The White City

by Simon Morden

  She started for the shore herself, lifting her sodden skirts clear of the water. She stared meaningfully at Dalip, who had stopped looking at the wolves for long enough to realise what was going on.

  His hand flexed around the handle of the machete, and she deliberately, subtly, shook her head. She pointed at Elena and Mama, and began to innocently make her way towards them.

  The Wolfman bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. His wolves trotted around him, high-stepping out of the surf, alternately gazing out to sea and then looking up at their master. He straightened up, wiped his nose with his sleeve, and tilted his head back.

  His scream of rage and abandonment went on for so long that Mary thought that it sounded more wolf than man. The wolves crumbled to dust, their chains lasting for a moment longer before they too flowed into the sand.

  Mary and Dalip stood shoulder to shoulder, making a wall of their bodies to protect Mama and Elena. They were both tensed and ready.

  The Wolfman didn’t even look in their direction. He strode out, walking quickly for a few steps, then broke into a loping run, back up the beach, towards his men.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked Dalip.

  ‘Fuck knows.’ They were suddenly alone. ‘We need to get everyone together, and, and …’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Get after Crows.’ She looked over her shoulder. The boat was only a black speck now, bobbing up and down with the waves. She looked back, and felt Dalip stiffen. The Wolfman was still running. His long knife was in his hand and he was heading straight for the man holding on to Luiza. ‘No. He can’t.’

  Dalip put his head down and sprinted, and she began to do the same, before realising that neither of them was going to make it in time. She had to hope that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, that nothing was going to happen, that he was just running off his fury.

  The Wolfman seemed to punch Luiza in the stomach so hard that she folded almost in two around his fist. The man holding her couldn’t untangle his fingers from her hair fast enough to just let her drop to the ground; instead, she hung there, hands trying to fend off her attacker, pushing ineffectually at his face and chest.

  The Wolfman stepped back, and she flopped on the sand, at first to her knees, then toppling hard on to her side. Her head hit the ground, and didn’t move.

  Dalip ran a few more steps, and stopped. Mary walked slowly forward until she was almost, but not quite, within arm’s length of the Wolfman.

  The man held up his bloodied hand. He was soaked to the elbow.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked him.

  ‘Revenge,’ he said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Revenge on Down. Revenge on you and him and everything.’ He shook his fist at her. ‘Do what you will. I’m done with this place.’

  ‘You stabbed her.’

  Dalip knelt down and his hand hovered over Luiza, uncertain as to what to do next. He brushed her hair from her cheek. Her eyes were wide open and unblinking. He looked up at Mary. ‘I … she’s …’

  Elena tumbled down next to her cousin, and threw her arms around her. She gathered her up, and the way that Luiza’s head lolled, her mouth opening slightly, left no doubt. There was no breath left in her, no heartbeat, no light.

  Mary already knew. It wasn’t like she was a stranger to it.

  ‘You didn’t need to do … that. You just didn’t.’

  ‘You’re wrong. So very wrong, you little black whore. I did need to do it. I’m going to keep on doing it from now on. Kill and kill and kill until there’s no one left on Down. And there’s no Bell or Crows to stop me.’

  Dalip stood up and scrubbed a tear away with the back of his hand. ‘I’ll stop you.’

  The Wolfman laughed in his face and lunged at him with his bloody knife. Dalip parried, once, twice, then launched his own counter-attack, stepping surely over the uneven, shifting surface as he swung and swung at the Wolfman’s weapon hand.

  Mary could end this, quickly and simply. Conjure up a storm of sand and thrust it down the Wolfman’s nose and throat, choke him and let him die, clawing at his heaving chest. But Dalip seemed intent on finishing it himself. His face was expressionless, save for the slight furrowing of his brows, and his body moved in a ballet of blows and blocks that defied his opponent’s crude violence.

  The Wolfman retreated before him, grunting with effort. His long knife was narrow and wholly unsuitable protection against the cleaving machete. Yet neither could he get anywhere near Dalip: every feint, every stab, was either knocked aside with finger-numbing force or avoided with a lithe twist of his body.

  ‘Help. Help me,’ he said to his colleague. His knife snapped halfway up the blade, the pointed end spinning away.

  The man saw Mary’s slow shake of her head and started to back away.

  Dalip brought the heavy edge down, cut through the meat and tendons on the back of the Wolfman’s hand. The rest of the knife dropped to the ground, and the Wolfman reeled.

  Now he was alone, deserted by everyone he’d counted on. He snarled one last time and went for the knife hilt, sticking up out of the sand. And Dalip cracked his skull like a coconut. Death was instantaneous, but it still took a few moments for his fur-clad body to stop moving. The beach began to darken around him.

  The machete was still wedged tight. Dalip put his bare foot on the Wolfman’s unprotesting neck and worked it free.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘was no more than justice.’

  Mary brought her hands up to her face and dragged her fingers down from her forehead to her chin. ‘Do we let the others go?’

  They watched their heels running back up the beach towards the dunes.

  ‘We could spend days hunting them down. It’s not worth it. Without him, they’re scattered. And we need to stay here, to get the next boat.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Looking out to sea, Crows was nowhere to be seen, though he had to be somewhere in the swell between the shore and the horizon.

  ‘I’m going after him,’ she said.

  ‘We’re all going after him.’

  ‘No. Now.’ And with that, she changed, no longer caring about what Dalip might or might not see. She called once, a piercing, high-pitched shriek, and then she was off, streaking over the beach, passing over the upturned faces of Mama and Dalip, over Elena’s bowed head and Luiza’s sightless eyes. She worked her wings to gain both speed and height, and then headed determinedly out over the breaking waves.

  She had no idea what she was going to do or say when she found him.

  8

  He left the comforting to Mama. He didn’t know what he could say that would alleviate Elena’s grief, so he said nothing. That felt wrong, too, and he knew that he couldn’t hide from that for ever. In fact, the longer he left it, the worse it would be. But he couldn’t do it now. He took himself aside and stared at Mary’s tail feathers until they merged with the clouded sky.

  He would need to dig a grave. Two graves. Not next to each other. He had nothing to dig with but his hands, so he thought somewhere in the dunes would be best. Make them too deep, and the sides would collapse, burying him as well. What he’d end up with would be two shallow scrapes which, in time, would do nothing to deter scavengers. Perhaps the animals wouldn’t put in an appearance until after another boat had grown and the four of them were off the beach for good.

  Four left. Grace gone God only knew where, Stanislav obliterated by lightning, Luiza pointlessly killed by the Wolfman. Who he, in turn, had killed.

  Stanislav – his death had been an act of mercy, and even though Dalip had baited the trap, Down itself had pulled the trigger. The Wolfman – Daniel, he had a name after all – was a different matter. When they’d fought, it had seemed so straightforward. It was only after he’d won that Dalip s
tarted to gather his doubts about him. Had killing him been necessary?

  His grandfather would have said yes. But this was the man who’d lied about his age and run away to war. He’d been fierce and proud and fearless, even in old age when Dalip had known him best. In the end, he’d been barely able to stand, but he’d still shake his fist at the television and shout obscure Punjabi curses at besuited politicians. He’d do the same to Dalip’s mother, but only after she’d left the room.

  Protecting others was one of the reasons Sikhs carried a kirpan. And he’d failed to save the person he needed to. But there were all the unknown others the Wolfman would have gone on to kill, but now wouldn’t. Perhaps that was a good enough reason. There were no authorities for either of them to answer to. Yes, he was judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, but the Wolfman was guilty, condemned by his own hand and words.

  The gurus said it was right to draw the sword when all other means had failed. This is what they’d meant, even if he’d never quite understood that before.

  He deliberately looked back at the scene off to his left. Elena keening over her cousin, head buried in Mama’s substantial chest and her frame rising and falling with her sobs, Luiza’s body now discarded on the sand like the driftwood they collected, and the Wolfman lying a little way off, spread-eagled and still.

  This was all Crows’ doing. His fault – he’d planned it, set it in motion, and had simply shrugged his bony shoulders at the havoc he’d left in his long-vanished wake. For certain, he was more charming, more superficially decent, than the Wolfman. But underneath, he was far more dangerous, more lethal than even Bell, and she’d been cold, callous and cruel, entirely devoid of empathy and utterly self-centred.

  Crows was, without doubt, the worst person he’d ever come across. He’d destroyed everything they’d salvaged from the wreckage of Bell’s castle. And for that, he would face the only kind of justice that could be delivered on Down. Dalip doubted whether Mary would do what was necessary: she liked Crows, and she was conflicted. So for the sake of everyone here, and yet to come, it would be Dalip Singh who rid this world of him.

  Trying to untangle his decision from his own burning sense of betrayal and his terrible need for revenge was futile. If that was all there was, then he might have given himself a stern talking-to. But no, his cause was right, and the crime enormous. There was the evidence: two dead bodies, one of a friend, the other an enemy, and Crows’ baleful influence shrouded both.

  There was nothing left to see on the horizon. Mary would come back when she’d said what she needed to say, done what she needed to do. Part of him wanted her to sink Crows’ boat and destroy the maps. But if they were the key to unlock Down, then keeping the collection intact was more important than Crows’ temporary wealth. It would also make it sweeter to take them back, afterwards.

  He got up, machete in hand, and slogged up the dune to take the view from the top. There was no one in sight, even though he knew there were at least three men relatively close by. Down had a habit of just swallowing people up in its landscape: they could be miles away, or just over the next ridge.

  ‘I’ll be just over here,’ he called to Mama. ‘Shout if … you know. If.’

  Mama nodded. She turned herself to try and shield Elena from the bodies, to lead her away, but it didn’t work. She patted Elena on the back and let her cry.

  It left Dalip wishing for all the alternatives. If Down was a time machine, then maybe, just maybe, there was a way around this.

  He slid down the face of the dune, then walked along the slack to where the boat had been birthed. There was a hollow in the sand, and a track, broken by wide, collapsing footprints, where the keel had been dragged out towards the sea.

  There would be fewer of them on the beach, waiting for the next boat to fruit. It might be smaller, and it might take more time to grow. Assuming it did. If nothing happened, they’d have to leave.

  He climbed the next dune inland and took stock again. Below him was a long marshy area, green with thin weeds and scummy algae. He was half-minded to toss the Wolfman’s remains in there, despite his faith tradition of cremation. The Wolfman didn’t deserve the correct observances. All the same, Dalip knew he was going to do his best anyway. No one was going to applaud him for the choices he made. They might even criticise him for them. It didn’t matter. He was the one who was responsible for what he did, and he wanted to be able to live with his decisions.

  He descended to almost the bottom, and turned to face the slope. He cut through the tough grasses and their long, fibrous roots, sawing with the machete blade until he could pull back a mat of vegetation. Underneath was grey-brown sandy soil, some of which spilled out of the hole, but as he dug further, it kept its shape and the sides didn’t slump into the void. He cut and pulled and dug and scooped, until he had a trench six foot long and a couple of feet wide, big enough to shove a body into, without much ceremony, and cover over again. If he went much further into the dune face, the ground would slip, and as well as working hard for no result, he’d be in danger of getting caught in a major slide.

  So he stopped, thought it good enough, and went to collect the Wolfman.

  He walked back to the beach, wondering how to do it. If someone died in Southall, the family gathered and the undertakers were called. Prayers were recited, the Guru Granth Sahib read, the body burned in the local crematorium and the ashes scattered into the Thames.

  Death was, in reality, messy. There was the head wound, the hand wound, and the post-mortem bowel movement, none of which he wanted to get close to. He circled the Wolfman, lips pursed, and made an abortive grab for the wolfskin cloak. He pulled, realised it would simply come off in his hands, and let go again.

  Mama frowned at him, and dipped her head towards the Wolfman’s feet.

  ‘Come with me, sweetheart,’ she said to Elena. ‘Dalip’s going to see to things here.’

  Dalip waited for them to reach a respectable distance before reaching down and grasping the Wolfman’s ankles.

  How much did a soul weigh? In the Wolfman’s case, it must have been a lot, because his mortal remains seemed incongruously light. Dalip dragged him away, face down, arms trailing, then at the top of the first dune sent him rolling down the landward slope to the bottom. The body tumbled and flopped, coming to an awkward rest on its back.

  He stood over the Wolfman, staring at the way the sand clung to his grey skin and infested his glazed open eyes. Where had the animating spirit gone? Had it merged with the Godhead, as he hoped he would one day? Had it already been recycled as some base creature with no thought or consciousness? The tattered remains of the Wolfman were just that: discarded clothes, an empty husk, worn and used. There was nothing there to be mourned. He took hold of the ankles again and dragged the corpse up the next rise, before easing it down next to the freshly prepared grave.

  It turned out that the Wolfman had been shorter than Dalip, which surprised him as he’d loomed very much larger. His feet, however, looked roughly the same size. He remembered a conversation with Mary, weeks ago, just after they’d arrived in Down. His own boots had been ruined by the fire, and she’d suggested taking someone else’s – after they’d died, of course.

  And here they were, a dead man’s boots. Dalip stared at them for a while, before unlacing them and slipping them off. They were worn, and their construction was workmanlike. The laces were thongs, the sole thick tanned leather, the uppers soft and supple. He knocked them out, and tried them on. His own feet were hard with calluses, but it felt good to wear them.

  It got Dalip to wondering if the boots were the only thing the Wolfman could offer him. He’d already started down that road. It would seem foolish not to take it to its logical end, even if it meant rummaging through a dead man’s pockets – distasteful, perhaps, but in a world where manufactured goods were at a premium, necessary.

  He put his doubts aside, and star
ted to peel back the layers of clothing.

  There were a lot of them, accreted like paint on an old door. Some of them were almost dust, a few spidered threads suggesting the outline of a garment. Some were more substantial, and a few had items of note in them: coins of various ages, dull brown wheels of copper and blackened silver, impressed with the unreadable faces of kings and sometimes queens; jewellery – a chain, a bracelet, again tarnished to inglorious trinkets, a gold ring worn so thin its edges were sharp; a tooth, an actual tooth, roots and everything, with half its mass made of yellow metal.

  Dalip guessed they were trophies of a sort, things taken from the Wolfman’s unwilling, unwitting victims as tokens of his prowess at lying, cheating and killing.

  Then there was a white oval that sat in the hollow of his hand like a small egg. He frowned at its incongruous natural shape and its obviously artificial origin. Its surface was rough with a thousand tiny scratches, and there was an obvious finger-shaped dimple on the fat end so that it would sit up when placed on a table.

  It wasn’t made of stone, more a hard plastic that was warm to the touch. He tapped it with a fingernail, and it sounded hollow. There was no obvious way in, no continuous line describing its circumference, no screw holes or cover to open.

  There was no way of asking after previous owners, either, which gave Dalip a moment of wry, black humour.

  ‘Take your secrets with you, Wolfman,’ he said to the corpse. ‘We’ll work it out without you.’

  He pocketed the items and arranged the body the best he could on its ledge. He took a double handful of dirt and cast it up. It settled in clumps, and he went back for another and another, scooping and flinging, until the human shape became softened and obscured. He hesitated for a moment when the last of the Wolfman’s face was about to be swallowed by the rising soil, then came to some sort of accommodation with what he was doing – burying a man that he’d killed – before finishing the job by relaying the square mats of scrubby plants he’d cut out.