Beaumont had done his disappearing act. Gone to call the powers that be. Cook wasn’t hopeful. The island was cut off from the rest of the city. There’d be a pen-pusher at the other end of the phone line. Procedures to be followed.
Cook looked up at the looming building. Every window was open, heads peering out, watching. Two hundred beds. Women and children. Doctors and nurses.
A door opened near the pool of silk. A matron, surveying the damage.
‘What’s going on here?’ she asked, in a tone that suggested Cook was somehow at fault.
‘Bomb,’ Cook said.
‘A dud?’ the matron asked.
‘UXB,’ Cook said. The first time he’d heard the term, it had sounded alien, like something from a science fiction novel. But the press had taken to it. Short for Unexploded Bomb.
‘How long to get everyone out?’ Cook asked, glancing up at the open windows.
‘Impossible,’ the matron said. ‘I’ve got three women in labour as we speak. Ten in critical condition, can’t be moved. We’d need ambulances for the rest of them.’
‘Can’t get ambulances in,’ Cook said. ‘Bridges are all up.’
‘You’ll have to do something about it,’ she said.
Beaumont returned, out of breath.
‘Got to leave it,’ he said.
‘We can’t,’ Cook replied.
‘ARP say it’s the army’s job. I called the army. They do bomb disposal. I told them what we saw. The parachute. They said it’s not a bomb, it’s a mine.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Cook asked. It sounded exactly like the army. Preferring to split hairs about terminology rather than get the job done.
‘Mines go in the sea,’ Beaumont said. ‘Float there, waiting for a ship to come close. Then they explode. Army said to call the navy. Navy’s in charge of mines.’
‘What did the navy say?’
‘Their mine disposal experts are all in Portsmouth. And they’re busy.’
Cook looked up at the open windows, and then at the hole.
‘Keep everyone back,’ he said.
‘I can’t allow you to go near it,’ Beaumont said.
‘I don’t answer to you,’ Cook replied, walking away from Beaumont, away from the smell of fear he exuded.
Towards the hole in the road.
26
The hole was ten feet deep. Even slowed by the parachute, the bomb had burrowed its way into the ground. Designed to cause maximum damage when it eventually went off.
Cook heard ticking. Possibly the metal contracting or expanding. Or possibly a timing device.
The bomb was an inanimate object, but Cook had the impression it was watching him. Waiting.
‘Got a light?’
Cook turned in surprise. Frankie’s father, Reynolds, the man who only hours earlier had been holding a knife in Cook’s face.
