The smell was soft, the same as the tang off the Shatt-al-Arab waterway and at the Faw peninsula. Then the screaming had come again.
At the Shatt-al-Arab and the Faw, when the salt scent had been in his nose, he had heard the screaming of a man wounded or gassed and left behind in the retreat. It had been his duty, then, inescapable, to go back into the marshes to find a man with a shrapnel-severed leg or with the gas droplets on his skin and in his eyes. He moved towards Fen Hill, cat-like and quiet, where the scent was stronger and the screaming louder. Ahead of him, dappled by thin moonlight, was the open expanse called Southmarsh on the map.
At the slight slope of Fen Hill he angered himself. His mind had been on the scent and the screaming, and on the ribbon of lights that he estimated to be three kilometres away, when he set up a pheasant. If he had been among the marsh reeds of the Shatt-al Arab or the Faw, he would have given his enemy his position. It would have been a fatal error. He stopped, and stood motionless against a tree-trunk so that his body made no silhouette, smelling the sea and listening to the screaming.
The distant sound of a car's horn, among the ribbon of lights, carried over the Southmarsh.
He found the rabbit, its throat caught by a snare. He did not use his torch, but felt it first with his stick and then with his hand. His fingers brushed the fur of the animal's back and then came to the restraining wire. The movement of his fingers, caressing it, had quietened the terror of the rabbit. He held it by the fur at its neck and loosened the fine wire. He could not see it, could only sense it hanging supine from his grip.
Because of his mistake in disturbing the pheasant, his anger and self-criticism, he felt a need to reassure himself. He killed the rabbit with a chop from the heel of his hand against its neck, one blow. He reset the snare and covered the ground where his feet had been with loose brushwood because at first light someone would come to check the snare. He pocketed the rabbit, dead and warm, and moved on.
He came to rest in the heart of a thick tangle of bramble on the edge of Foxhole Covert. Not for hunger, but to purge himself of his mistake, he tore a leg from the rabbit carcass, pulled the skin from it, and ate it. He chewed on the raw sweet meat. It was important to him to feel no revulsion, to be strong. He chewed at the leg until his teeth scraped on the bone, then put the carcass beside him and the cleaned bone, and wiped the blood from his mouth. The act of killing and the eating gave him strength.
The sausage bag was beside him. Through the bramble branches he saw the close-set lights across the Southmarsh. He had the photograph of the house and the man. His hand, stained with the rabbit's blood, rested on the bag and sometimes found the shape of the launcher and sometimes the outline of the automatic rifle. He thought that it would be as easy for him to kill the man as it had been to chop the rabbit's neck and eat its leg.
He tried, lying on his back in the silence, to think of his wife, Barzin, and of the home that they shared, and of the rooms they had decorated and of the possessions they had gathered together, and of the shy, darkened love between them, but the bare thighs of the girl in the car intruded and disturbed him. He could not shake from his mind the white skin of the girl and the outline of her breasts. Vahid Hossein tried, but he could not.
The bell rang three times.
Meryl said she would answer it. She said coldly that she didn't want to see him cowering in the shadow of the unit hallway again when the door was opened. The detectives had said they'd use three short blasts on the bell when they wanted entry to the house.
Blake was at the door and seemed surprised that she opened it. His face fell a little when he saw her. She thought he would be one of those creatures who expected only to deal with the man of the house. Blake said, fumbling for the words, that there were more personnel down from London, uniformed, armed and static, and that they needed to look over the house. She thought him supercilious. He did not ask whether it was convenient, but stood aside for them as they came out of the darkness. They shouldered past her, as if she did not exist, and pushed the door shut behind them.
Frank stood in the living-room doorway. She heard the names they gave him, Paget and Rankin. She grimaced, a bitter little smile, because neither asked Frank if it suited him, just said that they needed to walk round the house, look it over. They went together, as if there was an umbilical cord between them.
They wore blue-black overalls and webbing belts, on which were holsters and weapons and what she thought were gas canisters, ammunition pouches and handcuffs. When they had been waiting for her to answer the bell, they must have been in the mud at the side of the road and the green, and their boots smeared it over her carpet. They seemed not to notice. They looked around the living room, at her furniture and her ornaments, as if they were all dross, and the glass cabinet where she put the china pieces she'd collected, and the pictures of the seashore, prints, by the local artist that Frank had bought. She strained to hear the murmur of their voices.
'Have to get it taped up, Joe.'
'Too right, Dave, nothing worse than glass cabinets.'
'Have to get the pictures down.'
'What you think of where the television is?'
'Not happy, should be back against the wall, right back.'
'Shouldn't Davies have done this?'
'Should have, didn't.'
'Pillock – I don't like all the stuff on the fireplace.'
'Quite right. Let's do the windows.'
The tall one, Rankin, went to the standard lamp and switched it off. She stood in the darkness and could sense the rising impatience of Frank beside her, could hear the sharp spurts of his breath. The curtains were pulled back. A faint glow eased into the room from the street-lights on the opposite side of the green. She heard the scrape of their fingers on the glass and the window casing, then the noise as the curtains were yanked without ceremony into place. Only then was the standard lamp switched on again.
'Thought they were supposed to have been laminated, Joe.'
'They haven't got round to it the work order's in, be done by the end of the week.'
'Bloody marvelous.'
'I don't like that window, Dave, not without the lamination.'
'Don't tell me, I've got bloody eyes. What is it, a hundred metres, to those houses? A sniper, piece of cake, or an RPG.'
'What you say, Dave, piece of cake for a rocket launcher or a rifle. God, this place needs sorting out. Come on… They did the hall, the dining room and the kitchen. Frank trailed behind them and she followed. She didn't have to ask. Everything that was glass, china or pottery, everything that was heavy and unattached, would shatter, fracture and fly, maim and wound. They said they needed to see upstairs. She stiffened. Frank muttered that they should go upstairs if that was necessary, but they hadn't waited for his answer and were already on their way up. There wasn't any more mud from Rankin's boots to dirty the carpet. They looked around her bedroom.
'Don't like the mirror, Dave.'
It was the big mirror on her dressing-table.
'Tape it over.'
She imagined the mirror, where she made up, where she worked the delicate brushes before they went out for an evening, with packers' adhesive tape crossing it.
'Look at all that loose stuff.'
On her dressing-table were the cream jars and the glass eau-de toilette bottles, the vase of dried flowers and the silver-backed hairbrushes.
'Have to get it boxed up, Joe.'
She would have to rummage in a cardboard box on the floor for her eye-liner and lipstick. She imagined everything that was precious to her put away on the instructions of these men.
The pictures would have to come down, of course. The photograph frames would have to be put into the drawers, and she wondered if she would be allowed to take out the photographs and stick them to the walls, if they would permit that. In the bathroom, at the back of the house, she couldn't have said they lingered on anything that was hers. They were merely indifferent to each item that belonged and mattered to her. Better if they had lingered on them because then the items might have seemed important. They went into the spare room and discussed what should happen to the pictures, the mirror and the ornaments there. They paused on the landing outside the last door. It was as if they had kicked the fight out of her, and the resentment was flushed on Frank's cheeks, but neither of them protested. She could hear her boy's voice, making the noise of a lorry. They didn't ask her to go first, or Frank. The short one went in, the tall one behind him.
