Overkill by James Rouch Page A

would have removed, it was a shadow of the extensive bruising she’d received from a wound on their last mission. Then he’d been tempted to leave her behind, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to exclude her, to exclude himself from her company.
    She’d never allowed him near, given any hint of encouragement or indication that she was ever likely to, and still he hoped ... There was a faint smile on her face, it played at the corner of her lips and fractionally accentuated the curve of her cheekbones. He could only wish that it was a real one, and directed at him. He was very tired. It would have been good just to lie down beside her and hold her hand, and sleep. He was tired and lonely .The war; command; frustra- tion; they towered over him, crushing him down and he felt his will to resist the pressures crumbling.
    A hand was on his shoulder, and he turned to see the nurse making an urgent pantomime of ejection towards the door. One last look at Andrea, and he complied. He didn’t know if he would ever see her again. Thome was not at the hospice. No one remembered seeing him, or knew where he was. For the second time in a day, Revell had no unit. He sat on the steps of the building, fighting the temptation to lie down and sleep. It was hunger as much as willpower that prevented him doing just that. Even the condemned man ate a last meal, a pathetic act under those circumstances, as if it mattered when death was only a little way off, but the sensation was not about to be allayed by the application of reason, and he looked around for the kitchens. ‘Are you hungry?’
    It was the blonde with the camera. She stood in front of him, proffering a piece of sausage and a half-loaf of bread. ‘I am, yes, but those are your rations.’ ‘I can get more, here, take it.’
    Just to hold it felt good. Revell took a bite from the sausage. It was full of meat and rich with flavour. ‘Where do you get food like this?’ ‘Friends. I have lots of them. My name is Inga. Come with me, there is something I would like to show you.’
    Revell stood up and followed without question, like a schoolboy called from the dinner table by the headmistress. He didn’t know where she was taking him, and at that moment he didn’t really care. She laid a hand on his arm to caution him against some inert power lines drooping low across an alleyway and the slight pressure of her long slim fingers made him tingle. The sensation remained for a moment after she later, and slower than she need have, let go. She chatted as they walked. There was a trace of accent in her voice, but he couldn’t place it. Swedish, Swiss? Something about it was familiar, but precisely what escaped him. Apparently the city-fathers of Hamburg had decided to record history in the making, she was to chronicle on film every detail of the siege. Her job meant a pass that would take her anywhere, extra food, and if she needed it a car with petrol.
    As they walked she linked her arm through his. It seemed an innocent gesture, but he sensed a fraction too much pressure for it to be quite that. Being with her made him feel good. The distant, and sometimes not so distant, hammer of the guns was a barely heard background noise.
    With a genuine-sounding interest she asked him about his family, and he talked of his parents, and as her gentle probing prompted, about the bitch, and the divorce, and about Andrea. He had known her only minutes and already he had told her about years out of his life. She wasn’t Andrea, but she was attentive and attractive, and as he felt through the sleeves of their clothing, warm. There was such a lot he had kept bottled inside him, now there was someone who really seemed to want to listen and the pent-up thoughts and emotions became words and he talked as he had never talked to anyone. He wanted their walk to continue, until the burden he’d made for himself was lightened by being shared.
    Star shells lit the city. Shells pounded whole suburbs,