Survival of Thomas Ford, The (19 page)

Jack McCallum had found the old shovel at last. It had fallen right down the back of the generator’s side panelling. For a while, Jack had thought he might not be able to reach far enough down to get hold of it, but he had persisted.

Jack inspected the shovel’s flat blade in the generator light. He couldn’t be sure if it was rust or blood embedded in the metal. He decided it must be a bit of both. Shandlin had bled a lot. Screamed a lot and bled a lot. That little bitch from
Greenock
who wouldn’t keep her mouth shut, she had bled a lot too. What colour had her hair been? Blonde, Jack remembered, with a touch of a Farrah flick though she probably hadn’t modelled her hair on Farrah’s, no, this had been a nineties girl. What a mouth on her though, and the stupid little bitch thinking Jack was the sort of man who could be blackmailed. Well, she had learned. And now here was this new one, Lorna, she was about to learn.

Jack looked away from the shovel blade and over at the girl’s long shape by the caravan base. Normally, he would take her out of the blankets first, try to have some fun, but with Ford out here somewhere, loose, this wasn’t the normal situation.

Jack knew suddenly that he shouldn’t have sent Lanski off like that, to help the boy. Lanski should have been kept here, on the hill, until Ford was found. The girl and Jimmy could have waited. Ford was the priority. So why had Jack sent Lanski away? Fear and confusion had set in. Jack tried to get his mind straight. Should he dig the hole for the girl now, or should he leave the girl here and go looking for Ford?

If Ford finds people, help, then Jack knows he will hear them coming up the hill. There will be warning. Jack knows he can disappear into the forest if they come. The Subaru is gone now, Jack had heard Lanski go with it, so they can’t find it if they come. Did the girl tell Ford who Jimmy is, or who Jack himself is? That is the only important thing. Even that, though, might only be hearsay. Except that Jack owns the land here, and if they start digging it up…

It might all be over already then.

On the other hand, the girl was a certainty. She knew everything. Jack squeezed the shovel’s wooden handle. He walked into the trees, ignoring the girl. He let his belly lead him through the shadows and birches until he found a spot that seemed fresh, unused. He jammed the shovel’s blade against the rough earth and put his weight down hard.

Only twenty feet away, the family of feral cats froze in rapt attention, still, tense as metal cable, listening to the shovel break the forest earth. Such a huge intrusion into the night’s peace here was a rare thing. Most of the creatures listening, with their short, wild lives, had never heard such a thing. Only some of the older, more crazed-looking cats, felt dim memory stir, from earlier burials. It had been a comfort for Jack, Cathy and Jimmy, twenty years earlier, having the family of cats sleeping and purring in the gap below their caravan. The animals had provided an insulation, not so much from the cold, but from the loneliness of the forest and the hill. Even before Jack McCallum’s madness had filled the earth here with the bodies of his enemies, there had been ancient ghosts to contend with for anyone who tried to live on the dark hillside. It was an old place. Something in it had attracted many people over the centuries, and they had tried to live here, but no-one had stuck.

Only the cats had stuck for so many generations, taking possession of the land and the trees for these twenty years.

Now they tolerated the intrusion of Jack’s shovel chopping at the earth.

Jack was finding a rhythm in the work. Thoughts of Jimmy started to race through Jack’s mind, Jimmy at that house with the woman and that boy, Robert. Of course Lanski had to be sent there. What would have been the point of finding Ford here, only to have something happen to the boy in the city tonight? Cathy would never forgive it. Jack’s unspoken contract with his wife was that, no matter what else, the boy had to be kept safe. If anything happened to Jimmy all bets were off. And anyway, for Jack himself, even with Jimmy’s shortcomings, it was true when Jack told the boy that all the work had no meaning unless it could be passed along to Jimmy. Jack’s hands paused. He stopped digging and the shovel hovered in the darkness. It was as though reality suddenly penetrated Jack’s mind. The odds were so heavily against him now, against McCallum Homes, against the future that Jack had planned out. On paper, it looked almost hopeless now. Too many variables to control; too many genies let out of too many bottles.

Jack snarled. Paper odds had never meant anything to him. Paper odds were for cowards, who wanted an excuse for not trying. If you were going to dare to try to shape the future you had to forget about such things. You had to try to change your mind into a machine that could create diamonds, then you had to use the diamonds as tools to cut your name, your family’s name, into the glass surface that other people called the future. Then other people would read your name there.

MCCALLUM HOMES

There wasn’t anything else to it, not that Jack could see.

Of course, this meant you had to have a shovel on nights like this, and arms to lift the shovel, and a mind and heart that could live with the holes on the hillside.

But had it not been his own boy who had made the first hole for that kitten?

It was destiny then. Something irresistible and mighty that could not, and should not, be denied. Jack allowed destiny to use his hands to remove the next shovelful of earth from the hillside.

Lorna awoke to terror. Her head and shoulders, half-suffocated in the swathes of thick blanket, were scratching and thumping among the tree-roots and stoned earth that Jack McCallum was dragging her across to get her to her grave. He had hold of her good foot in one hand and in the other he gripped the foot he had broken earlier that night with a punch. The broken bone in Lorna’s right foot was an inexplicable white-heat, searing, but the terror eclipsed it.

Jack McCallum looked up quickly as muffled screams started from the other end of the blankets. He laughed.

“Oh girl of the forest,”
Jack began to sing in a surprisingly high, clear, ringing voice,
“why do you pine so you pine so…oh girl in the forest why not pine for me!”

Jack blinked and stopped singing. He laughed again.

Thomas Ford stood absolutely still, a statue bathed half by the moonlight and his remainder drenched in the edge of the generator’s bulb perimeter. He waited for the singing to come again, so he could judge direction by it this time and try to follow. But there was no more singing.

Ford started walking again. It didn’t occur to him to be careful. He simply walked into the aura of the generator lights. Long, blinking seconds passed as he walked higher, blindly, then his eye adjusted. He saw the wrecked caravan. The generator engine roared. Ford looked all round the area slowly. He looked for the bird-faced driver but he was not here. He looked for the square-jawed passenger. He looked for Lea until he remembered not to look for his dead wife. He looked for Lorna, a sense of urgency returning now as his mind focused again.

Lorna.

Thomas Ford walked up to the caravan. He put his hand on the door handle and pulled. The door came away in his hand. He let go of it and let it fall to the earth. The thin door landed silently there as the generator engine screamed.

Thomas stepped up and into the caravan. It was all rotted away inside. No-one was in there. Thomas backed out of the metal shell. He walked across to the generator housing.

He stood and stared around but there were no signs on the ground, no tracks. He looked at the edges of the generator’s light perimeter. He would have to go out there, into the darkness of the trees again. Somewhere in the moonlight he would find her and with her the bird-faced bastard. Thomas looked down as the pain in his head and eye threatened to win. He let it build and gnaw at him. He let it almost take away his reason. Then he firmed himself again and raised his head. He chose a direction for his feet and he walked to the edge of the unnatural, searing white light.

In the city, outside the living-room window of 72 Broomfield Road, the house that Marie Ferguson’s dead husband had left her, Zbigniew Lanski and the old, decrepit, grey cat remained silent and still beneath the silver moon.

The smeared coating of blood on the living-room window made everything inside the house on the other side of the soiled glass seem a rose-hued nightmare scene, not real at all. Lanski tried to make himself understand quickly and thoroughly that it was real nonetheless, but his brain refused to clank into gear and accept this.

Only when one of the seemingly dead bodies on the thick, red living-room carpet moved in a swift, convulsive spasm did the grey cat flinch and howl lowly. The spell shattered for Lanski too and he moved quickly away from the window, jogged along the front wall of the house. The door handle turned easily and Lanski was still running when he entered the hall. It was a well-decorated passageway. Lanski noticed the ornate mirror on the wall. His own reflection there was a surreal blur as he passed. The living-room door was almost closed. Lanski shoved against it but the door wouldn’t open. Something heavy was obstructing it.

Lanski pushed harder. The door moved slowly and steadily towards opening. Lanski put his shoulder to the door and followed through on the shove. The momentum brought the door halfway open. Lanski heard a dull thud as the body that had been blocking the door finished its roll on the carpet. Lanski got his head into the room. A woman’s thick black hair made a luxurious tendrilled splash against the red carpet. Her body had been blocking the door. Her arm was at a funny angle now, as though she deliberately hid her face from view. Lanski looked at the big man sprawled across the worn-out leather chair. Too big for Jimmy. Strangely, it was Jimmy’s moving form on the carpet, by the electric fire, that caught Lanski’s eye last. The boy’s erect hairstyle was intact, but a large knife was inserted neatly in his side. Blood flowed freely there. Lanski watched the boy’s eyes. Black circles. They looked back at Lanski with a curious little fire at their centres.

“Lanski?” said McCallum’s boy.

Lanski nodded. He took a high step and made his way over the woman’s body. He went to the man on the leather chair first. He put his fingers to the base of the man’s thick, square jaw. He kept his eyes on the man’s hands. There was no pulse in the neck.

“Did I do him, Lanski?” said Jimmy. “See? See? You tell my dad eh, tell him, tell him I did the both of them eh?”

Jimmy lay his head back down on the thick carpet.

“Tell him the future’s secure eh? Tell my dad, Lanski. Tell him the future’s alright now.”

Lanski turned his neck to watch Jimmy. A moan came out of the woman. Jimmy jerked his head in her direction.

“Finish her, Lanski! Finish her man.”

Lanski raised his eyebrows. He walked over to the woman and crouched beside her. He could see her face now. Her eyes were tormented. She must know the man on the chair is dead. Lanski can see that her eyes are in hell already. Lanski sees that the eyes are the eyes of a mother. She is the right age to be the mother of the man on the chair. Lanski sees that her face is beautiful, even now. She is still moaning. Her eyes are on the dead man on the leather chair. She has not focused on Lanski at all.

“Do her, Lanski!” hissed Jimmy.

“Shut up,” said Lanski.

The Pole stood abruptly and walked across the blood-stained carpet until he stood over Jimmy. Jimmy craned his neck and looked up at the man who towered over him.

“Where’s my dad?”

Lanski didn’t answer. He bent over and took hold of the handle of the knife in Jimmy’s side. Jimmy’s mouth opened and a high squeal filled the living-room. Lanski twisted the handle a little. Jimmy screamed. On the window-sill outside the living-room the old, grey cat emitted a low howl. It jumped down onto the front garden, jarring its hip-joints. It ran home. Lanski’s face in the living-room was set like a block of East European granite. To Jimmy’s tear-filled eyes, Lanski’s head was an Easter Island statue, floating above him in the room’s ether. Lanski pulled and the big knife came out with a wet sound. Lanski tossed it away. He took Jimmy’s jacket in one hand and his shirt in the other. He pulled back folds of material until the wound was exposed. Lanski pressed his palm by the wound’s edge and blood welled up. Jimmy screamed again and his whole body shuddered.

“You’re lucky little Scottish bastard. You only cut your skin I think.”

He prodded the open wound again with finger-tips.

“No organs see? Just your skin boy. Just the edges of you.”

Lanski laughed.

“You some kind of fucking vampire boy eh? My grandmother would have liked you.”

Lanski stood up. He left the room, walking over the woman’s moaning form. He walked along the hall and guessed at the bedroom. He opened a drawer and found a white shirt. As he walked back along the hall, he ripped the material into strips. He walked back over the woman and grabbed Jimmy’s shoulders. He pulled his boss’ son to a sitting position. When Jimmy understood what the Pole was doing, he raised his arms to make it easier for the Pole to wrap the cloth round his stomach. Lanski pulled tight and Jimmy yelled out again. He thought he was going to faint, the room and the woman and the Pole and Robert’s dead body all seemed to shimmer. Then the room hardened up again.

“You won’t bleed to death now boy,” said the Pole. “No, you live now I think.”

Marie Ferguson had started to crawl along the carpet towards her son’s body. Jimmy and Lanski looked over at her.

“Come on,” said Lanski.

He pulled Jimmy to his feet. The room threatened to swirl again. Lanski dragged Jimmy towards the living-room door. Jimmy looked back towards the crawling woman.

“Lanski. We’ve got to get her! Lanski! No!”

But Lanski had the boy in the hall now. Soon they were outside the front door of 72 Broomfield Road. Jimmy was shocked at the feeling of the cool night wind against the skin of his face. He had gone so far from life in so short a time. Now the Pole was dragging him back into the world. Jimmy saw the Subaru looming closer. He knew he couldn’t have walked a step on his own, only the Pole’s strength was holding him up. Surely it was better this way after all, to get away from that house after what had happened. But then it rose up again in Jimmy’s soul, the pointlessness of it all if the woman was left alive to tell everyone.

“Lanski! Christ! Go back and get her! You work for my dad man! He won’t want that woman left there!”

Lanski took an arm off Jimmy. He leaned the boy’s weight against the passenger door of the Subaru. He got the door open and levered the boy into the car seat skillfully. Lanski slammed the passenger door and walked round the vehicle. He looked over the roof of the Subaru, at the house. He looked for the grey cat on the window-sill and saw it was gone. The living-room window was still rose-pink in the glow from the orange streetlights, like the stained-glass window of a religion yet to be conceived.

Lanski got into the Subaru driver’s seat. He turned the key in the ignition. It felt better to be back in the car.

Lanski leaned across Jimmy and grabbed the passenger seatbelt. He pulled it across the boy’s shirt-wrapped torso and clunked it into its housing. Lanski grinned at the boy.

“I don’t work for anyone any more,” he said.

Painstakingly, doggedly, Marie Ferguson pulled her hurting body across the surface of the living-room carpet she had chosen one rainy afternoon at Carpetworld. It had been difficult, choosing between the deeper twill weave of a more expensive carpet, or the compromised yet harder-wearing close-relation weave that she had finally got a better deal on. It was at those times that she missed her husband’s presence most keenly. Her husband had been great at getting the best deals. Now Marie Ferguson was pulling herself towards the old, leather chair which her husband had gotten a fantastic deal on nearly twenty years ago. Even the gold cushion had been thrown in free and now her son’s dead body was sprawled across that chair and cushion. Marie was half-aware that she was the only living thing left now in this house. She heard the Subaru’s engine grunt into life beyond the double-glazed window. She heard it growl louder and move off down Broomfield Road. She knew that her son’s murderer was being taken away into the night by some man who had come into her home like a ghost. She crawled now, just as her son had crawled earlier in the day, from the kitchen to the living-room, to watch The Rockford Files, after Jimmy had kicked his balls. She crawled until she was close enough to raise her hand and place it on her son’s ankle. She tried to raise her head but could only get it high enough to hold it for a moment against the worn leather surface of her husband’s chair before she passed out.