by Rod Madocks
Who had left this gear for him? It was later discovered that he had tried to contact Andre, who had been transferred to a hostel in the city, but perhaps he had considered him too stupid and noticeable for the job. No, it had to be Pinsent, who had also been freed on license and who possessed the cool wit to obtain the stuff and arrange for someone to flit through the hospital car parks one night maybe months earlier and leave the bag behind the scoreboard roller. That Daredevil comic was surely a Pinsent touch.
Hobman made himself comfortable that night down in the hide. He pegged up his bivvy with the camouflage side to the exterior and rustled into the alu wrap before the chopper arrived. He slept a little despite the siren’s howl. Dawn came and he peered out of a small gap in the hedging to watch the search parties being briefed. He finished one water bottle and peed into it. He ate the slippery sardines with his fingers and passed the time stropping the blade of the survival knife with the little sharpening stone that came in a small pouch on the sheath. He whistled silently as the rooks streamed away into the mist. The search parties struggled into their wet gear and the smell of cooking reached him from a mobile canteen.
The day wore on, the White Lady sung to him, maybe he squinted at the comic, reading it close-to in the narrow nest, reading about the demon hero who transforms himself. The wind picked up as the day turned, driving off the mist and making the poplars sway, shedding the last of their leaves. Deep in his hedge, he rolled in the bivvy and stared out at the flocks of goldfinches feeding on groundsel seeds in the untended bowling courts and he scanned the staff entering and leaving. Perhaps he saw me: it is likely that he did. He lay there on into the night as the searching activity eased off and he may have crept out to ease his cramped limbs, ever mindful of the turning sweep of the car park cameras.
Poynton was exhausted by then, sleeping on a camp bed in the control room and the search parties moved further and further away.
Another dawn came, misty drizzle prevailed and a day of intense coming and going of police cars, of press, and search teams ensued. At some stage in the early afternoon Irina arrived, parking in a corner in the psychology department slot by the hedge. It was the last Thursday in the month.
I got the call in the mid afternoon. It was her ringing my office number from her mobile. Her husky, strained voice was a shock and a miracle. I leaped to my feet in the meeting and Bartram, and his junior medics, watched me curiously.
“Everything alright Jack?” said Bartram.
Of course it was alright, my Irina had rung me at last. I struggled to hear her on the crackly phone.
“Jack, it’s me, Irina. I must see you. Come alone. The churchyard, the cemetery in the village. You know it, don’t tell anyone.”
I left immediately, making a hasty excuse of domestic business to my colleagues. I hastened through the turnstiles looking up at the long glass windows of the control room where figures moved about in a fug of cig smoke. I hurried to my car, past the police Land Rovers and the cars belonging to the press, and pulled out turning eastward at the great gates. There was no one about apart from one police car slowly cruising. I find it hard to remember exactly what I was thinking. It was as if I had suspended conscious thought. An odd prevision, a wariness was there, however, perhaps it was always there with me, and I stopped for a moment scanning the outline of the church on the outskirts of the village. I spotted Irina’s small car by the church gate. There was no other sign of movement. She had told me to meet her in the church yard. I remembered that we had strolled there sometimes in the year that we were together, and I had once showed her the gravestones of the hospital dead.
I moved through the worn brick columns of the gates, the latch clacked loudly in the stillness, and I walked around the flank of the old church, my feet swishing in the fallen, crisp sycamore leaves. I stopped in the shadow of the church and called out, “Irina?”
There was no reply.
I called again, slightly more loudly this time, “Irina!”
Then my eye caught movement, nearly fifty yards off on the eastern edge of the churchyard. I saw something, shadows, figures moving against pale stonework and I moved cautiously towards them through the headstones. On that edge of the cemetery there stood a Tudor gateway, once the entry to some great house. Beyond it a rough track wove through orchard land, down to the river where, on the horizon the winking lights of the power station began to show more clearly in the fading light.
As I approached and before I could call out again, I saw a large figure moving that became two figures, closely meshed, moving between the dark pit of the doorway and the shadow of a nearby yew. Then, just once I heard Irina’s muffled voice calling, “Jack!”
I rushed forward and made them out at last. It was Irina and behind her a shape, pulling, tugging her back into the shadow. Then I heard his calm, almost languid voice, “And so we begin and end, Dr Keyse.”
Hobman.
“He took my car, Jack. I’m so sorry,” Irina gasped and I could see Hobman behind her with the glinting arc of the big, saw-backed knife to her throat.
“You know how it is,” he said, “you have to follow me. You know that don’t you? You see we’re off to see the wizard.”
He pulled Irina backwards, then he back-kicked at the old gateway door until it gave a little on its reluctant hinges and jerkily opened after more thudding kicks. Irina and Hobman edged into the entry and I followed. We stumbled down the trackway under the black shapes of leafless trees. Hobman forged ahead, occasionally turning and twisting Irina around as he did so to make sure I was following. And, so we stumbled along. I was thinking what I could do, perhaps fall on him but I was fearful of the consequences. They kept moving on ahead in the gloom. It was hard to make out which shape was Irina and which Hobman’s.
I remember our footfalls rustling in the sedges and the sound of Irina’s gasping breath ahead somewhere. We went further and further from habitation, although I had noticed that a light had come on in a house across from the churchyard when Hobman had been kicking at the cemetery door.
I tried calling out to him, “Just wait, Hobman, think what you are doing, don’t be stupid, you don’t want more hospital time.”
The only response was low laughter from him, then he stopped for a moment. I came close to them and could make out that he was still holding the knife up to Irina’s neck.
He said quietly, “Come on, come on. You of all people should know my purpose. You do know surely where we are going? The White Sister speaks to you too, doesn’t she?”
Then he turned and forged on as the ground grew more marshy and ditches gleamed with water. An icy moon rose and, at last, we broke out onto the bank of the river. It spread widely before us and downstream the red lights winked on the great vats of the power station. We went further along the bank close to the pilings of the road bridge. The river smelt of weed and fear and somewhere a water bird sounded a few warning notes. At last, we stopped by a landing stage that projected into the river which was dimly lit by the lights from the road bridge. Hobman drew Irina down the staging and I followed. I could see her breath emerging in sharp, little pufflets in the chill, dank air. Our feet slipped on the uneven wood which gave a bit under our tread. Below us the river ran darkly, strong and silent.
“What are we doing here Martin?” I called out.
“Bless you brother, not too many questions. Just be glad you are here with me as I feel you have been with me all these years.”
He still held the knife but I could make out that his hands dangled at his sides now and he was seemingly at ease.
“The White Spirit, she likes you. I can tell she talks to you. You have been with me since Eaton all those years ago. You remember Eaton when you gave me that nonce, your gift to me do you remember?”
“Yes, I do, Martin.”
Then Irina spoke, her voice quivering, “Jack, what’s going on?”
“Shush, sister, let brother speak to brother,” Hobman murmured. His shadowy form turned a
nd he seemed to be checking something on the skyline. After a moment I thought I heard the faint twitter of a siren from somewhere in the village nearly a mile away. He turned back to us and unhitched his rucksack, letting go of Irina who swayed about on the slippery stanchions.
“Sit, sister,” he commanded and shook out a long roll of material from the bag, which later proved to be his camouflage tarpaulin. Irina knelt there on the staging and Hobman solicitously folded the fabric around her like a cape. He moved closer to me and we stood facing each other.
“Tell me about you two,” he said, gesturing to the shape of Irina. “I want you to tell me about it. I smelled you out didn’t I? Both of you by the cupboards at the M Spot.”
I faced him and felt his breath on my cheek. He was so close.
“It was love, Martin,” I said.
“Don’t, Jack,” Irina called out, but I reached down and touched her face under the cape. Her cheek felt as cold as stone.
“It’s OK,” I said.
Hobman remained standing close to me. He spoke again softly. “Yes, listen to him. He knows it’s OK. Go on, Dr Keyse.”
“Our love had wings, Hobby,” I told him. “We met, we conjoined; we swam in each other’s flesh. We could not bear to be without each other. We breathed together, our eyes, skin, experiencing our love. It was urgent and immediate — like the way the foxes scream in the night behind the wire. You have heard them, haven’t you Martin?”
“Yes, I have heard them.” His breath steamed in the chill air as he spoke.
I went on pouring out a confessional, “Our love was elemental, it ached in our bones. Oh, to be with another being like that. And, when it ended, I grieved so terribly. It is so hard to live without that love, isn’t it Martin? The wind blows through you, you go on living but not wholly being. Some of us must do without love. We two are brothers in that. We are the unique ones, fated in that way. We live on, keeping true to the past in our own way.”
I felt him grip my hand as I went on in my trance utterance, an emptying-out which I can barely remember now, though I can still clearly see his rigid, gleaming face so close to me. I told him everything about Irina and my search for Rachel and somehow in that moment I felt that he had truly understood me.
I know I finished by gesturing to the crouched figure of Irina, “We adored each other Martin.”
And I could hear that Irina was sobbing, “But it ended as these things do.”
There was sound then, louder and nearer and he took a few paces past me, and stared along the river bank then came back and said, “Thank you Jack. I appreciated that. For me, it was always Fiona, my lover, my sister, my pride. I blessed the days of our union but hated those who would take her from me — my father, priest-men.”
He turned to listen once more then went on, “And why Kress all those years ago, why did you want me to deal with him?”
“I wanted him to suffer for my own loss. I was careless with others. He was a sacrifice, a mistake. It was wrong of me to involve you. Please forgive me. You shouldn’t have hurt him like that though.”
Hobman replied, “You wanted him gone.”
Before I could say more, there was a growing sound of yelping sirens from the road bridge and a lower register of sound, a whup whup whup noise, now nearer, now further off. I could make it out distinctly above the columns of the power station. It was a chopper with a searchlight glaring at its nose.
Hobman had seen it but he continued to speak to me as his face turned to the night sky, “No, no, there shall be no bad feeling. We all work through our purposes.”
It came on us suddenly and everything was swallowed by light and noise. The chopper thudded over us in a pass then reared up and made a turn to fix on us. There were waving torch beams and the sound of barking dogs somewhere close on the bank.
Hobman turned away from me and was standing looking up. I glanced down at Irina with her pallid face thrown back and, even in the terror of the moment, I felt so intensely tender for her.
I fell on Hobman in that instant screaming to Irina, “Get out! Run!”
I closed with him, wrestling for his knife arm, at the same time hearing a crashing and splashing sound, which I later found out had been Irina leaping into the shallows and floundering to the bank. Hobman was incredibly strong. We grappled but his knife arm coiled and twisted and he flung me off him. He hit me with a smashing impact that came so swiftly that I never saw the blow. He cracked me on the brow with what was probably the hilt of the survival knife, although he could have easily stabbed me. I was momentarily stunned and toppled back onto the slimy wood of the staging. I was aware of more splashing noises and I am sure for a moment I heard Poynton’s reedy voice shouting out, then I was lifted in a tremendously strong grip by my clothing. It was Hobman standing over me and he raised me right up and put his mouth to my ear.
“No need for fear any more. We are all spirit brother. I am you.”
I could just hear him above the roar of the overhead chopper. He let me fall and I watched him as I sprawled, he walked away down the landing, his back turned contemptuously to his pursuers. At the end of the staging he stood in the shaft of white light from the searchlight. His hair was black and spiky, and his tattoos livid scrawls around the pits of his eyes. He seemed to do a little dance on the rotten boards with his arms akimbo, and the knife flashing in the light.
He screamed out above the racket of the blades, “Look I’m a real boy now. No strings!” He turned, put his knife between his teeth and slipped into the river. I swear that he winked at me before he slid away into the water and began to swim while being carried swiftly along by the current.
The chopper drifted above him and I heard a voice calling out, my own, “Come back Martin. I need you!”
The current took him and soon his head was barely distinguishable as the water was ruffled up by the blades of the chopper. He seemed to stop swimming for a moment and raised the hand holding the knife in the beam of the helicopter light. There was the blur of his head, then even that was gone and all that remained was the swift water as it curved away.
PART THREE
The Present
Chapter Six
The Five Steps
Spring came; wildfowl streamed from the lake, flying north again to the Arctic and Scandinavia. The colour of the water went from grey to blue as the light intensified. The lines of police searchers paced the grasslands by the lake, skirted the woods and moved out over the hill, prodding with rods and detectors. They were looking for soil disturbance and they paused sometimes to consult maps and diagrams. Weeks dragged by, the weather impeded progress and the searches were called off for a while due to other alarms — demonstrations, terrorism perhaps. Then they resumed and the area of Clouds Hill was retraced. They hit something by a stand of wind-stunted poplars. It was a place a few yards from the water, the ground laced with sheep tracks. A slot in the stiff, pebbly marl was uncovered and the red soil peeled back. Blue and white banded tape then sealed the area and police landrovers bumped over the tussocky meadows. Sometimes a vehicle went hurrying back to the market town five miles away, its siren yelping. A small digger manoeuvred with the bucket raised and a canopy was erected to flex in the breeze off the water. The press got to hear; people began to gather and the peace of the lake was suspended for a while.
I arrived and watched the search and the excavations, standing among a crowd of press, onlookers and a few hikers that had been swept up in it all. I returned to haunt the hillside later in the summer, after they had all gone and the holes had been sealed up again. They had found some things and took them away. The police called them “remains” — a good word. I imagined bones, cloth rags, felted by time and moisture. I thought of teeth, still with a calcareous stain and I imagined objects holding onto their identity: a comb, a purse frame, keys, shoe soles. I also found a place to rest and think at last. I came drifting back in the nights and found it peaceful there as I lay couched in the grasses, near the huddled shadows
of the cropping sheep, listening to the rustle of the poplars and the lapping water on the shore. Sometimes I followed the sheep as they stumbled down to the water’s edge and I would look out over the lake.
Rachel and I had come here before when the place looked very different. It was over twenty-five years before, in one of those hot, dry summers of our decade together, maybe in the last year of our relationship. I still have a photo of Rachel standing next to the bike, taken later that day when we reached the coast. We had meandered eastwards towards the sea having decided on a whim to go on a joyride with no real direction. The old 650cc flat twin bellowed down those switchback country roads as I screwed on the throttle and enjoyed the cool wind with Rachel’s hand on my hip and insects bouncing off the helmet visor like shrapnel. The road had followed the ridge line of the flat-bottomed valley below us. The roadside grasses were passing in a creamy blur with the speed of our passage when I saw Rachel’s gloved hand pointing to the small sign Barnhaven. I slowed and dipped down a country turnoff, past woods and a straggle of cottages, down deeper into the valley to the plough lands and the standing wheat. The engine throbbed then gave out a meaty belch as I declutched and stepped down a gear. We cruised to the valley floor, past farms, and the empty-seeming hamlet of Barnhaven. As we approached a copse outside of the village, Rachel leaned over and yelled over the engine noise, “This is fine… stretch our legs a bit.”
I stopped at a field gate which was sheltered by ash trees. The wheat stretched away in a rippling, dense mass. I cut the engine, watched the dials drop to zero, and balanced the machine with my boots grinding into the dry, plough soil as Rachel dismounted. I rocked the bike between my thighs to test how much petrol was sloshing in the tank then clanked down the side stand and rested it on a flat stone. I strolled to the deeper shade by the fissured ash trunks, loosening my leathers and pulling off the tight helmet. It was so hot that it made my skin prickle. My boot plates clinked on the pebbles in the dusty soil, and the buckles snagged on loose wheat stalks underfoot. Rachel opened the battered box panniers on the bike and began to arrange a picnic. We sat on the raised roots of the ash trees, looked out at the heat-dazed fields and waved away hover flies. Rachel gave me a coke bottle and I cooled my hands on it. She rolled her bottle against her cheek. Her face was flushed with the heat and from the bright light burning through the helmet visor. Her eyes looked lighter against the sunburnt skin. Her hair was all pressed down from the helmet. We sat and chatted quietly as the engine fins of the bike clicked and creaked faintly and the pipes exuded a burnt-oil smell. We ate sandwiches and looked out over the valley. The sheep on the skyline huddled in the shade and one lone swallow dipped and turned over the wheat. It wasn’t a bad place to stop.