roared, with the voice of authority. ‘Stop that!’
Rogers might have stopped for all of thirty seconds, then he aimed another kick at the groaning man.
‘Rogers, I’m putting you on a charge!’
The kick went home, with a dull thud. The third man tried to grab the kicker. The kicker lashed out at him. He only just dodged back in time.
‘Right, Rogers, you’re suspended from duty, as of now.’
Rogers lashed out at his superior officer again, narrowly missing. The leading fireman backed off, and began to talk into his radio, which was clipped to his tunic. Now Rogers just stood, wild-eyed, panting. The man on the ground groaned horribly, and curled up into a tighter ball, hands holding his gut. I could tell he was really seriously hurt.
I felt I should go across and help him; but the wildness of the fist-clenched figure standing over him . . . it was Hermione who ran to help the injured man. Rogers nearly kicked her, till he saw she was a woman; he seemed as if he was coming out of some sort of fit. He seemed not to know where he was . . .
Now, in the distance, we could hear a siren. And at that dire sound, Rogers suddenly ran away round the edge of the Pond.
We all gathered round the man on the ground. But there wasn’t much anyone could do. He yelled out in pain if you tried to touch him. He was violently sick, and I thought there were streaks of blood in the vomit.
A police car swung in through the Park gate. Two uniformed constables got out and stared at the groaning body.
‘Who did it?’
The leading fireman pointed up the shore of the Pond, where Rogers was backing away further, and shouting something we couldn’t make out. There was something so strange, so . . . crazy about the way he was pacing up and down and shouting incoherencies, that I saw the constables look at each other with raised eyebrows. Then one of them radioed for back-up, and they began to move up the shore fairly cautiously. I noticed that they stayed together.
Another siren. Two now. One would be an ambulance, I hoped. I didn’t like the noises the man on the ground was making at all.
Ambulance and police car together. The ambulancemen very calm and slow-moving; the two fresh policemen making their way round the Pond the other way, talking into their radios.
We listened to them take the injured man away; but we watched Rogers across the water. There was something so strange and restless about him; more like some animal. He shouted at the policemen as they closed in; then there was a sudden rush of blue shirts, and he was face-down on the ground.
We turned away, letting out deep breaths of relief.
‘What the hell was all that about?’ I asked the leading fireman. He wiped a sweating face.
‘Bloody sandwiches. They were larking about one minute, then it suddenly just blew up. Those two have never liked each other, but . . .’
‘It must be the heat,’ I said. ‘And the smell . . .’
‘And the flies,’ he said. ‘Those bloody flies. Great fat things, and they keep on landing on your face.’
‘Flies? We haven’t had flies much here . . .’
‘Then just thank God for it. They’re driving us mad, down the far end. We’re changing the pumping crew daily now . . .’ He looked at me unbelievingly, and then at where the police were leading Rogers away. ‘That man has lost his job, and he’s probably going to prison. And all for what? A box of sandwiches. It’s mad . . . mad.’ Then he walked away back to his remaining crew, head down.
Two idle, hot, bickering hours later, the bomb disposal squad turned up and walked out on the ladders to the bomb. They didn’t hang about. We heard distant police loudspeakers telling people to open all their windows, then they blew it up with a small, controlled explosion. We watched from the road, well back. There was a lovely tall spout of mud, out there in the middle, and a nice little bang, but we never heard of any windows reported broken.
It was only a very small bomb, they said.
Crittenden turned up that evening to take a statement about the firemen. I was having a drink on the flat roof that overlooks my back garden. Of course, my back garden is full of shed, but other back gardens still have