Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson

Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson

Chapter 1
If the incident had been a scene in a film, it would have looked beautiful.
The violence would have taken place in elegantly choreographed silence
and slow motion. Perhaps it would have started with the wedding party
milling around outside the picturesque country church, then the camera
would zoom in on a rose of blood blossoming from the bride’s white gown
as she looks up, surprised, and floats serenely to the ground, arms reaching
out, grasping for something too insubstantial to hold. She would toss her
bouquet high in the air, pink and purple flowers against a backdrop of blue
sky, and it would fall into the arms of a pretty bridesmaid. Then the
bridesmaid’s head would disintegrate. Strings of blood would snake through
the air like drops of ink in water.
But the way Terry Gilchrist saw it – and he was there – it was as swift as
it was brutal. A crack, loud enough to be heard above the church bells, was
followed by a dull thud, then a patch of blood spread over the bride’s chest.
Her body arched, and she spun half around and crumpled in an untidy heap
of blood-soaked white chiffon and lace, her mouth open, the scream for
ever stuck in her throat. Another crack, and her groom fell beside her. A
frightened child clung tightly to his mother’s legs. The bridesmaids clutched
their posies, eyes wide with horror. A third bullet hit the maid of honour
before she could run for cover. She fell beside the bride and groom, half her
face shot away. The men in their grey pinstripe suits and the women in
difficult shoes and wide-brimmed hats bumped into one another as they ran
around in panic and confusion. A bullet chipped the corner off an ancient
tombstone and a sliver of stone entered the photographer’s eye. A guest fell,
clutching his thigh. The quickest to react reached the church door as another
bullet slammed into the centuries-old wood. Someone managed to pull the
heavy door open, and those who could rushed inside. They jammed the
doorway, and another bridesmaid arched backwards and dropped to the
ground, blood oozing from her back. People trampled over her body in an
attempt to get into the sanctuary of the church.
It was all finished in less than a minute.
Terry Gilchrist reacted as quickly as he could. He was no stranger to
sudden death and violence. He had been under fire before, but nothing had
quite prepared him for this. Even so, his soldier’s instinct kicked in. He
glanced up at the hill where he thought the shots were coming from and saw
a dark figure scurrying away, over the grassy summit and down the slope.
Gambling that the assault was over and that there was no one else up
there, Terry tried to shepherd the stunned and dazed stragglers into the
safety of the church, desperately searching for Winsome. There were no
more shots. The church bells stopped ringing. Tentatively, one by one, the
birds started singing again.
Terry stood alone in the bright December sunlight and called the police
and ambulance on his mobile. One of the fallen guests was moaning with
pain. Nearby, a bridesmaid sat propped up against a gravestone crying, her
hands pressed to her bloody midriff where something wet and shiny rested
in her lap. Terry was no medic, but he had picked up some basic first-aid
training in the military, and he visited all the fallen to see if there was
anyone he could help before the ambulances arrived. The groom was his
mate, Ben, and he had been shot just above his stomach, around the location
of his liver. He was still alive, though barely conscious, and the best Terry
could do was tear off and wad up part of Ben’s bloodstained shirt and have
him press it against the wound. Tears came to his eyes as he passed the dead
bride and cast a glance down at her crumpled body. He knelt to touch her
still-warm cheek and closed her staring eyes. It seemed that all he could see
were bodies strewn around the graveyard. Then he turned and went into the
church to find Winsome.
Banks left the crematorium ahead of the others, David Bowie’s ‘Starman’
playing over the tinny PA system, and hurried away from the knots of
people gathering behind him, down the gravelled drive to the iron gates.
‘It always made her feel happy, that song,’ he heard someone say between
sniffles. Earlier in the brief service, a friend had read a Christina Rossetti
poem: ‘When I am dead, my dearest, / Sing no sad songs for me’. ‘Starman’
was certainly no sad song, but it still had people in tears. And even David
Bowie was dead now.
Banks moved on quickly. He didn’t want to hang around and make small
talk about death and loss with people he didn’t know. He had seen the
mourners crying on the front row: two young couples, probably daughters

Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson