Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘Who rumbled Mal?’ Syd said. ‘I’d like to know that, Preston.’

Devereaux tossed his cigarette end into the pit.

‘Who told you about the Gullet?’ he said.

‘You were going to take Tim back that way, right? You waited for… Mr Robinson to leave, and then you were in with the spiked Scotch and time to go home, Tim. How desperate was that?’

‘Who told you about the Gullet?’

‘Hugo, actually.’

‘ Hugo? ’ Devereaux looking at him at last.

‘We have to get our information where we can.’

‘Where is he? Syd, he’s a boy.’

‘He’s no more a boy than half the drug barons in Birmingham. And if you tell me he hasn’t killed anybody, I wouldn’t be sure and neither could you. Can’t control these boys like you used to, can you? Let them go too far down the road. Maybe that’s another reason Old Wychehill’s been fallow for a bit, you trying to rein Louis in before it’s too late. Tell me who rumbled Mal.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or tell the police when they get here, I don’t mind. It’ll add to what they’ll have learned from Hugo, already naming names faster than they can write them down.’

‘Hugo doesn’t know any names.’

‘Boy goes around with his eyes shut, does he? It’s over, Preston, it’s disintegrating as we speak. That’s what I’m trying to get across to you.’

‘You’ve told me some far-fetched theories, that’s-’

‘ That ’s because I’m not trying to trick you, mate. And because I’ve been trying, maybe not too successfully, to be a priest. Sometimes, especially lately, I have to keep reminding myself that that’s what I am now. I can look at this situation and see clearly what would be the best way of dealing with it if I was still in the Army.’

‘The situation being?’

‘The situation being a dangerous young man out there, and probably more dangerous because he’s frightened and not really, with his background, the big gangster he thinks he is. He’s clever, but clever’s not the same as smart. Police see what Louis did, it’s an Armed Response Unit. Marksmen all over the hills. The soldier in me would take him out ASAP. Expedience. But the priest doesn’t want another death. Not even Louis’s.’

‘And how would the priest avoid that?’

‘I think… by letting you walk away like you did a short time ago. You presumably know where he is, so you can explain to him what I’ve just explained to you, and then the two of you can walk into a police station of your choice.’

‘Or leave the country.’

‘Leaving young Hugo to take all the weight? Nah. You’ve got some honour left. It’s the best thing you can do as a father and a clever man. Exercise some control over your boy. Tell him it’s pointless.’

Preston Devereaux straightened his back, hands on his knees. There was a glaze of sweat on his forehead under the line of his cap.

‘Where’s the point in that, Syd, when you’ve already told him?’

Perhaps Louis Devereaux had been there the whole time. Plenty of cover. Coppices and dells.

Perhaps Syd had known this. He half-turned and looked up at Louis with no surprise.

Merrily was on her feet, backing away, instinctively looking for Lol, but seeing only Louis Devereaux, a half-silhouette in the grey light, as still, for a moment, as any of the oaks, arms extended, rigid as dead branches, both hands clasped around the pistol.

‘Where’d you buy that, Louis?’ Syd said mildly. ‘ Very professional. They say you can get them in Hereford these days. Glock?’

The gun twitched.

‘Move away from my father, Rector.’

‘What for? Which one of us you planning to shoot to prove your old man isn’t in control any more?’

‘And shut up.’

‘Shouldn’t that be shut the fuck up? Got to get the tone right, the correct phraseology.’

‘ Shut the -’ Louis’s hands jerking around the pistol. ‘I could kill you now.’

‘Or blow me away, even. Blow all of us away. That’d simplify things a lot. Like that feller in Hungerford in the 1980s. You probably don’t remember that, you’d’ve been just a kid, but he shot himself in the end. Like the bloke at Dunblane. It always ends where they shoot themselves.’

Merrily couldn’t move. Louis was panting with rage and frustration and probably fear. On a hot night, it was the most unstable combination imaginable. And all Syd had was…

‘The other ending is death by Armed Response Unit. Like I’ve already told your father, lots of police marks-men all over the hills. Automatic rifles. Night sights. Make that thing look like a spud gun and you like the crass amateur you undoubtedly are.’

‘You make one more… remark like that and then-’

‘And for a while you get to learn what it was like for all the foxes you used to hunt. Only with not even the faintest possibility of an earth to escape to. No escape at all from those boys. Terrorism-trained, now, and they don’t take any chances. At some stage one of them gets you in the cross-hairs and takes you out. You don’t even see him taking aim. Like a wasp doesn’t see the rolled-up newspaper.’

Syd standing there with his arms by his sides, an unmoving target. Merrily’s heart going, Please God, please God, please God.

‘We can get away,’ Louis said. ‘Any time we want. Just a question of whether-’

‘Nah. It doesn’t happen, son, not at this level.’

‘-Whether we leave you fucking dead when we go.’

‘You don’t understand. You graduated to a new level of achievement tonight, mate,’ Syd said. ‘In the big school now. Where they spend millions hunting you down.’

Preston Devereaux stood up.

‘Can I talk to my son?’

‘Don’t ask me, Preston – he’s got the weapon.’

‘What do I do?’ Louis’s whole body bending backwards like a water-skier, tensed around the swivelling pistol. ‘ What do I do? ’

‘You probably give the gun to me,’ Preston said.

‘We can still get out of this. He’s got to be lying about armed police. We could-’

Louis turned, the pistol pointing directly at Merrily. She felt a spasm below her heart like a long needle going in.

‘-Take Mrs Watkins with us?’

‘And then what, Louis?’ Syd said. ‘Demand a helicopter? Grow up, son.’

‘Stay fuck-’ Louis spun but not at Syd. ‘Stay fucking there!’

Merrily, heart jumping, heard a cry from Lol.

‘… Tim! ’

Tim Loste was lumbering out from the tree. In his stained singlet, he looked like an old-fashioned butcher, arms sleeved in sweat, finger out, pointing at Louis.

‘You were wearing a… a balaclava.’

‘Don’t come any closer,’ Louis said, ‘you wanker.’

‘Recognize your voice. Wearing a balaclava with eyeholes.’

‘Louis,’ Preston Devereaux said, ‘it’s not necessary.’

‘Big knife. You had this big- She was screaming at you to stop, screaming and screaming and… and crying and you just… you bloody bastard-’

Tim tumbled, sobbing, into Louis and Louis shot him twice.

Seventeen

‘I went to sleep,’ Tim said. ‘Now I’m refreshed.’

He tried to laugh. A dry, skittering noise came out.

Merrily vaguely recognized the first words sung by the soul, after death, in The Dream of Gerontius.

‘Feel so much lighter,’ he said. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s very good.’ Time seemed to have slowed. The white clouds had diminished and so had the humidity. A small night breeze rattled among the boughs.

Tim said, ‘You’re jolly pretty. I didn’t… didn’t realize you’d be so young. Way Winnie talked, it was as if you were some old…’ He stopped for a breath. It was a terrifying noise, like a small breeze in a mound of dead leaves. ‘Doesn’t matter what Winnie said, does it?’