Blacklands

by Belinda Bauer

  Lumsden sighed inwardly—to sigh outwardly would have made his aim waver.

  Four hundred yards. That was the range of his weapon. The walker was probably beyond that. Despite the ease with which he held the man in his sights, Lumsden knew that the chances of hitting him, if he were to fire, were slim. Although the weather was good by Dartmoor standards, there was rarely less than a stiff breeze to contend with. After four hundred yards, the round would begin to lose thrust, lose direction, become unpredictable.

  The man disappeared behind some rocks and Lumsden gently moved his gun to anticipate his reappearance, feeling another thrill as the man walked straight back into his sights.

  He was approaching a small tor about fifty yards ahead of him. If he reached it, Lumsden would lose him.

  A sense of urgency made his finger tighten on the trigger and he had to make a conscious effort to relax it again. His breath hissed between his ears and, although the platoon were still firing at their targets, the shots sounded thick and distant to him.

  Lumsden admired his own self-control. He was still young, but the basic training had knocked the remaining child clean out of him, hardened him up, shaped him into a man. He knew he was already a better person than his father or brother or any of his half brothers would ever be.

  Here in his hands he held the power of life and death. Gary Lumsden, the boy, would have fired; Private Gary Lumsden, the soldier, was tougher than that. He felt an unaccustomed swell of pride.

  The man walked on, head down, through a patch of sunlight and Gary Lumsden held him in his sights, steady and careful. The tor was approaching, the kill shot would be lost, but it wasn’t about the kill shot, he told himself; it was about being in control, doing the right thing, growing up and being a man.

  The walker clambered onto the first of the big grey rocks. Two more and he’d be lost from view behind the tor.

  For less than two minutes, Private Gary Lumsden had been in possession of the power to inflict instant death, but had chosen instead to allow life to continue. It was godlike.

  Lumsden’s angelic blue eyes stung with heat at the thought of how far he’d come as he watched the distant, stupid man reach to pull himself onto the next rock. So small, so vulnerable, so oblivious to how close it had been …

  Private Lumsden’s entire being thrummed with the knowledge that this meant something; that this was pivotal; that he’d remember this moment forever.

  And then—in a sudden, sneaky triumph of nature over nurture—he pulled the trigger anyway.

  Arnold Avery opened his eyes to a blank white sky, a wet back, and a sharp ache in his left arm.

  His first fuzzy thought was that a bird had flown into him. A big bird. All he remembered was clutching at the fresh Devonshire air as he fell off the rock he’d been standing on.

  He turned his head creakily to one side, and sharp grass pricked his cheek. There was a disc of pure white something with two red dots in it beside his head; it took him several blinking seconds to work out it was a Mr. Kipling cherry Bakewell tart, spilled from his bag of stolen shopping. One red dot in the white icing was the cherry, the other was blood.

  Avery groaned as he sat up and saw his left sleeve dark and red. He winced as he moved his arm. It hurt, but it wasn’t broken.

  He looked around and could see nothing and nobody. But then, nothing and nobody could see him; he’d fallen into a shallow dip behind the tor. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious for, or what had happened to him. His bird theory was shit, he already knew, but he had no others. The moor stretched around him for miles, looking yellow grey now under the lowering clouds.

  He pulled his arm from his sleeve, wiping away blood with the tail of his shirt, and saw the gory crease through the top of his biceps, as though someone had dragged a forefinger through the flesh of his arm, removing the skin and leaving a bloody groove in its place.

  It looked as though he’d been shot, although he knew that wasn’t possible. This was England, after all, and the screws they sent to hunt down escapees were likely to be armed with little more than expense vouchers for their petrol costs.

  He shook his head to clear it, and slowly started to gather his stolen goods together. There was no point in hanging about trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to him. He doubted it was relevant anyway. If it had been an armed, overenthusiastic screw, then he’d be back in custody by now; if it had been a bird, there would be feathers. It didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping going. He tried to find the sun behind the clouds but couldn’t. It wasn’t getting dark yet, but that meant nothing; it was June, and would stay light until well after ten at night.

  Although he didn’t know it, Arnold Avery had been unconscious only long enough to miss the very faint, outraged shouts of Private Gary Lumsden’s military career coming to an abrupt but almost inevitable end.

  Chapter 33

  STEVEN STARED AT THE BLACK CEILING HE COULDN’T SEE, AND listened to Uncle Jude and his mother arguing.

  He couldn’t make out words, but the tones alone made him stiff with tension and his ears prickled with effort.

  She was cross. Steven didn’t know what she had to be cross about. His mind raced, trying to assess the previous day, prodding it to shake loose the moment when things had changed. Something. Something. Something had happened. Must have! Because last night, he’d lain just like this, gazing into blackness, and heard them having sex. He recognized the sounds from a DVD he and Lewis had watched last school holidays. Something with Angelina Jolie in it. It had been under some sheets, so hadn’t shed any useful light on the mechanics of the whole sex thing. He and Lewis had stared, flame faced, at the screen, not daring to speak or look at each other while the scene played out. When it was over, Lewis had said, “I’d give her one,” in a triumph of redundancy.

  But the sex between Uncle Jude and his mother had been last night. Tonight was the row. Uncle Jude mostly silent, occasionally defensive; his mother sharp and cold. He felt a rush of pure fury at her; wanted to run next door and scream at her to stop. Stop fighting, stop hurting, stop being such a … such a … fucking bitch!

  His fingers ached and he realized they were gripped too tightly around the top of his duvet, rigid and trembling—like the rest of him. He let his breath out and tried to relax.

  “Is Uncle Jude leaving?”

  Steven jumped. “Shut up, Davey.”

  “You shut up!”

  Steven did shut up, wanting to hear how the row ended, but there was no more.

  “I don’t want Uncle Jude to go.” Davey’s voice was whiney and tight with snot but instead of making him angry it infected Steven with the same feeling, so he said nothing, biting his lip and squeezing his hot eyes closed until he opened them and found that it was morning.

  And that sometime during the night, Uncle Jude had left.

  Steven slouched downstairs on heavy legs and cold feet, despite the season.

  Halfway down the stairs, he saw the purple oblong on the doormat.

  By the bottom of the stairs his eyes realized it was a postcard and picking it up he confirmed it was a picture of purple heather.

  When Steven turned it over, his heart jumped into his throat and started pumping there instead, making his whole neck throb.

  Compared to their previous communications, there was a cornucopia of information on the six-by-four-inch postcard.

  There was the edge of Exmoor, reduced by familiarity to a single dashed line. DB was where it should be. SL was where he’d shown Avery. Between them was a strange circle of short radiating lines, like an aerial view of Friar Tuck’s haircut, enclosing the initials WP, and the single word:

  Steven couldn’t eat. He’d never have thought such a thing was possible. It wasn’t because he wasn’t hungry; it was because his head was so full of thinking that the thoughts overflowed and pounded into his mouth, down his throat, into his chest, and even as far as his guts—a raging river of swirling hopes and white-water fears that le
ft no room for food.

  His first thought on seeing Avery’s directions was how quickly his own quest had faded from his mind. Uncle Jude’s return, the vegetable patch, Lewis, the real Mars bar. These things—these normal things—had squeezed Uncle Billy out of his day-to-day consciousness and into a corner in the back of his mind.

  But the postcard brought Uncle Billy bursting out again in a rush of old guilt and new anticipation.

  In an instant, he was recharged, reinvigorated, focused.

  He did not remember washing or dressing or doing his teeth, but they must have happened, because he arrived at the breakfast table without eyebrows being raised.

  Davey was miserable; his mother cut their sandwiches with a hard hand and a tight mouth, and Nan was uncharacteristically quiet on the subject of her daughter’s love life. But Steven was only aware of these things in the most peripheral, hazy way.

  I know where Uncle Billy is buried!

  He almost thought he’d shouted it out loud when his nan fixed him with a neutral stare.

  “Pass the butter to your brother.”

  Steven passed the butter and was gripped with a sudden certainty that someone else would find Uncle Billy first.

  Now that he had Avery’s map, it seemed so obvious! Blacklands! Of course! So close he could almost see it from his own bedroom window!

  Even Lewis had worked it out. Next time I come, I’m digging up at Blacklands…

  What was to stop someone else working it out too?

  Someone who didn’t have to go to school today?

  Someone who would beat him to it?

  Someone who would push open the door of opportunity and whose life would be transformed by the discovery instead of his, leaving him trapped forever between his nan and his mother and the dim, undersea room where his own piss still stained the carpet. Steven went cold and felt his middle empty as everything inside him pressured out towards his throat and his bowels.

  He got up from the table with a loud scrape.

  “Where are you going?”

  “School.”

  “You haven’t eaten.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Lettie looked as though she was going to make an issue of it, then bound his sandwiches viciously in clingfilm and banged them into his lunch box without even caring about a chocolate bar.

  Steven didn’t care either. Chocolate bars were for children, and today he would become so much more than that. He might not know how sex or relationships worked, but by nightfall he hoped his family would be a whole thing, instead of this cracked, crumbling half-thing that left him nervous and sad.

  Steven glanced round at his mother, Davey, and Nan—all of them unaware of how he was about to change their lives.

  He turned to go, but only got two steps before his mother said sharply: “Wait for your brother.”

  And so instead of digging up the body of a murdered boy, Steven had to wait for his brother and walk him to school and then go straight to double history, where Mr. Lovejoy made them draw cross sections of the pyramids, showing all the dark, secret ways the Egyptians employed to ensure that their ancestors remained undiscovered and undisturbed for thousands of years.

  Steven had still not been taught the meaning of irony, but once more he could hardly fail to understand it when it reared up in front of him and smacked him in the face.

  All day long, he felt like screaming.

  Chapter 34

  ARNOLD AVERY’S ARM BLED ON AND OFF ALL DAY LONG ON FRIDAY.

  Now and then he felt dizzy, but wasn’t sure if it was because of the blood loss or the ebbing sugar rush of the cherry Bakewells.

  He’d walked until it was dark on Thursday night, and then tried to sleep, but the cold was having none of it. After an hour of sitting hunched, teeth clattering, wrapped in the too-small green cardigan, Avery had got up and continued walking in the dark. It was slower going, but it was going, at least.

  Could be worse, he thought. Could be raining.

  He felt better for walking. He needed to get to Exmoor before his postcard did. The thought of SL finding WP without him made him feel sick and fluttery.

  In the early hours of Friday morning—at about the same time as Uncle Jude had been picking up his truck keys and leaving quietly so as not to wake Steven and Davey—Arnold Avery had reached Tavistock and stolen a car.

  It was surprisingly easy.

  He’d found several parked cars with their doors unlocked in the driveways of various homes. That’s the countryside for you, he’d thought as he ran his hands around their interiors and inside their glove compartments.

  One driveway held a scuffed BMW parked behind a small red Nissan hatchback. The hatchback had the keys under the sun visor. The car started on the first turn of the key and, with the BMW blocking his reverse exit, Avery had simply swung the hatchback in a juddering L-plated arc across the front lawn and through the token fence.

  In seconds he’d been driving north, hunched spiderlike over the wheel in a seat that was adjusted for a very small woman, his knees banging the dash, his heart racing in time to the engine, which—for some panicky reason—he couldn’t kick out of third gear.

  In a lay-by he’d levered the seat into a more comfortable position and searched the car. On the backseat was a child’s picture book—The Weird and Wonderful Wombat—and a box of tissues. There was a tool kit in the boot, along with a towrope and a plastic bag of women’s magazines. He took the magazines out of the bag and put the towrope in it, along with the wheel brace. He almost closed the boot, then leaned in and picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan. He might have a long wait.

  As he shut the boot, he was overcome by dizziness and fatigue. It took a huge effort to get back in the car and find the ignition with the keys, but he did it in the end. He turned the Nissan off the main road and drove jerkily down a series of haphazard lanes until he could pull into a field behind a hedge.

  Then he crawled into the backseat and slept.

  When he woke it was late afternoon and he felt a lot better. His arm still throbbed but had stopped bleeding entirely. His shirtsleeve was stuck to his arm but he decided to leave well alone.

  He drank more water, ate a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, and pissed with abandon into the hedge, enjoying the sensation of the gentle afternoon breeze caressing his penis. It felt like freedom.

  Reinvigorated, Arnold Avery set off again, this time triumphing over the vagaries of the Nissan Micra gearbox. Without the scream of the straining engine, his heart slowed to the point where he could think clearly once more.

  He tried not to think about what his immediate future held. It was just too distracting. Too exciting.

  Instead he tried to concentrate on relearning to drive; on the smell of the hedgerows that slapped against the passenger window now and then; on the smooth black ribbon of road that presented mostly forgotten sights around every corner.

  That was exciting enough.

  For now.

  Chapter 35

  SATURDAY DAWNED SO STILL AND SHROUDED IN MIST THAT IT deadened every sound.

  Steven was awake. Had been awake for hours.

  He felt sick. He felt happy. He felt butterflies in his stomach, and prickles in his knees that made his legs jump with wanting to run. To run up the track to Blacklands and stake his claim to the body of his dead boy-uncle Billy.

  He felt sick again—this time enough to go and bend over the toilet bowl and retch a little. Nothing. He spat into the bowl but didn’t flush in case it woke anyone.

  He dressed in his favorite clothes. His best socks were ruined—although he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw them away—but everything else was his favorite. The Levi’s his mother had got in the charity shop, still dark blue with lack of wear, and the perfect weight on his hips; the red Liverpool shirt with the number 8 on his back and his own name in white over the top of that. It had been a birthday present two years ago. Nan had bought the shirt and Lettie had paid for it to be printed when
they went to Barnstaple, ten pounds for the number, two pounds for each letter. She had joked it was lucky that they weren’t called Lambinovski and they’d all laughed—even Davey, who didn’t know what he was laughing at.

  As he dressed (clean underwear and everything), Steven was a little embarrassed to admit even to himself that these were the clothes he wanted his photo taken in for the newspapers when he revealed his find.

  This was how he wanted himself to be for posterity.

  He looked out of the window. The mist was down but he could tell that behind it the sun was shining. By midmorning it would have chased the gloom away. Probably. He tied the sleeves of his new boot-sale anorak around his waist anyway. It was the moor; you just never knew.

  Downstairs he made a raspberry jam sandwich, clearing up after himself with precision. He put the sandwich and his water bottle into his anorak pockets, feeling them swing against the backs of his thighs.

  Outside in the garden, the air was thick, white, and still. Steven could hear Mr. Randall’s shower and, seeming closer than he knew she was, Mrs. Hocking singing something soft and off-key—the sound dampened by the moisture in the air but still carried easily to him over the hedges, fences, and shrubberies of five gardens.

  Picking up his spade made a musical scrape against the concrete that seemed clangingly loud in the motionless air.

  Steven had planned to take his spade and go, but instead he went up to the vegetable patch. Walking up the garden made him sad as he thought of Uncle Jude being gone, but once he got there he felt better. Only a few days ago they had repaired the damage, and repaired it well. He could still see Uncle Jude’s footprints in the soil’s edges, still see the marks his fingers had made where he pressed the dark earth back down on the rescued seedlings. The evidence of Uncle Jude was still here, even if he himself was not.