INCARNATION (37 page)

He took another step in the soldier’s direction, arms raised in a gesture of supplication, a picture of harmlessness.

‘You’ll have to speak to my captain. I’m just here as a guard. It’s my job to keep the Muslims out of here. If you’re a cadre, you’ll be all right.’

But David knew that, once the sun came up, their fate would be sealed. He took another step towards the guard. The man prodded him hard with the barrel of his gun, knocking him back several paces.

‘Stay where you are, and don’t move again unless I tell you.’

With his free hand, he reached into a pouch on his waist and pulled out a handset. The light was growing. David wondered if the guard would distract himself enough to make a rugby tackle a reasonable risk.

At that moment, the handset fell from the guard’s hand, smashing against the marble floor at his feet. David looked round, astonished, thinking Nabila had intervened somehow, but she was still behind him, unmoving as before, her hands on her head. The next instant, David looked back at the guard. He was staggering, trying to keep his balance. The machine-gun dropped with a loud clatter to the ground.

David heard a hissing sound, then a dozen more, and each time the guard seemed to stagger or spin a little, until finally he fell to the ground, crumpled, jerking, coughing and moaning in an attempt to cry out. David bent down beside him.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

But the only answer came in the form of wheezes and gurgles.

Nabila joined them. She had brought the torch, and while David shielded the light from the nearest tanks, she shone it on the man. His face and throat were peppered with tiny darts, forty or fifty of them in all. She pulled one out and sniffed it.

‘Scorpion,’ she said. ‘But this has been concentrated. I can make out some vegetable poisons as well. It’s hard to be sure ...’

The guard started to convulse. Nabila tried to hold him down, while David looked round desperately for something to put him out of his misery.

‘I have a knife,’ he said. ‘It’s in one of the rucksacks.’ Nabila shook her head. ‘Help me here. He’s almost dead.’ Behind them, another tank sang out, as though playing its part in a ritual to summon the dawn. Still, the only true light was from the moon and stars; but at any moment the first faint strokes of the coming day might appear on the eastern horizon.

The guard cried out in a choked and garbled voice, calling perhaps on his mother or his friends for help, or simply calling out against whatever simple thing had turned his life to agony. The cry seemed to pass through all his limbs. Suddenly everything in him went rigid, and his back arched incredibly, like a bow, and a great cry started to come from him, which Nabila had to stifle, and they both held him like farmers with a steer, and for a moment there was overwhelming panic in his eyes. He died like that, with blood in his eyes and in his ears. Nabila let his head fall back against the ground, and set about removing the darts from his neck and face, very carefully.

David relaxed the grip he’d kept on the man’s legs. As he did so, he glanced round. He caught sight of their bags, and a few yards away, the opening to the steps leading down to the tunnel. There, in the opening, a small shadow was standing, watching. David got up and made to go to it, but it vanished.

‘We have to get rid of the body,’ he said. ‘If his friends find him like this, there’ll be a manhunt from here to the Pamirs.’

They carried him to the tunnel entrance. David shone the torch down; as far as he could see, there was no one at the bottom.

They manhandled the guard to the opening, then let him fall. There was a heavy crunch, then silence.

They closed the wooden doors, and moved some of the rubble over them, so that the spot was well covered.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said David.

Nabila looked up. Beyond the tanks, she could see trees on the horizon. A star hung, luminous and diamond-hard, near the head of a tall cypress. And from the horizon itself there appeared a thin glow that signalled the coming day.

Cadogan Place London

‘F
uck on oota’ it! Ah said, fuck off.’

The Big Issue seller looked again at the six-foot excuse for a human being. He decided he was wasting his time in return for nothing but insults, made a gesture and went off in search of someone more in harmony with the coming millennium of love and universal brotherhood.

Calum Kilbride glowered after him. He hated beggars. He couldn’t see the point of them. Or understand why they gravitated towards him as a possible source of bounty and goodwill. Perhaps they were all blind. Or mentally crippled. During the months he’d spent in India and Pakistan he’d seen more than his fair share. He’d never given any of them a penny, however hideous their deformities or pitiful their aspect. "Ah’m fucking poor mahself!" had been his constant cry, sometimes punctuated by pulling out the empty linings of his trouser pockets. "All Ah keep in ma troosers is ma balls. So fuck off, ye radge wee turd." Beggars in India and Pakistan never believed this. You didn’t get to travel thousands of miles across the globe on what they earned.

He looked up at the house. Whoever lived here wasn’t poor, wasn’t even moderately well off. If they kept anything in their trousers, it was hand-made designer underpants that they wore once and threw away. He’d sniffed them when he’d turned up at the clinic. Not designer underpants, but pound coins, a hell of a lot of them, all sloshing about this kid Maddie.

In his dreams, he often imagined that a big London publisher had offered him a million-pound advance for a book of raw Scottish ravings. ‘Just talk dirty,’ the publisher said, dealing out the fifty-pound notes, ‘and make sure you write it in Scottish.’ Dirty Scottish words were the in thing, apparently. And drugs. He’d have to put in lots of the white stuff and have loads of characters in severe mental trouble on account of it. Calum already considered himself a master of the Dirty Scottish genre. He knew that one day the big screen in the Edinburgh Odeon would be shouting his own words back at him in stereo. Fuck the beggars then, eh? Fuck everybody.

In the meantime, he reckoned he could pick up a couple of hundred here if he played his cards right. He had it all worked out in his head. "Ah’m down tae ma last fifty pee." "Ah’ve had a gruellin’ trip, Ah’m near dead wi’ the fatigue." "Ah wis robbed by loonies gettin’ ootay China." If only he could get to the wee dame in person, he was sure he could exert his charm and charisma, perhaps even his sexual allure to make an impact on her emotions and her pocket. He’d cleaned himself up and changed his clothes since getting back. Nothing spectacular, but he’d caught sight of himself in a couple of shop windows. He didn’t doubt for a moment that he could still pull the birds.

He reached up and pressed the bell.

He waited. A little time passed, then unhurried footsteps approached.

‘Sorry,’ was Elizabeth’s first expression on seeing him on her doorstep. ‘We have a rule. No hawkers. I thought you all knew. You’re wasting your time here.’

He caught her just as she was closing the door.

‘You’re no’ Maddie Laing are you?’

‘Maddie? I don’t understand, what’s wrong?’

‘Ah cannae tell you. All Ah know is Ah wis given this address by a man called Rose. Ah have a letter fir this Maddie. Fae China.’

Elizabeth’s chin went up. There were only two possibilities.

‘You’d better come in.’

‘It’s no’ you, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t me.’

‘But she’s here, eh?’

‘We’ll see, we’ll see. For God’s sake, wipe your feet on the rug.’

It had been raining most of the day. He’d let himself get wet in the hope of extracting a few more drops of compassion out of them.

She took him to the living room. He gawped once or twice and collapsed into a large armchair.

‘Drink?’

‘Wha’?’

‘Would you like a drink? Sherry - no, perhaps not - gin, whisky? Ah, yes, you seem like a whisky sort of person.’

‘Maybe a wee ...'

‘Yes, I know. Dram. Certainly. I’ll join you. I scarcely touch the stuff nowadays. How about you?’

‘Ah ... Ah’ve been on ma feet. Travellin’, likes.’

‘Yes. You suggested that. I seem to remember the booze in China leaves something to be desired. A pale imitation, if you can get it at all.’

‘It’s a’ fuckin’ ...'

‘Don’t say it. This is a tranquil house.’ She smiled wickedly at him. He seemed like fun. Not the sort of person she met every day.

She thrust a thick cut-glass tower at him and he took it. His hand shook and his nose threatened to spill on the carpet. He wiped it on his sleeve and tried to smile.

‘Tissue?’ she said, aiming a large box of Kleenex at him.

‘Right. Aye. Just the thing.’

‘Now,’ said Lizzie, ‘I’m Elizabeth Laing. Tell me all about it. But do leave out the swear-words. They’re my prerogative.’

Upstairs, Maddie lay in an untidy ball on her unmade bed, humming. The notes of her humming hunted for perfect pitch but invariably failed to find it. At times the hum became a sort of wail. Her dead brother’s name sang through it all, like the steady thrum at the heart of a mantra. The bitch her mother was taking her to a guru, some sort of Indian Rasputin in a hand-stitched turban and bare feet who made a comfortable living battening on the gullible souls of Knightsbridge and all areas adjacent.

She lay on her back and screamed at the ceiling, then put her hands over her head when it screamed back. Why had Lizzie told her about Sam? She wasn’t ready, she couldn’t cope, not with this much grief, not all at once.

Her mother had started to cut back on her tablets. When she was leaving the clinic, she’d overheard Dr Rose pleading with her mother not to reduce the dosage under any circumstances, not without his express permission or that of another psychiatrist. Now, her lithium was way down, her Prozac was being slashed, and her other drugs had been flushed down the toilet pan. She desperately wanted to get to a telephone and ring Rose, check what he thought, ask him to get her out of here - she was well over eighteen, after all, and not even her mother had the right to keep her here against her will; but the door was locked night and day.

‘And what did he look like? This man, the one you say handed you the letter?’

‘Ye dinnae believe me?’ Calum was growing to dislike this pompous woman, with her serious hair and alcoholic eyes.

‘No, Good Lord, of course I do. It’s not that at all. Why should I disbelieve you? I’m sure you’re very honest. You look very honest from head to toe. If you shaved and had some decent clothes, you might even look quite presentable. Physically.’

It had not taken Lizzie long to see that beneath Calum’s rough exterior there lurked an even rougher interior. Wash him, put him in Boss underpants, and he’d grace any catwalk. Or bedroom.

‘Cut out the crap, will ye? Ah’ve brought the fuckin’ letter. All Ah want is ma reward and Ah’m oot o’ here.’

‘Such impatience. Look, McGonagall, I’m not running a nursery for the totally deranged here - though, considering what I’ve got upstairs, I might as well be. Before I part with good money, I want to know this extra thing: What did he look like?’

Calum gave a rather wooden description. His memory of David was hazy. He’d been stoned at the time, and the wee wanker with the envelope had been just another native.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ exclaimed Elizabeth. ‘Stay there.’ She flounced off, and came back half a minute later carrying a framed photograph.

‘Is this him?’ she asked, pointing to a man on the right of a group that included herself and Maddie.

Calum took the photograph and squinted at it. It was a good likeness. And he could see the resemblance between him and the girl.

‘Ay, likesay, that’s him. Was this taken oot there, then? Was the wee man your guide or somethin’?’

‘Don’t be such a bloody retard. The “wee man” is the girl’s father. The girl is Maddie Laing. She is David Laing’s daughter and my daughter too, which makes me his bloody wife, though as you can currently see, he and I are not exactly living a marital existence.’ 

‘How’d you come tae get hitched tae a Chinese guide?’ 

‘Forget about it, Hamish. You say this was in Kashgar?’ 

‘Ah dinnae take kindly tae bein’ called Hamish. It wis ootside the Chini Bagh.’

‘That means nothing to me. And I’ll call you what I damn well like. You say it was on the day a curfew was imposed? Nothing in, nothing out, except for the bus you were on?’

‘The Karachi Express. It’s what we called the squits all the time we wis on it. Ah’ve been overtook by the Karachi Express in more toilets than you’ve set foot in.’

‘Don’t be so sure about that. You’re certain he stayed behind, the man who gave you the letter?’

‘That’s why he handed me the letter in the first place. The Chinese wirnae lettin’ the natives oot. An’ he was well hitched up tae a wumman. Nice wee thing, fancied her masel’.’

‘I see. A woman. Well, I’m not surprised. Good luck to them both.’ She basked in the thought that Anthony would be pleased with her, rotten pleased. He’d be pleasantly submissive tonight in bed, she thought. Which brought her back to David and his ‘wumman’. One of his own type, no doubt, an ending he richly deserved.

The thought of David’s infidelity - as she deemed it - had a curious effect on Elizabeth.

‘Not bad, this whisky, eh?’ she said, draining the last mouthful from her glass. ‘Shall I top you up?’

‘Ah’ve got tae be goin’. Maybe Ah should take the letter tae the wee girl now.’

‘Oh, no, out of the question. Look - what did you say your name was?’

‘Calum. Calum Kilbride.’

‘Well, Calum, I have a distinct impression your clothes are on the wet side. Why don’t you stay for a shower and brush-up while I get the girl to dry them out? Then we can see about this wretched letter.’ 

‘Well, Ah … Ah dunno. He said …’ 

‘Who, David?’

‘Ah dinnae ken. The man who handed me the letter. Said there’d be somethin’ for bringin’ it here. Ah widnae bring the matter up, likes, except… The fact is, likesay, Ah’m doon tae ma last fifty pee. And Ah’m near dead wi’ the fatigue and all.’