Survival of Thomas Ford, The (18 page)

The full moon hung over the hill at Ardlarich like a wounded, sightless eye.

Jack McCallum stood in the light from the generator bulbs, alone apart from the blanket-covered girl on the leaves at his feet.

He tapped his phone thoughtfully against the edge of his jaw. Then he shook his head and clenched his fist.

“The boy’s no good,” he whispered to himself.

Jack let himself sink down until he crouched over the girl’s body.

“The boy’s no good. The boy’s no good.”

Jack punched the middle area of the blanketed girl.

“Did you know that, lassie? Your lad’s no good. He’s weak. A weakling. A wee shitey weakling.”

Jack heard leaves crackle behind him. He turned and sprang to standing, facing the direction of the sound. The sound came again, but seemed to change position.

“Who’s there?” Jack growled.

A tall, pale figure began to materialise at the border of the generator’s light. Then the figure faded away again, back among the tree shadows.

“Who the fuck is it? Is that you, Lanski?”

Jack licked his lips and stared at the place where the figure had been. Or had he imagined it? He tried to be sure but it was impossible to be sure, not without lying to yourself. He looked quickly at the girl’s blankets. She hadn’t moved. Jack sniffed. The wolf within him bristled tightly from its tail to its long snout. A grin spread across his face, much like his son’s grin. But the next moment it vanished. Jack had trained it not to appear. Cathy’s husband couldn’t grin like that. Neither could the owner/director of McCallum Homes, or any of the business aliases Jack went under in the city. Only here, on the hill, could Jack McCallum reveal his true nature, yet even here he masked it.

Again a ghostly figure seemed to take shape, but this time ten feet to the left of where the first one had tried to come through. Jack took three steps on the dead leaves. His ankles were trembling.

“Lanski!” Jack hissed.

Lanski’s long, lean form emerged from the forest.

“I couldn’t find him,” the Polish-accented voice declared. “I followed all the way to that stream that comes down the hill. I looked all along it and zig-zagged back and around but the man is not here.”

Jack frowned. He turned his torso to face the hill above.

“He must have gone up there or…”

Jack reversed himself, his feet still planted in the leaves, his ankles still secretly vibrating.

“…or he’s down there, maybe at the road or the village already…run down, Lanski. He could have passed out, before the Subaru, or just after it. You’ll see him…”

Jack tilted his body back far now, presented his breast and neck and face to the moon above which was only a dim impression because of the glare from the generator bulbs.

“That moon there will be showing it all up, Lanski. Once you’re past the Subaru you’ll find him, if he’s gone downhill. Go!”

Lanski stared for a second, then turned. He had walked all the way to the generator’s light perimeter when he stopped and looked back.

McCallum sensed the movement and twisted his face.

“What?” he said.

Lanski only stood silently.

“What?” said McCallum again.

“The girl. What will you do?”

McCallum spat on the leaves.

“Find him, Lanski. Find him or it’s finished for all of us.”

Lanski turned and walked out of the light. He tread slowly and carefully down the steep track, stumbling sometimes, nearly falling once, until his eyes got used to the moonlight.

Then he heard a roaring shout from behind. It was McCallum.

“Lanski!” screamed McCallum’s voice.

Lanski turned and ran back uphill. He ran into the arc of the generator bulbs again, sure he would find Ford standing over McCallum, revenging himself. Lanski did not know what he would do if that was what had happened. But McCallum was only standing quietly where Lanski had seen him last. His face seemed different though, even in the harsh light here that held no subtlety or nuance.

“It’s just, the boy, Lanski, Jimmy, my boy. Take the Subaru and go to 72 Broomfield Road, in the city. If you see Ford take him back here first. But if you don’t find Ford go to 72 Broomfield Road. Jimmy’s there with a woman, Marie, a right bitch. And her son, he’s a weakling, like my boy, but he’s big too. You’ll need to help Jimmy sort out that house, Lanski. Then get back here fast, bring the boy, bring Jimmy, bring him back up here, alright Lanski?”

Jack turned, inclined his body uphill again.

“I think Ford’s up there, Lanski. There’s something in a dying animal, wanting to hide, I think it would take him up there, above us. What do you think? You were brought up in a forest weren’t you? Your grandmother’s village.”

Lanski could not remember telling McCallum ever about his grandmother or her village.

“That was why I looked along the water,” said Lanski. “The dying will sometimes seek out the water. I don’t know if they will seek height.”

Lanski shook his head.

“72 Broomfield Road,” said McCallum.

Lanski nodded.

“See my boy’s alright, Lanski. Then bring him back to me. I’ll be finished with this by then.”

McCallum jerked his neck in the direction of the girl under the pile of blankets on the ground by the caravan.

Lanski let his eyes look directly at McCallum’s eyes for a long moment. Lanski turned again and walked steadily downhill. He couldn’t remember telling McCallum anything about his home or childhood. He had told other Polish men on the site these things. One of them must have told McCallum. Lanski said the address, 72 Broomfield Road, out loud to himself twice, to prove to himself that he remembered it. He tried not to think about what was happening to the girl by the caravan. She was not his business. He was not his sister’s keeper. Lanski walked down the silver-lit area of track between the generator lights and the beginning of the Subaru’s headlight area which was still in the distance as though some giant had abandoned their torch here on the hill. Lanski’s eyes were just becoming used to the silver light from the moon and stars above when he nearly walked headlong into Thomas Ford who was coming up the hill. Lanski and Ford both stopped walking at the same time and stood looking at each other. Lanski could see that one of Ford’s eyes was ruined, but the other eye shone back moonlight at the Polish foreman. Lanski parted his lips and nearly swallowed, but the swallow didn’t come. He waited for fear, or anything, to start in himself, or for Ford to move, but Ford was absolutely still. Lanski could see that Ford was naked and barefoot, apart from the shredded remainder of tent material around his waist and upper thighs. He could see this without ever taking his own eyes off Ford’s one wide glittering eye.

“Where is she?” said Ford.

Lanski waited long seconds before answering.

“She’s up there at the caravan. He’s going to kill her.”

Ford’s single eye blinked. He nodded, but not as though the nod was about the girl at all. He seemed to be thinking of something else. Ford’s head dropped and his whole body shuddered. Ford exhaled a long breath that was audible above the wind that still whistled there on the steep slope. Lanski watched as Ford raised his head again and that single eye focused on Lanski’s eyes.

“And you?” said Ford. “Which one are you? Are you the passenger?”

“I’m going to the car behind you. I’m going to the city.”

Ford’s eye seemed to swell as Lanski stared at it. Lanski felt smaller and smaller as the eye regarded him. It seemed to Lanski that this was hardly a man at all. He was unsure. Was this even Ford? Then Lanski swallowed and his heart shrunk in his chest.

“I’m going to the city,” said Lanski again.

Ford’s eye shone with silver light. Lanski looked down. Suddenly Ford shifted all his weight to one side. He moved out of the way on the track, with an enormous and slow courtesy, making a space for Lanski to pass.

Lanski’s eyes and chest felt wet for a moment. He took two steps down the steep hillside but stopped as Thomas Ford spoke again, so quietly that Lanski only just heard the words over the wind,

“Don’t come back.”

Lanski couldn’t move for the next few seconds. When he could move he took more steps down the hill. He kept walking on the silver leaves until his boots turned white from the Subaru’s headlights.

Lanski got in the driver’s side of the Subaru and found the keys in the ignition. His hands were shaking too much to turn the key. He sat there for a minute, then looked out and up the hillside for the first time, to see if Ford was there. Ford was gone.

Lanski shook his hands. He clapped them together. He blinked and said his grandmother’s name out loud. Then he had the Subaru started and began reversing down the hillside.

Alan Gillan was still lying awake, thinking of his poor, lost daughter.

How could this be reality? There was nothing real about this. If it wasn’t for Jean, Alan knew he would be considering suicide seriously by now. If only to be reunited with Lea, or have the possibility.

The moonlight was coming in Alan’s window very strongly. He could see his wife’s hair on the pillow beside him. It looked like the silver tail of a merry-go-round horse. Lea had loved the merry-go-round when she was a wee girl. Alan and Jean hadn’t been able to get her off it at the end of days on the beach. It was like she wanted to ride off somewhere far away on the wooden horse that took her in circles.

And now she was gone, so far away that Alan couldn’t imagine it.

Cathy McCallum was lying awake too, half in anger at her husband and half in fear over her son. Jack must be with one of his little office whores now. He would make up some story about Lanski and him being needed at some late-night gas-leak on one of the many sites he always had on the go, so many sites that Cathy had long since stopped listening or understanding when Jack talked about the business.

In the early years she knew she had been a help to him, he couldn’t have got it all done back then, not without her. But something had changed, after they had left the caravan on the hill and Jack had started making what he called “real money”.

Cathy had thought she’d known what that meant, she had enjoyed the new life too. But ten houses had become a hundred, then hundreds, and something called
MCCALLUM HOMES
started being talked about in the town, because it was only a town then, she had seen signs outside houses saying MCCALLUM HOMES in loud, shouting type. She had seen adverts in the newspapers, on television.

Jack had forgotten then, to take care of Jimmy. He had thought of it as Cathy’s responsibility. Well, if it was her responsibility alone, then Cathy supposed she had messed it up, because even she knew that something wasn’t right in her son.

He had been so happy in the caravan though, as a tiny boy, on the hillside, out at Ardlarich. It hadn’t been easy for Cathy, taking a wee boy up that steep hill track to get home every day, passing all those abandoned tractors and vans. But it had all just seemed natural then, normal, and the walks kept you fit.

Cathy frowned and bit her lip. She thought of Jack, in some bed right now, some flat or hotel room, a girl young enough to be his daughter would have her legs wrapped round him. Cathy laughed and shook her head. It wasn’t even that she really cared, not now. But it still hurt her pride.

The silver light came in the bedroom window and Cathy’s eyes sparkled in it like strange organic jewels.

The wind picked up across the city and, outside 72 Broomfield Road, the old grey cat that chose to spend its nights reclining on the low, stone wall bordering Marie and Robert Ferguson’s front garden stretched its forepaws out ahead of itself as tightly as it could at its age.

The wind didn’t really bother the grey cat. Its aged owner rarely bothered to groom the beast any more. Its fur was a thick, matted pad of insulation, proof against rain and wind on most nights. The cat shifted its neck to look out of its large, round head at the living room window of 72 Broomfield Road.

Something there caught the cat’s attention. Its claws, all except the right forepaw’s claws which no longer came out, twitched and expanded and met the night air. A little cry came from the mouth of the grey cat as it looked at the glass of the living room window of 72 Broomfield Road. The woman in there sometimes came out with bowls of warm milk or sweet treats which hurt the cat’s bad fangs. Hesitantly, the cat positioned itself to jump down from the low wall. This took a lot of careful preparation. When it felt all its joints were optimally aligned to cope with the shock, the grey cat allowed its considerable weight to leave the wall. It landed on the short grass with a thump. It trotted along the garden and looked up at the window sill. It wasn’t sure it could manage any more but with a remarkable spring from its hindquarters the cat found itself standing solidly on the stone outer sill of the living room window.

It looked in. Its grey-green eliptical irises reflected back the light from the living-room. For a long time the cat watched, transfixed. It forgot its age and where it was. Sometimes its neck twitched violently from side to side as it reacted to the events in the living-room. The cat made no sound.

On the road along the loch-side, from the hill back to the city, Lanski drove the Subaru at a consciously steady, sane, regular pace. It was very important, he felt, to keep the outward appearance of control. Let the insides do what they liked, it was Lanski’s duty, at the moment, to maintain some control of the externals.

It seemed he had only blinked an eye though, barely a moment had passed, and already the Subaru was passing the golf course and going through the roundabout. Lanski was back in the city. Houses shot by on left and right. The occasional MCCALLUM HOMES sign loomed.

How easy it had been then, in the end, to just walk away from the dream. The dream of one day being a rich man like McCallum. It had passed and fallen from Lanski’s hands as lightly as a leaf. He would go back to the flat, give Elena some of his money. She would cry, perhaps worse. But by tomorrow, Lanski knew he would be back in
Warsaw
, with his wife and children again. It was the right thing. There was no doubt in Lanski. He could hear the warm voice of his grandmother, deep in his soul, already welcoming him home to the land where she was buried.

But still, Lanski found himself indicating left at the sign for Broomfield Road. His heart started to speed up as he drove steadily along the old avenue of oak trees. He counted off the even numbers until, just around the corner, he saw a large 72, metal letters stuck above a solid door with frosted glass panels. With the eye McCallum had trained his foreman to have, Lanski noticed the pebble-dashing along the side of the house. There was also something odd on the living-room window-sill, some large, oval, grey object, perhaps a stone or ornament.

Lanski parked the Subaru and turned off the ignition. He sat very still and made no move to open the car door. The grey object on the window-sill of the living-room of 72 Broomfield Road moved suddenly and Lanski blinked. It was a cat. Lanski thought it was shifting position on the window-sill, getting ready to spring down. But now he saw from the way it moved its hips and back that it was an old cat. It wasn’t preparing to jump. In fact, Lanski wondered from the painstaking movements the cat made now whether it had ever managed to jump up there on its own. Perhaps some children had left it there as a cruel trick. The children in this country could be like that. The cat moved again, almost in a flinching, cowering way. As though something it saw through that living-room window was affecting it.

Lanski placed his hand on the handle of the Subaru’s driver’s door. But he didn’t open the door. He just left his hand there. He could stay in the vehicle. He could drive away. What business was it of his any more? McCallum had sent him to this house to help Jimmy deal somehow with some woman and another boy, but Lanski knew he had no intention of helping the McCallums now. So why had he come here then? He was being a fool. It wasn’t necessary for him to be here. He should leave the city right now. It wouldn’t even be necessary for him to stop by at the flat and see Elena. Lanski’s debit card and passport were never kept at the flat. All the Polish workers from the site stored their valuables at Zebitov’s house. Zebitov’s house was safe. No-one messed around with Zebitov, not even the native Scottish in the city.

But Lanski felt his hand depressing the button on the door. He wasn’t doing it. The hand seemed to be doing it by itself, with a will so mysterious and deep that Lanski dared not interfere. He pushed the door open. He stepped out onto the empty road. He kept his eye on the cat and closed the door gently. The door did not fully close. The cat did not react. Lanski stepped onto the pavement and walked along it in the direction of 72 Broomfield Road, the garden, the gate, the window and the cat.

He kept his eyes on the cat and the closer Lanski came to the cat the more familiar the animal seemed. Lanski felt a tingling sensation in his cheeks and neck. Somewhere in his head, at the top of his skull, something seemed to warm, then tighten, then burst and flush away. An emptiness followed that sensation as Lanski stared at the cat’s grey fur. Its round head. No, this was too strange now. Lanski nearly turned back and returned to the Subaru, to his passport, to his debit card, to his family. But he scratched his thumb against his index finger and walked a few more steps towards the cat on the windowsill.

Lanski was at the gate to the front garden of 72 Broomfield Road. The cat made no sign of knowing he was coming towards it. Lanski recognised the cat and his lips were suddenly dry. The cat was Ixor. Ixor, the cat Lanski’s grandmother had had in the
village
of
Lanski
’s childhood. Lanski, who had been little Zbigniew then, little Zbiggy they had called him, he had always been frightened of Ixor, the big, old, heavy cat that sat on his grandmother’s lap through the afternoon and on her doorstep through the evening. Lanski told himself to stop being stupid, this was another cat, it only looked like Ixor.

But then the cat turned its round head towards Lanski. Its eyes were orange in the streetlight glow. Its eyes locked onto Lanski’s eyes perfectly. There was no difference. These were Ixor’s eyes reflecting the orange lamplight. Lanski was six years old again, pee on his thigh from a dribble he had just taken against the old elm tree by his grandmother’s porch. The cat’s eyes bored into Lanski. Why had his grandmother loved that horrible, evil cat so dearly? The stench of ancient, corrupting knowledge had seemed to come off Ixor like steam under the sunlight that shone down on the forests of Lanski’s childhood. And here was Ixor back again, perhaps only for a moment, looking through this other British cat’s eyes at Lanski the foreman. Ixor the unkillable. Ixor, the potent terror of Lanski’s infant nightmares.

Lanski stood still at the gate of 72 Broomfield Road. He knew his hands were shaking. He started to remember why he was here. The cat swivelled its huge head and looked away from Lanski. It was staring back in through the living room window of the house. Lanski felt the impulse again, like a surge of electricity, to turn back to the Subaru and escape.

Instead, he walked into the garden. He expected the cat to jump down or react and at least turn its head toward him again. But the cat was still as Lanski stepped on the paved path and walked up it until he was at the front door. Lanski looked through the frosted glass. The hall light was on. The number, 72, stood out boldly in black figures. Lanski walked along the front wall of the house, listening. He had almost reached the windowsill and the huge, old cat, when instinct told him again to go back. His feet stopped walking. Lanski stared at the cat’s grey rump. He should go back to the front door of the house, try the handle. He had not thought of it when he looked through the door’s glass. Neither had he thought of knocking, or ringing. No, Lanski realised, the idea must have been there, blocking him from doing those other things, the idea of seeing first, whatever it was the cat was staring in the window at.

That was it. That was the thread keeping Lanski from turning away now. He wanted to know. Perhaps that was why Granny had loved Ixor, her cat, for the knowledge in Ixor’s vast eyes. The knowledge must have passed, some of it, from Ixor to herself.

Lanski walked towards the windowsill and the old, grey cat. He wanted the cat to respond normally now, at last, jump down, run or stagger away into the night. But the cat stuck there as though superglued to the stone sill. The cat seemed so heavily embedded there on that window ledge, Lanski imagined its paws sunk into the stone by now, like wet concrete. He saw how dirty and matted its thick fur was. He saw its heavy, distended belly. Again, he wondered how it could ever have jumped up to the window-sill. Lanski pretended to himself that it was the cat he was curious to see up close, all the while he was edging along the front wall of 72 Broomfield Road to get level with the window.

Lanski was close enough now, to have reached out and touched the cat, though he had no desire to do it. Still the cat made no movement. It did not turn to watch him. Lanski could see the inner panel of the double-glazed living-room window. It seemed to have an odd tint, like rose-glass, or the high cathedral windows in
Warsaw
. Lanski couldn’t see into the living-room from where he stood. The angle was still wrong. Just another step, maybe two, and he would be able to see in. Lanski did not take the next step though. He wasn’t past it yet, the point of no return. He could still go back to the Subaru and drive away without ever looking through this window. The options danced at the front of Lanski’s brain like teasing nymphettes whirling in a private ballet of the soul. Lanski watched the edge of the cat’s left eyeball. That old eye was still looking in the window. Lanski tried to see some reflection in the eye but that was impossible. He took three quick steps, pivotted on his toes, and stood right outside the living-room window, directly behind the cat’s broad hips and long, thick tail which hung over the window-sill like a grey gallows rope.

The cat did not react to Lanski’s arrival at its back.

There was no tint in the glass. It was only blood. Lanski looked at the glass, and through the glass. There was nothing different here. This was only the same as McCallum’s hill. McCallum’s hill, and now this house, it was all the same. One was a hill and one was a house but Lanski knew what they were and that they were both the same. They were both the Valley of the Shadow of Death that Lanski’s old grandmother had talked about often.

Lanski and the cat remained quiet and looked into the Valley as the full moon swelled far above them.