‘I hated my teachers,’ Vaughn said.
‘Does that tell us more about them, or about you?’ I asked.
Freddie looked up at us, but kept going with his work. He unclipped the last fastener, and the lid of the coffin rose slightly. It had been tightly packed.
Freddie pulled open the lid with a flourish. He picked up his oil lamp so we could see what was inside.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think Vaughn owes me an explanation,’ I said.
‘I thought you were with us,’ Vaughn said. ‘All that stuff about turning double agent. But you keep on about the blasted Leckies. Makes a man think you’re not on his side.’
The coffin lay open like a clamshell. Both sides were full. The top half was guns. There must have been a dozen automatic weapons, packed head to toe like sardines in a can. I didn’t recognise them. That in itself wasn’t remarkable – it had been sixteen years since I’d left the army. A lot had changed. But I didn’t think these guns had come from one of our factories. Next to the guns were a set of grey, metal canisters, printed with dense text that I couldn’t read. Ammunition, I assumed.
The bottom half was covered with canvas, kept in place with studs. A couple of the studs were opened, and Freddie grabbed the canvas and pulled it up. The rest of the studs popped loose, and Freddie peeled the canvas back. Underneath, the coffin was packed with what looked like cloth-wrapped bricks. Each one was the size of a small bag of flour. Freddie took one out and threw it to me. I caught it. It was a dense material with a slight give. It made a crinkling sound as I squeezed it. I peeled back the cloth. Inside the cloth was another wrapper made up of some kind of waxed paper. I ripped the paper. It was what I’d expected. Yellow putty. TNT.
‘What’s this lot for?’ I asked. Safer to talk about guns and explosives than about the Leckies.
‘The fight for peace,’ Vaughn said.
‘You could make a fair amount of peace with that lot,’
I said.
63
The squirrel sat on the stone balustrade, eating an acorn. Twenty yards from our party. He didn’t seem bothered by us.
We made quite a shooting party. Me and Margaret, Vaughn and Miriam, and Freddie.
I’d shown them how to load and fire a revolver. Freddie was waving his towards the squirrel.
‘Don’t!’ Miriam said, putting her hand on his arm.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘The thing about a handgun, it’s useless for accuracy, no matter what the gunfighters do in the pictures.’
‘Useless for you perhaps,’ Freddie said, fancying himself a marksman.
‘Freddie ...’ Miriam said. I shared her feeling. This was a mistake, letting the training session become some kind of social affair.
Freddie stood sideways, the way he’d seen gunfighters stand in the movies. Billy the Kid. Annie Oakley. The kind where the sharp-shooter could hit a coin at a hundred yards.
‘Don’t, Freddie,’ Miriam pleaded. She was excited, though. It was the guns. I’d seen the effect before, on people who hadn’t been on the receiving end, who hadn’t yet learnt that the world would be a better place if all the guns were melted and turned into plough shares.
‘Don’t worry,’ Vaughn said. ‘He’s got as much chance of hitting that as I have of becoming King.’
Freddie squinted. I’d taken him through the basics. Squeeze the trigger, prepare yourself for the recoil. I’d laid it on a bit thick. Wanted to let Freddie know that this wasn’t a toy. He was probably expecting his arm to fly backwards, the kind of kick you’d get from a shotgun.
He fired. The squirrel, unmolested, dropped its acorn and ran along the balustrade, leapt into a tree and disappeared.
‘Let’s see you do better,’ Freddie said to Vaughn, who took the gun and checked the chamber.
‘What am I aiming at?’ Vaughn asked, squinting into the morning sun. In his shirtsleeves and braces, he looked like he’d rolled out of bed.
‘As I said, with a gun like this, aiming is going to get you killed. I want you to practise drawing the gun, and firing forwards as soon as you can. The only way to make sure you kill a man with a handgun is to stand so close you’re touching him, and make sure you get your shot off first.’ These were things I’d learnt through experience, in the trenches, and in the crowded alleys of Hong Kong.
Vaughn ignored me. He strolled over to the balustrade and put down his teacup.
