The Report Read Online Free PDF Page B

do you suggest, Paul?’ It pushed me, of course.”
    What he was saying was a lie. Growing up, he hardly ever saw his father, but the story was a way to introduce angling, which Paul hoped would help him succeed with Dunne. To keep his bearings, he pressed his right heel hard into the floor while he spoke, a habit that had replaced the nervous bounce that plagued him when he was younger.
    Dunne squinted at him.
    Paul changed course. “You were a relatively unknown magistrate—”
    “Not true.”
    “You were the youngest Bow Street magistrate, but you were popular.”
    Dunne nodded.
    “And because of that, a defensive government obsessed with morale asked you to go into a close-knit community grieving over a terrible accident. Somehow in three weeks’ time, you produced a report that became a model of style and substance.”
    Dunne held up a hand to stop him. “Your father was an angler?”
    The muscles of Paul’s right leg began to burn.
    “Yes. In fact, I’d hoped to show you something.” He reached into the bag by his feet and pulled out a fly wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. “He tried to teach me, but, well, I wish I’d paid more attention.” He held out the small trout fly, a pale evening dun. He fancied the name.
    “What do you think?”
    Copying from a book, Paul had tied it himself with some wool and a feather. The result was mediocre at best, and he knew it was a risk. Dunne, the master angler, would either see through the lie or be intrigued by the effort.
    Paul held his breath when Dunne hesitated. Then the magistrate squinted and took it.

Seven
    For hours the borough bellowed. Sirens arrived, departed, returned. The nearly one thousand people already inside the shelter awaited word, filtered rumors: there was an unexploded bomb, a woman had dropped her baby, an enemy plane had crashed. The most persistent rumor: the entrance had taken a direct hit. This had happened most recently at Bank, where fifty-six people had been killed. But in the odd currency of war, the evaluating and calibrating that went into surviving, fifty-six felt lucky. Everyone wondered how many would be dead tonight.
    Listening to the unruliness above, everyone inside began to hush. How easy when you were safe! Two nurses took care of them, while all other rescue workers tried to quell the misery at the entrance. People arranged blankets; families settled down.
    Outside, constables ran about, tapping people with their batons, pushing and pulling, trying to move people away from the stairs. Not until the all clear sounded and the pressure from the top of the steps finally eased could any sense be made of the scene. The bodies of the few still alive and the many dead formed a tangled mass of such complexity that the work of extrication was interminably slow. Warden Low lifted the last casualty from the stairway just before midnight. He put Emma Barber on a stretcher himself.
    After a roll call of the shelter’s registered users, Low told his staff to go home. The roll call had been the idea of Hastings, the deputy warden, and it might have been better to have canceled it. Silence followed the calling of name after name.
    “Go home,” Low said. He wanted to say more. He thought he should try to organize them, remind them of their responsibilities, because with work came order and with order, hope. But sending his staff home seemed the only just and reasonable thing to do. They were disheveled and demoralized beyond sense. He thought he and the nurses could look after the shelterers already in for the night.
    “There’ll be a public inquiry in the morning,” he added. “I’m sure the prime minister will call for it himself.”
    When everyone had dispersed, Clare Newbury told him he didn’t look well.
    “Where’s Bertram?” he asked. He knew Clare took care of Bertram, and he was glad of it. He worried the boy would not make it through the war.
    “Fine. Shaken, but fine. I sent him home, and now I’m going to ask you