A Lovely Way to Burn

by Louise Welsh

  The dentist picked up his bottle of beer and drained it. He threw it at the fireplace. The bottle glanced against the mantelpiece, dislodging the carriage clock and clinking loudly as it bounced unbroken on to the hearth. One of the drinkers opened his eyes, got to his feet, and then sat down again.

  ‘Take a look around,’ Summers said. ‘I think the moment for joining AA might have passed.’

  The two men laughed. Django took another beer bottle from his pocket, knocked the cap free and set it foaming before the dentist.

  Stevie said, ‘Dr Sharkey is dead.’

  Melvin Summers stopped laughing. He lifted his beer bottle in the air.

  ‘May he rot in hell, and may all those whom he loved join him there before too long.’

  The curse sent an electric current along the back of Stevie’s neck.

  ‘Someone killed him.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me, love. I wish it was.’

  Django put his hand over Stevie’s and she realised why he had sat patiently with them while Melvin had recounted his story.

  ‘Stephanie didn’t come here to accuse you, Melv,’ Django said.

  The dentist snorted. ‘Christ, you always did have a tendency to get cuntstruck, didn’t you, mate? Look at her face. That’s exactly what she came here for.’

  A sound of splintering wood and raised voices came from the other bar. The three of them glanced towards the lounge door, but they remained in their seats. Django turned his gaze on Stevie and squeezed her hand more tightly than was comfortable.

  ‘Is he right?’

  ‘Not exactly …’

  Django repeated, ‘Not exactly?’

  The pressure on her hand increased.

  ‘Dr Simon Sharkey was my boyfriend. He was part of Fibrosyop. I think someone may have murdered him. I want to find out who and why.’

  Django pulled her close. Stevie smelt beer, sweat and desire. He whispered, ‘You told me you’d lost a kid.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  He tightened his grip on her hand. ‘You let me think you had.’

  Another crash came from the adjoining room. A woman screamed, a dog started barking and a rumble of male voices clashed with the confused protests of the drinkers.

  Django knocked Stevie’s stool from under her as he got to his feet, toppling her to the ground. She thought he was about to kick her and braced herself to roll away from his boot, but he gave her a look of contempt and said, ‘Be careful who you make a fucking fool of in future.’

  The noise in the next room was louder. Django went to the lounge door, glanced into the other bar, then slammed the door shut and bolted it. ‘Fuck, you’d think the police would have better things to do with their time.’ He pulled on the denim jacket he had hung on the back of his chair and patted the two beer bottles he had slipped in its inside pockets. ‘Sorry, Melvin. I wouldn’t have brought her over if I’d known.’

  Stevie got to her feet holding the stool in front of her, ready to hit Django with it if he came too close. Glasses were shattering in the bar beyond and someone began battering their fists against the other side of the connecting door.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ The dentist seemed unaware of the chaos in the next room. He nursed the dregs of his pint like a man who had been felled by yet another bereavement. ‘She brought good news.’

  The curtains in the lounge were closed. Django pulled one open a crack and peered out of the window. ‘Usual stupid plods, they’re concentrating on the front entrance.’ He looked at Summers. ‘If we go now we might make it out through the back.’ The drunk who had woken was already at the door that led on to the street. Django shoved him out of the way.

  ‘You’re at the end of the queue.’

  He unbolted the door, opened it a crack and peered out.

  The dentist leant back in his seat and looked at Stevie.

  ‘My old gran used to say, “The Devil knows his own.” When I was a kid I used to wonder what she meant by it. Now I know. Look at you, fucking invincible.’

  Django said, ‘It’s now or never.’ He gestured to Melvin Summers, but the dentist shook his head and raised his empty beer bottle in tribute. Django returned the salute with a nod. He stage-whispered, ‘Geronimo,’ and slid outside, the newly woken drunk at his heels.

  A swell of rising voices came from the street. Stevie stayed where she was.

  ‘Did you kill Simon Sharkey?’

  The dentist shook his head. ‘No.’

  The banging on the connecting door had grown more desperate. One of the sleepers woke, stiffly unfurled his body and staggered to his feet, his footsteps sure as a zombie’s.

  Stevie said, ‘You had a good motive.’

  ‘So did a lot of people.’

  ‘Perhaps, but you’re a dentist. You work with anaesthetics; you had the means to kill Simon and make it look natural.’ The drunk was still struggling with the bolts, but he would master them soon. Stevie forced herself to be cruel. ‘Plus I’m guessing you lost more than most, your wife and your child.’

  Melvin Summers flinched.

  ‘If I’d killed your boyfriend, do you think I’d deny it? Believe me, I’d be fucking boasting.’

  There was a clunk and a small exclamation of satisfaction as the drunk managed to slide the bolts free. Stevie looked at the dentist, as if staring at him could uncover the truth. The bar door opened and she ran for the exit.

  Twenty-Seven

  Outside was a commotion of black-uniformed police officers and dazed civilians scuffling in the weak, tobacco-coloured dawn. Stevie saw Django in their midst, tussling with a policeman. One of the bottles of beer slipped from his pocket and shattered, foaming against the pavement. He let out a roar and smashed a fist into the policeman’s neck. The roar turned to a scream and Django crumpled to the ground, Taser wires snaking from his thigh.

  Stevie flattened her body against the wall of the pub and edged her way along the side of the building. When she reached the corner she broke cover and ran, bracing herself for the electronic sting of a Taser. Her limp had returned but she could see the Mini, parked where she had left it, on the other side of the road. Stevie took the key fob from her pocket and unlocked the car, still running. She threw herself into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and turned the key in the ignition. The daylight dimmed, as if the engine’s grumbling start had leached power from the rising sun. She looked up and saw a policeman at her window. The policeman grabbed the handle of the driver’s door and pulled, but Stevie had already clicked the lock home and it held tight. She crunched the gearstick into first, swearing under her breath. Her foot hit the clutch too hard. The car bucked and stalled, dead.

  The policeman banged against the window with a gloved hand. Stevie turned the key in the ignition again, slid through the gears and pressed her foot to the floor. The Mini accelerated forward, just as the policeman brought his baton down hard, against the glass. Stevie had queered his aim, but he caught the side window a glancing blow that cracked the glass like ice beneath a stone.

  Stevie looked in her mirror as she sped away. The policeman had tumbled to the ground, but he was already getting to his feet and she hoped that only his pride was hurt. She wondered if it mattered that he had probably got her registration number, or if things had gone beyond that.

  Somewhere deep in her bag her mobile phone started to ring. Stevie unzipped it and felt blindly inside, keeping her other hand on the wheel and her eyes trained on the road. The phone wasn’t in the side pocket where she normally stowed it, and her fingers scrabbled against her water bottle, hairbrush and make-up bag, things recognised and unrecognised, until eventually it stopped its jaunty tune and Stevie abandoned her search. She turned the car radio on, unsure of where she was going but determined to put as many miles as possible between her and the Nell Gwynne.

  Classical music was playing, soft and sombre, on the radio. Stevie wondered if it indicated a new phase in the crisis, or if it was the kind of thing that always filled the
airwaves in the early hours. She shifted through the stations until she found a news broadcast. The sweats had slipped from headline position and the news was dominated by riots that had spread across Britain’s southern cities and into the north as far as Newcastle.

  She was back in suburbia. The houses scrolling past were neat-edged, the pavements beyond them punctuated by overflowing dustbins and piled with rubbish. The car’s windows were closed, but the smell of something rotten slipped inside, the scent of a fruit-market gutter at the end of a long hot day.

  Shops had been looted, the radio announcer said in a distant voice, as if making clear that it was nothing to do with him; cars and buildings set on fire, people driven from their homes. Police resources had been stretched, he warned, but with the help of the Army, the authorities were re-establishing order.

  The streets beyond the car windows were empty, the only movement the wind ruffling the trees and trembling the tops of privet hedges in need of a trim.

  ‘Re-establishing order,’ Stevie repeated under her breath. The impact of the policeman’s baton had shaken the whole car. Even if she managed to discover who had murdered Simon, Stevie wasn’t sure what she would do with the information. Save it, she supposed. Collect the evidence and store it until things returned to normal.

  ‘At least it was the police and not the Army,’ she said out loud to comfort herself.

  Her words might have conjured the soldiers. Stevie turned the corner and saw four of them, standing in front of a barrier blocking the road. She considered turning back, but they were cradling machine guns and though Stevie couldn’t quite believe they would shoot her, she slowed the Mini to a halt and rolled down the window, hoping the shattered glass would hold.

  Twenty-Eight

  The soldier who approached was young and dressed in desert fatigues.

  ‘There’s a curfew.’

  He was Scottish, with an accent that made her think of slums and razor gangs; his eyes were framed by wire-rimmed glasses, his chin speckled with acne. The combination made him look like an intelligent schoolboy who had been pressed into service.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Stevie glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 6.30 a.m. ‘Doesn’t it end when the sun comes up?’

  ‘You’re thinking about vampires.’ The soldier’s expression was serious. ‘They knock off at sun-up. The curfew ends at 7 a.m.’

  ‘I’m heading home.’ In the past few days, lying had become second nature. ‘I spent the night at a friend’s.’

  Someone said something into the soldier’s headpiece and he looked away, towards the lightening dawn, as if the instructions were coming from above. The tinny voice stopped and the soldier bent towards her window, still keeping his distance.

  ‘Is it more than three miles away?’

  ‘No.’

  It was another lie, as smooth and automatic as the previous one.

  ‘Okay, turn off the engine and step out of the car.’

  The gun was still resting in the soldier’s arms. It was turned away from Stevie, towards the empty street, but now that she could see it up close, it was all too easy to imagine him putting his finger on the trigger and aiming it towards her.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to check your boot.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Okay?’ one of the soldiers by the barrier shouted and the boy by the car called back, ‘Aye fine, just the usual twenty bloody questions.’ He squatted down on his haunches and looked at her. ‘You can get into big trouble for breaking the curfew. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should do, it’s all over the news. Now stop making me look like a plonker and get out of the car.’

  Stevie turned off the ignition. Her hands were still trembling, but she didn’t shift from the driver’s seat.

  ‘I’m not moving until you tell me why I should.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ the soldier said. ‘Do you see what I’m wearing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He tapped the barrel of his machine gun.

  ‘And do you know what this is?’

  ‘Of course.’ Stevie kept eye contact with the soldier. There were lines and shadows on his skin at odds with his youth. ‘I’m not trying to be awkward. I just feel safer inside the car.’

  Some of the defensiveness went from the soldier’s face and for a second he looked frail. It was like glimpsing the interior of a house from the window of a train. A sudden intimate view, gone before you had time to register the details. He glanced at the barrier where his comrades were waiting and when he turned his attention back to Stevie, his toughness was restored.

  ‘No one’s going to hurt you. I just need to make sure you’ve not been looting, and then you can go on your way.’

  ‘You promise?’

  The soldier drew a finger diagonally, one way and then another, across his chest.

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ He made a face and looked upwards to where high command or God was watching. ‘I take that second part back.’

  Stevie opened the door and stepped on to the road. The sky was flushed rosy pink, and there was a scent of bonfires in the air, as if summer had vanished and autumn arrived early.

  The soldier asked, ‘What happened to your window?’

  ‘Someone threw something at it.’

  He nodded, as if it was only to be expected, and walked round to the back of the car. Stevie followed him and opened the boot. There was nothing inside except for a half-empty bottle of screen wash, a travelling rug and a bundle of newspapers destined for recycling. She shoved the lot into a corner and rolled back the bottom of the boot to reveal the spare tyre and jack stored beneath.

  ‘Can I go now?’

  The soldier’s radio was squawking again. He held up a hand, palm outwards, commanding silence.

  ‘Roger that.’ It was as if the radio controlled the official part of him. It died and the soldier muttered, ‘Fuck,’ beneath his breath. He looked at her. ‘Pull over to the side of the road and wait in your vehicle.’ He must have seen the rebellion in her face because he said, ‘This road has to be kept clear for priority traffic.’ He raised a hand to the men at the barrier and shouted, ‘They’re on their way.’ One of them waved to show that they had heard, and the three soldiers set about shifting the hurdle that formed their barricade.

  Stevie got into the car. The soldier slapped her roof with the flat of his hand and pointed to where he wanted her to park.

  She said, ‘How long will I have to wait?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong man. This was meant to go through hours ago. It’ll take as long as it takes.’

  ‘Can’t I go back the way I came?’

  ‘You’re not much of a listener, are you? If I were you I’d sit back and get a bit of shut-eye.’

  ‘I’d rather sleep in my own bed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all?’ The soldier grinned. ‘Do you know where I’m meant to be right now?’ He didn’t wait for her to reply. ‘Up in Glasgow with my wife and three-year-old. The wife’s mother’s sick and she insists on looking after her. I’ve told her to keep the boy well away, but it’s a small flat and my wife’s never been a great one for following orders, unlike me.’ He looked at her. ‘The lads over there are the same. Straight back from a three-month tour, no decompression time, all leave cancelled. We’re nice guys. Peace lovers, but it’s not a good idea to go around breaking curfews and arguing with squaddies. If my commanding officer tells me to shoot someone, I shoot them and they stay shot, understand?’

  Stevie nodded.

  ‘Don’t look so worried.’ He gave her a smile that made him look like a child soldier, young, but already marked by symptoms of an old age he would never reach. ‘I doubt it’ll come to that.’

  Stevie manoeuvred the car into place, checked the petrol gauge and then turned off the engine. The tank was half full, but supplies might be getting low and she should think about refuelling if she was to stay mobile. She made sure the door was
locked and then stretched back in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes.

  Mobile.

  Stevie opened her eyes and rummaged in her bag for her phone. Iqbal’s number was logged under missed calls. She stared out at the soldiers. They were still standing beside the open barrier gazing straight ahead, unsmiling, as if each one was encased in his own distinct world. Stevie wondered what ‘priority traffic’ they were waiting for.

  She pressed call-back and lifted the phone to her ear. Iqbal answered on the third ring.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  He sounded anxious and Stevie felt a jolt of regret. It had been a mistake to sleep with him.

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘The government’s declared a curfew.’

  ‘I know.’ She heard the remoteness in her voice and tried to inject some warmth into it. ‘Is the Internet still working?’

  ‘Yes,’ Iqbal said. ‘It’s weird. It seems like half the city has lost power and the other half’s going on as if nothing unusual is happening.’

  ‘That’s a good sign, surely.’

  ‘Maybe, but if everyone stayed at home there’d be less chance of the virus spreading.’

  Stevie wondered if it was a comment on her early-morning defection from the warmth of his bed.

  ‘People need to come out some time, if only to get food.’

  There was silence on the line. Stevie imagined Iqbal sitting at his desk in the not-quite-sterile apartment he had stocked for a siege.

  He said, ‘People need to avoid contact with each other to give scientists enough time to come up with an antidote or a vaccine, before the virus spreads too far.’

  She remembered what Dr Chu had said about doctors’ failure to cure the common cold.

  ‘That could take years.’

  ‘So what would you suggest?’

  ‘I don’t know. We carry on and hope for the best?’

  Iqbal’s laugh sounded as if it belonged to an older man.

  ‘This is war, Stevie. The virus is the enemy. We have to wipe it out before it annihilates us.’

  One of the soldiers at the barrier had taken out a packet of cigarettes. He offered them to his comrades, but the Scot said something to him and he shoved the pack back in the pocket of his uniform jacket, without lighting up.