Vail

by Trevor Hoyle

  I took another drink to dilute the tears and a hollow voice said, ‘I need help and you need help. If you help me I’ll help you. Is it a deal?’

  The man in the culvert was Urban Brown (his real name I swear, not a made-up one) and he was on the run, you could tell that at once by his face and his shoes. He was wearing a grimy corduroy shirt and filthy jeans with holes in the knees and arse, and carrying a heavy thick black overcoat wrapped into a bundle and tied up with string. He had a triangular sallow face and prominent bones, deep vertical creases in his cheeks, and a dark-blue jawline that could never look clean-shaven even five minutes after the expert attentions of a barber with a cut-throat razor. To categorise him: a starved crafty working-class face: insolent too; harbouring grudges and zealously storing up slights, real and imagined. Like many left-wing activists he was more interested in revenge than equality.

  I said, ‘You must be in a poor way if you need my help.’

  He almost snarled, ‘Not for long, friend,’ and came nearer, crabwise, eyeing the bottle. I gave it to him. He gripped it by the neck as if throttling a chicken and took a powerful gulp, throat muscles working, holding his bundle close under his arm as if it contained either the crown jewels or a spare set of dentures.

  ‘Is that your van?’ he asked, handing the bottle back.

  I nodded warily. There wasn’t a single thing I liked the look of about this character. I’d met his type in bars and always steered well clear of them. They were forever keen to do you favours to their advantage.

  ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘My wife and daughter.’

  ‘Just the three of you?’

  ‘Yes, why, are you going to hijack us?’

  He didn’t bother or even pretend to grin. He said:

  ‘I need transport. I have to get to London. I won’t give you any bullshit about my car breaking down, you’re an intelligent bloke, you can see that isn’t true. The police are after me, that is the truth. I haven’t any money either. I’m asking you straight out to help me. Throwing myself on your mercy.’

  Nobody had ever thrown themselves on my mercy before; it had an antique ring to it that pleased me.

  ‘If I refused you could always use force. Isn’t that what desperate men resort to?’

  ‘Not desperate men who haven’t eaten for three days.’

  ‘Would you consider it otherwise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are pretty desperate then?’

  ‘To get to London quickly, – yes.’

  ‘That’s my side of the deal, what’s yours?’

  He frowned, – almost glowered, – at me suspiciously, his eyes hooded and watchful.

  ‘You said, ‘If you help me I’ll help you’.’

  ‘Oh that. I could tell you things. I know what’s going on. Only a few of us know. You won’t read it in the papers or see it on TV. There are closely-guarded secrets that the man-in-the-street knows nothing about, would never imagine in his wildest dreams. But I’d tell you.’

  ‘Not the ultimate mystery of the pyramids,’ I said, ‘or that we’re all descended from aliens. I know that already.’

  Still no grin.

  ‘Secrets like these you could be killed for knowing.’

  ‘How come that’s a help?’

  ‘Knowledge is power.’

  ‘Not if you’re dead.’

  ‘Forget that. This is the real stuff. I’m not kidding. You’ll shit your clogs when you know what it is. You’ll be one of the few people who really knows what’s going on. That’s worth more than a measly trip to London, isn’t it?’

  I’d met loonies but never a real madman before. Was he mad? He sounded like a freemason. ‘What have you done?’ I asked him. ‘Robbed a bank or murdered someone?’

  He gave me a scathing, sneering grin (at last). ‘Petty stuff. I plant bombs. I kill people en masse. I’m a terrorist.’

  This was a conversation stopper, particularly in my befuddled state of tertiary intoxication. I suppose I gaped at him.

  ‘I’m Number One on their hit list. They’d love to get their hands on me and stage a show trial. The Sun would have a field day.’

  ‘By ‘they’ you mean the police?’

  ‘The authorities. The panoply of the state with its judiciary and law-enforcement tentacles.’

  (What kind of jargon was this? Panoply and tentacles in the same sentence!)

  ‘Dangerous to boast about it,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’m not boasting, just stating facts. You want proof?’ He tapped the black bundle significantly with long dirt-rimmed nails. ‘Here.’

  ‘Not a bomb?’ I said nervously.

  ‘You think I’m stupid?’ He shook his head and his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward slightly and mouthed, ‘Communication.’

  ‘Communication,’ I repeated imbecilically.

  ‘Want to see?’

  ‘No, I’ll take your word for it.’ The less I knew about this, the better. Still, it wasn’t every day that one met a terrorist.

  Also I was intrigued to learn what these ‘closely-guarded secrets’ were that ‘the man-in-the-street’ knew nothing about. Myself I had often suspected that certain facts were being withheld from the population at large: we were continually being reminded by TV, radio and newspapers that we had a free press, one of the cornerstones of democracy, and yet when you read the ‘free’ press you found that it contained nothing more revelatory than women with their legs spread wide and endless columns of bingo numbers. – Suppose lots of things went on that were either completely suppressed or distorted to give the exact reverse of the truth? If all the media were in collusion (it was possible), there would be no means of ascertaining the real truth except by rumour, hearsay, word-of-mouth, etc.

  I stoppered the bottle and took him back to the van. On the way he told me his name, but I decided to introduce him to Mira simply as ‘Brown’ and omit the ‘Urban’, reasoning that it might be safer in the long run. Perfect name for a terrorist, I remember thinking, – Urban Brown, – ordinary, commonplace, yet at the same time unsettling, disquieting, allusive.

  Mira was none too pleased. She became monosyllabic and kept catching my eye furiously. I didn’t care. I was in her bad books to begin with, so had nothing to lose. If I hadn’t been drunk I don’t think I would have taken the risk of transporting a known terrorist under the noses of the police, but disposition, curiosity and intoxication had conspired that July day in a sort of giddy recklessness, and here we were, the four of us, heading south down the hot black snake of the M6 in sweltering sunshine. Yipee!!

  The Knutsford (Rank) service station I decided to give a miss because we still had a quarter tank of petrol and the next service stat, Sandbach (Road Chef), wasn’t all that far and I judged we’d make it before running out of fuel.

  It was round about four o’clock now, still hot, which wasn’t good for the engine. Constantly pressing the accelerator to the floor had left me with a numb right leg up to the thigh.

  Another fear, or worry, made me sweat as much as the heat. Was there a curfew on this section of motorway, and, if so, what was the deadline? To be caught breaking curfew was bad enough, but to be stopped and searched whilst harbouring a fugitive … !

  Not clever; definitely dumb.

  There was a conversation going on in the back that I couldn’t hear. Brown was asking questions and Mira was answering him quite animatedly. He said something and I heard her snort with laughter. In the mirror I could see his narrow dark face with its prominent bones and starved eyes brightly illuminated by the golden light slanting through the side windows. He said he had killed people en masse and I could believe it. No, not an evil face, I would have said, but fixed, purposive, callous; in a word, ruthless. I wouldn’t like to run into him on a dark night, I remember thinking.

  I moved my head to look at Mira in the mirror but the angle was wrong and all I could see was a shoulder and broken white lines converging sharply to a focal point in the distance behi
nd us. Mira snorted again. What the hell was he saying to make her laugh?

  I knew I would have to pull the same stunt for petrol at Sandbach that I had employed at Holmes Chapel. Brown would have to stay out of sight. I couldn’t risk anyone spotting him. Service stats were crawling with strays and fringers, so his unkempt appearance wouldn’t excite comment, but there would be police and possibly the odd gwich floating around. It suddenly occurred to me that there might be a reward out for Brown. We could use the money. I hadn’t seen any posters with his mug shot and description, though I made a mental note to keep my eyes skinned. Everyone glaswellted on everyone else these days and thought nothing of it; it was the prevailing ethic of the times in which we lived.

  By tomorrow, I thought, somebody in a nearby flat on Zuttor would have informed the council of our midnight flit. First they would break in and ransack the place, taking everything they could carry, smash it up for good measure, and then collar the rent collector on his rounds and slip him the word in the hope that he wouldn’t use the heavy hand on their next default of payment and might even give them a free week. Some people practically existed by informing.

  Another snort of laughter, which I ignored. (I hated it when other people, – men I mean, – made Mira snort. The sound came up her windpipe and got stuck behind her epiglottis, where it imploded. It wasn’t the sound itself I hated, but the fact that someone else’s humour appealed to her whereas mine had long since palled.) What was he saying?

  I glanced irritably into the mirror, which was filled with a flashing red sign reading POLICE STOP. I took my aching foot off the accelerator and gently pressed the brake pedal, guiding the van onto the hard shoulder.

  There were two identikit policemen with thick moustaches and clean shaven lantern jaws and mirror sunglasses. They wore shiny black zippered nylon blousons and peaked caps raised up parabolically at the front and pulled flat across the crown of their heads with thin leather straps, like the Schutzstaffel used to wear. They had gunbelts and bulky black leather holsters bulging with firepower. One came to the driver’s window, the other stationed himself by the nearside door towards the rear of the van and peered in inquisitively.

  ‘Where’s the funeral?’ asked the first policeman sarcastically.

  ‘Fuel pump on the blink, officer. Sorry. I’ll get it fixed at Sandbach.’

  ‘Licence.’ He proffered a skin-tight black leather glove which showed the shapes of his knuckles and square-cut fingernails, and I handed him the licence enclosed in its plastic sheath. ‘Where are you going and why?’

  ‘Birmingham to see relatives. My wife’s sister.’

  ‘Where are you exiting?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Is that your wife in back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘Wife’s name, dumbo.’

  ‘Mira. Sorry.’

  ‘Who’s that with her?’

  ‘My daughter. Bev.’

  ‘We’ll look inside.’

  The first policeman, who had the name HUCK stencilled above his right breast pocket, went round to join the other policeman, who had MUTCH stencilled above his, and they squeezed one after the other through the narrow side door and stood filling the interior of the van with abundant healthy flesh, bowed at the shoulders because their peaked caps grazed the pale green underside of the metal roof.

  Their blank mirrored gaze swept everywhere.

  ‘Cosy in here, Tim,’ said HUCK to MUTCH.

  ‘We’ll look through your stuff,’ MUTCH said to me. ‘If you’ve no objection.’

  ‘No. None. Please. Look.’ I had climbed out of my seat and the three of us were stooping together in the hot claustrophobic space. The smell of Brut aftershave was overwhelming.

  MUTCH opened a drawer in the sink unit and rattled knives and forks about while HUCK knelt down to pull open the long drawer underneath the bunk on which Bev was lying, hair stuck to her forehead above her red bloated eyelids. HUCK paused with his gloved hands on the recessed handles and shied back from the waist. ‘She looks sick.’

  ‘She does, doesn’t she?’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  I shrugged from my crouch. ‘No idea. The doctors are baffled. She has a temperature and can’t keep anything down. Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘What’s the problem, Fred?’ MUTCH asked, his gunbelt creaking as he leaned over to take a look.

  ‘This kid. Looks to be at death’s door to me.’

  MUTCH frowned. ‘She’s not haemophiliac is she?’

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’ I said.

  HUCK rose with alacrity, striking his head on the roof. MUTCH retreated towards the door and stepped out backwards, missing the step and staggering.

  ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ HUCK said. ‘How long’s she been like this?’

  ‘Weeks. Or is it months?’ I said to Mira.

  ‘Months,’ Mira said. ‘At least.’

  ‘She hasn’t an opportunistic infection not associated with an underlying immunosuppressive disease or therapy, has she?’ HUCK asked.

  ‘Could have,’ I said.

  ‘Kaposi’s sarcoma?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Chronic generalised lymphadenopathy, unexplained weight loss and/or prolonged unexplained fever?’

  ‘Sounds familiar.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ HUCK said in a strangled gasp. He followed his colleague and they stood side by side sweating on the hard shoulder. I went to the door and they took a step back together.

  ‘Anything the matter, officers?’

  ‘Your daughter has AIDS,’ HUCK and MUTCH said in unison.

  ‘First or hearing?’

  HUCK and MUTCH glanced at one another as if I were a loonie. I beamed at them. ‘Is it catching?’ I went down a step and they backed away. They kept on backing, identical blank mirrored eyes locked on me, opened the doors of their car and slid inside and wound up the windows.

  What a wonderful anti-law device! Poor HUCK and MUTCH! They truly believed they were in danger of catching something nasty from a social status group C2DE, which was what we clearly were, judging by our accents, clothes and the vehicle we drove. Probably zoom straight to HQ, strip, scrub themselves raw under the shower and burn their uniforms. Poor saps!

  (It didn’t strike me at the time that they might be right: I was too euphoric, having outsmarted them.)

  Next stop Sandbach (Road Chef). I adopted the same procedure as before and parked on the edge of the perimeter. Mira said, ‘Can you get Bev a drink of some kind? I don’t want to move her.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’ll stay here.’

  ‘With him?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m harmless enough,’ said Urban Brown with a snide grin.

  (Not so long ago you couldn’t get the bastard to grin for love nor money; now you couldn’t stop him, – all the time grin-grin-grin.)

  I stepped over bodies lying in the entrance hall with their sleeping bags, primus stoves and bundles of possessions and joined the single line of people filing upstairs to the first-floor cafeteria, necessitated by the stairway having been taken over for living, eating and sleeping purposes until only a narrow central channel remained for the passage of those using the stat for legitimate reasons. Why, I wondered, didn’t the authorities do something? Kick the buggers out. Fine them for public obstruction under Code 11. They’d no right to be here. I hadn’t paid any taxes in years but I still felt affronted. What was the country coming to?

  The Cafeteria wasn’t much better, even though the strays and slags had been disbarred entry, because here the queue stretched right round the room and tailed off outside the door in a disgruntled spiral. A cup of coffee could take two hours of your time minimum. What to do? Bev was burning up and needing liquid, poor sod, but there was no way I was going to become one of the waiting undead.

  I pushed and squirmed until I got to the lavatory
and held my breath at the acrid stink of standing urine. The drain holes were blocked with fag ends or the flushing system wasn’t working or something, and the yellow steaming liquid sloshed brim-full in the stainless steel troughs. I took my shirt off, leaving my white T-shirt on, and rinsed my face and neck, keeping my shirt jammed between my knees so that it wouldn’t get stolen. I shimmied across to the towel machine and wiped my hands on the wet bedraggled tail of towel hanging to the floor. This gave me an idea. I wadded my shirt into a tight sausage and wedged it into a back pocket of my jeans. I opened the broken lid of the towel machine, removed the towel on its metal spindle, and wound up the flapping tail. I put the towel on my shoulder and strode purposively into the swarming corridor, calling out the usual phrases such as, ‘Mind your back! Out we go! Down and at ’em! To your left! Easy over! Up your arse!’ and the one that seemed to work best of all, ‘BACK PASSAGE!!!’ – parting them like the Red Sea as I sailed blithely through and into the kitchen unscathed. The cooks and servers in their soiled white hats were too busy to take any notice and I kept up the pretence of meaningful activity, cutting a swathe through the kitchen, lithely swaying my hips to avoid perspiring personnel, protruding handles of pans, stuck-out trays of mashed potato and green peas, so on and so forth, all the while sizing up what was where and how best to get it.

  Dumping the soggy towel in a corner behind a pile of rubbish cascading from a rubber dustbin, I went straight for a large metal tray and with the same unconscious aplomb began collecting various soft drinks and sundry portable foodstuffs as if to an order from the Almighty Himself, or at the very least the Catering Manager. No one stopped me, glanced in my direction, turned a hair.

  Tray full, I hoisted it above my head and renegotiated my gliding smoothly-coordinated way to the door and out.

  A pathway appeared as if by magic (a loaded tray held aloft is as good as a security clearance card) and I waltzed along the corridor and down the stairs, nimble as Nureyev, tip-tap-toe.

  ‘What time does the cafeteria close?’ an anxious soul asked me, sweat-dried face upturned beseechingly.