by John Samuel
‘Needless to say, Ben was mightily relieved when I told him that there was simply no way that a newspaper like ours would even for a second consider the use of such material. I was at pains to impress that on him. That, and the fact that our reporter had in no way, shape or form solicited it. And what do you think she had to say about that, the lovely Natalie? What do you think she said to me?’
He has allowed me to drop my head again. I’m not even going to try to respond, and nor am I expected to.
He just rolls right into it, ‘Nothing. Not one solitary word. She just nodded her little head and went about her business.’ He bends his knees so he’s level with my cowering. ‘It’s this Leveson, he’s got them all worked up about where their information’s coming from. Doesn’t matter what’s true, all that matters is how you got it. It’s the lawyers who are piping the tune now, son – you didn’t really reckon on that, did you?’
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I mean, yes, I remember the name from the television news, and I vaguely recall the man’s bespectacled dome, microphones sprouting up to it like tendrils pulled towards the sun. But as to what he said, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. It was the kind of voice that almost wills you not to listen.
‘It’s a shame,’ he says, almost too quietly to hear. He seems to have forgotten I’m there. ‘It’s a shame we had to change everything. It used to be so straightforward …’ He grinds out the butt of his cigarette beneath his shoe ‘… just snuffing out the difficult characters.’ He looks at me again, ‘But I don’t do that anymore. People don’t want the blood and thunder anymore,’ he tells me ruefully, ‘at least not from us, anyway.’ He gives me a strange, almost apologetic smile. ‘It ruins it for everybody – takes the poetry out of it. It robs it of that …’ he twiddles his hand in the air ‘… that epic quality.’
He’s contemplating me with something almost approaching warmth. ‘You remember how it was – the good old days …’ He shakes his packet of cigarettes at me. ‘Smoke?’ I just stare at him. He takes one out for himself and pops it in his mouth. ‘Yeah, the good old days,’ he mutters as he lights it. ‘When I think of the number I did on you – remember?’ He grins at this shared nostalgia. ‘Man, I really worked you over.’
‘The … number …?’ But I only manage to hiccup the words. To my immense irritation, I have begun to cry, and the more I try to stop, the more the tears keep coming, burbling up from a well-stocked source.
His grin broadens until he is positively beaming. ‘It really suits you, this new life you’ve chosen,’ he says.
I’m trying desperately to regain my composure but all I can think about is Abaddon, the way he was on that day – the day he did his ‘number’ on me. I hadn’t even known it was him at first. At Gethsemane, at the Praetorium, he just hung back in the rank and file with the other soldiers. I remember noticing him, though, those eyes watching my every moment, and the murderous hunch of his shoulders, but it was only as the morning wore on and the journey to my crucifixion began that he started to reveal himself to me.
I am putting you back. Those were his first words to me, as he pushed that thorny tangle into my scalp. You know who I am, he said into my ear. Not a question, a statement. And the moment he said it, I understood what was happening to me. I understood that he would use every second of these final hours on earth to visit unspeakable pain on me. And if there is one thing that Abaddon knows, it is pain. The atrocities he committed at His behest were infamous among us. We all knew that he’d waded knee-deep in gore at the Assyrian camp. In that baptism he discovered the esoteric pleasures of violence. And from there he refined that understanding to an addiction. It became a passion. A holy passion for pain. And so by the time my day came around, he was a past master at it. He manipulated those soldiers with clinical precision, worming into the crawl-space of their minds, urging them towards greater cruelties. Under Abaddon’s approving gaze, they tore my back to ribbons with their whips, they battered fractures into my arms and legs with wooden rods. I wasn’t even carrying the beam of my cross when I finally collapsed, it wasn’t about that – I just couldn’t go on, I was hysterical, very near to death already at that point. And yet still he yapped and goaded like a hyena, and still they beat me.
Everyone was afraid of how he looked. That’s what was written, how they remember it now, in all the churches and the pictures, making a festival of my beasting. He did not even look human. Nobody would recognise him as a man.
So by the time they were driving the nails through my feet, I was just babbling. Anything, anything to make them stop. But they wouldn’t stop. Even as my heart surrendered its final beats to my flooded chest, he was still there, conducting the mocking and the jeering and the spitting. God’s most decorated soldier, bullying me towards an unthinkable death.
‘You’re psychotic,’ I croak, shuffling backwards in an attempt to get away from him but bumping into the wall.
He nods slowly, like he takes my point. ‘And you? What is your part in all this? Tell me – I’m genuinely interested to know what you think you’re achieving here, among the people.’
‘I’m telling them the truth.’
‘Oh, are you really? And why do you think they need to hear this truth?’ He mimics my voice when he says truth, making me sound high-pitched and womanish.
‘I promised them something they can never have, and I –’
‘And you what?’ He snaps, right back up close again, in the space where he likes to be, just inches away from me. ‘There is no you,’ he exhales the sourness of these words right into my face. This time, though, I force myself not to look away. ‘None of this, none of anything, is about you.’
He desperately wants to hit me – he is almost quivering with the effort of restraint. I’m just hoping that passers-by might notice it too, the way he is standing over me like a wolf.
‘The truth, you spectacularly misguided little renegade, is that it doesn’t matter what you promised them. No one cares. No one cares what happens to them now, no one cares what happens to them when they die – it affects nothing. They’re just weeds. They sprout up, they rot back down. And so you,’ he grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me hard so my head whips back against the wall ‘do not get to start meddling in it. It is not your story,’ again he snaps my head back, ‘to tell.’ My ears begin to buzz, still he looms.
He’s about to say more but finally someone, a man, has come to help me. He is standing behind Abaddon. He clears his throat.
‘Is everything alright here?’ the man asks.
I look with plaintive gratitude at him as he dances around through the shimmer of fresh tears.
‘Go away,’ Abaddon says to him without turning around.
‘I’m sorry but I –’
‘I said,’ and this time he does turn around, ‘Go. Away.’
The man hurries away.
‘You need to learn some humility,’ Abaddon continues, as if no one had interrupted him. ‘You need to remember who made this universe and you need to let the people remember it too. It doesn’t matter that they think they’re going to flutter up to this little paradise you’ve promised them. Let them think it. In fact, the more they think it, the better – you actually did The Boss a favour with that nonsense. It’s the perfect outcome – He didn’t ask you to lie for Him, but you did, and now that you have … well, let’s just say it doesn’t hurt our numbers. As long as people still think there’s something in it for them, then they still keep Him in mind, they still praise and honour Him for the life He has given them. And by the time they find out it’s just a simple switch-off, well at that stage there’s no turning back – and besides, they never do find out. The human brain is a well-wired bit of kit.’ He pauses for a second, probably thinking about the brains he’s seen, spilled out of cracked heads. ‘But I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,’ he gives me an evil smirk, ‘you’ll be seeing it for yourself soon enough.’
‘You’re a liar.’ He’s right, my voic
e does sound small and pathetic. ‘He cares, I know He does. Don’t forget, I knew Him once too – better than you, better than any other – and I know that …’ but the words peter out into nothing, because I don’t actually know. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever knew. ‘Just because you don’t care about anything,’ a last thought hisses out of me, ‘don’t assume the same is true of Him.’
‘You, my friend, are adorable.’ He pats my cheek lightly. ‘Why don’t you just go ahead and believe whatever you want?’
He turns to go, then thinks better of it – one more thing to say.
‘Oh yeah – I didn’t tell you, did I? I also had a chat to your employer, and to those good people at InviraCorp. I just felt it was important for them to know where their leak was coming from. You can imagine what they made of it all. But that wasn’t even the best part. No, the best part was when I told our friends over at the Vatican – and, believe you me, we do have friends there. Good friends.’ He shakes his head, smiling, ‘Dio mio, what a rumpus. They were not impressed – they were even talking about putting some of their esperti on it.’ There’s an almost reverential light in his eyes when he says this. ‘Have you ever seen those guys work? So much more subtle than I ever was, and so careful too. You can always trust them to do a good, clean job.’
He holds the barrel of his finger to the side of his head and makes a silent Pow! with his lips.
‘And fear not, they’ll be sure to make it look like an accident,’ he tells me as he begins to walk away. ‘They always do.’
12
Everyone better just get out of my way. I can’t believe that not one single person found the courage to step up and help me tackle that monster. Again!
‘Where were you?’ I scream at some people outside a restaurant.
‘Where are they when I need them?’ I growl to myself as I jog along the pavement.
Of course, the moment Abaddon was out of the picture and it was just me there, recovering myself, half collapsed against the cold bricks, I had no shortage of strangers coming to check on me, wanting to know if I was alright, if I needed any help.
Too little, as I told them all, and too late. I actually had to shove one woman out of the way as I struggled to my feet. Too persistent for her own good. Let me help you, she kept saying to me.
‘You were not here when I needed you,’ I hissed to her as she tottered backwards from my push, ‘You never are.’
‘Help!’ she called out. The irony of it.
That was when I started to run, a run that has now slowed to an erratic, panting trot. It soon becomes clear that I will not be able to continue any further on foot. My head is throbbing with the strain. I touch my hair and find that once again my crown is wet with blood from Abaddon’s beating.
I come to rest at a bus stop. Its destination is obscure to me, nor do I bother to look. I know only that its number, 38, is perfect for the occasion. As I stand there, I become aware of the others who are waiting, a lowing, mulish throng pressing around me, the miasma of their smells, the prattle of their talk.
Breathless from my exertions, I have to squat on my heels. Every few seconds I need to hawk up the bile that seems to be pooling in my lungs and gob it out into the road. Some of them shrink away from me, others barely seem to notice. Their chewing, speaking faces stare with the effort of menial tasks. They witter to each other about nothing, they gawp at their phones in a paralysis of fascination. Nowhere do I see the promise of meaningful exchange. Nowhere is there evidence of real inquiry. There is no penetrating gaze, except for my own.
Disgust makes my mouth begin to work, but silently, not giving voice to the words, just shaping them and aiming them at those who are watching me through the slanted sides of their vision.
You ruined me, I secretly say.
On the bus, I sit alone at the back. Occasionally I look out of the window. I have no idea where I am going. At some traffic lights I see a billboard next to a man selling newspapers. It says ‘Father Behind Honour Killing’. As the bus sets off again the vendor looks up at my window.
I burrow back into my seat. I shut my eyes, I shut them so tightly it makes the muscles in my face tremble. Abaddon was right, I am a joke. All these people, it’s not truth they need, it’s comfort. They reach out their arms, slack-jawed with wonder, always trying to touch what they cannot have. And to think I tried to bring it closer to them, I tried to compass them, teach them a way to love Him and to love themselves. To live in love, that was my dream. And now look – the name of Christ snatched up like a trademark, bartered to a tribe of thugs and crooks.
What an imbecile I have been. To think I was ever moved by the sucking thirst of mankind – to think I actually sacrificed everything for it.
‘Stop that.’
There is no one else left on the top deck of the bus except for me and this man.
‘Stop that,’ he says again. He is sitting a few rows away, turned round to face me.
He means my hands. They are drumming on the back of the empty seat in front of me. I can’t seem to stop them.
‘You deaf, mate?’ He has stood up now, or halfway up – he cannot stand in this space. He is holding a can of lager. He has big square hands and a poorly reset nose.
‘No,’ I mumble. With great effort, I force my hands under control by gripping the metal rail I have been banging.
Still he stands in the aisle, trapping me like an animal. He is dark – jet black hair, coarse stubble – a contadino with murder on his mind. There is a bulge inside his jacket – it can only be a gun.
I prepare myself for death. Once again, I shut my eyes.
‘You can’t sleep here.’
This is the next voice I hear. A hand is shaking me, not roughly but briskly, part of someone’s work.
It is the bus driver. We’re parked, stopped for the night, and I am down on the floor wedged between the back seats. My back is twisted somehow. Hot needles of pain shoot down my leg and up my spine as I struggle to my feet. We are in the bus garage.
‘I must have passed out,’ I tell him. ‘There was a …’ I don’t bother to finish my sentence. He’s no longer there anyway, he’s halfway down the stairs.
‘You need to get off the bus,’ he calls up to me.
As I hobble out into the street, still hounded by the pain in my back, I start to notice an arrhythmia in my heart that had not been there before. It occurs to me that the man on the bus must have injected me with some form of slow-acting poison. It happens all the time.
I double back into the garage in search of some private corner where I might perform an intimate appraisal of my body. I end up in an unlocked store cupboard, with standing room only among the mops and buckets and bottles of cleaning agent. I disrobe and by the light of the half-open door I spend thirty dismal minutes examining every inch of my body for signs of needle puncture, rubbing at each blemish, scratching at every fleck of skin, like a witch hunter searching for a mark.
The results, though, are disappointing. Inconclusive might be a better word since my other symptoms persist, are worsening even, despite the lack of any obvious puncture point. The pain in my back, for example, has now spread to my left leg. Each time I move it the sciatic nerve flashes down through my buttock and into the back of my knee. It takes a great deal of time for me to put my trousers back on. My shoelaces I have to leave undone, my socks lie discarded on the cement floor – bending to reach these things is now impossible. Wounded, limping away from there, I know that I must go to ground. I cannot stay out in the open like this.
When I reach Will’s flat it is well past midnight. I ask the taxi driver to stay and watch while I unlock the door and go inside. But as soon as I am upstairs, shut away once again in the airless apartment, I realise that this is not the refuge I was looking for. I need to get further afield. There will be others like the man on the bus, and it won’t be long before they come looking for me here. The hemmed-in geography of the city makes me feel like a laboratory rat, forced on through
the plastic corridors of an experiment, ever nearer to death. What I need is a more natural space, with large, solid houses. A picture of just such a place flickers half-formed at the edge of my consciousness – a memory of Will’s still snagged in this flesh – but it’s enough. Enough to know that I need to find my way to his parents’ house. It’s an added complication – just talking to his mother on the phone was exhausting enough – but it’s safer than this, waiting here in this cell.
I take something for the pain and I work deep into the fretful hours of the night gathering what I need. The first thing to find is Will’s address book, a dog-eared little thing I have seen somewhere. I can visualise everything about it, except for where I saw it. I perform my search in total silence, creeping from room to room, my limp slowly ironing out as the pain killers kick in. Voltarol, this one was – a swart mythology to its name. A muscular, hammer-wielding name. I soon find it and, along with some clothes, other scattered papers, anything really that looks useful, it gets stuffed into a canvas bag.
Then comes a soft knock at the door. I listen, stock still, as this is followed by a gentle scraping in the lock. Someone is trying to pick it open. In a reflex of panic I start to shout at the top of my voice, yelling that I am calling the police. I collect pans from the kitchen and bang them together, advancing towards the closed door as I would towards a bear that has come sniffing around my camp. I stop only when I hear a different kind of knocking, the hammering of angry fists, and the sound of Alice Sherwin spitting my name. I know then that the intruder must have fled.
I remove myself to the bedroom. There, ears covered with a pillow, eyes sealed tight, I wait for the deliverance of morning.
13
As I step off the train a woman who can only be Will’s mother waves to me from the far end of the platform. She had sounded relieved when I’d called her from a payphone in the station but that’s not how she looks now as she walks towards me. The nearer she gets, the more her determination to look cheerful starts to waver, to the extent that when we actually meet and hug she finds it hard to let go. I can tell that she is crying into the folds of my coat, so I decide to let her stay there for a minute or two. Unlike the city dwellers I left behind in London, the people around us here are unashamedly curious. One lady in particular almost seems to be thinking about coming over.
