by Paul Theroux
‘Ron.’ She looked at him strangely. ‘Ron would have said that.’ She pushed at the soiled plates. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘I have to go. A little business.’
‘You’re running out on me. You won’t come back. Like Ron.’
He took her face gently in his hands. He kissed her and said, ‘I’ll be back.’
‘I’m scared,’ she said. ‘You done something.’
Hood said, ‘There’s nothing for you to be scared of. It’s all over. No one’s going to bother you now.’
Her expression – puzzled, fearful – had not changed. She said, ‘Ron,’ and then, ‘I loved him, and sometimes he loved me.’
Murf was on the stairs, clattering. He looked into the room and said, ‘Hey, there’s another ambulance. I want to see who copped it.’
‘Stay here.’
‘There must be more than one.’
‘If you leave this house, don’t come back.’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Murf. ‘I was just wondering.’
‘People live around here. They must know us. Keep that face indoors – and stop smiling.’
‘They’ll find you,’ said Lorna, moving warily, sensing danger. ‘They’ll do you, they’ll hang you, they’ll take you away.’
Murf said, ‘Well, they’ll be on to Mayo, won’t they? It’s her house, ain’t it?’ He lost his certainty and said, hoarsely, ‘She might cough.’
Hood said, ‘I’m going to Kilburn.’
From the train, high on its track, making its circuit through South-wark, the city looked immense, and he realized how miles of it were unknown to him. Most of it was hidden by the obscuring glare of the sodium lamps, the buildings showing as low dark blocks, and the church steeples indistinguishable from the night sky. There was no skyline; the dark was seamless, a tide of stars on a yellow broken sea. Too large to possess, too deep to be destroyed, deaf, inert, unchangeable; the waters had closed in, the mountain had subsided long ago. So the saboteur was proved ignorant, and his every act revealed him as a stranger. He would drown.
Hood considered this. For every one who used the city as an occasion to perform, a thousand chose it as a place of concealment. In its depths bombs were stifled. His own was local, personal, a family matter; it had not been heard here. On the platform at London Bridge there were travellers still waiting in the shadows, not hiding but hidden. He had thought this world was his to move in, an extension of his own world. But he had seen it grow unfamiliar, and smaller, and he was not moving at will. He had been driven here, to a narrowing space in the vast now featureless city where if he was not careful he would be caught. You were allowed to hide if you made no sound. The city confounded like a sea; it was penetrable, but it was endless and neutral, so wide that on a train tossing between stations – those named places, those islands – you could believe you had gone under and were dead. You verified your existence by taking out the ticket once more. You were your ticket.
Replacing his ticket he touched the rolled-up painting in his inside pocket. The last business. He would surrender that and so surrender himself. He knew the face in the self-portrait now: it was the man he had killed, months ago, and he had become that man.
The train was nearly empty; there were few people at Charing Cross, and from there to Kilburn on the Underground there were only workers returning home late and tired, sitting singly, using the satchels on their knees to doze on. It was the dead hour before the pubs shut, before the theatres let out, a chain of hollow platforms all the way to Queen’s Park. Five miles away there had been a bomb. Here, no one knew. The city dissolved the shock in the slow swell that hid its tide-rip, and it slept on, deaf and dark.
He retraced the route he had taken with Murf, from pub to pub, and found Finn at the second, standing glassy-eyed in a corner of the saloon bar near the telephone, sucking at the froth on a pint of Guinness.
‘Evening, sarge,’ said Hood. ‘Where’s your friend?’
Finn blinked. He had a sliver of discoloured foam on his upper lip. He peered into Hood’s face, searching it as though studying a mirror. He said, his eyes still darting, ‘He’s expecting you, is he?’
‘Stop scratching your ass and find out.’
Finn put his glass down. He nodded thoughtfully at the telephone, then chewing his lips in protest, left the bar. Hood looked around and noticed, as he had once before, that he was being eyed suspiciously by the other drinkers. He chose one and stared until the man turned away. He chose another, and he was still squinting at that man when Finn appeared, snatched up his glass and took a swig. He said confidentially, ‘You can go up.’
‘Smile,’ said Hood. ‘Business isn’t that bad, is it?’
‘You’re keeping him waiting.’
‘Did you say something, sarge?’ Hood went close to him and menaced him with a smile.
Finn muttered. He turned his back to Hood and faced the telephone.
‘If anyone rings, tell them I’m busy.’
Upstairs, the door was ajar, and before Hood could knock, Sweeney called out, ‘Come in!’
The room was unchanged – the dart board, a dirty ceiling, the shades drawn, the large table almost filling the rented space they called the High Command. Sweeney was seated at the far end of the table, in a pretend posture of authority. He put his mutilated hand out, but Hood ignored it and sat down at the opposite end.
Sweeney said, ‘Finn says you slagged him.’
‘Finn needs his engine tuned.’
‘You got me out of bed this morning. What’s the big idea?’
‘Like I said. I heard that guy was rumbled. Rutter. I figured if you knew him you’d better look out.’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know him?’
‘Don’t be so defensive,’ said Hood. ‘That’s why I got you out of bed. To find out.’
‘I don’t know the boyo.’
‘I heard you the first time. But it’s odd. I see him at the dog track now and then. He’s into arms dealing, and’ – Hood smiled – ‘so are you, right?’
‘London’s full of arms dealers,’ said Sweeney. ‘The world is.’
‘But this one was dealing with your actress. I assumed he was dealing with you, too.’
‘Did you now? You seem to know a lot. But you did the right thing. Let me know if you hear anything else.’
‘I won’t hear anything else.’
‘You might. At the dog track – Jesus, I used to go to the dog track. Haven’t got the time these days. Murf knows his way around the fellas. He’ll tell you what he hears. He’s a good lad, is Murf.’
Hood said, repeating it slowly, giving each word equal weight, ‘I won’t hear anything else.’
‘No? And why is that?’
‘Because I won’t be listening.’
‘Listening’s the whole game,’ said Sweeney. ‘If you don’t listen you’re no good to us.’
‘You bet.’
Sweeney laughed without pleasure. He lifted his damaged hand and pointed his scarred fingers at Hood. He said, ‘If you’ve got something to say, man, say it.’
‘I’m quitting,’ said Hood. He knew what he wanted to do next. He put his hand into his inside pocket and felt for the roll of canvas. He had gripped it and was about to throw it on the table when Sweeney lurched forward.
‘Take your hands out of your pockets!’
Hood showed his empty hands.
‘You’re quitting?’ said Sweeney disgustedly. ‘You think you can jack it in just like that?’
‘That’s what I’m doing. Are you going to plead with me?’
‘Listen here. No one quits the Provos. You join for life. That’s what I did – that’s what everyone does, including you. I said, including you. It’s like a family, see. No one quits a family.’
‘I never joined,’ said Hood.
‘Oh, didn’t you? What about that passport you made for us?’
‘A cunt’s passport.’
Sweeney said, ‘That was your members
hip card.’
‘I smartened up.’
Sweeney spat. ‘The last time you were in here you were full of ideas. I thought we were getting somewhere. I put my trust in you.’
‘Your trust isn’t worth a fart,’ said Hood. ‘I know. I checked.’
‘Where did you check then?’
‘Millwall,’ said Hood, ‘the Isle of Dogs. Don’t tell me you weren’t there. I saw you sitting in his house, waiting for him. He’s a fucker and you’re his friend.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re lying. You’re Rutter’s buddy. What did he tell you? That he was onto something big? Did he say he’d have to beat the daylights out of a woman to find out where the arsenal is?’
‘I’m not saying I know Rutter, and I’m not saying I don’t know him.’ Sweeney shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters,’ said Hood. ‘Because he’s a creep and that means you trust creeps.’
‘I trusted you.’
‘So much for your offensive.’
‘You know Rutter, too.’
‘I know his victims. I know who he leaned on. You put him up to it.’
‘If you don’t like people being leaned on, Hood, what in the name of Jesus are you doing here?’
It was unanswerable. Again he reached for the painting, to surrender.
‘Hands down,’ said Sweeney, but it was not a threat. ‘You can’t quit. You know too much. You’re part of the family now – you know all our dirty secrets. I can’t let you go.’
‘You won’t miss me.’
‘I will,’ said Sweeney in a friendly way. ‘I like a fella with some fight in him. And what about our English offensive?’
‘It’s all yours – everything.’ He wondered as he looked across the room at Sweeney’s grizzled face and the scar tissue shining on his damaged hand, if he had been right before in thinking that the onset of sympathy was the end of belief, and that sympathy could only curdle into pity. He said, ‘But the English offensive. I hope it never happens.’
Sweeney said, ‘There was a bomb today.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was on the six o’clock news. Three bodies recovered. No names.’
Hood said nothing.
‘It sounds like the Trots,’ said Sweeney. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Southeast London – that’s what they said on the news. You just came from there.’
‘It’s a big place,’ said Hood. ‘And I wasn’t listening.’
‘We’ll be blamed for it,’ said Sweeney.
‘You can take the credit for it.’
Sweeney said, ‘Bombing’s messy. Point a machine gun at a fella and he does what you say. Show him a bomb and he’ll laugh. You might be carrying a sack of flour. You have to blow him up to convince him, and that doesn’t get you anywhere. Well, you know. You were in Vietnam, weren’t you?’ He regarded the two twisted fingers on the stump of his right hand. He said, ‘But Rutter’s got all the guns now.’
Hood stood up. ‘I’m going.’
Sweeney sighed and said, ‘I’ll make an exception in your case.’
‘Don’t do me any favours.’
‘I’ll let you quit. We’ll say you had battle fatigue. You’re an American, you’ve got no business here. It was a mistake.’ He smiled. ‘You did a lot for my wife. She’s the nervous type – she never knew anything. But she really fancied you. You should have heard her talking about you – you’d have thought you were as Irish as Paddy O’Toole, with the sun shining out of your arse.’
Hood said, ‘I met her at Ward’s. She was drunk. She told me a ridiculous story about how she was going to steal a painting.’
‘I hope you didn’t laugh.’
‘She scared me,’ said Hood. ‘She was so drunk. Incapable – isn’t that the word they use? I felt sorry for her.’
‘You’re sounding like a bloody curate.’
‘I knew if I helped her she’d succeed.’
‘Don’t think I’m not grateful,’ said Sweeney. His manner had become genial, his talk soothing. He got up and came around the table to where Hood was standing. ‘Maybe the mistake was mine. I listened to my wife – that’s many a man’s downfall. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. What are your plans?’
‘I don’t have any.’ And he thought: It’s over. He was certain now that Rutter was dead: three bodies recovered. How little it had to do with politics. But perhaps Sweeney was more right than even he knew – it had always been a family affair. Weech had brought him to it, and he had had to become Weech to complete his revenge. And though he knew that tactic was a brutal amputation, it was the revenger who was left the cripple. There was nothing more. He reached into his inside pocket again.
‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ said Sweeney, joshing, as if Hood had misbehaved. ‘A parting of the ways. Let’s do it the Irish way, with a jar of Liffey water.’
Hood said, ‘Some other time.’
‘You can’t deny me a last drink,’ said Sweeney, slapping him on the back. ‘Come on, I know a good pub.’
‘I thought we were in one.’
‘Not this piss-hole. I never drink here. Bad for the discipline if your men see you drunk.’
‘Then why drink with me?’
Sweeney smiled. ‘You’re not my man anymore.’
Hood went first, at Sweeney’s urging, downstairs and out the back door to a side street. Sweeney chatted in his friendly way, his accent broadened by his good humour; he talked about the offensive, about Ulster, about Murf and Mayo. He said, ‘I told her not to come back without the painting – not that I care a tinker’s curse for the bloody thing. But it’s all we have at the moment. And it’s the principle, see. I said, it’s the principle.’
‘How much further?’ said Hood.
They were in a dark street, lined with cars, and something Hood was unaccustomed to seeing in London – a row of trees, all the way to a lighted junction. They were tall, leafless, and looked dead, as if at any moment they might thunder down.
‘Just over the road.’
‘I don’t see any pub.’
‘You will in a minute,’ said Sweeney. ‘Sure, it’s a beauty –’ He stopped speaking, crept behind a tree and looked back. ‘What’s that? Did you see someone down there?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not looking.’ Sweeney had become short of breath. He sounded asthmatic. He said, ‘I think we’re being followed.’
Bein follered. Hood registered the accent. He had been prepared for a deception, but he had not thought it would be so transparent. He obliged Sweeney by glancing down the street, going through the motions, acting at Sweeney’s direction. It was, as he expected, empty. But it was familiar. He saw the wall, the white letters ARSENAL RULE in damp chalk, and he was certain.
‘There’s no one,’ he said.
‘In here,’ said Sweeney, motioning to a door in the wall. He was making a convincing show of fear. He pushed at Hood and Hood could feel in the shove the man’s trembling hand.
‘That’s a cemetery,’ said Hood.
‘It is. Now hurry – I tell you we’re being followed. We can duck out by the side entrance and ditch them.’
Hood thought: The simplest trick of all. There was no pub, there was no pursuer. Sweeney had taken him here to kill him. What he hated most was Sweeney’s lying, his pretence of fear, the acting. Yet Hood remained calm. There was justice in this trap. Lorna was safe, and he, for his murders, deserved to die. The executioner could be ignorant of the crime. But he was appalled by the place, the empty street, the dead trees, and at the cemetery wall he resisted, hardly knowing why – because he thought it would save him, because he thought resistance was expected of him. He would not go willingly to his death. He was empty of rage, but he could play the victim and fight. He said, ‘I won’t go.’
‘Move,’ said Sweeney. ‘There’s someone after us.’
‘I’m not! Now’ – he pulled a pistol from his coat pocket – ‘get in there and be quick.’
‘You’re going to kill me.’
‘Get in!’ Sweeney screamed into his fist. His face shone with sweat, and still he pretended to cower behind the tree.
To be killed by this jabbering play-actor! Hood walked ten steps to the cemetery gateway and looked in. He saw the dark humps and shadows, the grim London light behind the far wall that gleamed like a tidemark of surf on the highest tombs. Appalling because it was so ordinary, so empty, so dark; it was too cold to die tonight. But he thought: If I had died yesterday before that phone-call, it would have been worse. His life had stopped with that bomb; it had blasted away the ramparts of his heart and he had not been able to face the painting after that. He was too ashamed. He had led himself to this death, this suicide. And yet he fought against the logic. He did not want to die. Tomorrow, tomorrow. But Sweeney was armed. I will run, he thought, and if I’m saved I’ll keep running.
He darted through the door and leaped towards the darkness between two monuments, his legs numb and working clumsily. Ahead of him he saw the eclipse of Sweeney’s shadow in the doorway’s reflection on the burying-ground. He remembered Murf: I hate this boneyard.
Crack!
He tumbled, feeling nothing, a miraculous transparency in his mind, a winded zero in his chest. I’m dead, he thought. But he saw he was still moving quickly on all fours, a monkey motion over a clump of gravestones. He was conscious of a sensation of sudden lightness: the painting had bounced up and dropped from his pocket. He spun round and saw Sweeney on his knees, toppling, trying to aim.
A man in a long coat stepped inside the gate. He fired three more times into Sweeney’s body, then – the long coat jumping like a skirt – ran into the street. A car door slammed, an engine roared, and it sped away until its sound became part of the city’s regular swell.
But Hood had seen the man’s face. A thug: he knew the face and then didn’t. He saw his confusion, the brutal similarity, the shaded features, all brutes looked the same. No – he remembered where he had seen it before, silhouetted like this, in the paddock of whimpering dogs at the track – one of Rutter’s men. Hood was blinded. The painting: he started back for it and saw a policeman enter, flashing a torch near where Sweeney lay. Before Hood turned again the policeman saw him and waved his feeble torch. He called out twice for Hood to stop, but Hood kept running, through the far gate, into the street; away from the shrill police whistle, away from the painting, and into the concealing city.