What I Tell You In the Dark (28 page)

She doesn't move. We stay like that, in silence, punctuated by the sound of Joel's breath beginning to return in patchy gasps.

Once Joel has managed to sit up on the floor, I start talking again. I tell them that I'm not stupid, that I know how this
works. ‘If I take this gun,' I say, ‘then everyone suffers. I understand that. I know how men like Devan operate.'

Neither one of them speaks, although Joel seems to sag a little at the mention of that name.

‘I know that if someone takes what's his,' I'm standing now, above them both, ‘there will need to be some payback. Someone will need to be punished.'

Alicia's tears are back. The boy doesn't look far off it either.

‘But I'm going to take the weight for this – you need to understand that, both of you. I am not going to let this come back on either of you, or your brother, Alicia.'

‘Why?' She's wiping her cheeks. ‘Why do you care what happens when you leave here?'

‘Because believe it or not, I want to help you. Yes, I need this gun, but I want to help you too. I want to help everyone,' I add, getting slightly off track. ‘Look, don't worry about why. Put it this way, I know you know where it is – a flat this size, with him coming and going at all hours, there's no way of keeping anything secret from you. I've watched you, you notice everything. But do you see me beating it out of you? Do you see me screaming and shouting? Turning the place upside down? No, because you're as much a victim as I am – you both are. I have no quarrel with you.'

She's almost there. She wants to trust me, I just need to give her the right permission to do it. ‘If this is done right,' I say, squatting down beside her, eye to eye, ‘your brother gets a second chance out of this – a turning point, where no one gets hurt. Because, Alicia, you know as well as I do that the next time someone comes crashing through this door in the middle of the night, it's not going to be a guy like me. It's going to be someone who will be bringing consequences in their wake – jail time, violence – you don't need me to spell it out.'

‘Keep your mouth shut,' Joel says from behind me.

She glares at him. ‘You're the one who brought him here. You
and all of them, always dragging Blair into your mess. We've already lost one from this family, in case you haven't noticed.'

This silences him. Turning to me again, she asks, ‘How?'

‘We make it look realistic. Joel, look at me. What would Devan do to you if he knew you'd led me here?'

He doesn't look at me. He keeps staring at the floor.

‘What would he do, Joel?'

‘What do you think? He'd hurt him.' She's sounds a little cross. She thinks I'm bullying him, and she clearly can't abide that, even with this boy. I expect he reminds her all too much of her brother.

‘I'm not trying to be nasty,' I explain, for her benefit as much as his, ‘I'm just trying to illustrate to you the position we're in. There are only two things that will stop Devan from hurting either of you or Blair. One, if he can tell that this was done by force. And two, if he knows who did it.'

Now he is looking at me. He has his same expression from when I first jumped out at him.

‘A cut lip and a few bruises aren't going to convince a guy like Devan. He needs to know that I forced you here, Joel, with a knife at your throat, and that you did something more than just let me do it. He needs to be convinced that you tried to fight me. And I'm afraid that means I'm going to have to cut you.'

I was expecting this news to be greeted with a degree of panic, or at the very least protest, but if anything it seems to come as a relief.

All he says is, ‘Cut ain't nothing. Jus don't shank me.'

Like I said, all he needs is to be treated like a man.

‘And then there's this,' I tell them, tossing Will's wallet on to the table. ‘I dropped it in the struggle – that's what you tell Devan when he comes. There's ID in there.'

‘There's money too.' I open it up and take out a tenner. ‘You can keep the rest of it,' I tell her. ‘I'm going to need to break a few things.'

She nods and scoops it into the pocket of her dressing gown.

‘Now – Alicia, will you please tell me where that gun is?'

She shows me instead. It's buried at the bottom of a fish tank, in Blair's room. From beneath the loose shale of coloured stones I pull a dripping package. I cut through the tape with my teeth and one by one I remove layers of clear plastic bags until I am left with a black pistol in my hand. The word
Glock
is stamped into the smooth rectangle of its barrel. It feels alien, like something I have been asked to hold.

Back in the kitchen, Joel says, ‘I want her to do it.'

She says she won't but I talk to her in the hallway. I tell her it will be easy, quick and easy. I explain where the arteries are. I tell her the hand is best, that it's the safest place, and a believable injury.

When she's ready, he sits on a chair in the kitchen, puts his hand out and looks away. I say to him, ‘This will remind you that we pay for our choices.' He's staring at me hard, waiting for the contact of the blade. ‘Make better choices, Joel. From this moment on.'

He cries out but he doesn't cry. After a few seconds, he starts to look faint. I show him my own hand. ‘I know how you feel,' I tell him.

‘Fuck you do,' he manages to say, and to my surprise he's trying to smile. ‘That jus a scratch.'

I laugh and head out into the hallway where I sweep a couple of pictures off the wall and shout loud enough for the neighbours to hear. In Blair's room I empty out drawers, toss the mattress and generally ransack the place.

When I'm back in the kitchen I tell her, ‘Before that dries he's going to need to put a couple of hand marks on the wall out there. But wait till he's feeling a bit steadier on his feet. You'll also need to take him to the hospital – it's going to need stitches.' I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maybe you can talk to your mother while you're there.'

‘He will come after you – you know that.' She has wrapped Joel's hand in a tea towel and is holding it up above the level of his heart, like I told her to.

‘That's the least of my worries. Very soon you'll be seeing my face in the news, and so will he.'

Joel looks away from the bloody swaddle for a moment. ‘You some kind of terrorist?'

‘More of an activist, I'd say. Now you make sure you drink plenty of fluids and –'

‘You need to go.' She doesn't say it angrily, just abruptly. She has a lot to do, and there's been more than enough talk already.

I leave by the staircase at the back of the building. My departure is not unnoticed but those who do see me pass – and I know they do, I can feel their look – take the warning of my gun seriously. At one point, I hear sirens in the distance. I stop for a second and wait but they do not come any closer. No one, it would seem, is rushing towards this particular emergency.

I keep my head down as I hurry north through the blank residential streets. When I see a bus up ahead I channel the last of my energy into a sprint. The doors close behind me with an encapsulating sigh and we pull out on to the empty road. As I sit down, the presence of the gun announces itself at the back of my waistband, angular and awkward against my injured disc.

‘Just you and me,' I say to the driver as he takes us west through ancient streets overwritten with steel and glass. So much has been torn down and swallowed up. Even the rivers have been driven underground.

As we pass through, the city lets out its fitful shouts and screeches. I rest my head against the window, the cold of the glass feels good. The mist of my breath fuzzes out the view so all I can see are shapes and colours, but always moving, reforming, vanishing again. Never still, never silent. Like me, London is a light sleeper.

17

Standing here on Waterloo Bridge, I watch the wide reach of the Thames come to life beneath me. Its waterway, its embankments, the dome of St Paul's and the giant prisms of the city, all alight from the rising sun. The chroma of fire. Brick, branch, every detail of what we know, coloured by God. This air in my lungs, this light in my eyes … never have I understood His design more clearly – and never have I felt more alone. Like the renegades before me, I have leapt into an exquisite state, without country, neither man nor Godsent. But how else can a meteor make itself known on earth, if not by detaching from heaven? It can only be this way. Burn bright, burn up.

Even at this early hour people are passing me every few seconds, in traffic, on foot, ready to begin their day. Their energy makes me realise how tired I am, from last night, from the days and the nights before that. But it's invigorating too. I turn away from the river, to try to draw something from them instead.

It's not long before I'm ready to join the march myself. I walk to the northern shore and turn west past the pitted obelisk of Cleopatra's Needle. In Embankment Gardens, secluded from the path by a dense and musty camellia, I squat down on my haunches and take out the gun. I release its magazine into my hand, and one by one I squeeze out the bullets with my thumb. They fall like a drill of seeds at my feet. I brush over them with twigs and dirt, then carefully I slide the gun back into the waistband of my trousers. It feels lighter as I straighten up, as if I've removed the part of it that was pressing into me.

It is no more than a baton now
, I tell myself as I continue my
journey to the tube station.
A tool with which I shall conduct proceedings
.

I join the queue for tickets and find myself waiting behind a man who is talking unnecessarily loudly into his mobile phone. His conversation seems work related, although I am trying not to listen to it. It's making my head rattle. I ask him to speak more quietly, but he doesn't. There are two others in front of us in the queue. They too are bristling at the sound of his braying voice.

Again I ask him to please let us have some peace. I remind him that we are sharing this space. He pauses his conversation to give me a certain kind of look, as if he's peering at me over the top of spectacles, which he's not. He then resumes, at the same volume, with an apologetic,
No nothing, just some weirdo
.

Before I realise I am doing it, I have removed the device from his hand and cancelled the call.

‘There,' I say to him, handing it back. ‘All sorted.'

He looks at me for a second then lowers his gaze. ‘Thanks,' is all he says. He goes to join another queue.

A few moments later the woman in front of me turns around, just as she's about to go and buy her ticket, and quickly smiles at me. It's not even a smile really, more a softening of the eyes, but it's enough for me to know that I am right. People should not have to endure the tyranny of bullies. Today, I shall make that clear. I glance at the clock – seven thirty. In half an hour I shall begin to tell this to the world.

On the train I make a mistake – I misjudge my audience. It's easily done, particularly when the sap of enthusiasm is rising through you, but in a setting like this it's hard to come back from, and very quickly I'm finding that things are beginning to run away from me.

The tube carriage is rammed, everyone alone together in that rush hour way with their downcast eyes and their headphones
and their branded coffee cups, but I don't feel like that at all. Or at least I didn't, when I first got on. I had been supercharged with purpose, excited to share it. But since I tried to speak about this a few minutes ago, my enthusiasm has been replaced by a less glorious kind of energy. I am suddenly aware of the confinement of this space, the way my words are festering in here, malformed, rotting among us. There is no dry wind to catch them, as there had been when my most memorable utterances took flight from Christ – on the Mount, that crowd waiting for me there at the foot of the hill, not only wanting but willing me to speak. It was the right time – people could be told in person then. They wanted to feel it, they wanted to bite the truth between their teeth and test it. But that was then.

I feel like I need to correct my foolishness – first though, I need to calm myself. I have begun to sweat, my hands are damp and trembling. The moment a seat is available I pounce on it. I lean forward and try to force some oxygen into my blood through long, smooth breaths, but it's hard to find a rhythm to it with the train stopping and starting beneath me the whole time. There is an unsettling pattern to its progress. For the past minute or so we appear to have simply stopped. No one other than me seems to care – perhaps it's normal to grind to a halt like this in the dark tunnel, but I don't like it.

‘I want to explain …' I begin, in an effort to recover myself, but it is said a little too forcefully. The couple standing in front of me move briskly away.

‘I want to explain …' I resume, more confidentially this time, in the direction of the man sat to my left, who tells me that he doesn't want any trouble.

‘Trouble is something you have come to expect …' I tell him, and the others, widening it out gently to those standing near us ‘… from someone who suddenly starts to speak when custom dictates that they should not. You assume that they are mad, or
that what they have to say must be rash or impulsive or ill thought-through. But consider how often you are willing to listen to perfect strangers in other contexts – television, internet … all of these things bring to you the views of people whose motivations you cannot possibly fathom. But it is a conventional source, it is the correct …' I use my hands for this next phrase – quote-unquote ‘… means of delivery.'

I am the only one in the entire carriage who is speaking.

‘The disembodied words that we so readily absorb online – ghosted for the most part, generated by an unseen hand. The source is obscure.'