The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

Chung, the structural engineer, was in charge of making the villa impregnable.

The wall surrounding the property was raised, the two gates reinforced, and everything between the house and the wall that could be used as cover or shelter was removed. The windows were fitted with bulletproof metal plates with gun slits, and the walls, doors and roof reinforced to resist grenades. Mines and booby traps with motion sensors were sown across the outer approaches. A control room was established in the basement from where the property could be kept under surveillance, with facilities to operate remotely controlled machine guns and grenade throwers mounted up on the first floor. We also had two drones with cameras that could be remotely controlled from the basement, or the War Room as Downing insisted on calling it.

In essence: anyone wanting to capture the villa would need artillery and bombs.

And if, in spite of all, someone managed to get inside the place, Downing had night-vision goggles. He said that he and his brother soldiers had made an ally of the nights in Iraq by cutting the power before starting the nightly hunt for terrorists in the hostile neighbourhoods of Basra. Once our families had gone to bed and all the lights were off Larsen, Chung and I practised working with these, but in truth the trials just left me feeling giddy and nauseous. And once, when Chung turned on the light without any warning, it was like staring straight into the sun and I was left half blind for several hours afterwards.

Chung also suggested we dig a tunnel in case we needed to retreat. I thought about it for a long time before saying it would cost too much. I was lying.

Through former colleagues in the Marines Downing had heard about an ammunition depot where we could barter weapons for food and medicine, and this we did. Larsen and I stored the ammunition in an unused washroom with thick stone walls in the basement. When Chung joined us he showed us the hole in the wall where the private sewage pipe he had made ran. If we were under siege and had our water and sewage disposal cut off then we now had a sewage pipe that opened onto a steep, overgrown slope below the property, as well as a water pipe Chung had attached to the mains supply further down the valley. In the unlikely event the besieging force should come across the sewage pipe and identify it as leading to our house there was of course the possibility they could fire a grenade up through it and into the house, but according to Chung it wouldn’t do much damage — the walls of the room were just too thick. Unless, of course, high explosives were being stored in there.

He said it in his usual dry, practical way, with no facial expression to indicate whether he was being ironic or humorous. And that’s why we laughed, Larsen and I, as Chung looked at us with his sorrowful gaze, which made us laugh all the more.

We decided to move the ammunition to the laundry that was being used as Brad’s cell. I had put him there because that was where they had kept Amy’s body. I was probably hoping it would serve as a constant reminder to him of what he had done, and would torment his conscience.

When we were finished I stood in the doorway of Brad’s new cell where he lay on the mattress reading one of the books I had put in there with him. He was already thin and pale after the short time he had been held in custody, despite the fact that we fed him well and walked him in the garden every day.