The Walking Dead

2 August 1938

To: Miss Enid Darke, Bermondsey, London

From: Nurse Angelina Calvi, 38^th Field Hospital, Ebro River Front

I regret to report to you the death of Cecil Darke, volunteer of the XV International Brigade.

He passed from us three hours ago. He had been hit by a single high-velocity bullet in the upper chest, which caused a Pneumo Thorax condition, the collapse of the right lung. Inevitably there was also internal bleeding into that lung, which had deflated. The original wound was bandaged on the instructions of the doctor i/c, and a trocar was inserted into the lung, a procedure that allows excess blood to be drained. Regrettably, in the conditions of the field hospital — there were many casualties admitted at that time — he was subject to infection. Bacteria would have been introduced through the nasal air passage, and from his uniform particles carried into the wound by the bullet. His temperature rose to 101 deg. F, and his pulse rate and respiratory rate had also risen. To alleviate pain, morphine was injected. At the time of death he was unconscious.

With comrades, he was buried one hour ago. The grave will not have been marked. We withdraw tonight, and tomorrow the Fascists will hold this place; they would destroy, defile, any grave they identified.

I talked to him this morning, before he went to unconsciousness. He was calm, able to speak in a whisper. You should know that, at the end, he had courage and was dedicated to the cause he had joined. He told me that he wished, when he was buried, that the words of Psalm Number 137 should be spoken over his grave: it is not permitted that Christian prayers be said, the commissars forbid it. He had this diary in his hand when he passed. We have an amputee who is being repatriated and he will take the diary to London.

I think he was a man for whom you should feel pride.

Sincerely, Angelina Calvi.

'You ready, Mr Banks? God, you look like you've seen a ghost.'

Low on the settee, his body hid the movement as he closed the notebook, slid it back into his pocket and let it fall on the loose coins and the two pebbles. He said curtly, 'Yes, I'm ready and have been for half an hour.'

'No need to be scratchy.' His Principal grinned. 'Looks like rather a nice day out there.'

She called from the kitchen that they should get a move on or the sausages would be charcoal. He touched the Glock in the holster on his hip, shrugged into his coat and followed Wright out.

Banks walked a pace behind his Principal, and a stride to his Principal's left, held the outer section of pavement. He wondered if an Italian nurse, sixty-nine years, less a few weeks, before, had written the truth of a man's death. Banks raked his eyes over the road ahead and the cars approaching, the people on the pavement, as his training had taught him. He wondered if a man with a hole in his chest and his lung collapsed still felt courageous. Banks saw the ordinariness around him, and sensed no danger.

He thought of betrayal. It would be a big day for betrayal. His, because he had been dumped by the team he should have been with.