‘Can we have a killing one, Dad?’ said the little boy. ‘Can we?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jewell. ‘Anyway, they might not let you take it on the plane. It’s probably classed as an offensive weapon.’
‘What’s offensive mean?’
Jewell gave the boomerang back to his son. ‘It means dangerous.’
‘It doesn’t look dangerous.’
‘We can see it tomorrow,’ said Sally, shifting the little girl from one shoulder to the other. ‘We don’t have to buy everything today. Anyway, we’ll be back in Sydney next week after we’ve been to Brisbane.’
The Jewells lived in Portland, Maine, and had flown to Australia for the wedding of Derek’s brother. He’d been living in Australia for the past three years and was marrying a local girl. Sally hadn’t been keen on the idea of a twenty-eight-hour flight with two young children, but Derek had talked her into it. It had been a nightmare and neither of them was looking forward to the flight home. But it was still two weeks away. Before then they had the wedding and a list of things to do, culled from the Lonely Planet guide to Australia.
‘Can I buy it now, Dad? Can I?’
The flash of light and the blast hit almost simultaneously. Jewell was slammed sideways by the force of the explosion. He hit the boomerang stall hard and felt his arm snap like dry wood, then slumped to the ground, ears ringing. The left side of his body was burning, his ears were running and something wet was pouring down his cheek. His mouth and nose were filled with a bitter, burned taste and his eyes stung.
His throat filled with something wet and treacly and he tried to spit it out, which made him choke. He got up on to his hands and knees. His son was lying on the road, chest ripped open by chunks of shrapnel, still clutching the boomerang. Jewel tried to scream but he couldn’t breathe. Then he looked down and saw ribs sticking out through his shirt and the bloody pulpy mess that had once been his lungs.
Katra was watching the news on the portable television in the kitchen when Shepherd walked in. ‘Have you heard what happened in Australia?’ she said.
‘No?’ he said.
‘Bombs,’ she said. ‘Three bombs.’ She stood up and poured him a mug of coffee. ‘More than a hundred people have died.’
Shepherd grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. The images on the screen were jerky, as if they had been filmed on a holidaymaker’s video camera. Bloodstained bodies on the ground, men and women staggering around in shock, fires burning. A news reporter was explaining that, as Katra had said, three bombs had exploded within minutes of each other, two in a weekend market. The picture on the screen changed to a hotel, black smoke pluming from the central section, the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge behind it. The voiceover explained that the bomb in the restaurant at the Hyatt Hotel had killed or injured at least fifty people. No one had claimed responsibility but local law-enforcement officials were assuming it was the work of an al-Qaeda terrorist cell.
‘All those people,’ said Katra. ‘It’s terrible.’
‘What’s terrible?’ said Liam, who had walked in and was bouncing a football.
‘Not inside,’ said Shepherd, pointing at the ball, ‘I’ve told you before.’
Liam picked it up and hugged it to his chest. ‘What are you watching?’
‘The news,’ said Shepherd. ‘What do you want for breakfast?’
‘Cheesy scrambled eggs,’ said Liam.
‘Is that all you ever eat?’
‘I like it.’
‘I’m not sure it’s good for you. Too much cholesterol.’
‘What’s cholesterol?’
‘Fat. And too much is bad for you.’
‘There’s fat in bacon and you eat bacon sandwiches all the time. And coffee’s bad for you, too. That’s what Mummy used to say.’
‘She was probably right,’ agreed Shepherd. ‘What about some fruit? Or muesli?’
‘Muesli’s rabbit food,’ said Liam.
‘Cheesy scrambled eggs on toast,’ said Katra. ‘And I’ll use wholemeal bread.’ She smiled. ‘Once in a blue moon won’t hurt him.’
Shepherd grinned back. ‘Yeah, but he has it every day. I’m surprised he’s not bored with it.’
Liam sat down at the kitchen table and put the ball under his feet. ‘Are we going to the park, Dad?’
‘Sure,’ said Shepherd, ‘but let me watch this now.’ He leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee. On the screen, paramedics with stretchers were rushing towards the wrecked hotel.
‘Why do they blow things up, Dad?’
‘It’s a tough question, Liam.’
‘What do they want, though, the men who did it?’
Another tough question, thought Shepherd. It had always been so much easier with the IRA. Their aims were clear. They wanted the British out, and a united Ireland. But the aims of Muslim terrorist groups, like al-Qaeda, were a lot harder to pin down. ‘They want to frighten people,’ he said.
‘But why?’
Katra slotted slices of bread into the toaster and cracked eggs into a bowl.
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ said Shepherd.
‘But why would they blow up a hotel?’
‘Because they think if they scare people enough they’ll get what they want.’
‘But what do they want?’
Shepherd sat down at the kitchen table opposite Liam. ‘Okay, part of it is about Iraq. You know we went to war against Iraq?’
‘Yes.’
‘And our soldiers are still there, with American and Australian soldiers – soldiers from all over the world.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, some people don’t want the soldiers to be in Iraq. They want them to leave. And they think that if they scare people enough, the governments will tell their soldiers to leave.’
‘But the people they killed aren’t soldiers.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s not fair.’
Liam was right. But much of what went on in the world had nothing to do with fairness. Shepherd had seen that at first hand as an SAS trooper in Afghanistan and every day on the streets as a police officer. ‘It’s easier to kill members of the public than it is to kill soldiers,’ he said.
‘Because they don’t have guns?’
‘Partly. And partly because ordinary people don’t expect to be attacked. Soldiers and policemen do.’
‘Are we okay in London?’ asked Liam. ‘They won’t do anything here again, will they?’
Shepherd had always tried to be truthful with his son. He’d never been the sort of parent who perpetuated the myths of the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas. He was happy to go along with Sue when she’d slipped a pound coin under Liam’s pillow in exchange for a milk tooth, but he’d always felt uncomfortable when she’d pretended that the Christmas presents had come from a man in a red suit who’d crawled down the chimney. When Liam was seven, he’d come home from school one day and said he’d been told by a classmate that Father Christmas wasn’t real. Sue had said that Santa Claus was hard at work with the elves at the North Pole. She’d turned to Shepherd for support, but he had pulled a face and walked away. A lie was a lie, and he’d promised himself that he would never lie to his family. His entire undercover life was spent lying, and he didn’t want to bring it home with him, even if it meant bursting the occasional bubble. ‘They might try,’ he said. ‘They’re bad men and they do bad things. But there’s a lot of people working to stop them. And the chance of you or me or anyone we know being hurt is so small that you mustn’t worry about it.’
There were two solemn newsreaders on screen, a pretty blonde girl and a man in his late forties, hair greying at the temples. Both had perfect teeth and a movie-star tan. The man was recapping earlier terrorist incidents – Madrid, Bali, New York.
‘But if they did do something, people would die, wouldn’t they?’
