Peacetime

by Robert Edric

  ‘Tell me,’ Mercer urged her.

  She clasped her hands together. ‘I was wiping his face,’ she said.

  ‘Wiping his face?’ Lynch shouted. ‘I’ve told you not to go anywhere near him.’

  Mary continued looking at Mercer as though her father had not spoken, as though he were not even present in the room beside them. ‘He opened his eyes,’ she said. ‘He wanted me to get closer to him. He was trying to tell me something so I put my ear close to his mouth to try and hear what he was saying. It was just his breathing, he couldn’t clear his throat. He wanted me to get closer to him. The only way I could do that was by lying down on the floor beside him.’

  ‘Lying down?’ Lynch said.

  And again she went on talking as though the man had not interrupted her.

  ‘One noise over and over,’ she said. ‘And then, when I was as close as I could get to him, still trying to understand what he was trying to tell me, he suddenly reached out and grabbed hold of me. He didn’t seem capable of it at first, but I was lying propped on my side and there was nothing I could do to avoid him; I fell away from him and the next thing I knew his arm was round my neck.’

  ‘The bastard,’ Lynch shouted.

  ‘Let her finish,’ Mercer said. ‘You can see she hasn’t been harmed.’

  ‘He tried to grab hold of her. You heard her.’

  ‘It probably wasn’t deliberate,’ Mary said. ‘His arm was where I fell, and when I landed on it, he folded it round me. He wasn’t really hurting me, more holding me. It was as though he just wanted me to lie there, to let him hold me. That was when I screamed. It wasn’t hard to push him off once I’d got my balance, and after that I went to the window. He scrambled on the floor for a few seconds and then he started coughing again and seemed to lose all his strength. I heard then what he’d been trying to say to me.’

  ‘He thought you were his sister,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Anna,’ she said.

  It was beyond Mercer to imagine what Jacob must have seen or heard in his barely conscious delirium, or where he now imagined himself to be.

  ‘He woke and thought you were his sister tending to him,’ he said.

  ‘He started crying,’ she said. ‘When he tried to grab hold of me and I pushed him away.’ She took several paces back towards where Jacob lay, until Lynch put out his arm to stop her.

  ‘If I’d known …’ she said to Mercer.

  ‘I know,’ he told her. Mercer finally rose to his feet.

  ‘Known what?’ Lynch said. ‘If she’d known what?’

  She tried to reach down to the man on the floor, but again Lynch stopped her, pulling her sharply back to him.

  ‘Let go of her,’ Mercer said.

  Lynch swung her round so that she stood between them. ‘Or else what?’

  And at that moment, perhaps because he had been alerted by the voices around him, or perhaps only because he had heard the girl and his sister’s name repeated so many times, Jacob, too, said, ‘Anna,’ and reached out his hand until it connected with Lynch’s ankle, which he then feebly attempted to grab.

  Lynch cried out at this and released his hold on his daughter. He lifted the foot Jacob had touched and then stamped it down hard on Jacob’s fingers.

  ‘Anna,’ Jacob said, and again they all heard him clearly. He went on saying the name, forming it over and over until his voice faded to a dry whisper, oblivious to Lynch’s foot.

  Hearing him speak, Lynch finally stepped away from him, and then, before either Mercer or Mary could intervene, he swung a kick at Jacob which caught his arm and threw it awkwardly back across his face.

  Unable to restrain him in any other way, Mercer threw himself against Lynch and knocked him to the floor.

  Someone below shouted up again to ask what was happening, and this time Mercer heard Mathias’s voice amid the cacophony. He called down for him to come up to them, trying to keep himself between Lynch and Jacob. And while he did this, Mary went back to the mattress and lifted Jacob’s head back onto the pillow. She gently picked up the arm Lynch had kicked and laid it by his side. Jacob no longer attempted to speak to her, and his mouth fell slackly open to reveal his teeth.

  Mathias climbed through the hatchway and shouted to ask what was happening.

  ‘Help him,’ Mercer said, indicating Jacob.

  Mathias stood for a few seconds trying to understand what he was seeing, alarmed by the presence of Lynch and his daughter.

  And in those few seconds, Lynch finally pushed himself free of Mercer, turned to where Mary knelt beside Jacob, and swung another kick at the man, this time catching him in his side and causing Jacob to groan and then to choke at the pain of the blow.

  Mary shouted for her father to stop, and in an effort to protect Jacob, she held herself over his chest and put her arms around his head. Oblivious now to all that was taking place around him, Jacob continued to choke, and every fibre and bone of his head, neck and chest were brought into sharp relief by the effort.

  Lynch shouted again for Mary to move away from him, and drew back his foot for a third kick.

  But by then Mathias had grasped what was happening and he struck a blow to the side of Lynch’s head which caught him by surprise and knocked him to the floor.

  Lynch rose quickly and turned to face Mathias, but as he did this, Mathias struck him again, and this time Lynch stumbled backwards, missing his footing and putting one of his feet through the open hatchway. He fell badly, striking his head against the side of the opening, wedged where he had fallen, and from where he now tried to pull himself back to his feet.

  Both Mercer and Mathias watched him struggle there for a moment.

  ‘Help him up,’ Mercer said eventually.

  But instead, Mathias went to where Lynch held out his hand to be pulled up and kicked at his arm and shoulder until he fell through the hatchway and down the steps into the room below. The voices beneath stopped immediately.

  Mercer went to the opening and looked down. Lynch lay without moving at the bottom of the steps, his legs above his body, one of his feet caught between the rungs.

  ‘He’s landed badly,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Mathias said, and he looked from Mercer to where Mary still knelt with her arms around Jacob’s head.

  Jacob finally stopped choking and lay calmly in her embrace.

  Beneath them, the voices resumed and a woman screamed.

  ‘You ought to go,’ Mercer said to Mathias.

  But Mathias shook his head. ‘No, I ought to stay. I shouldn’t have gone in the first place. If I’d stayed with him, none of this would have happened.’

  He went to the mattress and knelt at Jacob’s feet. At his arrival there, Mary started to rise, but he indicated for her to stay, and she put her hands back to Jacob’s face, stretching herself alongside him on the thin mattress. She whispered to him and he grew calmer. He closed his mouth and turned to face her.

  Mathias remained kneeling at Jacob’s feet, holding them in both his hands and caressing their soles with his thumbs. He started to cry, and then said something through his tears which neither Mercer nor Mary properly heard.

  Again, Mercer looked down to where Lynch had fallen, and where he still lay without moving. He lifted the open trapdoor and then lowered it into its space, sealing the four of them off from everyone below.

  He went to the window and looked down on the men and women outside, most of them now walking slowly back to their homes. It was brighter there than in the tower, and the moon cast their shadows ahead of them.

  Above them, a flock of gulls flew in from the sea, rising and falling in wavering lines, their vividly white outlines flickering and spectral as they passed silently overhead.

  The smoke from the fire still clung to the ground, and the men and women passing through it resembled nothing more to Mercer than aimless waders in a shallow sea, uncertain of their destinations or of the hidden depths ahead of them, the disturbed smoke curling and then settling around them as
they went.

  THE END

  THE BOOK OF THE HEATHEN

  Robert Edric

  ‘MORE DISTURBING EVEN THAN CONRAD IN HIS DEPICTION OF THE HEART OF DARKNESS’

  Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

  ‘RELENTLESS , . . AN IMPRESSIVE AND DISTURBING WORK OF ART’

  Robert Nye, Literary Review

  1897. In an isolated station in the Belgian Congo, an Englishman awaits trial for the murder of a native child, while his friend attempts to discover the circumstances surrounding the charge. The world around them is rapidly changing: the horrors of colonial Africa are becoming known and the flow of its once- fabulous wealth is drying up.

  But there is even more than the death of a child at the heart of this conflict. There is a secret so dark, so unimaginable, that one man must be willingly destroyed by his possession of it, and the other must participate in that destruction.

  ‘MANY RESPECTABLE JUDGES WOULD PUT EDRIC IN THE TOP TEN OF BRITISH NOVELISTS CURRENTLY AT WORK … AS A WRITER, HE SPECIALISES IN THE DELICATE HINT AND THE GAME NOT GIVEN AWAY’

  D.J. Taylor, Spectator

  ‘STUNNING … EVOCATIVELY BRINGS TO LIFE THE STIFLING HUMIDITY AND CONSTANT RAINFALL OF THE CONGO’

  John Cooper, The Times

  ‘A VERY GRIPPING STORY … THE READER IS DRAWN IN INEXORABLY TO DISCOVER WHAT HORROR LIES AT THE HEART OF IT … AN APOCALYPTIC FABLE FOR TODAY’

  John Spurling, The Times Literary Supplement

  ‘RENDERED IN PROSE WHOSE STEADINESS AND TRANSPARENCY THROW THE DARK TURBULENCE OF WHAT IS HAPPENING INTO DAMNING RELIEF. IT WILL BE SURPRISING IF THIS YEAR SEES A MORE DISTURBING OR HAUNTING NOVEL’

  Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

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  THE SWORD CABINET

  Robert Edric

  ‘A KALEIDOSCOPIC MEDITATION ON CELEBRITY, MUNDANITY AND HORROR’

  Mark Sanderson, Time Out

  Robert Edric’s brilliant novel recreates a faded world of seaside entertainers, stuntmen and illusionists. Mitchell King, failed impresario, ruined club-owner and embezzler, searches for his lost mother, the former girl-assistant to Morgan King, escapologist and chief suspect in an unsolved case of serial killing dating back to 1950.

  ‘SPECTACULAR … EDRIC DARTS BETWEEN INTERLINKED STORIES, SPINNING THEM LIKE PLATES ON STICKS’

  Ruth Scurr, The Times

  ‘GLORIOUSLY DISCOMFORTING AND MYSTERIOUS … A PHILOSOPHICAL PUZZLE’

  Alison Huntley, Independent

  ‘EDRIC’S TECHNIQUE RESTS ON SUBTERFUGE AND CONCEALMENT … A THOROUGHLY ARRESTING PERFORMANCE’

  D. J. Taylor, Sunday Times

  ‘THE REWARDS COME FROM THE CLEAR AUSTERITY OF THE PROSE, THE UTTERLY BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS AND THE SATISFYING MIXTURE OF REAL AND METAPHORICAL ILLUSION … IMPRESSIVE’

  Natasha Cooper, Sunday Express

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  CRADLE SONG

  Robert Edric

  An imprisoned paedophile and child murderer unexpectedly appeals his conviction. In return for a reduced sentence, he offers to implicate those involved in the crimes who were never caught; to provide evidence of Police corruption at the time of the original investigation; and, most importantly, to reveal where the corpses of several long-sought, but never found teenage girls are buried.

  Unhappy at what may be about to happen, but at the same time desperate to locate the body of his own missing daughter, the father of one of these girls approaches Private Investigator Leo Rivers with a plea for help.

  Rivers’ enquiries stir cold and bitter memories. Long-dead enmities flare suddenly into violence and a succession of new killings. Everyone involved, then and now, and on both sides of the law, is unprepared for the suddenness and ferocity with which these old embers are fanned back into life. As the investigation progresses, it gathers momentum, and now must speed inexorably to the even greater violence and sadness of its conclusion.

  The first of a trilogy of contemporary crime novels set in the city of Hull, Robert Edric’s new novel is reminiscent of Chandler and Mosley, and yet remains uniquely British. Against the backdrop of Internet pornography, Police corruption and child murder, this dark and intense novel reads like a game of chess where each piece is invested with a deceptive significance.

  NOW AVAILABLE FROM DOUBLEDAY

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