The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next 3)

I slowed down and cranked the wheel round to enter the dusty farm track. The springs on a Dingo are quite hard – it was a jarring ride along the track, which passed empty farm buildings, all bearing the scars of long-past battles. There was old and rusting armour and other war debris lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumour had it that in the middle of no man's land there were still artillery pieces dating from the nineteenth century. We stopped at a checkpoint, Landen showed his pass and we drove on, a soldier joining us up top 'as a precaution'. He had a second ammunition clip taped to the first in his weapon – always a sign of someone who expected trouble – and a dagger in his boot. He had only fourteen words and twenty-one minutes left before he was to die in a small spinney of trees that in happier times might have been a good place for a picnic. The bullet would enter below his left shoulder blade, deflect against his spine, go straight through his heart and exit three inches below his armpit, whereupon it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and I would relate what happened to his parents eighteen months later. His mother would cry and his father would thank me with a dry throat. But the soldier didn't know that. These were my memories, not his.

'Russian spotter plane!' hissed the doomed soldier.

Landen ordered me back to the trees. The soldier had eleven words left. He would be the first person I saw killed in the conflict but by no means the last. As a civvy you are protected from such unpleasantries but in the forces it is commonplace – and you never get used to it.

I pulled the wheel hard over and doubled back towards the spinney as fast as I could. We halted under the protective cover of the trees and watched the small observation plane from the dappled shade. We didn't know it at the time but an advance party of Russian commandos were pushing toward

s the lines in our direction. The observation post we were heading for had been overrun half an hour previously and the commandos were being supported by the spotter plane we had seen – and behind them, twenty Russian battle tanks with infantry in support. The attack was to fail, of course, but only by virtue of the VHF wireless set carried in the Dingo. I would drive us out of there and Landen would call in an air strike. That was the way it had happened. That was the way it had always happened. Brought together in the white heat and fear of combat. But as we sat beneath the cover of the birch trees, huddled down in the scout car, the only sound the coo of a partridge and the gentle thrum of the Dingo's engine, we knew nothing – and were concerned only that the spotter plane that wheeled above us would delay our arrival at the OP.

'What's it doing?' whispered Landen, shielding his eyes to get a better look.

'Looks like a Yak-12,' replied the soldier.

Six words left and under a minute. I had been looking up with them but now glanced out of the hatch at the front of the scout car. My heart missed a beat as I saw a Russian run and jump into a natural hollow a hundred yards in front of the Dingo.

'Russkie! I gasped. 'Hundred yards twelve o'clock!'

I reached up to close the viewing hatch but Landen grabbed my wrist.

'Not yet!' he whispered. 'Put her in gear.'

I did as I was told as Landen and the soldier twisted around to look.

'What have you got?' hissed Landen.

'Five, maybe six,' the soldier whispered back, 'heading this way.'

'Me too,' muttered Landen. 'Go, Corporal, go!'

I revved the engine, dropped the clutch and the Dingo lunged forward. Almost instantaneously there was a rasp of machine-gun fire as the Russians opened up. To them, we were a surprise ruined. I heard the closer rattle of gunfire as our soldier replied, along with the sporadic crack of a pistol that I knew was Landen. I didn't close the steel viewing hatch; I needed to be able to see as much as I could. The scout car bounced across the track and swerved before gathering speed with the metallic spang of small-arms fire hitting the armour plate. I felt a weight slump against my back and a bloodied arm fell into my vision.

'Keep going!' shouted the soldier. 'And don't stop until I say!' He let go another burst of fire, took out the spent clip, knocked the new magazine on his helmet, reloaded and fired again.

'That wasn't how it happened—!' I muttered aloud, the soldier having gone way over his allotted time and word count. I looked at the bloodied hand that had fallen against me. A feeling of dread began to gnaw slowly inside me. The fuel gauge was still intact – shouldn't it have been shattered when the soldier was shot? Then I realised. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.

I sat bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The strength of the memories had lessened with the years but here was something new, something unexpected. I replayed the images in my head, watching the bloodstained hand fall again and again. It all felt so horribly real. But there was something, just there outside my grasp, something that I should know but didn't – a loss that I couldn't explain, an absence of some sort I couldn't place—

'Landen,' said a soft voice in the darkness, 'his name was Landen.'

'Landen—!' I cried. 'Yes, yes, his name was Landen.'

'And he didn't die in the Crimea. The soldier did.'

'No, no, I just remembered him dying—!'

'You remembered wrong.'

It was Gran, sitting beside me in her gingham nightie. She held my hand tightly and gazed at me through her spectacles, her grey hair adrift and hanging down in wispy strands. And with her words, I began to remember. Landen had survived – he must have done in order to call up the air strike. But even now, awake, I could remember him lying dead beside me. It didn't make sense.

'He didn't die?'

'No.'

I picked up the picture I had sketched of him from the bedside table.

'Did I ever see him again?' I asked, studying the unfamiliar face.

'Oh, yes,' replied Gran. 'Lots and lots. In fact, you married him.'