Decay Inevitable

by Conrad Williams

  “Fuck off, you wanker,” Billy said. “What did you do to my old girl?”

  “If you mean your mother,” Vernon said, “I told her to put her teeth in if she was going to scream at me like that. Ugly specimen. I can see where you get it from.”

  Billy laced his fingers behind his head and crouched low. “Look, just get it over with then, why don’t you? I’ll take my beating and then you can get lost.”

  “It’s not quite as easy as that, Billy,” said Vernon. “We are going to do you over, make no mistake–”

  Sean loved that we.

  “–but where will that leave us? No progress, you see. No improvement in our relationship. The cold, brutal facts are that you owe me and I expect payment.”

  Sean said, “I don’t think he’s got any money on him.”

  Vernon gave him an indulgent smile. “Sean. Rule A: keep your mouth shut. I talk in these situations. You just stand around looking pretty. Now. It’s cold. I am starving. Let’s get this sorted. Sean. Hurt him. Then you can go. I’ll take things forward from there.”

  “You’ve got the bat. You hurt him.”

  “Sean...”

  Sean pressed his teeth against his tongue. Vernon’s habit of prefacing every sentence with his name was getting up his nose.

  “Sean... let’s say that I need you to do this. To prove something to me. It’s a test. Pass it, or fail it. If you fail, you will fail badly. And in more ways than one. So.”

  Billy crouched on the ground between them, his face slack with bewilderment, watching them at it.

  Is he on to me? Sean thought. And following that: If he is, he won’t be expecting this.

  It helped to think of Naomi. It fuelled him. But not so much that he couldn’t rein it in when Billy coughed up a little blood. Vernon was making admiring noises but Sean wasn’t listening. He pushed by Vernon quickly before he became Sean’s target, and strode to the Shogun. He sat in the passenger seat, trying to calm himself, hissing over his raw knuckles. He watched Vernon as he spoke to Billy. It darkened a little, out there, as if a cloud had blocked the sun, but the sky was cloudy anyway.

  Getting a headache, Sean thought, and rubbed his temples while punching at the radio buttons for something that might soothe him.

  He wanted so much to return and mete out a little to Vernon, just a little, of what Billy had suffered. He wondered if Naomi had been alive when her killer had cut off her lips. Sean rubbed his bruised knuckles and tethered his rage. He thought: not yet... not yet.

  He saw Vernon fiddle with his collar and lift something silver to his lips. If it was a whistle, it made no sound that Sean could hear. But when he blinked, there was another man in white standing next to Vernon. He wore a white skull-cap. His eyes were covered with dark glasses, and his mouth and nose were obscured by a green mask. Both men were looking down at the spot where, presumably, Billy lay.

  “Christ,” Sean muttered, as Vernon shifted slightly to allow a view of the blood stains that swirled across what must have been a surgeon’s apron. “Christ.”

  Nonchalantly, as if he were plucking a pen from his top pocket, the surgeon extracted something slender that glittered.

  “Christ.”

  He knelt out of sight. Vernon moved back across Sean’s line of vision and he didn’t see anything else until Vernon was striding back across the ploughed field, sliding a neatly wrapped parcel of white, greaseproof paper into his pocket. Neither the surgeon nor the boy were anywhere to be seen.

  Vernon came towards the four-by-four bringing the collars of his coat up around his neck. The wind played with his pony tail. He threw the bat and the briefcase onto the back seat as he settled behind the wheel with a contented sigh.

  “Is he all right?” Sean asked.

  “Depends what you mean by ‘all right’. Actually, come to think of it, it doesn’t depend on anything. He’s not all right. He’s dead, but he hasn’t quite got the grip of it yet.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Look at this place, Sean. Look at the people here. Staggering, blasted shells of people they are. This isn’t living. It’s not life. Is it?”

  Yes it is, Sean wanted to say. It might not be what they hoped for, but it’s what they’re dealing with.

  Vernon fired the engine. He switched on Radio 3. “I like classical music after a job like this. Calms you down.”

  Sean persisted. “What did he give you? What was in that white parcel? Who was that fucking freak you were talking to? Where did he come from?”

  Vernon selected first gear and took the Shogun on a slow, bumpy arc away from the field. “Ask me no questions,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper, “I’ll dig you no shallow grave.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: PIRATES

  MORNINGS THEY STRUCK out early, trying to force the cold from their bones. Around midday, they rested for an hour or two, wherever they could find shelter. Come nightfall, exhausted and hungry, they would steal food, smashing the windows of bakers’ shops in villages, and sleep in dilapidated houses, huddled together for warmth.

  Though he did not say it, Will was happy for Sadie’s presence. He was grateful for the way she unconsciously geed up both himself and Elisabeth. He was glad too that she acted as a check on his emotions. Had it been just Eli and Will, he might have tried to develop their night-time huddles into something more intimate as the memory of her smell seeped into his. Or he might simply have gone to pieces, happy to rot while his mind tried to cling to the broken images of Catriona.

  It had been five days since the bombs went off. They were no nearer finding out who or what had been responsible for the blasts. Will had sent Sadie into a village in the Midlands to see if she could find out some news but she had returned at speed. Someone had tried to follow her, she said. It was best that they took no chances.

  “How can it be that Sadie’s drawing this kind of heat?” he asked Elisabeth one night, as Sadie slept.

  “She might be imagining it, Will,” Eli suggested. “She was hiding when you found her. She’s probably been frightened by what has happened to me and you. There’s tension in the air. The poor child hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep. She might be imagining it.”

  “Possibly,” Will said, unconvinced.

  Elisabeth was moving better now. She had taken a battering, but there was no lasting damage. She felt better once they had stolen some fresh clothing from a washing line; the blood on her own shirt had stiffened to a dark red crust. She looked good in the new clothes. Her pallor might almost have been of her own design. Her beauty was fragile, non-committal. Brittle as porcelain.

  They were covering around eight to ten miles a day now, Will estimated. They shied away from people, choosing to make their way across country. It was slower, but it meant they were guaranteed passage without scrutiny. The only people they had to dodge were farmers in tractors ploughing their fields or heavy-coated figures taking dogs for a walk.

  Good luck paid them a visit when Sadie found a gulley partially shielded by trees. At the bottom ran a disused railway line, great tufts of weed sprouting between the sleepers. It was a joy to walk along the gravel, hidden from view; it created a pocket of silence. It gave them direction and purpose. Occasionally, if they did hear someone approaching, they could clear the track in seconds for the shade of the boughs that dogged the line.

  “How far will the line take us, do you think?” Sadie asked.

  “It would be nice if it took us to the front door of Sloe Heath,” Will said. “But I doubt it will. Let’s take advantage of it though. Try to walk a bit further than usual today.”

  They talked little, but the further they went along the tracks, the more Will’s thoughts turned to what he might find at Sloe Heath. He had no contact name and no understanding of what kind of facility it was. Presumably he wouldn’t be allowed to just walk in and start hunting around for clues. He wondered too if he would see any of the men that had broken into his and Cat’s flat. His palms itched. He hoped so.
r />   Sadie was slowing them down with a series of games. First she had been playing hide and seek, which distressed Elisabeth, and now she was walking along the line, arms outstretched, pretending to be a tightrope walker. Irritated, Will barked at her to catch them up and stop fooling. His charity towards her was lessening by the minute.

  “I knew it was a bad idea, bringing you along,” he snapped.

  “Will,” Elisabeth said, in a voice that he recognised from their past. It was her stop it now or we’ll have an argument voice.

  “Well, it was. We’ve got enough to worry about without playing mum and dad too.”

  “Pretend I’m not here,” Sadie retorted. “I don’t need a nanny.”

  “What were you doing back there, anyway?” Will stared at her. “What were you doing hiding in that old farmhouse? Where are you from?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, come on,” Will persisted. “I want to know. You could be a missing person for all we know. The police could be trying to find you. Which wouldn’t be helpful, let me tell you.”

  “What difference would it make? The police are after you anyway. They think you killed your wife.”

  Elisabeth stepped between them. “We aren’t getting anywhere. Why don’t we talk while we walk?”

  “Elisabeth, she could be, I don’t know, she could be helping them out.”

  Elisabeth frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She might be on their side. She might be – oh, I don’t know.” Will stalked away, angry with his inarticulacy and the lunatic thought that Sadie might somehow be plotting against him. If he was going to do something for Cat, it wasn’t going to happen with his head full of wool. Elisabeth caught up with him.

  “What is wrong with you, Will? She’s just a girl. What does it matter where she’s from? If she doesn’t want to talk, she shouldn’t have to. She’s with us. Friends. Let her feel secure for a while. At least until we get where we’re going.”

  Will’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, where perspective made the tracks vanish. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m not myself. I can’t stop it. I feel as though I’m being hollowed out, chipped away. I just want to get there and find out what it is I have to find out.”

  Elisabeth rubbed his arm. “You’re harder than this,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Ten days ago I was sitting in an armchair, wearing a pair of sheepskin slippers, while Catriona read out crossword clues. We were drinking tea. We were being a couple, in any of the million dull ways people are couples. Like we were a couple once. Just getting on with things, quietly.”

  Eli pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “I wonder if we should have had children,” she said. “I mean, obviously, considering what happened between us, it was better we didn’t. But I wonder if you’d be better with Sadie if you had kids.”

  Will couldn’t speak for a while. Cool wind swept down from the top of the gulley, spiced with burnt wood smells. Bonfire smells. It would be darkening within the hour.

  “Go and talk to her,” Eli said. “She might offer some information about herself before too long. It could be that she just needs to get to know us first. Feel happy around us.”

  Will nodded. He turned to Sadie, trying to smile. But she was gone.

  “THIS IS EXACTLY what we don’t need,” Will said again. It was all he had said for the past hour as they hunted though the trees and bushes that sidled up the gulley. Elisabeth had given up shouting out Sadie’s name.

  “We should just go,” Will said. “She’s pissing us around. She’s probably watching us now.”

  Elisabeth was pale with worry. “We can’t just go, Will. We can’t leave her.”

  “Why not?” Will snapped. “She left us. She’ll be fine. She’s not a child.”

  He couldn’t explain to Elisabeth, but the need to get to Sloe Heath had changed him. Instilled in him was a fresh impetus, unbidden yet as critical as the life force. He could no more ignore it than the instinct to get out of the way of an oncoming train.

  “If we hang around here much longer,” he complained, “this track will be re-opened.”

  “She can’t have gone far,” Elisabeth countered.

  “I hope she has.”

  “Will.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Another quarter of an hour. Then it will be dark and we’ll have to go on. But I promise you, she’s sitting in some tree, wetting herself watching us.”

  The search proved fruitless. The smells of the bonfire were thickening. Elisabeth said, “Maybe we should...” and though Will didn’t relish the thought of mixing with strangers, he saw how they must at least investigate. As much as he cursed Sadie’s selfishness, it would be better if he knew where she had run to.

  FOUR OR FIVE fires had been ignited across a patch of concretised wasteland comprised of a couple of acres that must once have been some kind of service depot for the long-departed trains. Ancient barrels of diesel lay around like fat drunks. Jagged holes in the metal showed how they had been siphoned of fuel. The foundations of a large building – some kind of maintenance shed – had left their outline in the ground. Lengths of scaffolding had turned the concrete it touched orange with rust. Into the grey surface, which was slowly being invaded by dandelions, pictures had been scratched in an infantile hand: cats and alien spaceships and steam engines. A skinny black dog trotted across the wasteland, giving Elisabeth and Will only cursory attention. Up ahead, where the fires were clustered together, came the occasional sound of laughter and swells of music. The tubercular grind of a car’s failing engine would at times drown out any other noise.

  “I’m not too happy about this,” Elisabeth said, reaching for his hand.

  There was a party in full flight. The fires contained it and illuminated it and encouraged it. Beyond the ring of flames, four or five caravans stood in the gloom like ruminating beasts. Will counted about half a dozen men sitting on blankets on the ground, passing a huge glass jug around that contained what looked like scrumpy from where they stood. The music worked on the three women in the ring like the moon on the tides, pulling and pushing them into fresh configurations. Barefoot, they wore wraps of fabric across their hips, slit to reveal legs tanned by the fire. They wore nothing on top. Four children played with toy cars in the dust at the far edge of the circle. From Will’s viewpoint, they looked misshapen, though that must have been down to the unreliable light. Sadie was not among them.

  They moved forwards into the clearing. “Hello?” Will called out, trying to project his voice above the music, but not so powerfully that he startled his intended audience. One of the children looked up, then turned to the men and, waving to get their attention, pointed to Will before going back to his miniature traffic jam.

  The music was turned off.

  A man in a fleece zipped up to his throat sauntered over to Will and Elisabeth. The women reduced the energy of their dancing by degrees until they were gently swaying from side to side, all eyes turned on the visitors. Their skin seemed incandescent. Perspiration had failed to bead; it coated the flesh of their arms, their breasts, which were silvered by the moon or gilded by the flames, depending on the tilt of their bodies.

  “Why are you here?” the man asked. His voice was touched by an accent Will couldn’t place. Something European.

  “We’ve lost a little girl,” Will said.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” the man replied. “There are places you can go to for counselling, as I understand it.”

  Low laughter from his male companions. One of the children stood up and threw a stone at Will and Elisabeth. It skipped along the floor and pinged off Will’s boot.

  Elisabeth said, “What he meant was–”

  The man blinked slowly. “She isn’t here.”

  “Do you mind if we look around?” Will asked. “She could be hiding. We only lost her a little while ago.”

  Now the other males sitting on the blankets rose and moved slowly to be with their friend
. One of them hitched up a shirt that was worn loose over his jeans, exposing the curved, polished handle of a knife.

  Will said, “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Well then,” said the man in the fleece, “you came to the wrong place.”

  The man with the knife stopped in front of Elisabeth. “This your wife?” he asked, taking an age to look her up and down. He leaned over to give her a side-on appraisal too.

  “Yes, she’s my wife. We’re lost. My daughter... our daughter was playing. She ran off. We’ve called the police.”

  A bowing of the lips, a tiny shake of the head. The slow blink. “I don’t think you called the police. I don’t think you have a phone. I don’t think you know where you are.”

  “We’re in the Midlands,” Elisabeth said. She was darting looks around her. Will could feel her bristling beside him. She would take off in a minute, he could tell. He would be right behind her.

  “Ah,” intoned the man in the fleece, “the Midlands. ‘Hello, police? Yes, we’ve lost our little daughter. Come and help us find her please. She’s in the Midlands. Somewhere.’”

  More laughter from the gang. It was uneasy laughter now though, forced as they considered, like Will and Elisabeth, what would come next. What would be their signal? Will hoped that he and Elisabeth might be away before they found out.

  The man with the knife reached out and pushed his fingers through Elisabeth’s hair.

  “Don’t touch her,” Will said, in what he hoped was a hard voice. He was no midget and the lack of a shave, he knew, lent his face an aggression that did not exist.

  “You’d rather I touched you?” said the man with the knife, failing to take his eyes off Elisabeth. His hand lowered, fastened on her left breast. Elisabeth winced.

  “Just leave us alone,” Will insisted. “She’s been in a car accident. She isn’t well.”