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“Not when The Owl on Sunday got wind of your story. I’ve read your testimony at the inquiry. You’re antiwar.”
The two students looked at one another as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune.
“We need someone to talk at Colonel Phelps’s rally,” said the young man with the big nose. “Someone from the other side. Someone who has been there. Someone with clout. Would you do that for us?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I looked around t
o see if, by a miracle, my lift had arrived. It hadn’t.
. . . Whom I, continued the mannequin, some three months hence, stabbed in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?
“Listen, guys, I’d love to help you, but I can’t. I’ve spent twelve years trying to forget. Speak to some other vet. There are thousands of us.”
“Not like you, Miss Next. You survived the charge. You went back to get your fallen comrades out. One of the fifty-one. It’s your duty to speak on behalf of those that didn’t make it.”
“Bullshit. My duty is to myself. I survived the charge and have lived with it every single day since. Every night I ask myself: Why me? Why did I live and the others, my brother even, die? There is no answer to that question and that’s only just where the pain starts. I can’t help you.”
“You don’t have to speak,” said the girl persistently, “but better for one old wound to open than a thousand new ones, eh?”
“Don’t teach me morality, you little shit,” I said, my voice rising.
It had the desired effect. She handed me a leaflet, took her boyfriend by the arm, and departed.
I closed my eyes. My heart was beating like the crump-crump-crump of the Russian field artillery. I didn’t hear the squad car pull up beside me.
“Officer Next?—” asked a cheery voice.
I turned and nodded gratefully, picked up my case and walked over. The officer in the car smiled at me. He had long dreadlocked hair and a pair of overly large dark glasses. His uniform was open at the collar in an uncharacteristically casual way for a SpecOps officer, and he wore a goodly amount of jewelry, also strictly against SpecOps guidelines.
“Welcome to Swindon, Officer! The town where anything can happen and probably will!”
He smiled broadly and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the car.
“Trunk’s open.”
The boot contained a lot of iron stakes, several mallets, a large crucifix and a pick and shovel. There was also a musty smell, the smell of mold and the long dead—I hurriedly threw in my bag and slammed the boot lid down. I walked around to the passenger door and got in.
“Shit!—” I cried out, suddenly noticing that in the back, pacing the rear seats behind a strong mesh screen, was a large Siberian wolf. The officer laughed loudly.
“Take no notice of the pup, ma’am! Officer Next, I’d like you to meet Mr. Meakle. Mr. Meakle, this is Officer Next.”
He was talking about the wolf. I stared at the wolf, which stared back at me with an intensity that I found disconcerting. The officer laughed like a drain and pulled away with a lurch and a squeal of tires. I had forgotten just how weird Swindon could be.
As we drove off, the Will-Speak machine came to an end, reciting the last part of its soliloquy to itself:
. . . Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, that I might see my shadow, as I pass.
There was a clicking and whirring and then the mannequin stopped abruptly, lifeless again until the next coin.
“Beautiful day,” I commented once we were under way.
“Every day is a beautiful day, Miss Next. The name’s Stoker—”
He pulled out onto the Stratton bypass.
