The Walking Dead

This one had a blown-out chest and a heavy gut under his coat, but spindle-thin legs from the outline of his trousers, and a hand deep in a pocket, which did not come out when he was shoved — it made sufficient of an equation for George Marriot.

His balance unsure on one stick, he lunged at the kid with the other, but the woman came across him. Her hand was in her bag, and then he felt pain running in torrents.

* * *

David Banks saw the old man lurch towards a couple, as a drunk did when incapable. He targeted the boy, but the woman had intervened with her body, and her robe swirled as she moved. The old man fell against her, then crumpled, went down on his stomach, was slumped flat.

A mother with a push-chair, and other parents with children, pushed past heedlessly because it was none of their business.

On training days, they drilled into Protection Officers that they were not to move off-station. A traffic pile-up — drive round it and head on. A fight in a street or a snatched bag — keep moving with the Principal and leave it to the uniforms. He stayed put, his back to the newsagent's door.

He might have thought it pathetic for an old man to be pissed-up that early in the morning…but his life was past making judgements. He looked away, made his eyeline traverse again and off the pavement where the sticks lay crazily and the old man was sprawled. Last thing he noted was the woman and the young man step over him, and start to come up the pavement. He looked behind him, through the shop-door glass, and saw that Wright was next in line to be served.

She felt no love; nothing of it remained.

Together, they had stepped over the body where the knife was. A little trickle of blood seeped from under the chest, and from the mouth.

'You should walk. I am behind you, but do not turn to find me Know that I am with you.'

For a moment, with his free hand he held hers. Then Faria pushed into his shoulder, shoved him away. She thought, at that moment and as he seemed to skip to regain his footing, that his smile had gone.

She followed him for three or four paces, no more, and saw him meander down the pavement…She was satisfied that he would not look back, would not search for her.

Everything that was asked of her, she had done.

She turned and started to walk away, back where she had come from. In front of the Tasty Fried Chicken and its steel shutters she did what she had forbidden to him, and stared after him. He went slowly, as if he walked asleep, and was near to a newsagent's and an alleyway with a rubbish bin, and beyond it he would cross the road, through the traffic, and join the queue at the base of the steps. She was not with him, was not close. She ran.

She ran until she was round the corner, close to the town hail — saw the clock that showed two minutes to the hour — then she snatched breath and walked.

It was done.

She slipped into a cut-through lane. She was alone. She heaved off the jilbab and dumped it with the headscarf, shook loose her hair and went out of the far end of the lane.

Faria, with a good stride, started for home. And she felt the emptiness, and the choke in her throat.

* * *

'God, look.'

'Can't, bloody traffic.'

'It's that girl.'

'What girl?'

The farmer's wife swivelled in her seat to look behind, out through the Land Rover's back window. 'The girl we had.'

'Had where?'

'You can be damned thick, dear. The girl we had in the cottage.'

'I'm not stopping or we'll be shunted.'

'Gone now anyway. You know what, she—'

'What?'

'Don't interrupt me, dear. She was crying her eyes out.'

'I haven't any idea where we'll get to park.'

'Listen, dear, she was sobbing, like her world had ended. Well, I think it was her. No, she was so composed, couldn't have been. It was like her.'

He saw the loop of the wire.

David Banks had seen the drunk veer against the couple, then smack at them with a stick, lurch into them, then collapse, and he had seen him ignored on the pavement. The couple had parted, the woman had scuttled away and the young man had walked on towards him…and the crowds heaved against the line of security men who were across the top of the steps.

Thoughts raced in the mind of Banks. It was a bright day, and sweat glistened on the skin of the young man's face, made a sheen there. There had been a smile, vacuous, where the sweat now dribbled — but not any longer. The smile had gone, was replaced by the tremble of lips, his eyes scattering glances ahead of him. His movement was slow. With each step, a loop of flex — three inches or so — bounced below the hem of the leather jacket. He saw a thin face, pinched at the cheeks, and a neck without flesh. One hand was deep in a pocket, but the other hung limply at his side. The legs, where the flex showed, were narrow and insubstantial, and the trainers were small…Yet the body was so large, as if it had been built with a weightlifter's pills, like layers of sweaters were under the jacket. The rest of the body did not match the size and bulk of the chest. And there was the loop of wire.