‘We don’t know even where he is,’ she said.
‘Well, my crew’s on it, so I’d call it sixty-forty he’s toast.’ He looked at River. ‘What do you reckon?’
River said, ‘I don’t think it’s a joking matter.’
But he was thinking: fifty-fifty. Absolute tops, he’d give Hassan fifty-fifty of seeing lunchtime.
Curly was moaning, a long low keening sound, and his foot was twisted at a peculiar angle. Perhaps, Hassan thought, it was broken. One broken ankle versus two bound hands—that made for a level playing field. Or would have done, except that Hassan now had an axe.
On the whole, that gave him the edge.
Placing one foot heavily on the fallen Curly’s hand, Hassan rested the blade on the fallen Curly’s head.
‘Give me a reason not to kill you,’ he said.
Whatever Curly answered was lost in a mouthful of earth and a whimper of pain.
‘Give me a reason,’ Hassan repeated, lifting the axe an inch.
Curly turned his head aside and spat grit and leaf. ‘Foo’s ur.’
‘I’m supposed to understand that?’
He spat again. ‘My foot’s hurt.’
Hassan lowered the axe once more, so the blade touched Curly’s temple. He pressed down, and watched Curly’s eyes close and his features tighten. He wondered if the fear Curly felt was the same fear he’d felt himself. Since it seemed to have departed him now, he suspected it probably was. And how’s that for a joke, he wondered? How would that work with an audience? That the same fear Curly had set loose in Hassan’s gut was now burying its snout in his own bowels? But maybe not everyone would get it. Maybe you had to be there.
Another push on the axe loosed a trickle of blood down Curly’s face.
‘Did you say something?’
Curly had made a noise.
‘Did you?’
He made another one.
Wrapping his bound hands tightly round the axe handle, Hassan dropped into a crouch. The blade pressed heavily on the side of Curly’s head. He said, ‘Did you have something to say?’, and gave equal weight to each syllable.
Curly said, ‘D—do it.’
Or he might have said, ‘Don’t do it.’
Hassan waited, his eyes six inches from Curly’s. He wished there were some way he could see inside Curly’s head; some way he could allow light into Curly’s brain in a way that didn’t involve brute surgery. But there wasn’t. He was sure there wasn’t. So he leant a little closer.
‘You know what?’ Hassan said. ‘You make me ashamed I’m British.’
Then he stood and walked away.
He walked back to the car and then along the track that led to the distant road. He had no idea how far away it was. He didn’t care. He was thirsty, hungry and tired, which were all bad things; he was cold and filthy, and that was bad too. But his hands were no longer bound, because he had severed the cord with the blade of the axe; and fear was no longer chewing at his innards, because he’d left it behind in the woods. He was alive, and nobody had rescued him. He was alive because of who he was.
And maybe because Joanna Lumley had come through, too.
He saw no sign of Larry, and that didn’t matter. He saw no rabbits, either, nor heard any birds, and his sense of time had long deserted him, but before Hassan reached the road lights bloomed way ahead of him: flashing ovals which painted the trees blue and then blue and then blue. And soon people were rushing towards him in a fever of noise and motion.
‘Hassan Ahmed?’
The axe was taken gently away, and arms were holding him up.
‘You’re Hassan Ahmed?’
It was a simple enough question, and it didn’t take him long to find an answer.
‘Yes,’ he told them. ‘Yes, I am.’
And then he added, ‘I’m alive.’
They were very glad to hear it, he learned, as they carried him back to the world.
The roadworks have eased on Aldersgate. Traffic flows freely once more. If our inquisitive bus passenger of earlier acquaintance were to gaze at Slough House today on her way past, she might find its passage too swift for concentrated study, though on a London bus there always remains the possibility of inexplicable delay. But that aside, a glimpse is all that the new dispensation permits; one brief view of a young Chinese man with heavy-framed spectacles behind a monitor, and Slough House is in the past. Whatever used to happen there presumably continues to do so. Whatever haunts its fading paintwork doubtless still abides.
But fresh opportunities have arisen since our voyeur’s first journey. She can alight at the bus stop opposite, for instance, and take a seat, and gaze all day at the never-opening front door of Slough House, with no possibility that Jed Moody will emerge to encourage her departure. Such a vigil, though, would offer little in the way of entertainment, and besides, other views await: across the road, up the staircase at Barbican Station, over the pedestrian bridge, a brief sortie along a bricked-walkway, and—weather permitting—she’ll find a dry low wall on which to perch, and perhaps light a cigarette, and feast at her leisure on what she can see through the waiting windows.
