As her eyes opened in the dark, she was immediately assailed by a smell of smoke and petrol. She took a deep breath. Her nerves were getting worse. She knew she was being watched, of course. How could she not be aware of the click on the phone line, the watchers in the street?
She slumped back into the pillows. The smell was her imagination. There was no sound, nothing. She closed her eyes; she had slept little these past weeks.
‘You said we were in this together . . .’
Her eyes widened, first in panic, then hope, peering into the pitch darkness while her hand scrabbled for the bedside lamp, only to send it crashing to the floor. ‘Marcus, is that you?’
‘Hello, Elina. Have you missed me?’
She was out of bed now, standing up, naked. She always slept naked. ‘What are you doing here, Marcus? What’s that smell? Please, turn the light on.’
The beam of a torch lit her torso, her eyes and her fair, wavy hair. She couldn’t see him, but he could see her pale flesh. Then, from out of the light, came a flash of steel. Even as the knife struck she didn’t realise she had been stabbed. She gasped as though she had been punched and her hands went to her throat as she fell back onto the bed. Why was her throat wet?
The blade came again, into her arms and face. Again and again. Ferocious in its speed, but not frenzied: a controlled onslaught. She flailed wildly, aware now that she had been stabbed. He held the beam of the torch to his own blood-drenched and expressionless face. His body, naked from the waist up, was streaked with blood. Her blood.
For a few uncomprehending seconds, her eyes met his. And then her eyelids closed, her hands sank away from her throat to the bed, and she died not knowing why.
*
The house was ablaze from bottom to top. From the end of the street Wilde could see flames licking the sky and black smoke belching from the windows. He twisted the throttle, accelerated two hundred yards, the front wheel of the Rudge rising from the road, then came to a screeching stop outside the burning house.
A small crowd was gathering, all in nightclothes. The fire roared and crackled. Smoke poured from the roof into the night sky.
Wilde ditched the bike on its stand and raced in the direction of the house, then stopped, helpless. It was an impenetrable furnace and there was no way in.
He heard the clanging of a fire engine somewhere in the distance, back in the centre of town. Please God let it be coming here.
‘No one’s coming out of that alive,’ someone at his side said. He turned to face the man: Neville from across the road, who worked as a floor manager in the Pye factory. Neville’s eyes met Wilde’s and he turned away shame-faced.
‘Neville,’ Wilde said. ‘Where’s Lydia?’
Neville shook his head and shuffled away.
‘Has anyone seen Lydia?’ Wilde was shouting now, the centre of a growing crowd.
The fire engine had turned into the road; the clanging of its bell sounded like the knell of death. What would they be able to do? There was nothing the firemen nor anyone else could do against such a blaze. Anyone or anything inside that house would be cinders and ash.
And then, at the far end of the road, Wilde spotted a face he knew. Marcus Marfield, naked from the waist up, standing there, watching his foul handiwork.
*
Constable Edgar Gates was among the first at the scene of this devastating house fire. He’d been three streets away when he saw the glow in the sky. By the time he got there, a crowd had gathered to stare at the huge blaze. First things first, get the fire brigade out. He blew his whistle hard to alert other beat bobbies, then collared a woman clutching a baby.
‘Got a phone, luv?’
‘I’ve already called the fire brigade, constable.’
‘Is there anyone still in there?’
‘If they are, they’re done for.’
The crowd was building now. Someone raced up on a motorbike – the householder? Gates was just about to go over to speak to him when he spotted the young man with his hands in his pockets and a bare chest that looked as if it was streaked with blood. There was something about him. As he approached, PC Gates’s grip tightened on the haft of his truncheon.
The young man’s gaze was fixed on the fire. He had fair hair and his face seemed familiar. ‘Do you know something about this, son?’ Gates demanded, turning on his torch and looking the young man up and down. He was covered in blood. ‘Have you injured yourself? We’ll have an ambulance along soon enough.’
The young man smiled, took his bloodstained hands out of his pockets and held them out, palms up, then down. ‘My name is Marcus Marfield,’ he said. ‘You had better arrest me. You’ll be a hero, constable. I’ve killed some Americans . . .’
*
Wilde pushed through the crowd, fists clenched, just as the constable was putting Marfield in handcuffs. A woman appeared at Wilde’s side, and grabbed hold of his arm. He tried to nudge her away, and then saw that it was Lydia, her hair sleep-tousled, her feet bare beneath her dressing gown. He stopped. ‘Lydia – thank God.’ He took her in his arms. ‘Where are Jim and Juliet and the boys?’
‘Throwing some clothes on. They’ll be out in a moment. Tom, your lovely house – how did this happen?’
Wilde nodded towards Marfield.
Lydia’s eyes followed his gaze. ‘My God, Tom, it’s Marcus!’
‘I’m going to kill the bastard. He got the wrong house – he thinks he’s murdered us.’
Marfield had seen him. A slight twitching of the lips; his expression was hard to read. Was he gloating? Wilde began again to shoulder his way towards him. Lydia pulled him back again.
‘No, Tom – let the hangman do it.’
*
In the morning, as the last few spirals of smoke rose from the dampened ashes and the firemen finally declared the fire was out, they stood there in line and looked on the ruin of Tom Wilde’s home: Wilde and Lydia, Jim and Juliet and their children, Doris, who had worked so hard keeping the house pristine over the years, and knots of neighbours.
Wilde put his arm around Lydia’s slender shoulders. ‘It’s all gone,’ he said. ‘Everything that I don’t keep in your house or at college. Papers, books, irreplaceable photographs, years of research . . .’
‘But you’re alive – and we’re all alive.’
‘How I wish I’d never heard of Camp du Vernet. How I wish we’d just left the bastard there to rot. All this, and poor Horace gone, too.’
Jim and Juliet moved closer to them and now all four of them stood arm in arm, with the two boys in front of them, straight-backed and silent.
‘This is the way it’s going to be, buddy,’ Jim said. ‘Whole cities bombed and burned to extinction.’
‘I know,’ said Wilde.
Lydia leant into him and put her arms around his waist. ‘No alternative now, Professor Wilde,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to move in with me properly, like it or not.’
He snorted. ‘This is all part of your master plan, is it?’
She shrugged, and smiled, then he began laughing and she laughed, too. And those around them were confirmed in their long-held suspicions that they must be mad.