by Robert Edric
Eventually, Devlin felt able to push himself up into a sitting position. His nausea faded.
‘You’ve got a bad infection, by the look of things,’ Samuel said, holding a finger to Devlin’s chin. He pulled his knapsack to him. ‘I brought you something to clean it. And something to eat when you’re up to it.’
‘Who else knows?’ Devlin said.
‘That you’re here? Nobody. Everybody knows who you are, though.’ Samuel took a folded newspaper from his jacket and laid it beside the food.
Devlin started to remember. He remembered the story of the death of Duggan’s father. He remembered the police at the holiday camp, and then the boathouse and the man who had confronted him there.
‘Recognize him?’ Samuel said, showing the man’s face alongside Devlin’s in the paper. ‘He says you knocked him down while he was going about his business, robbed him and then attacked him with the gun. He says the last thing you did before leaving him was to break his shinbone with the gun. Says he was screaming for help for three hours. A woman on a passing boat heard him and went in to investigate. Your face was back on the front page the next morning.’
‘So are people looking for me?’
Samuel laughed. ‘Here, there and everywhere. Truth is, they’ve been looking these past few weeks, but not like this. Not that it’ll amount to much in this weather. Snow’s drifted four foot deep across the marsh and most of the roads. It’s stopped falling today, but there’s already another gale forecast for tonight, an inshore shipping warning.’
Devlin considered all this. He looked at the altar and saw the gun propped against it.
‘It wasn’t like that – the boathouse,’ he said.
‘Hardly matters, I don’t suppose,’ Samuel said. ‘There’s always two sides to a story, and in my experience people usually choose right from the start which one they want to believe. The man in the shed said he pleaded with you to spare his life. He says he was certain you were going to kill him.’
‘His wife had already gone for the police.’
‘I doubt that. It says in there that they didn’t show up until two hours after the woman on the boat. What does that tell you? He’s in Boston hospital now. Same place they got the old man’s body. His son’s already complaining that they won’t release it for burial until they’ve finished all their prodding and poking. There’s talk of the man you hit walking with a limp for the rest of his life. It says in there he’s supposed to be walking his daughter down the aisle in a few months.’
‘And people will far prefer his story to mine?’ Devlin said.
Samuel shrugged. ‘They’ve already got a lot of other things to consider where you’re concerned, I suppose.’ He filled the cup again and gave it to Devlin. ‘You do even half those things they’re accusing you of?’
‘One way or another,’ Devlin said. A sharper jolt of pain than usual caused him to cry out and he was unable to go on speaking until this subsided. ‘Have you told anyone I’m here?’ he said eventually.
‘I already said – no. I didn’t even say anything to my daughter when she started going on about how worried she was that I was coming out here alone, and in this weather. I told her it was my job. What else was I going to do? Besides, I’m an old man; look at me, what threat am I to anybody?’
Devlin almost smiled at the words. ‘What did she say to that?’
‘What could she say? She jumps at her own shadow, that one. A lot of them do these days.’
‘I don’t even remember coming here,’ Devlin said. ‘I remember the boathouse now, and the start of the snow perhaps, but nothing else.’
‘Hardly matters,’ Samuel said. He lit two cigarettes and gave one to Devlin. ‘You were shot,’ he said, looking more closely at the swellings, scars and wounds on Devlin’s cheek and neck. Then he rose to his feet and went to the small altar, sitting beside it on one of the few remaining benches. ‘Finally got the go-ahead to pull the place down,’ he said. ‘Eyesore, see? No call for places like this in the modern world. The congregation – eight of us by my reckoning, and that was two years past – can do its christenings and burials somewhere else. Been nothing like that here for at least fifteen years. My daughter says good riddance. Good riddance to me, more like.’ He turned back to Devlin. ‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know.’ When had there ever been a plan? ‘Leave, I suppose. London, somewhere like that.’
‘That place? They’ll be looking for you, pick their spots.’
‘I never killed the old man,’ Devlin said. ‘He died, that’s all.’
‘And that’s what you’ll tell them, is it?’
‘Tell who?’
‘The police, the court.’
‘You think they’ll listen?’ Devlin started to cough, holding a hand over his mouth, the other pressed hard to his chest.
Samuel waited. ‘You’re in a bad way,’ he said, his voice low. ‘How on Earth did you come to this?’
‘Things just—’ It was as much as Devlin could manage.
‘Seems to me,’ Samuel said, ‘that half the trouble with this world is that nobody ever really knows where one thing ends and another begins, not really. It’s just one thing after another, forever crowding in on you. It confuses people, gives them no chance to stand still and take stock, makes them lose their bearings. I sometimes wonder—’ He stopped abruptly, rose and turned to the chapel door. He put a finger to his lips and told Devlin not to speak.
Devlin’s coughing finally subsided.
Then Samuel went to the door, opened it a few inches and looked out. A shaft of vivid winter sunshine fell into the chapel. The old man remained where he stood for a moment and then pulled the door shut and came back to sit beside Devlin.
‘What is it?’ Devlin asked him, his voice barely a whisper.
‘You know what it is,’ Samuel said. ‘There’s a police car at the lane end. Four men. One of them looks to be making his way towards the pumping station. The other three are coming here.’
Devlin took a deep breath and then let it out slowly.
‘This is the first real break they’ve had in the snow for the past three days,’ Samuel said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You could go out to them,’ Devlin said.
‘And tell them what?’
‘That there’s nobody here. Give me a chance to hide.’
Both men looked around the small space. It could be checked in seconds by a man standing at the door. There were no hiding places.
‘I doubt they’d believe me,’ Samuel said. ‘I’ve never seen the local police this serious about anything before or working so hard.’
‘Go back to the door,’ Devlin said. ‘See how close they are.’
Samuel looked towards the altar and then returned to the door. This time he opened it wider.
‘Don’t,’ Devlin said to him.
‘They’re following my tracks,’ Samuel said. ‘They know someone’s here. Besides, you need to get your face seen to.’
And before Devlin could respond to this, the old man pulled the door wide open and went outside into the snow. Devlin heard him calling to the approaching men.
More light fell into the chapel, reaching in a solid stripe across the full width of the floor to where Devlin lay, running over his covered feet and legs and then continuing beyond him. He looked at the shotgun and his few other belongings scattered beside it. He tried to remember how many cartridges remained in the box he had stolen.
A strange voice called in to him, telling him there was nowhere left for him to go and to stay where he was. There was both excitement and anxiety in the voice.
Then one of the constables blew hard on his whistle and afterwards shouted to the others. The noise of the whistle lasted a long time in the cold, sharp air.
Devlin imagined the four men running to join each other at the chapel to share and applaud their sudden good fortune.
A silhouette appeared in the light at the doorway and Samuel returned inside. He
came to where Devlin lay and knelt beside him. He straightened the sacking over Devlin’s legs and then pushed more of this behind his head. Devlin felt the old man’s hands caressing the top and sides of his head.
‘They said for you to stay where you were,’ Samuel said to him. He rested Devlin’s head against his leg and then stroked aside the hair which fell over his forehead and eyes. ‘I told them I’d stay with you. They know you’ve got the gun.’
‘Get it for me,’ Devlin said.
Samuel shook his head. ‘What good would that serve?’
‘It’d be something,’ Devlin said, his final hope evaporating on the breath of the words.
‘It wouldn’t be half of what you imagined,’ Samuel said, and before Devlin could say anything else, the old man rose to his feet, went to the altar, picked up the shotgun and went back outside with it.
A further whistle sounded, followed by another and then by several shouting voices.
Devlin heard the clacking sound of the gun being opened and closed and then opened again. This was followed by relieved laughter. He imagined the men outside already celebrating their victory, or whatever it was they considered it to be.
Eventually, Samuel came back inside and returned to where Devlin lay. ‘It seems to me you got no choice now except to let events run their course and hope for the best,’ he said. There was affection in his voice and he smiled at Devlin as he spoke.
‘And what would that be, do you imagine – the best?’ Devlin said.
‘You know that as well as I do,’ Samuel said. He again laid his hand on Devlin’s head. ‘Do you want me to go back out to them, tell them it’s safe to come in? They’re only lads themselves.’
‘Save your legs,’ Devlin said. He felt comforted by the old man’s hand resting on his head, the gently moving fingers.
He watched the door. Shadows came and went across the shining snow and someone rapped at the thin, corroded side of the chapel. He looked all around him. Soon, just as at Harrap’s, just as at Duggan’s, there would be nothing left of the place. A vague and fading outline on the open land between the embankment and the sea, perhaps; a few scattered pieces of rusted iron and shattered glass, perhaps; a lingering note in the air and a richness in the ground beneath, perhaps. But apart from that, nothing. Only an everlasting emptiness where once men and women and their children had gathered to worship and to sing and to pray, where they had come to rejoice and to mourn and to remember, but whose names were now long forgotten, whose voices were long since silent, and who would never again return to the place and say it was their own.
About the Author
ROBERT EDRIC was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (James Tait Black Prize winner 1986), A New Ice Age (runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize 1986), The Book of the Heathen (winner of the WH Smith Literary Award 2000), Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002), Gathering the Water (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006) and In Zodiac Light (shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize 2010). His most recent novel is Field Service. He lives in Yorkshire.
Also by Robert Edric
WINTER GARDEN
A NEW ICE AGE
A LUNAR ECLIPSE
IN THE DAYS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM
THE BROKEN LANDS
HALLOWED GROUND
THE EARTH MADE OF GLASS
ELYSIUM
IN DESOLATE HEAVEN
THE SWORD CABINET
THE BOOK OF THE HEATHEN
PEACETIME
GATHERING THE WATER
THE KINGDOM OF ASHES
IN ZODIAC LIGHT
SALVAGE
THE LONDON SATYR
THE DEVIL’S BEAT
THE MONSTER’S LAMENT
SANCTUARY
FIELD SERVICE
CRADLE SONG
SIREN SONG
SWAN SONG
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Robert Edric 2018
Cover photograph © Alamy
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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473510364
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