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Then, patiently, as she always did, because that was how she was brought up, she waited at the first pedestrian crossing, until the figure of the green man came and it was safe to walk. It was only a few hundred yards from the mouth of the Tube station to the heavily guarded gate of the Palace of Westminster, close to the foot of the tower, the entrance she had to use. As always, there were police officers everywhere, many carrying unsightly black automatic weapons in their arms, cradling them as if they were precious toys.
No one looked at a pregnant young woman out on the street in London. They were all too busy to notice such a mundane sight. She walked over the final stretch of road when the last pelican crossing allowed, wondering who would be on duty at the security post that day. There was one nice police officer, a friendly sergeant, tall, with close cropped gray hair, perhaps forty, or a fit fifty, it was difficult to tell. She knew his name: Kelly. Everyone else among the staff who scrutinized her bag and her ID card from time to time, asking pointless questions, picking curiously at her belongings, was still a stranger.
Twenty yards from the high iron gates of the security entrance she turned and saw him.
The young man from the train had his rucksack high over his head. He was ru
Melanie Darma watched all this as if it were a dream, quite unreal, a spectacle from some TV show that had, perhaps, been granted permission to film in the shadow of Big Ben, though this was, she felt sure, improbable.
She walked on and found herself facing the tower of Big Ben again. Kelly-Sergeant Kelly, she corrected herself-was there, yelling at her. He didn’t have a weapon. He never carried one. He was too nice for that, she thought, and wondered why at that moment she chose, quite consciously, not to listen to his hoarse, anxious voice.
“Melanie…!”
The bright, angry sky shook, the horizon began to fall sideways. She found herself thrust forcefully to one side, and felt her hands grip the shoulder bag with the golden portcullis close to her, out of habit, not fear, since all it contained was the book on Ouroboros, a few bills, a purse containing £20 and a few coins.
Falling, she clutched the canvas to herself, defending the tender swell at her stomach as she tumbled toward the hard London stone.
Two strong arms were attempting to knock her down to the ground. She broke the fall with one knee and felt his chin jab hard against her skull as the jolt took him by surprise. Her stockinged skin grazed against the paving. She felt a familiar, stabbing pain from childhood, loose flesh damaged by grit. Tears pricked at her eyes. She was in someone’s arms and she knew, immediately, whose.
She couldn’t see him, but he was still on her, tight arm around her throat.
When she looked up three men in black uniforms circled them, weapons to their shoulders, eyes fixed on a target that was, she understood, as much her as it was him.
Half-crouched and gasping for breath, she could see the iron security gates were just a few short steps away: security, a safe, private world, guarded so carefully against violent young men carrying mysterious rucksacks. Someone came into view, face in darkness initially since she was now in the shadow cast by the gigantic clock tower and the day seemed suddenly almost as dark as the mouth of the Tube from which she had so recently emerged.
“Don’t shoot me,” she said quietly, and realized there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t…”
Her hands stayed where they were, on her stomach. Somehow she couldn’t say the words she wanted them to hear. Don’t shoot us…
The grip on her neck relaxed, just a little. She caught the eyes of the man in front of her. Sergeant Kelly-she had never known his second name, and feared now she never would-had his hands out in front, showing they were empty. His face was calm and kind, unflustered, that of a gentle man, she thought, one for whom violence was distasteful.
“It doesn’t need to end this way…” he pleaded quietly.
“What way?” the voice behind her demanded.
“Badly,” the policeman said, and moved forward so that they could see his eyes. “Let the young lady get to her feet. Can’t you see she’s hurt?”
Laughter from an unseen mouth, his breath hot against her scalp. She found the courage to look. The old red rucksack was high in the air. From its dirt-stained base ran a slender black cord, dangling down toward the arm that gripped her. Tight in his fingers lay some small object, like a television remote control.
She couldn’t count the black shapes gathering behind Sergeant Kelly. They wore heavy bulletproof vests and soft caps. Black, ugly weapons stood in their arms tight to the shoulder, the barrels nodding up and down, like the snouts of beasts sniffing for prey.
“She’s pregnant,” the sergeant went on. “You see that? Can’t you?”
The unseen man sighed softly, a note, perhaps, of hesitation. She felt there was some flicker of hope reflected in Sergeant Kelly’s eyes.
“Get up…” the foreign voice ordered.
She stumbled to her feet. Her knee hurt. Her entire body seemed racked by some strange, unfamiliar, yet not unwanted pain.
Her captor’s young face was now just visible. He was looking toward the tower of Big Ben.
“We’re going in there,” he insisted, nodding toward the black iron security gates. “If you try to stop me…she’s dead.” He nodded at the armed officers circling them. “Them or me. What’s the difference?”
She wondered how long the men with guns would wait, whether they were already gauging how wide to make the arc of their circle so that they might shoot safely in order to guarantee a kill, yet not be subject to their own deadly fire when the moment came.
It will be soon…she thought, and found her hands returning to her belly, as if her fingers might protect what was there against the hot rain of gunfire.
Someone thrust aside the barrel of the closest weapon. It was the sergeant again, swearing furiously, not at her assailant, but at the officers with guns. Harsh words. Harsher than she’d ever heard him speak before.
“There are choices,” Sergeant Kelly insisted as he pushed them back.
Hands high, empty, face still calm, determined, he wheeled around to confront the man who held her.
“Choices…” the policeman repeated quietly. “She’s pregnant. Isn’t there-” he shook his head, struggling to locate the right words “-some rule that says it’s wrong to kill an unborn child?” Sergeant Kelly shrugged. “For me there is, and I don’t believe in anything much, except what I can see and touch. If you believe-” his right hand swept briefly toward the sky “-something, isn’t it the same?”
“You are not my preacher, policeman,” the voice behind her spat at him.
“No.” Sergeant Kelly was so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face and it smelled of peppermints and stale tobacco. “I’m no one’s priest. But tell me this. What will your god say of a man who knowingly takes the life of an unborn child?” He leaned forward, bending his head to one said, as if listening, curiously. “Will he be pleased? Or…”
A stream of angry, foreign words filled the air. The London policeman stood there, his hand out, beckoning.
“She doesn’t belong here,” he said. “Let her go with me. After that…”
He shrugged.
“You…and they…” The way he nodded at the others, the men with the guns, shocked her. It was as if there was no difference between them and the one who had snatched her, out in the bright, stifling day in Parliament Square. “You can do what the hell you like.”
Silence, followed by the distant caterwauling of sirens. This was, she knew, the moment.