THE ENGLISH CHANNEL was pouting angrily that morning as she beat demandingly against the hemline of chalk cliffs underpinning the Wealds of South East England between the North and South Downs. It was a day, many would consider, for a warm fire and a good book, and they would be right. Other more hardy souls would call the elements bracing and venture abroad. The couple that strolled along the cliff tops away from Saltdean in the direction of East Sussex were two of the more stalwart type.
As their feet crunched through the softly packed carpet of snow that covered the undulating roll of the land, the ill-tempered seagulls overhead screeched incessantly for their breakfast. The booming sea pounding against the foot of the cliffs sought to drown out the gulls' plaintiff squawks as it steadily maintained its centuries old task of eroding the land. As he listened, huddled in the warmth of his sheepskin jacket, to the feeble protests of the snow as it crumbled beneath their feet, Lechaim had, like his companion, lapsed into silence; the gulf between them widening with every step they took. She had hardly spoken a word since they had begun their saunter along the cliff tops despite his best efforts to engage her in conversation.
When Maxine had turned up on his mother’s doorstep an hour before asking, “Is your son in, Mrs. Davies? I'm a friend of his!” his mother had asked him when they had a moment alone, “Why didn't you mention her to me before?” Why indeed, Lechaim wondered, although her arrival that morning had been as much a surprise to him as it had been to his mother. Deep down, of course, he knew why he had never raised her name with his mother. Beautiful, Maxine may be, but she had shown Lechaim a side of her character these last few weeks that he found less than appealing.
Lechaim was not a man given to too much introspection but as they strolled along, he lost himself in it now. Try as he might to make allowances for what had happened to Maxine in the Philippines, he could not help but feel that she had assumed the mantle of a martyr, and he had little time for such people. It was not that he was a cruel man, far from it, but, to him, there comes a point in everyone's life when inner fortitude is required. Wallowing in self-pity was all right for a time - indeed, he had done a bit of that himself when Sinead died - but this continuous air of despondency that Maxine carried with her was depressing for everyone, himself included.
Was he being insensitive? he asked himself. Had he finally acquired that streak of hardness that the army had tried at various times to instill in him? “Captain, Sir!" an SAS instructor had once said to him, “Winning is everything, the people that come second get buried.” He could well remember the words of his commanding officer on the Falklands after he had carried Carlos out of the minefield in 1982, “You're a fool, Lieutenant! This is not a game of cricket where win or lose, you must be a good sport. Stick the fuckers before they stick you! You have a soft spot in you Lieutenant Lewis. One day, it may get you killed!”
Was he sticking it to her now, he questioned, yet he felt within himself that he had tried to be sympathetic. What got Lechaim down the most was her silence which he did not seem to be able to penetrate. It had been evident in the Philippines and it was evident now. Like most men, he found it hard to cope with a woman that would not communicate. He had tried very hard to be patient but it was now wearing thin. That's where Sinead had been so different from most of the other young women he had been involved with. Like Maxine, from time to time, his former girlfriends would start brooding, normally over some trifle or other. Sinead had been like a breath of fresh air in a sea of feminine neuroticism. Among the many qualities his dead wife possessed was the ability to be able to laugh at the world and herself; her sense of humour being one of her most endearing traits.
There again, he reflected, perhaps it was he, not women in general, that was at fault. For most of his life, he had been fiercely independent and the army had scarcely trained him to be a sensitive new-age man. Women, with the exception of his mother, his late wife, and, of course, dear Eva, saw mostly the uniform and never the man. To most women, he represented some kind of superhero without fear or feelings. For that matter, he thought, to some men he symbolized the same thing.
Of course he had feelings, and none more so than for his beloved wife's memory - that would never fade down the years. As for his being a hero, it was more myth than reality. It was true that in battle he had never experienced the qualms that seemed to grip so many others. That wild exhilarating dash up the slopes of Mount Harriet in the Falklands, the abbey attack, and the encounter with the little gunman in the Philippines had never been fearful experiences to him.
Why, had he included the abbey attack in his summation? That was self deceit right there!
As they continued to walk along in silence, he thought ruefully of the VC they had awarded him for his actions at the abbey that night. Everyone assumed afterward that he was being self-effacing when he refused to speak of his feat. Yet, the truth was that he remembered nothing of that experience from the time he picked up the sword to the time when he had found the monsignor unconscious on the grass outside. Did he have a right, therefore, to receive a medal when his personal bravery had never been really tested? He knew in his heart that he would have fought until he fell anyway, but he had always felt reluctant to take credit for something that he was unable to recall to mind. The VC tag next to his name had been an embarrassment, a reminder of his personal deception, and he had never used it once. As for the medal itself, it had always been a source of reproach, and the Regas had been welcome to it
Often, he had mulled over that night in an effort to recall the events from the time he had lifted the sword from its case. He remembered well enough the strange power that the sword seemed to possess and the feeling of invincibility that had flooded through him when he held it in his hands, but the rest was lost somewhere in his mind. Never once had he confided his lapse of memory, not even to Sinead, but the sham was slowly eroding away within him.
Pulling his collar closer to his icy cheeks, the comfortless climate he had so recently returned to, made him long for the tropical land he had left behind a lifetime ago. The salt from the sea sprayed his nostrils as if to remind him that he was home now, and that he had better get used to the idea.
Her words came as a surprise for he had quite forgotten about the woman walking beside him.
“Can we stop here for a bit?”
“Sure!” he replied thankful that she had decided to come back to life.
The two of them stood looking out to sea with just a shaky fence to stop them from wandering over the edge of the chalk to the breaching water below.
“Are you all right?” he asked turning to her.
“Not really!” she replied, her eyes cold like a fish. Then, she walked along a few paces as if he were contagious to be around and turned to face him. Lechaim frowned at her continuing coolness which was really beginning to annoy him and looked seaward again where the low overcast hid France from view.
“You remember that man that you killed in Manila?” she said as she reached into the shoulder bag she carried.
The question caught him by surprise and he turned to face her again hoping that she was going to open up to him at long last.
“The man that was on Corregidor, you mean? The one that kidnapped you?”
“Yes, that one!”
“What about him?” he inquired letting her lead the conversation now that she was finally talking.
“He was the only man I ever loved!”
Lechaim thought he had misheard her until he saw the pistol she had taken from her bag and was now pointing at his chest.
“Maxine! What the hell is wrong with you?” he said thinking that she had taken leave of her senses.
With eyes that were blazing like a mad woman's and a voice pitched too high, she said,
“Why, Lechaim, why should there be anything wrong? My lover lies dead at your hands and you ask me what's wrong!”
The pair stood staring each other down for some seconds, their only discourse, the puffs of condensation from their breathing. As he looked at her he idly noted that snowflakes were beginning to fall about her shoulders and one settled on the barrel of the gun. The small compact weapon was a Glock Model 26 by the look of it, he concluded, a weapon designed for concealment. Lechaim, himself, had used the larger version, the Glock Model 17, on a firing range as he had many other handguns. The short stocky firearms instructor that Lechaim had listened to many times in his army days had been almost ecstatic when describing that particular handgun. “The 'Glock Model 17' is a self-loading pistol made in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, and was designed by one, Gaston Glock. It is erroneously called by some, the terrorist's pistol because of the polymer materials that have been used in its construction. The theory is that it can be passed through the X-ray machines and metal detectors used by airport security. Don't try it, gentlemen, it doesn't work. The Model 17 has a magazine capacity of seventeen rounds and fires 9mm Luger ammunition...”
As Lechaim stood staring down the barrel, he felt strangely detached and unconcerned. Fear still did not course through his veins, but this time he knew why. The woman before him could not kill a dead man. Lechaim could feel that wet sand beneath his bare feet again as they walked by the water's edge and her words carried to him on the wind. “I'm waiting for you, darling! It's almost morning and the sun's coming up!”
This was not going as planned, she thought as she saw the smile on his face. Her anger mounted again and she fought to calm herself. She wanted to savour the pleasure of this moment and remember it for as long as she lived.
His voice when he found it was calm and without emotion.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Samantha Jessep and I'm going to kill you! Not the way you killed Peter! That would be too easy! No don't think about it!” she warned as she saw the danger signs in his eyes. “I'm a qualified marksman with this weapon and you wouldn't make it!”
“I see!” he acknowledged and that smile played around his lips again.
“I'm going to cripple you first. I'm going to watch you crawl and beg for your life like a dog!”
In a voice that betrayed no fear, he said, “You’re a sick woman, Maxine or should I call you Samantha!”
What was wrong with the fool? she thought. Didn't he realize that he was about to die? Since Peter’s death, she had pictured in her mind, over and over, how she would kill this man. How he would plead for his life, yet the man before her was not reacting the way she had anticipated. She wanted to tear his heart out the way hers had been. Then her eyes glinted as she thought of another way by which she could bait him.
“How's your memory, Lechaim ?”
“My memory!” he responded puzzled at the question.
“Think back to that day in Ireland when you ran down the beach searching for your wife and you could only find a woman with a dog!”
The small Dalmatian puppy playing around her legs yelping for attention as the woman exclaimed, “I'm sorry! I've seen no one!”
“How do you know about that?” he asked in surprise as realization began to dawn on him.
“Because I was that woman, you dummy!”
“You!” he exclaimed, But..
“Peter and I. Peter, by the way, was the name of the man that you killed in Manila. Peter and I met up with your wife on the beach that morning while she was taking a walk. You were asleep, as I recall.”
Lechaim said nothing as she continued but a feeling he had never felt before was welling up in him, pure hatred, and he knew that it was about to engulf him.
“Peter wanted to fuck her first, but we couldn't leave her cunt full of him, now could we?”
There it was, the look she had been striving for. At long last, she could see his pain as she added, “We had to make it look like an accident, don't you see!”
She then thought of some more poison she could use. “He would have filled her up all right, believe me!” As she was speaking she could feel the excitement building in her as she recalled the size of her lover's organ. It had been one of his most redeeming features.
“Oh, and that stupid cow of a mother, you have! She's next!”
The cold-biting wind and the gun in her hand were no more than a blur now as his senses were consumed by the desire to kill.
She was the one to smile now as she saw it in his eyes, the same hate that she herself was consumed by. Satisfied that he now shared her pain she lowered the pistol as she backed off even further. She knew he was about to make his move, and when he did, she would blow his left kneecap apart with her first shot. Then she would take her time about killing him. One thing was for certain, she decided, his death would be long and very painful.
On the summit above Tony Wright had been studying the pair through binoculars that hung around his neck. Hanging back so as not to be seen, he knew he was now too far away to intervene. The pistol Tony could see in the woman's hand had made her intentions all too obvious. Taking the binoculars from his eyes, he let them hang loose as he reached inside his fleeced-lined survival jacket. The SIG-Sauer Model P226 pistol, standard issue in the SAS, which had been resting in his shoulder holster came out in his hand. The aluminum-framed gun felt reassuring as it always did and he held it beneath his armpit away from the elements as he decided what best to do. The distance, the wind factor, the ever-increasing flakes of snow obscuring his vision, and the close proximity of the target to his friend precluded taking the woman out with his pistol. Tony Wright was one of the best shots with a handgun in Special Air Services but even he could not do the impossible. There was only one way, he thought, as he considered the problem. He had already noticed a small cairn of stones just off to the couple's left which he had picked up through his binoculars. To the naked eye, it was just a distant speck but it would serve as an aiming point. The shot, he hoped would distract the woman just enough to give Lechaim the opportunity to make his move. It was a long shot in every sense but it was the best he could do in the circumstances. As he took aim the flurry of snowflakes before his eyes ceased so that his line of sight was unhindered. The wind dropped to nothing as his finger took up the slack on the trigger, and a strange sensation flooded through him. It was almost as if he were one with the weapon. Only once before in his life had he experienced such a feeling. He had cause to remember it well because it was the day he had shot a perfect score.
Lechaim was about to launch himself at her when the side of her head exploded like a wet dog shaking its coat and the smell of her warm blood doused the smell of salt in his nostrils. The sound of the bullet echoed along the rolling gait of the white slopes as her body was flung to the ground where it lay twitching. With the reflexes borne of considerable experience, Lechaim launched himself into the snow beside her contorting limbs. Quickly, he leaned over her blood-soaked head seeking the pistol she still gripped in her hand. Even in her death throes the woman tried to hold on to it, but he prised it roughly from her fingers. Rolling back, he saw the tiny figure running down the snow-covered hill towards him, and he made himself as small a target as possible. There was no sign of a rifle in the man's hand and Lechaim searched around for an alternate shooter, then he relaxed as he recognized the short frame of Tony Wright drawing near.
Their hands clasped and Lechaim exclaimed, “Christ, Tony! what are you doing here?”
“Just as well, I was!” Tony replied breathlessly after his long run in the snow and bent over the still twitching form on the ground. Standing upright again, he looked at Lechaim who nodded. Tony's gun kicked in his hand and a neat hole appeared between the woman's eyes - she no longer moved. The noise of the second shot like the first rolled around the empty landscape as Samantha Jessep departed. The two men spoke no more of it. The woman was finished and it was the most humane thing to do in the circumstances.
Tony took the weapon from Lechaim's hand and studied it. “Lovely weapon but a rather heavy trigger pull for a lady, I would have thought!”
“That was no lady!” Lechaim declared bitterly as he looked at the body that he had once fondled and entered. The same body that had in life helped to end Sinead’s life. He felt his betrayal was complete now. Not only had he been unfaithful to Sinead’s memory, but he had also slept with one of her killers. He resolved there and then that he would kill them all, every last one of them that had had any part to play in his wife's death.
“You're right there! That was no lady!” Tony responded.
“You know her then?” Lechaim asked.
“Yes, I know Samantha Jessep! A very unsavory person, believe me! I'll tell you all about her later. For now, we need to get the body out of sight!”
Lechaim looked around and spotted the stone cairn.
“What say we take her over there and put some of those small rocks over her? The snow should help to camouflage her for now.”
“Sounds good to me! I'll make a call to have her removed later.”
“So you're still working for the firm then?”
“Of course! Couldn't do without me!”
The two men grabbed a leg each and dragged her body by them to avoid the spillage from her shattered head getting on their clothes. As they dragged her along, her carcass left a bloody trail in the snow.
“What did you do with your rifle?” Lechaim asked when they reached the cairn.
“What rifle?”
“Good God! Don't tell me you took her out with your pistol!”
“Hmm, not a bad shot, hey!”
In their days together in the SAS, Lechaim and he had often competed against one another on the range. There had yet to be a clear-cut winner.
“That was one hell of a shot, Tony! I knew you were good, but I didn't know you were that good!”
“Hmm!” the other man said but was noncommittal.”
Placing her beside the mound the two of them started to pile the small boulders over the cooling corpse and then Tony saw it. The small nick on one of the stones where his bullet had struck before ricocheting away. The one shot in a million had become the one in ten million as Tony realized what had happened. Like a cannon shot in billiards, the bullet had hit the stone and then deflected at right angles into the woman's head. Tony blanched as the thought occurred to him that the bullet could just as easily have hit his friend. No, he would not be bragging about that shot to anyone, least of all, Lechaim.
When they finished covering her over, Lechaim turned about to attend to the job of hiding the smear trail her body had made across the snow, but found that the ever-increasing flakes were already setting about the task for him.
“The weather’s closing in,” Lechaim remarked. “We'd better make for home!”
“Right!” Tony agreed. “Tell me, does your mother still make cheesecake?”
“You'd better believe it, my friend!” Lechaim replied clapping the other man on the back. “God! But it's good to see you again!” Then he thought for a moment.
“Hey! I owe you one!” he said nodding to the buried corpse they were now leaving behind.
“My pleasure!” Tony acknowledged. “We’ll arrange to have her collected later today.”
To save the life of a Victoria Cross winner was very satisfying indeed. The fact that the man was also a good friend made it doubly so, Tony thought. Strange about that bullet though!