The Villager

by Matt Kruze

  * * *

  Shoes creaking on the thick carpet of frost, Sammy walked the central hub of the village and the little lanes that led off the High Street like tributaries. Soon the bristling whiteness which clung to trees and houses and roads would be washed and melted away: already the air had lost its bite.

  There was a bustle of pedestrians hurrying to the village shop before work, cars nudged up against every kerb, cramming every corner and obscuring the visibility of drivers exiting the t-junction onto the main road. Here and there, groups of school children were gathered, some in huddles, others ambling towards the bus stops at either end of the High Street. All the idiosyncrasies of a village coming to life, the gears of the working day beginning to turn.

  For Andy Smith, Sammy realized again, the impact assailing him like a smack in the chest, they would never turn again, and for Celia would never function in the same manner. Sammy stared ahead as he walked, turning absent-mindedly into one street, then another. Twice he almost blundered into the path of an oncoming car. He had seen this condition too many times manifest itself in colleagues, was distantly aware of it now in himself–the sinking into this soft, misty torpor following the loss of a friend or colleague.

  And yet he fell into it like a cushion–something to soften the impact of grief. He would pay Andy the full respect of that emotion at the funeral, permit its entry on a temporary basis into his conscious just for those few hours, and then expel it afterwards; he could be of no use, offer no support, in grief–

  –Nor could he in this vapid, dreamlike state. Stupid, he berated himself. He shook his head clear. Breathed. Felt the bite of winter air in his damaged lung.

  His feet had carried him to the scene of last night’s potential–what, abduction? Assault? Murder? If that young lady had been the target, surely she would remain one. And yet she seemed to have already left for work, there being no car on the driveway, so she was safe. For now. Sammy left the area and moved eastwards, crossing the centre of the village.

  And in one of the roads close to his own, came upon the grey Ford.

  * * *

  There were two facets to Ryle’s preparatory work. First was the selection of an appropriate subject–the kind of person who, if they arrived home late from work, would not be questioned by respective husbands, wives, children. And secondly, the location of that subject’s residence. It had to be quiet, sheltered, with a sparse flow of traffic–both pedestrian and motorised. The little avenue on which he found himself now was ideal, and it was barbed with smaller lanes, trees standing sentinel along the pathways, obscuring, concealing.

  * * *

  Sammy came to an abrupt halt, then bounced backwards as though caroming off a barrier, retreating around the corner from which he had emerged. He had not expected to see the car today or, if he subscribed to the fug of pessimism which clung to his resolve, ever again. And yet there it was.

  Slowly, keeping his body well back, he peered furtively around the corner of the brick wall, into the lane. It was without doubt the same vehicle. And in it, the silhouette of a man at the wheel. In closer proximity and under the condition of full daylight, Sammy was able to make out the plate and he made a mental note of it. Without hesitating–he never hesitated, only paused for as long as was necessary to weigh the logical options–he turned and hurried back to his house, just a stone’s throw away.

  This time, he would be prepared.

  Breaking into a steady jog, already visualising his car keys on the hook in the kitchen, Sammy’s mind turned over the possible grounds for the arrival of this stranger in his village. The car – that innocuous grey hatchback – was pulled up outside another house, another front door. The resident of the house he had been at last night had not been the target then, but merely a target. And now what–this disquieting, malevolent visitor was selecting another?

  * * *

  Ryle feathered the keys dangling from the ignition, hesitant to leave such an optimal location. And yet he had come across a house earlier that morning–the first stop on his little reconnaissance–which had suited him equally well. Well that was fine; he had a decision to make and he would spend the day mulling it over as he drove around the village. He might come across somewhere even more fitting, and if he didn’t, he would make a choice between the two houses and then retreat for the night. No contact today, he counseled himself.

  He turned the key and fired the engine.

  * * *

  Sammy returned in his car less than five minutes after he had left the little tucked-away cul-de-sac. Driving across the junction of the lane, he glanced to the right and saw the grey Ford engaged in a turning manoeuvre. With a sudden prickle of adrenaline needling his stomach, he accelerated quickly past a parked car, executed a rapid U-turn by bumping up the kerb on both sides of the road, and came to a stop behind the stationary vehicle. He switched off the engine, mindful of the white exhaust fumes that would boil up so prominently in the frigid air, and waited. A few seconds passed before the nose of the Ford nudged out of the junction ahead of him, turned left and pulled away. Watching it through the glass of the car in front, Sammy started the engine again and pulled away from the kerb.

  Eight

  January 24th, Tuesday

  As the light of dusk overcame that fleeting wedge of winter daylight, Ryle found himself drifting towards the boundaries of the village, almost subconsciously. His search for a better target had become indolent, so comfortable had he grown with that morning’s find.

  In the end he had elected to target the first location over the second. There was little to choose between the two houses, and it hadn’t been a logical decision, rather a selection based on instincts. And Ryle trusted his instincts–they had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  So tomorrow morning he would return to the house, and wait–perhaps for the subject to return from work, or maybe Ryle would be the benefactor of some auspicious twist of fate and the subject would take the day off. Everything would work out though, either way.

  * * *

  Sammy found that he could not rely on any facet of his military training as he tailed the grey Ford around the village all day. Tracking a vehicle through safe streets presented a range of disparities compared to stalking an enemy through war-racked Kabul, and he found himself falling back on scenes from the movies over anything he had learned in the Paratroopers.

  Safe streets…

  Perhaps not, he reflected, and the skin on the backs of his arms grew tight, the flesh chilled.

  The car had moved gradually west, towards the exit of the village, and by 5pm, as darkness fell, had reached the junction onto the main A-road running northeast-southwest. Sammy was glad of the retreating daylight, for it would facilitate his pursuit; the driver would see only an anonymous pair of headlights in his mirrors, and as rush-hour approached the roads would be heavily populated; safety in numbers.

  For the first time in over a week the temperature had edged above freezing and now the rain washed away the last traces of slushy ice. The brittle, star-studded night sky which had hung suspended over the village like a jewelled carapace now lay concealed behind a massing blanket of cloud, and the orange glow from the streetlights was hazy with the mist of precipitation.

  After four miles the Ford drifted into a filter lane at a set of traffic lights. Without indicating, it turned right into the sprawling new housing area and, allowing the distance between hunter and quarry to stretch, Sammy followed. It was as though he were entering the jaws of the beast, that behind him teeth of brick and tarmac and steel would snap shut, trapping him in the domain of his enemy.

  He shook his head, ridding himself of the image, and plunged further into the housing area, towards the undeveloped section.

  * * *

  Ryle drew up at his usual spot–a curving avenue of steel girders and semi-constructed foundations, a world of dark red earth, now slick and heavy with rainwater, crossed with the tracks of earth-moving machinery. Around him, on the em
pty plots, bulldozers and heavy lifting machines lay still in the darkness, huge metal scoops clotted with mud, hanging like great slumbering heads above the ground. It was the perfect night time retreat–completely isolated from civilisation, devoid of human attentions until the morning.

  He sighed, content with his plans for tomorrow, and picked up his book. He would read to empty his mind, and then visit the little portaloo which the construction engineers had so conveniently left for him a five minute walk away, before bedding down for the night. He liked to sleep early, partly to overcome the boredom of having nothing else to do, and partly to compensate for a propensity for early rising.

  * * *

  When the driver turned into the dark construction area Sammy was forced to quit his vehicular pursuit; the dazzling headlights in the rear view mirror would have been conspicuous on those uninhabited streets. So he parked at a kerb and climbed out, squinting against the rain, wishing he had dressed more appropriately.

  Sammy hadn’t realised how vast this development was–the size of a small town. He paced the dead, mud-strewn streets, keeping close to the semi-constructed houses, peering through windows devoid of glass, hunting for the car. Subconsciously he caught himself looking for trails of debris, hidden wires, watchers in windows. Felt his jaw ache with remembered tension.

  Not here, he berated himself. This isn’t Kabul.

  –And therein, he conceded, was the danger. Here, in this arena, he was a newcomer. A recruit.

  When he saw it, parked on smooth new tarmac that was brown with mud, he shuddered, suddenly glancing behind him. The car was empty.

  Sammy edged through an open doorway and into the steel skeleton of a house whose brickwork rose only to the height of where the ground floor ceiling would be. He stepped over the undulant carpet of mud which clung to his trainers, weighting his feet, and moved across to the far window from where he could see the grey Ford, motionless, quiet in the gloom. He longed for some night-vision goggles, some equipment from his other life which would give him the advantage. And yet here he was, unarmed, poorly dressed, ill equipped, with only his wits and instincts for protection. He took a breath, released it slowly. There was but one choice open to him. Slowly, peering through the gauze of rain, he went back to the doorway and exited the house, edging towards the empty car.

  * * *

  Ryle stepped out of the portaloo, not offended by its poor state of refinement, only grateful for the convenience, and began the short walk back to shelter and what he hoped would be a peaceful night’s sleep. Lately he had been plagued by troubling dreams–not of his military days but of the strange, dark voice of Serus. Nothing intimidated Ryle; he had faced danger and the threat of death for days on end, endured desert temperatures of almost fifty degrees and the bone-chilling grip of Himalayan winter, and yet this one man at Sylexon made the hairs on his arms stand up. The voice was portentous, charged with icy power, somehow menacing in its very tone. Ryle shuddered, increasing his gait as he hurried back to the car.

  Nine

  January 24th, Tuesday

  Sammy let his fingertips feather the door handle. The metal was ice-cold and slick with rainwater. For the hundredth time he scanned the darkness in every direction. He drew a breath, held it a few moments, all the time aware of the quietly ticking clock counting away the seconds until the return of the car’s owner.

  There was no sound above the wet click of rain on mud and the harder thud as it fell onto the metal and glass of the car. The watery deluge impaired that most vital of senses, so that he could not even hear the rumble of rush hour traffic coursing the by-pass, let alone the stalking footfall of his enemy.

  To hesitate was to steep the odds against him, so, exhaling, he gently tugged at the handle. He sensed the creak of the spring beneath his fingers, then the clunk as the latch disengaged.

  * * *

  The rain was miserable and it quickly saturated Ryle’s hair until it clung wetly to his scalp. He had no desire to change his attire, but if they absorbed too much water he would be forced to–it wasn’t healthy to sleep in a cold environment wrapped in wet clothing. He quickened his step, picking his way across the slick clods of earth, careful not to slip into some unseen pipe ditch.

  The car would be dry and, if he ran the engine for just a little while, warm.

  * * *

  Sammy gasped involuntarily as the interior light flared like a warning beacon. Quickly, he climbed into the passenger seat and yanked the door shut behind him. The little lamp, so bright above his head, died with exquisite slowness, fading by degrees over what seemed a lifetime. With the vehicle’s interior alight, he was entirely blind to the outside world–and starkly visible to anyone looking in.

  Finally the lamp went out, and immediately one sense supplanted another; in the darkness he could suddenly pick out the smells of a lived-in vehicle: the subtle fragrance of the air-freshener which dangled from the mirror; an underlying scent of meat and breadcrumbs; and the more personal, conflicting aromas of deodorant and musty clothing. Withdrawing his phone, Sammy pointed its glowing face about the car, cursing his lack of foresight to bring a pen-light.

  On the floor at his feet was a grey plastic briefcase, functional rather than aesthetic in design. Trying to avoid muddying it with his feet, he bent down and flicked the catch. It opened, and when he saw what lay inside the blood drained from his face.

  * * *

  The one advantage to Ryle’s hideout was at that moment a marked impediment. The darkness of his temporary realm meant that he had to navigate the landscape of mud and brick and half-completed streets by memory alone, unable to rely on sight to guide him back to the car. And the rain made it worse, further obscuring the steel beams and jagged brickwork behind a grey mist. Somewhere straight ahead of him though, along this newly tarmacked road, was his car. Normally he would have been able to spot it from here, but in these conditions it was invisible–

  –no, not quite invisible. There was the softest haze of blue-white light a hundred metres or so in front of him. Strange how the tricks of the rainfall played with his perception of it, as though the pale phosphorescence was pulsing, fading and then glowing brighter. And what was the source of the light? Had he failed to shut the door properly? Squinting against the rain, frowning as his senses warned, Ryle broke into a steady jog.

  * * *

  The device, at close range, looked like something from an alien film, some kind of probe. It was metal, somehow sterile in appearance, sinister yet delicate. Intricate. Like a gun, but skeletal, with a framework to contain some kind of receptacle perhaps where the barrel of a handgun would be. At the muzzle end was a tube-like housing, again designed to contain some other implement. Most disturbing of all though was the trigger, which appeared to have a linkage to some kind of plunger behind the muzzle. Fumbling through the functions of his phone, struggling to control the applications on the wet screen, Sammy selected the device’s camera and snapped two quick photos. He would have taken more but the phone’s automatic flash was a silver glare that would have betrayed his presence to anyone close by.

  He glanced out through the windows – blank, black screens streaming with water as if the very glass were melting. He could distinguish nothing at all of the outside world.

  Hurrying, he closed the briefcase and turned his attention to the glove compartment.

  * * *

  Ryle stopped dead, feet anchored to the wet road surface. Were they flashes? Coming from within his car? He rubbed his eyes, not sure whether he had imagined the two quick stabs of light ahead of him, or if they had been nothing more than sparks in his vision as his feet smacked against the ground. He altered his course, skirting around to the right so as to approach the car from behind.

  * * *

  A cascade of white paper slips poured onto the open door of the glove compartment. No, not slips–packets. Little sachets.

  Sammy picked one up between finger and thumb and turned it over, studying it. One side was white pa
per, the other a transparent film. Holding the illuminated screen of his phone closer to the clear side he studied its contents.

  A syringe needle. Just like medics used, or the family doctor for that matter. He had seen them countless times, had watched the doctor tear open the packet prior to the administration of his inoculation before travelling to some tropical location on exercise.

  There were so many of them–a hundred maybe–all threatening to spill out of the glove compartment in a glistening white wave. He kept one and ushered the rest back in before closing the door. It was time to leave. Right now.

  Pocketing the sachet, he opened the door and stepped out into the hissing rain.

  Ten

  January 24th, Tuesday

  In order to approach his car from the rear, Ryle was necessitated to weave behind the shell of a half-built house, its glassless windows staring out across the dark, mud-soaked landscape like black eyes. For thirty seconds or so, as he stalked along the back wall where the garden would eventually be laid, the brick carapace shielded the car from his view. He picked his way slowly through the darkness across the humped earth, testing each footfall for ditches and abandoned masonry or cabling, to the far corner of the building.

  He inched his face out from around the sharp edge of brick, eyes stinging as rainwater carried a stream of old, diluted hair gel onto the delicate membranes of his corneas.