Noose by Bill James Page A

shelter. Nobody in the shelter could miss hearing this ‘shouldn’t’.
    The right arm of the man who had said ‘shouldn’t’ went forwards and backwards four times, or maybe five, and Ian thought he saw that shining thing again and the man who had turned his back just slipped down and lay on his side by the other man’s feet on the floor of the shelter. Even if Clifford hadn’t said, ‘He’s got a knife,’ Ian would have known then it was a knife that went forward and back. The man with the knife had given up his hold around the neck of the other one so he could drop. Ian saw that the bottoms of the shoes of the fallen man did not look at all dirty or worn. This newness made him think again that these two men were not from this part of the town.
    Of course, if the man on the floor had taken a lot of money from somewhere, he might have spent part of it on shoes. He had said the money was gone, which showed he had spent it on certain items, perhaps such as shoes. Ian did not know whether the shoes of the man with the knife were also new. If both the men came from a posh part of the town, it might be the thing for everyone there to have new shoes. Many thought good shoes very important, not just for keeping feet dry but to look classy when polished up.
    Before the big raid tonight, Ian and his friends had used the public shelter as just somewhere to play in. There had not been any bombs near their street until now. Girls and boys kissed in here and so on, away from grown-ups, and played chase through the shelter. It had a door at each end in case of being trapped if it was hit, and the locks had been broken and then mended and then broken again and left broken. When they built the shelter in 1940, just after Ian began at the grammar school, he had not written a love heart in the wet cement with his finger but ‘Britons never shall be slaves’. He had taken that saying from the song ‘Land of Hope and Glory’
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He put those words there because Hitler said he would soon be ruling Britain. Ian wanted to give him a message. The cement went hard and the letters must stay for years and years – until the end of the war when the shelter would get knocked down because of no more raids, and Hitler would have been smashed by the army, navy and Royal Air Force.
    Now, because of the raid and this man lying on the floor, and Clifford Hill saying ‘He’s got a knife’ in an ordinary way but phlegmy and trembling, the shelter seemed to Ian quite different. It was not a place to pee in or play and kiss and get feels in, but to hide from the bombs and shrapnel in and watch two men become really angry about something to do with money, and one of them turn savage. The other man, the one not flat on the floor and most likely dead, went and sat on a bench. ‘He’s got the knife in his hand,’ Clifford said. ‘Blood.’ Cliff was still trembling. Everyone in the shelter had had a shock, but it seemed worse for Clifford. It had been a very bad evening for him – in his house by himself when the raid began and now this man with the knife.
    â€˜Ignore him,’ Ian’s mother told Clifford. Ian could see the knife clearly now. The man held it down against his trouser leg in his left hand. It looked like an ordinary pocket knife but big. He did not fold the blade back. Blood would drip on his clothes and shoes, and he did not seem to care. Perhaps he had decided the other man must get stabbed like that because of the money, and now it was done and he could not be bothered to worry. Maybe some people were like this when they became angry about losing money. Ian thought the man would run away after doing what he did, but he stayed there, although outside everything still seemed better and safe. Mr Bell, the chip shop man, said someone should go and fetch a police officer, stabbings being a crime even in the middle of an air raid.
    â€˜Yes, the