Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Maude was inspecting her finger. She seemed upset.

‘It’s been crazy around here,’ she observed.

‘There was a huge fire on the estate, apparently,’ Kane said. ‘You can see the plume of smoke for miles…’

‘There was a crash on the slip road,’ Maude interrupted him, ‘in almost the exact spot where you hit me, earlier. It was a ten-car pile-up. This fire engine slammed into the back of…’

‘Did you see it?’

‘No. But I heard it. I ran down there. There was a pregnant woman. She was trapped inside her car. She was panicking. She thought she was losing her baby. I had to stand there and wait with her. Hold her hand. All these other people around me were crying out for help, bleeding, staggering from their vehicles…’

‘ Jesus .’

Kane sprang from the Lada. ‘What on earth are you still doing here? You must be in shock. Get into the car. Let me drive you home…’

‘And I’ve got this…this stupid …‘ Maude pointed, enraged ‘…this splinter in my finger…’

She yanked off her glove.

Kane drew in closer. He gently took her hand. ‘That isn’t actually too bad,’ he told her, ‘I can probably just…‘

He squeezed the splinter — hard — under his thumbnail.

‘ Owwww! ’ she bellowed.

He jerked back, alarmed.

‘I already tried that,’ she whimpered, ‘I need a pin to dig it out with, but I don’t…’

‘Hold on a second…’ Kane smiled. He removed the pink charity ribbon from his lapel.

‘I have one,’ he said, showing it to her.

She inspected the pin, mollified.

‘What’s that special word the Arabs always use…?’ Kane murmured, taking hold of her hand again, then gently applying the pin to her fingertip. He pushed it in, very carefully, and five seconds later, the splinter was out.

‘There you go,’ he said, brushing it on to his own fingertip. ‘See? It was only very tiny…’

‘Thanks.’

She smiled up at him. ‘That didn’t hurt at all.’

Kane placed the pink ribbon against his lapel and tried to pin it back into place again, but as he applied pressure to it, the pin — for no reason that he could fathom — suddenly snapped in half.

He grimaced, hung the ribbon over his button and dropped the two tiny fragments into the grass.

Maude, meanwhile, had returned to her task.

‘God, you’re tenacious,’ he said, almost admiringly.

She didn’t respond.

‘Not too many left now,’ he continued, peering down along the embankment.

‘You’d better head off and find your friend,’ she suggested.

‘Yeah.’

Kane turned to go. He took a couple of steps towards the car, then he paused and turned back again. ‘Let me do the last few,’ he said. ‘I’m fine,’ she insisted.

‘No, go on. I’d be happy to…’ he paused. ‘I’d like to.’

He put out his hand for the Stanley knife.

‘It’s pretty blunt,’ she warned him.

Kane took the knife, bent over, and removed five collars in quick succession.

‘Easy,’ he said.

She snorted.

‘So you’re a student?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’

He removed another three collars.

‘What of?’

‘English, Economics and Political Theory, although I’m pretty crap on the financial side of things…’

‘And what do you plan to do with those?’

‘You mean when I graduate?’ She shrugged. ‘Become a teacher, I suppose.’

Kane removed a further two collars.

‘So what do you do?’ she wondered.

‘Huh?’ he scowled. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well I’ve seen you in the French Connection…’

She gave him a significant look.

‘Oh…’ Kane slowly straightened up. ‘Uh…’

He gave his response some careful consideration. ‘Well, I suppose I’m what you might call a vagabond,’ he answered finally.

Maude glanced over at him, mystified.

‘A kind of…of medical vagabond,’ he expanded, before casually delivering her his most disarming smile.

The Darkmans lay in wait. He knew it would only be a matter of time before one of the two men came. Gaffar was the first to arrive. He was limping. He’d developed a blister on his heel from his new, leather boots. He was searching for the bird, but all he found was a stray feather by the edge of the road.

As he bent down to inspect it Gaffar noticed that there were shards of broken glass everywhere. And traces of blood. And there was corn on the tarmac — tiny, crushed ears of corn.

He approached the feather with caution (he had no intention of picking it up), but then he spotted The Darkmans — from the corner of his eye — moving stealthily towards it.

‘No,’ Gaffar said firmly, reaching down and grabbing it for himself, ‘it’s mine.’

He clutched the feather, tightly, in his hand. He claimed it as his own. He annexed it.

The Darkmans prowled around him, foiled, enraged, fascinated. And as The Darkmans prowled, Gaffar’s mind was suddenly transported back to Hasankeyf. He was just a boy, sitting by the banks of the Tigris River, dreaming of the cool caves, of the magnificent obelisk, of the old, stone archway. Then — without warning — everything was submerged. Gaffar saw himself drowning. He saw his life slowly washing away from him (his family, his dreams, his home, even his tongue).

He felt a moment’s sharp anxiety — a sense of suffocating panic — but then he quickly turned away from it. He kicked hard with his feet and swam up to the surface. He drew a long, deep breath–

Haaaaaaah!

The Darkmans crouched down and appraised Gaffar intently. He held out his hand for the feather. He pretended to be sad. He pretended to be broken. He dabbed at his eyes. He shivered like a kicked puppy.

Nope . Gaffar shook his head. But as he watched The Darkmans’ pathetic act, Gaffar’s mind was suddenly transported back to Diyarbakir; the Town of the Black Walls. And he was standing, barefoot, in the dirt, his hands clenched into fists. And he was fighting a losing battle to keep his insides in and the outside out. Then, half-way through the battle, he turned, with a gasp (the taste of blood on his lips), and he saw his poor mother standing behind him, on the sidelines: abandoned, disappointed, alone.

Gaffar winced. He felt a moment of profound self-loathing, but then he sprang forward and he delivered it a swift, sharp upper-cut. He kicked it. He winded it. He hurled it down.

The Darkmans slowly rose to his feet. He scratched his chin, thoughtfully. Then he pulled himself up to his full height, placed his hands on to his hips, opened his mouth and demanded the feather. His voice crashed through the air like rolling thunder.

Gaffar tipped his head and he listened. And as he listened, his mind was suddenly transported back to a place that he’d never seen before; a place of his father’s ancestors, a place called Sinjar. He saw his people farming in peace there. He saw them caring for their livestock, delivering their lambs, waiting patiently for the summer rains. He saw them praying. He saw white turbans, clean robes and joyous devotion. He smelled incense burning. It was a lovely vision, but it quickly faded. Then everything was overturned. He saw chaos, he saw movement, he saw poverty, he saw persecution, and in the midst of all of this he saw his father, alone, in the Sheikhallah Bazaar. He saw the light. He saw the dream. He saw the whale. He saw the lie.

Gaffar scowled. He felt a moment of despair, of profound desolation, but instead of giving in to it, he shoved his hand into his pocket and he felt for his five die. He rattled them in his palm. He removed them from his pocket and showed them to The Darkmans, proudly–