Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

Afterwards I couldn’t remember how we met, only that I was standing at the bar and that they were there as well, the three of them. Leon did most of the talking. He wore a leather jacket, and he had lined the lower rims of his eyelids with black kohl. The other man, Mike, had a spider’s web tattooed on the side of his neck. The girl was called April. In her crimson headscarf, her frayed denim jacket and her knee-length boots, she looked faintly piratical. They lived in Ustion, Leon told me, which was sixty miles north, but they always drove down for the burning of the animals. You couldn’t miss the burning.

Somehow it came out in conversation that I was thinking of heading that way.

‘You want a lift?’ Leon said. ‘We’re going there ourselves. Right now.’

Mike and April swallowed their drinks and placed the empty glasses on the bar. It all seemed to have been decided very quickly.

‘Really,’ April said. ‘It’s no trouble.’ Gazing up at me, she linked her arm through mine.

‘Well, if you’re sure.’ I drained my brandy.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Leon said.

‘Come on, Tom.’ April pulled gently on my arm, and we walked out of the bar together.

Leon had a dented pickup truck with roll-bars at the front and an extra set of headlights mounted on the roof. For hunting, he explained. Before he could go into any detail, though, I realised I had left my bag behind. Saying I would only be a moment, I turned and hurried back into the pub.

Upstairs, when I switched the light on, my room appeared to slip a little, like a picture dropping in its frame. Now that I had accepted Leon’s offer of a lift, I was worried he might become impatient and go without me. And there was April too, of course — that tantalising look she’d given me, the way she’d called me ‘Tom’ … I packed as fast as I could and zipped my bag shut, then I hoisted it on to my shoulder and ran back down the stairs. I found Fay Mackenzie in the bar. I couldn’t thank her enough, I told her, for taking me in, for treating me so well and, above all, for trusting me. Probably I said too much, my words tumbling over one another, but she only smiled at me and wished me luck. She wouldn’t take any money for the room.

Outside, the air had thickened. The smoke from the burning seemed to have been driven down the hill, flakes of charred paper drifting past at head-height. My new friends were standing at the edge of the car-park, deep in conversation. Then one of them noticed me, and they separated, their faces turning towards me.

‘All set?’ Leon said.

I nodded.

He held the door open on the passenger’s side. I climbed in first, hoping April would follow, but Mike got in next, leaving April to sit against the door. Leon went round to the driver’s side. Once behind the wheel, he revved the engine, then let the clutch out fast. The truck leapt down the road that led away from the pub.

April leaned forwards and spoke to him. ‘You drunk?’

‘No drunker than usual,’ he said.

I held my bag on my lap, aware of the men’s shoulders on either side of me. It was cold in the truck, and the cramped interior smelled of oil and cigarettes. I watched as the headlights picked out one bend after another.

I turned to Leon. ‘How far did you say it was?’

‘Where to?’ he said.

‘Ustion.’

‘I don’t know. It’s a way.’

He seemed to consider the question irrelevant, beside the point. My stomach tightened. I stole a glance at his profile, hoping for some reassurance, but all I saw was a low, brooding brow, and teeth that slanted back into his mouth like a shark’s — features I had failed to notice while we were talking in the bar.

After driving for five or ten minutes, Leon took a sharp right-hand turn on to a much narrower road. Mike and I were thrown to the left, and April cried out, then swore, as she was crushed against the door. Leon just laughed. The truck lurched and bounced over potholes, unseen branches scraping at the windows and the roof. As I peered through the windscreen, trying to determine where we were going, the road opened out into a wide apron of gravel and weeds. Our headlights swept over part of a building, and I caught glimpses of a turret and an ivy-covered wall.

‘Where’s this?’ I asked.

Nobody answered.

Leon switched the lights and engine off, then opened his door and stepped out. April and Mike climbed out the other side. I hesitated, then I followed. We had parked next to a circular pond with a raised edge, the water hidden beneath a quilt of lily pads. I lifted my eyes to the building that lay beyond. The wings that extended sideways from the gate-house were topped by battlements, and the windows resembled those in medieval castles. I turned back to Leon, who seemed to have fallen into a kind of trance. His friends were standing near by, but facing in different directions, as though keeping watch. I wasn’t sure why they had brought me to this place. I suspected I was becoming embroiled in some reckless agenda of theirs, as a result of which I might lose sight of my own.

‘It used to be an asylum,’ Leon said, ‘but it was shut down years ago.’

The night was quiet and still. Moonlight coated everything.

I walked over to Leon. ‘I need to get moving,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could tell me which way to go.’

He didn’t take his eyes off the building. ‘First you have to give us something. For our trouble.’

I stared at him blankly. ‘Give you something?’

‘Some kind of payment.’

Mike seized me from behind, pinning my arms, then Leon reached into my pockets and felt around.

‘If it’s money you want,’ I said, ‘it’s in my wallet.’

Leon stood back. Behind him, April cut my bag open with a knife and started tossing pieces of my clothing on to the ground.

‘There’s nothing valuable in there,’ I said.

Leon leaned in towards me again, blocking my view of the girl. ‘You know it all, don’t you?’ A grey gleam on his sloping teeth. ‘Actually, no, that can’t be true,’ he said. ‘Because if you knew it all you wouldn’t have got yourself into this situation in the first place.’ I watched as he opened my wallet and went through the contents. He shone a torch on my visa, then on my identity papers, and let out a low whistle.

Still stooping over my bag, April looked round. ‘What?’

‘I heard he was from somewhere else,’ Leon said. ‘I just didn’t know where.’

‘Where’s he from?’ April asked.

Leon told her.

‘What do you think he’s doing here?’ she said.

Still examining my papers, Leon didn’t say anything.

April walked towards me. ‘He could be a spy.’

I had applied the same word to myself only the night before, but in a purely romantic sense. Now, though, it was being used seriously, as an accusation.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said.

Almost instantly there was an explosion in my head, and I dropped to the gravel, lights hanging in the left side of my field of vision like a curtain of garish elongated beads. Mike must have hit me.

As I lay there, April reached down and pulled off my coat. I made no attempt to resist. She put the coat on over her denim jacket, then paraded up and down in front of the pond as if she were on a catwalk. She was much shorter than me, and the coat’s hem trailed along the ground behind her.

‘You’re spoiling it,’ I murmured.

Mike’s boot caught me just below the ribs. ‘It’s hers now,’ he said. ‘She can do what she likes with it.’

Lying on my side, doubled up, I felt the bile rush into my mouth. At the same time, I had the feeling that the episode was already over and that it could have been much worse. They had what they wanted — my money, my documents, my coat. Clearly, though, there was a kind of protocol involved. They couldn’t leave until their superiority had been properly established. It was important therefore that I didn’t draw any more attention to myself. Better to grovel, play dead.