Then four security men ran out of the trees up ahead. Their advent was so unannounced Carver suspected they had been hidden from sight, waiting for anyone – or two specific persons – to come down the steps.
Carver stopped dead. Croft also. They watched as the four men – coordinated, expressionless – bounded towards them.
None of the four carried a weapon, but all were no doubt armed, and with a selection of devices. This was like the schools. Carver, almost mindlessly now, seeing in pictures not words – one or two boys on their own, hoping it was OK, and abruptly confronted out of nowhere by the bullies. But here the bullies had been cloned – they all looked alike. The man with the spiked hair was not included.
About five metres from them, the gang came to a halt.
Croft spoke. “Yes?” His voice was steady and pitched, and kept a balanced authority. He was in charge. That was all there was to it.
Or not.
The face of the slightly taller security man sagged to let out a ribald laugh.
“Hello, Crofty. Look, it’s Crofty. Who’d have guessed?”
Two of the others laughed, softly, not minding.
The fourth man stared hard through round unliking glassy eyes. “Well,” the fourth man said, “he can frenchy kiss up his own shitty arse.”
That made all four men laugh. Even the glassy-eyed man who had said it.
The taller one said, “So. What’ll we do with him, boys?”
Croft did not speak now. To speak was very likely useless.
Carver readied himself for what must come next – a fight with professional strong-arm balletics, the utilisation, probably, of instruments intended to subdue, if not – essentially – to kill. He did not look at Croft. To look at Croft would not be useful either.
Short and incongruous, a firework cracked, somewhere around the building.
It was not a firework.
As one, the four-man gang altered, everything about them changing .
Their faces had resumed likeness, blankly serious and fixed. Only “Shooting–” the glassy-eyed man murmured, as if explaining to himself, giving his body an extra split second to respond. And they all broke into motion, running, sprinting at and then past the two men who had seemed to be their quarry. Off they raced, away along the wall of the building, the shortest of them leaping a low bush that had encroached.
A litter of several more disembodied shots fractured through far-off air. Then quietness reassembled, and the sense of total distancing.
“This place smells like badly-smoked haddock,” remarked Croft, “don’t you think so?”
Carver did not answer.
Croft began to stride up the incline, more or less in the direction he had led Carver before. Carver followed. Nobody else, nothing, sprang from the trees. At least, not yet.
“Hiding,” said Croft, “in plain sight.”
They had met no one at all, though they had not paused at the griffin bench on the slope, but progressed around, by the rises and dips of the higher ground, towards the northern side. To the sheds. Carver’s sheds.
Although Carver had been left with keys, unsurprisingly Croft had another set.
He unlocked the central door of the central shed.
Inside it was cooler than the woods. (Cool. Play it
... )
Carver looked around him. He had been about here last night till dawn, had sat below, looking up, or sleeping, under the yellow eye of the 4th Level Alert that the glow in the shed had become. Unless he had imagined this, as he had imagined, or been made to imagine, that Anjeela Merville could grow her hair and fingers to unusual lengths.
The shed had, it was true, also changed somewhat. In addition to the table, on which he had put the small random group of ‘stolen’ objects, three chairs were instantly notable. They had been arranged against the walls. Plus there was a miniature white fridge, working on batteries, whose door Croft at once flung wide. “Good, good,” said Croft, with sombre gratification. And drew out a large bottle of vodka with a white and brown label, its pedigree written in Russian characters. A filled ice-tray came next, and a dish of anchovies. Everything began at once to smoke as its frigidity met the surrounding warmth. Croft set the bottle and fish on the table, and pulled up two of the chairs.
Carver now noted another much lower table had been positioned under the main table, with a dozen glasses standing on it. “My apologies, they didn’t bring the coffee, as I asked. I know you’re not enamoured of alcohol, Car. That was your father, was it? There is bottled water in the fridge, nicely chilled – yes?”
“All right,” Carver said.
Croft went back and drew out a two litre bottle that had lain on its side due to the cramped space. Its label also was unknown. It seemed to be in French, and bore the reproduced pen-and-ink illustration of a fairy-tale well.
“Come,” said Croft, as he seated himself. “Sit.” Carver remained where he stood, just inside the door. “Shut the door, please, old fellow,” added Croft. “Perhaps you should lock it – I have the keys here.”
“In case someone comes by, you mean,” said Carver.
“Hiding in plain sight,” Croft repeated. He had poured a short thin glass full of vodka, and knocked it back, picked up two anchovies in his fingers and set them in his mouth, savorously rolling them about his tongue before biting down.
Carver shut and triple-locked the door. He retained the keys. “I thought,” Carver said quietly, “we had to get out of here. Away.”
“We do,” said Croft, through the fish. He chewed further, then swallowed, poured another drink, and swallowed that, again in one mouthful. He poured a third glass, and now added the miniature ice-cubes. Put it down, only running the edge of his large and manicured hand lightly, kindly, against its frosty sides. Petting it before drinking it.
“Then why,” said Carver, “are we in here?”
“Common sense. They have gone mad. They will look for me. For us. Initially in the sections. Then outside. They will expect that we attempt a straight route for the outer world. They will be massing at every exit.”
“What are the exits? Where are they?”
“I’ll show you the best ones. In a little while. You must be patient, Car, dear boy. Have some water – or can I tempt you to this tasty water-coloured beverage?”
“Where does it come from?” Carver asked.
“Somewhere in Russia, I assume. Legally imported. Perfectly valid, patriotic and safe. No treason in sampling foreign drinks or food. These are good, these anchovies. Yes? No? Your loss, dear boy. Caviar would be delightful, of course.” He ate more of the fish, then raised and tipped the glass between his lips. This time he emptied only half, crunched on an ice-cube. Turning in the chair he pierced Carver with a grimace of sudden and intense malevolence. “Sit down, boy. What do you think you are doing? Sit. Drink your water.”
Carver glanced over his shoulder through windows, out of the shed. The slopes were sullen and shadowed yet still seemed vacant of people. But the trees had not shown the security gang until the four men chose to emerge. And if Carver left now, he had no notion of any safe way to get across the wild extensive grounds, at speed and in the right direction.
He walked to the table, positioned the second chair and sat; reached for the water and the second glass. (The keys were in his pocket and Croft might have forgotten them.)
“We must just be patient,” said Croft thoughtfully. “We can do that. It’s the fashion now, everything must rush so fast. It was better in the past. The past went slowly. Perhaps even you remember how slow it went when you were young. Minutes that were hours, hours that were years.” He finished the glass, sucked in another of the ice-cubes. Deciding to speak again, he spat the cube out on the floor. He had devoured all the anchovies, and now wiped his oily fingers on the sleeve of his severe and costly suit, whose jacket, even in the heat, he did not slough. “Let’s pretend, shall we?” said Croft, resuming a smile, almost drowsy with a goodwill as sudden as the
flash of malevolence. “Let’s pretend we’re in a Russian novel – Tolstoy, say. Or a Chekhov play, that might be better. Platonov... The Cherry Orchard.... The Seagull. Ah, that would be the life. All that elite glamour and passion and fuckingly glorious angst, and then a conclusive and mindlessly magnificently fearless death. Anna and Platonov with their trains, and so-and-so with his pistol – Drink up, Car. Nothing like good vodka.” His mind had mislaid, it seemed, that Carver’s drink was water. Carver drank amenably. His heart thudded heavy as lead, like leaden bullets loaded in his chest, playing now Russian Roulette, slipping round, with the empty click of escape, but in the end the explosion would come, more silent than any silence of the living earth.
Croft refilled his own glass.
The bottle was half empty, one more chamber of the gun. When all the single-glass-deep chambers of the bottle were empty, the explosion would yet come.
Whatever was happening in this Place was plainly happening to Croft as well. Did he know? Did any of them? – the girl with her blood-dipped toenails, Ball and Van Sedden fighting and weeping. Charlie Hemel. Anjeela–
And he, Carver, he must have it too, this madness. That, his madness, was why he had seen her hand alter, and her hair. Did he now only imagine – pretend – Croft partly lay there in the wooden chair, his jacket smelling of vinegar and salt-fish, and his real hair falling over his vast, mournful and bitter eyes.
Croft drank. “Car,” said Croft. “You know, dear boy, it’s been hard on me. My son – it was – years ago. They killed him. It was during conflict, the great battle, hearts, minds. It was then. He was so young. About your age once, Car. When you were young, like that. I wished so much he hadn’t died. If it could have been me. If someone – if someone had said to me, we must kill one of you, Peter. You, or him. I’d have – I – would have said, me. Let it be me. But no – nobody asked. He was my son. I never saw – Not enough left of him to bury. What’s that?” Croft had lurched about, almost falling, spinning up from the chair which itself did fall, on its back. He rushed to the nearest window and gaped out, panting as if he had run for miles across a minefield. He put both his hands up on the glass, as a child might, staring out. And then he threw himself on the floor, below the window level, not to be seen.
Carver rose cautiously, and approached the other closer window, keeping to one side of it. He could make out nothing in the view that had not already been there. No intruders, other than trees, in between. But, as he had already decided, that might not prove a thing. He eased away from the window. Really, the shed being constructed as it was, with so many windows on both sides, to hide in here was fairly nonviable. Croft, going crazy, glossed over this. Or else it made for him a facet of some necessary pattern, inescapable after all. Just like the building and its grounds.
Far away though now it was, the up-and-down building in fact ended the vista from the shed. About a quarter mile off below this hill. The windows of the corridor outside his room would be identifiable, if he searched for them – he did not.
Croft was getting up from the floor. He stood without unease and crossed unguardedly in front of the windows as he returned to right his chair and sit on it. He looked a moment at the vodka bottle, but did not refill his glass.
Croft’s face was strangely both very old and very young. The features, sockets and lids of the eyes, might have been carved. He seemed tired but restless, feverish.
“What were we talking about? Ah,” he said. “Chekhov. Have you read the plays?”
“No.”
“That’s a pity. Nobody reads now. Nothing like that, like Chekhov. But you’ll have seen the plays acted–” Carver did not reply, or need to. “You’ll know what I mean. There comes a junction, a crossroads. You have to choose. Jump under the train, blow your brains out. Ibsen has it too. Hedda Gabler. You can’t go on. The jackals are gathering, the starving black wolves that want to rip your guts and gnaw your bones. Or you can avoid them. A crash, a flame, nuclear detonation of the brain and skull. All over. Oblivion. Peace.”
Croft lifted the vodka and poured himself another glass. He sipped it, laid it down with tender care.
“I think it was quick for him. My boy. They said it was. So young. So quick.”
Croft sat and did not say anything. Carver did as Croft did. If Croft finished the bottle, he might lose consciousness, or at any rate become less intransigent, could be dealt with.
If there was time.
Odd the rest of them had not come here. Something more intriguing for them to do, obviously. Searching the building. Massing at the exits–
Would Carver have to kill Croft?
And others, would he have to kill others, too?
He was untrained in that. Self-defence to a point, of course. Not murder.
But he reckoned he could, if he had to, and got the chance. Most human things were capable of that.
Was Croft starting to go to sleep? His long lids were almost shut. He slumped in the chair.
Outside, at the windows, a blink of transparent lightning. Downhill, through the intercessionary trees, a low flat boom resounded. Underfoot, faint yet not to be missed, vibration trembled the floor of the shed, and the adjacent sheds rattled at their couplings, softly, as if – for a second – the train would be travelling on.
Something had been blown up. Going on the impact, probably not the entire building.
Carver went back to the window. The building was not visible. Instead another pillar of darkness was copiously gushing upward, tinged a muddy orange at its base. The smoke was already, blown not by any non-existent wind but by the charge of the blast, swirling uphill towards them.
As the smoke thickened round the sheds, the tremble below ground ended.
Croft had revived. He sat upright. He drained his glass, poured another drink and tipped it down his throat.
“No time to lose now,” he announced very clearly. “Got to get out, you and I. OK, Car, OK, old man?” And from inside the jacket, from under his arm, he drew out a slender hand gun, and set it down by the nearly empty bottle and the empty plate.
Carver, not meaning to, half rose.
“Sit, my friend,” said Croft, his voice musical as any fine actor’s. “Even like this, I’d be too quick for you. You have to trust me on this.”
Something – something – yes, Carver trusted him on this. Croft would be too quick.
One hope. His aim might not, under these circumstances, be so very splendid. Not now. So hold quiet, and judge the moment. The moment to dodge, to dive – or to die.
“The thing of it is, Car,” said Croft, turned in the chair, and watching him, black eyes wide open, burning and abnormally clear, “I do mean to escape. But how about you? Do you want to come with me – over the mountain and far away? Oh Christ, Carver,” he said, and the bright clear eyes filled up with tears brighter than the vodka, or the eyes. “I see it now. I see it. My son. It’s you, Carver, you, my dear son. Poor boy, poor boy– Say, then, dearest boy, do you want to escape with me?”
It was gibberish, but not all. Carver had seen at last what Croft’s escape plan must be. Either there was no other path left out of this Place, or else Croft could no longer access the path. And so the only route was through the gun.
“No,” Carver said. “I don’t want to escape that way.”
He spoke calmly. Reasonably.
It might not, could not work. It did.
“Good luck then, my dear son. Take care. Get out now, please. And close the door.”
Carver got up and walked to the door and opened it and at every step he felt the blazing bullet shear home through him into head or heart. But no bullet came. Only the smudged greenness outside, the leaves, the patched clearness and the smoke like fog, old fogs someone had once told him of as a child.
And peculiarly, through the patches in the fog, an irrelevant fact came to Carver now, that only this central shed had two steps up to it. The others, either side, stood on slightly higher ground, and were stepless. Th
is was the first time he had noticed.
Carver did not look in at Croft as he closed the door.
Carver was down the two steps, just on to the turf and tree roots, the smoke catching in his throat, when the gun thundered behind him. Carver stalled, but the bullet had not been for him. Its noise was unconvincing even so, the one bad special effect which, after all, had spoilt the play’s final act.
Twenty-One
But another act was due to begin. After an interval.
In the interval, Carver walked off from the sheds, across and over the rise, and down its further side. The acrid smoke became less here. The woods were thicker, the scent of leaves and grass persisted. No sun showed, but from the position of the glare that now and then seared through the overcast, he thought it must be noon.
He sat under a tree, as he had before. He waited, not for another theatrical surge, (explosion, shot), but perhaps for his brain to catch up. It did not seem to. It maundered around the edges of the plot, the story-line, veering off as if bored, to other, tinier events – an ant on a blade of glass, indifferent to the larger world and intent on its own life-drama; an increasing awareness of his own tiredness and physical hunger – when had he last eaten? God knew – which the cold water had not alleviated.
However, the fact of the unfinished water bottle was what, in the end, made him get to his feet. He needed more fluid, he thought, and besides there might be something palatable in the fridge, aside from anchovies.
So, back up the slope Carver went, and straight up the steps to the shed door.
Only as he opened it did he properly understand, aside from a mere concept, that a man lay dead now in the wooden room, or dying even, if Croft had got his last move wrong.
Croft had not. He had been infallibly perfect. The chair had fallen again as the power of the gun propelled him from it. Croft lay a brief space from the chair, and the gun too had separated from both the chair and the man, done with them, and its role temporarily concluded.