A bird’s eye view would have offered this: two dark figures scrambling on a carpet many shades of white.
The bird wouldn’t have been interested, though. The bird wouldn’t have been out in this weather.
Frank had moved faster than River expected, even given previous experience. And he had moved slower than he should have done, which Frank might have been banking on; that some bone-deep instinct would stay his finger. Most boys didn’t shoot their fathers. Most fathers, too, wouldn’t have known to feint before lunging; River’s bullet tugged at Frank’s sleeve before spending itself harmlessly over the sea, and then River was on his back, Frank on top of him, pinning his gun arm down, forearm across his throat, and trying to push his knee up into River’s crotch.
“Let go of the gun, kid.”
“Fuck . . . you.”
With his left fist he tried to batter Frank’s head, but couldn’t get a direct shot: the arm across his throat was blocking his shoulder too, weakening his punches. Frank smiled through them, or bared his teeth anyway; absorbing the damage.
“Be easier on both of us . . .”
River’s vision was fading to black; dark spots exploding into other, smaller spots. He should have shot Frank while he had the chance. It might not be what the O.B. would have done, but his mother wouldn’t have batted an eye.
He moved his lips. Mouthed words.
“I can’t hear you . . .”
He tried again.
“Still can’t hear you.”
He tried again:
“. . . Dad . . .”
Frank moved closer, to catch River’s drift.
River bit his ear.
For moments there was crazy confusion: he could breathe again, but was breathing in blood. And then he was rolling, but not quite free; each locked in the other’s embrace, and at last River got something like a decent punch in, and felt his father’s cheek beneath his fist, and then felt something else: a swift and sudden moment of release.
A bird’s eye view would have offered this: two dark figures scrambling on a carpet many shades of white.
And then only one.
Without admitting he was Cyril, the soldier shifted his weight one foot to the other, and tilted his chin. He scanned the path behind Coe, checking for reinforcements. Then said, “Didn’t figure you were a walker.”
“I’m on my own,” said Coe. “Anyone in the barn?”
Cyril shook his head slowly.
“But you’ve seen them.”
Cyril said, “You’re with the woman? She caught me a good one with a fucking monkey wrench.”
“I wish I’d seen that.”
Cyril pointed to a mark on his temple, more black than blue. “That right there. I was slurring words the rest of the night.”
“You still are, a bit.”
“I should get my head seen to.”
Coe nodded.
“But you know what it’s like, out in the field.”
“I’m not really a field man,” Coe admitted.
“The boss said something, Slough House? That you lot?”
Coe nodded.
“Said you were a bunch of rejects.”
“That’s harsh. But fair. And you’re a mercenary, right?”
Cyril shrugged. “It’s a living.”
“Pay well?”
“Yeah, it’s good. But sometimes there’s months between jobs, you know? You have to budget.”
“Hard to get a mortgage,” Coe suggested.
“Well, I move around a lot, anyway.”
“Still, it’s an investment. Thought about buy-to-let?”
“I’m a mercenary. Not a pirate.”
This was a good point.
“Anyway,” said Cyril. “You wouldn’t want to live where my sort of work is.” He looked around. “Here’s not bad, mind. You like the countryside?”
Coe shrugged.
Cyril said, “You should give it a try, man. Air’s a lot better, know what I’m saying?”
“There’s shit everywhere, though,” Coe said. “And I gather they have diversity issues.”
“No, that’s true.”
They stood for a while, gazing out across snow-laden fields; pretty much everything white—barring Cyril—as far as the eye could see. A bird of prey was hovering, one black smudge, and just for a second Coe wondered what that was like—to balance on the wind, and track your prey from an aerial distance. Drop on it from a direction it barely knew existed.
A lot to be said for an ending you couldn’t see coming.
He said, “Just out of interest, what did the boy do? That made it necessary for you lot to come after him, I mean?”
Cyril said, “We don’t get a prospectus, man.”
“Right.”
“It’s just a job.”
“Right.”
A gust of wind had snowflakes dancing in front of Coe’s eyes.
“I’m not saying that makes me blameless or anything.”
Coe didn’t have an answer for that.
They stood a short while longer, each lost in thought, but that obviously couldn’t last forever.
“Well,” Cyril said at last. “We should probably get on with it.”
He sounded genuinely sorry.
“Guess so,” said Coe.
His hand dropped to his pocket for his blade.
“Where?”
Emma Flyte’s thoughts were rattling round her head, loosened by the last two blows.
“Won’t ask again . . .”
There was something of the war zone about it. A forest track, if a tame one. Snow falling, if British snow. And this man versed in brutality; in regarding others as damage waiting to happen.
“. . . Shed,” she said.
