by Stav Sherez
Carrigan smiled, feeling . . . he didn’t quite know what . . . as they stepped through the Sitex screen and into a dark corridor reeking of weed and booze and body odour. Music was seeping from every corner of the house, several different tracks clashing and crashing in a dissonant caterwaul.
He couldn’t believe people lived like this, life reduced to the bare essentials and often not even that, no water or electricity or heating. And yet what were your options if you were young and starting out in London? The rents so high that an entire segment of society was now kept off the property ladder. He looked around the crumbling corridor. The squatters had followed their own logic and beliefs – they didn’t think it was morally just that buildings should be vacant – but they missed the bigger picture, and Carrigan thought back to last night’s conversation. If every marginalised group took the law into their own hands, society wouldn’t last very long.
‘You want to try in there?’ Geneva shouted above the dull thump of drum and bass, nodding towards a door on their left.
Carrigan went in first and was greeted by a thick fog of cannabis smoke. The room was shaking with the music, the walls convulsing and throbbing like beating ventricles. Sweat popped on his forehead and under his collar, the heat and musk of fifty or sixty bodies dancing and swaying to the deep rhythmic pulse, the room itself seeming to breathe in time with the beat.
They let their eyes and ears adjust and tried to spot anyone resembling Nigel but it was impossible, and they left, their bodies still vibrating with the deep rumbling bass drones. They passed through a dangerously leaning partition wall that had come loose and ducked through a hole into a large hallway. The walls were painted in bright lurid colours, daubed with monosyllabic slogans and the ubiquitous anarchist sign. Carrigan heard something behind him and stopped. He thought he saw a flash of yellow hair but when his eyes focused there was nothing but the empty hallway. He turned and followed Geneva through the winding labyrinth, realising they were in the house next door now, that all the houses were connected and that the squatters had erected makeshift walls and corridors to guide them through.
In the next room, people were slumped on sofas and bean bags, listening to music that seemed to consist of nothing but fire alarms, fax screeches and klaxons calls. The occupants were passing around a large cylinder of gas between them. A face mask was connected to a white rubber tube and each person took long hungry pulls, their expressions distorted by the mask. Geneva went around asking if anyone knew Emily or had seen Nigel but it was hard to tell if the people in the room even registered her or merely thought she was part of their shared hallucination.
They left the room and realised that they were now lost, not sure how many of the connected houses they’d passed through. Carrigan felt his head swell with the roar and scream of the music and quickened his step, leading Geneva down a long reeking hallway and into a dead end.
‘Christ!’ he said, turning round, and that was when he saw the girl.
She was blonde and small, her T-shirt dark against her flat torso. She had large green eyes and a slender neck that didn’t look like it could support the weight of her head. She didn’t say anything but beckoned them with her hand and, before they could stop her, she’d turned away and they had little choice but to follow.
Through the darkness and muck, through corridors and barriers, through noise and heat and broken walls until the girl ducked under a low-hanging beam and into a dark cramped room. Carrigan went first, Geneva following, watching their back.
‘Close the door.’
They did as they were told and stood in total darkness, every muscle and fibre of their bodies attuned and tense.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want anyone to see me talking to you . . . I saw . . . I saw it on the news,’ the girl said, switching on a small electric light which radiated across her face, making her look like a gilded angel. ‘I’m not doing this for you,’ she made clear to them, her accent rough and common and slightly exaggerated, a distinct middle-class burr underneath. She looked all of fourteen, a slim nothing of a girl, long blonde hair matted and split, her face a mask of scary blankness. Another one of those girls, Geneva thought, who created a web of chaos around them, shiny black ravens in a hurricane. ‘I’m only doing this for Em.’
‘You knew Emily?’ Geneva asked.
The girl nodded. ‘Yeah, we used to hang out a bit when she was staying here.’
‘She lived here?’ Geneva took a step forward and looked around, realising that this was the girl’s bedroom, the hairdryer on the chair, the crumpled magazines and pillows and empty food cartons. ‘How long ago?’
The girl sniffled and lit a cigarette, the smoke filling the room and shrouding her face. ‘She first turned up, I think it was March of last year. She was one of Nigel’s.’
‘One of Nigel’s?’
The girl looked at Geneva, totally ignoring Carrigan. ‘You know, one of his girls? He always has a new one around. The ones he can mould, the ones that fall under his spell. He turned up with her one night, likes showing off his new recruits. Introduced her to everyone.’ The girl took quick, angry drags off her cigarette. ‘We started seeing her more and more and one day she was crashing here, permanent like, and before we knew it she was doing all the talking and planning. Nigel found a right one when he found her.’
‘What kind of stuff are we talking about?’
The girl ground out her cigarette and glared at Geneva.
‘It’s okay, we’re not interested in anything but finding out who killed Emily.’
‘You mean that?’ she said, and when Geneva nodded, the girl seemed to accept it. ‘Nigel’s part of what he likes to call the movement. He organises and mobilises people for protests – war, student fees, human rights violations, doesn’t matter what.’ The girl’s lips were thin and pinched and it was hard to believe she was so young. ‘Emily was just like him. She lived for the moment we hit the streets, came up against the cordons and looked into the eyes of the enemy. She was one of those people who only found themselves in the crowd, in the flash and roar of running battle. She was only ever happy when she was fighting. That’s why Nigel loved her, she was his mirror in so many ways.’
Geneva lit a cigarette for herself then another for the girl. ‘How long did she stay here for?’ she asked, trying to get a sense of the timeline, the blank space between Emily leaving Geoff Shorter and the fire in the convent.
‘She was here six months, maybe a little less. Then they went abroad, her and Nigel, and when they came back she’d changed.’
‘Abroad? Where?’ Geneva tried to keep the excitement out of her voice, tried to tell herself this was probably nothing, just another step out of many that Emily had taken to get to the convent on that particular night.
The girl looked down at the floor or at her torn trainers, the toes poking out, it was hard to tell. ‘I think it was Nigel’s idea. He’d come into some money. No idea where they went but they were gone three weeks and when they came back Emily was different.’
‘Different how?’ Geneva and Carrigan looked at each other.
‘More focused. As if all her stray particles had finally come to rest. She began to miss meetings and marches, went out for days at a time, never telling anyone where she’d been. She started criticising Nigel and the things we were doing. He confronted her one night, both of them screaming at each other in the kitchen, Emily laying into him for not having enough commitment, for only being interested in causes that got him on TV. The next day she was gone. Left all her stuff and didn’t bother telling anyone.’
‘Her stuff?’ Carrigan said.
‘Just left it here. I kept it in case she came back but she never did.’
‘Do you still have it?’
The girl went over to a corner of the room. She reached behind a thin mattress that lay flush against the wall and pulled out a small canvas bag and handed it to Geneva.
Geneva opened the flap and gazed down at the contents. There was a toothb
rush and an electric razor, a couple of faded paperbacks, a stack of scratched CD-Rs, a few blurry photos, a packet of cigarettes, a lighter and a black notebook.
‘We’d also really like to talk to Nigel.’
‘So would I.’ The girl shrugged and scratched her wrist. Geneva saw that the skin was red and dry, striated with white crescents and old cutting scars. ‘He was supposed to be here for the protest party but never showed up . . . first I ever heard of Nigel missing a party.’
‘How long has he been gone?’
The girl thought about this, her lower lip pressed between her teeth. ‘I haven’t seen him for five days. The news people were back yesterday, I’m surprised he missed that.’
Five days, the day of the fire. ‘Did Nigel or Emily ever mention anything about nuns?’ Carrigan asked.
The girl looked at him as if he were mad.
Geneva handed her a card, said to call if she remembered anything else and thanked her. The girl whispered, ‘Good luck,’ but when they turned, she’d already disappeared back into the darkness.
When they made it back through the connected rooms and corridors to the main hallway, they saw them.
Two men stood against the front door blocking their path. They were young but heavily muscled, one with a green Mohican, the other shaved except for one black lock, gelled and twisted around his neck in the shape of a noose. They both wore torn T-shirts, snarls, and old scars across their faces.
Carrigan instinctively moved closer to Geneva. He looked at the door, then he looked at the men. Mohican was reaching into his pocket. Noose extended his arm across the door in a challenge. Carrigan could see Geneva gripping the bag with Emily’s things tightly in one hand, the other resting on her hip. He glanced behind him and saw that others had left the party and were gathering to watch the action. A group of men and a couple of women stood a few feet away, swigging cider, laughing, and blocking their escape.
Carrigan quickly ran through their options. He knew they’d been stupid in coming here alone but he’d also known that coming in with a full team would have ruined whatever chance they’d had at finding anything. He felt his body tensing, his hand reaching down for the snap stick he wore on his belt.
‘C’mon then,’ Mohican snarled. ‘I can’t wait to fuckin’ have you.’
Carrigan saw him smile then pull something from his back pocket. It took him a few seconds to realise it was a chunky black padlock. It was tied to a long rope and the man began to swing it in front of him in long extended arcs. Carrigan heard Geneva breathing heavily beside him, the rumble of her fear, the tightness in his own throat.
‘Step away from the door now!’
The two punks laughed and Mohican swung the padlock and just as quickly snapped it back. When Geneva flinched, he burst out laughing. ‘You cunts,’ he said. ‘Think you can just come in here and there’ll be no consequences?’
Carrigan glanced down at Geneva, saw her face reddening, her hands twitching at her sides. She tightened her grip on Emily’s bag. Carrigan looked behind him, noticing that the crowd was becoming more animated and that there would be no way out in that direction. The two punks and the door were their only option.
He was trying to decide the best course of action when Geneva launched herself at Mohican. The man swung with the padlock as she entered his space. Carrigan saw her duck, missing the ridged metal by only a few inches, then swing upwards with her baton, smashing it hard into Mohican’s crotch as the padlock crashed into the wall.
Carrigan was already moving on the other man, using the full weight of his body to force him back. A sharp stinging pain burned through his ear as the man’s jaw clamped shut over it. Carrigan felt something rip, turned to see Noose grinning with bloody lips and smashed his truncheon into the man’s stomach. Noose went down without a sound and Carrigan placed his shoe on the man’s neck, pinning him to the floor.
He could see some of the others starting to creep up on them, not sure whether to join the fight or just watch, and then all he could see was Geneva in a blur of motion as she swung her truncheon at Mohican’s neck, causing him to stumble, grab his throat with both hands and drop the padlock. She used one foot to shunt it away, delicate as a dancer, and then swivelled and kicked Mohican in the chest. He tried to grab her legs and she took out her pepper spray and pressed down hard on the nozzle. Mohican let out a long agonised scream but Geneva didn’t stop, bent over him, aiming the stinging mist directly into his eyes.
Carrigan took his foot off the other man’s neck and grabbed Geneva. ‘That’s enough!’ he shouted, pulling her away with one hand while using the other to open the front door.
The street light and cold air rushed in and Carrigan took a couple of deep breaths as he pulled Geneva through the door. She looked back once, her face twisted into a scowl. Carrigan remembered Karlson’s comments from yesterday, felt his body start to ache and moan with pain, the sudden enervation as the adrenalin disappeared from his system.
Something exploded on the path next to them, spilling its contents onto the cracked paving stones. Carrigan looked down and saw a trail of baked beans splattered across his shoe, the tin torn and twisted on the ground. Something else hit his shoulder. He looked up and saw an ashtray spinning through the air and ducked just in time.
‘Run!’ he shouted, grabbing Geneva by the hand as more items began raining down from the high windows of the squat. They wove through the front garden avoiding chair legs and potted plants, empty tea mugs, planks of wood and a shopping trolley which just missed Carrigan, buckled and bounced and glanced his thigh. He saw Geneva stagger as a stone stung against her shoulder and he grabbed her and pushed her through the gate.
They made it into the car, shaking, breathing heavily, staring blankly at the road ahead. They both jumped in their seats as something smashed against the roof of the car. Geneva started the engine and was about to release the handbrake when the back window exploded in a shower of glass and noise. Carrigan looked through the gaping hole and saw a hundred people, maybe more, spilling into the street – a few were chasing after them but the rest had turned their attention to the Tesco Express, hurling objects and piling against the windows, and then he heard more breaking glass and the sharp stuttering whine of the shop’s alarm system as the mob piled in.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,’ Geneva shouted, smashing her fist into the dashboard.
Carrigan turned towards her but she was staring back at the squat.
‘I can’t fucking believe it,’ she said, reaching for the door handle.
Carrigan grabbed her arm. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I’ve got to go back there. I dropped Emily’s bag. Shit.’
Carrigan eased his grip and when Geneva turned in her seat she saw that he was smiling.
He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the small black notebook.
Geneva’s eyes widened and a smile cracked her face. She took the notebook and turned it over in her hand, tilting it so that it caught the overhead bulb-light. The notebook was a Moleskine, bound shut by a piece of black elastic. Geneva slid her fingers underneath the strap and snapped it open. The pages smelled of damp and hairspray. She flicked through pages of scrawls and lists, internet addresses, random notes, phone numbers, and then she stopped.
This was a different section of the notebook, demarcated by several blank pages before it. She stared at the page on the right. There were only seven words, written in large chunky letters, a heading of sorts:
Em & N’s Peru Trip – September 2011
He’s with me, by my side, but I don’t really see him nor feel his presence. He may as well be a tree, or a dog that follows you around because no one else will love it. But even dogs can be useful. Sometimes it’s the dogs that tell us where to look.
That first night we slept on the rocky ground, as far away from the hanging trees as possible, and in the morning we set off along the road, hoping to find help at the next village.
He has a
map and a tattered guidebook and a sure sense of where he is going. He says if we leapfrog across the highlands, village to village, we’ll be able to catch up with the bus. Otherwise, it’s a two-week wait until the next one. Of course, all he wants to do is go back to the bars and alleyways of the town to drink and tell his tale to gape-eyed college girls and gap-toothed Scandis and watch them swoon and melt but it doesn’t bother me any more, at least not in the way it used to.
We hitch rides in the backs of ancient pick-up trucks, the kind of thing you expect to see in a museum, belching black smoke and diesel stink, us rolling around in rusty beds among straw and farm equipment and animal shit. Each truck or car only goes as far as the next hamlet. These are the limits of their lives. The rest of the world seems cut off from this high arid plateau but, of course, that’s only a romantic illusion – something we like to tell ourselves – if you look closer, if you can be bothered, you can see it seep through every crack of rock and bend of river.
It didn’t take us long to understand that this wasn’t an isolated incident. That the trees of the high country carried familiar fruit and that many villages were empty and abandoned like the one we’d stumbled upon.
On the second day the smell came back and this time there was no mistaking it for some natural occurrence. The back of my throat was sore within minutes. My skin felt hot and prickly. He coughed and popped some pills and pretended not to notice but I could see him fighting back tears.
The villages are strung out along these impossible peaks, fifty or seventy or a hundred miles between them, small groupings of mud huts and tin shacks, crumbling alleyways reverting to dust, leaning brick buildings and always, at the bottom of every ravine, the skeleton wrecks of smashed cars, a constant reminder of what we all want to forget.
The villages are beautiful in their simplicity and setting but most of them are deserted.
There are old men sitting on stones in town squares and stray dogs that bark and sneer when they see us approach. But everyone else is gone. Most of the villages are empty and the ones that aren’t, all slammed doors and dark suspicious glares. The old man we spoke to, or at least I tried speaking to in my crappy guidebook Spanish, just shrugged and flickered his fingers and waved as if to say they’d all flown away.
