There was a single shot, presumably someone being finished off. I lay there and waited, my arm more pain-ful by the minute, and thought of Burke who had tricked me. No, more than that, had beaten me all along the line. I also considered how I would settle with him. I thought of that a great deal and with variations and drank more brandy and waited.
The waiting game is the hardest one to learn, but it is the only one for a soldier if he wants to survive. Once in the Kasai, I crouched with Burke and four other men in a three foot trench while the ground above us was raked with heavy machine gun fire. Burke told us we must school ourselves to patience, that to go now would be madness. But one by one, the others cracked, made a run for it and were chopped down. Five hours later, when darkness fell, Burke and I crawled away in perfect safety.
My shoulder had stopped bleeding-I think because of my immersion in the ice-cold waters of the stream- and the hole where the bullet had entered had closed into two rather obscene purple lips. And it had gone straight through, thank God, which I discovered when I probed about gingerly with the tips of the fingers of my left hand. The edges of the exit hole seemed to have come together also and although I had obviously lost blood, there was no immediate need to bandage myself up.
I gave it an hour and then started to work my way cautiously through the trees to the top of the apron. I could see the hut, the smoke from the fire, but there was no sign of life.
There was a movement in the bushes over on my right and I crouched, waiting, and then one of the donkeys appeared. A kite called harshly, swooped over the clearing and soared again. He finally went down and perched on the roof of the hut, something he’d never had done if a human had been anywhere around.
That decided me. I stood up and moved cautiously towards the clearing. When I got close, the kite flapped away and left me alone with the dead.
The first body I came to was Legrande’s, although he was barely recognisable and was minus his camou-flaged jump suit which they’d presumably taken off him because it would have excited comment.
Serafino and his three friends lay so close together that the sprawling limbs actually touched each other.
In death, Serafino smiled savagely, teeth bared and I judged him to have been shot seven or eight times. The others were in a similar position except for Joe Ricco who had obviously turned to run and had taken his dose in the back.
I could see it all now quite clearly. The girl had been right. Hoffer had intended death and had planned it with Burke’s connivance. Now he would go to the police, reluctantly tell his story of the kidnapping, of the ransom payment that had failed to secure the girl’s re-turn. And the police would have to go through the motions, would lay on their ritual search of the area, as they had done so many times before, expecting Sera-fino to stay one step ahead as usual, only this time it would be different. This time when they started at the usual place, they would find this butcher’s shop, after-math, as the girl had suggested to me earlier, of a fight between rival gangs.
They’d light a few candles in the cathedral in Palermo, Hoffer’s friends would commiserate and he’d wipe away a tear with one hand while he was signing the papers that gave him two and a half million with the other.
The girl sprawled partially on one side and when I turned her over, I sucked in my breath. Her face was a mask of blood, flies settling already. I had seen death in all its obscene variations often enough and yet I sat back on my heels, feeling suddenly faint, overwhelmed by the pity of it all, the tragedy of what had happened to this young girl.
I thought of Burke-of how he had fooled me- fooled me right up the end, taking Jaeger along with him, even poor, ageing Legrande, presumably on the promise of a larger reward than had ever been sug-gested to me. Quite a performance when you thought of it. Then something snapped inside and I found myself cursing him wildly out loud.