by Martyn Ford
‘I said, I said I should have gone,’ he shouted.
‘You’re a liability,’ a female voice called back from another room.
Shaking his head, Max took a mug from the cupboard and pulled a handle below the worktop – the cutlery drawer slid to the end of its runners. He stopped. Reflected in the chrome kettle, Sam saw a pointed beard, flicked moustache and eyes that narrowed, suspecting something wasn’t quite right.
As the whistling continued to rise, Max turned and looked Sam directly in the eye.
‘If you’d gone you’d have ended up doing something really . . . stupid,’ Diane whispered the last word, appearing in a doorway.
She seemed suitably alarmed by the pistol in Sam’s hand. But Max was nonchalant, leaning now on the kitchen worktop, tapping a cigarette packet.
‘Easy . . .’ Diane said, showing her palms.
Max lit a match, then mumbled, the filter tip bouncing in his mouth as he spoke. ‘How’s your kid?’ He took a drag, stoking the ember, then shook the flame out. ‘See, me . . .’ he pointed with two fingers, laughing through smoke ‘. . . I’d be mad about that. Hopping mad.’
Without even looking, Sam lifted his arm and fired the gun. There was a harsh thudding sound, a hollow thump, followed by Max falling sideways across the open cutlery drawer, snapping it, sending knives and forks clattering, spinning across the tiles. He grabbed his shoulder and gasped, trying to get to his knees.
Diane was reaching for something.
‘No,’ Sam said, drawing his aim back to her. She held her hands up.
‘What is it you want?’ she asked, removing her yellow-tinted glasses, folding the stems and sliding them into her top pocket.
The million-dollar question. ‘Give, me, the, name,’ Sam said. ‘I want this to end. I want no more violence.’
‘Ah, fucking hell. You’re going about it in a funny way.’ Max shuffled to a sitting position on the ground and retrieved his cigarette. He smoked with his uninjured arm. The tattoos on his biceps were glazed now with blood.
Frowning, Diane seemed to realise something. ‘Where are Henry and Gregory?’ she asked, eyeing the blazer.
‘I’m sorry. Your brothers are dead.’
She sighed.
But Max dropped the cigarette and clambered back to his feet, slipping once, holding the counter for balance. His eyes were lined with tears. His hand firm on the wound. The three of them stood and stared – all taking stock of the situation. Of what it meant. Of what would happen next.
‘Stop,’ Diane said, glancing between them. The peacekeeper. ‘No one else needs to get hurt.’
‘Is that true?’ Sam asked, looking at Max.
He turned to his sister, who appealed to him for caution, diplomacy, maybe even deception. But Max just smiled and shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, speaking only to Sam. There was common ground here. An unspoken understanding. ‘I’m afraid not.’
Crossing herself, Diane began a murmured prayer – a panicked, quick appeal to anyone who might be listening. ‘In the name of the Father, and the Son . . .’ she whispered. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be . . .’
‘Thank you,’ Sam said. See, he thought, honesty always guides the way. Even complicated problems have simple solutions when cast in radiant, glorious truth. Here, on Max’s face, was every justification he needed.
Sam aimed the pistol at his head. Max, still smiling, closed his eyes. There was a liberating sense of letting go. Sam thought about that night he’d wandered alone to the roadworks, to the half-built shopping mall, up and up the spiralled ramp, down and down this troublesome path. Drunk on corrosive frustration, on empty mystery and impending defeat. The unfortunate inevitability of all this mayhem, this senseless journey – it all led here.
Sam, falling now, finally embraced the rising void. And, as the kettle hissed and screamed and rattled, as steam rolled and curled on the ceiling, as the mumbled prayer came to an end, he squeezed the trigger.
Click.
There was an awkward pause. Max looking down, his brow lifting in excitement, his eyes wide.
The gun had jammed.
‘Uh-oh,’ he said, gripping a knife from the counter, coming forwards.
Wrestling with the slide, clearing the lodged round, Sam stepped away, stopping against a wall. Max lunging, stabbing. The bullet pinged free, spinning, and they grabbed each other’s wrists. Pinned now, Sam felt a knee come up and, as he blocked it, heard a loud sound to his right. Spray. Something wet on his face, blinding him with quick heat – his eyes burning, yelling in agony. It was in his nose, his sinuses – sudden fire. He blinked – took a look at the room, a snapshot. Max moving to the left. The gun went off – a crack. Another photo. Max gone. More mace. A long, direct spray across his ear, his hands – turning, he took a lungful and spun, fired again. Coughing, wheezing, dark and desperate as something hit his leg. One more picture – the last he could take – and the pepper spray caught his open eyes. Somehow disarmed, Sam was shoved to the ground on all fours. A hard strike smashed his teeth together, filled his mouth with the tang of iron and sent him flat on his front. The kettle whistled, howling above him.
‘They say it leaves the whole world blind,’ Max said, as he pressed a knee into Sam’s back and drove something sharp down into his shoulder. He shouted as the knife tip touched the tiles below him.
And then helpless, dazed and lost, Sam felt a tug on his hair. His head lifted, pulled back, exposing his neck.
Cold steel on his throat and—
‘Stop,’ Diane said. ‘Don’t do it in here.’
‘Why not?’
Sam rolled, bucking the weight off his body. Then he crawled, his hands slipping, squeaking on the floor.
‘The police will arrive soon. They will talk to us. Clean this up.’
‘Where shall we take him?’
‘Take him home.’
Sam’s eyes were scrunched shut as he patted the ground. He only felt cutlery, forks, knives, scraping metal.
‘Not even close,’ Max said.
A final thud, the kettle whispered silence and Sam’s remaining senses fell away.
Chapter 37
Shortly after Sam’s eighth birthday, his father seemed to lose the knack for successful grant applications. Marine research was never an easy sell but, during the 1970s, when money was tight across the board, counting fish and seabirds became an academic luxury few organisations were willing to fund. They sailed back to the UK, and stepped off the Coriolis for the final time. Sam remembered that day clearly. It was foggy, cold – gulls just shadows circling in the mist. He stood on the stone harbour wall and waved to the ship he’d called home for so many years – a farewell to the very ground that held his first memory. His life began, just as it would end, at sea.
Following their parents, he and his brother turned and walked across the port car park, to start their new days on dry land. A normal school, static and dull, awaited them. No more dark nights, no more infinite skies, no more nocturnal adventures to the stern railing to see endless stars above and below.
Later, when he was well into his twenties, he asked his father whatever happened to that big red hunk of floating metal.
The Coriolis had begun its life as a cargo ship. It was an old vessel, well past its best and had always been destined for scrap. Their time aboard was borrowed. So, it was retired, and docked for months, rusting and abandoned. In the end, it fell into the Navy’s hands. A tugboat dragged it out to sea, and left it at a suitable range for weapons testing. Sam had pictured an operations room. He’d seen the image as old footage – men, naval officers in uniform, standing in a line at a console of buttons, levers and spinning radar lines. Ahead of them, through the glass, perhaps a mile away, a maroon ship, small and vulnerable, out on the open water. They’d have watched through binoculars. A radio would crackle with voices. And then a roar of fire nearby, a long plume of arched smoke and, a few seconds later, a silent grey explosion on
the starboard side, rocking the target – white spray raining as the sound arrived. The stern sinking, tilting the whole thing on a flooded axis. Within two minutes, waves and bubbles and nothing.
The Coriolis was deep underwater, resting on the sand – somewhere without light. Full of new life now. Sam imagined it caked in coral, marine algae and seagrass. Perhaps lit from time to time by curious undiscovered creatures that glow and swim through the narrow metal corridors, darting for plankton around his old bedroom, sending shadows lurching up the brown walls.
He remembered the free-diving nomads they saw in the Andaman Sea. The Moken people. They’d lived on the ocean for countless generations. They could hold their breath for minutes at a time, descend to the depths, and help themselves to all the fish they’d ever need. Sam, perhaps five years old, had played with the children on a beach, somewhere in the Mergui Archipelago. White sand, hot enough to hurt your feet, sting your eyes. He’d swapped a bottle cap for a perfect, spiked shell the size of his fist. He had thought it was a good deal, until he saw hundreds of similar shells littered all over the rocks nearby. But he didn’t care. Another man’s treasure.
His father told him the Moken tribes have always had unlimited food beneath them. Their lifestyle had been so successful, for so many years, that, in their language, they did not have a word for ‘worry’.
Sam dreamed of one of those tanned children, lying in his rusted bedroom, underwater, flicking that bottle cap with his thumb and watching it spin and sink down into his hand, dancing like an autumn leaf.
They have no word for worry, he thought, as he felt the need for air. He was holding the bottle cap now, swimming, kicking for the surface, desperately hoping he’d make it up in time.
No word for worry.
And he was awake.
The first thing Sam noticed was the taste of blood around his back teeth. He explored the damage with his tongue, and found at least three molars were missing. Grunting, he realised his jaw was broken too.
Finally, he opened his right eye, then pressed his palm into his left, wiping his sticky lashes clean. He flinched at the tender bruising around his socket. Although blurred and sore, his vision was working without too much pain. So, he reasoned, many hours had passed since he’d been pepper-sprayed.
Hanging above, he saw a human hand – it had lost all its colour. Grey flesh, trapped in cuffs, connected to a thick radiator. When he moved and the metal clattered, he discovered it belonged to him. Only one hand was cuffed though. But his other arm, thanks to his stabbed shoulder, felt virtually useless. It would go no higher than his head.
Cold stone – he was lying on the ground. Sitting up, grimacing through his injuries, his free hand lay limp across his lap as he looked around the room. He did not recognise this place.
It had a high ceiling, wooden beams bridged by cobwebs, sagged with dust. A single light bulb, without a shade, hung from a wire and lit the space. Shelves filled with clutter – tools, a car battery, a blue crate of old electronics. Three Hecate dolls faced the brick wall as though they’d misbehaved. To his right, directly opposite the radiator, he saw a pipe organ, half covered by a faded sheet. Near that, stained-glass windows, stacked up against the wall. Cardboard boxes – ‘candles’, ‘cushions’, ‘plates’ written on the sides in black marker – piled high between a desk and a long pew. Two grey lumps of granite, a broken headstone, had been slotted together to make a carved cross on the floor. These looked like rescued items from a derelict church, stored here by someone who’d rather not see them crumble.
‘We used to raise so much hell in this house.’ The voice made Sam twitch and turn. It was Diane, sitting on a foldable chair right behind him. ‘When we were children, they called us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’ She laughed, then sighed. Craning his neck, he shuffled round to face her. ‘I would say, but Mother, I am a girl. And she would say, no, no Diane, you are Famine.’
Sam tugged on the handcuffs, inspecting the lock. Urgent now – he really was trapped.
‘Funny, actually, to think about that,’ Diane added. ‘Henry and Gregory – young. Alive.’
Exhaling, Sam realised his struggle was pointless. He slouched against the radiator, his left arm hung at shoulder height. ‘I’m sorry this had to happen,’ he said, frowning at the dull ache in his ear.
‘Had to happen?’
‘Your brothers, they . . . they would have hurt my son again.’
‘And that would have been unjust?’
Sam didn’t respond. Instead, he checked his pockets and felt wild anxiety when he couldn’t find his phone.
‘It was a genuine offer, wasn’t it?’ he asked. ‘You know who that man is.’
‘I do.’
Rattling his wrist, Sam said, ‘No harm in telling me now.’
One last brush with the truth.
He looked up at her as she pressed her hands into her knees, stood and stepped past him. ‘Are you familiar with demonology?’
Sam rested his head on the cold metal. ‘Diane, please.’
‘It’s all quite clear, should you read the text, Samuel.’
He laughed and coughed.
‘What, might I ask, is your issue with piety?’
‘I’ve got no problem with religion,’ Sam said, watching her as she paced in front of him. ‘You can wear the clothes, sing the hymns – maybe everyone should come together once a week, community is important. We’re social beings after all. Lovely buildings. Beautiful music. Art. And Christmas, well, it was always a hit in my house. These stories, they’re fine with me, Diane. I’ll go all the way with you. Right up until you say it’s true.’
Now she sniggered. ‘I don’t think you quite understand how faith works.’
‘You ever watch cartoons with a kid? It’s no less fun to know they’re just . . . moving pictures. No less joy, no less value.’
‘Here you are, solving humanity’s greatest follies,’ Diane said. ‘I suppose you believe removing truth would negate all the ugly things you blame on doctrine? One simple adjustment – tweak the dial. Consider it fiction.’
‘It’d certainly help.’
‘But something powerful brought you to my home. Something related to conviction. What is it that drives you?’
Sam thought of hunger, survival, the existence bias that curses every living thing. Had the simple animal call to protect his own child, perpetuate his genes, drawn him to this situation? There aren’t many obligations that so reliably unveil the dormant feral creature prepared to bite fingers and claw eyes. Or was it something above primal biology – was it:
‘The truth?’ he said.
‘OK. Well, the truth is, yes, I do know him.’ Diane spoke softly, flowed with grace, fluid, her limbs in constant motion – for her, this was a performance. ‘The man is called Julius Jacob. You can tell, from the scars on his face, that he has seen hell in his time.’
She picked up one of the dolls, turned and came back. Holding it for Sam to see, she touched the charcoal, stroked the frayed cloth dress.
‘It was Julius. It was his idea to burn their faces.’ Diane inspected the hand-carved figure. ‘Do you see? Like him, they have witnessed hell. Oh, they’ve looked into the fire . . .’
‘He came to your sermons? He’s a member of North Serpent?’
‘No, no Samuel. No. He is a friend. More. He’s like family.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Like me, he values privacy. He lives in . . . in a secluded place.’
‘Where?’
She thought for a moment, then inhaled. ‘You’re right. What’s the harm? Do you know Wrenwood Common?’
Sam nodded.
‘Do you know who owns it?’
‘You?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Western track, before the first sign, only house, you can’t miss it. I used to live there myself.’
‘You sold it to him?’
‘I gave it to him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m kind
.’
‘Kind enough to take these cuffs off?’ Sam asked.
Diane crouched, the doll still in her fist. Close now, he saw her left eye was missing, replaced with what looked like a marble. No, it was a cataract – bleached blue. Her short black hair, parted to the side, reminded him of a headmaster. Strict. Formal. And her glasses, tinted yellow, were meant for a man – too big for her face.
‘I would, but that may upset Max. He is exceptionally traumatised by what you’ve done. He loved his brothers.’
‘This man, Julius, he might have something to do with Robin Clarke,’ Sam said, deliberate, slow – as though explaining something to a child. ‘A little girl.’
‘The Clarkes.’ Diane glanced to the ceiling and groaned. ‘Everyone is obsessed. What is it about that family you people find so engrossing? Photogenic children? Is it that simple? I’m not an avid follower of such lowbrow news, but I recall seeing a picture of Mrs Clarke, then Miss, of course, on her wedding day. Big and pregnant. Perhaps it is God’s will that their bastard son should disappear.’
‘And their daughter?’
‘Sinners are punished, Samuel. Who are we to question judgement? Have you thought that what happened to the Clarkes says more about Francis and Anna than it does about Ethan and Robin?’
Sam blinked. The headache was overshadowed by damage elsewhere in his body. Now he was aware of the hole in his shoulder – the stab wound sealed shut with a rolled bandage and duct tape. It was a crude dressing that pulled on his chest hair when he moved, but it worked – he had not bled to death. Sadly, he doubted the efforts to keep him alive were symptoms of compassion.
Diane stared at him. ‘It drives you crazy, doesn’t it? You’d give anything to know what happened to those children. Maybe you were close to an answer.’
‘Do you know where they are?’
‘If I did, do you think I would tell you?’
‘I think you’d take pleasure in not telling me.’