Nicholas Royle - Regicide

I stood outside Annie’s place for half a minute looking up at her window for signs of life. The light was on but there were no shadows of movement. Pushing open the street door I felt my way through the gloom of the hallway to the stairs and began to climb. My legs felt heavy. At the top I hesitated outside Annie’s door and listened again. Nothing. I knocked and waited. There was no sound of activity from within so I knocked again, louder. Still nothing. I tried the handle. The door swung open.

‘Annie,’ I said quietly as I walked into her flat. ‘Annie, are you there?’

The bathroom on my right was in darkness. I checked it nevertheless. It was empty. The little flints of mirrored glass on the wall flickered in the light from the hall. The kitchen was also empty, dirty mugs left standing on the draining board and take-away boxes sticking out of the top of the bin. The light I’d seen from outside was burning in the bedroom, but Annie wasn’t there either. The bed was unmade. I glanced in the living room. Empty. I stepped back into the hall then straight back into the living room, my heart in my mouth: I’d glimpsed something on the living room wall and only assimilated it unconsciously.

On the wall in two-foot-high letters — in red — were the crudely daubed words KING KILLER.

I looked in the empty bedroom again. The unmade bed. The light.

My breathing became quick and shallow. Where was Annie Risk?

It was too late to get a train anywhere and when I sat down on Annie’s bed to think about what I could do to find her I must have given in to exhaustion because the next thing I knew I was waking up. Light was streaming in at the window. I felt a momentary elation that I was back and then I remembered that Annie was missing. I got up and looked in the other room: I had not dreamt the message on the wall. The red seemed a little less vivid in daylight. Or maybe it was just that it was six hours later and no longer fresh. It had acquired the rusty look of dried blood.

I showered, shaved and dressed in ten minutes, and left the flat.

On my way to Piccadilly I bought a bap, a pack of Camels and a newspaper, which told me it was a Wednesday. So what? On the train I soon put it down unread: I couldn’t concentrate on this world while Annie was being held hostage for me in another. The Camels, however, tasted good after the stale muck available in the City.

Arriving in London I went straight to the shop. I pushed the door open against a wodge of circulars, free newspapers and bills. I trailed my finger through a layer of dust on the counter, thought about sticking a record on the turntable and decided against it, in case it turned out to be the recording of my court case. I sat in the back room for a while with a cup of instant coffee and a couple of cigarettes, then went up the back stairs to use the toilet. I sat there looking at the picture of a figure skater in the Winter Olympics I’d clipped from one of the Sunday supplements and tacked to the inside of the door. About to go into a spin, she had already started to turn and twirl her star-speckled black skirt.

I walked downstairs, lit another Camel, stuffed the pack down the side of my left boot and left the shop by the back door.

I found myself stepping directly into a back entry in the City. The air was thicker, warmer on my shaved cheeks. I walked with confidence now I had some purpose other than my own salvation. Soon I was among the crowds. People streamed out of an official-looking building carrying brown paper parcels stencilled with the letter W. I guessed — or understood, as you do in a dream — that W stood for Wednesday, as M had stood for Monday; today’s news on the hunt for the escaped King killer. Twenty yards further on was a street-corner judge. I approached him.

‘I want to hand myself in,’ I said. ‘It’s me you’re looking for. I killed the king.’

He became flustered, calling excitedly for the police. I felt sorry for him. His big chance and he was making a muck of it.

A crowd gathered around us, backing off when they realised what was going on. There was no abuse this time, no angry recriminations, maybe because they hadn’t yet had the chance to go home and read their information packs and shoot up whatever drugs the City fed them. It took about three minutes for the police to turn up. I was pushed roughly into the back of a van and driven away. One officer sat in the back with me, restraining a dog. When the van turned a corner, we all lurched in one direction. Eventually the driver braked sharply, I heard footsteps and then the doors were flung open. The dog chased me out into the midday brightness. I blinked, rubbed my eyes.

‘Where is she?’ I demanded. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where she is.’

Ignoring me, one of the guards grabbed me by the arm and led me through a large open doorway. We walked down a long, green-tiled corridor, my guard’s heels snatching metallically at the paved floor. He pushed me to the left through a set of double doors and I stumbled into a reception area. Trophy cabinets stood empty in the middle of the floor. I smelt disinfectant and other institutional smells that made me think of hospitals. A group of people stood waiting for me. Their buckles and buttons gleamed in the harsh light of a single fluorescent strip. A small figure ran out of the centre of the group towards me. The guard let go of me, I opened my arms and Annie Risk bowled headlong into me, almost knocking me over.

They allowed us a few moments. The smell of her hair was instantly familiar despite the fact I’d known her for such a short time. She looked up and I wiped her tears away. And then mine.

‘Carl,’ she said. ‘Carl, Carl.’

‘Don’t cry, Annie,’ I said.

‘Carl, you’re sick. You’ve got to get better,’ she said, brushing her lovely long black hair out of her eyes. ‘All this running around…’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get better.’

‘Yes, Annie,’ I said, not letting her see my confusion. ‘I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. I’m feeling better already.’

Had they drugged her? Brainwashed her? Perhaps it wasn’t the end of the world. Better she didn’t know what was about to happen.

‘You’ve got to go back now, Annie. You can go back. Go back and wait for me.’

I had to tell her something. Over the top of her head I could see the belted-and-buckled advancing towards me as a group.

‘You have to let her go,’ I said. ‘That’s the deal.’

They nodded as one man, still moving forward but slowing down and suddenly looking all fuzzy and colour-saturated like a weird music video. They took Annie from me and propelled her towards the door I’d come in by.

‘Where are you taking her?’ I asked.

‘She’s going back,’ one man confided into my ear as the door to the corridor was pulled open and Annie stepped out. I ran to the door to watch her go. Already she was impossibly far away, vanishing in the distorted perspectives of the green corridor. I felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back into the bare room.

‘It’s time,’ said a man in a white coat who wasn’t White Coat, and suddenly I thought the execution was going to take place in a small private room, perhaps a lethal injection administered by this man. But the buckles and buttons in the large group took control of me and ushered me out into a tunnel. My own footsteps and those of the group behind me echoed around the walls and ceiling. My heart was pumping faster and faster, my mouth drying up like a rose in the desert.

The tunnel sloped upwards and natural light leaked into it from somewhere ahead. The footsteps behind me seemed to speed up, forcing me to do the same and, before I realised fully what was happening, they had faded away while I carried on to the end of the tunnel, where I emerged out onto the pitch. The gates were locked behind me.