Mercury Falling

by Robert Edric

  The police would already have alerted the local hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. Wherever he went, the outcome would be the same.

  Morris finally left them and returned to the parlour, where he sat alone in the dim light.

  Ellen leaned closer to Devlin. She started to gather up the bottles. ‘A man called Sullivan was here,’ she whispered to him.

  ‘Sullivan? What did he want?’ What did Sullivan have to do with any of this?

  ‘He said you’d worked together and that he owed you a favour.’ She glanced at the open door of the parlour.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He told me to let you know that the boy – he said you’d know who I was talking about – was blaming you for everything. He said the police had already been to see the gypsies and that they were backing this boy up and saying that they hadn’t even known he’d been to see you. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

  Devlin nodded.

  ‘He told me to wish you good luck with it all, said he was finally leaving and that if he never saw you again then it would be too soon. He was only here for a minute, didn’t even come in.’

  Morris returned to them and asked them what they were whispering about.

  ‘You,’ Devlin said. ‘But then again, you must get that a lot, people whispering behind your back. You’re that kind of man.’

  ‘Which makes you what?’ Morris said, pleased with the remark. ‘She’s right about you needing to see a doctor. Or perhaps the next thing we’ll hear is that some local surgery or other has been broken into and medicines stolen.’

  ‘That was my next move,’ Devlin said, attempting to smile.

  ‘It says in the paper that you even stole the gun. Ray Duggan said he recognized it and that he knew the man who’d had it taken. The police said they were looking into it.’

  ‘They look into a lot of things,’ Devlin said. Besides, who recognized guns when they were pointed at you from ten feet away in the dark?

  ‘A man I know,’ Morris went on, ‘said Duggan had got a bandaged foot and a bit of a limp, so you must have hit him.’

  ‘Probably twisted his ankle when he fell and tried to crawl away,’ Devlin said.

  ‘It’s not what he’ll be telling the police, or what his wife and father will be confirming,’ Morris said.

  ‘He’s right,’ Ellen said. ‘You should turn yourself in before all this gets even more out of hand. It might just be your word against Duggan’s, but you’re still the one who’s been wounded. It’s got to count for something in the eyes of the law, surely?’

  ‘Unless Duggan presses charges of attempted murder,’ Morris said. He shrugged. ‘I’m only saying.’

  ‘Another twenty years and I could probably get to like you,’ Devlin said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Morris said.

  ‘So what will you do?’ Devlin said.

  Ellen held his arm for a moment. ‘In the paper, they’re telling people to be vigilant, to keep an eye out for you. They make you sound like something you’re not.’

  ‘It’s how they work,’ Devlin said.

  ‘They talk about your “known haunts”.’

  ‘Meaning here,’ Morris said. ‘Us.’

  ‘“No fixed abode” it said,’ Ellen said. ‘That never sounds good. They use the word “armed” three times, warning people not to approach you.’

  ‘Put like that, half the men in this county are armed,’ Devlin said. He wondered how swiftly he had become this other man, how swiftly and how completely and how unknowingly.

  ‘Perhaps if you let Morris call them – not now, necessarily, but first thing in the morning – then we could arrange something,’ Ellen said. ‘I could even go with you, help you explain things.’

  Devlin shook his head at the words. ‘And that’s what you think would happen, is it, that we’d all sit down over a cup of tea and sort things out?’

  ‘We could try,’ Ellen said.

  ‘The best thing now,’ Devlin said, ‘is for me to go and for you two to deny ever having seen me. Or you could tell the police that I came, but that you wouldn’t let me in. I’ll go over Sutton way and break the surgery window there, tell them I cleaned myself up.’

  ‘They won’t believe you,’ Morris said.

  Devlin could think of no answer.

  For the next hour, Ellen dried the stolen coat in front of the low fire, its embers stoked and fed to give some warmth in the winter night. Then she made them all more tea and wrapped whatever food remained for Devlin to take with him when he went.

  An hour after that, three before the late dawn, Devlin stood at the door ready to leave.

  ‘Where will you go?’ his sister asked him.

  Devlin shook his head.

  ‘We’ll tell the police you were here,’ Morris said, ‘but that we refused to let you in.’ He made the words sound almost like an act of kindness.

  ‘And if they don’t believe you?’ Devlin said.

  ‘We’ll make them believe us,’ Ellen said. She ran her hand over Devlin’s arm. ‘I know you’re not the way they make you sound in the papers.’

  And again it seemed like an act of almost unbearable kindness to Devlin.

  He left them a few minutes later, walking away from the house briefly before doubling back to the outhouse to retrieve the shotgun.

  Later, as he neared the empty holiday camp in the already brightening dawn, he started to wonder about all the half-chances and vague opportunities that had just been revealed or suggested to him, and which had then, one by one, all been just as swiftly and as completely taken away from him.

  43

  ANOTHER HARD FROST covered the winter compound and its caravans and trailers and dismantled rides. A solitary light shone above the entrance to the distant stables.

  Devlin poured the petrol beneath the trailer and then splashed what remained against its sides. The can was heavy and difficult to hold with his one good hand. He went in a full circle around the trailer, throwing the liquid as high up its sides as he could manage. When the can was almost empty he dropped it beneath the axle.

  He waited for a moment, looking around him. He had gone first to Maria’s caravan and had gently tried the door. It was locked. All the curtains were drawn. The McGuires’ lorry sat where it was usually parked at the compound entrance.

  He had already gathered a ball of dry straw beside the trailer steps. He went to this and struck a match, which was instantly extinguished in the light wind. He crouched closer to the straw and struck another. This time the match flared and he dropped it into the waiting fuel. It smoked for a moment and then the straw caught light, erupting close to Devlin’s hands and causing him to move quickly back from it. He picked up the ball of burning straw and carried it to where he had splashed the petrol, blazing stems falling and floating behind him. He threw the straw close to the can. For a moment there was nothing, and then the blue vaporous flames appeared everywhere at once, liquid across the hard ground and starting to catch against the lower edge of the trailer, where the blue turned to yellow, took further hold and started to burn. The air felt suddenly warm and he backed away from the flames.

  The trailer burned. A crackling sound gave way to a succession of small explosions. And then he heard noises from inside, the panicked shouts of both brothers.

  Devlin retreated further, hiding himself beside the shuttered ride where Egan had been found. He remained mesmerized by the spreading flames, watching as they rose above the roof of the trailer, peeling the paintwork from its sides and burning in lines along its wooden trim. Sparks erupted from the rear of the structure and then a pane of glass exploded. The next moment the door was pushed open and both Patrick and Colm ran outside shouting. Patrick appeared to have flames on one of his arms, but he quickly rubbed these out. Both men were dressed but barefoot and they ran back and forth across the frozen ground in front of their blazing home.

  Devlin went on watching.

  A light appeared in Maria’s trailer and she too came outsi
de. Beyond, along the far boundary of the field, others emerged to see what was happening.

  Maria went to her brothers and stood beside them.

  There was nothing anyone could do now, except stay clear of the rapidly spreading flames and watch the trailer burn.

  It seemed to Devlin that the inside caught fire even faster than those parts on to which he had poured the petrol, and that every surface and fitting and piece of furniture had turned yellow in an instant. Dark smoke poured out of the doorway and broken window. A second window shattered, causing Maria and her brothers to cover their faces. People from the other caravans and trailers came closer.

  Devlin could hear the brothers shouting at each other.

  People tried to pull them away from the blaze, but both men resisted.

  Only Maria, Devlin saw, left the fire and walked to the centre of the compound. She stood there and looked all around her. It stood to reason that whoever had started the fire could not be far away, a fact that seemed not to have occurred to either Patrick or Colm. There was a sharp smell of petrol in the night air and the empty can still lay in view beneath the axle.

  A louder explosion sounded and one of the gas canisters attached to the trailer flew a few feet into the air before landing close to Patrick and Colm. Seeing this, and knowing a second canister was still in place, the brothers finally moved further from the flames. And then they too started to look all around them, making short barefoot dashes into the darkness as though they might flush Devlin from his hiding place and then set off in pursuit of him.

  But no one came close to him where he stood and watched all this.

  Light from the flames spread across the open ground and played on the sides of other trailers. A solitary man threw buckets of water into the flames from a nearby tank, until he saw the futility of this and stopped.

  The second gas canister exploded and the rear of the trailer seemed to crumple. Flames rose into the night air higher than before, and as these swiftly fell and faded the whole structure collapsed, deflated almost, like a slowly punctured balloon. The sides fell inwards and then the floor fell away to the ground. Every new draught formed new flames and every collapse fanned the fire and smoke in new directions.

  After ten minutes of burning, only the thin metal outline of the trailer remained, and the flames now ran only along those pieces where glue and pitch still burned fiercely. The interior of the structure was lost completely, every shape and outline blackening and then disintegrating to dust and ashes.

  A few minutes more and the blaze finally lost its force, the flames subsiding into glowing mounds, sparking and smoking occasionally but with nothing of the power and energy of only a few minutes earlier.

  Knowing now that only this single trailer was destroyed and that the fire could not spread, some of the night’s urgency was lost. People went back to their own homes. Several men went to check on the horses at the rear of the compound.

  A small group of women came closer to where Devlin stood, but no one saw him there and they were soon beyond his hearing.

  Maria went back to her brothers and the three of them walked together to her caravan. Devlin expected one or other of the men to turn and shout that they knew who had done this and that they would find him soon enough. But neither man did this.

  Besides, the thought only then occurred to him, they probably considered Duggan a more likely culprit than himself, and this cheered him briefly.

  He stayed where he was for a further ten minutes, watching the remains of the all-consuming blaze finally subside and die. And when there was nothing left to watch, he left his hiding place and went back through the hedge on to the open land beyond. He retrieved his gun and followed the line of the old bank in the direction of the sea.

  He climbed a plank bridge and looked back at the distant compound before dropping below all sight of the trailers and rides. He imagined the smouldering wreckage and its disturbed embers rising and scattering occasionally in the night air.

  Ahead of him, Devlin saw the first bright stripe of the rising winter sun across the eastern horizon, and it seemed to him almost a portent: both an ending and a new beginning in one; a sign, perhaps, of better things to come.

  Only a minute later the rising sun was lost to the falling cloud, but the loss went unnoticed by Devlin, who kept his head down and who now walked without looking.

  44

  THE FIRST DEVLIN knew was the vague pulse of blue light on the wall beside him. He’d had another sleepless night and had slept only intermittently and lightly through the previous day, waking at every sound. It was mid afternoon and the daylight was already failing.

  He went to the window and looked out. Between the rows of caravans he saw the police car parked at the camp office. Two constables stood beside it, talking to the watchman. Devlin wanted to laugh at the idea of a man calling the police over a missing coat.

  Both constables carried torches, which they occasionally shone towards the nearby caravans. A faint cloud of frosted air quickly formed above the three men.

  And then the watchman pointed directly to where Devlin sat watching them and the three men started walking, disappearing and then reappearing amid the lines and rows of caravans.

  Devlin grabbed the coat, the gun and the holdall containing his few other belongings, and then, waiting until all three men were again briefly out of sight, he left the caravan and stood behind it. His instinct was to get away from it, but he knew that if he left his hiding place there was a good chance that one of the men would see him as he crossed the open ground. The three of them had now moved further apart and were coming towards him separately.

  Dropping what he carried, Devlin pushed the bag and gun beneath the caravan and then crawled into the space himself, pulling behind him the empty gas canisters and water drum. It was dark at the centre of the restricted space, but he knew that a torch shone there would reveal him to any searcher, and that when that happened he would be trapped. He might somehow evade a single man, but not three men already on their feet and waiting for him to run like a rabbit from a hole.

  He watched his own breath cloud in the cold air and covered his mouth.

  He heard the voices of the men as they came closer and again joined company.

  An elongated circle of yellow light moved jerkily across the grass and came to rest beneath the caravan door.

  Someone knocked, metal on metal, and the watchman shouted uncertainly that he knew someone was in the van.

  ‘Not very likely,’ one of the constables said.

  Devlin watched a pair of booted feet walk around the van. The man stood on his toes to look in at each of the windows.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘There was definitely somebody here three days ago. My coat was stolen the day after. I’ve been freezing ever since.’

  ‘Let’s just say it went missing, shall we?’ the second constable said.

  Devlin heard the man’s scepticism in every word.

  ‘You say what you want,’ the watchman said angrily.

  ‘All I’m saying is that I think we ought to consider one thing at a time. Sir.’

  ‘It’s the only one I’ve got. I was demobbed in that coat.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Devlin heard one of the men go into the van and walk its full length. He felt the tremors above him. He felt the whole surface sway slightly.

  ‘Nothing,’ the man said, going back outside. ‘It looks as though someone’s been there. Might be him, might not be. We get reports like this every closed season.’

  ‘Whoever it was,’ the watchman said, ‘I didn’t recognize him.’ The man, perhaps fearing for his poorly paid job, was now watching his words.

  ‘And the camp’s been empty for the past month?’

  ‘At least that. The winter came early. Like I said, the van was used last by some of the contractors when they were working here.’

  ‘And not since?’

  ‘Not until I saw him three days
ago.’ Then something occurred to the watchman. ‘You’re only here on account of that man you’re looking for,’ he said. ‘This has got nothing to do with my coat.’

  ‘Everything is of interest, sir.’

  ‘But some things are more interesting than others, is that it?’

  ‘He’s a dangerous man,’ one of the constables said.

  Beneath the van, Devlin held his breath for a few seconds.

  ‘Where do you want me to start?’ the other constable said. ‘So far we’ve got allegations of trespass, non-payment of rent, robbery, aggravated assault using a firearm, wounding, illegal possession of said firearm, housebreaking, wilful destruction and possibly arson with intent to endanger life on the Charge List. How much more do you want? So, as you can see, from where we’re standing a stolen coat isn’t too high on the agenda where our priorities are concerned. Oh, and did I mention the aiding and abetting of an escaped prisoner from the North Sea Camp? I’m telling you, with this one, the longer you look, the more you find.’

  ‘But, presumably,’ the watchman said hesitantly, ‘when you do finally catch up with him, you’ll find my coat at the same time?’

  Neither man answered him.

  ‘Sounds as though he’s been a busy boy,’ the watchman said.

  ‘We’re still receiving reports of this, that and the other from every two-man police house between here and Spalding.’

  ‘So why didn’t you do your job properly and pick him up sooner? He sounds a regular little one-man crime spree.’

  ‘Because sometimes these things just never add up,’ the constable said. ‘It’s only when somebody starts making all the right connections that we actually get somebody in our sights. You can rest assured that now we know who we’re looking for, he’ll be in the bag fast enough.’

  ‘And is he?’ the watchman said.

  ‘Is he what?’

  ‘In your sights? It seems to me that all you’re doing here is running around in the dark.’

  The two constables laughed awkwardly. ‘You sound like our Chief Super,’ one of them said. ‘He wanted to know why Jimmy Devlin hadn’t been arrested months ago.’