I’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of the police: I was used to a life where either you solved your own problems or you died. I rather liked the idea of handing this over to the cops.
I should have known it was optimistic though. No sooner had I said ‘Oh yeah’ than I heard someone coming up the stairs. I made a face at Homer. He went white and put the phone away. I made the same face at Gavin but there was no need — he was always so quick to pick up on what was happening.
I grabbed Alastair’s cricket bat and Homer and Gavin each took a stump. We tiptoed to the door. Homer took one side of it, with Gavin behind him, and I took the other. I had the wardrobe behind me, which wasn’t so good as I wouldn’t be able to get a good swing.
The footsteps outside sounded confident. And they sounded like they were coming straight towards Alas- tair’s room. I had the horrible feeling that it might be Alastair and we were about to knock him into another dimension, but the steps sounded too old and heavy for Alastair.
The handle turned. I have no idea why an enemy soldier was coming into this room, unless he’d suddenly decided on a game of cricket with his mates, but he didn’t hesitate. The door opened and he started to enter. Homer took a swing straight away, before the man was right inside, which was a mistake as it gave him an opportunity to back out again. Nevertheless Homer got him across the forehead, with a hell of a crack. The man put his hands to his face and staggered backwards. Blood spurted between his fingers. But now he was out in the corridor again. He was having trouble standing but he let out a noise, a sort of cry and yell at the same time. I’d followed him but I couldn’t stop him doing that. There wasn’t time for much of a backswing there either, but I belted him as hard as I could, on the top of his head. There was a terrible clunking noise, like I’d hit a solid rock. His eyes rolled and his mouth opened and he dropped to his knees. Homer hit him again with a full backswing, this time to the side of his head. The whole thing was pretty disgusting. I hauled off Gavin, who was sneaking round to my other side so he could have a go. Gavin had been corrupted by the war enough already; I didn’t want him to get even worse.
The man fell sideways and lay on the carpet. Blood poured from his scalp. You could see the stain, the lake, quickly spreading across the carpet. His eyes were now closed.
We waited anxiously, watching over the stair railing, to see if anyone had heard. The door downstairs was still shut, so that was in our favour. But I saw it open again. I darted back. I heard a man’s voice, in a foreign language, calling out what sounded like a name. And he was aiming his voice right up to us.
‘Oh geez,’ I thought. ‘He’s calling for his mate.’ The same mate who was lying on the floor to my left, bleeding so freely that the carpet was already wet and soggy.
I glanced at Homer. He’d picked up my cricket bat and was on the other side of the stairwell. It seemed like a huge gulf suddenly stretched between us. We all retreated a bit, Homer towards Shannon’s room, Gavin and I towards the door of Alastair’s room. A floorboard creaked under me and I shuddered at the sound. The man called again. This time he seemed puzzled.
Still going backwards I got a better idea. On hands and knees I scuttled back to the unconscious body. I knelt beside him and checked his pocket, the one I could reach. Just a packet of cigarettes and some coins. I tried to roll him over. He let out a low groan. Gavin helped me. I glimpsed the triumph in his face as we saw, at the same time, a big bulge in the left pocket. Either this guy was glad to see… but no. He was unconscious. It had to be a gun.
I worked it out of the pocket. I wasn’t sure if the man downstairs had heard the groan. But I had to assume the worst. I mightn’t have much time. Thank God the war had taught me how to use a hand gun. It was all right for Gavin to think our troubles were over, now that I had a revolver, but it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t know if the thing was loaded, let alone how many bullets were in it, how many enemy soldiers were down there, whether the gun even worked.
Homer was next to the hall cupboard again. Gavin had retreated to the doorway of Alastair’s bedroom. I thought I heard a creak, a step, on the staircase. I gestured for Homer to go into the closet and Gavin into the bedroom. Neither boy moved. I heard another sound from the staircase. I gestured at the two boys again, furiously, and this time they seemed to take some notice.
I couldn’t waste any more time on them. I had to know about the revolver, whether it was loaded or not. I pulled back the slide as quietly as I could, and felt relieved to see the dull gleam of the shiny little metal cap. But the noise as I closed it again sounded like a car door slamming. I glanced up. The man was almost there already. I could see the top of his head. He didn’t seem too suspicious yet — he was just walking up the stairs. Well, he was about to become suspicious as hell. If only we’d had time to move the body. But the patch of blood would have been there. Anyway, the whole war was full of ‘if onlys’. Couldn’t think about them, not now.
I was crouched over the body when the man reached the top of the stairs. He looked to his left first. Luckily Homer had disappeared. It gave me time to see that the man had a gun in his hand. I had been thinking of something like ‘Put your hands up’. Now I decided I’d say ‘Drop your gun’. But as he turned towards me and I tried to speak, I couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat. My throat felt like a rusted-up hinge. And I had no WD40. I knew no sounds would be coming out of there.
I saw the light of understanding flame in the man’s eyes. Understanding and fear. He started to leap to his lef t. He didn’t have much room to move. He raised his revolver.
That’s when I shot him. I didn’t mean to shoot more than once, because I knew I might need every bullet in the magazine, assuming there were any bullets in the magazine, but my finger kind of spasmed and I let off two shots before I could get control again.
The guy spun around to his left, almost a complete revolution. His mouth opened but his eyes seemed to open even wider. He fell backwards, landing on the top couple of steps. His knees were sticking up and they stopped him from sliding down the staircase. His head suddenly fell to the left and the life went out of him. You could see it go.
I was still frozen, still kneeling on the carpet. I think I would have stayed there half an hour but Gavin burst out from Alastair’s bedroom and grabbed me by the shoulder. I’m sure he heard the shots.
At the same time the door of the room below opened, and a cacophony of voices flooded out. There were shouts directed upstairs and a scrabble of boots across the polished floor. I assumed they were calling to the two missing men. I suppose at that stage they didn’t know whether the shots had been fired in error, from one of their friend’s guns, or whether someone like me was in the house and cutting loose.
When no-one answered their calls they figured out that things were not going according to their script.
By then Gavin and I had moved quickly, as quietly as we could, down the corridor. We were outside Homer’s closet. I opened the door a little and whispered, ‘They’re coming, we’ll go in Sam’s room,’ and closed the door again. We went on a few steps. We were now opposite the bedroom. I pushed Gavin in there and I stood in the doorway, trying to keep him behind me, and at the same time keeping a watch down the corridor.
Now I had time to check the magazine and the chamber. Three rounds. Sheez. It sounded like at least three men were coming up the stairs. But the revolver was all we had. Suddenly those other little weapons, the cricket bat and stumps, seemed a waste of time.
CHAPTER 21
A long wait followed, maybe four minutes. I heard a murmur of voices at one stage: I think when they saw their dead buddy lying on the top steps. I knew they were still making their way up the stairs though. I heard occasional whispered comments, and the slow ‘urrrhhh’ noise of a step as the weight was gradually taken off it.
A head suddenly appeared, almost at floor level, looking along the corridor both ways then quickly withdrawing. It was like a tortoise sticking out its neck, but just for a moment. It happened at a speed no tortoise would have recognised. I was left wondering if I’d imagined it.
I didn’t think he’d seen me. I eased back a little further into the doorway. Gavin prodded me. ‘What?’ he asked, with a whisper. It intrigued me that a deaf kid was so good at whispering and moving quietly. Maybe he’d learned it during the war.
‘One soldier,’ I mouthed back, holding up a finger.
‘One?’
