The Night the Lights Went Out

by John Eider

‘And you’ll bring the Army in?’ the lad Patrick was muttering as I carried him after Wareing, his head clearing even as we spoke.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And Interpol?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ I struggled to remember what we’d told him only minutes ago.

  ‘You’ll tell them about Kronkear?’

  ‘All about Kronkear.’ I spoke and my voice was a croak.

  ‘And Tanya, Tanya..!’

  ‘Yes, even little Tanya.’

  ‘She wasn’t little, she was a big girl.’

  ‘Then you see her in your dreams.’

  ‘And that’s my gun!’

  With some reluctance, Wareing paused, lifted it over his head and handed it back; I only wanting to be out of there and free of Patrick before he realised he’d been half-way to being well and truly boondoggled in there – for had Ashe found him in there unconscious, gun and prisoners missing, it would surely have been enough to have had him killed.

  ‘Yes, let’s get the Army in.’ It was Wareing muttering then. ‘Who knows, even bloody Linkater – put him to good use for once.’

  The lad directed us then not back out through the foyer, but rather up the little stairs and over the boards that had known a thousand Shakespearean feet; before turning us Stage Left into the backstage area. This was clearly Ashe and Dahla’s domain, the same jungle field-hospital vibe of camp bends, sheets hung as awnings, drink, clothing – all hers – draped and thrown haphazardly… I guessed suddenly that back in that pre-E-Day world Ashe had found her acting somewhere, a faded mess, strung out maybe, and knowing that within his seaside domain of clubs and arcades he had a stage he could offer her. This little theatre had probably been the span of her reputation then, the compass of her talent. Of course, all thought of such frippery and carnival had ceased the night the lights went out.

  The usual detritus of the decadent life lay around also, no need to hide it: needles, tin foil, white powder. I wondered if this came in off the boats too? It was probably costing them as much as the food for a dozen families. The room was cast in the same eerie golden light from its high, narrow windows, diffused by the scarves and throws and diaphanous dresses, which hung from strung lines and which formed partitions dividing the dust-thick air.

  At the back door we discovered that this route hadn’t been much better than us coming out the front door; for the land the town was built on, though rising only very slightly from the sea, left the rear of our building with a bunker-like earthwork facing it, rendered near-impassable with the addition of a low wall topped with broken glass. To either side of the Palais were food- or gift-shops, one of which we were about to skip along the back of; when Wareing held me back,

  ‘You smell that?’

  My senses still not cleared from the fug of the Palais, thus alerted picked it up,

  ‘Burning.’

  We each looked along the narrow alleyway that ran beside the building. With the sunlight almost lost now, and certainly not visible from this trench-like space we found ourselves in, we saw along that gully’s length the unmistakable flickering of firelight.

  ‘What are the timings again?’ asked Wareing briskly but quietly.

  ‘The boats come in at midnight,’ answered Patrick, ‘but Kronkear’s always here before then.’

  ‘When?’

  The lad looked to his watch,

  ‘He might already be.’

  ‘The building wasn’t lit then?’

  ‘No, the lads never came back with the diesel for the gen… Wait, was that you..?’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that now.’

  ‘But you didn’t..?’

  ‘No, we didn’t hurt anyone,’ answered Wareing, who could have had no idea if that was true. But then we heard voices coming from the fire’s direction, and so shared a look, before silently agreeing we had no choice in it: we had to see what was happening on the front. This constant changing of plan must have wearied Wareing, he always trying to stay two steps ahead. He asked,

  ‘Crofts, can you go and fetch the bags?’

  With barely a nod, I turned and ran along the earthwork behind the seafront shops, before finding my way out into town and then the road beside the depot. Our scouting missions and the march along the front in daylight had left me with good bearings, and with the streets deserted now, the town’s attention elsewhere, I found the bags where we had thrown them and was quickly dashing back along the way I had come.

  I must however have been making more noise than I realised, for on the return run there were people at doors, faces at candlelit windows: faces of women and children and the elderly, and all of them worried. I sensed they wanted something from me, had heard rumours of strangers and disturbance; but with no idea of what to say to them, I turned and ran.

  Back in the area behind the theatre, I skipped along the narrow alley between buildings to nestle with Wareing and Patrick at their viewing point. There, as Wareing got his backpack on, hidden at the corner of the Palais, and still a few blessed yards along from the guarded front entrance, we saw the scene – where on the beach directly ahead of us was a pyre of deckchairs, their stripy canvas backs flaring in flame, their wooden frames burning more slowly as the wood turned to cinders and collapsed on itself. It was, I have to say, magnificent to see the seafront lit up this way – though as eerie as it gets.

  ‘The first boat’s here now,’ called someone to the beach. ‘Keep the rest of the chairs back for midnight.’

  In the light of the fire I saw a wooden cart piled with more deckchairs and what looked like beer garden tables; and moored close in to the beach – perhaps to leave the harbour wall free for the later cargo boats – was a white speedboat cruiser of sharp angles, gleaming windows, and an open cabin beneath a chrome roll-bar that reflected the patterns of the fire.

  It being a warm night, Ashe, and a man in expensive casual wear (who could only have been Kronkear), were dealing in the road outside the building, flanked by a crack-looking guard and Dahla toting a handgun. The tanned and well-built Dutchman, in a pan-European accent was saying,

  ‘And you don’t have anything special for me?’

  ‘What?’ Ashe quickly cottoned on, ‘Girls?’

  ‘“What? Girls?”’ he repeated in mockery, his security also knowing when to laugh. ‘Come on Ashe, seriously, what have you got for me?’

  ‘But there aren’t any more.’

  ‘I thought you owned this town? Come, we’ll grab them if you’re…’

  But Ashe leaned into him to whisper, we so close we were able to hear it,

  ‘These men are my men, the men of this town. You’re talking about their daughters.’

  Listening in, I wondered: was even the man who hung bodies off signposts finding his limits?

  ‘And other villages?’ ventured Kronkear.

  ‘What other villages?’ shot back Ashe, incredulous. ‘Everywhere’s dead now. D’you reckon they’d be letting us strip the lead off their churches if they weren’t?’

  ‘But there was Tanya?’

  ‘Tanya was different, she was just a street kid, got a job in the arcade, no one would miss her.’

  ‘Arghhh!’ Absorbed in the conversation for that moment, I had forgotten that Patrick was right there with us, and that he had a machine gun. He might have just-about held it together those months, watching that man he despised conduct his dealings, running the town like a despot, selling off the wealth of the area and bringing the destruction of its best buildings; but at mention of the girl Tanya’s name in vain, Patrick rose, roared, and fired his machine gun – and in short accurate bursts: he had received training somewhere – straight at Ashe first, then at Kronkear, then at Kronkear’s closest man; before turning to the Palais’ two guards, I swear I seeing a cigarette falling from one of their mouths in shock as they remembered what an armed guard was actually meant to do. But too late, one getting off a couple of wildly misaimed rounds before both were felled, falling quite sweetly one atop the other.
/>
  Kronkear’s second guard, who we saw then on the beach, was not so slow, and we took a round of fire as he rose over the ridge behind the small gardens on the front. Obscured by the untamed topiary and fronds of miniature palm trees, by the time he was aiming with conviction the lad Patrick was firing back; and I had been able to grab a gun off one of the fallen men to join him. Both sides took flack, but the second guard was hit the moment he paused to see his boss lying there dead in front of him.

  A few final wild bullets sprayed past as he keeled over, one shattering a glass poster frame outside the Palais, an unlit lightbulb in the sign popping loudly right behind my head. But I wasn’t hit, I was still standing, and enduring a white flash of instant, seizing panic that ran through me, obscuring all senses bar sight.

  People were appearing now: from the streets behind the front, from the B&Bs and terraced homes and flats above shops. They were peering around the corners of the closed arcades, from behind information signs, and diagonally through the windows of glass-sided corner shops. Though they saw us armed, and saw the bodies, they saw Ashe and his guards among those bodies, and were not scared.

  ‘The boat,’ Patrick called out wildly from the floor where he had ended up in the firefight. Taking up my bag, (the also-fallen Wareing not able to get up it seemed, as I glanced across) I ran to the lip of the beach past the dead Dutch guard, as the cruiser bobbed at anchor in the bay. I looked at the boat: designed by supercomputers to cut the most efficient path through choppy sea waves. It was plastic, moulded, probably very expensive, but with not one trace of artistry in its construction. I found the next-smallest charge I had left after that I’d thrown into the truck, and after fumbling with the timer, lobbed it onto the empty deck. The pilot, still onboard and ducking after the gunfire, broke cover and made a cinematic dive into the water (that was barely deep enough), a second ahead of the flames that leapt after him.

  At the exploding of the boat I heard an anguished cry from the decorative garden behind me, the wail of a junkie seeing their fix go up in smoke. Dahla launched at me, close enough for me to slap the gun out of her hand. At this she clawed me with the other, to catch me with her nails and leave me a set of silk-thread scars that I still bear. We ended up in a child’s hand wrestle; from which she released herself to fall down on unmowed grass between the rosebeds, and weep.

  I climbed back up off the beach and saw the two shapes on the ground before me, only one moving. It was Patrick,

  ‘Long live the King,’ I whispered as I got my arm around his waist and hoisted him up – it was a leg wound, right in the fleshy part – I hoped he healed quick.

  ‘This lad killed Ashe,’ I called out along the seafront, full of heat and bravado and knowing how important it was to cast this moment right in people’s minds. ‘He’s in charge now. There’s no more robbing, no more gangsters. The Army will bring you food within the week.’

  Chapter 30 – A New Dawn