Andy McNab
Payback

Robert Rigby
1

Big Ben struck midday as he walked through Parliament Square. The spring sun was warm, almost hot, but he kept his brand-new puffa jacket zipped up to the neck. A police car siren sounded, and he turned to watch the driver skilfully manoeuvre his vehicle through the snarl of traffic and on towards Westminster Bridge.

He was feeling slightly apprehensive, but at the same time elated. At last he was about to do something meaningful, something significant. Waiting at the pedestrian crossing, he smiled and gently squeezed the few twists of green garden twine nestling in the palm of his right hand. For comfort.

As the traffic lights turned to red and the green man flashed on, he crossed with the rest of the crowd waiting at the kerbside. Japanese tourists walked with their camcorders at arm’s length, watching their screens while filming the imposing, magnificent buildings. Motorbike couriers revved their engines, impatient for the lights to change.

He joined the queue outside St Stephen’s Entrance, the public access point to the Houses of Parliament. Armed police watched impassively as the line of visitors slowly shuffled towards the wide entrance doors leading to the X-ray machine and the metal detector blocking the corridor about fifteen metres inside the building.

Ahead of him was a small group of young women, some with babies in carriers strapped to their fronts, brandishing leaflets warning of the health hazards created by a newly opened landfill site and chatting animatedly about the imminent meeting with their local MP.

The queue was in a suntrap, and tiny beads of sweat dotted his upper lip, but still he kept his chunky Gap jacket zipped up. He looked smart: his hair was neatly combed, his trousers were immaculately pressed and his black shoes still shone with newness.

A thin trickle of sweat ran down the side of his head as he turned and smiled politely at a group of pensioners who were beginning to line up behind him. The women wore their best dresses and light coats and the men were in blazers, their old regimental insignias sewn onto the breast pocket and their highly polished medals hanging proudly above.

‘You here for the tour too?’ asked one of the men, fishing out a letter of invitation from his blazer pocket and unfolding it to reveal the embossed letterhead reading: HOUSE OF COMMONS.

‘No,’ he answered softly.

‘How old are you, son?’ said the man.

‘Seventeen.’

The man nodded his admiration. ‘Well, it’s good to see a youngster with an interest in politics,’ he said. ‘Makes a nice change these days.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, his fingers caressing the twine in his hand. ‘I’m very interested in politics.’

He turned back as the queue moved closer to the large doors opening onto the grand corridor, where statues of statesmen through the ages lined both sides. Reporters and visitors were showing their credentials for entering the public areas before placing briefcases and bags on the X-ray machine and then stepping through the detector.

The group of young women was stopped by a whiteshirted security guard and asked about the purpose of their visit. They named their MP and showed their letter of invitation and were allowed to move into the corridor towards the security checks.

The new shoes were pinching slightly, chafing his heels, but nothing could stop his joy as he stepped over the ancient threshold of Parliament, where a security guard was waiting to question him. ‘And what business do you have here today, sir?’

He smiled at the security guard and whispered a single word: ‘Martyrdom.’

The guard leaned closer. ‘Sorry, sir, what name was that?’

He didn’t reply, but pulled sharply at the twine that ran up his arm. St Stephen’s Entrance erupted in a hail of flying glass, shattered statues and broken bodies.