anyway.’ Something not very good had happened inside, and she was trying to make light of it. She shepherded them down the steps just as her mother appeared in the doorway. Hazel looked distraught.
Charlie got up and took a couple of steps towards her, then jerked his head at me to go and check.
I pulled open the screen door and went in. Silky and Alan were standing in front of the television. This was no kids’ DVD; the screen was filled with jerky, urgent images. I heard screams and the rattle of automatic gunfire.
Silky turned to me. ‘It’s near Russia somewhere. A siege. They’re shooting children.’
The picture cut to soldiers trying to make entry into a big square concrete office block. The rolling captions announced that terrorists were holding an estimated three hundred people hostage. The town of Kazbegi was in the north of Georgia, on the border with Russia. Many of the hostages were thought to be women and children.
I watched as a small group of soldiers fired their AKs wildly into the windows and others tried to make entry with sledgehammers.
The camera shifted to an armoured vehicle ramming into a door. Screams filled the TV’s speakers.
Women and children tumbled out of the building, only to be caught in vicious crossfire. Black smoke billowed through broken glass. Elsewhere, I could see panic-stricken faces pressed against the panes.
Soldiers gesticulated wildly to get them to stand aside, but it wasn’t happening. They were frozen to the spot.
The picture cut again to a reporter hiding behind an armoured vehicle, her pretty dark eyes wide as saucers as she extracted and processed information from the chaos. All around her, what looked like half the army was popping up and firing pistols and assault rifles. I was watching a gangfuck, Georgian style.
As two attack helicopters rattled overhead, she shouted into her microphone, in an Eastern European accent with an American twang, that the building was a regional government office; a census was being conducted and that was why there were so many people inside. The attack was thought to be an Islamist militant group protesting against the Caspian pipeline. Fuck knows how CNN had got someone there so quick, but they had. The breaking news caption now put the death toll at thirty.
Silky held her hands to her face. ‘Oh my God, those poor kids!’
A soldier ran across the screen. Cradled in his arms was the limp body of a child, his clothing charred and smouldering.
There was an explosion inside the building. The camera shuddered as a rapid flash hit the windows on the first floor. Glass blew out, then smoke billowed from the holes.
I could hear a series of shouted orders, but the chaos continued. Usual story; more chiefs than Indians.
A couple of soldiers who had successfully made entry jumped back out of a ground-floor window, one of them with flames dancing on his uniform.
The camera zoomed in on a fleet of ambulances coming down a road, some civilian, some military. The two helicopters still rattled overhead.
Two blood-covered women dashed from the building, gathering up whatever dazed and bloodied children they could as they ran.
There was another prolonged and totally indiscriminate exchange of gunfire as the camera zoomed in on two kids jumping from a first-floor window to escape the flames.
Hazel hit the remote and the TV died. ‘Enough. Not in my house.’
4
I sat next to Silky on the veranda as the sun came up, listening to last night’s events being endlessly dissected on the radio as I cut orange after orange for her to put through the juicer. Getting the Tindalls breakfast seemed the least we could do to repay their hospitality, and I hoped it might help put a spring in their step. The atmosphere had been pretty subdued after Hazel switched off the TV. We’d helped clear up in near silence, then gone to bed. Hazel hadn’t been at all happy about the way the real world had come in uninvited, and Charlie had been tense, preoccupied.
‘Hear that?’ Silky whispered. ‘They now estimate about sixty dead and a hundred and sixty injured.’ She poured another few oranges’ worth of juice into a jug. ‘That’s over half the people who were in the building. It’s terrible.’
‘It’s not so bad, you know, as sieges go.’ In the corner of the paddock, the old bay was treating himself to an early-morning dust bath. ‘You have to work on the basis that they’re all dead from the beginning anyway. Even a single survivor is a bonus in a situation like that.’
She stopped squeezing and straightened up. ‘I keep thinking about that poor child. The one who’d been burned. Did you see the soldier holding him?’
I cut another couple of oranges and passed them across. It seemed to be taking an awful lot of fruit to produce not very much juice. ‘The place was probably rigged with explosives. We saw one lot go off. I’m surprised there aren’t many more dead.’
‘But all those soldiers looked out of control. They didn’t know what they were doing.’
‘You know, if twenty per cent or fewer get dropped it’s a success. What those soldiers were doing was reacting to what was happening, whether it was the correct thing to do or not.’
‘Dropped? What is dropped? Killed? For a panel-beater, you seem to know an awful lot about these things…’
‘Don’t you box-heads read
Silky pulled a face before going back to her task. ‘You certainly don’t. The only magazines you read have parachutes on the cover.’
I was still laughing when Hazel appeared in the doorway in her dressing gown. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were red and shiny.
Silky jumped to her feet. ‘Hazel, are you all right?’
Atear rolled down her cheek. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ I said. ‘What are you on about?’
‘He’s not here.’
A lot of thoughts raced through my mind in the next split second, and all at a thousand miles an hour. Charlie had withdrawn into his shell after the news broadcasts. ‘That stuff really seemed to get to Hazel,’ I’d said. ‘She’s been like that ever since Steven died,’ he’d replied. ‘She wants to shut out the real world, keep us all from being hurt like that again. That’s what this place is all about.’
He’d been very morose all evening, come to think of it, but I’d put that down to the Toohey’s; it had been looking more and more like he had a drink problem. And all that stuff about shooting horses… fuck, he wouldn’t have taken it into his head to drive off into the night and top himself, would he? He wouldn’t have been the first.
Silky wiped her hands on her jeans and wrapped her arms around Hazel. ‘Charlie has gone somewhere? Would you like some coffee, or maybe some tea?’
I glanced across at the parking area at the side of the house. The Land Cruiser was missing. ‘Maybe he’s gone to fetch some croissants.’ I gave her my biggest smile. ‘I noticed a little bakery about a thousand miles back.’
Silky glared at me as she comforted Hazel. ‘It’s not funny, Nick.’ She was right; wrong time, wrong place.
‘I’m sorry. You sure he hasn’t left a note or something?’
She shook her head. ‘He didn’t say anything to you? You two were talking together a long time out here.’
Silky’s head bounced between the pair of us as she tried to get Hazel to sit down. ‘Anyone want to tell me what’s going on?’
I touched her hand. ‘Later.’
She got the hint. Hazel finally sat down and Silky disappeared inside the house to make that tea she’d promised.
