Day of the Assassins (2 page)

I
t was four pm. Jack stood by the imposing wrought iron gates as school dispersed. He turned the collar of his blazer up and stamped his feet to thwart the biting autumn wind that whistled round the Victorian buildings. Until ten years ago the buildings had been empty; they had only been revived by an endowment from a reclusive benefactor. The local community was grateful that the secluded site and its surrounding parkland had been redeveloped – it brought in much needed money. A lot of the local kids now attended the school and its reputation was growing.

Jack’s hands were turning pink with the cold. He rubbed them together.

“Where is he?”

His head was still buzzing from double history, which had just ended. They were doing the First World War. Dr Pendelshape, the history teacher, had become even more animated than usual. The man was obsessed. Even though it was a world away, Jack could not help being caught up in Pendelshape’s story. Maybe it was because he had seen some of it in
Point-of-Departure
… or because of Angus’s story yesterday about Ludwig. He remembered the opening titles from
Point-
of-Departure
with its black-and-white pictures of the crusty, moustached generals of the great European imperial powers and their paraphernalia of office – medals, uniforms – all the grandeur of empire.

Pendelshape had explained about the new military hardware of that time. Apparently, there were howitzers that could belch a shell of Jack’s size thirty kilometres away. They were launched way out of sight and would land in a maelstrom of shrapnel and fire that would create a hole bigger than a house. There were new guns that could
fire six hundred rounds in one minute, dismembering anything in sight. How had Pendelshape put it? That’s right, he had said, “It all lay amassed and untried in that beautiful European summer of 1914 that was poised, unknowingly, for the bloodiest war that mankind had ever unleashed upon itself.” When he had said it, Jack had thought that Pendelshape was about to burst into tears.

Despite his interest, Jack hadn’t hung about after school to chat like he sometimes did. He got on well with Pendelshape. But he reckoned today he should really be thinking about, well, about happier things. After all, today was his birthday.

He didn’t want to wait any longer. He stamped his feet again and shivered. Suddenly he heard the pop and whine of a motorbike buzzing up the hill from the lower car park, trailing a plume of blue smoke from its 125cc two-stroke engine. Jack’s heart sank. Angus had brought the bike to school again.

The blue and yellow Husqvarna WRE trail machine skidded to a halt, but Angus had misjudged the kerb, and Jack jumped back to avoid being squashed by the front tyre.

“Idiot!”

Angus cut the engine and the air was suddenly still. He removed the full face helmet, revealing a mop of straight black hair. At sixteen, Angus was a year older than Jack and at one metre seventy-seven, he was also fifteen centimetres taller. With all the sport he did, plus helping his dad out on the farm, Angus was strong and broad shouldered. He had a wide face that always seemed to be flushed from physical exertion or from being outside. Jack still had the slender frame of a boy. He had messy blonde hair that could never decide whether it wanted to be curly or straight. Jack and Angus were bit of an unlikely pair.

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“Keep your hair on, Jackster…”

“You’re not supposed to be riding that thing, you’ve only got a provisional…”

“Well, test is only a few months away. Anyway, how else am I supposed to get to school?”

“The bus?”

Angus shrugged. “It was early this morning.”

“You were late, you mean.”

“Who cares. We’re going to your place aren’t we? Let’s stop farting around…” Angus unclipped the spare helmet and tossed it to Jack. He grinned. “Climb aboard, big man.”

Jack remembered the last time he’d been on Angus’s bike. It was at his folks’ who had the sheep farm up the valley in Rachan. The family was machine mad and Angus had grown up with bikes. Trouble was, Jack hadn’t. He’d had a go, but lost his balance, the bike had spun off in one direction, and Jack in another, and he had ended up with a face full of mud. Angus had laughed so much he’d nearly fallen over.

“You’re joking?”

Angus shrugged, “Well you can walk if you like.” He snapped down on the kick-start and the engine burst into life. Jack rolled his eyes, reluctantly donned the spare helmet, climbed behind Angus and clenched his eyes firmly shut. Angus turned back the throttle and the engine wailed; he dropped the clutch and the machine jerked forward. The front wheel immediately lifted off the ground in a spectacular but completely unnecessary wheelie. Jack was taken by surprise and just avoided slipping right off the back and onto the tarmac. Once the bike had two wheels back on the road, it was too late for Jack to complain.

They soon reached the main bridge out of town, which crossed the river that was starting to swell from the extra rain in the hills. As they crossed it, Jack could feel the temperature drop. The river acted like the cold element of a freezer as it snaked through the fading light of the border hill country. In two minutes they would be turning into the long drive at Cairnfield. A journey which usually took him twenty-five minutes on foot had been completed in only five.

They had moved to Cairnfield with his grandparents when his mum and dad came back from Geneva, Switzerland – just before they had split up. Jack had been only six. Jack’s mum had kept the Cairnfield estate when first, Jack’s grandfather and then, later his grandmother,
had died. This had left him and his mum on their own rattling round in the big old house together. His mum didn’t talk much about their life in Geneva or why they had left. Nor did she explain why she had split up from his dad soon after they’d moved to Scotland. She had just said he was “too obsessed with work” or “there wasn’t room for us and his work”. Jack sometimes tried to find out more, but his mum would become all buttoned up and quickly change the subject.

Jack prodded Angus as they made their way down the drive. “Stop!”

Angus pulled the bike to one side, and the engine puttered away in neutral.

“Put it somewhere, we’ll walk from here. Mum’ll go berserk if she sees me on the back of this thing.”

“If you say so.”

Angus pulled the WRE behind the thicket of yews that flanked one side of the drive. They left their helmets and pressed on down the track. Soon the big white house loomed into view.

Jack’s mum was making tea and looked up as they came through the back door into the kitchen. Her hands wet, she blew her hair from her face. Carole Christie looked a lot like Jack. She had the same grey-blue eyes and blonde hair. She was still slim, although her figure had thickened a little with her forty-three years.

“You’re back early…”

Jack looked at Angus nervously. Angus avoided the subject and attempted his most winning smile, displaying a mouthful of uneven teeth in the process. It was a sight that would have traumatised a small child.

“Hello Mrs C. My cake ready?”

Carole Christie looked at Angus with mock affront. “So it’s
your
birthday now, is it?”

Angus started to move towards a large bowl of chocolate cake mix.

“Looks tasty.” He brought a large, dirty-nailed index finger dangerously close to the sugary mixture. But Mrs Christie was too quick.
She whipped out a wooden spoon and landed a swift blow expertly on Angus’s knuckles. He yelped.

Jack approved. “Nice one, Mum.”

“You’ll just have to wait,” she said. “Go and do something for an hour.”

“Mum – has it arrived?” Jack asked.

His Mum’s smile quickly vanished and she gave him the look – a sort of grimace that passed over her face whenever the subject of his father came up.

“It’s in your bedroom.” She turned back to the worktop. In his excitement, Jack did not notice the hint of satisfaction in her voice, when she said, “But I don’t think it’s much to get excited about, love… definitely smaller than usual.”

He ignored the comment and rushed out of the kitchen.

Soon they were in his bedroom, and there it was sitting on his desk, just like all his other birthdays: a parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. He flipped it over and instantly recognised the italic writing. His heart beat faster.

“Come on… open it.” Angus said impatiently.

But his mum was right. Based on size, the parcel looked disappointing – compared to earlier birthdays, anyway. He placed the precious package on the floor and stared at it, inspecting it from each side in turn. His mind flicked through the presents from previous years. The year before, there had been the remote controlled aeroplane and before that, all the fly fishing stuff. Every year, a present had arrived, like clockwork, and it had always exceeded his expectations. These birthday presents were his only connection with his father now.

Jack could no longer resist and, egged on by Angus, tore open the wrapping paper. Then his jaw dropped in disappointment as the contents were revealed.

“It’s a book.” Angus was alarmed.

Jack picked it up and shook it. Maybe something would drop out – like a cheque for a thousand pounds or an airline ticket to some exotic holiday destination. But no. It was a book. And, worst of all, it was a textbook.

“It’s a school book,” Angus said with growing horror.

Jack’s heart sank. He read the title:
The First World War
.

“It’s called,
The First World War
,” Angus said. “Dull-arama.”

“I can read.”

This present did not have the ‘wow’ factor of those from previous years, but maybe it was better than nothing.

Angus had already lost interest and busied himself with a particularly annoying wooden pyramid puzzle that rested on the mantelpiece and which he had failed to master even after several months of trying. It had taken Jack four minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

Jack scanned the front cover and then opened the book to inspect the crisp, sharp-edged photographs arranged in three sections. They showed trenches, ships, barbed wire, ‘over the top’ howitzers, aeroplanes, tanks, maps, women in factories, leaders, soldiers, medals, observation balloons, trains and more… Some pages were blurred and sepia, others were crystal clear, but together they gave Jack an instant insight into the four years of brutal war.

“Weird.”

“What?” said Angus, without raising his head from the puzzle.

“I get this history book from Dad, right, and yesterday you talked about your Great Grandfather Ludwig who was in the war, and then Pendelshape was on about the same stuff today in class.”

“What stuff?”

“You know – the First World War – all that…”

Angus shrugged, “So?”

“Quite interesting – don’t you think?”

“For a boffin like you. Doesn’t do it for me.”

He looked up at Jack with a piece of the puzzle in each hand. “How do you do this stupid thing, again?”

Jack leaned over, took the pieces and manipulated them expertly. In under a minute the puzzle had been done and Jack handed it back. Angus stared at it in awe.

“See – easy.”

“You’re really annoying sometimes.”

“Pendelshape was saying today that millions of people died in the war. Millions. And that if things had been slightly different it might not even have happened.”

Angus yawned. “If you say so. For me, it’s all in the past. Gone, dead, finished.”

“What about
Point-of-Departure
? That’s based in the past. You like that, don’t you?”

“That’s different – it’s a game. It’s real.”

It’s what Jack would have expected Angus to say. But something about the images and the clear black text on each page of the book stirred a distant but strong emotion in Jack. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He sometimes got a similar feeling when he played
Point-
of-Departure
. A sort of flashback – a connection to somewhere else, somewhere different. He was transported back to a time, he was not quite sure exactly when, but he had been very young – maybe only four years old.

He remembered that they had been on a family holiday. He had been vaguely aware that Dad had not had a day off from the lab for months and had been working very late. This was to be his first break in a long time. They had gone to France or Belgium and had visited Cambrai or some such place – a monument to the First World War. He had been aware that his father was interested in history and, he supposed, this period of history in particular.

What had happened and in what sequence had remained a disconnected patchwork in his head – sometimes fragments came into greater focus when he thought back but they would evaporate, chimera-like, as he struggled to make sense of it all. He remembered visiting graves – an endless sea of white crosses – and also the grassed outline of old trench networks. He recalled a voice describing “how it was”. Maybe it had been his father’s voice, or maybe a tour guide’s, or maybe some audio-visual show. He had not understood the words, or if he had, he no longer remembered them, but the serious, gravelled voice conjured up a strong image of the war and the plight of its young victims.