What I Tell You In the Dark

by John Samuel

Not that he’s laughing, or even smiling, but I can see a little chink there. He’s thinking about it.

  ‘Where are you headed?’

  ‘London,’ I tell him.

  ‘My depot’s in Canning Town.’

  ‘That’d be great.’

  ‘Come on then if you’re coming.’

  As I climb up into the passenger side of his cab, he asks me, ‘You’re not going to puke in here are you?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘Trust me,’ I tell him. ‘I’m a whole lot better than I was.’

  However much it hurts. That’s what I wrote to Will’s sister in the email I sent. I told her, however much it hurts, I will cut the cord that binds us to the false promises I gave humanity two thousand years ago. It was pretty grandiose stuff when I think of it now, and obscure too – the impossible beanstalk, I remember using that phrase at one point. But what can you do? These things come out how they come out. I wasn’t thinking straight. What I should have said is we’re all God’s children. That would have made more sense to her, instead of my prattle about the wrongful elevation of Man. I should have just said that everything, every living thing, on the ground, in the sky, hiding on the ocean floor, invisible on the head of a pin – all of it is God’s work. Not better, not worse, none more or less valued than the next: it just is. That’s how He sees it – it’s how they all see it. Habitat, consumption, decay – reload, release, repeat. There’s no ace in the hole, no deus in the machina. There’s nothing more to know.

  But I didn’t say that. I just waffled on. Which is precisely why, from this moment forth, I need to keep my big flapping trap shut. I am afraid of the foolishness I have spoken, as a great poet once said, I must diet on silence; strengthen myself with quiet. So that when the truth does come, it will not be from me. It will jump, quick and ugly as a toad, from the mouth of another. My only task will be to capture that moment, that miracle, and show it to the waiting world. I will transfuse it into the internet, this web that has become so much a part of you, that supports you, natural as the spider’s silk – you must stop regarding it with such suspicion. You need to rid yourselves of this fear of technology – machines do not threaten you, they are you. Trust me, I saw how it started. It was no different then. I watched the dream of the ape slowly take shape, get pushed ashore by systems that were creating a network of unknowable life, just as you are now – bacteria, energy invisibly budding, blind life congealing to the first spasms of tissue. Not Christ’s way, not science either, not humanity, whatever that is, or progress, not any of the vainglorious markers you care to put down, just life. Just God’s work. And so it will continue, with or without your consent. So just please, for the love of God, make your peace with that. Let me help you to make your peace with that. Let me show you how to let go.

  ‘You don’t know what robotics or nanotech or genetics or any of that stuff will bring, any more than the furiously multiplying microbes knew what would crawl from the primordial sea.’

  Boom! So much for keeping my mouth shut. I mean, I will keep it shut, when it counts, but I just couldn’t hold that one in. We’ve been driving for well over an hour and I’ve not said a single word. It’s been building up. We’re nearly there now, in fact – through the Blackwall Tunnel and into London proper.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’

  We are the only two people in the cab of his truck, of course, but you can see where he’s coming from.

  I want to tell him that no, I’m not really, I’m talking to all of mankind. But as discussed, I need to be holstering up that kind of rhetoric.

  ‘Sorry, it just popped out. I don’t even know what I said.’

  ‘You just told me to fuck off, mate, the fancy way – go forth and multiply. That’s what I heard.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ I reassure him jovially, ‘A simple misunderstanding.’ I wriggle up from my slump – ow, ow, ow, my back. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have been quite so grateful to Luc for whatever it is he did there. ‘That’s not what I was saying at all.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t know what you said.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. Sorry – let’s start again: I apologise for whatever I said. No offence, okay?’

  ‘What happened to your hand?’

  I’m holding up my hand, the cut one.

  ‘I lashed out at a prostitute’s business card and cut myself on a nail.’ I can’t be bothered to lie anymore, about anything. ‘It’s an ironic stigmata,’ I add to that end, ‘probably put there by those who are able to influence such things, as a pointed reminder of my inept piloting of Jesus Christ towards doom and futility.’

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ he says, and stops his truck with an almighty hiss of the brakes.

  We’re at the side of the road in a part of London I don’t know. He opens the glove compartment and produces a wooden club shaped like a fat exclamation mark. It’s about a foot long and looks like it always has and always will belong there in his fist. Cars are already hooting behind us. The truck is too big to go around.

  ‘Get out.’ He’s admirably succinct in word and gesture.

  As the truck pulls away and the queue of cars behind it is once again free to get going, one of the drivers is so angry at having been made to wait that he bothers to wind down his window and say the word wanker to me as he drives past.

  It’s a bit of a rude awakening. I resent being outside and noticed again, in the drizzle and the dark. I liked it in the bubble of his truck, lulled by the radio and the occasional sound of his unanswered questions as I watched out of the window. All those vehicles, going this way and that. But now I feel raw again, on my toes so to speak. Aware of the threats. Not for the first time, I find myself thinking about Caravaggio – I watched him closely during those final few weeks of his life – and I do not want to get sucked into the mistakes he made. He was so paranoid about who may or may not have been about to emerge from the shadows and stab him that in the end he was completely incapacitated. He went into defensive lockdown. He’d take a swing at anything and everything. Production ground to a halt. But not me. I am most definitely not going down that road. I’ve got too much left to do.

  ‘Man up!’ I tell myself in no uncertain terms. ‘Man up and grow a pair.’

  These are just expressions you overhear, of course. They always sound so much better coming from someone else. That truck driver, for instance. He’d be able to pull off a very convincing Man up, I reckon. But you work with what you’ve got. I’m a lover not a fighter (as I made a point of telling people the last time around; I even said it to one of the soldiers who was banging a spike through my feet – come to think of it, I bet he’d have been able to muster a solid Man up as well).

  ‘Wait!’ And I do, as I say it. I stop on the pavement, in the dark drizzle. ‘This is actually a very important point.’ I can talk to myself out loud like this because there’s no one else in sight. It helps to focus the mind, I find, if you actually say the words. ‘I’m going to need to get a lot tougher if this next part is going to work.’ I wince at the memory of my performance last time I saw Abaddon. ‘A lot tougher.’

  ‘This is the time to be brave,’ I remind myself as a bus, lit up and empty, comes swaying past.

  ‘I am going to need a gun.’ These words are more of a surprise, popping up on me out of nowhere, but no less true for it. Because I mean, let’s face it, of course I’m going to need a gun. Look at me. How am I going to take charge of anything in this state? I will need an instrument of persuasion if I am to be taken seriously. A nine, a piece, a strap … it seems like only yesterday you were calling them barkers and persuaders. I find it very charming, this habit of euphemism. It’s a crucial part of the deception. If you don’t quite say it, have you quite done it? Anyway, call it what you will, I need one – and the sooner the better. It’ll be morning before I know it. There’s no more time for pussy-footing around. I need to start attacking this situation.

&n
bsp; The question is, where to find one. I’m certain that Will doesn’t own one. If his flat was messy when I first saw it, it’s nothing compared to the condition I left it in after my various ransacking searches, and I certainly didn’t see any guns. But not to worry: after all, this is London, one of the world’s great stews of urban life. Iniquity cannot be far away.

  I look around. Nope, it can’t be far away at all.

  16

  It was in fact a little farther than I’d thought (nearly three hours of continuous walking, to be exact), but enough griping. I’m here now.

  By here I mean a place called Medway Bounds, a dilapidated housing estate off Mile End Road. It sits louring among streets of squat, dirty houses, the tall pillars of its high-rises punctuated with hard little squares of light. Loveless, soulless, hopeless – it must be well stocked with firearms. Trouble is, it’s not really the kind of place you can just stroll into without first getting the lie of the land, which is why I’ve spent the last hour shivering in a hidden corner, keeping an eye on the few comings and goings that are still to be seen at eleven o’clock on a rainy Sunday night.

  I think I’ve more or less got the gist of it, though. I have a decent view of what’s what from my hidey hole (a dark and filthy corner at the entrance to a raised walkway between the two main blocks). At first the place seemed devoid of life, but after a while I started to notice a few little whistles and noises from the balconies above. These, I realised, coincided with the times when a car would drive up to the interior courtyard, just below me. Whenever one of these cars pulls up, a guy comes loping, hood up, head down, from the graffitied porch and across the rectangle of patchy grass. After a short conversation at the car window, he then gestures to another and the car drives off around the back, to a part of the building I can’t see, where presumably the transaction is made. I’ll be honest: the details of exactly how it works are a little unclear to me, but it’s really not the point – after all, I’m not here to buy drugs. What is important is the scout who shuttles round on his bike. Him I have watched like a hawk. He whips round the perimeter, pedalling like fury on his little bike with its pushed-down seat. Each circuit takes him about ten minutes by my reckoning, after which he reports back to the guys at the porch, then sets off again. It’s quick work as there’s very little for him to see, just the sheer boundaries of buildings and concrete overpasses, every door shut fast. I’m the only one stupid enough to be out, and he most certainly hasn’t noticed me, even though his journey takes him within about two feet of where I’m sat.

  The next time he comes past – that’s what I told myself last time he flashed by me. And now here he comes. It’s time. Just as he’s about to draw level with me I pounce. I charge out soundlessly and at speed, shoulder first, and bang straight into the side of him. It sends him clean off the bike and into the wall. When he looks up at me I see he’s bleeding from the mouth. He can’t be more than twelve years old.

  ‘I ain’t got no gear on me, blud,’ is the first thing he says.

  ‘I’m not interested in that,’ I tell him.

  This is worrying and confusing news, and both of these emotions are more than apparent in the look he’s giving me. What he’s most focussed on, though, is the syringe. Did I mention the syringe? I found it (that’s to say, I nearly spiked myself on it) when I first settled into my dirty corner, and I’ve been hanging on to it ever since. I thought it had potential as a makeshift weapon but, looking at this child before me, I feel suddenly ashamed of that thought. I let it drop to the ground.

  The boy, who has been watching my face during this thought process, looks about ready to cry.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I tell him. ‘If you do what I say,’ I feel compelled to add. After all, I am supposed to be threatening him. It requires considerable effort for me to manufacture the air of menace that comes so naturally to Abaddon and others like him. But the boy doesn’t seem to notice. He still looks terrified. My appearance, together with the fact that I have just knocked him off his bike, are reason enough.

  I drag him to his feet and march him back the way I came when I first got here. We leave his bike where it is, but my abandoned syringe I kick off into the shadows where it belongs. I tell him not to worry, that he is not in any danger, but he doesn’t seem to hear. He keeps daubing at his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

  When we get back to the front of the estate, I have a quick look for convenient rat runs into which we might safely disappear. A nearby stairwell suggests itself. Without me even telling him to, the boy enters the code to get us in. I tell him to be quick. We run up all the flights of stairs. The door to the roof is broken and therefore permanently ajar. Just another few steps take us to the very top of the building.

  None of the lights work up here, which leaves us in a twilight of litter and broken glass. A few shouts and calls from the courtyard below suggest that the boy’s absence has already been noticed. I hold a warning finger to my lips. I have a quick peek over the chest-high wall at the edge of the roof. I can’t see where any of the noises are coming from, but then you never can – that’s the point.

  I tell him to empty his pockets on to an old mattress that has been shoved into the corner by the wall – I shudder to think why. He has a cheap, disposable mobile phone, which I discard, a pack of gum, which I let him keep, but no knife or other kind of weapon. Good to know. It would be so sad to get stabbed by a child.

  I ask him his name. It’s Joel.

  ‘Well, Joel,’ I say thoughtfully, ‘you and I are going to have a little talk, and when we do, you are going to tell me what I want to know. If you hide anything from me, or try to lie to me, I will know. And I will not be happy.’

  He nods quickly.

  ‘I need a gun,’ I tell him, plain and simple. ‘And I know that at least one of that lot down there will have one stashed away somewhere. So you, Joel, are going to tell me where that somewhere is. And then you’re going to take me there, via a route that won’t get us seen, by anyone.’ I leave a meaningful pause. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Joel.’ Which, of course, is true, but I say it in a way that makes it sound like I definitely would if I had to.

  It does the trick. He just comes straight out with it. ‘Devan got a strap, innit.’

  ‘Okay. So where do I find this Devan?’

  ‘He don’t keep it on him,’ he glances at the wall beside us, leaving me to assume that Devan is currently out and about, conducting his business. ‘One of the youngers holds it for him. In de yard we jus by.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘I don’t know no number, man. Jus know the one it is.’

  I’m probably looking sceptical or homicidal or something because he quickly tells me everything else he knows in a bit of a rush. The boy’s name is Blair. And Devan, apparently, is something of a ‘bad man’.

  ‘Sounds perfect,’ I tell him.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Dis butters,’ he mumbles. ‘Gonna get plain ugly.’

  Suddenly, his mobile phone starts ringing. It sounds incredibly loud in this remote little corner, so I snatch it up as quickly as I can and shove it underneath the mattress. It continues for a few more muffled rings then stops.

  Joel is shifting around from foot to foot. I’ve put him in a horrible situation, I can see that, but there’s no other way to get this done. And anyway, I have an idea how I’m going to make things right for him. But first things first.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him with a steering hand in his back, getting us started towards the stairs, ‘you’re doing really well. You’re just going to have to trust me. I know that’s not easy but it’s the only choice you have.’

  We take a long way round. Whenever we get to a potentially tricky point in our journey Joel scouts ahead then motions me forward with militaristic hand gestures. All that sitting around playing Call of Duty is suddenly paying off for him.

  Blair’s flat is on an internal corridor, as opposed to one of the balcony
‘walks’ as Joel calls them. The strip lights above us must have got wet or shaken loose a wire because they are guttering like candle stumps, plunging us in and out of darkness. Joel is not keen on the effect, it’s playing on his nerves. By the time we arrive at our destination it’s all he can do to stand there and stare at the door.

  ‘This it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s waiting for me in there, Joel?’

  ‘Jus Blair, innit. And his sister.’

  ‘And the parents? Where are they? It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘His mum’s working.’

  When I ask about the father, all he says is ‘in the pen’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Prison, presumably.

  ‘Okay, go on then,’ I wave him on, ‘ring the bell.’

  It’s a teenage girl who comes to the door. She’s wearing a towelling dressing gown. Her hair is flattened and bunched up on one side. We’ve clearly woken her.

  ‘Sorry,’ I tell her, ‘but we’re coming in.’

  I shove Joel in front of me and follow him inside, shutting the door quickly behind us. Understandably she kicks up a bit of a fuss. As she’s demanding to know what the hell’s going on, I’m readying myself for the sudden appearance of her brother, maybe even brandishing the gun in alarm. But no one comes.

  ‘Where’s Blair?’ I ask her.

  She stops her protest immediately. The mere mention of his name is enough to explain why a stranger has come barging into her home at this hour.

  ‘He’s not here.’ She looks at me, or rather, she looks at my suit. ‘You police?’

  I’m not sure what kind of policeman would be muscling into someone’s house looking like I do but I don’t deny it. There’s a certain primness to her that tells me she’s used to picking up the broken pieces her brother leaves behind him, and if I can keep her believing I have the law on my side, I might just be able to get what I need without having to resort to scaring or threatening her. To be perfectly frank, looking at her studious, careworn face, I sincerely doubt if I could so much as raise my voice at her. But like I say, hopefully I won’t have to. Joel, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. This is all making him a bit fidgety.