

… Can't you come close to me, Mister?'

'Don't you listen, what I told you? It's a minefield.'

'Won't you come nearer to me, Mister?'

'There are mines – it's what Cann said – all around me. I can't move. I'm thinking… '

The Eagle thought he was free. It was as if a chain had snapped. He could not see Mister's eyes, which cut into men and made them shiver. His back was to Mister. He had no fear, now, of Mister, and he had no need any more of the rewards with which Mister bought him. The freedom was the cool breeze that played across his face, that stilled the pain. He was safe from the fear.

'Mister? Are you listening to me, Mister? I've been with you more than twenty-five years. I know you, Mister, like I know my hand. I want to tell you what I have learned about you.'

It was a struggle to raise his voice. Spit bubbled in his throat. The pain was worse when he tried to speak.

The Eagle did not have the strength to shout, and he did not think he had much time. He wished he could have turned so that he could see into Mister's eyes. He gloried in his freedom, and knew it could not be taken from him. He hoped that Mister heard him.

'You are evil, Albert William Packer. You are the most evil man I have met. As God's my witness I am ashamed to have been a part of you. I hope, as those I love say prayers over my body, that I am purged of the sins of my association with you.'

He could not lift his head, which lay on his fallen arm. He spoke into a wall of grass stems and he smelt the fresh-turned earth and the tang, acrid, of the chemicals.

'You are the bully. You inflict pain, misery. After you are dead – whenever, wherever – you will be hated, despised. Don't think a great column of people will follow your coffin, they won't. The coffin will go by and people will slam shut their doors and draw their curtains, because you are vile, a mutation of a human being. But I thank you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing me to this place.

Here, I've learned freedom from you. Thank you, Mister.'

He wished that Mister could have seen his face and seen the truth, the honesty, he felt. His voice fell and he didn't know whether he was heard. He cared no longer about the pain, but tried to throw his voice.

'And thank you for giving me a last sight of you.

You're scared, aren't you, Mister? I don't have any fear, not any longer. You're scared, I smell it. How do I know you are scared? Because you haven't run. You can't buy a mine, Mister, can you? Can't corrupt it. A mine doesn't get defused because a bent bastard like me preaches on your behalf in some bloody Crown Court. It's not a jury, you can't intimidate it – it's a mine.'

He heard behind him a slight, very small shifting movement.

'Can you see my leg, is that why you're scared to run?'

The movement was a metal scrape, an oiled lever under a thumb's pressure.

'Show me you're not scared. Run. Run twenty yards, or fifty, then tell me you're not scared.'

For a last time he hurled his voice high.

'Did Cann bring you down?'

The first three shots missed him. They were a thunder around the Eagle and the ground spat over him. The fourth shot hit his raised shoulder and flattened him, pinned him down to the grass, as if a hammer drove a nail into him. He gulped.

'Did Cann-?'

He pulled the trigger again and again and again… pulled it until the clicking replaced the blast, and the magazine was emptied.

The voice was away across the fields, from the tree-line.

'The Eagle was your last best man. That was another mistake. Who's going to protect you now, Mister? Are you going to run?'

He let the Luger slip from his fingers and tightened his arms closer around him to make smaller the space of wet grass on which his weight was set. There were six more hours of darkness. He had six more hours in which to make his decision. Are you going to run, Mister? If he turned his body, he could see the dark line of the river a hundred yards away, could hear it.

Beyond the river were the village lights, and there would be a car. It would take a hundred running strides to get to the river, a hundred times his feet would stamp down on the grass and the earth, one hundred chances of risk… He closed his eyes against the night.

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.