The Hanging Shed

FORTY

I emerged from the wood and scampered across the road. There was little or no traffic round here but it would be stupid to be caught sauntering along this country road with a shotgun under my arm looking like a refugee from a private shoot. The wood continued on the other side of the road, the side the farm was on, and I melted into the cool arbour and started to track my way back to the farm and parallel to the road.

I soon ran out of trees. Ahead was open ground bounded by waist-high, dry stone dikes. I made sure the safety catch was on both guns and clambered over the first. I made steady but cautious progress until after a sweaty half hour I’d reached another wood. By my reckoning, these trees bordered the Planner Farm. If I was guarding the place, this would be the most likely direction I’d expect an assault to come from. So I slipped into the first line of trees and headed north to come round the back of the farmhouse, still in the treeline. The air was still and I reasoned that if there were dogs they’d hear me before they smelt me.

I kept glancing to my right. Here and there the woods thinned; they were only about a hundred yards deep. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of whitewash or grey slate. There was no sound other than the birds, and even they weren’t putting their hearts into it. It was midday and unseasonably hot. A time to doze.

I heard a thunk from the direction of the farm and saw something move at the limit of my vision. I froze and waited. Movement again. Someone had come out, slammed the door and was walking away from the house. I heard voices, and then another figure appeared heading back to the house. The door slammed behind him. Changing of the guard? I started walking again. I did a dogleg and came back at the house from its rear. I was still in good shade. I shuttled from tree to tree, and finally got on my belly and crawled. This was where the hardy tweed came into its own. All I needed was some boot polish on my face and some twigs in my helmet and I was back at the training unit we shared with the Commandos at Spean Bridge in the Highlands.

Finally I stopped and made myself comfortable. I laid my shotgun out and placed the pistol alongside it. I flipped off the safeties on both. I had a clear view of the house and the clearing in which it sat. It was single storey, with white-painted stone walls and a slate roof. There was a back door on the left and windows either side of it. All were closed. Gravel surrounded the whole house to a width of about ten feet. About twenty yards closer to me, was a square stone shed; no windows this side and a sloping corrugated roof.

Just then I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel of the house from the right. I ducked down and then peered cautiously through the brambles and grass. My old pal Fergie strolled round the corner and halted about halfway across the back. He was carrying a shotgun in one hand, but the barrels had been cut just past the action. Easier to hide about the body and great in a packed room, but useless if you were trying to hit someone with lethal intent beyond ten yards. The shot would simply scatter and spray out in a fast-widening funnel. It would still hurt though. Fergie looked around casually before lighting a fag. He looked bored. He was in shirtsleeves and braces and should have completed the picture with a knotted hankie on his head to keep the sun off.

He left after ten minutes and returned about twenty minutes later. The routine continued until after an hour he was replaced by his pal who’d helped throw me over the rail on the good ship Jeanie Deans. I watched this pattern unfold through the afternoon.

Then about five o’clock things changed.

I heard a sodding dog bark, and voices from the front of the house. Gravel crunched and Dermot Slattery appeared towed by a rough-looking hound on a lead. I couldn’t make out the breed but it wouldn’t win any medals at Crufts. Somewhere between an Alsatian and a lurcher, but big, toothy and mad-eyed. Dermot had a stick and he bent down, unclipped the lead and set the dog dancing and barking around him. He flung the stick directly towards me and the bloody animal bounded after it, straight at me. Fortunately he didn’t have much of a throwing arm. The stick barely made it halfway to my hiding place.

The two bodyguards appeared and the three of them took turns to throw the stick until the dog was foaming and wild-eyed like an advert for rabies. Now I knew my odds: four to one if you assumed Gerrit was inside with a good book. Five to one if you counted Fido.

Dermot seemed to get bored. He turned and banged on a window. A few minutes later a white-haired woman hove into sight with a tray bearing three dark bottles and three glasses. I wondered if this was lady Slattery. She put the tray down on the table and left them to pour their own. I watched as they slurped back the dark liquor. I was thirsty as hell and hungry. I sipped from my water bottle and envied them their beer. I’d known many times like this; waiting for the off. This time was no different except that this time it was personal.

By twilight things had quietened down. Dermot and the Hound of the Slatterys had gone back inside and even the guards seemed to have disappeared. Did they think no one would attack after dark?

I got to my feet and moved back far enough so that I could do some stretching exercises. My body was numb from lying still. Carefully I checked the guns again. I moved forward and to the left where the shed was, keeping to the line of the trees. With the shed between me and the house I ran over the grass and stood against the shed rear wall. I inched round the corner, saw nothing, heard nothing and crunched across the ten feet of gravel to the back door.

My heart was pounding, waiting for someone to shout out or just blast me with the sawn-off. He wouldn’t miss from this range. I could hear voices from inside, his and hers, probably in the kitchen to tell by the crashing of dishes. Should I try the door handle and burst in? I put the 12-bore in my left hand and was just reaching out with my right towards the handle when I saw a shadow fall long across the grass from the side of the house. He was walking silently on the soft turf instead of the gravel.

The extended silhouette of a man crept along the ground and then the man himself appeared. He was looking ahead but immediately turned towards me. It was Fergie’s mate. His face was a picture as he saw me. His jaw opened and he began to turn towards me lifting his shotgun to take aim. I had had an extra two seconds to prepare. I hoped I’d made the right choice of weapon. Hoped, too, I hadn’t lost the art.

My arm was already raised behind my head, my knife held tightly by the point. I flung it with all my force and watched it race towards his chest even as he pointed the gun at me. The knife had twenty feet to travel. His gun barrel only had an arc of two feet to rise to be level with my guts. The knife hit with a dull thunk, slap in the middle of his throat just above his rib cage. His eyes opened wide with the shock. He stumbled backwards, dropping the sawn-off as he fell, so that he could clutch at the blade that grew from his neck.

He coughed and tried to shout but it came out like a grunt. I’d been running towards him even as my knife was in the air. I got to him as he collapsed. I kicked the shotgun away and bent down at his side. The colour was already leaving him, except on his shirt where red was spreading fast. He looked up at my face in bewilderment. I thought he was about to shout for help, so I stuffed my hand over his mouth and ripped out the knife. I stabbed it down again, into his chest. I felt the blade grate against his ribs. He moaned under my hand and I felt his last gasps, then a spasm, as his body tried to sit up before falling back. His head sank gently into the grass and he stared up at the sky unseeing.

I wrenched out the knife. More blood pooled and ran down both sides of his shirt and into the earth. I wiped the sticky blade on the grass and then on his trousers before sliding it back into my sock. I picked up my own shotgun and stuffed the sawn-off in my belt at the back of my waist. It would come in handy at close quarters. I had a second to wonder at my coldness, at taking the life of a man with such clinical efficiency and with nary a qualm. It didn’t seem to be troubling me. And that troubled me. But that was for later. Three to one not counting the dog. The odds were improving.