door. Only two men were able to hold him as they came through the tight space of the doorway. Penn saw the small round startled face. He bit the hand on his arm. He elbowed into a stomach. It was his chance. He broke free. There was black darkness beyond the lorry. Penn yelled, 'Kill your lights.' The one chance only. The lights died. Night darkness around him. He ran. The darkness was his friend. He threw himself under the moving wheels of the lorry, and rolled. He didn't know what the hell happened, but he had killed the lights. Just the glow of the dashboard in the cab and the fluorescent buttons of his radio. He was nudging the lorry forward. The far door of the cab came open and there was a quick blast of night air. There were hands groping by his shins and ankles, and something, Benny didn't know what, was thrown from the cab floor. It hit the wooden fence across the road, clattered in the dark. There was weight across his legs and panting, wriggling movement. Something else, Benny didn't know what, was thrown from the door of the cab, and that seemed to go further and it hit glass across the width of the road, perhaps a greenhouse, perhaps a cold frame. The door closed quietly on the cab, and the weight came over him and prised into the gap behind his seat and the passenger seat. There were men running round the Seddy, going across the road towards where something had hit the wooden fence, and something else had smashed a glass surface. There was shooting, he could see the gun flashes in the big side mirror of the Seddy, could see the fireflies of the bullets going towards the fence and where the glass pane had been broken… and all the lorries were hammering it now, because of the shooting. The lorries swerved, each in their turn, for the road they should have taken. Benny was cool. He didn't favour panic. The radio in his cab was a jabber of voices, all calling for the convoy to get the hell out, get the distance in. There was the sharp panted breathing behind him, and Benny realized the man stank. He was in cruise gear and they were doing good speed, and the village was behind him, and the sound of shooting was fading. He was cool, no panic, and he could think well. Benny reckoned it to be about, give or take a bit, twenty-five minutes to the crossing point at Turanj… and he was in deep shit, deepest without a bloody bottom. Because the first rule, aid convoy driving, is don't get involved, but the yell had been English. The second rule is not to take sides, but the shout had been English and desperate. All the rules, up to one hundred and one bloody rules, said the aid convoy system went through the window if the drivers weren't, all the way, impartial, but the cry of 'Kill the lights' had been English. What he had done was get involved, take sides. And what he'd done, when they hit the crossing point at Turanj … if back in that black village they'd gotten their act together, raised the radio, lifted the telephone, sent a fast bloody pigeon… what he'd done was to hazard the whole of the aid convoy programme. People survived because the aid convoys went through without getting involved. People would starve if the aid convoys were banned because the drivers had taken sides. People depended on the aid convoys crossing the lines, impartial… Perhaps, Benny thought, before they were at the crossing point at Turanj, he'd just chuck him out, push him clear. In the convoy queue, spearing the night with its lights, the Seddy hammered forward, going sweet. Benny unhooked the pencil torch from the dashboard clip. He shone the light around his feet.
'Now then, my old cocker, you have just lost me my sandwich box, that my Becky gave me and you have just lost me my fire extinguisher, and I am not allowed to drive without a fire extinguisher in the cab and I'm thinking you should do the decent thing and, please, close the door after you…'
Benny shone the torch behind him, into the gap behind his seat and the passenger seat. He turned to look fast behind him. In the narrow beam, Benny saw the blood on the face and the cuts and the bruises. Back to the road. He thought he had seen the face of a man who was softened for death. He twisted again. Benny saw the stubble growth that dammed the blood, and the eyes that squinted between the puffed bruising, and the swollen split lips. He dragged down the switch of his torch, and again the cab was in darkness.
'You are, my old cocker, a heap of trouble…'
Fourteen.
When the big torches came and the guns, they would have him against the stream. Milan shouted orders among the babble of the men of the village. 'Make a line… Search everything, coal sheds, tool sheds, the barns… Search your houses… Keep the line…' The men of the village stood in line as they had been told to, waiting for the big torches and the guns to be brought. Between shouting the orders, his eyes flicked down to his watch. Milan stood on the steps of the school building and behind him were the two swing doors into the hall. They had only their small torches, sufficient to light a way from their homes to the hall for the social evening, and they had no rifles until the firearms were brought from the locked armoury of the headquarters building… Five clear minutes lost… Five minutes lost since Branko had pushed his way back into the hall, licking at his wrist that was bitten, and Milo had followed him with his hands held across his groin. Five minutes lost since they had blurted that the bastard had gone… and been heard to crash through Petar's fence, and been heard to run into the greenhouse where Dragon brought on his spring lettuces. He had not seen it for himself and he must take their word on trust… Behind Petar's fence and Dragon's greenhouse was wire and then sodden fields, and then the stream. That was where they would get him, the bastard, when he came to the stream. The first orders he had given with his barely suppressed fury had been that they should run, shit quick, to the bridge, alert the bridge guards and get themselves across the fields on the far side of the stream. They alone had guns and a torch. They'd gone fast, scuttling in their goddamn shame. Five minutes lost and men were running back to the school steps with their torches, and Vuk was panting his way back from the armoury at the headquarters with an armful of rifles, with his pockets bulged by the magazines.
The line was formed.
It was a muddled story, it was something about the bastard breaking clear, and rolling under the lorry, and then going through Petar's fence, and then breaking Dragon's greenhouse… Where was the goddamn lorry? But Milan had to move the line. The torches caught at Petar's fence, and the broken glass of Dragon's greenhouse. There was the clatter in the line of rifles being loaded and cocked.
He glanced again at his watch. They should be in position now on the far side of the stream, and they would be raking the bank with their flashlights. They would drive the bastard to the bank… He gave the order for the line to move… and the minutes were crawling and lost.
Milan heard the curses from the line. The men wore their best trousers, and their best shoes, and their best sweaters or jackets. The women in their best dresses were streaming from the doorway behind him, and they carried away on plates the bread that had been baked for the evening and the fruit and the cheeses that had been taken earlier to the hall. It had been an attempt by his trapped village to throw off the mood, his own mood and everybody's, of being held prisoner, and the bastard had destroyed the attempt. He searched the faces of the women who carried the food home, because they had all heard his name given, and all heard the name of Dorrie Mowat, and the bastard had used the word that was coward. He searched the faces, and none met his, and the minutes on his watch were frittering away.
Evica was beside him, carrying in a linen cloth the food she had brought for the evening.
'Do you have him?'
The excitement of the chase, of being the king who gave the orders, slipped in him. 'No.'
Evica said, simply, 'I could not help myself, when he looked at me, when he asked who had met her. He was so… so bold.
I could not help myself when he faced me… What does it mean, the man coming to make a report…?' There was a shout. He did not answer her. Milan ran across the road. At the side fence in Petar's garden he was shown the plastic box. There was a single bread roll in the box, with squashed tomato and pressed cheese in the cut in the roll and half a bar of chocolate. He felt his nerves squirm in his belly. Another shout. The torches showed him the way. He climbed the fence between Petar's plot and Dragon's garden. Milan saw the broken glass pane on the roof of Dragon's greenhouse, and more torches shone inside the greenhouse. On the trays of spring lettuces was the fire extinguisher amongst the plants and the shards… It had been gone, it had been buried, and some nights he could even forget it, and the bastard had come to bring back for him the face of the young woman… He was shouting. Who saw the lorry? Was it just one lorry? What colour were the lorries? Which way did the lorries go, towards Glina or towards Vrginmost? The minutes slipping on his watch. Were the white lorries from a convoy of the United Nations? Milan Stankovic ran. He ran like the athlete he had once been. He ran for his life, and for the bastard's life. Hoarse, chest heaving, Milan scrambled into the office area of the headquarters. The minutes slipping. '… They all bad-mouthed her back in England. She was just a horrid young woman. There seemed to be a story about her for every year of her life, the stories seemed to queue up to foul-mouth her. Her mum told the stories worst, like it was something she had to get release from. The way of the release was to find out what happened to her. There was no
