Dark Horizons
Page 42
Behind me, I heard him saying my name. ‘Alex? Alex? You still there? Don’t leave me, man. We’re brothers, right? Don’t leave me. Alex. We gotta stick together. I got no one else, Alex.’
I ignored him and went to the nurse at the bed nearest the door. I asked if she spoke English.
‘A little.’
‘I’m looking for a girl,’ I said, taking the picture out once again and pointing to Helena.
The nurse nodded. ‘I seen her. Nice girl.’
‘You have?’
‘A few minutes gone.’
‘Here?’
‘Right there. Looking at that man you talk to. I thought maybe she know him, but she say no.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Gone. She leave.’
‘Where?’
She pointed and I thanked her, my hopes lifting further amid all this chaos, but before I could leave, she put a hand on my arm and stopped me. ‘You know that man?’ She looked over at Michael. ‘He need help. He need a friend. Someone. If you’re friend—’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before.’
She released my arm and continued to watch me as I hurried from the ward.
With a new sense of urgency, I rushed down the stairs that had brought me into this terrible place. I took them two at a time, my flip-flops slapping the stone steps. I dodged among the doctors and nurses at the bottom and jogged through the hospital entrance into the warm air, skirting round the back of an ambulance that was parked at an angle, abandoned in a hurry. There were still many people outside Sanglah, a greater collection of locals now, probably come to see what was going on. Many of them were lined along the plastic-wrapped veranda. They were peering over the top, holding their shirts to their noses, looking at the lines of covered bodies. I looked down as I passed, and something caught my eye, making me stop. I stared down at the corpses, covered only with thin white sheets. The unmistakeable shapes beneath. Some with limbs protruding. But one in particular had made me stop.
An uncovered leg. White. An unmistakeable mark on the ankle. A single domino. Double six. And I remembered everything that had come before this moment. I remembered when she had first shown me that tattoo, lifting her foot onto the bed, and how I had thought she was so perfect. And, despite everything she had revealed herself to be, I remembered what I had first thought she was. And it was with a sad heart that I turned away from her. I had other places to go now. Domino was gone.
54
I moved through the crowd, searching for Helena, spotting the white faces, focusing on them each for a moment, hoping that one of them would be her.
There. Walking away. Not looking back. Showing no interest in what was going on. Blue jeans and a black shirt, her hair tied back.
‘Helena,’ I shouted her name, but there was little chance of her hearing me. I shouted again, calling as I passed among the people. ‘Wait.’
I was forced to stop as a group of people carried an injured man into the hospital. I shifted from side to side, wanting them to hurry, to move aside. Helena was getting away, moving out of sight now. I craned my neck to see her.
As soon as the men had passed, I pushed on, picking up my pace, moving as quickly as I could, calling her name over and over. ‘Helena. Helena.’
Now a group of young men blocked my path, westerners, built like rugby players. I edged among them without looking at their faces, intent on keeping my eyes on Helena, not wanting to lose her now.
‘Alex,’ said a voice, stopping me. ‘We found him,’ he said. ‘We found Jamie. Look.’ It was John and his friends, the ones who had shared the bemo with me. ‘How ’bout you? Any luck?’
I pushed on, calling Helena’s name.
‘Guess not,’ said John, moving to one side to let me through. Angus and his brother moved, too, opening up the way ahead, and as they parted, I saw her again. Helena. Right there in front of me.
She’d heard me calling. She was in the process of looking over her shoulder and, as she did so, she caught sight of me. I stopped a couple of feet away from her. I had found her. At last I had found Helena, and now I didn’t know what to do. There was no slow-motion approach, no smiles, no rousing music. But I could feel the tension drain from her and the relief rush in to replace it. Her shoulders dropped and her whole face changed. She took a step towards me and closed her eyes. She couldn’t even manage a smile.
‘It’s OK,’ I told her. ‘It’s OK.’
‘How did you know where I was?’
I pulled the picture from my pocket and showed her. She took it from me.
‘I was on the news?’ she said, looking at the photo.
I nodded.
Helena crumpled the picture into a ball and dropped it. She put one hand to my face. ‘What now?’ she asked.
‘We’ll go somewhere,’ I said.
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. Somewhere quiet.’
‘A good place to go,’ she said, and we began walking, merging with everyone else, nothing special or different. Just two more people in the crowd.
Copyright
An Orion ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Orion Books
This ebook first published in 2011 by Orion Books
© Dan Smith 2011
The right of Dan Smith to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright © Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 0826 9
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