Candlenight

'Sorry, Bob, stupid of me. It's just I thought I heard…well, a shot. Never mind. Look, there's the child, do you see her?'

'Where?' said Neil Probert, eyes closed.

'Wake up, you dozy bugger. What do you make of that?'

'Sorry, Sir.' Neil leaned over Gwyn Arthur's shoulder. The searchlight had picked up the small girl on the main street

'Skipping along, see. Not a care in the world, as if she's going home from school. And what bloody time is it?'

'One twenty-five, Sir.'

The child looked up at the helicopter, directly into the searchlight's glare, and even from this distance they could tell she was grinning.

'Kids,' said Gwyn Arthur, forgetting for a moment that he was investigating at least one suspicious death. 'What are the bloody parents doing? And what's that all over her face? Toffee?'

The child skipped gaily up the street. 'Oh Christ…' said Neil Probert. 'Who's this?'

'Jesus…' Gwyn Arthur breathed. 'Get us down, Bob.'

The man with the shotgun was stalking the child along the street.

'Get the fucking thing down!'

'Yeh, yeh, got to be the field, though.'

'Can't you get any closer?'

The man was perhaps three yards behind the girl. He raised the gun to his shoulder.

'Sod the fucking field!' Gwyn Arthur screamed. 'Go in.'

The pilot glanced wildly from side to side, judging distances, road levels. 'Gonna damage it, guv.'

'So it's damaged… Go in!'

They were so low now, churning up the night, that the man's white hair was blown on end. He went into a crouch, the gun aimed at the back of the child's head.

'Hit him in the fucking whatsits — land on him or something.'

The girl stopped.

She turned round.

The man's hair and his clothes were quivering in the swirling air.

He lowered the gun.

The girl's hair was unmoving in the rotor-driven maelstrom. She stood quite still in the spotlight, staring at the man.

The man stood there for long, long seconds before sinking slowly to his knees in the snow and fumbling with the shotgun and something else.

'What's—?' Neil said.

'A twig.' Gwyn Arthur said, suddenly calm 'Pen. Pencil. I don't know. But he's fitting it under the trigger guard.'

Aled rose from his knees, the shotgun upright on the ground, its barrel tucked under his chin. The child watched him lift a foot, bring it down the side of the gun to where the twig, pencil, whatever protruded from the trigger guard.

Neil Probert turned away.

'OK,' Gwyn Arthur said quietly. 'Pull back. Land in the schoolyard. Don't scare her any more.'

The star burst of blood and brains covered a very wide area of the snowy street.

Bob Gorner said, 'She ain't scared, guv. Tell you that for nuffink.'

The child had turned her back on the mess and was skipping back up the road, past the Tafarn, towards the cottages, to where two women were waiting. They each took one of the child's hands.

'She's in shock,' Gwyn Arthur said uncertainly.

But Neil Probert knew what the pilot meant. He sank back, closed his eyes, the sweat cooling on his brow.

Bob killed the searchlight and took the chopper into an arc towards the school.

None of them spoke.

For a moment it seemed the child had thrown a shadow ten times her size across the snow. A monstrous shadow, with the illusion of small, hard wings flapping at its shoulders.