The surge of euphoria at the perfection of his shot crashed instantly into self-disgust. On his knees, half-buried, Nat vomited into the snow, then staggered upright. Through the windowless gap in the wall, he glimpsed Felix, staring at the stone hut.
On the battlefield, faceless figures appear from nowhere. They are anonymous. You may not even see their eyes before you shoot. Further away, a movement in a landscape gives away a position. A glint of metal or a flash of glass. You fire and never see what happens. You convince yourself your enemy isn’t human. Nat thought he had come to terms with killing.
But this was worse than anything he’d known before. His head told him he had performed his duty. That was his job, wasn’t it? He had despatched a threat. But that was not how it felt. He had done something terrible and he knew it. He had acted on instinct, and instincts couldn’t always be trusted. And this was not a battlefield.
His fingers felt clumsy and useless but he made them slide the safety catch back on. There was blood on his hand, where the trigger had nicked the delicate skin between his thumb and forefinger. Some five feet away the bullet case had made a neat hole in the snow.
He stumbled out into the open, the taste of bile on his tongue. Felix looked frailer than ever in her bulky coat. She was swaying slightly, or perhaps it was him. The thought that he had so nearly lost her had sent him off balance. Everything was out of kilter. He just needed to get over to her now, and take her in his arms again, and look after her properly. He’d work out what to do next after that. Thank God he had followed her. Thank God he had been there in time.
The short walk seemed to take hours. As he got closer, Nat registered a change of expression in Felix’s face. Its unseeing gaze had shifted into hatred. Who could blame her after such a betrayal?
He tried to gather her stiff body into his own, to wipe out everything with an embrace, but she shook him off with a shudder.
‘Don’t.’ Her hands were raised as if she was defending herself against him.
‘Please, Felix. Your face . . .’ He reached forward with one hand.
‘What? What is it?’
She backed away, wiping her hand across her cheek. She felt something, inspected her palm. A tiny fleck of blood, smeared on her bare skin. She rubbed furiously, distorting her face. When Nat tried to help her, she turned away.
‘Don’t, I said.’
‘It’s all right. It’s gone now,’ he reassured her.
‘No. It’s not all right. It’s not all right.’
Nat waited, arms open, willing her to look at him again. She wouldn’t. When he tried to smile, his cold numb lips didn’t work. They caught against his teeth, turning his smile into a grimace.
‘Felix, I’m sorry. I had no choice.’
She looked down again at Dolores’s twisted body, and he made himself look too. It was completely still. You didn’t need a medic to tell you that life had left it. Vermilion seeped slowly into the snow around her head.
‘No choice?’ Felix said. Voice cold. Eyes wide. She looked straight at him. That was when he finally realised that her hatred was for him, not Dolores.
‘She’s a killer,’ he said. ‘She told you herself. You heard her.’
‘Like you.’
‘Yes, like me. But I didn’t know what she was going to do next. I couldn’t take the risk.’
‘You didn’t give her a chance.’
They had been whispering. As if they could be overheard. Nat raised his voice and shocked himself with its loudness.
‘A chance to kill someone else?’ To kill you, he was thinking. ‘She’s the enemy.’
‘A chance for a trial.’
‘A trial? You don’t understand. That’s what I’ve saved her from.’ He spoke slowly, and patiently, convincing himself with his words.
‘What on earth do you mean? Saved her from a fair trial?’
Nat stepped towards Felix, and again she stepped back, shaking her head. Again she rubbed at her face.
‘Nothing. Except she’d never get a fair trial,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what it’s like now. There’s no such thing, these days. How can there be, in times like these? And what would be the point, anyway? You know she’s guilty. She told you herself.’
‘So who made you judge and jury?’
‘Felix, listen to me. Listen. It was the kindest thing I could have done for her.’ She doesn’t realise what’s happening in Spain, he thought.
‘Kind?’ A fleck of spit caught her lower lip.
Again Nat tried to approach her, to wipe her clean, and again Felix backed away, the back of her hand against her mouth. She began to retch herself.
‘Please. Just listen to me,’ he urged. ‘Hear what I’m saying. You don’t know what these “trials” are like. They’re not about justice. Nothing like. Believe me. You can’t imagine what Dolores would have gone through if we’d turned her in. A court martial? Under these circumstances? They’d have executed her for this. This way at least it’s all over at once. It’s done. She hasn’t suffered.’
‘You don’t know that. You can’t be so certain.’
Nat couldn’t answer that. Perhaps Felix was right. And he knew that it had been the last thing on his mind when he pulled the trigger. He closed his eyes briefly. He simply didn’t understand. How could this be happening, the two of them standing there, arguing with each other? You would think he was the enemy. All he had wanted was to protect Felix, and keep her safe.
‘She could have gone to prison. There are prisoners of war, aren’t there?’ said Felix. ‘That’s how it works, doesn’t it?’
‘Sometimes. It’s how it should work. But even when it does, that’s just another kind of hell. Anyway, what about the evidence?’
‘What do you mean?’
Her face was like a mask. She really didn’t realise. It wasn’t surprising, perhaps. He was only beginning to realise himself.
‘I mean you’d have been called as witness, and then what? It would have been your word against hers? Don’t you see? You’re not a Party member. You could be an unreliable yourself. What then?’
‘You think I’m unreliable?’ Her voice rose harshly, in a way he’d never imagined it could. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘No, no. Stop it. That’s not what I’m saying. Of course I don’t.’ Oh why couldn’t he make her understand? ‘Of course not. But that’s how things are going now. Without a political record of any kind . . . There’s nothing on paper to prove your allegiance. You’re not in the Party. These are dangerous times. Everyone’s under suspicion. You must have noticed.’
She’s not taking this in, Nat thought despairingly. She doesn’t realise what it’s like now, what else I’ve saved her from. She thinks I’m patronising her. ‘People are disappearing, Felix. People you thought you could trust. And it’s not clear where they’re going. Or why.’ And all that aside, there’s something else neither of us could have known until it was too late. If Felix hadn’t realised, how could Nat be the one to tell her?
Felix turned away from him and dropped to her knees. She bent over Dolores. The bullet had gone through her neck. The exit wound – what he could see of it – was a mess. Dolores’s face half-nestled in the colouring snow. Her eyebrows were still raised, expectantly; one taunting dead eye was visible, waiting for Felix’s answer.
Down in the valley a horn sounded, and Felix’s head whipped round. A thin cheer went up, quickly swallowed by the rising grumble of a truck engine. Nat took a deep breath, but dared not try to touch her again.
‘Felix, you’ve got to go. Now. Everyone’s leaving. They’ll be looking for you now. And they mustn’t come up here. Let me deal with this.’
She stood up very slowly. Fury made her tremble, not fear. She hated him now, he was sure. She really hated him.
Forgive me before you leave me. Please, please forgive me. But get away. You must go. Quickly, get away. He couldn’t say it out loud.
One last chance.
‘Felix?’
Refusing to meet his eyes, she shook her head again. She walked quickly away from him and didn’t once look back.
Nat wanted to bellow and howl and beat the ground and tear his clothes to shreds. He wanted the earth to stop turning and the heavens to crack open. He wanted to shout at Felix, call her back, physically force her to meet his eyes and then beg her to see things for what they were and not let her go until she did. But there was no time, and he didn’t trust himself any more, and he couldn’t take the risk. So he watched her go in silence.
Then he bent down, hooked his arms under Dolores’s, and dragged her backwards towards the sound of the stream he had heard earlier. Smearing their tracks, Dolores’s blood painted the snow. At the edge of the ravine, Nat inched sideways, holding his breath. It was a very long way down. They would be far away before she could be found, he was certain.
He knelt at Dolores’s shoulder, twisted, and slid his hand over hers, into her coat pocket. He felt around her unresponsive fingers. They were empty. Angrily, he jerked her hand out of the pocket, felt again inside, and panicked when again he felt nothing. You fool. She’s probably left-handed. You can’t remember how she was standing. He grabbed roughly at her other arm, and pulled the hand out of her pocket on the other side. As he did so, Dolores’s fingers released the silvery surgical blade they were clutching and it bounced on the rock with a harsh ringing sound. Then it hit another rock below, and another, and another, tinkling its way down to the bottom of the ravine, getting quieter and quieter, until there was complete silence.
Nat let out his breath, and got to his feet. He manoeuvred the body round, so that it lay crosswise to him on the rocky ledge. Sitting down for stability and strength, legs in front, hands braced behind, he pushed with his feet, gently at first and then harder, until he felt the body lose resistance. Dolores slithered out of sight, and Nat’s hopes went with her.