Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

It was, to Gough, a classic scene… The kid who was underneath, spine wedged down on the road, moved every few minutes but only very slightly, and sometimes was shouted at and sometimes received a cuffing from the pistol when he did so. He was alive, seemed unhurt and did not cry out and had taken the wise course of simply staying still and silent and waiting for others to take action. Gough had done sieges before as a young man, standoffs when a hostage taker had a weapon at the head of an unfortunate: Irish sieges and those in London with PIRA men, also a bank situation, and he could fault neither the actions of the police as he saw them, nor those of the youngster at the bottom of the pile. Different position for the youth above him and squashed down because of the weight of the scooter. The youth, with the smooth chocolate skin of a Somali, was suffering. He shouted often and Pegs translated what she understood – the obscenities graphically repeated – and had cause to shout because his track-suit was rucked up on his right leg and the wound was clear to see. If the kid were to be treated as a human being then he needed to chuck away the pistol and get a shot of morphine, and if he needed to be treated as vermin then he needed finishing, the way a motorist would go to his car boot having stopped after hitting a deer or a badger on a country road and extract from the tool-box the heaviest wrench and bash it on the head and end the misery.

Pegs said, ‘I’m cold, Goughie, and I’m hungry, and need to piss… The kid says that he wants a car out, no police tricks, no prosecution, and he’ll let his prisoner go free, wants a guarantee of immunity – or he’s going to shoot, kill his prisoner. Sounds as if he might just do that… hopefully it won’t happen while I’m looking for that piss.’

The scene was easy to monitor because the police had brought up floodlights, taken power from a first-floor apartment, dropped cables from a window, and had made daylight. She’d gone. Gough was wrapped in his thoughts and supposed there was a benefit in being given a front row, stalls view, and he heard a murmur behind him. Started soft and grew. Like the rumble of water on a shingle beach and repetitive but louder as the time advanced. He tried to identify it – then reckoned it was a name. A car door slammed, he heard boots on the tarmac behind him… the kid down the road was calling louder and with a shriller voice and the message seemed the same, but he did not have Pegs to interpret. The Major came past him, made no contact, and there was a soft exchange of voices. He had identified the murmur, and thought the name repeated was ‘Samson’. He could not comprehend why there was importance in that name, what was signified. Gough didn’t care to rubber-neck, but he turned his head with discretion. The murmur was a whisper, was a call, and it spread among the police who manned the cordon, and from the upper windows where the residents hung out to seek a better view down the street, and from those who were kept back on the pavement but would have a garbled view. And Samson…

… Gough watched him. Boots tied tight in a hurry with the laces out of kilter. Crumpled overalls and a vest that was not fastened close to the body, and a balaclava that was blue, not the uniform black, and he carried a rifle easily as if it were no more important to him than a handbag to a woman. Gough did not have the knowledge to identify the type or its origin, but mounted on it was a telescopic sight. The sound of the kid’s shout reached them, and the Major was deep in conversation with the marksman, with Samson. He nodded curtly and he left the Major, and his head twisted and his eyes would have been roving for vantage-points.

Peggy was back at his side. She had ended up in an alley, in darkness, best she could manage and still no food or drink. She cocked her head, listened, heard the screams of the kid with the pistol, told Gough it was about more threats to send his prisoner off to his maker.

She said, ‘Beats staying in and watching television. He’s something of a celebrity, apparently. Has a list of kills to his name. I asked a plod when I came out of the alley… Samson did the head-chopping during the Revolution, was an executioner… we’re being shown what’s real here, Gough, getting the lesson force-fed. So that we know our place. Don’t chuck our weight around and expect them to jump.’

They waited. The kid with the pistol made more threats and fired in the air… and the lone figure, Samson, had slipped away, not hurrying, had disappeared into dense shadow, and they’d lost him. Would he actually do it, aim the pistol on to his prisoner’s forehead, pull the trigger, leave himself without a shield, or would he cop out? The kid would have to gamble, like Gough did. He gambled all the time, and with other lives… and he wondered how they did, the girl and his Level One, and where they’d reached.

Zeinab slept.

She had a backpacker beside her. He was a New Zealander and had a badge of his country’s flag stitched on the upper sleeve of his jacket. Probably her age, within a few months, and wanting to talk, and he had not enjoyed a shower that day, might not have had one for two days or three, and he had offered her water from his bottle. He told her – whether she wanted to hear or not – that he was between Heidelberg and Lyon, and after a few days in the south of France would be going to London, then the north where his family had relations, and… she declined his water. Was she a frequent traveller, did she know the French rail system, had she been to Germany, or to Athens, or Buda-Pest, Prague, the concentration camp at Auschwitz, did she want something to eat because he was going to the buffet? Did not tell him that far from skitting around Europe she had never been further by train than the one-hour journey from Dewsbury to Manchester, had never been to London before this journey, and had been nervous of negotiating the Metro system in Paris, said none of that. He was built big and overlapped his seat and his elbow was across her armrest, and the carriage was fully booked… was he an enemy?

They had pulled out from Gare de Lyon. He had gone for food from the buffet, and had seemed moderately hurt that she wanted nothing.

He had the window seat and she had the aisle. She could hardly pretend to be asleep and then be woken to let him ease past her. He might have been walking in a mall when he came to the north of England, buying socks or underpants, and be confronted with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and neither she, nor Krait nor Scorpion, could stop and eliminate him from the line of fire – big New Zealand boy who was likely a drop-out from a chemistry or geography course at a local college. Everyone, each last one, walking along the aisle of the mall was an enemy. Could not look into their faces, not engage them and make a judgement, shoot straight or aim off. Could not… He came back.

She shifted, and the backs of his thighs were close to dropping into her lap, and his arm brushed her chest, and his jeans had slipped and showed the skin of his lower back and the start of cleavage, and he dropped into his seat, and thanked her for showing patience. He had a happy look on his face because he had found a girl to sit with, and one who spoke his language. He presented her with a bar of chocolate, just a gift, and it came with a bovine, silly smile. They were all enemies, had to be. If some were not enemies then she had lost the necessary determination, was a fraud, should not have been chosen – and had betrayed the cousins she had known in Savile Town.

She refused the chocolate. She turned away from him and closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, and he ate from a bread roll of ham and salad, and crumbs fell on her arm, which he clumsily wiped off. The train went south, at speed.