Blast From the Past (31 page)

‘How could I have got over you, Jack?’ she said. ‘You were still there with me, growing inside me every day.’

Jack knew that this was nonsense. He tried to shoot, but still he could not. Because if it were true, although it could not be, but if it were true, it would be so … Jack shut the thought from his mind. He had come to kill this woman.

‘It was a boy, Jack,’ Polly whispered. ‘We have a son.’

All Jack’s life he had wanted a child, and being a soldier, of course, he had particularly wanted a son. He and Courtney had not had children; she’d been young and ambitious for her career and they’d grown apart so quickly. But to have a son with Polly! Jack had often daydreamed of exactly that, imagining what a wonderful spirited boy such a union might create. Jack struggled to regain control. He had no business to be indulging in fantasies of this sort at such a time. Imagining Polly as the mother of his child reminded him of how much he was still in love with her, but he could not afford to be in love with her. He had a higher love to answer to – his love of power, of ambition, his love of self.

Yet still he could not pull the trigger.

‘What’s his name?’ Jack asked, allowing himself to relish the dream.

‘Misty Dawn,’ Polly replied instantly.

‘Misty fucking Dawn? You called a boy Misty Dawn?’

‘He changed it to Colin when he was at school.’

‘What was wrong with Jack?’

‘Everything was wrong with Jack, you bastard.’

Jack knew that he was talking too much. He knew that it was time to get on, time to do the deed. The deed that was the heavy duty of men who would be leaders of men; those who sought to command must know how to sacrifice.

Polly could see Jack’s hesitation. ‘You can’t kill me, Jack,’ Polly said slowly and clearly. ‘I’m the mother of your child.’

This was madness. Jack knew it was madness. ‘You were on the pill,’ he said.

‘I lied to you. I knew you were paranoid about anything that might damage your precious career, so I lied. I don’t approve of putting chemicals into my body. I was using a natural sea sponge and it leaked.’

That sounded convincing. Polly had been just the sort of over-confident, illogical, ideological young nut who would have deployed a sponge as a barrier to a liquid. Just the sort of cocky idiot who would have considered her principles more powerful than the laws of physics. On the other hand, she had not mentioned anything before. Jack struggled to think, not an easy
thing
with Polly’s eyes burning into him, pleading for her life, a life he held so dear.

‘Fifteen years old, Polly,’ Jack said. ‘That’s all he’d be.’

‘That’s right, he’s fifteen.’

With a tremendous effort of concentration Jack began to get over his initial shock and doubt, and began to regain control.

‘Then where is he?’ Jack asked. ‘Doesn’t a young boy need his mom?’

‘He’s at his gran’s!’ Polly replied, perhaps a shade too quickly, too desperately. ‘She spoils him. Lets him drink alcopops.’

Jack knew now. ‘One photograph, Polly,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I don’t see one photograph. Not one. Show me a photograph of our son, Polly. As a baby, as a toddler, now. One photograph, Polly.’

Polly could see that the game was up. She’d known that she could not keep up the lie for long, long enough for a course of action to present itself, long enough perhaps for her to find a way to reach across her bed and press the panic button on the wall. But it was not to be.

‘I … I don’t have any,’ she replied.

Polly had not wanted the abortion. She’d loved Jack so much and suddenly she had found herself still carrying a part of him. But at the time she’d felt that she had no choice: a seventeen-year-old girl with a fatherless baby? There’d been a girl like that in the year above
Polly
at school. How Polly had pitied that girl, old before her time, her whole youth sacrificed for a single moment of passion. Polly loved Jack, despite what he had done to her, and she had wanted to keep his baby, but not in exchange for her life and that was how she had seen it at the time. At seventeen she had thought that having a baby would be the end of her life. What cruel and terrible irony to know now that had she kept it, it might have saved her life.

‘I’m sorry, Polly,’ Jack said.

And he was sorry, so very sorry that she had no child to give him. Sorry that they had not shared their lives together, sorry that he had ever left her in order to serve a cold, ungrateful country. Most of all, sorry that despite all that, he would still have to kill her.

Polly sensed his resolve hardening, sensed her life slipping away.

‘You said you still loved me,’ Polly pleaded, dropping to her knees.

‘I do still love you,’ Jack replied and for the second time that evening there were tears in his eyes.

‘Then you can’t kill me,’ she begged.

‘Polly,’ said Jack, and it was almost as if it was he who was doing the pleading. ‘Try to understand. If I make chairman of the joint chiefs, do you know what the next step could be for me?’ Polly had started to sob. ‘President. Yes, president. Leader of the world’s only superpower. There was a time when men waged war all their lives over a few square miles of mud and huts. They sacrificed their sons and grandsons to defend a
paltry
tribal crown. People have fought and murdered in pursuit of power since the dawn of time. Rivers of blood have flowed for it. For little power, for nothing power! I have before me the possibility of being the leader of the world! The world, Polly! Your existence severely compromises that possibility. Are you seriously suggesting that with such a destiny within my grasp I should shrink from the killing of just one single soul?’

Well, there was a foolish question. Polly could see that, even through the blind terror of her tears.

‘Of course I am, you bloody fool.’

‘Because I love you?’ Jack asked.

‘I don’t care why.’

‘Love is the enemy of ambition, Polly,’ Jack said. ‘I made that decision sixteen years ago, in the early hours of the morning in a hotel room. There’s no point going back on it now.’

‘Jack!’

But Polly could see in Jack’s eyes that her time was up.

‘Like I said,’ and his voice seemed to come from somewhere else, ‘people die every day.’

Jack was a stranger to Polly now. She no longer recognized him. Whatever it was that she had loved in him had simply disappeared; all that remained was pride and ambition. It was as if had shut down his heart and soul, had removed himself emotionally from the scene. He had gone over this moment in his mind a thousand times and knew that he could not trust himself
to
say goodbye, he never had been able to say goodbye to Polly.

And so in his mind at least he stood apart. It was not his finger squeezing the trigger but some other self, a separate personality too strong to be denied. He watched himself as the story unfolded, knowing the sequence of events exactly, like a series of stills from an old movie.

The soldier shoots the girl in the forehead. The girl falls back upon her bed, stone dead. The soldier wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his coat (he is surprised to discover how upset he is) and takes a last look round. Confident that there is nothing of his left in the room save for a single bullet, he picks up his bag and without looking again at the dead girl he lets himself out of her flat. Ensuring that his overcoat entirely covers his uniform, the soldier descends to the front door and, having checked that there is nobody about in the street outside, he quietly leaves the house. He then drives himself back to the private hotel in Kensington in which he has been staying, parks his plain hirecar in the private car park, and returns to his bedroom. The following morning he is collected in an army car and begins his journey to Brussels in order to continue with the business of NATO.

That was what was supposed to happen, anyway.

One bullet between the eyes and leave.

But Jack did not shoot. He had meant to, he had been about to, but he had talked too long and he had missed his chance. Because in what was to have been
Polly’s
final second on earth, at the point when Jack began to draw his finger back on the flimsy resistance of the trigger, there was a knock at Polly’s door. More than a knock – a bang, a thud, the crash of a body throwing itself against the solid panels.

56

THE BUG HAD
remained frozen for some time after killing the milkman. He had stood on the sodden, sticky stair carpet, gaping at the corpse that he had made, wondering what on earth he could do now. He could, in fact, do anything, because it was all up for him. He had stabbed a man to death and there was no hope of escape from the consequences. The police knew that he was about and that he had a knife; his mother had made sure of that. They would put him away now, that much was sure, not just for a month or two but for ever. His life was over and it was so unfair. All he had been trying to do was protect her. He had acted always out of love.

And now he would never have her, not even once. He would be locked away from her, never again to feast his eyes upon her beauty. Even if they ever did let him out, which he doubted, she would have long since grown old and ugly.

Then a wicked thought began to grow in Peter’s mind. He would have her, he would have her that very night, before the police arrived. He would go upstairs, kill the American and make love to Polly, rape her if she
resisted
. Why not? He had nothing left in the world to lose now. He was a murderer already and hadn’t he earned his moment with her, earned it with his love? Surely even her cold heart would not expect him to go to prison without even once knowing that for which he had sacrificed his life.

Peter turned away from the dead milkman and bounded up the stairs, all caution forgotten. He knew that the corpse could be discovered at any moment and the alarm raised. He knew that if he was to act it must be immediately. If he was to have time to force himself upon Polly and justify the life of incarceration that he faced then it must be now.

At the top of the stairs the door to Polly’s flat was closed as Peter had known it would be. He hurled his body against it, hammering with the fist of his left hand. In his right hand he still held the knife, his fingers clenched around the bloody hilt, sticky with his own blood and that of the milkman. Peter was no longer afraid of the American. He had killed once, he could kill again. The moment the door opened he would stab his hated rival and then force Polly to his will.

‘Let me in, you slag!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve let him do it to you! Why not let me?’

Inside the flat Jack leapt to the door. Whatever it was that was going on outside the noise would surely wake the whole house. There would soon be irate figures in the stairwell and one of them would be bound to ring the police. Jack had only moments in which to silence this new menace.

He flung open the door. Outside stood the Bug, knife in hand. Peter was caught momentarily by surprise, but then lunged forward with a shout of triumph. But the Bug was no more of a threat to Jack than if he truly had been a bug. Jack stepped neatly aside and Peter stumbled forward into the room. In some ways even this pathetic circumstance was a small triumph for Peter. He was inside Polly’s home for the very first time. He glanced round, trying to take it in, store it up, memorize more of Polly’s life.

But Peter had no more need of memories.

Jack raised his pistol and shot the Bug, as he intended to shoot Polly, straight between the staring, gaping eyes. Peter was dead before he hit the floor. Jack then turned back to Polly in order to complete his self-appointed mission.

But it was too late. The Bug had foiled Jack’s plan, providing Polly with a tiny window of opportunity in which to defend her life. For as Jack turned back towards her Polly was already reaching up to the head of her bed; her finger was already on the panic button. Instantly as she pushed it the room was filled with the noise of jangling bells and outside the open door the stairwell began to glow a jarring intermittent red as the alarm light installed there began to flash.

Jack met Polly’s eye, a surprised look upon his face.

‘It’s connected to the police station!’ Polly shouted, having to raise her voice in order to make herself heard above the jangling of the bells. ‘They’ll be here in two minutes at this time of night.’

Jack stood, gun in hand, and for the first time that night he seemed at a loss.

‘Go, Jack!’ Polly shouted. ‘Run, get out now!’

But it was too late to run. Jack had killed a man; the bloodied corpse lay at his feet and the forces of the law were almost upon him. Even now he could hear a faint siren amidst the shrieking of the bells. They would be in the street in moments. There was no escape. Yes, he had killed Peter in self-defence, but there would still have to be a police investigation. Even if Polly stood by him, and there was no reason why she should, even if she kept his terrible threat to her life to herself, the whole story of their past must eventually come out. Then would come the suspicions and the whisperings. Why had he been in her flat that night? Why had he been carrying a gun? Despite what Jack had said to Polly, it was not common practice for American soldiers to go about London armed. At the very best, Jack’s career would end in pathetic and contemptible disgrace, and at worst he would be imprisoned for manslaughter. What a mess.

Downstairs, a shrill woman’s voice joined the chorus of complaint now ringing round the building. The whole house had been aroused.

‘Run, Jack!’ Polly repeated desperately. ‘Get out! Get out now!’

He loved her more in that moment than he had ever loved her. He had tried to kill her and yet still she cared for him. Such was the power of love, love which he had denied all his life, love which he had tried that night to
murder
. But he had failed and it was love not him that would survive.

The police were at the front door now. In a moment they would be in the house.

‘I love you, Polly,’ said Jack, ‘but I don’t deserve you and I do not deserve the trust of my country. I have failed in my duty and brought disgrace and dishonour upon everything I care for.’