The Summer Isles

by Ian R. MacLeod

  Reeve-Ellis clears his throat. Brushing the dust from the corner of the desk, he hitches at the knee-creases of his flannel trousers and sits down. “May as well get on,” he snaps at the two PCs.

  “Whatever all of this is,” I say as PCs T3308 and K2910 exchange glances, “You should know that I’m a dying man. I’ve no close friends or relatives. I have terminal cancer—you can look it up in my NHS records. I have nothing to lose.”

  “I’m afraid,” Reeve-Ellis says, “that it doesn’t work like that.” He tucks in his legs to let PC T3308 and PC K2910 past him.

  “Right or left handed, sir?” asks older, burlier PC T3308; the one with the bitten nails, the big stevedore’s hands.

  I look up at him, his thick head haloed by the bare-bulbed light. The gun and the truncheon and the handcuffs that hang from his belt look like sexual appendages. “I didn’t think this was the sort of thing the London Constabulary specialised in,” I say, and glance over at Reeve-Ellis, who’s watching from his perch at the far edge of the desk. “I always imagined this was all left to the KSG nowadays.”

  PC T3308 rumbles a laugh. “We don’t need those fancy boys, sir. Piss-poor at anything, from what I’ve heard. Was it the right or left-handed that you said you were?”

  “Come on,” Reeve-Ellis mutters, and reaches in the top pocket of his shirt. He offers me a pen. “Take this will you, old man?” Stupidly, I reach for it. “There you are. Right-handed. Most people are. Just a question of using a bit of intellect.”

  PC T3308 blinks slowly. Unruffled, he leans across and lifts my right hand from the arm rest, splaying it palm-up at the edge of the desk. He sits down on it, his fat-trousered bottom pushed virtually in my face. I can’t see them now, but I can feel my fingers dangling in the cool air beyond the edge of the desk. Even with the pressure he’s now applying, it’s hard to keep them still.

  I hear the rasp of a belt buckle. Something jingles. A raised truncheon appears above PC T3308’s head, and I glance over at Reeve-Ellis; but he’s looking away now, pruning his nails. I imagine that they’ll start asking me questions at any moment, long before they actually do anything, now that the threat of violence has clearly been made.

  “If this is—” I begin just as, with small a grunt of effort, PC K2910 brings the truncheon down across the fingers of my right hand.

  The world shivers and breaks apart for an amazed moment, then re-forms in jagged pain.

  Alone now, I can hear Reeve-Ellis’s voice as he talks to someone on the telephone in a nearby room. The bell bings. He dials again. Yes. No. Not yet. Just as you say… I can tell from the sound of his voice that he’s speaking to a superior.

  I’m cradling my right hand. It’s the most precious thing in the entire world. My index finger is bent back at approximately 45 degrees just above the first joint, and it’s swelling and discolouring as I watch. The first and middle fingers are swelling rapidly too, although they could simply be torn and bruised rather than broken.

  This is terrible—as bad as I could have imagined. Yet I’ve known pain before. I broke my wrist once after slipping on the tiles in embarrassing circumstances in the Gents’ in a pub in Banbury. And I’ve had plenty of opportunity lately to get more used to pain. The thing about torture isn’t the pain, I decide between bouts of shivering. It’s the simple sense of wrongness.

  The keys jingle. Reeve-Ellis and the two PCs re-enter the room. They smell faintly rainy—of cigarettes and tea and London traffic and ordinary mornings. Reeve-Ellis rakes a chair towards the desk.

  “I won’t piss you about, Brook,” he says. “I’m no expert, anyway, at this kind of thing. Thanks to you, I and my two friends here have to practise this grisly art whilst some jumped-up AS from Marsham Street takes over my office on temporary and geographical promotion.”

  “I can’t say you have my sympathy.”

  “Be that as it may…”

  PC K2910 extracts his note pad and pencil. With that freckled narrow face of his, he still looks far too young. PC T3308 leans back against the wall and nibbles at his nails. A sick tremor runs though me.

  “Perhaps you could begin,” Reeve-Ellis continues, “by telling us exactly why you’re here. What all of this is about…”

  “I don’t see how I can tell you when I don’t have any idea. You brought me here. I’m supposed to be an honoured guest, and then you…”

  But almost before I’ve started, Reeve-Ellis is getting up from his chair, sighing in weary irritation. He’s nodding to PC K2910 to find the keys to let him out of the room again. Once he’s gone, the two PC’s glance at each other, and come around to me from opposite sides of the desk. Their hook their hands beneath my armpits.

  “If you’ll just stand up, sir.”

  I try to grab the chair’s armrest, but it slides from under me and the fingers of my right hand catch on the belt of my dressing gown. The world greys for a moment, then I’m standing upright and the PCs are moving me towards the old grey filing cabinet in the corner of the room. In a grunting ballet, PC K2910 bends to slide open the top drawer. I feel the agonising pull of my tendons as they straighten out my right arm and hold my hand over the open drawer as PC T3308 raises his boot and kicks it shut.

  “These things have a pattern,” Reeve-Ellis says, sitting in front of me again. “You have to accept that, Brook. And it’s always effective, although I’m sure that to you it appears crude. But what you must realise is that there’s only one outcome. Which is you telling me everything.”

  Weeping, gently rocking in my chair, I stare back at his blurred shape.

  “So now that I’ve been honest with you, Brook, perhaps you could be honest with me.” A soft click, and there on the table, although stretched and blotched to my eyes as if in some decadent non-realist painting, lies the pistol, the Webley Bulldog gun.

  “If you could just tell me how and why you got this thing, and what it was doing in your suitcase at the New Dorchester.”

  “It’s a relic,” I say. “It belonged to a friend of mine who died in the War.”

  “Can you tell me his name?”

  I hesitate. A billow of black agony enfolds me. “Francis Eveleigh. As I say, he’s dead.”

  “Where did he live?”

  I tell him the name of the street in Lichfield, and then—what could it matter now?—that of Francis’s parents’s house in Louth. “It came back with his effects when he died at the Somme in 1916,” I add. “I have no idea how he got hold of it.”

  “And the bullets?”

  “They came with the effects as well.”

  “They’re not standard Army issue.” Reeve-Ellis strokes his chin. “But I know how chaotic it was over there. So it all came to you, this gun, these bullets, as a memento of this Eveleigh fellow?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve kept them with you ever since?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever used the gun?”

  “No… Well, a couple of times. I wanted to make sure that it still worked.”

  “Did it?”

  “I’m no expert. It seemed to fire.”

  “I see. And what did you intend to do with it?”

  “What do you think?”

  Reeve-Ellis frowns. “I thought we’d got past that stage, old man.”

  “I intended to kill John Arthur.”

  Reeve-Ellis nods. He seems unimpressed. Behind him, PC K2910 frowns, licks his pencil, makes a note. Somewhere, a phone is ringing.

  “It was Christlow,” I say, “wasn’t it?”

  “Who?”

  “Christlow, my scout. He told you about the gun.”

  “I don’t see that that matters.”

  “You don’t deny it?”

  “We seem to be forgetting here exactly who is asking the questions.” Reeve-Ellis smiles. I sense that the two PCs behind him are loosening their stance. Perhaps all this will soon be ending.

  “And to recap—the ammunition?”

  “What?”

  “Th
e bullets—the ammunition. Where did you say you got them?”

  “They came with it…” I take a breath. The swollen lump that was my hand is a blazing sun. I am just its circling planet. “With the gun.”

  “With the gun?”

  “With the gun.” I swallow. “Although I can’t see that it matters now. You know what I planned to do, and all the rest of it was all a long time ago. You can see that, can’t you?”

  Reeve-Ellis is slowly shaking his head. “I’m sorry, old man, but that really won’t do.”

  “I told you at the start that I have nothing to lose. Why do you think I planned to kill John Arthur? Why do you think I brought the gun?”

  “There’s really little point in my bothering unless you can do better than this…” Reeve-Ellis stands up. “I’m sorry.”

  I nod and drowse in and out of some terrible dream. There are more questions, the nightmare of the filing cabinet again. Pain’s a strange thing. There are moments when it seems there has never been anything else in the whole universe, and others when it lies almost outside you. I think of Christ on his cross, of Torquemada and Matthew Hopkins. All those lives. And even now. Even now. To the same old gods and the new secular ones. In Japan. In Spain. In Russia. In Britain. I’m not lost at all. Not alone. A million twisted ghosts are with me.

  I flinch as the lock slides and the door opens. Alone this time, Reeve-Ellis sits down.

  “I was once John Arthur’s lover,” I swallow back a lump of vomit, trying hard not to cough. “I bet you didn’t know that? I was his lover…”

  Reeve-Ellis frowns at me. A loose scab breaks open as the flesh on my hand parts and widens. The sensation is quite disgusting. A fresh dribble of blood patters the floor.

  “I was asked to show you these,” he says, laying out a brown manila envelope.

  “I can’t imagine that there’s anything…” I gasp. “…Sufficiently compromising…” I’d almost laugh at the idea if doing so wasn’t excruciating.

  “It’s not that,” he says, almost angrily.

  I do my best to focus as Reeve-Ellis opens the envelope up and slides four photographs out. He swivels them around and lines them up on the desk before me like playing cards, grainy enlargements of four faces and upper bodies, all apparently naked. Three are white-lit against a white cloth background; the fourth—a man, I realise when I’ve sorted out the approximate details of these gaunt, near-bald, blotched and virtually sexless figures—is standing against a wall. They are each holding in spider-thin hands a longer version of the kind of slot-in numbers that churches use for hymns, although these numbers are longer, dotted by brackets and sub-divisions: a tribute to the power of bureaucracy. My vision blurs. A large part of me doesn’t want to recognise these people.

  “How do I know,” I say, “that they’re still alive?”

  “You don’t.”

  I gaze back at the photographs. Eyes that fix the camera without seeing, as if they can fill up with so many sights that light is no longer absorbed. My acquaintance, he looks younger, older, beyond time, with the thin bridge of his nose, the ridges of his cheeks, the taut drum-like skin, the sores. His wife, his children, are elfin, fairy people, blasted through into nothingness by the light that pours around them. Barely there at all…

  “These people—”

  “—I was just asked to show you, Brook. I don’t know who they are, what they mean to you. Their names…”

  The lock on the door slides back. Both PCs stand close to the wall without a word, watching me and Reeve-Ellis.

  “Are you proud of this?” I say to them all. “Is this how you wanted it to be in the Summer Isles?”

  “The where?” Reeve-Ellis looks weary, defensive, frustrated. In spite of everything, I still have this feverish sense that there’s some part of the equation of what’s happening here that I haven’t yet glimpsed.

  “They’re dead anyway, aren’t they—this family?” I say. “I don’t understand you people. Even if I could save them, where would they go, how would they live—what kind of life?”

  Reeve-Ellis shakes his head. “Just concentrate on telling us everything, old man. Who knows what might happen then—who you might be able to help. Don’t worry about thinking you can shield someone. Don’t worry about betrayal. Believe me, all of that’s in the past. Your plans and your schemes, the simple life you probably thought you were living. Do you really think you could get even this close to John Arthur with a pistol unless someone wanted you to? Still, it must have been fun while it lasted, playing your stupid little game.”

  He picks up the photos, taps them together and slides them back into the envelope. PCs T3308 and K2910 move towards me, grip me beneath my arms and bear me up once again, towards the filing cabinet.

  In the end, it’s the pain. When all’s said and done, our bodies are selfish creatures, and they control our minds. Forget love. Forget loyalty. Forget hope. Forget the dream. Remember pain.

  When I’ve told them more than I imagined I ever knew. When I’ve told them about Walter Bracken and about Ursula. When I’ve told them, yes, about Francis Eveleigh and about my acquaintance and about poor Larry Black at the Crown and Cushion and Ernie Svendsen who deserves it anyway and all the children I used to teach at Lichfield Grammar who I know are grown up by now and culpable as all we British are yet at the same time totally blameless. When I’ve told them about that time in the twenties when I saw Francis Eveleigh again at the Cottage Spring except he was now really John Arthur, and about the stupid, stupid joke of tomorrow being the fifteenth anniversary of that day. When I’ve told them everything, I’m suddenly aware of the sticky creak of the chair I’m still tied in, and of the waiting emptiness that seems to flood around me. It’s still too hot in here, although I’m shaking with cold. The pipes are humming. And I’m flying through everything, right down into the earth’s core and the grinding, meshing heart of history.

  “Well…” Reeve-Ellis says eventually. His arms are folded. His legs are stretched out. He’s sitting well back from the desk and the mess I’ve made. “I suppose we had to get there eventually.” He glances back at PC K2910. “Did you get most of that?”

  PC K2910 nods. His face is paler than ever now; the freckles are like drops of blood.

  “Then give me that notebook.”

  Reeve-Ellis takes it from PC K2910. The way he stuffs it into his pocket, I know he’s going to destroy it as soon as they’ve finished with me.

  “Well—you know what to do.”

  PC K2910 fumbles with the keys. PC T3308’s staring at me, a half-smoked cigarette behind his ear. He looks like a family man, and I can see him now with his own chair nearest the telly and the fire in a nice police house in Ealing, and taking his eldest lad to watch Spurs when they’re playing at home. I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for all of them.

  The two PCs come around both sides of the desk. They’re careful this time as they loosen the ties. They lift me up almost gently. Reeve-Ellis steps back into the corridor as they drag me out.

  “Might as well try using your legs, sir. You’ll find it’ll be easier.”

  Amazingly, my limbs do still work as we stagger along the corridor in what seems like the opposite direction to that from which we came. But that was an age ago and I can no longer be sure of anything. We find the stairs, and my body is still surprisingly functional as I shuffle up them one at time. We come to doors marked MAINTENANCE ONLY, and PC K2910 fiddles with the bolts, swinging them open into a shock of London night air. I can hear the murmur of traffic as PC T3308 hooks his hand around my left arm and leads me into the darkness, but the sound is distant, shielded on all sides by brick and glass and concrete. This is one of those ugly shaft-like courtyards that architects design to let light into the centre of large buildings. The distant patch of sky is the same shape and colour as a cooling television screen—there’s even one small dot-like star in the middle. I’d always imagined that my life would end in a prettier place. A remote clearing in some wood in
the Home counties, the cry of a fox and the smell of leaves and moss…

  I glance back. Reeve-Ellis stands in the lighted doorway, hands stuffed into his old cardigan as he leans against the frame. It really is quiet here, although it’s probably past midnight in London by now. The whole of this pre-Trafalgar Day, and the celebratory service I was expecting to attend at Westminster Abbey, has gone past me. A faint, bad smell comes up from the central drain that the concrete slopes to.

  PC T3308 lets go of me and I sag to my knees, still struggling to protect the precious burden of my hand. He nods to PC K2910 and reaches to release the flap of his holster. The leather creaks slightly. Somewhere, faintly, dimly, deep within the offices, a phone is ringing. His breathing quickens.

  “I’m sorry about all this, sir. If I had any say in these things…”

  PC K2910 is backing off. Somewhere, the phone is still ringing.

  “Wait!” Reeve-Ellis calls across the courtyard.

  The two PCs stand as he disappears whilst I hunch between them. The night falls apart, pulses, regathers. From somewhere, I can hear the scream of a whistle, the clattering wheels of a train. Eventually, the phone stops ringing and I stare down at the stains around the drain and breathe the rotten air that it and my own body are making, trying to wish away this moment, this pain. The train whistle screams again. I think of a rocking sleeper carriage. A man’s arms around me, his lips against mine. The gorgeous, shameless openness…

  I hear the sound of Reeve-Ellis’s footsteps. The thin lines of his body re-shape against the bright doorway.

  “There’s been,” he says, “a change of plan…”