He turned to the last notes he had made.
‘What about infrared?’ he had said, asking about the enemy’s capabilities.
To which Muriel had replied: ‘I don’t think so.’
In other words, they might have night vision, they might not. His own Maxi-Kite, at least, he had recovered at the hospital, strapped crudely to the barrel of the L85.
‘What the hell am I going to do?’
‘Pull yourself together. That’s what.’
He stood up and, with one hand on the overgrown railings, contemplated the reflected sunset in the eddying, fish-dimpled surface of the canal. What if Bex and his henchmen had not, after all, found the figurine? Even then, they surely would have known enough to look for Suter’s inward trail at Shanley. The fieldcraft of the three who had followed him to Watford had been such that his adversaries were no longer to be underestimated.
If they were good enough to find his trail, they would know how to follow it invisibly. The technique was simple enough. One kept tabs on a predicted trail by means of a series of lateral loops, making each contact where the ground and vegetation were most favourable. If the contact proved negative, one retraced and then repeatedly halved the last loop until contact was re-established. Provided one knew what one was about, the original maker of the trail, coming along behind, would have no idea what had happened.
Since, on his northward walk last Friday morning, Suter had kept close to the canal bank, these loops would have had to be made on the landward side of his trail. By adopting a parallel course, fifty feet or so from his original, he would intersect them. As soon as he found convincing evidence that the loops had indeed been made, he would be forewarned that Bex’s men were waiting in ambush.
Unfortunately he needed strong daylight for such an exercise. If he wanted to wait till morning he would have to find somewhere safe to spend the night. That meant a building he could secure against dogs. Even with the benefit of a torch, looking for such a place at dusk or afterwards could be extremely dangerous.
He considered for a moment longer and came to a decision.
‘Sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
There was no need to check for an enemy trail, because he had to assume that they had made one anyway. If his assumptions were correct, they would be lying in wait for him at or very close to his house, since they would be unable to predict from which direction he would return. They would not wait upstream, by the canal, in the unlikely event that he might go past by boat. So he was at small risk of being shot in passing. Even so, it would be safer to continue downstream in darkness. And as far as dogs were concerned, he would be safer on water than on land.
He clambered back into the canoe and shoved off.
9
Approaching the barn, Seumas looked up at the remnants of the sunset. A few rooks and jackdaws, blacker than death itself, were moving across the afterglow, heading for their roost in the woods above the village. Like evil spirits, they would be back tomorrow to haunt the fields, the riverbank, the battlements of the church tower. He had seen them earlier today, swirling above the chimneys of the Manor House, making shadows on the leaded panes of Bex’s window.
His hurricane lamp swinging, Seumas lifted the latch and swung open the door. The sweet, warm smell of straw and horses met his nostrils.
Coco and Stolly came behind.
‘I still don’t see why I should have to do it,’ Coco said, continuing the monologue of complaint he had kept up all the way from the house.
Seumas said, ‘Bex told us three, so three it is.’
‘Why don’t he never do fuck all?’
‘Can it, Coco,’ Stolly said.
‘I had to make the dinner again, ’s all I’m saying. ’S time Dave took his turn. Or Matt. Where is he, anyway? He’s always hiding somewhere when Bex give out the orders.’
Seumas held up the lantern while Stolly pulled aside the tarpaulin. A grimace forming on his face, Stolly bent to take his first close look at the corpses of their three comrades. He turned to Seumas. ‘Where’s Terry’s head?’
Seumas shrugged.
Coco said, ‘I’d heard he lost it. Over some slit.’ He was unable to suppress a snigger. ‘What about old Redmond? Red’s about right for him. How many slugs you think he took?’
‘Twenty,’ Stolly said. ‘Maybe more.’
‘Jeez-us. Talk about Irish stew.’ He glanced round. ‘Sorry, Seumas. I forgot you was a Mick.’
There was no danger here. Bex had told them the angel had, at least for the moment, left the village. But, if the creature was elsewhere, why did Seumas feel its presence now? He had the sensation that they were being watched. Out there, close by, something was watching. Listening. He turned to look, but the doorway of the barn showed only darkness.
Because it had been sent to do equal battle with Satan’s warriors here on Earth, the angel had been given human form, modern weapons, everything. Even a night sight, which Danzo had found on the escarpment. Maybe other things, too.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ Seumas said.
Stolly unscrewed the cap from the canister of white spirit and doused the bodies. Holding the emptying canister at arm’s length, he then performed a frivolously balletic sweep of the area round about, draining the last of the spirit in a line towards some bales stacked against the timbers of the wall.
‘What about the horses?’ Coco said.
‘Bex didn’t say nothing about them,’ Stolly said.
The barn was also used as a stable. There were three stalls, each holding a plough-horse. They were looking on. The nearest one, with a white blaze on its face, was named Amos. Seumas had once heard a villager calling it that. He thought of sending word back to Bex, asking what to do. ‘Burn the barn,’ Bex had instructed them, simply, finally, settling the disposal of the three corpses, which had only occurred to him as an afterthought, or a whim, and then he had gone upstairs again to Helen, with the avowed intention of driving her mad. There was no breaking that stupid bitch, he had told Seumas. He could easily have throttled her, but he wanted to strangle her mentally, just to see how long she would last.
Seumas knew that Helen had become for Bex a fascinating symbol, a martyr without audience or hagiographer, clinging in private to the papier mâché rock of her faith. At the other villages he had destroyed – especially at Essendon – Bex had been able to make everyone recant, to say anything he told them to say, to make them wipe their arses on tissue-thin pages torn from the New Testament. Even in those few places where fundamentalist Christianity had not dominated, he had taken pleasure in subverting their beliefs. For all had subscribed to the notions of ‘goodness’, ‘humanity’, and suchlike woolly-minded shit.
It had been so even at Chilton, the village where Seumas had lived. At Chilton they had worshipped not God, but creatures from space. The idea of ‘goodness’ had dominated their thinking from the start. The plague, they had believed, had been sent to rid the planet of iniquity: the New Home on Fornax-5 was an Elysium of enlightenment. Here the Grey Beings were re-educating the Purified and preparing them for their eventual return to Eden.
Faced with the muzzle of a machine gun, the Caller at Chilton had wasted no time in admitting it was all rubbish, invented for his benefit. Just like Christianity, also made up for the benefit of certain privileged persons, there was no sense in it whatever. It had been an excuse for him to screw anyone he wanted, like any of the young girls of the village he and his woman had taken to bed. His pursuit of ‘goodness’ had produced only suffering. That, Bex had said, was all any religion ever produced. Religion was hypocrisy, religion was muddle, religion was the tangle of undergrowth where bullies and madmen lurked. And the worst, the worst ever, was Christianity. Without Christianity, Bex had explained to Seumas, the Roman emperor Constantine would never have been able to cling to power. Without him, a thousand years later, the Renaissance would never have happened. Without the Renaissance, there would have been no work ethic, no Industr
ial Revolution, no overpopulation, and no plague. Christianity had poisoned the garden of the world. Satan, in his aspect as Pan, horned, cloven-hoofed, had been displaced from his throne. He wanted it back; was nearly there.
Hearing all this had been a revelation for Seumas. He had been even more taken with Bex’s views on evil itself. The practice of ‘goodness’ led to suffering because evil was inherent in the human spirit. Conversely, the conscious pursuit of evil led to purity and simplicity. And because evil was inherent in everyone’s breast, it was also natural and enjoyable. In order to realise his potential, a man had to embrace evil. He had to recognise as hypocrites all those who blocked his path.
Seumas thought again of the inspiring way Bex had shot the head man. Bex was already free, unfettered, a golden being.
The horses belonged to the village. They were part of its apparatus of oppression. The simplest thing to do, the purest and most exciting, was to burn them where they stood.
On the other hand, Bex might not want them burnt. Besides allowing the villagers to continue harvesting their crops, they might prove useful, when the time came to leave, to the Order itself.
Horses were big animals, like cows. At Essendon Seumas had heard the noise of the cattle imprisoned in the milking-parlour, which Danzo had set on fire. He would never forget it. Even if the three horses had to die, might it not be better to shoot them rather than listen again to those screams?
Seumas reached in his pocket for matches. He felt the box, its corners, the roughness of the abrasive strip. He knew what Bex would do. Strike a match. Now. Right away. And, laughing, leave the horses to burn.
Again he felt as if something were outside in the darkness, watching him through some powerful and mysterious instrument, reading his thoughts, awaiting his decision.
‘We just going to torch them?’ Stolly said.
‘Better not,’ Seumas said. ‘Like you say, Bex didn’t tell us to. It might piss him off.’ He turned to Coco, including him in the debate. ‘Let’s take them outside first. That one’s called Amos.’
∗ ∗ ∗
At seven o’clock the moon climbed clear of the hybrid poplars on the lakeshore. Suter had been waiting for it to do so, watching over his shoulder: a day or two in advance of the first quarter, the right-hand side of the disc was lit. The Man in the Moon was looking down on Harefield with only one eye. He was already rising through Pisces, unhindered by cloud, and bright enough to obscure adjacent stars.
Suter looked away, not wishing to delay his dark adaptation any further. Until five minutes ago he had been using the night sight to examine his house, eighty yards away. The drab, particulate image had revealed no sign of intruders. Everything appeared to be normal and intact, just as he had left it. The place seemed empty. He told himself his fears had been paranoid. No one had followed his trail.
‘Mit Vorsicht, immer Vorsicht! ’ he breathed. Caution cost nothing. How many times had it saved his neck?
Behind him the poplar leaves were clattering faintly. The bulk of them had yet to fall. The trees were now gigantic. When he had first moved here they had been less than half their present size. They were not native and did nothing for the landscape. He should have cut them down years ago and made them into firewood.
From time to time he could hear the river’s soft voice, below him and to the right. On this broad, sullen stretch, the current made its way in virtual silence. Under the surface, long tresses of weed hung downstream, raising an ever-changing flux of ripples. Only the spasmodic nodding motion, set up here and there, of bulrush stems, entire or bent back on themselves, produced an identifiable sound: yet the passage of so much water, in contact with so many small obstacles, could not proceed for long without giving itself away.
The river and canal diverged just above his house. Suter had hidden the canoe a quarter of a mile above that point and made the final approach on foot. By taking paths through the woods, he had skirted the house itself and come out by the river to the south.
Walking the woods at night was not a good idea. Every minute he spent outside like this increased the chance of discovery by dogs, and he had been lying here for half an hour. If there were men in his house they would not be expecting him to risk an arrival after nightfall. That, he supposed, was something to his advantage.
He raised the binoculars. His dark adaptation was nearly complete. He could clearly make out the balustrade on the terrace, the dense mass of shrubs against the walls, stirring somewhat in the north-westerly air. His field of view travelled to the back door, just visible. There was his yard-broom, head upwards, exactly where he had left it on Wednesday afternoon. He studied the bedroom windows and above them the gutter, now casting shadow along the stonework. Three dormer windows, each with its silvery bib of sheet-lead flashing. A chimney-pot.
The line of the roof cut across the stars. From this angle it seemed to be rising too, like the hull of an immense submarine.
His house was an island of straight lines in a sea of fractals. Everything else conformed to nature’s geometry. This single piece of architecture was all that remained to connect him with man-made order, with civilisation itself.
Suter felt a surge of affection for the building that had sheltered him for the past ten years. He was eager to set foot in it again, to reacquaint himself with his routine and try to put the nightmare of Shanley behind him.
Not that he ever could.
He made a minute adjustment to the focus of the left-hand eyepiece. An 8×30 was unsuitable for night use. It provided an exit pupil of only 3.75 millimetres: thirty millimetres divided by eight. He could handle almost twice as much light-gathering power. Inexplicably, his eyesight had been improving since the plague. His dark-adapted pupils were as wide as those of a sixteen-year-old: lately he had discovered that he could distinguish, at twilight, between the brightness of a 7×42 and that of a comparable 7×50.
The Dialyt was struggling to separate the acanthus leaves on the stone moulding round the doors from the drawing room to the terrace. Suter’s brain wanted to fill in remembered detail; he tried to stop it from doing so. He looked aside from the moulding, allowing its image to form away from the centres of his retinas. Brightness improved, but at the expense of detail.
Having established how well he could see the moulding, he painstakingly quartered the doors themselves: the frames, the glazing bars, the handles, the central crack, the heavy curtains hanging behind. The doors were properly shut. The curtains were drawn back, held with silk ties which he knew connected with braided brass hooks set in the wall. They too looked undisturbed.
His gaze passed beyond the curtains and into the room. From this low vantage he could see almost nothing of the interior. The ceiling. A hint of the cornice. A stray moonbeam was catching something high above the fireplace: the cylindrical brass shade of the picture lamp.
With the same intensity, Suter examined the back door and each of the visible windows on the ground floor. He did the same to those on the next level. Everything was fine. His confidence grew. He moved to the first of the three dormer windows. Unchanged. And the next. Likewise the third. The curtains in all three were drawn. He kept them like that, to prevent the sun from spoiling the objects he kept there.
He felt something catch in his memory. On Thursday... on Thursday afternoon he had gone up to the servants’ quarters to get the Maxi-Kite. His inventory had directed him to the tall whitewood chest. He could still see the night sight reclining in its plush-lined case. He had opened the case up there to take a look, in daylight. That meant he must have opened the curtains at the nearby window. Of course he had. It was only natural.
The question was, had he shut them again? He had no recollection of doing so.
Of course he would have shut them. That was how he did everything, by rote. He would have drawn them carefully together, placing one seam over the other to exclude all sunlight.
As he focused on the third dormer window, Suter felt his heart thumping. From the panes an
d the drawn curtains behind, second-hand moonlight, the colour of pewter, made its devious, reflected way through the anti-glare lenses and prisms of his little rubber-armoured Zeiss.
He averted his gaze a fraction. An uncertain impression had reached him. Were the curtains slightly apart? He looked back. He strained to see. The light was seething, jostling, like something alive. He couldn’t be sure.
‘Don’t strain.’
Resting for a moment with his head on his forearm, he shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he looked again.
It was all right. They were overlapping, left on right.
‘All ist in Ordnung, alter Knabe.’ Everything’s in order, old bean.
Should he get in closer, make another examination, perhaps from another angle, before attempting to enter the house?
‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps not.’ He hadn’t forgotten the dogs. ‘You can be too cautious, you know.’
‘Einverstanden.’ Agreed.
‘Warum sprichst du Deutsch? ’ Why are you speaking German?
‘Am I?’
He already knew the answer. It was the woman. Helen. The woman in the village. He had been thinking about her again, at the back of his mind, as it were. Speculating. What did she look like? Was she dark, as his Helen had been? Was she pretty?
‘What do you care?’
Nothing. Except that Muriel had seemed very fond of her. Muriel had been prepared, by taking his Glock, to risk her life in defence, not of just the village, but of the head man and his daughter too.
He wondered whether she had received the bonze.
‘My God, what’s the matter with you?’
This other Helen was a stranger. She had nothing whatever to do with Suter. And even were that not so, her husband had been dead scarcely a week. Had not Suter himself recovered the body, two minutes from this very spot? And had he not with his own two hands drenched it in creosote and set it on fire? That murky smoke resembled nothing so much as the unheeding drift of his thoughts.
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