Lie of the Land

by Michael F. Russell

  Again there was a wait while the question registered with Terry, winding its way towards an answer, which then worked its way mouthwards. Terry looked at Carl, and Carl wanted to look at Terry. But when you’re looking into someone’s face you generally scan across both eyes, the other person doing the same, and there shouldn’t be just one eye, wide and wild, staring back, bandages over a raw hole where the other one should be.

  Carl looked away.

  ‘Yes,’ said Terry. ‘I, um, Catharine . . . Dr Morgan says that . . .’ He nodded to himself, knotting his dirty-nailed fingers together. ‘She says that. The copper says that. So that’s what happening. I’m good to go.’

  ‘Good,’ said Carl, standing up.

  Suddenly Terry sniggered, became alert. ‘Fucking cyclops now, eh?’

  The others exchanged glances.

  ‘Bang goes my tennis game. You need binocular vision for that gig, eh? It’s all about depth perception. Parallax. Still be good at pool though, because I always close my right eye when I take a shot. Save a fortune on lenses as well.’ He sniggered again. ‘Worse things have happened, eh? Worse things.’

  No one knew how to react.

  ‘Mine eye has seen the glory,’ echoed Terry, snorting with laughter. He lapsed into silence while the others gulped their tea.

  One their way out, Carl saw Simone and Gibbs walking towards the surgery. He waited for them, skipping the pleasantries when they reached the gate.

  ‘Did you speak to your brother?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simone, her voice flat. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’

  Simone gave a slow deliberate nod. ‘Yes. That’s what he told me.’

  Carl grunted. ‘I’m only asking.’

  ‘As I said the other day: if you grow a pair of balls – remember those? – you know where to find me if you want to talk about anything else that might concern you. Anything at all that might affect the way you live your life in any small way.’

  ‘You don’t even fucking know me, for fuck’s sake,’ hissed Carl.

  Simone cocked her head. ‘No, I don’t – but I know your kind.’

  Before Carl could answer, or ask what she was doing visiting the surgery, Simone went inside with Gibbs.

  He refocused on what needed to be done. He could fetch Howard’s car. If it would still start and its tyres weren’t flat, he could get it out of Hendrik’s lock-up and drive Terry home in it. That would mean no grand parade past all the houses. Better for Terry if they took the car home. But then Carl figured that those responsible should be forced to take a good fucking look at what they’d done. Did they think justice, whatever that meant, had been served?

  31

  Next day, Carl tried again with Gibbs. But the due process of law wasn’t about to process anything.

  ‘Gemma told Casper she’d been raped.’

  ‘So that makes it okay? Taking someone’s eye out and scarring them for life?’

  Gibbs’s eyes narrowed. ‘I didn’t say it was okay, Mr Shewan. It’s very bloody far from okay. But there are different rules now, and I can’t do anything about those. These are the hard-and-fast facts of life, I’m afraid. I thought you’d have grasped that by now. It is what it is, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it. I’m sure as hell not going to start anything with Casper and Adam and Christ knows who else. We’ve been through enough. We’ve probably lost our son.’ His jaw tightened, working on a pulse of angry grief. ‘How do you think Liz would react if these bastards beat the shit out of me, or worse? Get a grip, man, and leave it alone. Perhaps you should spare a thought for a fifteen-year-old girl, rather than the man who might have raped her.’

  Swallowing hard, Gibbs bit his lip and took a step back inside his porch. ‘We’ve had enough pain to last a lifetime. You help yourself to more, if you feel up to it . . . And it sounds to me like Gemma was groomed – supplied with drugs – by your fucking mate.’

  Gibbs slammed his front door. It had been over three months since the redzone had sprung up. Now Inverlair was right in his face again, as hostile as any microwave cannon.

  •

  ‘I can’t believe there was no one else who’d do the job.’

  ‘Well, there was maybe one or two. I was giving it some thought, before . . .’

  ‘Right.’

  They walked on.

  ‘So no one else will do it?’

  Alec John screwed his face up. ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that. I just thought that maybe you needed it more than most. Especially when you took the air rifle apart without a spring compressor.’ He laughed.

  ‘Very funny,’ said Carl. ‘But I was lucky the spring didn’t take my eye out. And then Terry, you know? Whether it was deliberate or not I don’t know, but it’s odd, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Alec John. ‘Maybe you’re reading too much into it, over-thinking things, but maybe that’s an occupational hazard with you. I think you’re missing an opportunity up on the hill. I can feel my lungs getting worse and I need a decision. I need to take someone else on, if not you, then someone else.’

  ‘No pressure, eh?’

  ‘Yes, pressure. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but this is an important job. You might not find it very pleasant, but you’ll get used to it. It’s also better than getting stoned all the time.’

  Carl laughed. ‘Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve tried it.’

  ‘Eh? When?’

  ‘A long time ago, before I came back here.’

  ‘When was that? How d’you mean – came back?’

  ‘You’re a nosey bugger, aren’t you?’

  They passed through the forest-track gates and onto the road.

  ‘Another of my old habits,’ muttered Carl.

  Alec John grunted, his heavy boots clumping on the tarmac as they rounded the bay. ‘Well, since you’re interested, I was twenty-seven at the time. My father took a heart attack, a bad one, so I came back, yes, almost forty years ago now.’ He chuckled. ‘I’ve tried a few things, for sure. Even after I came back, for a time.’

  ‘What did you do before you came back?’

  ‘I was a crane operator on a seismic survey ship.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your dad, he was the head gamekeeper here?’

  ‘He was.’

  Carl felt a tightening in the air. ‘I thought . . .’ He changed tack. ‘Where were you a crane operator?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘All over. Oil companies, mainly. It was good in those days.’

  ‘Good pay?’

  ‘Yes, plenty of work in those days, before we drained the planet dry. We did some deep-water stuff off Angola, Spitsbergen. I spent a year in Baku, in the Caspian.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  They stopped at Terry’s gate. What could Carl say – that he’d assumed Alec John had been born with heather sprouting from his ears? He fumbled for an explanation. But Alec John had moved on.

  ‘How’s Terry? I should come round more, but after being out with you on the hill, I’m tired.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a piss-poor excuse.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Carl rubbed his face. ‘He’s okay, physically anyway. But it’s affected him – there’s no doubt about that. He doesn’t say much and then he talks a lot of garbage, to be honest. Ideally, he’d get counselling . . . something.’

  ‘Has he said anything about . . . that night?’

  Carl sighed. ‘It happened. They both had a bit to drink at the reception, went for a walk along the shore, started snogging and then . . . it went too far. He said he felt horrible after doing it and he just wanted to get away from the girl as quickly as possible.’

  ‘And so she went to tell Casper . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Carl. ‘Casper found her crying, by the side of the
community centre. She told him what had happened.’

  They were quiet for a spell at Terry’s gate. Then Alec John brightened as he changed the subject. ‘Do you see how important it is to stay low to the ground when you’re crawling, especially your arse and your head?’ He laughed. ‘And will you try and remember: when you get the chance, go for a crow with the 10-bore, or a rabbit – that’s why you’ve got it.’

  Carl looked sheepish. ‘Sorry. I forget.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want to,’ said Alec John, a stern edge in his voice. ‘You’re going to have to make your mind up about that. Always take a crow if you can – that’s the rule. You stick to them or you’re no gamekeeper, it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘The poor old crow,’ said Carl. ‘Just trying to survive like everything else.’

  Alec John shook his head firmly. ‘They’re vermin,’ he said, shouldering the .308. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, if you’re still interested. I’ll show you which areas to burn in the spring for the grouse. But you have to tell me one way or the other. Are you in or out?’

  Carl said goodbye, watched the old man walk down the road towards the head of the bay. He was definitely slower now, less able, and more reliant on the argocat to get onto the hill. It was such a lurching uncomfortable ride that Carl would rather walk.

  He went through Terry’s gate and part way down the track. He stopped among the stand of alder where the earth and treacly leaf-mulch smelled of rain. This end of Terry’s caravan had no windows. White smoke emerged from the tin chimney and vanished in the breeze. One-eyed Terry, who had stopped washing himself and was now mute – when he wasn’t spouting gibberish – was in there.

  Carl waited among the trees for a minute. Then he turned and walked back up the track. If he went quickly he would be at the head of the bay, beneath the big trees at the bridge, and Alec John wouldn’t be able to see him walk back to the hotel.

  •

  From the window of Room 7 Carl watched Simone and Isaac set off on a visit. Down in the lobby he had been able to listen to her playing her flute through in the annexe, standing transfixed by the sound until it stopped. Then he’d hurried back upstairs to his room. It was the first time he’d heard her play, though he knew she did.

  There was still no sign of a bump – when exactly did a woman start to show? But she’d put weight on, and there were hardly any in the village who’d managed to do that. As a pregnant woman she’d be getting extra food, according to Howard’s system. Simone’s right to calories was inviolable. Maybe they’d worship Howard as a god, as their saviour, in years to come. No. That was unkind.

  Miscarriages happen in a high number of pregnancies. Carl had read that somewhere. But it was still there, no doubt about it, and pretty soon there would be no hiding it and then it would be a case of: here’s this little baby and ooh and ahh and before you know it he’s actually caring for it. That was the ever-changing world, making up new rules just as you’re getting used to the old ones. He grabbed his jacket and rucksack, intent on heading out and up as far as he could, and he grabbed the 10-bore. Perhaps the time had indeed come to get rid of some predatory vermin.

  Instead of heading straight onto the hill, Carl made his way along the edge of the northern headland, along the shoreline, past the roofless stone ruins of the old herring stations. There was nothing but time for him in Inverlair, an open-ended sentence stretching ahead. He might not even want to leave when the nearest base station failed. He shivered at the word: institutionalised.

  What were the golden rules inside a prison? Watch your back. Keep out of trouble. Accept each day as it comes. Do your time. Keep active. Then what?

  Howard had said that the masts would pack in within a few years. But approaching the cities and towns would take longer. SCOPE had numerous urban nodes, embedded in lampposts and on top of bus stops, so Howard had said, and they were all harvesting power from countless micro-renewable sources. SCOPE was a blanket of silence, with only a few small holes in the fabric. Years would pass before those holes got bigger, merged, then people would move back, recolonise; maybe they’d be non-Europeans. Carl smiled as he considered a racist’s reaction on that prospect. Repatriation may no longer be an enforceable policy response.

  Fissured cliffs of shale loomed ahead as the worn path beside the herring stations gave way to rocky shoreline. It took him over half an hour to travel along the base of the northern headland, over a jumble of rocks, and in that time the sky had darkened. A shower was on the way, but he had on his waterproofs, so he’d be dry. He sat down for a spell, an outcrop acting as a windshield, picked up a dark pebble and turned it over in his hand, staring up at the shale cliffs. The book in the residents’ lounge had said this was the right kind of place for ammonites. Inverlair was littered with fossilised remains. He put the stone in his jacket pocket and sat there, staring at the waves.

  The memory of a dream came to him. He was eight or nine and he dreamed he was standing at the living-room window looking out and up, terrified, at the bright sky, from which lasered a single, massive eye, watching him. He knew it was God’s eye, up against the keyhole in the clouds, an unblinking all-knowing intelligence. And God, for whatever reason, wasn’t pleased with what he saw. Carl remembered the dream because he’d had another one like it last night, only this time there had been no one eye in the sky, judging him, like when he was a kid.

  But there was still something watching him, in the empty dream-streets of Glasgow, at Heron Point, or out on the hill, an invisible intelligence probing him, analysing him. Carl got the feeling that whatever it was hadn’t quite made up its mind. A judgement would come, but there was still time for him to influence the outcome by adding to one side of the scales, or by taking away from the other.

  In his new dream there was no god’s-eye, only himself, and nothing obviously awry with the world apart from the fact that there was no one else in it. The streets were the streets and the sea was the sea. Yet his dream-self this time knew that something was present, undeniably so, something that was under the sea and in the wind-creaking trees at night and behind a thousand untenanted windows. It was in all those places, and in none of them. It might be God, or time, or death, or life. Something eternal, anyway.

  He remembered a conversation with Howard, about SCOPE.

  ‘There were people in the National Emergency Authority, officials who knew about black projects, who opposed SCOPE once they found out what it was designed to do.’

  ‘So what did they do about it?’

  Howard took a deep breath, resigned to the telling of it. ‘They raised their concerns through the proper channels,’ he had said.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘They were told that everything was in order, or that their concerns were being addressed.’

  ‘And the opponents of SCOPE were happy with this?’

  ‘Some of them were, yes. The ones with families to feed, mainly.’

  ‘And those that weren’t?’

  There was a long pause as Howard looked out of the window, at the shifting light on the hills. He kept it simple. ‘If they pressed too hard, they either died in accidents or killed themselves, or just disappeared.’

  He looked directly at Carl, searching for the realisation that stopping SCOPE had been impossible. There was too much money and power behind it. And Carl had been made to understand the risks Howard had taken to warn people, to warn him.

  Ammonite in hand, Carl shook himself at the thought of Howard, stood up and set off again for Heron Point, picking his way over the rocky shoreline, stooping every now and again to pick up an interesting stone or shell. He could see it now, see how it was going to be with the committee and Gibbs and Adam Cutler. It hadn’t been designed to end up that way – he was sure it wasn’t intentional. But the people who were running the operation, who were applying Howard’s survival system, could enforce their will, if that’s what they wanted. The law of unintended consequences had struck again. There was always a god’s-eye, of so
me sort, trying to control how people behave.

  The shoreline came to an end at the base of a spur that jutted from the headland, and he had to take an old sheep track that zigzagged up the rugged grassy slope and onto the headland’s heathery peak. After climbing for a few minutes he stopped to look back. Through binoculars he could see a flotilla of ducks, close in against the shore. He’d seen geese head south the other day; maybe the ducks were doing the same and had just stopped for a rest.

  He lifted the 10-bore. There was nothing pestilential about roast duck. If he crept back down the path he could fire down on them from a range of about thirty metres. With a bit of luck, he could chalk up another species on his hit list. They were just targets at the other end of a lens. Necessity dictated that he view them as nothing more. A man can behave like a machine, can act on what needs to be done, and there’s no need to for conscience to come into it.

  Isaac, cocooned in his hooded coat, looked up from his sandpit as the gunshot boomed around the bay. With three litres of home-brew inside him Terry slept on his couch, not hearing anything, except the dream-shouts of his pursuers, and the crying of a girl.

  32

  Christmas. He’d heard a kid, a girl of about five, say the word the other day to her dad, but the guy didn’t know what to say in response. Others had mentioned the idea since then, mainly adults prompted by their kids whose kids had told other kids, and so on. What can you say when your son or your daughter asks about Christmas? Sorry, it’s been cancelled. Maybe parents should say it’s no longer appropriate to celebrate, or how there are no more toys because of what happened. Carl wondered how SCOPE and the redzone had been explained to curious young minds. Dad tells me X. A pal tells me Y. Put all the stories together, and the kids might end up concocting their own version of the truth. They might grow up believing any number of implausible reasons why the world became the way it is.

  Christmas had once been toys – the bigger and noisier the better. Carl could remember a few of those must-have big-ticket items coming his way. Like a lot of parents back then, the amount of money his own had spent on presents was inversely proportional to the amount of time they spent with their kids. He remembered one girl in his student days, beautiful, brittle as sugar glass; her dad swam in Middle Eastern oil and he threw cash and presents at her, though he hardly ever saw her. He’d sent her a brand new top-line computer that had sat in the hallway of their shared student flat, boxed and unopened, for a week or more, until the Fairy Princess could be arsed to have a peek inside.