Nicholas Royle - Regicide

I was dragged up onto the back of a trailer and the tailgate was bolted after me. Four guards shared the trailer with me, each armed with a baton and an old-fashioned rifle. A sixth person — a woman — was helped up into the trailer as it began to move off through the crowds. When the woman turned around I saw it was Maxi. She was holding a straight razor in her right hand. My chest tightened and my throat dried. However poor the prospects for survival, the promise of pain is never easy to bear. Hence a dying man’s desire to commit suicide.

While the guards concentrated on the crowd so they could avert any attempt to kill me before the appointed time, Maxi set about finishing off the haircut she had started. Although a double-crosser, she was at least a familiar face.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked her as she grasped a handful of my hair and sliced cleanly through it. The razor was so sharp it almost wasn’t there.

‘You know where we’re going,’ she whispered.

‘How do they do it?’ I asked.

‘They have different ways.’

Part of me believed there had to be a way out. With my hands still secured by the plastic tie, however, it was going to be difficult. A stone thrown from the crowd hit me on the leg and my sudden movement caused Maxi to nick my scalp. It was so hot and sharp I didn’t realise until I felt the warm trickle of blood — stickier and thicker than sweat — make its way down past my ear. One of the guards fired over the crowd.

‘What about afterwards?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean, afterwards?’ she hissed. ‘There is no afterwards. This is it. The big one.’

‘Do I get buried, eaten by dogs, or what?’

She didn’t answer, just carried on shaving my head. I could tell she was being careful to avoid cutting me.

‘So?’ I insisted.

‘You know this place,’ she said mysteriously.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Hey, King killer!’ It was one of the guards. He thumped my shoulder with the butt of his rifle. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

The trailer rumbled on and eventually the guard had to turn his attention back to the mob below. Fists shaking, eyes rolling, they kept up their tirade of abuse.

‘They’ve systematically been slaughtering suspects here for years,’ Maxi continued. ‘But this place doesn’t follow your rules. The dead won’t lie down.’

‘They can’t kill me?’ I said.

‘They can kill you. And they will. But you won’t lie down and be buried.’

She fell silent, chopping away at what was left of my hair. I watched it fall to the floor of the trailer, hoping I would get a chance to grow it again. I wondered if they’d let me have a last cigarette. I still had a couple of Camels down my left boot, if they weren’t squashed beyond smoking by now.

‘I was reading a book before I came here,’ I told her, ‘in which the action constantly switched between two worlds. In one of them, the king was due to be assassinated, but then his body turned up in the other. And although one thread featured an unnamed first-person narrator and the other a protagonist called Boris, you sensed they were the same person. I wish I could just switch back to the other world like Boris could.’

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ she said in a whisper. ‘That’s what they’re going to do. Take you into your world. As the train crosses over, the dead lie down.’

‘What train? And then what? Do they bring the bodies back?’

‘No. If they did so, they’d just get up again. It’s that kind of place.’ She dragged the dry razor over the dome of my head, now almost bald. ‘They leave them there. In your world.’

The trailer was pulled off the main road into a grid of short straight side streets. The crowd was no longer stationary. Thousands of people were streaming through the streets alongside us, hundreds more joining the flow from other streets and back entries. I knew where we were going. There hadn’t been any sign of a football stadium on my map but I didn’t doubt that was where we were heading. I didn’t have long. There had to be some break in the network of streets. I needed another element. I needed an escape route. My eyes searched the back streets and patches of waste ground, searching for the interstices.

There had to be one somewhere. It should be part of the geography of this part of the City. Every urban area had its grey area on the edge of the inner city. Derelict housing, old warehouses, dead industry, waste land, football grounds, railway sidings, gasholders, canals. Brownfield sites, interzones, edgelands.

I pictured the football ground. I imagined the splash of green under the floodlights. I imagined being led to the middle of the pitch — and then what? Would there be a gibbet? A trapdoor? A guillotine? A simple post and a firing squad?

Then I saw what I wanted, glinting like a seam of jet in redundant rock. A narrow, oil-black canal threading its way between the backs of two streets. The street we were on would go over it in fifty yards or so. Not a bridge as such, the width of the canal hardly merited it, but there was just a chance. In my position the slightest chance was worth taking. If I fell to my death at least I would have chosen the manner of my going, which was preferable to whatever execution the authorities had planned for me in the stadium.

Right at the last moment the truck that was pulling the trailer seemed about to turn off into another street away from the canal. My mouth filled with the acid taste of fear. But the truck bumped onwards. I looked at the guards. They were watching the flow of humanity in the streets. The trailer was drawn past the last row of houses before the canal and past the back entry whose cobbles shone in the orange light like fat little fish. I jumped.

In the air my arms came free. The plastic tie had been cut clean through. Only a razor would have produced such a clean cut. I didn’t have time to protect my face or hold my nose before striking the water. It went up my nostrils as I sank deeper and felt my leg hit the bottom. Thinking my head was about to burst I turned and headed under the road, swimming underwater. I couldn’t open my eyes but I heard the bullets that tore through the water on either side of me. I dived deeper and swam along the bottom for as long as I could before I had to come up for air.

Despite the desperate need to empty my passages and breath fresh air I surfaced slowly and quietly.

I found myself in total darkness. I could hear a far-off rumble and clamour, the thump of my pulse, and a constant drip, presumably from the ceiling of the tunnel. I cleared my throat, took a few deep breaths and swam on. The taste of the canal water in my mouth was bitter and nauseating. My boots were slowing me down but if I got rid of them I knew I’d regret it later. I put everything into moving my arms and legs, thrusting forward and pushing water behind me, kicking back as if there were dogs snapping at my heels. Just when I was beginning to think I couldn’t swim another stroke, I saw light up ahead. I listened but couldn’t hear anything apart from my own echoing splashes.

Even with the tunnel exit in sight it was the cold that now got to me. My limbs felt as if they had been packed in ice and I had started to shiver violently. I forced myself on by willpower, thinking of Annie Risk. If she was in danger I had to get back for her sake as well as mine. The distraction of her image gave me a few more strokes.

Ten yards from the end of the tunnel, I dived and swam as far as I could, then veered to the left-hand side and broke the surface. Water dripped off my nose.

The tow path and nearby streets were empty. I clambered out and sat on the bank, taking off my boots and emptying them. A minute later I set off again, trotting along the tow path, looking for what I guessed I would come across sooner or later. Only two hundred yards further on I found what I wanted: a railway bridge. I climbed up the side and walked onto the line. Nothing was coming from either direction.