A walk along the river, that’d be nice. Joe made his way through the town centre until he came to the bridge, then took the steps down to the waterside path where a man of similar age held a rod over the idle flow. ‘Only thing you’ll catch in there’s Wheel’s disease.’
‘Whissat?’
‘You know, thing you get off rats.’
‘Ah’m no fishing for rats.’
‘I know you’re not. But there’s a disease you get off them.’
‘You mean rabies?’
‘No, Wheel’s disease.’
‘Same thing as rabies, isn’t it?’
The conversation went on for some time and gave Joe considerable satisfaction, particularly when a brown rat was sighted near the opposite bank, but then it was time for him to say cheerio and move on, and when Joe reached for the transistor radio in his pocket, intending to switch it on and retrieve his earphone, he was reminded of the contents of the carrier bag still dangling from his right hand which bumped against his chest as he raised it. Looking into the bag he saw a fawn-coloured trail of melted ice cream oozing from the softened cardboard tub.
‘All because of that damned drug,’ he muttered, looking ahead along the path and seeing a litter bin he could make use of. As soon as he reached it he put Caramel Oargasm and its grinning transatlantic creators where they belonged, and in a further public-spirited gesture decided to pick up one or two crisp packets that lay beneath the bin, either fallen out or more probably tossed there by kids who found it too much effort to dispose of their waste properly. It gave him renewed strength, a sense of righteousness, and he strode vigorously along the canal to the accompaniment of the afternoon jazz programme on Radio 3.
More than half an hour he walked, a good couple of mile, until he was beyond the town and surrounded by fields, the water looking cleaner here though he still wouldn’t trust it. And over there in the distance, the place he suddenly realized he’d been unconsciously drawn to as if by a malignant magnet. Site where the military installation used to be.
The base was gone, thank God, but the land round about looked little different from when it was taken off the farmers. Compulsory purchase order, they called it, part of the Cold War effort, officially it was described as a testing range and signs went up on the perimeter fence warning of live explosives beyond. All Joe’s protests had done nothing, the leaflets and the meetings and the marching with Anne in those days when their joints were still capable of political action. Half the town were up in arms about it but to no avail, the fence was up, and far behind it, out of sight and mostly hidden by trees, a complex of low-rise prefabs grew, housing whatever it was they did in there.
For the most part nobody noticed, except when the big guns were fired. Every weekday afternoon they’d go off, the exact time never fixed so the booms came without warning, singly or in groups. Joe never heard them because he was at work but it was worse than ruddy Concorde, Anne said, she was hopping mad about it, could still hop then. Houses shook, windows cracked, tenants’ associations held more meetings and nothing got done. Installation wasn’t even marked on the new Ordnance Survey map came out, only the re-routing of the roads round an empty grey patch, and how do you get rid of something that doesn’t exist? Joe never believed it was guns in there, more likely some new bomb or secret fabrication process; but everybody got used to it, even the cows in the surrounding fields that would graze on through the banging, it was said, without so much as batting an eyelid.
Robbie used to go playing in those fields at weekends with Scott Campbell. Two of them would ride there on their bikes, couple of mile from home, but you never worried in those days, looking for frogs, flying their kite. And wandering round the installation where they weren’t meant to go. That’s how it started.
Joe hadn’t seen another soul for the last quarter of an hour but now he caught sight of a young man ahead, chap in his forties maybe, coming into view round the bend of the river and walking towards him. Looked familiar; Joe thought he knew him but the other man showed no sign of recognition as he approached. Not an angler or a bird-watcher, just a walker like Joe himself, yet with a sense of purpose in his gait.
‘Aye there,’ said Joe, trying to remember where he’d seen the man before. Was it the fellow moved in at the end of the street? Couple with two wee kiddies, whole scheme was getting taken over by a new generation now the first wave was dead or going into retirement homes.
‘Hello,’ he said. Even sounded familiar. The two men eyed each other.
‘How’s it going?’ Joe asked open-endedly, hoping a bit of banter would help the penny drop. Music was still playing in his earphone.
‘Fine,’ said the stranger, neither elaborating nor moving on.
It was starting to give Joe the creeps, knowing this bloke but not knowing how he knew him, or why, or where. He pulled out his earphone and then, with some embarrassment, said, ‘You look like you don’t remember me.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Joe Coyle.’ Saying his own name, hearing how defensive the words sounded, made him feel almost a stranger to himself.
The man showed a flicker of understanding, a movement of his eyebrows, but it was not a gesture of warm acquaintance. ‘I don’t live in these parts.’
In Joe’s hand, the earphone continued to emit its tinny rhythm like a trapped insect. ‘You’re not from here? That’s funny, because you’re awfie familiar. Did you live here before and then move away? Maybe you went to school with Janet or Robert, you look the right sort of age—’
‘Are they your children?’ the stranger interrupted.
‘Yes,’ said Joe, feeling as if he was being interrogated.
‘And did they leave?’
Joe took a breath. There was something uncomfortable about this conversation, as if it had a deeper meaning he was incapable of fathoming, though he knew it was only small talk with somebody he must have met before, maybe when the fellow was still a boy which was why it was so hard to recognize him. ‘They’re both gone,’ he said.
‘A lot of people move away from here.’ There was a new note of sympathy in the stranger’s voice.
‘My daughter’s living God knows where,’ said Joe. ‘My son died when he was nineteen.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ He sounded as if he meant it.
‘He’s been gone longer than he was alive,’ Joe said softly. ‘Doesn’t feel it, mind. But what about you? Are you visiting family?’
‘You could say I’m here on a mission.’
Joe’s heart sank – now he understood why the fellow had come over so concerned and understanding all of a sudden. Hadn’t struck Joe as an evangelist but you never know where these people’ll show up next – the door-to-door business must have gone slack and now they were trying a riverside approach, John the Baptist sort of thing, though this missionary had a rough look about him, more Livingstone in the jungle than the clean-cut style you usually see hawking salvation. ‘Good luck to you,’ Joe said, cutting short the conversation before he could get handed a leaflet. He was about to move on.
‘I’m looking for somewhere to stay.’
‘I can’t help you there,’ Joe said at once, feeling instantly threatened.
‘I heard there was a hotel near here.’
‘Now I’m with you,’ said Joe. ‘You mean the Lodge.’
‘That’s the one. Some people in town gave me directions but they weren’t very accurate.’
Joe pointed away from the riverbank across the fields to some thick woods. ‘It’s right in the middle of they trees, that’s why you couldn’t find it. But I wouldn’t go near it if I were you. Used to be a military base there, they closed it after the Cold War ended, cleared the land and redeveloped it. They say it’s safe and there’s no contamination but they would, wouldn’t they? Chance for somebody to make a quick buck. And the sell-off was a dodgy affair, it went to some consortium runs conference centres all over the place, but why here? Who’d want to come here for a conference? I reck
on the answer’s in the name.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Place used to be a private estate, belonged to the Logie family, then it got sold to the military; and next thing you know, the army’s selling it back again, to this chain the Logies have got shares in. A nice wee deal between the Grand Master and his fellow members in the top brass with their funny handshakes and rolled-up trouser legs. It’s Freemasons run that place. Why do you think they call it the Lodge?’
The stranger took it all in like there was nothing in the world could surprise him. Maybe he’s one of them too, thought Joe, then watched the fellow walk by after they’d exchanged a cursory farewell. ‘I hope your mission’s a success,’ he called after him, but the stranger didn’t turn, either failing to hear or else ignoring him. Opus Dei, they were probably at the back of it, running the Lodge as a training camp. When Janet disappeared his first thought was she’d joined that shower, because he knew she’d converted to Catholicism after her time as a Buddhist, but no, it was a New Age commune they eventually got a postcard from, said she was happy and they were never to try and contact her again or come looking for her, well it’s all brainwashing whatever name you want to give it and no worse than being a parsley addict when you come down to it but Joe was on to that one, he’d got it sorted. He wasn’t going to end up like the daughter he’d lost, high on dope and God knows what else and living on lentils because it’s bad karma to kill a fly never mind a cow.
And the son he’d lost. Joe looked again towards the far trees and thought of Robbie and Scott playing round there, two helpless wee specks on the map, straying towards the grey. Joe never quite got the truth of it, but Robbie claimed he and Scott managed to get through a hole in the fence and inside the installation. Two boys playing soldiers in a top-secret base. Anne never believed it, nobody did, called it another of Joe’s conspiracy theories; but they could call it what they liked, Joe didn’t care. It was still the truth by any name.
He left the riverside and walked up to the quiet country road that would take him home, retuning his radio to listen to the news and who was this coming on, my God he might have known. David Luss MSP, education spokesman. Fellow who sat in Joe Coyle’s living room thirty-odd year ago with fumes belching out his pipe, head of science at Kenzie High, Robbie knew him for the fool he was though Janet took a shine to him, maybe because he spent his lessons talking about John Lennon or Chairman Mao instead of teaching anything. Didn’t hurt his career, though. Joe had monitored his progress over the years; a steady move up and to the right as the arse-licking toady free-lunched his way from Trotskyite shop steward to respectable school inspector to elected politician in a nice suit and tie with a fair bit more weight on him than he’d had that time Anne cooked for him.
‘We have to remember that education is our top priority because this nation’s children are our future.’
Aye, you tell them, thought Joe. Tell them how you never really gave a damn about the workers but socialism happened to be the fashion at the time, like flared trousers and sideburns, and soon as it went out of style you changed your stripe. Yes, you were the one ended up chief commissioner for schools, calling on teachers to break the strike they’d voted for.
World’s full of shits like him, thought Joe, the item on the news washing over him like foul rain. Finger in every pie that could fatten his reputation, like that nonsense about poor Mr Tulloch in the local paper last few weeks, grown men saying he’d made a pass at them when they were teenagers, all lies. And who’s come out of the woodwork to take the glory? David Luss, of course; said he was the one reported Tulloch at the time, no evidence mind, but as a conscientious colleague who put the interests of children first, etc., etc. Forced a good teacher into early retirement, more like dismissal, and what did Tulloch do? Topped himself with a bottle of paracetamol. Well done David Luss, spokesman for education.
A car beeped and swished past Joe, too fast for the small road and probably on its way to the Lodge. Sam Dunbar was a Freemason too, Joe remembered; half the GPO were in it, exchanging code words on the fairways. Maybe the Angry Brigade had a point, trying to blow up that control tower of theirs; but what did Robbie find in the installation? No microwave dishes or armed guards; didn’t even see any buildings. What Robbie said he found was marbles, great big piles of them heaped like waste, mountains of dense green glass. What they were for, nobody knows; even after it was all over and the base got closed, still there was never any explanation of those marbles or even an admission they existed, as if everyone had only dreamed about them. But they were real.
Two lads who wandered up the wrong path and next minute they’re jumping on these heaps of magic glass, imagining they’re on another planet or whatever; the marbles, millions of them, crunching and rolling beneath their sinking feet, the boys laughing and shouting and never for one moment thinking there could be any harm in it because that’s kids, you can’t blame them, it’s the ones who are older who should know better. Like an enormous playground they’ve stumbled into, not a soul about, nobody to tell them off or object when they start picking the marbles up and lobbing them at each other, dodging round the mounds trying to take cover, could easily hurt yourself with one of they marbles, not as big as golf balls but a fair bit of weight in them. And something strange about their surface, not perfectly smooth like an ordinary marble but grooved and wavy, like they’d come out an irregular mould. Nuclear waste, that’s what it was.
Middle of the Scottish countryside, aye, put it there in case something goes wrong. Don’t want an accident anywhere near London, do we? Oh no, that’d be terrible, that’d get on the news. But if a few more Scots die of cancer nobody’s going to notice, are they? And put a fence round it all to be on the safe side, but these fencing contractors, Joe had seen how they operate. Got a wee stretch nobody notices – save yourself some wire. Cut corners, reduce your overheads, increase your profits, take the rest of the afternoon off and play a round of golf, whatever. Anything the hell you like as long as it means you don’t have to shift your weight more than the bare minimum, it’ll all get hushed up anyway if something goes wrong, so there’s two wee kiddies walking in like it’s a swing park and they’re playing on irradiated waste from those shells the army’s testing there. Or if it’s not radiation it’s chemicals, who knows what it was, when all you get is denials and even your own wife doesn’t believe you.
As far as the boys were concerned it was something to play with, pile of marbles, take some home as souvenirs. Joe never knew anything about it until long after when Robbie started getting the headaches, hardly a wink of sleep some nights and the doctor was no help, prescribing analgesics for the symptoms and never troubling about the cause. Joe found it under Robbie’s pillow: a marble. Anne already knew because she was the one made Robbie’s bed every day and said a bit of glass couldn’t be the trouble, hardly pressed his skull, but it wasn’t the pressure troubled Joe when Robbie said where it came from. Joe held the sphere aloft and in its watery refractions saw the connection.
He threw it out, evil relic of his son’s trespass. But that was a mistake, because whenever in later years Joe aired his theory about his son’s disease and death, his words were received in contemptuous silence, the evidence being missing and presumed buried beyond the tender reach of any Geiger counter or more probably non-existent. Nor would Scott Campbell verify Robbie’s story, sensitive more to his own self-preservation than to historic record: said they’d played in the estate before it was redeveloped but never again once the military moved in. All lies. They were in there, again and again, nobody knew but Robbie saw the secret complex. Yes his mind was confused, it started then with the headaches when he was twelve year old and only got worse, but that was a symptom of the poisoning.
Now Scott’s got two grown-up kids of his own, Joe reminded himself, they’re all healthy and happy. And Robbie’s dead. One wrong path, a big heap of marbles, a boy’s life, for what? All so the government could test their weapons at the installat
ion, never admitting the cost of it. All because America needed to hold on to its colony in the North Sea. For their damned greed Joe’s son had to die.
8
So it’s seven o’clock in the evening and this guy’s waiting in the park like he said he would, not in the fenced-off play area where the swings are, but on a bench on the grassy part outside, and the kid’s with Jodie, watching from behind a row of bushes that must have got planted by the council to make the park more like a countryside sort of effect though the twigs are full of drink cans that people shove in like it’s a bin and on the dry earth at the kid’s feet he sees a condom as in probably used but he’s not exactly going to check, is he? Well, duh.
Jodie reckons it’s ninety-nine point nine per cent certain the guy’s a paedo. She’s fourteen years old and she knows a paedo when she sees one, they’ve all got this slimy Mr Ordinary look about them and RC fits the bill perfectly. She whispers in the kid’s ear, if you go with him he’ll rape and murder you. Or maybe just show you his dick or something, and they both try not to laugh while they hide behind the bushes.
Sputnik Caledonia Page 42