Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

Gavin laughs. “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” How odd it is to be holding a weapon yet to have no control over the situation.

“Gavin,” says his father, “I think it might be a good idea for you to put the gun down.”

He agrees with his father and he would very much like to put the gun down but he does not want the stranger to see him doing something his father has asked him to do.

The stranger walks very slowly towards Gavin. He seems utterly unbothered by the gun. It is the most menacing thing he has done since his arrival.

“Whoa,” says Gavin. “Whoa, whoa. Stop right there.” His voice is not as low or as calm as he would like it to be.

The stranger comes to a halt a couple of metres away from Gavin. They are two magnets of identical polarity pressed into close proximity. You can almost see curved lines of force penned on the air.

“No closer,” says Gavin.

“Gavin,” says his father, “you need to be very careful.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” says Gavin.

The exchange makes both men seem smaller.

The stranger makes the tiniest of moves, perhaps no more than shifting his weight from one foot to another. Gavin responds immediately by raising the gun. He is not aware of having taken this decision, only that it has happened and that he cannot now undo it.

“Oh fuck,” says Sarah. “Fucking fuck.”

Gavin is now pointing a gun at another human being. He has occasionally imagined doing such a thing but he has never imagined it coupled with this level of anxiety and unease.

Anya gets up and runs from the room. No one follows her for fear of doing even more to upset the precarious balance upon which everything seems now to depend. David has no thought of leaving. He is gripped. He senses no danger. He wonders if it is all part of Grandpa’s Christmas extravaganza. Perhaps the stranger is a friend of Emmy’s. Later on, when he gets up to his room and digs out his phone he is going to have the most amazing story to text to Ryan and Yah ya.

“You’re going now,” says Gavin to the stranger.

It is quite obvious to everyone that the stranger is not going.

Leo softly pushes his chair back, half stands and reaches out towards Gavin, intending to nudge the barrel of the gun towards the carpet. But Gavin swings the gun towards Leo. He does not think about how the gesture might be read. It seems obvious to pretty much everyone in the room that it means I could shoot you, too . Leo sits back down.

Martin can think of nothing more that he can contribute. He would rather David, Sofie, Sarah, Emmy and Madeleine were not in the room but otherwise he finds the situation perversely fascinating.

“Pull the trigger,” says the stranger.

“This man is not well, Gavin,” says Leo. “Gavin? Listen to me.”

“I don’t think it’s a real gun,” says Gavin. “That’s why our friend is so relaxed.” He doesn’t quite believe this. The gun feels real. He simply needs something to say. If he keeps talking then maybe he can find a way to get a grip on the situation.

The stranger says nothing and does not move.

“Put the fucking gun down, Gavin,” says Sarah, “and stop playing this stupid, bloody childish game, all right?”

“I don’t think shouting is helpful,” says Emmy.

“Well, gentle persuasion is not working out terribly well,” says Sarah.

Gavin steps forward and pokes the stranger in the chest with the barrel of the gun.

“Brilliant,” says Sarah.

Madeleine’s face is white. Sofie’s hand is over her mouth.

“No, no, no, no, no,” says Martin quietly, holding his index finger up, like a schoolteacher wanting a pupil to pause so he can redirect them towards the correct answer. “That’s a very bad idea, Gavin.”

Emmy says, “Gavin, this is really scaring me. This is really scaring all of us.”

Martin reaches towards his son. And this is when it happens. Everyone’s attention is momentarily distracted by Martin’s movement. Everyone, that is, except David who has no interest in his grandfather and eyes only for the gun. So it is only he and Gavin who are looking directly at the stranger when he is hit in the chest at point-blank range by two barrels of shot. He has no memory of the noise because the sight is so extraordinary. It is like a huge, invisible airbag going off between the two men, lifting them and hurling them away from each other, the stranger’s torso propelled by the shot, Gavin’s torso propelled by the butt of the gun which punches him hard in the ribs. He has seen this kind of image in films. What he has never seen in a film is the way the spray of shot passes instantly through the stranger’s chest, shredding and liquidising its contents and splashing them all over the curtains and the grandmother clock and the hand-coloured map of Bedfordshire while the stranger himself is still airborne.

Then the stranger is no longer airborne. He is lying on the floor on his back, his head hard against the base of the clock which is still rocking from the impact, his greatcoat spread to either side like a great pair of bat wings. Mirroring him on the opposite side of the central rug Gavin, too, lies on his back, arms thrown to the side, unconscious but with his eyes and mouth open as if he has just noticed the amazing pattern of blood on the ceiling. A fat S of sulphurous grey smoke disperses slowly in the air between the two men.

Madeleine screams, stops to catch her breath then screams again as if she is in a screaming competition.

“Gavin…?” says Emmy, but she is wary of getting too close. “Gavin…?”

There is blood on the sofa. There is blood on the standard lamp. There is a growing pool of blood beneath the stranger’s body. It is viscous with a plump, rounded outline, the colour of good port. There is blood on three of the dining chairs. There is a thin lasso of blood across the dining table, bisecting the cheese plate exactly. There is a little marble of blood sinking very slowly in a glass of Sauternes. Sofie has blood in her hair. She is wiping it robotically with a napkin, keeping her eyes fixed on the light switch on the far wall.

Anya appears at the doorway. Granny is screaming. She sees two men lying on the floor. She sees oceanic amounts of blood. Her assumption is that the stranger is killing everyone in the house. She turns and runs, as quietly as she can, upstairs and into the guest bathroom on the second floor. She has imagined this happening many times. She thinks, often, about the car crashing, about bombs on the train, about tsunamis, about volcanoes, about ISIS, about Boko Haram. Whenever she finds herself in a new building she works out escape routes and hiding places. She finds it comforting, imagining the jackboots on the floorboards overhead and the sad cries of the foolish children who have failed to plan for this eventuality. It’s not comforting now that it is happening in real life but at least she is prepared. There is a panel beside the bath. She slides her fingernails under the rim, pulls it away and squeezes through the hole into the little loft above Granny and Grandpa’s bedroom, pulling the panel back into place behind her. The cramped, triangular space between the water tank and the roof is thick with cobwebs. It is also shockingly cold. She has only been in here once before, at the height of summer two years ago when she read an entire Tracy Beaker by torchlight. She had assumed it would be the same temperature all year round but she is sitting on the insulation which keeps the rest of the house warm. She should have grabbed a coat or a jumper. It is too late now. She hugs herself and starts to shiver.

Downstairs, Martin puts his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “You need to stop that now. Go into the kitchen and take some diazepam.”