Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Her hand trembled, as if she sensed the danger of what she did. The bird flapped away in heavy flight, and his eyes followed it, watching its wing-beat.

Soon he would be gone with the rifle, and she would wait at the car for him to return. He needed her, and the knowledge of it gave her the confidence to slip her hand down on to the skin and bristly hair at the back of his neck… She knew the man who would be killed that night, and the house where he would be killed, and the excitement coursed in her.

There had been an older boy in her street who had a. 22 air rifle. It was fired on wasteland where a factory had been demolished. Many times she'd gone after him to the waste ground and hung back, had never qui4e had the courage to ask him if she could fire it. She'd dreamed at night about the chance to hold the rifle, aim it, and fire it. One summer evening, the boy had shot a pellet against a passing bus, and the police had come and taken it away so she'd never had the chance. But, for the lonely, unpopular girl, the rifle had stayed in her mind as the symbol of the boy's power. On the waste ground with his friends, he swaggered when he carried it. The dream from childhood was roused. One hand still stroked the hair at the back of his neck, but her other hand moved in slow stealth behind his back until her fingers touched the weapon's barrel, which protruded from his bag. She felt its clean smoothness and the tackiness of the grease, and her fingers slid on the oiled parts. She imagined it against her shoulder, and her finger against the trigger, and she touched the sharpness of the foresight, and she thought of the sight locking on to the chest of the man in the house on the green. Her hand moved faster, but more firmly, on the nape of his neck, but her fingers glided in gentleness on the cool metal of the rifle's barrel. He could see what she did, but he could not snatch the rifle away from her because that movement would frighten the bird.

She said, very quietly, "I should be with you."

"No."

"I could help you."

His free hand had moved to hers. She felt the roughness of his hand covering it. She would be with him, following him, and sharing with him. She had, in truth, no comprehension of the thudding blow of the rifle stock against a shoulder, or the ear-splitting noise of the discharge and the soaring kick of the barrel. She only understood the power that the rifle offered. The pain was in her hand. Relentlessly he squeezed her hand down on to the sharp point of the foresight, crushed it until she struggled to remove it. His eyes never left the bird. He freed her hand and she quietly sucked the blood from the small, punctured wound. She kneaded the muscles at the back of his neck.

"I go alone," Vahid Hossein said.

"Always I am alone."

"I am here to give you anything you need," Farida Yasmin whispered.

Meryl heard the impertinent, lingering blast of the bell.

She was in the kitchen, locking the legs of the ironing board, with the heap of washed and dried clothes in a basket at her feet. She started for the door to still its insistent shrillness. It surprised her that Frank had not gone to answer it. She heard the voice of Davies, the detective, speaking into his radio in the hall. Stephen was with her, at the kitchen table, methodically writing in his school exercise book. In spite of it all he was doing the weekend work that his class teacher had set. That was her next looming problem: Monday morning, and no school. Frank shouted down from upstairs that he was on the toilet. Davies was at the door, waiting for her to come, and assuring her that the camera had picked up one of the village people. She switched off the iron.

All Frank had told her was that Martindale, the bastard, would not serve him.

Davies opened the door, and she saw Vince, smelt his beer breath.

She was behind Davies.

"It's all right, Mr. Davies, it's Vince. Hello, Vince God, don't say you've come to start on the chimney."

Vince was the most fancied builder-decorator in the village. There were others, but he was the best known. He was a great starter and a poor finisher, but those with a leak or a slipped tile or the need for a sudden repainting of a spare bedroom for a visitor knew they could rely on him. And he was a popular rogue… The Revenue had looked at him twice in the last seven years, and he'd seen them off.

He was in a constant state of dispute with the parish council because of the builders' supplies dumped in the front garden of his former council house, now his freehold property, behind the church. Anyone who could lay a hand on a Bible and say they would never have a rainwater leak or a slipped tile or the need for fast redecoration could call him a fraud, a bully, a botcher. There were not many. Small, powerful, his arms heavily tattooed, he was everybody's friend, and knew it and exploited it. What Vince believed in, above all else, was the quality of his humour. He had no doubt that his jokes made him a popular cornerstone in the village.

Meryl tittered nervously. The mortar was coming out of the brickwork on the chimney. It was just something to say.

"Surely you're not going up there?"

"Actually, I've come for my money."

"What money? Why?"

"What I'm owed."

"Frank paid you."

"He paid me two fifty down, but there was more materials I've got the bills." He was routing in his trouser pocket, dragging out small, crumpled sheets of paper.

"I'm owed nineteen pounds and forty-seven pence.~

"You said it was inclusive, for Stephen's bedroom, everything for two fifty."

"I got it wrong. You owe me."

"Then you'll get the extra when you come to do the chimney."

"If you're still here, if pigs fly, if-' "What does that mean?" He'd been in her kitchen. She made him four pots of tea each working day and gave him cake. She'd left him with the key when she'd gone out and he'd been working in the house. She'd trusted him.

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"If you haven't moonlighted going, aren't you? I'll be left, owed nineteen pounds and forty-seven pence, and you'll be gone. I've come for my money."

She choked.

"I can't believe this. Aren't you Frank's friend? We're not going anywhere."

"No? Well, you should be. You're not wanted."

She stuttered, "Go away."

"When I've got my money."

The detective moved without warning, stepping forward two, three paces. He caught at Vince's collar and had him up on to his toes. When the fist came up Davies caught it, as if he was handling a child. He twisted it hard against Vince's back, pivoted him round and marched him back down the path. She heard everything Davies said into Vince's ear.

"Listen, scumbag, don't come here to play the fucking bully. Go back to that godawful pub and tell them that these people aren't leaving. And don't ever bloody come back here."

With a jerk of his arm, the detective pushed Vince down on to his knees in the roadway, forced his face into the deepest and widest of the puddles and kept hold of him until he stopped struggling, lay still in submission. Davies released him, and stepped cleanly back to watch Vince crawl away.

She leaned against the wall beside the door. Davies came back in and closed it quietly behind him. She hadn't noticed it before but Frank's trousers were too short for him and his sweater was too tight. She put her hand on his arm.

"Thank you I don't suppose you should have done that."

"I don't suppose I should."

"Frank would have called him a friend he went up on the roof in a storm last winter."

Very gently he took her hand from the sleeve of the sweater. She didn't look into his face, didn't dare to. She looked down at his waist and the gun in the holster.

"What you have to understand, Mrs. Perry, it's all totally predictable. It's not peculiar to here, it would happen if you lived anywhere. It would be the same if you were in a suburb or a city street. It's what people do when they're frightened. Maybe you'll find someone out there who has the guts to stand in your corner, and maybe you won't. What you have to remember, they're ordinary people, people you'd find anywhere. You can't expect anything else from them."