Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

‘I’ve got a library card,’ said Geoff, in a very loud voice, standing to attention.

‘Is it true?’ said Arnie.

An upstairs light in a house across the street winked on.

David said, ‘You’d better come in.’

Arnie and Geoff wobbled into the living room, not taking off their shoes and coats, and David shut the door and followed them. They sat side by side on the sofa, hands in their laps, attention fixed on the television screen and the end of the film David had been watching.

‘Rocky ,’ said Geoff. ‘Brilliant.’

Sylvester Stallone was sweaty, desperate, having his eye cut so he could continue to see the killer punches coming. David took the remote from the arm of the chair and switched it to mute. ‘Marianne’s gone back to the island,’ he said. ‘She’ll probably write to you, once she’s ready.’

‘I’m not reading any letters from that place,’ said Arnie. He had a patchy grey beard that made him look even more unkempt than usual, and the smell of beer wafted out from him in waves. ‘Listen, come to the pub with us.’

‘It’s closed.’

‘Not now, boy.’ Arnie shook his head at Geoff, who tittered. They had become a circus double-act, stuck together, gurning at each other for their own amusement.

‘Listen,’ said David, ‘it’s really late—’

‘The way I see it,’ Arnie said, ‘that bastard hurt Marianne, am I right? He hurt my daughter. I’ll be honest, I might not have cared about it much five or six years ago. All I cared about was the cubes. I’ve mowed Mags’s lawn, if you get my drift, every Saturday for the past decade because of losing on the cubes. But I don’t owe her any more favours now and I don’t need the cubes any more. I used to need them to know stuff, but now it comes to me anyway.’

David sat down in the armchair. Rocky had just lost the match and was calling for Adrian, his pulped wreck of a mouth hanging open. ‘What kind of stuff?’

‘Other people. I’d drink the medicine down, and then I’d go in the back room and see other people living their lives. Marianne, in her library. Vanessa reading, in the darkness, always reading. Like mother like daughter. And now I see it in my dreams, at night. I saw what happened to her. I saw that man come into the library. I know his face. I know how to get him. Into cameras, isn’t he?’

‘Once, with the cubes, I was watching a big fight,’ said Geoff, his eyes still fixed on the screen. The credits were rolling. ‘There was one in red trunks and one in blue, and I was in the corner, with the stool, waiting for the bell to ring. I don’t know what it meant.’

‘We can stop him,’ said Arnie. ‘Well, you can. With our help. Before he does it again.’

‘He won’t use the library,’ David heard himself saying, while another part of his brain shouted about the ridiculousness of it. ‘The library staff are never alone now. And it’s being staked out by the police.’

‘It’s not bloody America here yet, mate. They don’t have the staff to keep that up for long. Give it two weeks and they’ll have to call it off. Then you’ll be ready to step in.’

‘What makes you think he’ll come back anyway?’

‘That’s what he does. Besides—’ Arnie tapped his nose. ‘He won’t be able to resist it. We’ll make sure of that.’

David stood up. He couldn’t reach a decision. Was some sort of plan forming? Arnie and Geoff were the last companions he would have picked for this mission, but they did seem to be committed. They were both sitting up straight now, looking more focused. Maybe having something to think about other than the cubes was doing them good.

Arnie raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’

He could tell them to go, and they would. Probably without much of an argument. But did he really want to do this alone?

‘I’ll put on some coffee,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to sober up if we’re going to really talk about this.’

‘White, two sugars,’ said Geoff.

‘I’ll take it as it comes, son,’ said Arnie, with a smile. ‘And then we’ll talk about what you need to do tomorrow to kick this thing off.’

‘Isn’t tomorrow a repatriation day?’

‘It is. It’s too much for him to resist. You’ll see.’

The credits had finished rolling, and the late news had started. David turned the volume back up, and let the sounds of battles and blood from around the world reach him as he went into the kitchen, switched on the kettle and waited for it to boil. Things were escalating. It wasn’t his imagination. Hatred was growing, proliferating, and it was his job to stop it.

The feeling in the crowd was different.

Usually, on repatriation days, there was a quiet air of solemnity over the town. People spoke in lowered tones, and many of them wore dark colours. It had become a tradition, and although David was aware of the undercurrent that existed between the serial mourners who turned up just for the catharsis of the occasion and the true locals who tried to go about their daily lives in the packed high street on such days, this level of tension was new to him. It was heavy, blanketing the people as they waited for the hearses, nine of them, the most amount of deaths to make up a cortege. The faces in the crowd were beyond sad. They were angry.

David stood back in the chemist’s doorway and wondered how Arnie had picked it up before it had even begun. Could there have been talk in The Cornerhouse? But then, nobody went there any more. Instead, apparently, all the drunks were out on the streets at night, hanging about, breaking car windows, stealing when they got the chance. The local paper had dedicated its front page to the ‘crime spree’ that had hit Wootton Bassett, warning locals not to go out at night until the police had cleared up the problem.

A rougher element had descended on the town: bikers, that was the general gossip going around at David’s office. But he didn’t see any new faces waiting for the hearses that afternoon. They all looked familiar, set in intensity, each one wearing the same expression as the next in the row along the kerb. There were very few women and children. Men stood alone, and the sense of danger was thickening, intensifying, until it was as palpable as a storm waiting to break over the street.

The first hearse drove past.

Something terrible was about to happen. He could feel it. The second car in the cortege was level with him when the banners went up, three of them, painted red words on ripped white sheets, waving back and forth, so the only words he could make out were WAR, FUCK, DEATH – and then the crowd rumbled, pulled back and sprang forward as one to engulf the banners and those that held them.

The hearses came to a stop as men spilled out onto the street. Some threw themselves onto the bonnets of the cars, hammering with their hands and feet. David heard breaking glass and screams, coming from further down the road. Someone stumbled into him, blocking his view, grabbing at his shirt. He pulled back into the protection of the doorway and shoved, hard, until the man fell back. Another took his place, with fists raised. David’s instincts told him to duck, then aim for the gut. He connected with the white T-shirt ahead of him, felt the flesh and fat underneath give. But he was in the swell of the crowd now, moving away from the doorway. Bodies were all around him, pressing, pushing, jostling, falling into fights, the street overtaken with battles, and in the distance, police sirens, pressing closer.

Then he saw her.

She was standing by the fifth hearse, holding the door handle on the driver’s side, with her baton in her other hand, held up over her head like an exclamation mark. She was trying to reach two men on the roof of the car; more were attempting to climb up from the other side. The aloneness of her was starkly visible. Her black and white uniform stood out, even though she was so small, in a sea of men. It terrified him to see her that way, as a target. He called out her name, couldn’t even hear his own voice over the noise of the crowd, and started to push towards her, not taking his eyes from her in case she disappeared under the weight of the uniform.