James was on my left, with Kilduff behind him. Bassett was behind me, enjoying prodding the small of my back with a machine pistol. They called them Burp Guns or something. I knew that he’d make me take off my jacket if he shot me, because he’d had his eye on it as soon as I came down the stairs. When their man went down, and the rustling started, they moved outside of us: Kilduff to the left and Big B out to my right. Then someone stepped into the road in front of Kilduff, and a church bell went off in my right ear.
There was some movement down by the cab of the truck, and its narrow beamed lights came on, giving us some weak illumination. The church bell was someone belting the other Bassett over the helmet with the full flat of a long-handled spade. It must have melted his brains, because he sat down immediately, with his feet splayed out in front of him. He dropped his MP, and made funny little gurgling noises. I immediately cringed, waiting for the spade to swing on me. The figure confronting Kilduff was the little girl I had seen earlier. She had her hand back over her head with half a brick in it. I suppose that it could have been something nastier. He swung his pistol her way, but he was going to be a loser all along. England slammed into him with his shoulder, and Kilduff started to stumble sideways among the bricks. The girl was good. She would have been a bloody good point fielder if Jerry ever played cricket. She could even hit a moving target. Her brick piece caught him on the forehead, under the rim of his helmet, which tipped forwards across his face as he fell. James threw himself across the body to pin it down, and when the Bürgermeister’s wife stepped up to put another spade against Kilduff’s neck, with her foot on the blade’s shoulder, that was it, really. Les slammed Bassett’s helmet sideways with another mighty, ringing blow of his spade, and the policeman slipped sideways to lie on the road as if he was asleep. Although his eyes were open, and he was still alive. His right hand twitched spasmodically as if it had a life of its own.
Les said, ‘My effing head aches. What did they do to it?’
I told him. He massaged his brow vigorously, and cut James’s wrist cords with that horrible black-bladed knife of his. They should have taken that away from him.
From James there was, ‘Thank you that man: I’d say Many thanks, Raffles; but how the hell did you let them creep up on us in the first place?’
There was this thing about Les: honesty, and syllable-specific accuracy when you needed it most.
‘I was a prat,’ he said, and, ‘It won’t happen again, sir.’
James wouldn’t let him take it all on his own.
‘I suppose it would have helped if Charlie and I had managed to keep our wits about us for a change?’
‘No call for that, sir. You’re officers.’
Kilduff made a little gurgling noise, quite similar to Bassett’s sound effects soon after Les gonged him. Mrs Bürgermeister’s leg was getting tired, and her weight was beginning to bear on the spade, which was beginning to bear on Kilduff’s throat. James waved her away. He had taken Kilduff’s pistol, and Les had Bassett’s submachine gun. He kicked Kilduff to his feet, stuck his pistol in his ear, and cocked it.
‘After you, Captain America,’ he told him.
The truck’s lights were killed just as we reached it. The boy with wire-rimmed specs was sitting behind the wheel. He had lit a cigarette from a packet on the dash. The American driver was on his knees with his hands in his lap. Like he was praying. His eyes were open, like Bassett’s, but unlike him, he wasn’t breathing heavily. He wasn’t doing much breathing at all. To be frank, he wasn’t doing any. There was a little trickle of blood from his mouth to his chin, and a little grin on his face. It was self deprecating; as if acknowledging that he’d done a stupid thing. I could go along with that: dying uncalled for is often a stupid thing. Kilduff gawked, and then he turned his head away.
He said, ‘Aw shit; they killed him with a garden fork.’ He retched, but nothing came up.
It was why he was still kneeling. The fork had slammed into him from the back. As he had sunk to his knees and then fallen back, its handle had lodged against the road, keeping him upright. The boy winked at me from behind the wheel. Then he blew on his fingers, the way you see the hero blow on his knuckles after a fist fight in a gangster film. I could have retched myself, except that it would have been impolite. I could still sense the people moving in the shadows on either side of the street. It was like hearing waves lapping on a shoreline you couldn’t see.
I asked James, ‘You think we’re all right now?’ When he didn’t answer I added, ‘Sir.’
I don’t think that it was that. I think that he was pausing to gather his thoughts.
‘I’m not sure I’d say that. I think that we’re better off than we were half an hour ago when these bastards caught up with you.’
We were back sitting near the stove in the Bürgermeister’s kitchen. The American Private Bassett was sitting awkwardly at our feet, his legs crossed. His arms were bound uncomfortably behind him: wrist to wrist, elbow to elbow. He was sweating like Niagara, which
