by Stav Sherez
Carrigan flipped the lid off his coffee, stared at the watered-down muck, more beige than black, and pushed it to one side. He looked out as the train scrolled through the western suburbs, the factories and warehouses giving way to endless cities of cars stacked in multi-level parks, reservoirs, shopping malls and gasworks poking through the grey clouds like the battlements of some ancient fortress. It got worse as they headed west. Both his headache and the rain.
He’d sat and waited the days out after Ursula’s arrest. His flat seemed smaller and somehow the belonging of someone else, a shadow self he felt no connection with and instead he’d checked into a nearby Travelodge, comforted by the anonymity of his new surroundings.
He couldn’t go back to the station, not until he knew for sure.
He’d sat in that tiny rented room, the TV turned low, and thought about the last few days. He went over it again and again, each time coming up short. He wondered whether he was now seeing connections where there was only coincidence. He ran through every assumption they’d made, every trail they’d discounted, but in the end he knew there was only one way to find out. So he waited and sat, counting down the days until Saturday.
And now here he was, speeding across the waterlogged rim of the country, the Channel a small grey smear to his left, the uplands wet and hooded in the mist like the bowed heads of supplicant monks.
A man argued with his wife, shouting into the small black box of his phone, exasperated, complaining about having to go out again, buy food, do something for the kids. The hassle of normal life buoyed Carrigan with its remoteness to his own, as if the world was divided into those who dealt with death and those for whom it was only the unspeakable shadow in the corner of their lives, the late visitor you’d forgotten was coming.
He almost missed the stop, the tangle of his thoughts and grey swales of rain all but obscuring the small village station.
As he stepped into the storm, the wind and rain lashed up from the Channel shadowing the small houses and twisting streets of the village. He took the back way, avoiding the parade of shops, sludging through two feet of water which had turned the narrow cobbled lanes into torrents.
He climbed the long hill leaving the winking lights and pub signs swaying in the wind far behind him and crested the rise, stopping to stare at the dark murk of water ahead. Somewhere over the fog and rain lay France and the rest of the world but here it seemed the earth stopped at this rocky promontory and that there was no other world beyond, only the illusion of one.
The gate was locked and it took him a couple of attempts before he managed to tumble the cylinders on the padlock and line up the numbers. The soft click, almost hidden by the rain, made his stomach drop as it always did.
The cemetery had turned into a sea of mud and he trudged ankle deep past old Victorian crypts with their stained nymphs and elegant angels, pointless efforts at pretending those inside had not been wiped from the ledger of the world. The last hill took him a long time to climb, his breath short and pained, the rain smacking across his face, the ground soft and welcoming as if hungry for further souls.
He got to the top and stood for a moment disorientated, getting his breath back, wondering how, after all these years, he’d lost the way. He wiped the rain from his brow and read the inscription on the stone. David’s name and dates of birth and death glistened in the rain but the grave itself was empty.
He looked wildly to the left and right and saw the earth disinterred and stacked up beside the grave, the long wet hole by his feet holding nothing but the rain.
He noticed the dark shadows cast by the chapel ahead of him, remembered cold greetings in that bare place, hands shaken slowly, the tears of family and friends, and then, years later, only the emptiness, the way it always seemed colder inside than out, the silences that stretched beyond language.
The path was slippery with leaves, the rain coming down harder, his shoes squelching against the flagstones. The door to the chapel was open as he’d known it would be. He took one step inside and saw the gun.
40
‘I knew you’d make it,’ Ben said, the gun in his right hand, mud and rain streaking his face and clothes. ‘You were always predictable, if nothing else.’
When he’d watched Ursula being escorted out of her house, Carrigan had realised that even though he didn’t know where Ben was, he was pretty certain where he would be. They’d been coming here for twenty years to mark the anniversary of David’s death, the last remaining mourners now that his family was gone. He thought back to the scene on the hill, the dark rain-filled hole, and he could barely get the words out. ‘What happened to his grave? What have you done?’
Ben shrugged. ‘You’re the detective – I’m sure you can work that out for yourself.’ He sounded strangely calm as he took a step back. ‘Take a seat, Jack.’ He gestured with the gun towards the front of the chapel.
Jack crossed the nave, staring up at the black wooden ribs vaulting the ceiling, the murky drama of a stained-glass tableau rattling in its frame, and headed towards the altar, Ben always just far enough behind him so that he couldn’t make a play for the gun. ‘Is this really necessary?’
Ben laughed, a throaty rumble echoing through the empty stone chapel. ‘I think you know it is.’
Jack sat down in the front row of pews, the wood hard and dry against his back, and stared at the dangling crucifix as Ben took a seat one row behind him. A stained-glass window depicting the Stations of the Cross shook and convulsed with each gust of wind. The figures seemed to move and reconfigure themselves, a pulsing tapestry of light and suffering. He felt the water seeping through his shoes, the soft curl of his toes against the concrete floor, the cold kiss of the barrel against his skin.
‘Your mobile, please.’ Ben reached out and Jack saw the soil and dirt compacted under his nails, mud streaking his forearms as if he’d only that moment been birthed from the wet earth. He handed Ben the phone then reached into his jacket pocket, stopping when he felt the gun press against his skull.
‘It’s just a photo.’ He slowly pulled it out, unfolded it and turned it face down. He’d been staring at it for the last four days trying to find a way it could mean anything else, but it was always the same: Ben with his arm around a much younger Bayanga, both of them smiling in the sizzling African sun.
He passed the photo back and, as Ben took it, swivelled sideways, trying to turn, but his legs slid out from under and he felt Ben’s fist grab the collar of his raincoat and then the pain, sharp and electric, the gunmetal stinging against his right temple and the rush of the ground beneath him.
‘Don’t try that again, Jack. I’m going to have to hit you much harder next time and it would be a shame if you were out cold.’
Carrigan sat with his hands on his knees, getting his breath back. The chapel reeled and span and he closed his eyes. ‘How the fuck do you know Bayanga?’
Ben’s laugh brought unwelcome memory flashes, forgotten moments fading into lost years.
‘The only reason I know him is because of you,’ he replied, ‘because of one simple choice you made.’
The instinct to turn round was sharp and insistent so he concentrated on the crucifix, the bewilderment on Jesus’ face, the twisted limbs and dark black nails emerging like flowers from the wounded flesh. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Jango Road.’ Ben’s voice was suddenly loud against Jack’s ear. ‘That fucking road. Why did you do it? Why did you take that bloody fork?’
The day flared bright and orange across Carrigan’s vision, the heat and dusty hours scrabbling along the corrugated track, the gazelle flashing across the night . . .
‘Did you hear me, Jack?’
. . . Ben telling him to make a decision, any decision, David yawning in the back seat, the smell of spilled cola heavy and thick as burned rubber. ‘None of us knew, Ben.’
‘But it was your choice. Just like Africa was your choice.’
‘You can’t be serious?’ Twenty yea
rs he’d been a detective and he’d never suspected Ben felt like this.
‘It was your notebook they found. You killed David when you took that road. And you walked away from it, as always, walked out of there with barely a scratch. You never once thought about what we went through; you never even asked.’
He knew Ben was right, knew he’d been avoiding it like he avoided the pictures of David and the wedding photos, brittle with dust, stored away in his attic. ‘I just wanted to forget everything.’ The words tasted raw in his mouth. ‘I never wanted to think about it again.’
‘Convenient, Jack. Every time I tried to bring it up you’d put on that sour-old-man face of yours and I’d know the evening was over if I continued. You thought we could just leave it behind us, chalk it up as some youthful adventure gone wrong? But the world doesn’t work like that. A thing such as this has consequences. You can spend your whole life ignoring it but one day you turn your head and realise it’s been right there behind you all this time.’
The sound of Jack’s mobile punctured the silence. Ben had placed it in one of the Bible stands and it jumped and vibrated against the wood like a trapped insect. Ben caught him looking at it. ‘It won’t help,’ he said. ‘No one’s coming just like no one came for us that day.’
‘What happened in the camp? Tell me what the fuck they did to you.’
‘It’s not what they did.’ Ben pulled a quarter-bottle of whisky from his jacket and unscrewed the cap. He took a long drink and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘It’s what we did.’
41
‘We saw you sitting in that small room as they led us away. Your head was hanging down and you looked like you’d already given up.’
They should have been doing this face to face. They should have been doing this back at Ben’s house over drinks and cigars. The urge to turn round burned through Carrigan like liquid fire but he could feel the sharp poke of the gun’s barrel against his back and the way it kept shaking as Ben’s voice stumbled and faltered on the words, so he closed his eyes and listened to the chapel buzz and rattle with rain as Ben continued.
‘They stripped us of our clothes and marched us to a cell. Thirty men in a space the size of someone’s bedroom. Two metal poles stretched across the middle of the room, anchored into each wall. The prisoners were chained by their feet to this pole, their wrists in handcuffs criss-crossed over each other so that if one man moved the whole line would. The guards found a spot for us and manacled us to the pole.
‘I lay there in the dark, my wrists and ankles already screaming with pain, not able to move, fighting off the claustrophobia, the panic, the desire to just thrash around and moan. You’ve never been on the other end of a pair of handcuffs, have you? Well, there’s something about it that instantly reduces your body to this pulsing mass of pain.
‘I held my breath, trying to stop myself from shaking, and listened to David mumbling the Lord’s Prayer over and over. I lay awake all night thinking of what they were going to do to us in the morning.
‘But the next day was exactly the same except that it was light and there was no way you could pretend you were anywhere but there. Some of the other prisoners spoke in whispers among themselves but most had given up and just lay still, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling.
‘That second night the guards came and unshackled David. They lifted him up, I heard him gasp as his legs finally straightened, and then they marched him off. A couple of hours later they brought him back, reattached the leg and arm cuffs, and left.
‘The following morning he seemed quieter and I noticed a few new bruises around his neck. I tried talking to him but he complained that he was sleepy and turned away. I spoke to the man chained next to me but it only made things worse. He’d lost track of time, of how long he’d been in the camp, why he’d been arrested, even who he was; he said everyone had been here a long time and that once the Black-Throated Wind started blowing it never stopped.
‘You strip a man of clothes, you take away the light, you put him on a bare floor with other men, and there’s very little left. That’s something I learned in Africa. We’re not irreducible like the philosophers and priests say. We’re more like snow; we flourish in the right conditions but we melt so easily.
‘On the second day they came for us. They took us to a large room – it had been a classroom, you could still see the posters on the wall, small graffiti from tiny hands, the smell of chalk. But all the tables and chairs were gone. The blackboard hung on one wall, faint smears of writing on it, English sentences like How do I get to . . . I remember how surreal it all seemed. And what a relief to be unshackled, standing, together.
‘Then they brought the girls in. When I saw them hope spread through me even though I should have known better. I thought they were freeing all Westerners but when I looked over I saw David shaking his head.
‘The soldier in charge lined the girls up against the opposite wall. I tried to make eye contact with the women, send them some kind of unspoken reassurance, but when I saw their faces I had to look away.
‘The soldiers were drinking. The oldest must have been fourteen. There were empty bottles of Primus littering the floor. They were smoking weed and snorting something too. Their eyes were red and full of glee. The girls were bleeding. Their faces wrecked and bruised, their clothes dirty and torn.
‘The soldiers proceeded to get drunker and rowdier. They ripped the girls’ clothes off. They stood there laughing and joking among themselves, one had a video camera, this old chunky model, and was filming everything.
‘Suddenly it got quiet. The soldier in charge pointed to David. Two other soldiers surrounded him. I saw his eyes and I could tell everything of the David I knew was gone – his certainty, faith and strength. All that was left was fear.
‘They marched him to the other end of the room. They stood him in front of the terrified girls, some kneeling now, praying hard and fast. They showed him a pistol, then pointed it at the women. The commander asked Which one you like? and when David didn’t answer they started punching him in the head. He fell and they kicked him until he got to his feet again. The commander asked the same question and David pointed to the girl at the end. His hand was shaking and dripping blood. The commander gave him the pistol. Shoot her! he screamed. David closed his eyes and they hit him with the rifle butt again. You shoot the girl, you and your friends go free, the commander urged. The room was filled with crying, moaning, praying and laughter. Shoot her and you are free, he kept repeating.
‘I could see where this was going. I could see what David was about to do and what they would do to him in return. I’ll do it. I’ll kill her, I screamed at the soldiers. I looked at David. He turned to me, smiled and shook his head.
‘The gunshot surprised the soldiers almost as much as it did me. David looked down at what he’d done, then calmly turned the gun on himself, placed the barrel in his mouth, and squeezed the trigger. A pale mist erupted out the back of his head and his body crashed to the floor.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Jack heard the words coming from his mouth but they felt untethered, like radio signals from another room. He stared at the floor, trying to stop it from spinning. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?’
His phone began ringing again, short, sharp trills of sound bouncing off the roof and smashing against the walls. Ben waited until it switched to voicemail. ‘You think you would have benefited from that knowledge, Jack? I know how you see David. It was my duty as your friend not to burden you with it. You haven’t had to spend the last twenty years carrying this around. I protected you and did David’s memory justice. We wouldn’t have even been able to put up the gravestone if anyone had known it was suicide. And the newspaper headlines – I couldn’t do that to his family.’
Jack shook his head. ‘You should have told me.’
‘Yeah, and we should have gone to India . . .’
He tried to imagine what it had been like in that school room, the choices Ben and David had been
forced to make, but it was impossible, and he knew that, ultimately, every man’s life was always his own. ‘What happened after David died?’
Ben passed him the almost empty bottle. ‘The soldiers all began laughing and high-fiving each other, the one with the camera came in close, kneeling down, making sure he got David’s face in frame. The other soldiers stood over his body, offering each other drinks as the room filled with the smell of David’s life emptying out.
‘The commander turned, asked me if I still wanted to kill. I shook my head, told him It doesn’t matter now. He just laughed and talked with one of the soldiers, then came back over. You want to save your other friend?
‘I looked up at him and, God help me, I nodded.
‘He grabbed me and took me past David’s body. I had some vague notion that I would turn the gun on them but when I got there soldiers surrounded me and I knew I would be dead before I even tried.
‘They started screaming at me, poking me with their rifles, their voices getting louder and wilder. Then they gave me the gun.
‘I turned to the woman at the far left. She was on her knees, praying and rocking. She looked up at me and nodded. Then she smiled. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.’
42
Jack flashed back to the room again – Eye-patch, the poster of the mountain, the piece of paper he was about to sign. All these years he’d thought he was the one who’d made the sacrifice, that it had been his actions which had freed them.
‘David was gone. I had to save you. You were all I had left.’ Ben’s voice quivered and cracked, the rain hissed and spat against the roof, the windows rattled and clanged in their frames. ‘You think it was easy? You think it still is? Every fucking night I think about them. Every time I look at Susan and Penny, I see those poor girls’ eyes staring back at me.
‘When we got back I watched the news reports. I read about their families, their hopes and fears, the dreams coaxed nightly in their chests. They became real to me when they’d been only ghosts in that room. And then the footage was leaked. You can’t imagine how it felt, waiting any moment to see David’s face or my face splashed across a million TV screens – then the years of dread, fearing that one day it would show up, the past would come out of some dark hole and consume the present.