Incompetence

by Rob Grant

  This much was certain: my cover had been blown wide open. I was officially what we in the business call 'dirty'. Which meant I couldn't risk contacting any of my associates or agencies that might help me, for fear of tainting them. I was too dirty even to turn myself back over to Home. I was, in short, utterly alone. Which left me two alternatives: lie down in a lime pit, die and disappear, or head back to my London base to regroup and try and steal a march on the bastard. I wasn't used to being quarry, and I didn't much like it.

  But I was a long, long way from London.

  Still, like the Zen man said, even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I looked around. There could have been a nice gentle grassy slope for me to amble down, but there wasn't, naturally. Naturally, there was a vindictively steep and gallingly high escarpment for me to climb, complete with stiff thickets of vicious gorse, stinging nettles and impenetrable undergrowth, doubtless concealing countless layers of putrefying wild animal crap.

  What larks.

  I sighed the sigh of an entire beleaguered nation and started to climb.

  I didn't plan to walk for long.

  I never plan to walk for long.

  Walking is primitive. Let's face it: walking was invented by monkeys, and even they don't like doing too much of it. They break it up every once in a while by swinging through some trees, to speed things up a little. Walking is a stupid way of getting from A to B, or any other capital letter for that matter. It's slow, it's ponderous, it's dull and it requires an uncommon amount of effort for scant reward. That's how I feel about walking even when I haven't just thrown myself out of a speeding vehicle at fifty-two kilometres per hour, cracking every single one of my ribs and scraping so much skin off my knees they wouldn't have looked out of place in a butcher's window next to the calf's liver.

  So walking was not only boring, it was downright painful, and I had an urgent lust for alternative transport. I had it in mind to reach a town of sufficient size to warrant a bus service, if not, heaven forbid, an actual train station, in reasonably short order. Failing that, I hoped I would sooner or later wander across a road of sufficient sophistication to bear some kind of traffic that might be flagged down. Failing all the above, I surely had a reasonable chance, at least, of encountering another human being who might be persuaded to give me a piggyback for lots of money.

  But no.

  Of all the places I could have picked, I had chosen to leap out of the car in the absolute dead centre of the Land That Time Forgot. I swear to you: it's probably marked exactly that on the map. You'll find it right at the end of the Infinitely Long Straight Road. I walked for over an hour and a half without finding so much as a roughly trodden path. Cavemen hadn't even wandered here. It would not have caused me a moment's surprise if a giant pterodactyl had swooped down and swept me off in its jaws as a titbit for its nest of cawing young.

  I stopped off in the absolute middle of the middle of nowhere and buried Harry Tequila in an abandoned badger's sett. I filled it up with stones and bracken, to discourage any sabre-toothed tigers or giant woolly mammoths that might come snuffling around, and carried on walking.

  The thick underbrush was hacking at the dismal remnants of my pathetic butternut squash shoes and shredded ankles, and there wasn't a millimetre of my entire body that wasn't racked with pain. I don't want to undermine my tough guy image with you, but I was feeling very, very sorry for myself. I wanted to cry. I wanted my momma. But I wanted those things in a very tough guy kind of way.

  Finally, after doing the monkey thing for close on four hours, I came across a cultivated field. Where there's a cultivated field, there's a civilized human not far away. Or a farmer, at least.

  For a few moments of mad enthusiasm, I actually broke into a lively, grinning hobble, but the neatly furrowed fields just seemed to carry on endlessly to the horizon, and I quickly fell back into my broken, wretched stagger. I had traversed enough fields to last me this and the next dozen lifetimes before I finally saw the smoke rising from a distant farmhouse chimney.

  It was a large farm, but wholly underpopulated. The farmyard was occupied by a handful of the usual suspects: chickens, a few pigs, the odd cow, but they all seemed terribly lacklustre, as if beset by a strange animal ennui. The chickens could barely muster a disgruntled squawk and a couple of desultory wing flaps at my appearance. There was a sorry-looking tractor sitting sadly in its shed. All in all, the word 'thriving' did not come to mind.

  I spotted a brimming rain barrel by one of the outbuildings, and it suddenly struck me I was uncommonly thirsty. All I'd had to drink in the past twenty-four hours was the coffee in the service station, and most of that had wound up on the cafeteria table.

  I walked over to the barrel and scooped up some icy water in my hands. My hands were so caked in unnameable filth and dried blood, the water came up dark purple, but I drank it anyway. I sucked it down by the filthy gallon. When my thirst was finally sated, it occurred to me that my appearance might benefit from a little tidying up before I encountered any humans or farmers, so, crisp as the air was, I stripped down to my vest and set about soaplessly scrubbing myself in the Houdini cold rainwater. It wasn't going to get me anywhere close to what an unfastidious blind man would pass as 'clean', but it might stop small children from running away screaming at the sight of me.

  As I came up for air, I spotted a face watching me through a broken window pane in a surely derelict shed across the yard.

  It was an old face, weathered and worn. From the proximity of the chin to the nose, I surmised it was probably toothless, too. I would not have been able to guess at its sex were it not garnished with a masculine, old, flat cap. Although it appeared to be looking in my direction, it didn't much seem interested in what I was doing. It didn't much seem interested in anything. I kept him in my field of vision, though, just in case. I shook myself as dry as possible and dabbed at my face with my vest. And then I heard that sound again.

  The terrible sound of a shotgun being cocked behind me.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  This time, I didn't feel any fear; I guess I'd plumb run out. All I felt was a dull kind of resigned exasperation. I exhaled long and deep and raised my hands dutifully, because that's what people with shotguns trained on my person always seem to expect of me, and waited for either instructions or an explosive death, not much caring which.

  An old ratchet of a voice with a thick country accent advised me to turn. Obviously, I turned.

  I surmised it was a woman behind the shotgun, because she was wearing an extremely voluminous black skirt, and sporting a black headscarf rather than a flat cap. In every other respect, she looked identical to the sad old man in the shed. Her face was set in a grim, defiant gurn, so that her chin actually kept touching her nose. I swear, she could have had both those features fitted with metal segs and made a living performing some kind of facial tap-dance.

  I wasn't too happy having her point the gun at me. She was truly ancient, and I really couldn't vouch for the reliability of her muscle control. I needed to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible. I thought about flashing a good old detective badge at her, but that little voice inside me warned that might not be the best idea. I never got the chance to thank the little voice, but, looking back, it probably saved my life. Instead, I dug out and slapped on my most affable, harmless grin and asked her, all polite and nice manners, if she wouldn't mind at least lowering her weapon.

  She wasn't inclined to do that.

  She just stood there clacking her chin against her nose, looking me up and down with a mixture of loathing and distrust, like the Pope might look at Satan if the Prince of Darkness turned up uninvited to a Vatican whist drive. Then she turned her head to one side, spat out an unlikely volume of brown sputum, then turned back to me and said something strange. Now, she was speaking some kind of French, only in an obscure, ancient dialect, and brogued with an unfamiliar accent, so I'm translating for you as best I can how it came to me.

  What
I think she said was: 'You fellers sure an' have an appetite for buckshot.'

  Well, I have absolutely no appetite whatsoever for buckshot, and I certainly don't belong to any group of fellers that do, but before I could avail the termagant of that knowledge, the voice from the woodshed shouted out: 'Him besn't one o' them 'mission fellers.'

  The old woman winced at the voice and spat back at it: 'You besn't even here, so I never heard that.'

  I couldn't work out what kind of madness I'd wandered into here. Had I heard right? The crazy old witch was saying the old man didn't exist? If so, he seemed remarkably underperturbed. 'Mebbe I bes here or mebbe I besn't,' he said. 'Don't alter the fact that him besn't one of them 'mission bassards, either ways.'

  The woman steadied her aim at my chestal region. 'You pay him no mind.' She flicked her head dismissively in the direction of the shed. 'Him besn't here, and you besn't seen him, neither. You follow?'

  I nodded. 'He's definitely not here,' I agreed, 'and I certainly haven't seen him.' This seemed to mollify the old trout, so I chanced my arm and added: 'But he's right.'

  She cocked her head at me and chinned her nose, mulling it over. 'You besn't one of them 'mission fellers, then?'

  'No.' I shook my head slowly and broadened my winning smile. 'I definitely besn't.'

  The voice from the shed chipped in petulantly: 'Told yers.'

  This was too much for the woman. 'You never told nobody nothing!' she shrieked. 'Being as you besn't here, you stubborn old pig shagger.' She was screaming with her face towards the woodshed and waving the shotgun around agitatedly in my vague general direction. I was trying to sway along in sort of counterpoint to it so it was only aimed directly at me about fifty per cent of the time. Not ideal, not cool, not elegant, but it doubled my chances of survival, I reckoned.

  The shrew turned back to me. 'You stand still, Mister.' Reluctantly, I complied. 'Mebbe you besn't 'mission. But mebbe you's from the 'surance, though.'

  The old man shouted again. 'Him besn't from no 'surance, neither.'

  I really wished he'd stop helping me.

  The woman jumped up and down in fury. 'How many times!? You besn't here! Can't you get it through your fat daft skull, you senile old farty?'

  The old man shouted something back at her, something about him besn't having a skull at all, daft or otherwise, if him besn't there, most of which was unfortunately lost on me, because it was around about that point the old biddy fired the gun.

  Her exasperation finally caused her twitching finger to tighten on the trigger involuntarily, and I was slightly distracted from the course of the dialogue by the puff of smoke and the lethal projectile that issued from the barrel of the shotgun, in the vague direction of my head at pretty close to the speed of sound.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I never actually heard the blast, but there must have been one.

  They say you never hear the one that kills you, and -- let's face it -- there can't be a whole lot of eyewitness evidence to support that particular proposition, but I can confidently confirm this from savage personal experience: you definitely don't hear the one that sails so close to your head it scorches your eardrum and melts the wax protecting it.

  The shot blew a basketball-sized hole in the outbuilding behind me, burrowed clean through a large pig and sailed right through the wall at the rear and, as far as I know, it's travelling still. She missed splashing my brains all over the farmyard cobbles like so much animal mulch by the width of a woodworm's hard-on. I didn't even have time to flinch.

  The old harridan looked even more startled than I did, which was saying something, because I was the colour of Marcel Marceau. She dropped the gun and bustled over to me, waving her hands and shouting things. God knows what things she was shouting: apologies to me, curses on herself, and blame on the sad old git who didn't exist, in all probability. I couldn't be sure, because all I could hear was a dull, sonorous kind of echoing ringing, interlaced with a long, low, howling wind.

  Bluntly, I'd had enough of country life by now, and I really just wanted to be on my way and walking on a city street just as soon as life could whisk me to one, but the hag kept harrying me across the yard and up the steps to the farmhouse kitchen, all the while yattering away inaudibly to me, and examining my head. I don't know why she was examining my head. Making sure it was all still there, I guess.

  She sat me in front of the stove and threw an ancient blanket that smelled of old people around my shoulders. I didn't protest. I just let it happen. I actually felt strangely high and detached, what with my Quasimodo hearing and the near-death-experience-induced endorphins racing round my system, working their wily wonders on my jangled nerves.

  She ladled out a ceramic mug of soup from a cauldron on the stove, and I laced my fingers around it gratefully. For the first time in as long as I could remember, someone was offering me succour, and I appreciated it. I'd have preferred not to have gone through the whole accidentally-almost-shooting-my-head-off episode in order to get it, but I wasn't in a mood to be pernickety.

  My hearing was beginning to return. I could vaguely make out a distant, incessant yakking noise that seemed to be coming from the direction of the old woman as she busied about the kitchen, doing old womanly things with bits of laundry and buckets.

  I sipped at the soup. It was tongue-blistering hot, but, I kid ye not, it truly was the greatest food I've ever tasted, and I've tasted plenty. It was some kind of meat and vegetable country broth. I couldn't make out what the meat was: sort of halfway between rabbit and chicken. I didn't much care. It could have been cholera-infested warthog and bubonic sewer rat for all I cared. I sucked it down greedily.

  A good home-made soup is the world's finest medicine. I was already feeling better before the elixir even had time to hit my stomach. I felt like I was glowing. My hearing returned. Even the old hag was beginning to seem less dreadful. She bustled over to me carrying a steaming rag in a pair of wooden tongs. She seemed intent on applying it to my person, for some reason. I caught a whiff of its steam. It stank. Truly, it stank. It smelled like lonely death. I tried to wave her away, but she wouldn't take no for an answer.

  She wrapped the malodorous hot poultice around the poor skinned knuckles of my right hand. It stung at first, and she laughed when I winced, showing off a single ochre tooth in the middle of her gaping maw, and stroked my head, making mock soothing noises, as if I were a baby, and a pretty cowardly baby at that.

  She biddled on back to her steaming slop bucket and fished out another stinking rag with her tongs. She told me to take off my clothes. I hesitated, naturally, and she laughed again, and mimed mock virginal coyness. Kindly as her intentions were, I really wasn't enjoying watching that laugh, so I made a resolution to obey all her future instructions without question, rather than risk provoking more of that demonic cackling. Besides, I did not feel my honour was under major threat, so I removed my trousers.

  Pretty soon, I was swathed from head to toe in steaming, stinking bandages. I remembered a food photographer had once shown me one of his tricks of the trade. To keep the food looking hot during the shoot, he soaked a feminine hygiene product in boiling water and secreted it on the plate. That's what I must have looked like: a giant hot tampon steaming by the stove.

  While we waited for the poultices to do their stuff, we talked.

  I asked her what I should call her, and she said as long as she could remember everybody had always called her Mamma. I didn't feel our relationship was ready for such Oedipal intimacies, so I let it go. She asked me how I'd come to this pretty pass, and I made up some yarn about a gang of thugs yanking me out of my car and bundling me into some ditch. She asked me if they'd been young tearaways, and since that's what she seemed to want to hear, I told her yes, they'd been teenage thugs. She nodded sagely and clucked something despairing about young people and respect.

  I glanced over at the kitchen window. The old geezer had dared to venture from his shed, and was looking hungrily in the direction
of the steaming cooking pot on the stove, his face pressed up against the pane. The old woman caught my gaze and got herself all worked up again, grabbing up a broom and shaking it at the window, yelling all kinds of imprecations and threats. The old fellow just looked at her forlornly, then turned and slouched away sullenly, back towards the lonely comfort of his derelict shed.

  The woman stared after him, hands on her hips, shaking her head. 'What's a body to do with him? Him just won't have it him's dead.'

  I looked up slowly and stared at her through the steam from my mug. 'He's dead?'

  She nodded. 'I been a widder now for more'n a year, and him still won't have it.'

  Clearly, I was on dangerous ground here, but really I felt someone had to speak out for the old chap. 'Well, he's got a bit of a point, don't you think?'

  'Don't you start. It's bad enough him not wanting to be dead anymore, without you stirring things up. Lookee this.' She thrust an official document in my face. 'There's him's death certificate. It's all signed, official and everything.'

  The death certificate certainly looked authentic enough. 'How did you get this?'

  'In the post. Signed by the county coroner, see? You can't get deader than that.'

  'Well, you can. I mean your husband does seem to be enjoying more... robust health than a lot of dead people I could think of.'

  'That's what him says! Lookee...' She span a kitchen chair round so the back was facing me, straddled it like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel and sat. She was incredibly limber for a hundred-and-forty-year-old. And she went into her tale. It was one of those yarns where all you can do is listen and smile and nod in what you hope are the right places.

  'I used to feel the same, at first. It all started when us got this letter, see, from the social security. It was all nice and sympathetic saying sorry Pappa was dead, like, and offering us condolences and that, for the loss of us husband. Well, that upset him and us both, naturally, him not even being slightly dead. So us bain down the social office in a right strop and told 'em, like, that him warn't dead at all, and this was him, here, standing there in front of 'em, all alive and hale and hearty, and thems'd probably made a mistake and got him all confused with somebody else. Well, them wouldn't have it at first, of course. Said it was us'd made the mistake and him probably wasn't my husband, and us was just a bit confused. Well, that done it. That really done it. Him made quite a scene, I tell you. Quite a scene.' She chuckled fondly at the memory. 'Him wasn't one to take no nonsense, wasn't Pappa. Not when him was alive, God rest his soul.' She crossed herself. I just kept on smiling, non-committally, and wishing I was on that city street again.