Dispossession (45 page)

And of course it wasn’t for me. “I didn’t leave,” he said.
“There were trees I didn’t know. Over there, do you see?”

No, I didn’t see. It was dark, and too much effort to squint,
and my eyes weren’t Luke’s. Twenty-twenty vision only goes so far. But yes, I
believed there could be trees he wouldn’t know: a park this grand, this old,
whoever laid it out might have brought seeds or saplings from all over. And a
new tree, yes, that could hold Luke here for days while he hugged it and loved
it and learned it from root-tip to leaf-tip.

Just as well, for me. It all came together—his tree-hugging,
his eyesight to see me from wherever those trees were, his hearing perhaps to
pick up the sounds of my pain at the same distance, and his deceptive, inhuman
body. Plus a sense of unexpected drama in him, a yearning for the big effect,
that he chose to rip through the wall rather than simply pull locked doors
open; and some equally unexpected and possibly quite random impulse to
generosity, that he’d chosen to come and help when there was no obvious reason
for him to do so. I didn’t flatter myself that there was any tie of friendship
that could draw him to my rescue purely on its own account.

Which being the case, neither would he go to war on my
account; but he was a formidable war engine, and the only weapon that I had...

“I hope you enjoyed your trees, Luke,” I whispered. Didn’t
have the strength to shout, but all right, he was hearing me.

“Why?” He would expect a reason, of course, to shore up any
such wish. Simple generosity of spirit he wouldn’t recognise, any more than I
recognised it in him.

And quite right, too. “Because they won’t be there much
longer,” I told him.

And had all his attention now: his stillness like a statue,
his arms like stone beneath me, no giving flesh to cushion my weakness.

“Why not?”

“There’s a woman here, the one who had me locked up in
there? She’s going to have all those trees cut down, to make room for another
road across the park. That’s one of the reasons she was holding me, because I
said I was going to tell you, I thought you ought to know. She’s the one who
gave Dean his orders about that girl at Leavenhall, too. It’s never been
Deverill, you can see he’s a tree-lover at heart...”

Not what he would have heard, of course, if he’d been
stretching his clever ears to hear us talking, Mrs Tuck and me; but that wouldn’t
matter. Luke was a creature born of faith and destroyed by faith. Luke
believed
. He didn’t understand about lies, and he’d
never spotted one in all his long, long life. He saw sweet and clear and
exceedingly well, and that was enough; a very Cartesian angel, he knew that
what he saw was true. He never thought to look below the surface, that
something might be other than it seemed.

And he was my friend, and so I used him.

o0o

And just in time, because there were voices suddenly in the
night behind us, brief cries of surprise and running feet. Luke turned, and I
twisted my head to see the same two men who’d spent such a happy time doing me
over, coming at us fast. Behind them were others, pale faces in the dark,
Deverill and Suzie and Mrs Tuck.

Luke dropped me. I hit gravel, gasping; and rolled over the
margin onto grass, not to be under their feet. For a moment it felt nothing but
good to be lying on springy stems and soft earth, but I pushed myself up onto
an elbow to cry a warning, “Don’t...!”

Too late. Of course, too late; what else were they going to
do, under their employer’s eyes? This was what they were paid for, after all,
and they all too clearly enjoyed their job. They charged him; and even I could
take no pleasure in their stupidity, though I’d suffered enough at their hands
and feet. It seemed that I had no instinct for revenge or punishment, though I
could draw little comfort from that just now.

Not so Luke, as I knew too well. He wouldn’t punish them for
hurting me, that was not his concern; but they stood in his way, and so he
removed them.

They hadn’t seen what his hands had done to corrugated
steel. I don’t like to remember what those hands did casually, in passing, to
those men; but perhaps I do after all have an instinct for self-punishment,
because the images are painfully bright in my memory despite its other
failings, despite the dark and my exhausted weakness and my tear-blurred
reluctant eyes.

Like anyone, these men had their favourite moves. The one
had his baton, and swung it as soon as he was in range; the other let fly with
a kick.
Easy meat
, they must have been
thinking, if they were thinking at all.

Me, I’d say they weren’t thinking. They’d seen Dean’s body,
for God’s sake; they’d doubtless seen the video also, whatever of that grisly
execution had been caught by the security camera. They surely should have
recognised Luke.

But they came on regardless, stick and kick and
watch him fall down
—only he didn’t. The kick
cracked hard into his knee, and I knew just how that felt but Luke didn’t seem
even to feel it. And the stick didn’t make contact with his head, where it was
aimed. Luke flung out an arm and met it with the palm of his hand. The sound
effects for that should have been the crunching of many small bones and a howl
after, but all I heard was a grunt of surprise from the baton-wielder as Luke
closed his unbreakable fingers around the shaft and tugged, wrenched it from
the guy’s hand and sent it up, up and away with a whirl of his arm.

For a moment then the two men stood and looked at him, in
major reappraisal. They still had a chance, I guess. If they’d only had the
nous to turn and run, he would have let them. They didn’t interest him. But
something brought them on again, training or macho pride or simply fear for
their jobs.
Still two to one
was in their
heads, no doubt, and
we can take him out
,
perhaps that too.

They knew the moves to do it, and Luke was no fighter; but
they didn’t know Luke. They closed on him from either side, consummate
professionals, and the first swung another kick, aiming to sweep Luke’s legs
from under him and get him down on the ground for some more fancy footwork. But
again he only stood there, something better than bone in his legs and wrapped
around with matter that I knew too well could be very much harder than flesh.

It was the kicking man who yelled, who hobbled a pace back
and then fell. Broken shin, I thought, or broken ankle. The one still standing
gave his mate a glance, total shock, I thought; and that would have been Luke’s
chance to belt him one, only Luke still wasn’t interested. He just tried to
walk straight through them.

The standing one grabbed him round the neck.
Big
mistake: you can’t choke an angel. Luke
looked at him, then reached up to grip him by the shoulders. Fingers that could
puncture steel dug deep, and I swear that even through the man’s bubbling
scream, even under their heavy coating of muscle I heard his shoulder blades
crack and splinter.

Luke tossed him aside then like something used and finished
with.

The man on the ground, though, he was still flailing, still
trying to fight. Wrenching at Luke’s ankle, trying to topple him. Just
instinct, it seemed, not knowing an end when he saw one.

He’d never see another. Luke bent down, picked him up; held
him above his head and hurled him down again, and then trod on his throat. The
man spasmed, arched once and went limp. Luke didn’t even look back.

He walked slowly and deliberately forward, and very much
towards Mrs Tuck. She, no fool, was already moving sideways, heading for
shelter, for the Portakabin.

No fool, she was taking Suzie with her: gripping her by the
wrist and dragging my reluctant, resisting wife. Suzie wasn’t fighting yet, but
I thought she would, sooner than be hauled inside that particular steel cage by
someone she hated and feared. Circumstances had changed now. She could see I
wasn’t exactly their prisoner any longer, obedience wasn’t a prerequisite; yes,
I thought, she’ll start fighting any second.

Strangely looking forward to that, I was, despite it all. My
wife the cat as spitfire, all claws and teeth and hissing: she’d get my money
any day, over the plump contented evil of Mrs Tuck. Not so contented now, I
hoped, seeing her nemesis stride so steadfastly toward her.

But then she cheated, she changed the script. While one hand
kept a grip on Suzie, the other delved into the handbag she carried slung over
her shoulder.

Delved, and came up with a small gun. It was too dark for me
to see, but none the less I saw her thumb work the safety-catch, neat and
efficient and meaning it. I saw her level that little widower-maker at my Suzie’s
head, and no, Suzie would not be fighting now. She’d just been given another
reason to be sensible.

As had I; but not Luke. What did he care for hostages? I sat
up dizzyingly quick and screamed at him, “Luke, no! Stand still, don’t go any
closer, for God’s sake...!”

He jerked slightly, but that was just at the word. He always
flinched from any name of God, even from me who had no faith to back it. But
then, when my doom-seeing soul expected him only to start walking again, he
startled me by doing what I’d told him to do, standing still and going no
closer. Mrs Tuck nodded her satisfaction, pushed Suzie against the Portakabin
wall—this the untorn side, they wouldn’t have seen the damage—and gestured with
the gun,
stand still, girl
, while she
reached into her bag again and came up with keys.

Luke, meanwhile, had turned his head to find me. “Why?” he
asked simply.

Why. Right. Okay, explain compassion, desperation, love to a
creature with no soul and entirely lacking in empathy. Do it now, do it in a
sentence...

Couldn’t. I watched Mrs Tuck unlock the cabin door and
thrust Suzie inside, and said, “Because she’ll kill her if you go in after
them.”

He weighed that in the cold, accurate balance of his own
judgement, and visibly found it wanting. Didn’t speak to me again, only turned
and walked toward the cabin.

“Luke, no!”

This time, he didn’t so much as look back.

I saw Deverill take half a pace forward, presumably also
wanting to stop Luke but for reasons entirely opposite to mine. Only his path
to Luke would lead him past his men, dead or unconscious on the ground, and I
saw him check, consider, decide against. Wise man, he stayed where he was.

Not me, I couldn’t do that. Not my man in danger: my woman,
my wife, partner and lover and what more I needed time to find. So I thrust
myself awkward and ungainly to my feet, and went staggering towards the cabin
just as Luke reached it and stepped inside.

The door slammed, and I thought it was slamming on all my
hopes. I ran, though I was in no state for running; and arrived at that door
only a couple of seconds behind Luke, only a couple of seconds too late.

I grabbed the handle, but it wouldn’t turn. Locked or jammed
or broken: I shook it desperately, pounded with my fists, and the whole cabin
rocked.

I did it again, and it happened again, and it took my dull mind
a while to catch up with what was happening beneath my hands. Then, gaping, I
laid a palm flat against the door with no pressure. The cabin tilted ten,
twenty degrees out of true, and crashed to ground again.

I stepped back, stunned and shaking. Before I could think to
run around to the other side where the hole was in the wall, I saw one end rise
a metre or so; and then the whole cabin went on rising at that angle, snapped
free of its power lines so that all the lights in the windows went out at once,
was lifted up like a shoebox toy in the unseen hand of a child.

How’d you get it up here?
I’d asked, about Luke’s new caravan.

I lifted it
, he’d said.

And I’d wondered at the time what that had meant, and now I
knew. Luke hates to fly, but when he must the air will bear him up; and his
environment also, apparently. Anything he chose to take with him.

This was no easy, smooth ascension, going up nice and steady
like a lift. The cabin jerked and swung and seemed to dangle from shifting,
immaterial cables, so that anyone inside must be tumbling like dolls. Broken
dolls, I was afraid. Not good territory for shooting, of course, I thought
perhaps I needn’t worry any longer about that; but not good for staying whole
and undamaged either. Very likely not so hot for staying alive.

Sometimes as it tilted and turned, I caught a glimpse of
Luke’s dark hole where the wall was ripped open, and had visions of Suzie
falling free. Nightmare visions, those: gone too high, she’d never survive such
a fall.

But a fall was all there was in prospect now. What other way
down? This wasn’t an aircraft Luke had made, to fly unwilling guests back to
his mountain in the Lakes. At least I guessed not, though in all honesty I
couldn’t be sure. I’d known him long enough not even to venture to read his
mind. If that happened between us, it was strictly one-way traffic.

Up and up it went, till I was straining to see. Deverill was
beside me now, both of us twisting our necks and squinting into the sky. He’d
lost his anger, in the stunning bewilderment of the moment; he said, “Jonty?
What the hell is
happening
here?”

“Later,” I grunted. Two stories I had to tell him, one of
Luke and one of Mrs Tuck, and he wasn’t going to like either one of them; but
right now neither one concerned me in the least. Luke had Suzie up there too,
and I cared for nothing and no one else.

And was totally helpless down here, could do nothing but
stand and try to watch, not to be defeated by the night. I was seeing more by
the absence of light now, how the cabin’s shadow occluded the stars. Not so
good, that, but good enough at least to show me one thing. I could tell quite
clearly when the cabin stopped going up, and started coming down.