Mercury Falling

by Robert Edric

  It had grown much darker in the time they’d been standing there. Darker and colder.

  Neither man spoke for a moment. Duggan swung his arms across his chest and blew out plumes of cold air.

  ‘I think we’re just about finished here,’ he said. He nodded to the gun. ‘Your best plan now, boy, would be to give that thing to me and then turn around and vanish back into that darkness you’ve started to favour. Give the gun to me and I’ll make sure Skelton gets it back. I could also tell him I’d given you what you deserved on his behalf. Be one less thing for you to have to worry about, at least.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’

  ‘The goodness of my heart? Besides, all these others looking out for you and then doing what they’re likely to do – it makes things messy. I like things done nice and tidy, you know me, one thing at a time. Who knows, perhaps Skelton and his wife have managed to finally gather up all those tiny scattered pieces of paper and bits of shattered glass and fitted them all back together again until they’re good as new. Granted, it’s not very likely, but it would be something.’

  Devlin wondered why he was saying all this.

  ‘Like that, would you – retracing all those steps and making everything good again?’ Duggan said. ‘I bet you would.’

  ‘None of this—’ Devlin began to say.

  ‘I’m still talking,’ Duggan shouted at him. ‘“None of this” what? Oh, don’t tell me – none of this was supposed to happen? Well, that’s life, boy. All of this did happen, and most of it happened because you – you, nobody else – made it happen. Anything you got coming to you now, you brought it all on yourself.’

  Devlin took several more steps away from Duggan.

  ‘Where you going?’ Duggan said, and even before he’d finished saying this, he ran several paces to one side and then threw himself to the ground beside the parked lorry, shouting something Devlin couldn’t make out. After that there was an explosion in the darkness somewhere close to the house and Devlin immediately felt the sudden sting of pellets against his face and arm.

  ‘Again,’ he heard Duggan cry out from under the lorry.

  A second explosion sounded, and this time Devlin saw the cone of bright light and cloud of smoke produced by the gun. There was no further stinging, but he could feel the blood already flowing over his forehead and cheeks and chin where the pellets from the first shot had struck him.

  Instinctively, he turned and fired towards the house. There was nothing to see there except the outline of the building in the darkness, the blocks of light at its windows and doorway – nothing to aim at, and no response to his shot to let him know if he had hit anyone.

  He ran away from the house into the surrounding night, stopping briefly beside the scattered ropes and tarpaulins to fire again at the ground where he imagined Duggan now lay. He heard Duggan call out and then go on shouting after him as he ran out of the yard and into the surrounding fields. He felt the blood on his face and in his eyes and tasted it on his lips, blinking wildly and wiping his mouth on his sleeve as he ran stumbling over the wet, uneven ground.

  41

  HE TWISTED HIS neck and pinched his cheek into the small pockmarked mirror. He counted eleven spots of rising blood, another seven on his hand and forearm. Prodding each red bead, he felt where the pellets remained beneath his skin. Those which had struck his hand and arm had penetrated the flesh enough to draw blood, but had not lodged. On his cheek and neck, eight of the lead balls remained, and nowhere had the deeply coloured blood yet stopped flowing. He squeezed at those pellets which felt closest to the surface, but none of them appeared and he succeeded only in tearing the flesh further and causing the blood to flow faster and to smear across his skin. He cursed Duggan with every fresh stab of pain.

  Having returned only briefly to the prefab, he was now in a caravan at the edge of one of the camps in which he had worked with the McGuires during the autumn. He had hurriedly gathered his few belongings and left the place before Duggan showed up there. The journey to the empty holiday camp had taken him almost two hours through the same sodden darkness. He had stopped frequently to wipe his bleeding face and arm, but knew instinctively that the wisest course of action now was to get beyond Duggan’s reach.

  Apart from a solitary watchman at the site entrance a quarter of a mile away, the camp was deserted. The storms of the past few weeks had finally put an end to all the repair and maintenance work. He remembered the caravan from when he’d worked there – close to the perimeter mesh fence and with a broken lock. The camp owners had used it as a makeshift store and canteen for the out-of-season labourers.

  The mirror had been on the door of a cabinet in the cramped toilet. He’d pulled the door off its feeble hinges and propped it close to the basin’s single cold tap. He doused his face with water, numbing it and diluting the blood which still flowed from most of his wounds. One of the holes was on the side of his nose, another close to his lips, and a third less than an inch from the corner of his eye. He saw for the first time how close he had come to being blinded.

  He watched the blood drip into the basin. As he managed to stem one flow, another reappeared because of the pressure from his clumsy prodding fingers. He wondered why nothing from the second barrel had struck him. It was a small consolation. And he wondered too if what Duggan had said was true and the man had known all along where he’d been and what was happening to him.

  Beyond the perimeter fence lay a wide verge and then the grass-topped dunes. Beyond these lay only the broad open space of the beach, the flats and the distant sea. He could hear the tide and the wind from where he stood in the caravan. He could see the lines of distant foam breaking on the shore, phosphorescent in the darkness.

  One of the pellets in his cheek was deeper than the others, perhaps half an inch into his flesh, and this bled the most and caused him the most pain as he tried unsuccessfully to work it to the surface. When he was a boy he’d broken a tooth on the tiniest grain of metal lodged in a pigeon his father had brought home. He cut into his flesh now using the smallest blade on his penknife, and after ten more minutes of painful probing, dousing the wound with Skelton’s whisky and biting hard on a piece of cloth, he finally heard the pellet fall into the sink, where it lay barely visible against the blood on the stained surface of the bowl. Most of the other pieces of shot, he knew, would work their own way to the surface over the coming weeks.

  After an hour, by which time he had drunk what remained of the whisky, most of the lesser wounds had finally stopped bleeding.

  There was no lighting in the caravan, no heating, and he was careful not to make any noise. He might have been a good distance from the entrance, but the smallest sound carried in that empty place. Devlin guessed that the watchman stayed where he was on such nights. The light from the man’s room lay in a strip across the driveway, and Devlin could hear the man’s radio whenever he opened his door to look out into the darkness.

  Only the torn and gouged flesh of his cheek refused to stop bleeding and he was forced to pack it with a piece of torn curtain and then to hold this in place with a strip of the same material fastened around his head, clamping his mouth shut. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he looked comical and ridiculous in equal measure. He doubted if Duggan would see it like that. The problem now, he knew, would be staying out of the man’s sight until the bleeding had finally stopped and his wounds had started to heal. Wherever he went and however he now appeared, Duggan would be looking for him, and coming closer all the time, his vicious intent honed and sharpened even further by everything that had just happened.

  42

  ‘HE CAN STAY where he is.’

  Devlin tried to push the door open and force himself past Morris. He called to his sister, who stood a few yards behind her husband in the dark hallway of their home.

  ‘You’re nothing but trouble,’ the man hissed at Devlin. ‘I told her you’d turn up here. And I told her what kind of reception you’d get when you did,
when you were finally desperate enough to show your face.’

  It was again night, four days after he’d been shot, and during that time he’d eaten only a loaf of stale bread he’d found in the bins behind the camp entrance.

  He’d walked all the way, through the darkness and the sleet, having waited until the early dusk to start his journey. It was almost midnight by the time he’d arrived and shouted for his sister to come down to him.

  Morris made no attempt to stop Devlin once he was inside and Devlin went immediately into the parlour, where he took off his coat and then carefully unwound the scarf wrapped around most of his face. The wounds had started to heal during those four days, but both the deeper gouge on his cheek and the hole at the side of his mouth had continued to swell and to ache. There was still occasional bleeding from both wounds, diluted now by smears of yellow pus. Devlin tried hard to convince himself that it was how all wounds healed and that soon there would be nothing left to see.

  The marks on his arm and hand had already started to scab over and caused him almost no pain now. But the pain in his mouth was as bad as any toothache he had ever suffered and he wondered if the pellet was still deep and undetectable in his jaw somewhere. Sometimes he was able to jab his mouth and feel nothing whatsoever, and at other times he cried out with the unexpected pain of the slightest touch.

  His sister was the first to see him like this. ‘Dear God,’ she said, and held her hands to her face. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘An accident,’ Devlin said.

  ‘We know what’s happened to him,’ Morris said, coming to stand beside her. He wore a dressing gown over his pyjamas and thick socks inside his slippers. He went briefly into the kitchen and returned with a rolled newspaper that he slapped hard into Devlin’s chest. It was what men in films did. Perhaps it was the same on the television set which now stood in the parlour in its glossy wooden cabinet.

  The three of them stood for a moment and watched as the paper fell to the floor.

  Morris picked it up and gave it to Devlin. ‘Read it,’ he said.

  Devlin unrolled the paper and read the headlines. An accident with a shotgun had left a well-known local businessman wounded in the foot and leg following a foiled armed robbery at the man’s house. The businessman’s wife was the hero of the hour, having come to the rescue of both her husband and his ailing, terrified father, a man of over seventy and another well-known local character, scaring off the would-be thief by discharging a gun into the air.

  ‘There’s even a description,’ Morris said, pulling the paper from Devlin’s hands. ‘But why don’t you just look straight in the mirror instead?’

  Involuntarily, Devlin lifted his eyes to the mirror hanging on its chain above the mantel.

  ‘There are some long words in the report, but even you should be able to get the gist of it,’ Morris said. ‘Besides – Ray Duggan? You went back there with a gun and threatened Ray Duggan?’

  ‘He won’t—’ Devlin began to say.

  ‘He won’t what? The police have already been here looking for you. They came the morning after, in full view of everybody. I told them that neither of us had seen you for years. They told us what to do when you finally showed up. According to them, you had nowhere else to go.’ He looked hard at Devlin’s face, at the swollen wounds. ‘They didn’t say anything about all this.’

  ‘The paper said Duggan’s wife fired into the air to give you fair warning,’ Ellen said.

  ‘And she said that you ran faster than a rabbit at that first shot,’ Morris added.

  ‘She fired twice,’ Devlin said, turning away from the mirror. ‘And she fired at me. And she fired first.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Morris said.

  Devlin looked at his sister. ‘What else did you tell them?’ It was clear to him that she had said nothing to her husband about his recent visits. He let her know by his glance that he would reveal nothing now.

  ‘What did we tell them?’ Morris said. ‘It was the police. What do you think we told them? The truth, that’s what we told them. It might be an alien concept to people like you, but most of us still know how to do the right and proper thing when called upon.’

  Devlin read the rest of the article. ‘It doesn’t mention me by name,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean that Duggan won’t have told them exactly who it was. Besides, how long do you think it would have taken for them to work it out for themselves?’

  ‘It could be anyone,’ Devlin said.

  Morris shook his head. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said to his wife. ‘He hasn’t got the first idea. He’s still living in his own little fantasy world; has been ever since he was drummed out of the army and we were all expected to treat him like the homecoming hero. I’ve been telling you this for years. And now this.’

  ‘I know,’ Ellen said. She led Devlin into the kitchen and told him to sit at the table. She helped him off with his coat. ‘Who’s Harold Edwards?’ she said, reading the label in the collar.

  ‘Just a mate,’ Devlin said. The watchman at the camp.

  ‘Mate?’ Morris said. ‘What mate?’

  Ellen brought a bowl of warm water to the table and started to examine his wounds. She unrolled a length of lint and took several small bottles from a cabinet, shaking these vigorously as she arranged them on the table.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Morris asked her.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘It looks to me like you’re aiding and abetting a wanted criminal – I believe that’s the phrase – that’s what it looks like.’

  ‘No, I’m just doing what anybody decent would do.’ She opened and sniffed each of the bottles.

  ‘And that’s what you’ll be telling the court, is it?’ Morris went to the window, lifted the curtain and looked out. ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s bound to see that the lights are on.’

  ‘So?’ Ellen said.

  Devlin flinched at the first of his sister’s dabs. She picked away the dirty scabs and washed the raw flesh beneath. There was surprisingly little fresh bleeding as she did all this.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ she told him, and he believed her and was grateful both for what she did and for her faith in him.

  ‘They’ll know it was you, us,’ Morris said. ‘Me – they’ll think I was a part of it all.’ He let the curtain fall and then tugged at its sides to ensure that no light showed.

  ‘I can clean him up and then he can go to the police,’ Ellen said, surprising both men.

  ‘I can’t,’ Devlin said.

  ‘Yes you can,’ she said. ‘You can tell them that Duggan’s wife fired first. You can tell them that the robbery story was made up by Duggan. Tell them everything that’s happened between the two of you. They’ll listen to you. Surely they must know Ray Duggan for what he is and not what the paper makes him out to be.’

  It made a kind of sense to Devlin, but he still knew that what she was suggesting was beyond him, that everything would continue to work in Duggan’s favour.

  ‘It’ll be his word against the woman’s,’ Morris said. ‘And Duggan’s and the old man’s. We’d all get dragged into things. You, me, him, everybody.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Devlin told his sister.

  ‘He always is,’ she said quietly, firmly, surprisingly, turning his face to dab at the swelling beside his mouth.

  Morris, who had been about to say something else, fell silent at the remark.

  ‘I can say I did all this myself,’ Devlin said. ‘There must be first-aid kits all over the camp, stands to reason.’

  He started to consider these new possibilities.

  Ellen told Morris to put the kettle on and to make them all a drink. She told him to make Devlin something to eat.

  ‘So I’m his skivvy now, am I?’ Morris said.

  ‘No, you’re just another one of those decent human beings doing something for his fellow man.’


  There was no argument to this, and Morris began to gather together food from their cupboard. He put this on the table in front of Devlin and Devlin ate everything he was given.

  When he’d finished, his sister said, ‘You need to see a proper doctor. It looks to me as though the wounds on your cheek and your mouth are infected. They’ll only get worse. You need that new miracle drug they have these days.’

  ‘Antibiotics,’ Morris said.

  After that, the three of them sat in silence for several minutes.

  Then Ellen said to Devlin, ‘Morris told the police he’d call them the minute you showed up. They told him that if we could keep you here, that would be for the best. Or if not, then to let them know before you’d gone too far. They said it was all for your own good.’

  ‘It always is,’ Devlin said.

  ‘They said they didn’t know how long it would be before your name appeared in the paper.’

  ‘What difference would that make?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Morris said. ‘They probably already know everything there is to know about what happened. All he’s doing now – all this – is getting us involved.’

  ‘Have you got a telephone, then?’ Devlin said.

  ‘One day,’ Morris said. ‘Meanwhile, there’s one at the road’s end. It’s half a mile. I can—’ He stopped talking.

  ‘What is it?’ Ellen said.

  ‘The gun,’ Morris said.

  ‘What about it?’ Devlin said.

  ‘For all we know, he could have brought it with him,’ Morris said, ‘hidden it somewhere close by.’

  ‘Have you?’ Ellen asked Devlin.

  ‘It’s miles away,’ Devlin said. ‘Miles.’

  It was outside, pushed into a bundle of garden canes beside the outhouse. For the first time in his life, Devlin felt guilty for lying to his sister.

  ‘The wound by your mouth is infected on both sides,’ Ellen said. ‘Inside and out. Your gum’s gone black. It could be a lot worse than you think.’

  Devlin had tried to convince himself that the pain in his mouth was growing more bearable each day.