Jack turned and dropped the ball.
Across the grass at the Punch and Judy stall, parents stumbled to their feet, grabbing children, hurrying away. The screams kept filling the air – made more horrifying on such a beautiful summer’s day.
His eyes focused on the Punch and Judy stall, its red-and-white striped curtains still tightly drawn.
A woman stood to the side of the little stand-up theatre, arms limp. Her face blank with shock; eyes wide, mouth open, breathing fast.
Her eyes locked on what lay at her feet.
And Jack now knew why she had been screaming.
The head and shoulders of a man were visible, sprawling out from the stall, motionless, eyes wide open. As soon as Jack saw him he knew it meant only one thing.
Immediately his old training kicked in. When other people ran away, Jack ran towards …
Behind him he heard Sarah telling Daniel to stay back. Then as he pushed through the retreating crowd and approached the stall, he felt her come level with him, reaching out for the woman.
As Sarah drew the woman gently back, he knelt down by the man on the ground, the Punch and Judy puppeteer wearing a satiny costume of red and blue.
His right hand was inside the puppet Punch, ready for the show – its cheeks painted rosy, eyes glinting and a broad grin carved into the plaster of its face stretching from ear to ear.
Jack moved fast. The man wasn’t breathing. There was no pulse …
Jack’s hands went to his chest and he began pressing.
The puppeteer’s eyes remained glassy and unresponsive. His thin wispy white hair rustled as Jack pressed rhythmically on his chest. The man’s glasses lay beside him, crushed by the fall. His eyes remained wide open.
Then – a detail, even as Jack kept up his rhythm.
The man’s teeth were clenched tight, as if he’d been in extreme pain – and on his lips were flecks of foam.
“Heart attack?” said Sarah, now kneeling next to him. “Someone’s gone for a defibrillator.”
Jack looked up, ready to say … might be too late for that. Instead, noticing her face, he said:
“Could be, don’t know how long he hasn’t been breathing.”
Jack quickly removed the puppet from the man’s hand then straightened his body. He tilted the man’s head back making sure that the airway was clear and then clamped his fingers tight onto the old man’s nose and started mouth to mouth.
He counted the breaths, then pulled back so Sarah could continue the CPR, applying pressure to the chest.
He looked up — a small crowd had formed around them.
“Need an ambulance, fast,” he said firmly. “This isn’t doing … and where is the …?”
Jack had been with people – some in the line of duty – who had slipped away before his eyes. That moment always seemed like the one thing he couldn't accept.
A moment when he could do nothing.
Then one of the firemen hurriedly squatted next to Jack and Sarah and folded open a portable defibrillator. Jack paused his mouth to mouth.
“Shirt?” he said to the fireman, who nodded as he pulled the cables from the defibrillator box. If there was the slightest chance at all, they had only seconds.
Sarah drew back as Jack pulled open the man’s collar, and then ripped open the shirt, tearing the fabric back. The fireman passed the sticky pads to him, and Jack pressed one high on the man’s chest, the other lower down on the other side.
As the machine began to build a charge, Jack took a second to examine the man who lay before him.
“Do you know him?” he asked Sarah.
“It’s Mr Brendl,” said Sarah. “Everybody knows Mr Brendl.”
“Stay back,” said the fireman.
The machine delivered its jolt of electricity.
“Ambulance on its way,” said someone.
Then the fireman reached in and continued mouth to mouth, while Jack took over pumping Mr Brendl’s chest.
The minutes went by, with the fête now silent, the music stopped, the rides motionless, as if everyone was willing the old man to live.
Jack felt a hand on his shoulder – the ambulance had arrived. The fireman nodded to him to remove the defibrillator pads. He peeled them off.
And then he spotted another detail, in the hyper-reality of that moment. Underneath Mr Brendl’s armpit was a small tattoo. A faded blue tattoo of a bird.
But not a pretty bird. Not a bird of peace. Not a robin, or a dove.
No.
A vulture.
And that stopped Jack.
Thinking: I've seen that before. But where?
And then, he pictured it. Back in the nineties when the Russian mobs had moved in on Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, he had seen this tattoo on the body of a bloated fat cat whose days of Stoli and caviar had ended with him washed up on the rocks of the Brighton Beach jetty.
And now – the same tattoo, here.
In Cherringham.
The paramedics lifted Brendl onto a stretcher and moved him quickly to the ambulance. Jack and Sarah stood up and watched them go.
“Do you think – there’s a chance? That he might —?” said Sarah.
Jack hesitated, which he guessed would be answer enough. Then: “They’ll do what they can,” he said. “And we – we did what we could.”
But while Jack hated the fact they hadn’t saved the old man, something else bothered him now.
Brendl … Brighton Beach. Was there a connection?
Jack told himself to go easy.
It’s a heart attack. Takes people every day. End of story.
That's what he told himself.
But that tattoo. The vulture.
Is there something wrong here?