Forty-five minutes away, that’s the nearest hospital.
Two paramedics in jumpsuits were working at MacKay now, they’d brought out a stretcher, the gleam of equipment incongruous in the filth of the arena. And a long-limbed boy in a big hat and a bright yellow shirt like his father’s was sitting up on the fence, leaning forward, a man beside him, resting one hand on his shoulder—perhaps to comfort, perhaps to restrain. And, as if she had wished herself there, a woman was out in the ring now, pretty in snug jeans, a silk blouse, tawny hair, and pushing at one of the cowboys and nodding her head, please, please, please, and then turning her back on the benches, curling over at the waist to make some kind of privacy, because clearly she couldn’t bear to be here with everybody watching and clearly she also couldn’t leave.
“We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything, folks. Just as soon as we hear.”
The ambulance rocked away in silence, not a hint of its engine, only a dumb progression through the gate and on to the track and then joining the first, grey curve of the road. It seemed the pressure of so many eyes must have taken away its sound.
Forty-five minutes and where will God be when they get there.
The arena was cleared when June looked round to it again. Beyond the rise, cars would be leaving to follow the ambulance. She turned and walked with her back to the sun until she reached a steep bank, the grass tall on it, but flattened out into smoothed forms wherever somebody had sat or lain during the day, the wider areas where there’d been couples, or families. June picked out an unmarked spot for herself and sat, liking the press of stems around her. Another few weeks and this would be dried to straw.
Out of sight now, the rodeo continued: what sounded like laughter and drifted cheers as the pack race started: a mule bray, more laughs. June shut her eyes and saw the woman in the ring and the way she nodded, all of her movements jagged with terror, struggling under the first rise of pain.
And I was the only one there, the only ugly, wrong one who wanted that, just that. I have no sympathy for her, or compassion, no interest: I only want the right to be so injured, to know what I miss. To have someone I can lose.
I only want a reason for the sadness. Please, God, I do. Let me hurt for the sake of a body I’ve loved, a body that loved me. Please, God, only that.
She didn’t know if she was crying, whether anyone could see, and the clouds dragged over the evening hills in silence and there was nothing left for her to burn.
White House at Night
Danny wondered where he was: where he was. Really—which was the place in the body where he felt himself to be.
It was something that you did know—you just never thought of it. Ask the question and the answer always came: “I’m up here, mainly up here,” with yourself inside this little kind of capsule, busy at the back of your eyes and aiming wherever they aimed: quieter with them shut, but definitely in there all the time, huddled in some indefinable space at the back of your sinuses and arched up, somehow, over the roof of your mouth, an invisible lodger.
You could feel through the whole of your body, you were aware it belonged to you and was personal, but you—where you were—that didn’t quite extend into your limbs, it faded. There was a sense of attention lying in your hands, maybe, in your prick, but truly you were in your head, that was where you lived.
He knew the experiment, thought he remembered it from a lecture—where you’d ask someone to write their own name on their forehead and almost every time they wrote it backwards, for the benefit of this interior self they had, crouched behind their face, seeing out through their skull.
That proved it—everyone lived inside their heads.
So when Niamh said that as a criticism of him, she was wrong. His living there only meant that he was human and she didn’t understand. He was just a human being, like everyone else.
At some point, the sun had set and now the room was wavering with passing headlamps, the bigger gleam of trams, then resting in darkness and dry warmth. The heating was great here, defying the evening’s frost with faultless, Swiss efficiency. In fact, it wasn’t a bad place, all round—much cleaner and much larger than the one they had to use, out by the pit.
Imre had said they could go off and stay here as long as they wanted. “Take. Take. An apartment of my highly good friend in Lucerne. He never is at home,” Imre had insisted. “Quiet place, Lucerne. You will enjoy.” Of course, they wouldn’t have as long as they wanted, they never did. “Is very … very tidy. Not like here. Take.”
One day to get there—the truck and then two planes could do it—one day to come back, but then four free for them to stay: four pristine days somewhere else. It made sense to accept the offer, the keys, the scrawling map with a jagged blur of lake shaded in pencil. “Quiet place.” Even if it indebted them to Imre. “Niamh will like such a place—you will see.” Even then. “Make her happy.” They’d needed a rest and this would be it. “Take. You should take.”
They hadn’t quite shaken the pit, though. It stayed with them: with him, Dan supposed that would be more accurate. He still had the peat smell on his hands and that other, deeper scent, or the memory of it, would rise in him when he relaxed: butyric acid, methane, sometimes a faint tang like metal and what he could only think of as the taste of unreality, of a situation it would never be possible to accept, even when you were in it: perhaps most especially then. The particular mix of odours was universal: death announcing itself quite predictably on any continent.
This time the preservation had been good, the bodies buried quickly in a wet, acidic soil—ideal conditions and quite unusual for this terrain. Theoretically, the chances of identification were high: some of the faces stained, but not overly altered, some clothing perhaps recognisable. Amongst a few of those found in the lower layers, fingerprints were not out of the question, the pliant skin coaxed into gloving away from hands, almost intact. A relatively simple matter, in such cases, to trim off what he needed and ease a finger inside each dead sheath, set each blued nail above one of his own, dip himself into the shadow of another man. A layer of latex between them, of course—hygiene. He would ink up then, careful, press and roll the necessary print. Niamh did the same for the women whenever that proved appropriate. Children were more difficult, small: but then, unless they’d been printed as infants and records could be found, there wasn’t much point in trying, anyway.
Down in the current pit there were fifty-three bodies, so far—back home, he might not see that many in a year. Seventeen at the last site, a messy reburial, dusted with lime. Ninety-eight in the grave before that. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn.
It was wonderful, too, that Niamh could be here with him. She always seemed to worry about safety, which was not unreasonable—the people who buried the corpses were multiple murderers, they wanted the soil to absolve them of their crimes and they wanted you to leave things be. In Chile, in Argentina and now here, you were a disturbance they’d rather avoid. This made for risks, of course it did, and Niamh was a woman who liked to have certainties.
There were times when they’d watched him digging, he knew—the murderers. They’d look on with this odd expression, almost coquettish, almost proud, and quietly disbelieving that anyone would actually try and retrieve the irretrievable: scraping up no more than proof of annihilation, when it had never been particularly secret, only the kind of joke that sensible people denied having heard. Those intended for destruction had been destroyed—what more could one want to know? What more could there be?
Danny worked while they tilted their heads and puzzled over the string grids and the little, coloured flags, the expensive cameras—all the fussing paraphernalia of his job—and he knew it must seem inadequate. He was supposed to be here to unearth justice, give the dead their voice—but all the dead could ever do was list their injuries, confirm the absolute success of their tormentors. Nothing Danny did had any strength, he knew.
And so did they, the watchers, they could taste hi
s doubt. When they caught his eye, they would start a smile, teasing, ready for him to give some sign of his real motives: he must have motives, his own variety of guilt. The whole thing made him ashamed and then angry with himself. He was meant to be doing a good thing, so he ought to feel good, he ought to be able to manage that. Arresting those responsible would help. It hardly ever happened, though.
Possibly that was why the murderers never seemed ashamed, or angry—very seldom even made a threat—or not that he’d heard of. The ones who threatened were the bereaved: calling down vengeance, tugging out sudden, battered guns: defending their own, months too late.
Which Niamh should never be involved with, not any of it—she was right. So he’d tended to come out alone in the past, but on this trip they were well protected—UN troops and local bodyguards. He’d persuaded her that it was safe, because it was important they should be together. They did the same work and they ought to be doing it in the same place.
He stood, walked across and looked down from the window. The Casino glowed discreetly opposite: a long, neat block in pastel orange and cream: no neon, nobody entering or leaving, no sign of anyone trying to take a risk. For a moment, he pressed his cheek against the dull cool of the glass and then drew back. He raised his hands to the top of his head, spread his fingers over it, then gripped, as if he might feel a movement inside, might surprise the shiver of himself if he could only squeeze down hard enough.
Nothing.
Danny bent to remove his shoes and socks. His jacket was already somewhere on the floor. He’d put on a tie when he’d still been planning to go out and eat, but he wouldn’t need it now: so off it came, then dropped.
The bereaved—he pulled his shirt free of his waistband and knew he was going to remember them. No use telling them not to come—they did what they wanted, moved with this awful kind of privilege.
They were the same in every country. Quite often, no one should know when a pit was opened, but they’d arrive in any case, get closer than they should: the ones who shouted, the ones who stood, the ones who had never done this before, the ones who now did nothing else. The ones who wept.
All the ways human beings can weep—he’d begun to learn the variations and realised that they were virtually infinite, as characteristic as dental work, or DNA.
Its buttons being done with, he removed his shirt, balled it up and threw it towards a corner, didn’t hear it land.
The ones left behind, they had photographs, descriptions of people who weren’t people any more—the hobbies, the small things the dead had enjoyed. Fathers and brothers arrived quite regularly, but mainly women came, particularly mothers, less frequently wives. He told every one of them to leave: register details, perhaps pay respects, say goodbye, but leave. The pits were never anything they should see.
One tug and his belt pulled loose with a slapping glide and he could swing it, intending to let it fall, but then he reconsidered and kept his grip. He clutched the buckle and started to circle his arm, across his body and then out wide, the leather thrumming and turning silent in a cycle, as if there were someone else with him here, drawing shuddered breaths.
Backing into the dim centre of the room, he turned slowly, still swinging, and knocked over an ornament of some kind—heavy china—then another—he thought the Venetian glass fish. Then he regathered his momentum while he listened to something tumble, roll and break satisfyingly. He slashed down at the table next, cracking his belt over the glimmer of the bonbon dish and his whisky glass. Then he ran, flailing, cutting across his own shins, making contact with the chair where he’d been sitting and lashing it, meaning the strokes, intending the injury implied by every arc.
When he stopped he felt ragged, jarred. He set down the belt, unfastened his trousers, bent to hurry them down, his underpants, too, his socks, and then he stepped clear. It was time to go up to the window again, enjoy its length, his bare feet nervous of broken glass on the carpet, but not so nervous that he didn’t walk. When he reached the view—the single, high pane—he was still unharmed.
He braced his legs and eased forward, a smooth chill ready to meet him from his forehead to his knees, his chest and stomach pushing sharp against the window, relenting, then pushing again. Danny hadn’t realised he was breathless, hadn’t noticed an effort in what he’d done. His cock stung with the cold, but it barely disturbed him: he tucked his hips forward, squeezed the bite clear back into his balls, and then lifted his arms, stretched them up along the glass, his palms set flat above. He turned his head to one side, made his fit closer and gave himself up. The street noise sounded hollow and very distant.
But no one was going to notice him. This was calm and pretty Switzerland: no one would look up.
Although they ought to, because he deserved it. A shame to drive out a shame that should make him feel good, please him.
This afternoon, he’d stood at the lakeside, leaned over the rail beside Niamh, and they’d watched as the coots disappeared themselves under the surface, swam through the greenish clarity of water, their backs silvered over with clinging air, heads purposeful. They’d popped to the surface again, neat and unscathed, white beaks occupied with morsels of something. They were very pleasing. The tufted ducks, the swans, the wooden bridges: all very pleasing. They just hadn’t pleased him.
He’d excused himself and found a call box, phoned Conrad and asked about body 41. It was female and unusual—both breasts augmented with implants. They’d discovered her lying on her side, the implant gels already drifted into the peat close by her torso: soft and incongruous, like something marine. They’d traced the manufacturer and make: Style 186, round saline implant with anterior diaphragm valve and an RTV silicone elastomer textured shell. They had the catalogue, lot and serial numbers on a woman’s hope of change, her idea of beauty, maybe, personal confidence.
“Bonnie Dukic.” Conrad had the name ready.
“OK.” The name didn’t mean a thing to Danny, of course, and she was dead now, she didn’t need it. “Relatives?”
“In the States. I think in the States—born there, Bonnie Simic. Married one Hasim Dukic and went back to the old country. They had a son, Aleksandar.” There was no reason to suggest that either her husband or son were still alive.
“Well. A name, then. Good.”
“I could have told you this when you got back.”
“Yes.” Danny often enjoyed hearing Conrad—there was a tranquillity about him.
“You’re on holiday, Dan. Remember.” He could be overly moral, superior, but most of the time he would just ask questions and let you realise your answers told you how you should proceed.
“Yes.” Danny had wanted to be more forthcoming, but he’d felt hot, unsteady.
“Niamh enjoying it?” He would let you accuse yourself, Conrad—that was his drawback, his problem.
“Both of us are. Yes. Should get back to it, in fact.” Conrad hadn’t answered, leaving a friendly silence when Danny had no need for friendliness. “See you on Monday.”
“Take it easy.”
“Of course.”
Danny had wondered if Aleksandar was the boy in the carrier bag. Number 15. It wouldn’t be very difficult to work out: the mother’s DNA leading on to the son, the son’s perhaps finding them the father.
He’d gone back to the railing and hugged Niamh, her body lighting against him, feeling happy, and then drifting, turning wooden until he let her go. Or perhaps that had been his fault, perhaps he’d seemed cold, somehow, and had made her colder.
That kind of thing, the game-playing, it tired him. It left him wondering what clothes Niamh would be wearing when they found her. In the end, the absolute end, you were always an object to be discovered, sometimes straightforward, sometimes not. Or she could be naked: what was intended might come and take her when she was like that. Yes, she might be naked.
Danny realised he was used to the window, couldn’t feel it any more. He could imagine it had disappeared and left him supported purely
by a type of will, a resistance beyond his control. The way that he lived now, this wouldn’t seem surprising. Like when he was going to the pit, there was a path to take—secure and cleared of mines—but some mornings he couldn’t use it, he would have to push up through the woods, hysteria cramping in his calf muscles and his whole shirt sweated through with the terror of stepping on something bad. Still, that was the way he had to go.
He shifted his weight and the pattern of cold changed across his stomach. A creak eased out left along the window frame. Danny thought he heard a laugh break from the street. Panic flared in his chest, but he stayed where he was, displayed. He had no choice.
He was beginning to believe that no one did. Staying awake late, packed in the kitchen with Imre and the guards: “They’re shits.” He said all the things that he couldn’t tell Conrad: “They do it because they can.” He let go of his secrets. “Human beings like to know what they can. Like to do it.”
“Yes. Of course. Yes.” Imre, grinning. He liked it when Danny was drunk and when it was dark: he always got more friendly then, more interested.
“They fucking love it.” The guards didn’t speak English, or didn’t seem to. Imre, when he wanted, could also pretend not to understand. “Love. It. Bastards.” With them, Danny could relax, as if he was speaking to no one, and he could say everything—even those thoughts which would prove unacceptable, if voiced in a humanitarian group. “Like sex—think how much of that’s in you, how much you want that—they love it like that.”
“Sex? You know about this, Mr. Dan?” Imre needling for some reason, alert and ducking away, giggling.
“I said … I said the way they love it …”
And then formal, leaning forward, brisk, “Did you think it was something else, Mr. Dan? Money?—everyone loves this, frankly, yes—and to take some farm, some house you wanted for a long time—this is good. But killing, you have to love—just to kill, not to get something. To kill like this … you love.” Imre had rested a hand on Danny’s shoulder, “You understand.” The touching hungry, overly firm.
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