The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

WHEN I TOOK back the second mug of tea, with the demerara stirred in, he had taken off his baggy sweater, which was unraveling at the cuffs; he dresses for the tomb, I thought, layer on layer but it won’t keep out the cold. Under the wool he wore a faded flannel shirt. Its twisted collar curled up; I thought, he looks like a man who does his own laundry. “Hostages to fortune?” I said.

“No,” he said, “I don’t get very far with the lasses.” He passed a hand over his hair to flatten it, as if the adjustment might change his fortunes. “No kids, well, none I know of.”

I gave him his tea. He took a gulp and winced. “After…” he said.

“Yes?”

“Right after, they’ll know where the shot’s come from, it won’t take any time for them to work that out. Once I get down the stairs and out the front door, they’ll have me right there in the street. I’m going to take the gun, so as soon as they sight me they’ll shoot me dead.” He paused and then said, as if I had demurred, “It’s the best way.”

“Ah,” I said. “I thought you had a plan. I mean, other than getting killed.”

“What better plan could I have?” There was only a touch of sarcasm. “It’s a godsend, this. The hospital. Your attic. Your window. You. It’s cheap. It’s clean. It gets the job done, and it costs one man.”

I had said to him earlier, violence solves nothing. But it was only a piety, like a grace before meat. I wasn’t attending to its meaning as I said it, and if I thought about it, I felt a hypocrite. It’s only what the strong preach to the weak; you never hear it the other way round; the strong don’t lay down their arms. “What if I could buy you a moment?” I said. “If you were to wear your jacket to the killing, and be ready to go: to leave the widowmaker here, and pick up your empty bag, and walk out like a boiler man, the way you came in?”

“As soon as I walk out of this house I’m done.”

“But if you were to walk out of the house next door?”

“And how would that be managed?” he said.

I said, “Come with me.”

* * *

HE WAS NERVOUS to leave it, his sentry post, but on this promise he must. We still have five minutes, I said, and you know it, so come, leave your gun tidily under your chair. He crowded up behind me in the hall, and I had to tell him to step back so I could open the door. “Put it on the latch,” he advised. “It would be a farce if we were shut out on the stairs.”

The staircases of these houses have no daylight. You can push a time switch on the wall and flood the landings with a yellow glare. After the allotted two minutes you will be back in the dark. But the darkness is not so deep as you first think.

You stand, breathing gently, evenly, eyes adapting. Feet noiseless on the thick carpets, descend just one half-flight. Listen: the house is silent. The tenants who share this staircase are gone all day. Closed doors annul and muffle the world outside, the cackle of news bulletins from radios, the buzz of the trippers from the top of the town, even the apocalyptic roar of the airplanes as they dip toward Heathrow. The air, uncirculated, has a camphor smell, as if the people who first lived here were creaking open wardrobes, lifting out their mourning clothes. Neither in nor out of the house, visible but not seen, you could lurk here for an hour undisturbed, you could loiter for a day. You could sleep here; you could dream. Neither innocent nor guilty, you could skulk here for decades, while the alderman’s daughter grows old: between step and step, grow old yourself, slip the noose of your name. One day Trinity Place will fall down, in a puff of plaster and powdered bone. Time will draw to a zero point, a dot: angels will pick through the ruins, kicking up the petals from the gutters, arms wrapped in tattered flags.

On the stairs, a whispered word: “And will you kill me?” It is a question you can only ask in the dark.

“I’ll leave you gagged and taped,” he says. “In the kitchen. You can tell them I did it the minute I burst in.”

“But when will you really do it?” Voice a murmur.

“Just before. No time after.”

“You will not. I want to see. I’m not missing this.”

“Then I’ll tie you up in the bedroom, okay? I’ll tie you up with a view.”

“You could let me slip downstairs just before. I’ll take a shopping bag. If nobody sees me go, I’ll say I was out the whole time. But make sure to force my door, won’t you? Like a break-in?”

“I see you know my job.”

“I’m learning.”

“I thought you wanted to see it happen.”

“I’d be able to hear it. It’ll be like the roar from the Roman circus.”

“No. We’ll not do that.” A touch: hand brushing arm. “Show me this thing. Whatever it is I’m here for, wasting time.”

On the half-landing there is a door. It looks like the door to a broom cupboard. But it is heavy. Heavy to pull, hand slipping on the brass knob.

“Fire door.”

He leans past and yanks it open.

Behind it, two inches away, another door.