Down Cemetery Road Part 31

The mess wasn't as bad as he'd expected, actually. At least Amos had left all three in the bath.

III.

These were the missing days. Sarah spent them living a road movie: not the American variety, all sand-strewn horizons and miles of cattle wagons trundling over a prairie, but a homegrown version in which damp hedgerows featured largely, and the scenery lacked visible rhyme or reason. Dry stone walls appeared out of nowhere, ran humbly along lanesides for a mile or two, then vanished into the ground. Who decided that's where they should be? Fairytale trees, tough and withered as witches, jutted at dangerous angles from hillsides. She remembered Mark saying once that all the best road-books and films he was an infallible source of opinion were the product of foreign eyes celebrating things the natives never noticed: Nabokov setting American geography in motion; Wim Wenders discovering Texas to the sound of a steel guitar. Okay then: maybe she should have packed a pen or a camera. She had the refugee's eye all right; she was an alien in this landscape. A visitor from outer s.p.a.ce.

They had chosen to drive the back roads Michael had chosen to drive the back roads because, well, because that's what he'd chosen to do. She did not argue; if anything, they needed s.p.a.ce in which to conduct a reality check. It was not a reality she had ever expected to find herself in a hire-car with guns in the boot: you read about this happening in the States. It was always described as a spree, and there were always bodies left by the roadside. It ended with somebody strapped to a chair, waiting for the punishment to start.

She had to jerk herself out of these reveries. Remind herself whose side they were on.

The first night, they stopped at a farmhouse some miles from anywhere: if it had been possible to drive clear of Britain without noticing, they'd have managed it that day. The B&B sign by the verge also offered eggs, tomatoes, and, peculiarly, reconditioned fridges. The depredations on the farming industry had obviously been farther-reaching than she'd imagined. They took two rooms, the only two rooms, and in response to the landlady's raised eyebrow Sarah managed something about just being friends. They were not just friends. There was no word available to describe their relationship. That night she fell straight into heavy sleep, to be woken in the small hours by a barking dog, followed by the muttered cursing of, presumably, the farmer. The dog fell silent. So did everything else. Sarah got out of bed and went to look from the window; the surrounding countryside was dark as the far side of the moon. But as she gazed out, a car crested a hill in the distance, its sudden headlit appearance throwing everything into relief. She could make out the hillsides then; the occasional raggedy outbreak of hedge. Three trees in the near distance, their configuration an echo of a Station of the Cross. When the car pa.s.sed she returned to bed and slept once more, though this time there were dreams: savage, confused things over which hovered, somehow, the horror of crucifixion. The next morning, when they pa.s.sed those trees, they were innocent in the early light; neither young nor ancient; merely trees. She could as easily have had nightmares about the car she'd seen; a black demon chewing the darkness with its twin electric swords.

Michael never referred to his coughing fit. When she asked him directly he shrugged, and changed the subject.

That second day, still early, they parked on the edge of a wood. While Sarah watched for traffic, Michael fetched the guns from the boot and carried them into the trees. There she followed him, picking carefully over roots and fallen branches; skirting mud puddles and suspicious piles of leaves Michael didn't seem to notice, though he didn't stumble either. He stopped in a clearing and laid the shotgun on the ground. He had not broken it the way you were supposed to: the code of the countryside. Presumably he followed a different set of rules.

Out on the road, a car drove past. Its engine noise tugged at her heart; the ease with which it left the area, disappeared into somebody else's future.

He found a tin can lying under a tree there wasn't an empty s.p.a.ce in the country you couldn't find a rusting can and lodged it in a branch before pacing the clearing, measuring ten steps. 'Any further than this,' he said, 'you're definitely going to miss.'

'I'm not going to shoot anybody.'

'Are you going to let them shoot you?'

'I don't suppose it'll be a straight choice,' she said.

He loaded the handgun. 'Use both hands. Use your left to steady your right. On the wrist, like this.' He demonstrated. 'It'll kick back. Not a lot, but you need to expect it.'

'I don't want to fire your gun, Michael.'

He ignored her. 'Don't aim dead centre. Take your bearing and fire a little low. That way, when it pulls up, you're already compensating. When you're new to it, it almost always pulls up.'

'Fascinating. But no.'

'You know your problem, Tucker? You haven't sorted out yet which part's real and which part isn't.'

He turned, apparently casual, and shot the tin can from the tree. It made a lot of noise: not just the gun itself, whose low crack sounded like the splintering of last year's wood, but a racket all around as birds and unseen beasts took fright and fled. And then there was just a settling down, with, somewhere in the distance, a ba.s.s pulse, as if the gunshot were still out there, heading like h.e.l.l for the hills.

Michael retrieved the can and showed her its jaggy, bone-dry wound. 'See? It's made of tin. You can shoot it all you like, you'll never hurt it.'

'So what's the point?'

'We're not in Oz. Whoever's got Dinah, it's not the Tin Man.' He held the gun out for her. 'You might never have to use it. But if the time comes you do, you can't say Stop, I haven't practised.'

It was heavier than she'd have imagined. This was appropriate: machines that were made for taking life should have heft to them. You wouldn't want to take them lightly. This one, he'd already told her, was a German gun. A Luger. Not as old as the gun he'd broken back at Gerard's, but a wartime piece just the same. 'A collector's item.'

'But still illegal.'

When she looked at the can, it was miles away.

'Just imagine it's Rufus.'

This was crude, unnecessary, and did not work. Her first three shots went wide; only with the fourth could they measure how wide, because that time her bullet wound up buried in the tree itself. About a foot from the can.

'You're pulling to the right. Aim to the left.'

He showed her how to load, but didn't make her do it. He did make her try again. This time she emptied the gun, and came within a few inches of the can with her last shot: he said. She wasn't sure how he could tell.

After that, he picked up the shotgun.

(Back at Gerard's, while Michael smuggled the guns out, Gerard told her about the shotgun. 'Don't let him fire it without taking the plugs out,' he'd said.

'Plugs?'

'The barrels are plugged. Keeps dirt out. That's a b.l.o.o.d.y expensive gun, Sarah.'

'What would happen if he fired with them in?'

'He'd ruin it.' After a moment or two he added, 'Blow his hands off too, mind. Serve the b.u.g.g.e.r right.'

And she knew it was her he was thinking about. That he didn't want Michael handing her the gun; saying, Here. Have a go with this, and Sarah blowing her hands off.) She didn't need to bring it up. He broke the gun open, peered down the barrels, then upended the gun and pulled a cork from each with his little finger. They looked like corks: red ones, each with a loop in the end for easy removal. He dropped them into a pocket of his denim jacket, then scooped a handful of sh.e.l.ls from a box liberated from Gerard's cellar, and shovelled them into another.

'Watch.'

He loaded it, his eyes watching her rather than his hands; making sure she was following. Then cracked the gun back into a piece, pulled the hammers back, and with an action so smooth he might have been dancing brought the stock to his shoulder, levelled the barrels and fired.

The can disappeared. A good part of the branch went with it. This time there was no follow-up noise; no local creatures left to go bats.h.i.t with shock. Anything left in the area was already stone deaf or dead, themselves excepted. And she wasn't sure about her own hearing, once the roar of the gun had died away.

'You okay?'

'You hit it, then.' Her voice sounded funny in her head. As if it were echoing in a large, empty room.

'Missing it would have been a better trick. If it comes to a straight choice, use this.' His voice was level, serious. It always was, but holding a gun lent him gravitas. 'You point a handgun at a soldier, he'll take it off you. But if you're carrying one of these, he'll keep his distance. Here.'

This, too, was heavy. But in those first moments, she had nothing to compare it to: couldn't remember picking other things up. It was a tool for a job outside her scope, and only a sudden heavy scent of woodland carried on a draught through the clearing gave her the bearing: it was like work for an autumn day, work you did with the house behind you, and woodsmoke drifting on a steady wind. Like shouldering a rake once you're sure the job's done; or wielding a yard broom, clearing rubble from the foot of a tumbling wall.

It was not like housework.

'It'll kick,' Michael said. 'The thing is, don't drop it.'

She raised it to her shoulder, the way he had.

'Uh-uh. You'll end up with a bruise the size of Ireland. Fire from the hip. Just let your eyes point the way. We're not going for long-distance marksmanship here. All you need do is prove you're not afraid to fire it. Most situations, that'll get you the benefit of the doubt.'

When he was satisfied she was holding it correctly, she fired.

It kicked, yes: she felt the tug on her arms as if she were about to take off backwards. What she had been aiming at, she wasn't sure, but the sh.e.l.ls tore a hole in a bush she could have put her arm clean through. This was something she did not notice until regaining her balance: but she did not fall, did not drop the gun. For a short moment her vision pixelated, but that was all. The dead bush, the trees around her, were a vast confusion of blurred dots, as if she were standing too close to the screen they projected on to. And then it cleared, and the bush had a hole in it, and Michael was taking the gun away, showing her again how to break it open, feed it, lock it.

'One more time,' he said.

'No.'

'Don't think that's it. Shooting at people, it's a lot different.'

'I imagine,' she said, on her way back to the car.

'Bushes don't shoot back,' she thought he said. But by then she was deep among the green, tracking her way out of this narrow world of leaf and mud, and couldn't be sure of his words, or whether he meant that made it easier or harder.

That second night she had curled up on the car's back seat in a search for comfort calling on resources she didn't know she possessed. When she closed her eyes, her dream landscape rolled by at an unwavering forty miles an hour, with, every so often, the same barn, the same clutch of houses drifting past. Like a pointless ring road, her dream circled nowhere, endlessly, and trying to break free of it, she could only spin into the void. The trick was to keep going. Even a ring road had to lead somewhere.

Michael slept outside, on hard ground. It was a fine night, with a bright moon but cloud cover enough to keep frost at bay. He had bedded down worse, he a.s.sured her. And woken operational.

Earlier that day, they had crossed the gla.s.s border: that was what it felt like to Sarah. One moment they were driving along the road; the next they were doing exactly the same thing, only in another country. An invisible transference. In Scotland the sky was still blue; the radio, when they could hear it, still squawked war news. Sometimes, clearing gaps in the roadside, sudden winds buffeted the car, and she felt her heart leap sideways, bang against her ribs.

'Where do we go now?'

'North. Still north.'

The island, he told her, was offcoast from a village called Barragan. He had found it on a map, and was sure that was right.

They had other maps, but Sarah wondered if each didn't merely describe the area in which they were lost. Maps were a means to an end, but only took you so far. Wasn't there a fable about a king who demanded a map of his land so accurate, it would show every ditch, every bush, everything? And his map-makers had produced one on a scale of 1:1, and laid it over his land like a shroud . . . You might as well be stranded in the dark as blinded by the light. And besides, if they knew where their journey would take them, they'd end it here and now.

That afternoon, they parked in a lay-by where a van sold mugs of filthy sweet tea, and one of the other customers a man in a green sleeveless pullover: for some reason, that detail stuck with Sarah was driving a car with a for-sale sticker pasted to the rear side window. The car was a Citroen 2CV. A blue one. He was asking four hundred and fifty pounds, and his sign gave an abundance of detail about age, road tax, MOT: Sarah didn't pay attention, being more enthusiastic about the toilets which were the other main feature of this lay-by. But when she emerged, she found that Michael had bought the car.

'We've already got a car.'

'Now we've got a different one.'

'We just drive it away?'

'He'll take the VW.'

So Michael carried the guns from the old car in a jumble of jackets and a thin blanket; carried them so casually, it was as if they'd lost shape in the process. That must be what it's like, having guns a part of your life. Carry them like kitchen equipment, and n.o.body looks at them twice. Sarah, though, watched him, even if the man in sleeveless green was too busy double-counting his money; wondering, probably, if he'd not just been ripped off in a manner he hadn't tumbled to yet. Sarah felt like Faye Dunaway without the blonde; Michael, too, was no Warren Beatty. Besides, they were the good guys. But still: here they were, swapping cars, concealing guns. Unhappy feelings kicked inside her.

In the new car, this tinny thing, the wind's buffetings struck a lot more drastically. Sarah was driving now; had to learn to cope with that at the same time as picking up the car's habits. When she felt the gusts she had to lean into them, making the wheel a part of her own motion. This was the other trick of it. You had to bend to what was happening. You had to accommodate, to keep from being blown away.

All this time, a sense of their shifting status had been growing on Sarah. Quick glimpses of her stranger's face in the rear-view the sharp dark hair; the face narrower than she was used to reminded her that they were on the run; that she had adopted this new ident.i.ty, non-ident.i.ty, to throw their followers off the scent. But there were no followers. They were not fugitives. The flight from Oxford, the time in the hotel: these might have been the results of a misread script, because n.o.body was looking for them at all. She was a.s.sumed, if Gerard had told the truth, to have fled a crooked husband, and while this put her under the heading of missing, it did not mean she was actively sought. If what she had once read was true, thousands of people went missing every year. She was simply one of a huge population, a vast herd on the run from what had been their defining characteristics: pa.s.sports, driving licences, credit cards roaming now at will like invisible buffalo through indifferent landscapes. As for Michael, he was not part of the equation. n.o.body but Gerard knew they were together.

And Gerard hadn't reported the theft of his guns.

So there was no need to worry each time a police car hove into view. Whatever crimes she had been involved in, they had an element of perfection about them: there was even a killing so un.o.btrusive, it left not a body behind. Though still she flinched when the memory caught her unawares, and in her mind's eye trapped Rufus, or Axel, falling backwards, his blood a fine spray in the air.

It was an image that haunted her dreams that night, as she slept curled up on the car's back seat, looking for comfort that never came.

Next day she drove again; too wired to doze in the pa.s.senger seat. Michael traced their journey with a finger on the map: the roads afforded glimpses of the lochs. Spots of rain threatened, but never made good. The drive took three hours.

Three hours, and by the time Sarah drove the 2CV into Barra-gan she was beginning to suspect they'd bought a clunker: loose noises were rattling under its bonnet, as if some mechanical emergency were trying to break free. So much for the man in the green sleeveless pullover; you'd have thought, if you could trust anybody, somebody with an anti-culling sticker on his windscreen would be a good bet.

Michael said, 'You want to get something to eat?'

'I'm not hungry,' she said, without thinking about it.

'Well, I am.'

So was she. It was as if her body were admitting, at last, that she couldn't get by without it.

There was what amounted to a village square, though it wasn't square, and this was where she parked, under the low branches of a large tree. This stood in a plot of earth maybe three yards by four, around which, some time ago, concrete paving slabs had been laid. Now they were cracked and jutting at jagged angles, as what had been intended as some sort of framing device had become a testament to the inexorable defiance of trees. A row of shops lined one side of the square; houses two others; a garage and what seemed to be a health centre the fourth. One of the houses was a pub. This was where they went to eat.

The food was okay, nothing special; the service friendly, if distant. Michael ate like he did most things; as if it were an exercise, and you got marks for efficiency. She wondered how long it would take to get to know somebody like this; and if, after all, the effort would be worth it. Perhaps he'd been different once h.e.l.l, everybody was different once but perhaps he'd been different before that time in the desert; before the helicopter and the small gla.s.s bomb, and the melting boy soldiers. And still she wondered, too, why he had been chosen to be there in the first place. And if there were sins he'd yet to tell her about.

'We'll stay here tonight,' he said suddenly.

'We'll what?'

'Stay here. Tonight.'

So that was another decision taken, she thought bitterly. But knew, too, that the bitterness was token, was reflexive; because she had no other plans, and nothing to do with her life. Other than finding Dinah, of course. Meanwhile, she might as well stay here as anywhere.

So they booked a room in the inn after eating; a double room, because that was all that was on offer. Not that the village was heavily popular, but one double room was all the inn had. They didn't have much luggage: a couple of carrier bags. The changes of clothing Sarah had bought en route. The guns, they left in the boot of the car.

Afterwards Michael slept, while Sarah went for a wander round the village. By her watch, the wander didn't take more than fourteen minutes: on her second circuit she stopped at the newsagent's and bought a Reginald Hill paperback, and retreated to the bar where she read it cover to cover over the s.p.a.ce of the next four hours. It was the calmest afternoon she could remember. Joe was much on her mind, though. This thought kept intruding every time she raised her eyes from her page: that she'd killed him, as good as; that if not for her he'd be in his office now, waiting for the phone to ring, or rabbiting on to a new client about old clients he'd had . . . Zoe, too. Just a few days ago, though it seemed as many years, Zoe had pumped her full of salt water and emptied her of drugs: not a soft woman, Zoe. And she'd promised to check up on Sarah, though Sarah hadn't hung around long enough to be checked up on. Perhaps she should call Zoe. At least let her know she was all right.

That was another thought that wouldn't go away, once she'd had it. It felt like she'd run from a lot of responsibilities lately, and letting Zoe Boehm know she was alive would at least give her a small piece of credit: that was what she told herself, dialling Directory Enquiries from the telephone near the bar, and scribbling Oxford Investigations' number on the pad provided. But when she rang it, that was all that happened; it rang. Not even an answerphone. She pictured a vacant office, dust slowly thickening on its shelves; absence accruing minute by minute, as the empty room waited for a Joe who would never return. She had to hang up before her thoughts caused her to cry.

Oh G.o.d, she thought, dear Joe. Missing out on the rest of his life, because of her. Poor Joe, she wished him peace. Out there with the cosmos now. She had a sudden urge to see the stars.

The inn had a back garden where she found a bench and sat, suddenly overwhelmed by the luxury of being alone. For all the relatively early hour, it was dark now as a city girl could wish it, and though it was mild, she shivered under the big night sky. There were countless stars, each already dead perhaps, but the world wouldn't know that until the unborn generations had come and gone: all part of the cosmic joke that ensured that most important truths stayed well and truly out of reach. The time it took to see the light, the world itself had darkened. There was a degree of comfort in this, Sarah decided; that, divinely ordained or accidentally slamdunked into being, the arrangement of the universe was not without humour. Which in itself you could take as a sign that prayer was not without purpose.

The wind rustled leaves across the way. An unseen dog barked. Something skittered in the darkness and she exhaled slowly.

. . . There was this to say about the inky background of the cosmos, it covered a mult.i.tude of sins. And maybe the stars didn't know they were dead yet. Maybe that was why they continued to shine. Looking up at them now, Sarah understood for maybe the first time what a very tiny part of everything the world was, in a universe which was anyway expanding. This world itself would hardly be missed. What mattered were the little components that went up to making human life. If Dinah didn't matter, n.o.body did. One of the few important truths within Sarah's reach.

'There's always a good night sky here,' Michael said behind her.

She hadn't heard him arriving.

After a while, he added, 'We used to look at the sky a lot, when we were on the island. One of the others, he knew we were in Scotland. He could tell by the stars.'

'Was that Tommy?'

'No. But it's how Tommy and I knew where we were when we landed.'

'Where was that?'

'A little way up the coast.' He gestured. 'We found a church by the side of a wood. Well, a chapel. Deserted, it was. Funny place for it, really. We sheltered there that first night. Sanctuary, you'd call it.'

He said no more but stood, like her, drinking in the vast s.p.a.ces above them. And Sarah was surprised to find that she had grown comfortable with his company. Liking didn't enter it. Liking was for people you met, then chose to meet again. This was trust, and trust was for those who taught you to use a gun, then stood close while you fired. Years ago, she'd come through a baptism of pain to find a life with Mark, and had thought she could trust him because she'd imagined it was something they'd come through together. But Mark had simply been on the sidelines; picking up the pieces and arranging them how he'd wanted. And when that fell apart, or at least when his hopes did for the books and the successes; the life of academic achievement he'd come to expect he rearranged it all again, and settled for the money. In time, even that hadn't been enough. She wondered how long it had taken him to rationalize his crime; to talk himself through to the other side of the scruples he'd once had. And supposed that when you were denied what you really wanted, you didn't see why you shouldn't have everything else. The money. The mistress. The works.