Call Down Thunder (27 page)

‘Take his head off,’ shouted Escal, his voice ugly. ‘Take it off with your cutting blade, Calde. Take his head off and put it on a pole, like in the old times.’

There was laughter and a couple of the men jeered.

Reve pulled his head back. He didn’t want to see any more. ‘They’ve roll him up in a net, Mi.’ He took a shaky breath and pressed his head against the shack wall.
‘I think they goin drown him . . .’ He closed his eyes tight and through clenched teeth said, ‘Mi? Can’t you call down something . . . some of your magic . . . now,
please.’

He turned his head and looked at her. Mi was trembling very badly, her eyes staring, not rolled-up white but staring hard straight ahead, not at Reve but at some point he couldn’t see.

She grunted, trying to make a word. Her hand was a claw on his arm. ‘Ohgh!’ she grunted. Or maybe it was ‘Ohd!’ Nothing that made sense.

‘Make him ready,’ called Calde.

This was it.

Reve prised Mi’s fingers from his arm. Better to do something, even if it is the wrong thing. When you step in the dance you got to know the steps. But there were no steps to this dance.
‘Stay here, Mi. Keep still, OK? Stay quiet. Don’ let anyone see you.’ She was rigid, lost in some dark place again. He touched her cheek. ‘Whatever happen,
a’right?’

He ran round the corner and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Stop! You got no right, Calde! I witness what you doin! You murdering Tomas! An’ he done nothin ’cept stand
against you! Tha’s all he done!’ He took a ragged breath.

He saw Ramon looking at him, not sneering in his usual way but puzzled, an eyebrow raised and looking behind Reve as if expecting to see someone else. And Hevez, his face glazed and
stupid-looking – he’d been stoking up his courage with beer.

The small crowd parted a little and Reve could see a shapeless snagged-up bundle with Tomas’s face visible through the netting, and the white of his vest that looked drenched in sweat and
a darker stain over the wound. He wasn’t moving. He couldn’t move. Was he still breathing? Reve couldn’t see.

‘Tomas never call anyone,’ he shouted again. ‘He got no cellphone. He got no interest in what you doin. Calde tellin a lie!’

Arella, up on her porch, suddenly called out, ‘Reve! What they doin? What they doing to Tomas?’

He wanted to reassure her. Poor old Arella, with nothing in her life but a bit of company with Tomas, standing up on her porch, her head tilted up as if she could somehow see with her head that
way.

‘What they doin?’ Her voice quavered.

Calde swung round and lifted his panga blade, pointing the tip at Reve’s throat. ‘You come back, eh! Well, you next if you step in my way. Be careful, runaround, or you find you lose
a leg or an arm.’

Theon cut in. His voice was icy. ‘You don’t know what you’re sayin, Reve. Go back out of this. You can’t do anything here. Not now.’ The sinking sun caught his
glasses and the flash blanked out his eyes, made him look inhuman.

Reve felt as if he was trembling almost as bad as Mi. He forced himself to walk forward, past the two brothers, up to Tomas. He wished he had a knife to cut the net biting into Tomas. He wished
he had a knife in his hand, give him courage, give a chance to put up some fight before they finish him.

He turned and faced them again, planted his legs apart, as if he were keeping steady on his skiff and, ignoring all the faces of the men staring at him, looked straight at Calde and said,
‘You got no right! You got no right steppin on anyone, Calde!’ His voice shook a little but they all heard him, every one of them.

Calde grunted with surprise. ‘You got some nerve, boy. Maybe you got some of Tomas’s rum runnin in your belly.’ A few of the men smiled. Then Calde’s tone hardened.
‘Move out the way. This not the first time a squeal-pig gets done in this place. Tomas know what comin to him. Your father was—’

‘Murdered,’ said Reve. ‘You going to do the same?’ He caught Theon’s eye. ‘What happen, Theon? How you let this happen?’

Theon shook his head. ‘Some things you can’t fix.’ He had promised them it would all be safe when they got back.

There was a heartbeat when no one moved and everything was so sharp. Every sound, every breath was distinct: the crunch of a sandalled foot shifting on the track, the sea flopping up on to the
sand, a gull crying, the cicadas buzzing, an engine changing gear.

Calde pulled a face. ‘What is this? None of this talk interest me. Someone get him out the way.’

Reve clenched his fist. One hit. At least let me land one hit on this ugly man. One hit for what he done to us all.

There was the sharp squeal of tyres on a hot road. A few heads turned and Reve saw a black car pulling down from the highway, bumping fast along the track and into the village.

Suddenly Reve realized what Mi had been trying to say: ‘The road!’ She’d somehow known someone would be coming.

‘You got more witness now,’ Reve said. ‘Look who coming for you.’

A stay of execution.

That’s what it felt like, though when Reve saw the squat figure of Moro and two of his suited men getting out of the car, his throat tightened. Instinctively he stooped down, trying to get
Calde and his men to block him from Moro. If Moro saw him or Mi, they were dead. He wouldn’t care one way or the other about Tomas.

Why in the name of heaven and hell had he insisted Mi come back to the village with him? To be family? Dead family.

Calde’s men moved towards the señor. Maybe if Mi kept really still he could swear to Moro that she wasn’t with him. Maybe Moro hadn’t come for them at all. Maybe he had
come for the informer, trace him down with that number that Theon had insisted Reve pass on. Reve edged back towards Tomas. ‘Tomas,’ he hissed. ‘Tomas?’

He thought there was a faint movement, a finger hooked through the mesh. Tomas was alive!

Moro put up his hand. ‘Not so close,’ he said to Calde’s men.

‘This is it,’ said Moro, ‘a village gathering. I like this. Everything in the open. Calde, I see you got business. Tell me what’s happening, eh. And Theon . . .’ he
said, spotting him. ‘You here too. That’s good. Now, why you got that man like that. Someone been fishing?’ No one laughed at his grim joke.

Calde started to tell him about Tomas – that he was the one who had informed on the smugglers and that he and his men were about to punish him, when suddenly there was an excited yell.

‘I got the witch girl!’ It was Hevez, his voice crowing with delight. He and Sali emerged from behind Arella’s, dragging Mi kicking and struggling between them.

Reve didn’t even think. He abandoned Tomas, sprinted straight at Hevez and threw a punch that landed hard, smack in the middle of his face, right on the button of his nose. Hevez’s
head snapped back and he fell, landing with a thud on the track, his nose bloody. In the same instant Mi wrenched her arm away and swung her free left hand round in a claw-hammer blow that caught
Sali a ringing smack on his ear that made him grunt with surprise and pain. He clutched the side of his head, and she broke away from him and stepped in beside Reve as Hevez struggled back to his
feet. For a moment it looked as if the two boys were going to make another move, but she just raised her arm and pointed at them, and that stopped them in their tracks.

Reve was so astonished that it took him a moment to register that no one else, none of Calde’s men, had done anything to help the boys. He took Mi’s arm and edged her back towards
Tomas, everyone watching them, and glancing at Moro as if expecting him to give an order.

He felt oddly calm. At least the three of them were together, like they had been all that time ago when Tomas had peeled away the net from their drowned father.

He felt for Mi’s hand and gripped it.

‘Ah,’ said Moro, and gave three claps. ‘I hoped for this. Very good. The little bull and his sister. That moves me, it does, but . . . you,’ he said to Reve,
‘should have been smarter. Found yourself another town, stayed free. But here, this place, this is mine now, eh. And you got serious problem.’ He smiled, but his small eyes were cold
and angry.

Reve kept his head up, but he felt lost. This was it. This is what it must feel like to be scooped up in the net. All three of them in the one catch. Jackfish. No running away.

‘Now,’ said Moro, ‘my business.’ He pulled out his cellphone. ‘I got a number here,’ he said. ‘This the number of someone who think calling the
helicopter coastguard a smart idea.’ A few of Calde’s men moved away from Tomas. Moro’s suited men, Reve realized, had guns, heavy snub-barrelled weapons, pointing casually at the
crowd. ‘And whoever got a phone that ring when I call this number, that man got a problem.

Calde was impassive. He glanced at Theon. Theon shrugged and wiped his glasses again, but a moment later Reve noticed that he stepped sideways, leaving space between himself and Calde.

Moro tapped the numbers into his cellphone, making a performance of it, slowly, mouthing each number to himself.

Silence.

A phone started to ring. Everyone shuffled nervously and looked this way and that. Calde grunted and patted his pocket, then took out a phone, which chirped at him till he pressed a button with
his thumb. He frowned. ‘This is not my phone . . .’ he began to say.

Moro nodded at his men.

Calde didn’t even have time to look up before the first bullet took him in the chest and the second in his throat, flinging him back on to the sandy path, about a metre away from
Tomas’s feet.

Everyone else froze.

The silence was sudden and heavy. Even the cicadas seemed to pause their endless scraping and sawing. Maybe they were holding their breath too.

Reve studied Uncle Theon’s face for a clue, but it was impassive. He’d figured this, hadn’t he? Done something clever. Clever Theon. Switched Calde’s phone maybe. If
anyone else thought the same, they weren’t saying.

‘All right,’ said Moro, looking up from his phone. ‘I come along to do this. So now we all know: you play a game, you got to be sure the rules work for you; but you play a game
with me, the rules always work for me. That fat man nothing when he lived, and he nothing now. Anyone goin step in his place?’

Reve saw Hevez keeping his head down, his hand cupping his bloody nose. He tried not to look at the body lying on the ground like a beached whale, the shirt ridden up a little, showing some
belly.

Theon glanced down at Calde, then stooped, picked the phone out of his hand, clicked it off and slipped it into his pocket. Reve kept his face still and his mouth shut. Theon had figured out the
whole play.

‘Well,’ Moro faced Theon, ‘you got any business with this man? You got problem you going to give me for this?’

‘No,’ said Theon. ‘He played his game. I got different business.’

Moro nodded. ‘Yes, of course. The boy, this one here, was your messenger. Good. I like things to be tidy. Everything in its place.’ Moro looked around the crowd, seeing, perhaps, if
there was anyone else he needed to identify now, anyone who might challenge his authority. There was no one. Cesar had his hand gripped round the back of his brother’s neck. Maybe he feared
he would make a fuss. Escal had never been smart.

‘Good,’ Moro said again, briskly this time. ‘We do business another time. This is a long drive to make to kill a man, but some things you got to do.’ His eyes found Reve.
‘All right. You and your sister come now and you get in the car.’

Mi’s grip tightened in Reve’s hand. ‘No,’ she said, her voice barely audible.

‘What’s that she say?’ Moro sounded surprised.

‘She said No,’ said Reve. ‘She not going with you. She not going to that police captain who murder our father. She not doin any of these thing.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ said Mi, her voice light and clear now. ‘You should leave this place.’

‘I think you make a mistake about me, princess.’

Princess?

The strange thing was that was exactly how Mi looked. It didn’t matter that her legs were scratched or that she was wearing a crumpled man’s shirt over a crumpled and stained green
dress. She stood somehow taller, stronger; her hair, free of the cap, blazed round her serious face. She didn’t looked like the crazy girl who scraped around in a sand garden and lived in a
dead car.

Calde’s men couldn’t take their eyes off her. It was as if they had never seen her before; and not one of them made a move towards her or Reve.

Even Theon seemed surprised to see this girl stand tall before the señor.

‘Put her in the car,’ said Moro. ‘You and you.’ He jerked his head at Cesar and the man beside him. ‘You can leave the boy. Hold him, eh.’

For a moment Reve thought the men would disobey him, but it was just a moment. Then three quick strides and they had their hands on Mi. A brief silent struggle, with Reve kicking until someone,
Escal maybe, had him lifted off the ground with his arms pinned tight by his side, and Mi, silent too, being dragged to the car.

Why couldn’t she? Oh, why couldn’t she call down a storm? Why couldn’t the sky darken and the waves rear up, tall as rolling cliffs, and thunder down on them, like the sea on
the Egyptians in Tomas’s story. He wouldn’t mind; he wouldn’t care at all if he got swept away, if they all got swept away together, but not this helplessness, seeing Mi, her head
pushed down, being shovelled into the back of the car. Not this!

Reve jerked and snapped his right heel back hard and high, catching Escal in a place that sure enough hurt him so badly that the burly fisherman gave a loud ‘huff’ and let Reve drop
as he buckled over, clutching his groin.

The car door slammed shut as Reve ran towards it. He could see Mi’s face through the window. Moro was getting in at the passenger side. Moro’s man, Secondo, was standing beside him,
holding the door with one hand and his gun, casually pointing at Reve, in the other. His expression was impossible to read under his dark glasses, though the corner of his mouth lifted. He could
have been smiling.

From either side of the track people were coming out of their shacks, the women, one or two of the men, but mainly women, five, ten, more. Maybe they thought they were safe now; maybe they
wanted to watch. He saw Tomas’s neighbours, the whole family and the family next to them and the fisherman who lived two up from Arella.