Peace on Earth. Gordon Stevens

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      The door was only half open; Enderson reached in, trying to open it, felt the tearing and burning in his arm as he pulled at the door, the flames on his jacket.

      She saw the man pulling the boy out, saw he had been injured, one of the other men coming forward, putting out the fire. She saw the injury to his arm, tried to move to help him, watched as he pulled her son away from the car, the men round him moving with him, everyone moving back, away from the car, away from the explosion. She was looking at her son, at the way the man was laying him on the ground, seeing the red, so much red she was suddenly thinking, the blood pouring from her son’s body, knew he was not breathing, knew he was dying, his insides pouring out, his tiny lungs giving up the fight for breath. Somewhere, she did not know where, she heard the ambulance, knew they would not know what to do, would not know how to save her son, knew they would be too late.

      The man with the blacked-out face was reaching to his gun belt, pulling out a pack, inserting the tube into her son’s mouth, clearing the airway, enabling him to breathe, pulling his body together, ramming the padding and bandages on his wounds, stopping the red pouring from him. Just like the accident unit at Birmingham Hospital, Enderson was thinking, just like when he had done his six months on the emergency unit, just like the night they had brought in the first victims of the motorway pile-up.

      The photographer was parking his car by the drinking club on the corner, his camera on the seat beside him. He had been on the nightly tour, hoping for a picture, knowing there would be nothing so close to Christmas, when he had heard the shooting, known where it had come from. He heard the sound as the car blew up, knew he had missed it and ran anyway. The crowd was parting, he saw the woman kneeling over the boy, knew who the man treating the boy was, not who he was, not his name, what he was. The ambulance was pulling up, the ambulancemen pushing through the crowd. One chance, he thought, was reacting automatically. Seven thirty, he checked the time, worrying about the deadlines, if he would make them, if the photograph was as good as he thought.

      Within twenty-five minutes he had developed the film and alerted the picture desks in London.

      The image began to appear, he tilted the tray, letting the liquid run evenly over the print, and watched the details emerging, growing stronger, saw that the photograph was even better than he had remembered, knew without thinking what he would call it, what they would all call it. It was so close to Christmas, he thought. Knew the impact the photograph would have, the impact the three words of the title would have.

      The saloon bar of the public house in Charlotte Street was busy, it would get even busier later. The walls were draped with decorations and a sprig of mistletoe had been pinned on the ceiling by the fireplace. Walid Haddad arrived five minutes early, bought himself an orange juice and stood against the bar, sipping it. Behind him a group of men he could not help overhearing were talking to two attractive young women he assumed were their secretaries. At eight thirty he made his way across the room, through the door at the side of the bar, and followed the signs to the gents’ toilet. A man in a business suit was leaning against the urinal singing to himself; he looked up, his eyes red and blurred, then turned back to the wall. The cubicle was empty, Haddad closed and locked the door and felt behind the cistern. The envelope was taped in place, he pulled it off, flushed the toilet and left.

      Fifteen minutes later he collected the briefcase from the left luggage locker at Euston station and returned to the Holiday Inn, stopping at a chemist shop in Camden Town to purchase a pair of surgical gloves and a torch. Only when he was in his hotel room did he open the case, pull on the gloves, and examine the contents. The four ounces of plastic explosive were in a soap container, the transmitter, receiver unit, detonator and battery wrapped separately. He connected the receiver unit and battery to the bulb from the torch, and activated the transmitter, seeing the bulb light up and confirming the system was working, then he disconnected the bulb, replaced it with the detonator and began to assemble the bomb. At twenty minutes to ten he locked his bedroom door and left the hotel.

      The mews in Camden Town was quiet and dark, the only light was through the curtains of the windows of the flats on the first floors and the street lamp thirty yards away at one end. It took Haddad less than a minute to open the garage door and another eight to attach the bomb to the petrol tank of the Granada. By eleven thirty he was back in his room. He helped himself to a drink and turned on the television, searching the channels for the in-house feature film. As he passed BBC 2, a late-night news flash caught his attention; he flicked past, then back again.

      ‘We are receiving more details of the terrorist incident in Belfast earlier this evening,’ the announcer was saying.

      He turned up the sound.

      The rain outside was heavy, the windows were running with condensation. In the corridor outside she could hear the clamour of the children as they began their morning break. In the corner someone was smoking, they had tried to ban smoking in the staff-room, but some people had objected. She joined the queue for tea, enjoying the atmosphere, and sat down. The morning newspapers were on the table in the centre of the room, the men amongst the staff were talking about them. ‘Amazing,’ she heard one of them saying, ‘absolutely amazing.’ She hadn’t seen the papers, been too busy to look at them. End of term, carol service that evening, the reports for her English class to finish. And the Christmas shopping, all of it, for her and the kids. One day, she sometimes thought, she ought to sit down and work out how she managed it all by herself, except there wasn’t any time. In the far corner the men were still talking about the newspapers. ‘Incredible,’ one of them was still saying, ‘absolutely bloody incredible.’ She took a cup of tea and sat down.

      ‘What are they on about?’ she asked.

      ‘Haven’t you seen the photo in the papers today?’

      She said she hadn’t had the time; a colleague reached across, pulled one from the pile and gave it to her.

      The picture filled the entire front page; it had been taken at night, she knew, the image grainy, almost unreal.

      In the centre, lying, screaming, on the ground, was a small boy. He was burned, she could see, horribly burned and shot, the insides of his body seemed to be pouring from him, the remnants of his clothes hanging from his limbs. He was looking up, white-eyed with fear, at the two people bending over him, at the woman – she knew instinctively it was his mother – kneeling beside him, holding his hand, looking at the other figure, the man in the camouflaged clothing of the British army. She looked at the man, not aware she was sipping her tea; not aware of the noise in the staff-room. His hair was long and his face was streaked with black. He was bending over the child, his hands pulling the remnants of the shattered body together, stemming the blood that was flowing from the boy’s arteries, soothing the terrible burns. Even in the photograph she could see he was treating the child as if he was a doctor, as if he himself was a father. From his left shoulder hung a short squat weapon, she did not know what it was, a belt of cartridges across his chest, the pistol and grenades hanging from his belt. His left arm appeared to be injured, she could see by the way he was holding himself, see the way his own clothing had been burned away. The woman beside him was looking at him, appealing to him. She stared at the picture then read the handful of words below.

      Late the previous evening, the single paragraph stated, a British army unit had gone to the help of a Catholic family who had been bombed and shot in their car. Both the father, a leading member of the Republican movement who was high on the Protestants’ wanted list, and the mother had escaped unharmed.

      She read the words a second time, still not hearing the conversations around her, then looked at the three words of the headline across the top of the page, ‘Peace On Earth’.

      It was almost Christmas, she remembered.

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