A Prospect of Vengeance

and understood why Check Coat and Grey Suit had been so confident.

He was caught — pin-pointed as a collector's butterfly: not pursued, but caught, beyond all hope of escape!

To Check Coat and Grey Suit he added Combat Jacket: a third style, naturally, so that there had been no uniform appearance to register among the followers he might have noticed, if he'd been more observant — if he hadn't thought dummy2

himself so clever, and so lucky. Or ... or, if he'd taken poor old Reg more seriously, maybe — ?

But now he was caught, anyway. And caught finally and more obviously than before, and quite unarguably. Because, where Check Coat and Grey Suit concealed their weapons, Combat Jacket carried his own openly — openly, albeit casually, in the crook of his arm. But then, in Lower Buckland on a wet September evening, a shotgun was as good as a Kalashnikov and more easily explained.

He straightened up, accepting the inevitable even as he tried to reject it as something which didn't happen in real life, to ordinary people.

Or... not to Ian Robinson — ?

Or ... not to Reg Buller — ?

Combat Jacket straightened up, too. But, as he did so, his free left hand came up, to steady the shot-gun even as his casual right hand slid back to slip its trigger-finger into position.

'Hullo there!' Combat Jacket smiled at him, even as the double-barrels swung from their safe downwards-point into the shooter's-readiness position, for the clay pigeon, or the rabbit, or whatever sport was in prospect — whatever game: feathers-and-two legs, fur-and-four-legs — or skin-and-Ian-Robinson —

This time his legs betrayed him: he wanted them to run, but his knees had thrown in the towel, and it was all he could do dummy2

to stop them buckling, to bring him down to grass-level.

'Mr Ian Robinson, I believe?' The gun was coming up.

And Combat Jacket was smiling psychopathically, with enjoyment —

It would be an accident: one of those tragic shot-gun mishaps —

Ian closed his eyes. There would be a terrible impact. And then there would be ... whatever there was after that: probably pain, until communications broke down; but that wouldn't take long, with a shot-gun at five yards. And then . . . everything? Or ... nothing?

Nothing happened.

Or perhaps time was standing still for him, in his last second of it?

Only, time wasn't standing still: all he had felt, before that last thought, was blank fear filling his chest. But then he realized that he had breathed in deeply as he'd closed his eyes, and now he couldn't hold his breath any longer: it was the discomfort of that which was filling him —

He breathed out and opened his eyes again simultaneously, to find that there was no one in front of him any longer: there were only the greens and greys of the churchyard, swimming slightly for an instant and then coming sharply into focus as he blinked the sweat away.

He had been stupid, he began to think. And then the confusion in his mind cleared, just as the sweat had done, in dummy2

another eye-blink, as he remembered that the man with the gun had called him by his name.

He turned round clumsily, grasping at the nearest gravestone for support as his legs threatened again to give way under him, making him stagger slightly.

Combat Jacket was still in the churchyard, but was way past him now, up by the wall midway between the yew-tree and lych-gate and staring out across the Village Green, shot-gun still at the ready. For the moment he seemed quite uninterested in Ian.

But . . . ' Mr Ian Robinson, I believe?' was there between them, validating the man's presence, making it not-accidental — and reconvening all Ian's fears in a clamorous disorderly crowd in his brain: the man was real, and his shotgun was real. And those other men had been no less real —

Check Coat and Grey Suit — but where were they now — ?

Combat Jacket turned towards him suddenly, beckoning him.

There was no arguing with the invitation. If there had been a moment to run, and continue running, it was past now. And, anyway, the weakness in his legs dismissed the very idea as ridiculous, never mind that shot-gun in the man's hands.

The rough-cut churchyard grass was soft and springy under his feet, and there was a different cross-section of memorials to the long-dead inhabitants of Lower Buck-land all around him. But he only had eyes for Combat Jacket now, as he dummy2

approached the man.

Combat Jacket was no longer smiling (and maybe he'd never been smiling: maybe that smile had been inside his own imagination?).

'Well, I think they've gone.' Combat Jacket nodded at him, then re-checked the Village Green, and then returned to him.

'They've gone?' Ian's husky repetition of the words betrayed him. But . . . Combat Jacket was fortyish, for the record: young-fortyish, but a little haggard; brown hair, short-cut but well-cut; brown eyes, regular features ... the sort of man, if he'd been ten years older, whom Jenny might have looked twice at, once he'd acquired a touch of grey (older men, not younger, were Jenny's preference — ) —