Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Junk

‘ Gaffar? ’ he yelled, slamming the door shut and tearing the letter open. ‘You back?’

Nothing

He peered towards Beede’s flat. The door was slightly ajar. He walked over to it. ‘Beede?’

He knocked.

Nothing

He removed the contents from the envelope. Inside it was a folded-up piece of paper, and when he unfurled it, a car key dropped into his hand–

Huh?!

‘Beede?’

He pushed the door open, still staring at the key. He flattened the paper it’d been folded up in and turned it over–

Nothing

Although…

He frowned, looking closer…

Isn’t there something…?

A vague…?

A kind of…?

He moved over towards the window to try and inspect the paper in a better light, but as he moved it gradually began to dawn on him that there was something very different, something very…

Wrong

He glanced around him–

JEESUS!

His jaw dropped. The room looked like some kind of explosive device had recently gone off in it.

‘Beede?’

He suddenly had a vision of his father lying dead (or injured) in another room. He panicked— ‘Beede? ’—and ran into the kitchen, then the bedroom–

‘Dad?’

The bedroom was dark. The bed was a mess. He stared, uneasily, at the rumpled counterpane.

‘Dad? ’

He ran into the bathroom. The floor was soaking. And there were tiny traces of…

He peered at the walls–

What?

Blood?!

Kane returned to the living-room and gazed around him, horrified–

Is anything…?

Was he…?

He scowled–

Could this conceivably be…?

He ran to the door–

‘GAFFAR! ’

— then sprinted upstairs.

His own flat looked exactly the same as when he’d left it that morning. He stood in the middle of his sitting-room for a moment, struggling to catch his breath, then promptly headed off to find his stash. He found it, undisturbed, and shoved it — all of it — into his coat pockets before sprinting back downstairs again and standing in the open doorway to Beede’s flat, his eyes ransacking the room for clues — evidence — ideas— anything …

Kane suddenly froze–

Oh my…

— then he slowly began moving — as if hypnotised — towards the sofa. Propped up, carelessly — lop-sidedly — against the arm, was a cross; a large, beautifully carved wooden cross–

Can that…?

Is that…?

He knelt down to inspect it, his eyes lingering (to begin with) on the terrible, naive lettering in the mid-section before moving, ineluctably, to the marvellous profusion of exquisitely carved wild roses on the outer reaches.

Kane gazed at the cross, in silence, for several minutes. ‘But why…?’ he finally murmured, scratching his head, confused.

He peered around the room again–

Where’s the fucking cat?

He glanced up at the light-fitment–

Is that broken, too?

— then became aware, once more, of the letter in his hand. The key–

Peta…

He sprang to his feet and walked over to the window. Outside he saw The Blonde (parked — rather haphazardly — over by the front gate) and sitting neatly — unobtrusively — in The Blonde’s habitual parking space? A mysterious, black Lada with darkened windows–

Now what did she call it again?

Kane frowned–

The Commissar?

He stared down at the key. He inspected the envelope–

Nope

— then he held the plain piece of paper back up to the light.

When he looked at it carefully, at a particular angle, he was sure he could see…

He turned and strode over to the mess of books, furniture and papers against the opposite wall. He fell to his knees, took a pinch of soil from an upended plantpot and applied it, very gently, to a small section of the paper. As he rubbed, a tiny line of letters and digits came into relief. Kane walked back to the window and held the paper up to the light again–

II Corinthians XII. IX

?!

He stared around the room–

Bible?

— then began hunting through the debris–

Hopeless

His mind turned to Kelly (waving at him from her scooter — Bible clutched in her hand — a couple of hours earlier). He grabbed his phone and dialled her number–

No answer

As it rang, he stared over at the cross again, with a shudder. Kelly’s voicemail clicked in. He cut it off and texted her instead:

2 Corinthians 12.9

K.

A couple of minutes later — on his way out to the car — he quickly checked his reflection in the hallway mirror, then paused, shocked, and drew in closer. He looked odd — faded, haggard, spooked —as if he’d just seen a ghost. Or perhaps — even worse than that–

Much worse—

Much scarier…

— as if he was actually the ghost himself (a transient ghoul, a fugitive spectre), drifting — aimless and confused — through a bold, clearly defined world of private jokes, cast-iron alibis and irrefutable facts.

Dory was speaking to him, but Beede couldn’t actually focus on what he was saying because–

Pain

— it had recently begun to rain and the sound of the paindrops–

Raindrops

— hitting the Rover’s roof had generated this strange counter-conversation inside his head–

A Master of Art is not worth a fart,

Except he be in schools,

A batchelour of Law, is not worth a straw…

The sound of the pain–

Rain

— was soon eclipsed by the wailing siren of a fire engine. They were turning off the A2042 (on to the steeply curving slip road beyond) when the engine drew abreast of them, its blue light flashing. Dory rapidly slowed down and allowed it to pass. He muttered something, but Beede didn’t quite catch it because he was gazing, dazedly, out of the window, where his eye was momentarily arrested by a pretty, young, blonde girl who was methodically removing the plastic collars from the trees and the bushes at the top of the embankment.

The girl straightened up as the fire engine passed and their eyes made brief contact. He blinked. She blinked. He was certain that he’d seen her before, but he couldn’t say where, exactly. He also knew (in that same moment) that–

A Master of Art is not worth…

— her father was in recovery from breast cancer, that her mother was going to be very angry indeed–

Too angry,

Silly moo…

— about the dent in the car, that she had an irrational fear of small spaces, that she hated the taste of uncooked tomatoes (but virtually lived on ketchup), that she fervently regretted not taking A-level Japanese (or Spanish, or Arabic), that when she was thirty-two she would develop diabetes during her second pregnancy, that this child would subsequently inherit a slight heart-murmur (from her grandfather on her mother’s side), that her first child (a daughter), would become a leading expert in the field of post-traumatic stress, that the boy with the whispering heart would become a keyboard player in an unsuccessful pop band, but would then write a tune (in his late forties) — a short jingle — which would eventually be adopted to spear-head a ten-year campaign to sell the world’s most successful brand of sugar-free, fat-free, dairy-free chocolate…

Dory accelerated off again. He quickly built up speed.

…But most important of all, Beede saw that this girl — this damp, diligent, blonde girl with her savagely pinned-back curly hair — would loyally support her husband through medical school, and that when he eventually graduated they would travel to Uganda together (and do great work there), then on to the Congo, then on to the Sudan — to Darfur — where he would soon become embroiled in a tragic, sexual liaison with a talented engineer called Eva Jane Bartlett (who had helped to design, build and fund a small hospital he was working at), that he would be shot — and fatally wounded — by her estranged husband, a famous local brigand, and that…