“What’s going on?”
Bowman’s eyes were adapting to the dark. He turned his gaze away from the candle flame to avoid being dazzled. Young kept looking over his visitor’s shoulder, to the other room and the window that looked out on the street.
“I work for the blokes at the cannery. There’s been a strike there going on for weeks. The lads don’t want to give up. It’s war, Sergeant!”
“What?”
“I work for the bosses. I’ve got a team, Sergeant, like you had! Brave soldiers. They hired me to break the strike. I couldn’t care less about any of that crap, it just makes me laugh. We have to find the ringleaders and beat the shit out of them, and protect the lads who want to keep working. You know what the workers call us?”
Bowman slowly put his bag down at his feet. He did not take his eyes off the ’cosh.
“What do they call you?”
“Yellows!”
Young laughed.
“Like the monkeys! Fucking yellows! But what are you doing here, Sergeant? Eh? You looking for work? The bosses’d definitely be interested in a bloke like you. Sergeant Bowman! I bet you could get those bastards back to work in less than a day.”
“I’m not looking for work. Why are you hiding in here with your bludgeon, Young?”
“’Cos they want my guts for garters, what do you think? It’s the same thing every time. But they’re not going to get me. We’ve been through worse than this, haven’t we, Sergeant? Eh?”
“Put the club down, Young.”
“What? Oh, yeah! You want a drink, Sergeant?”
He placed the ’cosh next to the candle. They were in a sort of box room. Young rummaged through the contents of the shelf and opened a bottle, which he handed to the sergeant.
“Let’s have a drink, and after that we need to get out of here, all right? Not that I don’t want to have a good talk with you, Sergeant – I’d love to, in fact – but we don’t want to hang around here.”
Bowman lifted the bottle while keeping an eye on Young.
“Get down!”
A window exploded behind Bowman. He fell to his knees.
“What’s going on?”
“They’re coming, Sergeant! They’re attacking!”
Another stone, followed by a shower of small rocks, which smashed the glass to smithereens. Out in the street, the men were yelling, calling out Young’s name and threatening him with a whole list of horrors. He crawled over to Bowman, a pistol in his hand.
“Come on, Sergeant, we have to get out of here! Follow me.”
Bowman picked up his bag and grabbed the bludgeon on his way out. Young, bent double, pushed a chest of drawers away from the wall. In the candlelight, Bowman saw a hole in the bricks, knocked through with a sledgehammer, big enough for a man to pass through.
“Go on, Sarge!”
Bowman felt bare earth under his hands when he emerged on the other side. Young followed him and pulled the chest of drawers back in front of the opening. They heard bellowing, then the front door being smashed down and the drunks from the tavern rushing into the house.
“This way!”
They were on the other side of the street, on a dirt path that ran behind the houses. Young was already running ahead of Bowman, yelling, his words muffled by laughter, that it was all going to kick off soon. Bowman ran forward and banged into something, or something banged into him, and he found himself rolling on the ground. Instinctively, he raised his legs and, when he felt the weight of a body against them, he kicked it away with all the strength he could muster. He glimpsed someone get back up and charge towards him. Bowman hit out randomly with the ’cosh and heard a crack, followed by a groan of pain. The figure wavered in front of a lit-up window, and Bowman recognised the neighbour, the one who had sent him packing, and had sneaked out into the path to ambush them.
Inside the house, the workers, furious, were destroying everything they could lay their hands on. They soon found the opening in the wall. Norton Young had disappeared. The neighbour started to shout: “They’re here! They’re . . .”
Bowman threw himself at the man and flattened him against a wall, the club crushing his throat.
“Was Young here on July 14?”
“Huh?”
Bowman pushed harder on the club.
“Young! Was he here in July?”
“Who the fuck are you? What are you on about?”
“Tell me!”
The man, his nose broken, stammered as his throat was crushed: “He didn’t leave. He was here, for the strike . . .”
Bowman released him and the man, half asphyxiated, fell to the ground. Hearing shouts from the house, Bowman ran away as fast as he could. When he was out of breath, he slowed to a walk. He kept turning, taking roads by chance between factories and houses, and ended up on the path he had taken on his way here. He reached the landing stage for the ferry on the River Copse, curled up in a ball in a small boat moored to the pier, and waited, wide awake, for daylight.
He didn’t sleep on the train either, and when he got to the hut he drank a whole bottle of wine, then finally picked up his pen and bent over the sheet of paper.
I found Young. He was mad too.
I ran away and I hid in a boat all night scared that the workers would find me.
There’s only Peavish left.
Bowman wrote another line that he thought about crossing out, but decided in the end to leave as it was.
It’s a bit worrying because he’s the last one but at the same time I’m looking forward to seeing the preacher again.
He then descended from his roosting-place, mounted his horse, and rode to the naked summit of a hill, from whence he beheld a trackless wilderness around him, but at no great distance the Grand Canadian, winding its way between borders of forest land. The sight of this river consoled him with the idea that, should he fail in finding his way back to the camp, or in being found by some party of his comrades, he might follow the course of the stream, which could not fail to conduct him to some frontier post or Indian hamlet.
Bowman closed the book. He only had a few pages left for the return journey.
Millbay Station, on the edge of Plymouth, was not one of those buildings made from stone, metal and glass, but a simple wooden construction. It was like an unambitious outpost, built not to last but merely as a staging post for a future conquest, on the periphery of that other outpost on the sea, which was Plymouth itself. On the square outside, Bowman asked a coachman where Herbert Street was and, seeing him hesitate, the driver offered him a good price. Bowman got into the carriage.
The city was lively in this late afternoon, the air still warmed by the sun. Bowman was lost in his thoughts as the driver told him about the city, taking seriously his role as ambassador to this visitor from London. He explained about the buildings under construction, the names of streets, the way to the port where steamboats and large sailing boats would set off for Europe and the Americas.
It took them twenty minutes to reach Herbert Street, a wide, peaceful, sun-soaked road. Bowman paid the driver and waited until the carriage moved away before crossing the lawn to the little chapel.
The interior was dark and bare. The altar was made of wood, and above it was a cross without any ornament. Through the windows, like long arrow slits, without any stained glass, just enough light filtered that visitors could see their own hands, know where to kneel.
A young boy was sweeping between the pews.
“Peavish – is he here?”
The child, who had a hunchback and one leg shorter than the other, looked like a halfwit.
“The pastor?”
“Peavish.”
“He’s at home, sir.”
“Where’s his home?”
“Well, here. But over there. Behind.”
The boy showed him a door behind the altar. Bowman walked over to it and knocked. A voice answered him: “Have you finished cleaning?”
Bowman opened the door without a word.
Peavish hesitated for a second before this apparition, then his smile widened, illuminating his face. He had no incisors left in his upper jaw; two yellow canines ended the smile at each corner of his mouth, framing his pink tongue.
“Sergeant Bowman.”
Peavish crossed himself, closing his eyes for a moment without ceasing to smile, and then opened them again.
“The man who has been in my thoughts for such a long time.”
The preacher still had the same voice and the same puppy-dog eyes, and he still spoke like a visionary; he had not changed a bit, even when the Burmese had smashed his teeth out with rocks. They, too, had ended up sick of the sight of that smile.
Bowman glanced around the little room: a chair and a table, a Bible, a bed pushed against a wall, an iron bowl and a pitcher.
“Hello, preacher.”
Behind the chapel, there was a garden encircled by a low wall, with a tree and a bench. Peavish invited him to sit down.
“What are you doing here, Sergeant?”
“Why did you say you’d been thinking about me?”
Peavish smiled.
“It is my duty to go towards those who are in need. And to seek out those who are most in need. To recognise them, I think of you, Sergeant.”
“Your bullshit won’t work on me, preacher.”
“And yet you’ve changed, Sergeant. I can see that clearly.”
Bowman stared at Peavish and his toothless smile.
“You always thought you knew me, but you don’t know anything.”
“Then why did you come here, Sergeant?”
“Because there was a murder in London.”
Peavish stopped smiling.
“That’s awful, of course, but it shows how much you’ve changed, Sergeant. Before, you were not the sort of man who worried about a corpse. Why have you come to speak to me about it?”
“Where were you in July?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Answer the question.”
Peavish looked amused again.
“You mention a murder, then you ask me where I was in July? You’re not being very tactful, Sergeant.”
Bowman put his hands on his thighs and lifted his head.
“Just tell me where you were, Peavish.”
“I was here. Do you need witnesses? Ask anyone in my parish. To be honest, I even wonder why I’m answering you, Sergeant. And I still don’t understand the reason for your visit.”
Peavish looked at Bowman, his eyes as tender as a saint’s, his smile as patient as a martyr’s.
“Yes. You have changed, Sergeant. You remember what I told you the first time I ever spoke to you? I remember it perfectly, but I never thought that, all these years later, it would seem so prophetic. If you’ll pardon the expression.”
“I’m not pardoning anything, preacher. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I asked you why you didn’t stop the fight earlier, aboard the Healing Joy.”
“And what prophetic conclusion do you draw from that?”
“You replied that one never knows who was right to go to war. And that it is sometimes he who did not want to fight who wins. You recognised, Sergeant, that there is no such thing as a coward, and without meaning to, you admitted that you didn’t believe in courage.”
Bowman tried to smile, but his body tensed up. Peavish’s voice sounded as assured as if he were preaching.
“You changed because you discovered fear, Sergeant. Perhaps now, you will learn true courage. Why are you looking for a murderer?”
Bowman got up from the bench and took a step away from Peavish.
“Because in London they think it’s me and they’re trying to hang it on me.”
“You want to prove your innocence?”
The preacher’s tone was ironic now. Bowman gritted his teeth.
“You killed men too, Peavish.”
“But I’m not making the mistake of thinking myself innocent. Why are you looking for that murderer?”
Bowman stood in front of him, his face pale.
“Because it’s one of us.”
“Us? Is that a metaphor?”
“Don’t get clever with me. You’re the last one on the list.”
“The list?”
“I found them. All of them.”
“All of them?”
The colour had drained from Peavish’s face and his hands, joined in prayer, were visibly trembling. Bowman leaned towards him.
“They were all mad. And as far as I’m concerned, you’ve always been crazy. I’m not going to believe you’re any different to the others just because you’ve got a chapel and you act like a saint. Bufford threw himself down a well because his child drowned. Collins . . . well, it wasn’t him either, but I saw some blokes smash his skull open because he’d spent too long looking for the knife that would finally slit his throat. Clements lives like a ghost. Briggs is locked up in a lunatic asylum and he thinks he’s still in the cage and they’re coming to get him for . . . for what you know about, Peavish, for what we all have under our clothes, even your stupid fucking priest’s dress. Morgan, I didn’t actually speak to, but he was dying because he’d been poisoned, and if you want to make that a metaphor, then go ahead. Greenshaw got so drunk that he fell in a farm machine. Young is completely crazy: he risks his life and laughs about it, and he’s just waiting for the same thing. There were ten of us, Peavish. Those ten – who else do you think I could mean by ‘us’?”
Bowman stifled a laugh between his cheeks and his teeth.
“Changed? Is that what you think, preacher? I don’t even blame my colleagues in Wapping for thinking it’s me, because I thought I could have done it. Some nights, I even wondered if it was me. When you’ve lived your nightmare in reality, Peavish, you can explain to me how you tell the difference between what’s in your head and what’s actually happening. But you should know that, given that you’ve always lived in a fucking dream. I remember something I told you once too, you know: that you’re in the same boat as the others. You’re arrogant because you believe you’re sitting next to the good Lord and that you can whisper words into His ear while you wait for Him to get you out of the shit you’re in. You want blasphemy, preacher? I’ll give you some. Something I saw in a sewer tunnel when the whole city was dancing in the rain.”
Peavish closed his eyes and did not react when Bowman grabbed his collar and shoved his fists under the preacher’s chin.
“It was a child who led me down there. Are you listening to me, Peavish? Open your eyes, for fuck’s sake!”
The preacher opened his eyes and looked at Bowman’s face, planted right in front of his.
“The others, I couldn’t talk to them about it, but you, preacher, you who pardon everything, you get to hear about it. I never believed you were capable of such a thing, but you at least deserve to know. I haven’t forgotten a single detail. We’ll see how well you get through it. Don’t close your eyes, you’ll need them too.”
*
The two men remained silent for a long time, sitting on the bench in the little garden. Bowman was drained, his rage all used up, and Peavish filled with all the horrors that the sergeant had poured into his ears. Night was approaching and they were getting cold. Edmund Peavish finally stood up and walked on the grass, following a beaten path, a little circle around the tree, with his hands crossed behind his back. He came back to Bowman and stood still.
“Bufford is dead?”
“And Collins, Greenshaw and Morgan too. Briggs won’t last much longer.”
The preacher lowered his eyes.
“And your friend, Sergeant?”
Bowman looked up at him.
“Who?”
“You haven’t found them all. You didn’t tell me about your friend.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Penders. Where’s he?”
“I dunno. The woman he was staying with said he’d gone. Maybe to America. Why did yo
u call him that?”
“Your friend? Because he was probably the only one – along with me, perhaps – who understood you a little bit and was able to talk with you.”
The preacher sat down next to him.
“Whether it was courage or not, without you, no-one would have emerged from that forest alive. I was unfair to you earlier. I won’t ask you to pardon me, just to excuse me.”
“Forget it, preacher. It would have been better for us if we’d all died out there.”
“But we are alive.”
Bowman looked ahead of him at the little wall surrounding the garden.
“There was something else in the sewers.”
Peavish looked troubled, as if he had an itch that he was trying not to scratch, an itch that made him writhe about on the bench.
“I think I’ve heard enough, Sergeant.”
“After what I’ve told you, it won’t make much difference. The man who did it, he wrote a word in blood on the bricks of the sewer wall.”
“A word?”
“Survive.”
Silence fell over them, then the preacher articulated slowly: “Are you going to continue to search for him?”
Bowman turned to face him.
“Penders?”
“Who else?”
Bowman stood up.
“I have to go.”
Peavish offered to let him spend the night in the chapel. Bowman declined the invitation with a smile. Together, they walked through the dark building, and the pastor opened the door for Sergeant Bowman.
“Peavish, what would you have done if I’d come here to confess, and I’d told you it was me?”
The preacher smiled.
“Is that the question you’re asking yourself, Sergeant? What you’ll do if you find him?”
Bowman put the strap of his bag over his shoulder and adjusted it.
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither, Sergeant.”
“Goodbye, preacher.”
“Come back whenever you want, Sergeant.”
*
The next train did not leave until dawn. Bowman took a room in a hotel facing the station in Plymouth, and ate dinner in the little restaurant, surrounded by travelling salesmen talking in loud voices.
Retribution Road Page 19