The Walking Dead

'Don't suppose it does…The car went out this morning, I saw that. Half the bedroom curtains were still drawn, but there was washing on the line. A bit after that I was crossing the Home Field on the tractor and one of them was sat on his backside among the trees in the Old Copse, looking a right zombie, just staring at me. You reckon they're on drugs?'

'I doubt it. The girl didn't seem the type — if I know what the type is…That's it, celebrations are called for. Thanks to them, their contribution, we're all right for this month.' She bundled the paperwork together, buried it in a file, then dumped it in the table's drawer.

He chuckled. 'Could be magic mushrooms…What I'm thinking, maybe one of us…'

'You mean me?'

'…maybe you should pop down there, some time this week, just make sure they haven't…'

'Wrecked the place? You didn't meet her and I did. She's very pleasant…It's a family gathering — none of our business what they do all day…But I will. Not today, because I've got to do the ironing, and finish that embroidery if it's to be in time for the Show…but I will. Don't expect they'll bite me. I'll call in tomorrow or the day after. Satisfied?'

He grinned, stood, then bent and pecked her cheek. 'Just to be on the safe side, tomorrow or the day after.'

He went out, stepped into his wellingtons and walked, in his rolling gait, to his tractor. He would resume harrowing the Twenty-Five Acre field, which was beyond the Home Field. He wondered whether the zombie was still parked on his backside in the Old Copse, and couldn't imagine what an Asian family was doing at Oakdene Cottage and why, mid-morning, half the curtains were still drawn…but she'd find out. She had a nose as good as any vixen's for probing and prying.

* * *

It was about trust, and the Scorpion was short of it. He trailed the girl across the square, and at his shoulder was the youngest of them, Jamal. Her hips swung in front of him but he cut his glance from them and stared around him as he walked. His eyes raked over the signs for the sale that would start at nine in the morning on the next Saturday in the shopping centre. But he did not trust enough to show his interest. She walked to the steps and turned.

She said softly, 'On Saturday morning, before nine o'clock, there will be a queue here. There will be many people.'

At his grandfather's side he had learned not to trust the father who had abandoned his pregnant mother. Walking in orange groves with his grandmother he had learned not to trust the mother who had discarded him to find escape in death. Sitting in a classroom at school he had learned not to trust fellow students who sneered that he was a bastard and without parents. As a paratroop recruit he had learned not to trust the 'chutes' packers because a man in front of him had fallen to his death when the canopy hadn't opened. As a qualified paratrooper in the Jordanian army, trained in warfare against the Zionist enemy, he had learned not to trust when the frontier was opened to Jewish diplomats and a craven deal was done. After he had disappeared from the barracks in Amman and travelled to Baghdad to volunteer for the fledgling guerrilla militia, he had learned not to trust when, two months later, the Republican Guard units had disintegrated when attacked. In the ranks of the mujahidin, operating from the supposed safe haven of the Triangle, he had learned not to trust when captured colleagues informed.

He did not fully trust any of the cell that had been assembled for him. His trust for the girl who stood on the steps was at best incomplete, but he could live with that.

He spun on his heel and walked away through the square. He saw the confusion on the youth's face and heard the clatter, of the girl's shoes as she ran to catch him. He walked briskly to the car park.

At the car, she asked, blurted, 'Is the place not right?'

His survival was based on.a culture of mistrust.

He said to Khalid, in a firm voice, decisive, 'I want to go to the city of Birmingham. It is the second city, yes? This is a shit place, too' small and not worth his sacrifice. I am going to Birmingham to do a reconnaissance for a target of importance.'

The faces of the girl and the youth fell, as he had intended. He told them they should take a bus back to the village, that only he would go, with Khalid to drive, him. He thought the youth was near tears, and that the girl's mouth — below the scar — quivered in anger at the slight. He said he would be in Birmingham for the rest of that day, the night, and that he would return to the cottage on the following day.

Deceit, lies, evasions fashioned a protective web behind which the Scorpion, Muhammad Ajaq, existed.

* * *