Turquoiselle (20 page)

Twenty

Croft and Carver
travelled down in the lift that was corridor-attached to Croft’s room. Six – seven?
– levels below, they emerged onto the terrace with steps and handrail. They
descended the steps to the grass. No one was there. The whole area, including
the lush wilderness ahead, seemed held in a unique pocket of unmotion and
blurred quiet – though raucous shouts and other disturbances were audible, they
sounded removed and irrelevant; noises off. On the slopes, and among the trees,
no burning was to be seen, and nothing stirred in the windless, smoke-dried
airlessness. Already the day was too warm. The sky had a glaring pallor.
Nothing moved there, either. The gulls were gone.

Then
four security men ran out of the trees up ahead. Their advent was so unannounced
Carver suspected they had been hidden from sight, waiting for anyone – or two
specific persons – to come down the steps.

Carver
stopped dead. Croft also. They watched as the four men – coordinated, expressionless
– bounded towards them.

None
of the four carried a weapon, but all were no doubt armed, and with a selection
of devices. This was like the schools. Carver, almost mindlessly now, seeing
in pictures not words – one or two boys on their own, hoping it was OK, and
abruptly confronted out of nowhere by the bullies. But here the bullies had
been
cloned
– they all
looked alike. The man with the spiked hair was not included.

About
five metres from them, the gang came to a halt.

Croft
spoke. “Yes?” His voice was steady and pitched, and kept a balanced authority.
He was in charge. That was all there was to it.

Or
not.

The
face of the slightly taller security man sagged to let out a ribald laugh.

“Hello,
Crofty. Look,
it’s
Crofty. Who’d
have guessed?”

Two
of the others laughed, softly, not minding.

The
fourth man stared hard through round unliking glassy eyes. “Well,” the fourth
man said, “he can frenchy kiss up his own shitty arse.”

That
made all four men laugh. Even the glassy-eyed man who had said it.

The
taller one said, “So. What’ll we do with him, boys?”

Croft
did not speak now. To speak was very likely useless.

Carver
readied himself for what must come next – a fight with professional strong-arm
balletics, the utilisation, probably, of instruments intended to subdue, if not
– essentially – to kill. He did not look at Croft. To look at Croft would not
be useful either.

Short
and incongruous, a firework cracked, somewhere around the building.

It
was not a firework.

As
one, the four-man gang altered, everything about them changing .

Their
faces had resumed likeness, blankly serious and fixed. Only “Shooting–” the
glassy-eyed man murmured, as if explaining to himself, giving his body an extra
split second to respond. And they all broke into motion, running, sprinting at
and then past the two men who had seemed to be their quarry. Off they raced,
away along the wall of the building, the shortest of them leaping a low bush
that had encroached.

A
litter of several more disembodied shots fractured through far-off air. Then
quietness reassembled, and the sense of total distancing.

“This
place smells like badly-smoked haddock,” remarked Croft, “don’t you think so?”

Carver
did not answer.

Croft
began to stride up the incline, more or less in the direction he had led Carver
before. Carver followed. Nobody else, nothing, sprang from the trees. At
least, not yet.

“Hiding,”
said Croft, “in plain sight.”

They
had met no one at all, though they had not paused at the griffin bench on the
slope, but progressed around, by the rises and dips of the higher ground,
towards the northern side. To the sheds. Carver’s sheds.

Although
Carver had been left with keys, unsurprisingly Croft had another set.

He
unlocked the central door of the central shed.

Inside
it was cooler than the woods. (
Cool
. Play it
...
)

Carver
looked around him. He had been about here last night till dawn, had sat below,
looking up, or sleeping, under the yellow eye of the 4th Level Alert that the
glow in the shed had become. Unless he had imagined this, as he had imagined,
or been made to imagine, that Anjeela Merville could grow her hair and fingers
to unusual lengths.

The
shed had, it was true, also changed somewhat. In addition to the table, on
which he had put the small random group of ‘stolen’ objects, three chairs were
instantly notable. They had been arranged against the walls. Plus there was a
miniature white fridge, working on batteries, whose door Croft at once flung
wide. “Good, good,” said Croft, with sombre gratification. And drew out a
large bottle of vodka with a white and brown label, its pedigree written in
Russian characters. A filled ice-tray came next, and a dish of anchovies.
Everything began at once to smoke as its frigidity met the surrounding warmth.
Croft set the bottle and fish on the table, and pulled up two of the chairs.

Carver
now noted another much lower table had been positioned under the main table,
with a dozen glasses standing on it. “My apologies, they didn’t bring the
coffee, as I asked. I know you’re not enamoured of alcohol, Car. That was your
father, was it? There is bottled water in the fridge, nicely chilled – yes?”

“All
right,” Carver said.

Croft
went back and drew out a two litre bottle that had lain on its side due to the
cramped space. Its label also was unknown. It seemed to be in French, and bore the
reproduced pen-and-ink illustration of a fairy-tale well.

“Come,”
said Croft, as he seated himself. “Sit.” Carver remained where he stood, just
inside the door. “Shut the door, please, old fellow,” added Croft. “Perhaps you
should lock it – I have the keys here.”

“In
case someone comes by, you mean,” said Carver.

“Hiding
in plain sight,” Croft repeated. He had poured a short thin glass full of
vodka, and knocked it back, picked up two anchovies in his fingers and set them
in his mouth,  savorously rolling them about his tongue before biting down.

Carver
shut and triple-locked the door. He retained the keys. “I thought,” Carver said
quietly, “we had to get out of here. Away.”

“We
do,” said Croft, through the fish. He chewed further, then swallowed, poured
another drink, and swallowed that, again in one mouthful. He poured a third
glass, and now added the miniature ice-cubes. Put it down, only running the
edge of his large and manicured hand lightly, kindly, against its frosty sides.
Petting it before drinking it.

“Then
why,” said Carver, “are we in here?”

“Common
sense. They have gone mad. They will look for me. For us. Initially in the
sections. Then outside. They will expect that we attempt a straight route for
the outer world. They will be massing at every exit.”

“What
are
the exits?
Where
are they?”

“I’ll
show you the best ones. In a little while. You must be patient, Car, dear boy.
Have some water – or
can
I tempt you to this tasty water-coloured beverage?”

“Where
does it come from?” Carver asked.

“Somewhere
in Russia, I assume. Legally imported. Perfectly valid, patriotic and safe. No
treason in sampling foreign drinks or food. These are good, these anchovies.
Yes? No? Your loss, dear boy. Caviar would be delightful, of course.” He ate
more of the fish, then raised and tipped the glass between his lips. This time
he emptied only half, crunched on an ice-cube. Turning in the chair he pierced
Carver with a grimace of sudden and intense malevolence. “Sit down, boy. What
do you think you are doing?
Sit
. Drink your water.”

Carver glanced over his shoulder through windows, out of the shed.
The slopes were sullen and shadowed yet still seemed vacant of people. But the
trees had not shown the security gang until the four men chose to emerge. And
if Carver left now, he had no notion of any safe way to get across the wild
extensive grounds, at speed and in the right direction.

He walked to the table, positioned the second chair and sat;
reached for the water and the second glass. (The keys were in his pocket and
Croft might have forgotten them.)

“We must just be patient,” said Croft thoughtfully. “
We
can
do that. It’s the fashion now, everything must rush so fast. It was better in
the past. The past went slowly. Perhaps even you remember how slow it went when
you were young. Minutes that were hours, hours that were years.” He finished the
glass, sucked in another of the ice-cubes. Deciding to speak again, he
spat the cube out on the floor. He had devoured all the
anchovies, and now wiped his oily fingers on the sleeve of his severe and
costly suit, whose jacket, even in the heat, he did not slough. “Let’s pretend,
shall we?” said Croft, resuming a smile, almost drowsy with a goodwill as
sudden as the flash of malevolence. “Let’s pretend we’re in a Russian novel –
Tolstoy, say. Or a Chekhov play, that might be better.
Platonov
...
The Cherry Orchard...
.
The Seagull
.
Ah, that would be the life. All that elite glamour and passion and fuckingly
glorious angst, and then a conclusive and mindlessly magnificently fearless
death. Anna and Platonov with their trains, and so-and-so with his pistol –
Drink up, Car. Nothing like good vodka.” His mind had mislaid, it seemed, that
Carver’s drink was water. Carver drank amenably. His heart thudded heavy as
lead, like leaden bullets loaded in his chest, playing now Russian Roulette,
slipping round, with the empty click of escape, but in the end the explosion
would come, more silent than any silence of the living earth.

Croft refilled his own glass.

The bottle was half empty, one more chamber of the gun. When all
the single-glass-deep chambers of the bottle were empty, the explosion would
yet come.

Whatever was happening in this Place was plainly happening to
Croft as well. Did he know? Did any of them? – the girl with her blood-dipped
toenails, Ball and Van Sedden fighting and
weeping.
Charlie Hemel. Anjeela–

And he, Carver, he must have it too, this madness. That, his
madness, was why he had seen her hand alter, and her hair. Did he now only
imagine
–
pretend
–
Croft partly lay there in the wooden chair, his jacket smelling of vinegar and
salt-fish, and his real hair falling over his vast, mournful and bitter eyes.

Croft drank. “Car,” said Croft. “You know, dear boy, it’s been
hard on me. My son – it was – years ago. They killed him. It was during
conflict, the great battle, hearts, minds. It was then. He was so young. About
your age once, Car. When you were young, like that. I wished so much he hadn’t
died. If it could have been me. If someone – if someone had said to me, we must
kill one of you, Peter. You, or him. I’d have – I – would have said, me. Let it
be me. But
no – no
body
asked. He was my son. I never saw – Not enough left of him to bury.
What’s that
?”
Croft had lurched about, almost falling, spinning up from the chair which
itself did fall, on its back. He rushed to the nearest window and gaped out,
panting as if he had run for miles across a minefield. He put both his hands up
on the glass, as a child might, staring out. And then he threw himself on the
floor, below the window level, not to be seen.

Carver rose cautiously, and approached the other closer window,
keeping to one side of it. He could make out nothing in the view that had not
already been there. No intruders, other than trees, in between. But, as he had
already decided, that might not prove a thing. He eased away from the window.
Really, the shed being constructed as it was, with so many windows on both
sides, to hide in here was fairly nonviable. Croft, going crazy, glossed over
this. Or else it made for him a facet of some necessary pattern, inescapable
after all. Just like the building and its grounds.

Far away though now it was, the up-and-down building in fact ended
the vista from the shed. About a quarter mile off below this hill. The windows
of the corridor outside his room would be identifiable, if he searched for them
– he did not.

Croft was getting up from the floor. He stood without unease and
crossed unguardedly in front of the windows as he returned to right his chair
and sit on it. He looked a moment at the vodka bottle, but did not refill his
glass.