‘It’s okay, love,’ Sergeant Prav said to Lauren, whose face was ashen, her sightless eyes gazing up at the ceiling. ‘Help is on its way. You’re going to be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay.’
Then the rail spike hit Dennie right between the eyes and the world went away.
6
DESERTION
THE DESERTER DID THE THING HE DID BEST, WHICH was to run.
He burst from the shed and fired twice in the direction of the police lights to keep their heads down as he ran for the boundary fence that gave onto open fields. He saw Gar being savaged by the old woman’s dog, but sped by without slowing down. Sorry, chum, he thought. Trying to escape in the van was out of the question. Even though these first two officers were easily evaded in the confusion, soon there would be helicopters, cars, and the most up-to-date surveillance technology. There was no way he could outrun them, so the next best thing was to do what he had done at Loos – hide, sink, go under, and try to come up safely on the other side. Even the furrowed ground of the plots reminded him of No Man’s Land, the bean trellises like barbed wire in this light.
He clawed his way over the boundary fence and dropped into nettles and brambles on the other side, fought his way clear of them and dashed off along the fence until it began to run behind houses, then met a hedgerow that he turned to follow downhill, deeper into the field.
Behind him, the screams and shouts faded. Midsummer dawn was drawing the world around him in dim pastels, and dew soaked his trousers as he plunged through another field, and then another, over stiles and past fleeing sheep and puzzled-looking cows.
When he emerged onto a narrow lane between high hedgerows he stopped, stood very still, calmed his breathing and listened.
No shouts or sounds of pursuit. Possibly the faintest hum of a helicopter but equally that could have been distant traffic. A blackbird was trilling its morning song. It was tempting to feel optimistic, except that behind and underneath everything was that rolling wall of thunder that had pursued him ever since he had dragged himself clear of the French mud. In the hundred or so years of his life since then, it had sometimes seemed very near and sometimes – usually when he was with Ardwyn – so far away that he could forget about it for a while. Right now it was so close it felt like a tidal wave at his back threatening to fall on him.
They’d soon be throwing a circle around the area and filling it with uniforms, so he needed to get out of that circle as quickly as possible now. He set off along the road in the direction where it seemed to curve a bit more, for no other reason than it might give a better chance of cover if the first vehicle he saw was a police car.
Headlights swelled ahead, and he hesitated. It might be the police, and they might not have their flashing blues on, but he thought that unlikely given the hue and cry that must be erupting now. If he hid and it wasn’t then he’d have missed his chance.
So he stood in the middle of the road and thought Well, if this is it, this is it.
The car that screeched to a halt in front of him was a grubby white thing with mud all up the wheel arches, and by the time the driver had wound down his window and was shouting: ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ the deserter had walked up to the passenger side, opened the door and pointed the Webley at him.
‘I think I’m going to paint the inside of this car with your brains, chum,’ he said. ‘Unless you take me where I want to go.’
The driver – a potato-shaped man with a shaved head – gaped at him.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ said the deserter, and got in.
‘You can’t… you can’t…’
The deserter shut his door and pointed the gun right in the driver’s face, thumbing the hammer back. In the enclosed space of the car its mechanism was very loud. ‘Drive or die,’ he said. ‘Up to you.’
Pale and trembling, the man set off again. ‘Where to?’ he asked.
‘For the moment, that way will do,’ said the deserter, pointing his pistol at the road ahead.
As the light grew so did the vague stirrings of a plan to keep heading north until he hit the Peak District and then try to get lost in its moors and valleys. There was a hut he knew, and maybe a gamekeeper who still remembered him. For all their technology there were still corners of the world blind to prying electronic eyes.
They came to a junction where their lane was crossed by a larger B-road, but with no signposts to tell him what lay in either direction.
‘Which way?’ asked the driver.
He didn’t know. Nothing looked familiar. The terrified man behind the steering wheel was breathing very quickly and the stench of his sweat was nauseating. It was all the deserter could do to resist putting a bullet in him right here and now.
‘Turn right here,’ he said, because a decision had to be made, even if it was the wrong one. If this is it, this is it.
As the driver indicated and started to turn the steering wheel, flashing blue lights appeared to their right and a pair of police cars came barrelling down the B-road towards them. The deserter pressed the gun’s
