The Ruins

by Mat Osman

  Andre unlocked the front door and I went in first. There was a pleasing feeling of being at home here which I didn’t want to lose.

  “Come on, don’t be shy, your mother wasn’t.” I flopped on a couch swathed in embroidered throws and sank into its broken base. “Sit yourself down. Andre love, why don’t you make us a nice cuppa.”

  He didn’t move until Saul gave him a look and he disappeared back into the tiny galley.

  “So, Saul. Ronnie and Reggie eh?”

  “Oh. Did they come to see you?”

  The controller was warm in my pocket as I pressed the A button. White light roared from the right-hand side of the cabin and the bird headdress burst into flames.

  It was pretty impressive. A cold glow lit the skull from within: the eyes blazed as the feathers caught and shrivelled. Saul watched in fascination as the flame burned blue and acrid smoke pooled around the ceiling.

  It took Andre to realise the whole place might go up. He doused the flames with a hand-held fire extinguisher. I let the noise subside as inside me a wave picked up speed beneath a starless sky.

  “Yes, Ronnie and Reggie came to see me. And guess who gave them the address?”

  Saul held his hands up. “I didn’t know that where you were staying was a secret.”

  “Fair enough. But didn’t they seem, I don’t know, a bit miffed with me?”

  He was silent at that. How much did he know? It didn’t really matter.

  “A phone call would have been fine. ‘Sorry Bran — I may have inadvertently sent a couple of homicidal goons your way.’ I could have at least tidied up for them, made myself look presentable. Instead they turned up extremely uninvited and now have it in their heads that I owe them quite a lot of money, money that I don’t have. So I thought to myself, who does have that kind of money? And it came to me. Lovely Saul. Who could just sign one little piece of paper and I’d have just enough to keep my head on my shoulders, and what’s more it’s money that he doesn’t even want, which makes it all the easier, doesn’t it?”

  Saul shook his head with his eyes closed. “It goes against everything I believe and everything I’ve worked for. It’s not right…”

  I pressed B and steeled myself so that when the shards of coloured glass rained throughout the boat I didn’t flinch at all. Saul was on his knees with his hands over his ears though. Andre stood holding the useless fire extinguisher at his side.

  It was only once Saul had signed the papers that I told them my share of the money would all go to Robin. Leading with that might have saved myself much of the aggravation but I understood how best to use Brandon’s power now. Yes kick a man when he’s down, yes to the final twist of the knife. Logic and threats might be enough to tamp Baxter and Saul down for now but I needed them to keep quiet about all this when I was out of their lives too. Only cruelty, and the threat of madness, would gave me that level of remote control.

  I left them tidying up in the dark, the smell of petrol and burnt feathers hanging over the boat. Once I was back in camper van I pressed the final button. You could hear the distant whoomph even over the engine noise as the sails burst into flames.

  I angled the rear-view mirror to watch: burning rainbows, burning bones, burning peace signs. An oblong of light as Saul and Andre came out to see what was happening. Three tongues of fire grabbing for the sky and two silhouetted figures hand in hand. It was beautiful. My heart fluttered and stuttered and I had to gasp down great lungfuls of icy air to keep me from passing out. The blaze was the only light for miles, framing the scene in something blacker than black: pure night. The boat, shimmering with flame, adrift on a sea that was sky, that was oil, that was night.

  Around Todmorden when the gleam of the cat’s-eyes started to trail like tracer rounds, I parked up and lay in the back of the camper. Baxter was done; I had his money and I had his compliance. Saul was cowed and the contract would give Robin something for the future. That left Kimi and the record and I had no idea where to start with her.

  Instead I focused on Ronnie and Reggie. Andre said they were working the door of a rave up near Rochdale that night so I headed north. Streetlamps smeared across my vision and I swore I could hear the conversations in the cars next to me at traffic lights. As I drove I craved sleep but when I parked to lay down my heart hammered until I had to start moving again. I drove as fast as I dared with the windows wide open to drown out the static in my head.

  The traffic thinned as I headed out of town then congealed again as we neared the party. Four or five to a car, their windows down with music playing, partygoers turned a country lane into a battle of competing sound systems. A lone building stood spotlit on a hillside as the traffic slowed to a standstill and people began to get out and walk, abandoning their cars on the roadside. Light shone from open car doors as people leaned in and laughed. I saw deals being done against the glow of car interiors.

  A man slapped the front window, frightening me. I wound it down an inch.

  “Mate, mate, mate can we use the back of your van?” He was pressed hard against the glass, gesturing behind him at some girl hanging back.

  “Sorry, I can’t.”

  He pushed his face against the glass, flattening his lips as he bellowed, “Well fuck yooooooou then”. And with that he was away. I heard him a little further down the line of stopped cars. “Mate mate mate. No wait.”

  I drew the curtains in the back and counted out the money.

  From the darkness of a small hillock I watched Ronnie and Reggie working the queue. It was mostly good-natured. Once or twice Ronnie had to put his hands on the shoulders of one of the dancing queuers to still them so Reggie could go through their pockets, but they seemed focused on getting inside. Wide eyes concentrated on the noise and light coming from the double doors and jaws worked soundlessly. I waited until the queue died down before making my way over.

  Reggie saw me first. He was examining a plastic bottle of confiscated pills.

  “Well, look who it isn’t, the dead man.”

  Ronnie looked up. Back on my home turf they’d been imperious, treating the Magpie’s security and my presence as negligible, nothing to be concerned with. But here, with their dogs and their people around them, they definitely looked wary. Ronnie’s knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the Doberman’s collar.

  “This is a surprise Brandon, I can’t stress that enough.” Both of them held back.

  I raised both hands. “I have your money.”

  A look between them: quick, hungry. “Here, now?”

  I nodded. “In a van, down the lane. I had to park up because of the traffic.”

  “All of it?”

  “Every penny.”

  Ronnie walked with me down the lane in an uncomfortable silence. A few stragglers were coming the other way and somewhere down in the valley kids were dancing around a fire: no music, just stick figures whirling around the flames. The walk seemed longer than the journey up the hill and I was beginning to think I’d overshot when I saw the familiar shape of the camper.

  Ron looked out of place in the dolls-house confines of the VW. He perched on the built-in sofa while I took the money from its hiding place. His face was waxy in the tube-light, pale skin pulled tight over his skull, his stubble longer than his shaven head. He looked for all the world like an Action Man. I felt a nervousness from him that I didn’t expect. I must have looked worse than I thought.

  I counted out the money. “Here. That’s everything.”

  He nodded, seemingly satisfied, and put the money in his jacket.

  “So, we’re square? And you won’t bother my girlfriend? Or the boy?”

  Even saying my girlfriend gave me a forbidden thrill. Mine, mine mine.

  “Of course.” He sounded offended. “We never would’ve. I don’t like to have anything to do with families. Yours, mine, anyone’s. Too much drama.”

  He perched further forward on his seat and I could see the pink of his skull through the stubble. “You can tell m
e now. Which one are you really?”

  It took me a second. “I’m the brother. The one you were supposed to kill. Seriously.”

  He examined me. “Fuck, sorry about that. Never got anything that wrong before.”

  He looked apologetic, as if we were discussing some minor incident. “Or, I guess, sorry about your brother.” He rested both hands on his knees.

  “He was a cold fish that one, anyway.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Well, killing your brother, I mean it’s got to have some kind of karmic retribution, don’t you think? On some level. Some spiritual cost. It’s like a Greek myth.” He ran a hand across his head. “And it just seemed like no thing to him. No thing at all. I’m glad we fucked up in a way.”

  “Me too.”

  He gave a tight smile at that. “Yeah, I bet. So, the kid and the girl?”

  “His.”

  “And do they know?”

  “Yeah, they know.” I didn’t want to explain about Robin.

  He licked his lips thoughtfully. “So, it all worked out for you then?”

  I looked around the interior of the camper, the closest thing I had to a home now that Umbrage and the Magpie were gone, felt the sting of powder burns along my fingers and sensed the dark wall of water that adrenaline was barely shoring up.

  “Just peachy.”

  I was nearly ten miles away before the idea hit me. I swung the van around and retraced my route. When I got back to the party Ronnie and Reggie were sitting in a Nissen hut by the entrance, drinking tea from china cups.

  “Hey, do you guys want to make some money?”

  Ronnie pushed the door closed with his boot. The music sounded miles away.

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Nothing you haven’t done before.”

  The drive back to London was a flurry of texts sent under bleak northern skies in bleak northern laybys, typing one-handed as passing lorries shook the walls of the camper. I sent a WhatsApp to Jay: hey can u get me a Kevlar vest, texted Saul: lawyers will need a statement from you in the next couple of days. And to Rae, simply: I’m coming, hang on.

  Then it was back to driving. Talk radio, no music and a light pouring over me like sloughing off dead skin. It was only when the traffic began to snarl on London’s outskirts that gravity reasserted itself. The first hints of morning framed the skyline and the idea of driving city streets weighed on me.

  I pulled into a service station and parked in the far corner of the car park. Someone had left a roll of thin orange blankets in the locker so I pulled them tight around me and tried to sleep. My phone buzzed constantly on the table but I ignored it. A couple of hours’ sleep would do me but when I closed my eyes I heard vast wingbeats like far-off thunder. I told myself not to be scared, to imagine those same wings enfolding me into a feathery cocoon. I willed myself into the streets of New Umbrage, my gift to Robin. I felt his hand in mine — those tiny bones — as we walked through his model: a landscape that shifted and reconfigured around us. A kernel of terror squatted in my heart, a terror for Robin and the arbitrary world we were building around him. And a kindred terror at his generation’s blitheness to it all. I slept in patches. Machinery, wingbeats, hot breath under musty blankets. Phone buzz, car tyres, the beep of reversing lorries. Robin and I walking hand in hand along flagstones that flowed like liquid, only icing over once his toes touched them. A painted-on sky, dead pixels, stage-set shopfronts. Everything unslotted. Kevlar vests. Empty car parks. Coming Home.

  “We’re here daddy,” said Robin, picking up the pace, skipping on stepping stones that materialised under every unwatched step. “Just keep on walking.”

  I woke to a banging on the camper door and it took me a couple of moments to remember where I was. I was damp with sweat and the slivers of window I could see through the curtains ran with condensation. I opened the door an inch to hide the table littered with wraps and pill packets, and a man in a hi-viz jacket was taking pictures of the VW on his phone.

  Seeing me, he said, “It says ‘lorries only’ in four-foot fucking letters, mate.”

  I was in London for midday. Spring rain made the streets slick and the sun was low, giving the city a glassy sheen. The petrol station had cut up the last of Brandon’s credit cards in front of me so I was spending cash from Baxter’s pile.

  My phone rattled on the dashboard — Jay’s number. 10am tomorrow, 516 The Liberty Building. Nineteen hours. My head was a black tower, an echoing well.

  I parked and tried to sleep but the blood pulsed hard in my chest and my eyes sprang open at any little noise. I’d have to power through. I drove anywhere, taking whichever street looked the emptiest, until I was somewhere out near Snaresbrook on a square of back roads enclosing a paltry wood and pond. I drove around and around the four roads, turning left, left, left, left until I could have done it with my eyes closed. It wasn’t enough to still the chatter in my head. It would be early in California but I needed to hear a voice that knew me.

  Rae picked up on the first ring. “Ads? Is that you?”

  “Hey.” I propped the phone on the dashboard. “I’m just out driving. I have Baxter’s money. I’ve got a promise from Saul that he’ll sign the lawsuit. It’s happening.”

  As I said it I felt the paranoia slip away. It’s happening. I’m doing it.

  “That’s amazing. How?”

  I laughed for what felt like the first time in days. “I’m not really sure. Fifty per cent Brandon and fifty per cent me. It doesn’t matter. I just need… Just talk to me for a bit OK? Tell me something from your past.”

  I could hear her moving around. She’d be in bed, under the covers. “Did I ever tell you how we got here, to Tahoe?”

  I tried to remember where Brandon’s Story of Rae finished. “No, I’ve heard about LA, in the Canyon though.”

  “Oh man, that’s missing out all of Vegas. Hold onto your hat. We were living in this weird place. It was supposed to be this totally chi-chi estate, like the Palm Springs of Nevada, but the money ran out almost as soon as they started and all that was left was one show home, thirty shells of houses and mile upon mile of levelled-off desert. There were massive earthmovers just abandoned there, seized up with sand. Technically we were the caretakers but it didn’t look like anyone was ever coming back.”

  “Was there power and water?”

  “In the show home, yes. That’s where we lived. But the rest of it was just ghost town. It was all right actually. It was restful after LA and beautiful, especially at night. You could lie on your back and just watch the universe rotate around you.”

  I pulled the van over and parked on a yellow line. Rae’s voice was blurring the edges of things. I reclined the seat and held the phone close to my ear.

  “We went back to school. Croupier classes, to learn how to deal at the casinos? An actual proper school with lesson plans and whiteboards and exams and everything. It was hard. There’s maths and these long sequences to remember and each game has little quirks and you’re constantly being reminded that if you make a mistake it can cost someone hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which is a lot of pressure for ten dollars an hour plus tips. Bran was actually good at it though. I mean he hated being told what to do but he loved the drama of it. He used to say, ‘In what other profession can you irrevocably ruin a life with the flick of the wrist? It’s like being a brain surgeon.’ He loved the big games, loved to watch someone fucking up their life.”

  I heard her moving around in the bed, trying to get comfortable.

  “But it was all good. Once we graduated we took it in turns to work and we were making some money. And on the quiet days — Mondays mainly — we’d have these awesome parties. Thirty or forty people up from Vegas. Peyote and grass round the fire, music as loud as you like and everyone crashing out in empty buildings. It was free, y’know, like being a kid again. And nothing really to do except read and have sex, and what with it being twenty miles to a drugstore and Bran’s total inability to plan
ahead, I guess it was only a matter of time before we got pregnant.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “I mean, obviously never say that to Robin. I’m so grateful for those twenty miles now, without them I might never… But the minute he came into the world I suddenly saw where we were living through his eyes. And the place was just… just no. I mean for starters the heat was brutal. Once when we were there a guy from the next town, this young, fit guy, went hiking and got caught in a rockslide. Broke his ankles so he couldn’t get himself into the shade. Guess how long before sunstroke killed him?”

  “Um, three days?”

  “Six hours. Six hours and he was dead. It’s a place that actively wants to turn everything to dust.”

  I heard her move through the room and the sound of curtains being drawn.

  “So, I went back to dealing poker. It meant leaving Robin with some pretty dodgy people, but I was desperate to get out and Brandon seemed happy enough up in the hills. I started working the cheap tables but there was such a high turnover of staff that you got promoted like once a week. And the thing is, Bran was a pretty good dealer but he never got tips. Usually if you dealt to a big winner then you’d at least get given one of those orange chips that they used to call pumpkins. But Bran, I guess he looked like he didn’t need a tip because he’d come home with nothing.

  “I was getting nearly two hundred bucks a night when it was just the locals playing, but then the Chinese players started asking for me. Voodoo Rae. They’d heard it from the other dealers who’d heard it from Bran. ‘C’mon Rae, do do your voodoo’. I’d be dealing the one-five dollar game and the pit boss would come over and drag me off to one of the private rooms where it was all Chinese. Even the waiters spoke Mandarin. But I’d deal and do the calls in English and everyone seemed happy. And, the first few times, if I got a proper tip I’d stop off and pick up pumpkin pie from this twenty-four-hour bakery on the way home. I’d get back and say, ‘pumpkin for all’ and Robin would get the pie and Bran would get the orange chip, but I stopped after a while because he wasn’t ever getting any money off his players, and I was getting a thousand every couple of nights, and it drove him crazy. So I started hiding them away. Pumpkins and Barneys. Thousands and five hundreds. As long as you didn’t cash them in then they weren’t too tempting but at the end of every week I’d walk out to the furthest of the empty houses and squirrel away another couple of chips. I never counted them or tried to calculate how much was there. I just dropped them in an old cash box and enjoyed the sound of them rattling around.