Light Errant (3 page)

“Does your brother know?” I asked her directly. She shook her head, mute and appealing,
don't tell him
. I nodded my understanding. Her brother Mahmout was at the college, though she was not. I knew him by sight, and by reputation: a hothead, too streetwise too young, a charmer with a ready smile and a knife just as ready, or so rumour said.

“Mahmout would kill him,” Marina murmured. I believed that, as absolutely as they did. For his family's honour, he would kill; and with that killing his family would be destroyed, himself jailed and perhaps his parents also, for a year or two before they were deported.

So no, Mahmout was not to know. They had come to me instead, with or more likely without her parents' consent or knowledge. What was I? Publicly, Sallah's English tutor; privately, her lover; more private still, I was a young man who knew too much about bribes and blackmail and all the excesses of power. My own family was expert in such practices. Marina knew something of that, if Sallah didn't. This must have been her idea; she'd be looking to me for a solution, a way out of a brutal maze.

And yes, I could give them that, I had it in me. There would be a price, of course, and it would be mine to pay; and yes, I owed them. I owed them both, more than they knew; so what matter if they were asking more than they could possibly know?

Besides, I was angry. Coldly, furiously angry, sick with anger in a way I'd not felt for years. I knew vileness, I was an old hand at recognising the stink of it; and oh, this was vile, this was worthy of a Macallan.

“What's his name?” I demanded; and almost wouldn't have been surprised if they'd said
Macallan.

o0o

I left the girls in my room, with instructions to finish the wine and sleep after if they wanted, share the bed, they were welcome to it; then go, I said, go out to the beach, enjoy the sun, have a coffee, have dinner, have fun. Lock up when you leave, I said, stick the key under one of the geraniums.

Where was I going? Never mind, I said. And don't worry, I said that too. I'll sort this out, I said.

o0o

Hot and eager the bike was, under my hard hands; hot and ready I was, even in the chill blast of wind it made as I devilrode it. Bareback under the sun's lash, I could never be anything else.

The police station was a modern concrete block on the outskirts of town, the ugly side, appropriately wreathed as often as not with a thick yellow hellsmoke, the downfall from a gross of industrial chimneys. I gave it a glance as I drove past, only hoping that Inspector de Policía Mañuel Garcia de Ramos found himself on duty and available this fine afternoon. If he was there, he would make himself available, I thought. If not, I thought I could get a message to him regardless. Good policemen—ambitious, promotable policemen—always stay in touch; and he would declare himself on special duty when that message arrived, I thought, whatever private pleasure he might previously have been pursuing.

Past the police station and a long way past, past the factories and the processing plant, through the burnt-chemicals-and-fishguts fug and at last out to where I could breathe again; and now the road was increasingly rough, breaking up for lack of use or care, as I came to the next headland. No town here, no usable harbour so no village, even, no human habitation. Just a ness, rocks and shale and grass like wire and a far fall down to the sea; God alone knew why they'd built a road this far in the first place, no blame that they hadn't bothered to maintain it. At night, I knew, teenagers came out here in their fathers' cars, wrecking the suspension with the potholes and the jig-a-jig. You could see all the headlights from town sometimes, lighting the place like a carnival, beaming like a signal out to sea. There was little action in daylight, though, and none at all right now, in the muggy heart of the day.

I checked that, then turned and retraced my tracks for half a mile, to the last of the industrial estates. Here were bus-stops, and here also public phones; in my head, the number Sallah had given me.

“Inspector Ramos, please?” No trouble to sound like a young English traveller, tense and nervous and a little excited; I pretty much was all of those, for real.

“
Si.
”

“Er, do you speak English?”

“A little. You speak, I understand.”

“Okay, good. Great. Listen, there's a girl, out on the Munchial? You know where I mean?”

“
Si.
Yes, I know. What girl?”

“She's standing right on the edge there, and she says she's going to jump. She says she wants to talk to you. No one else, she said, only you...”

“Her name?”

“Sallah, she said. That's all, she said you'd know...”

“Yes. Your name, please?”

I gave him a false one and said I was just passing through, not staying in town, I'd only stopped for the view and a doze in the sun. Better hurry, I said, the girl looked desperate...

He said thank you and goodbye, told me not to go back to the headland, not to go near the girl; then he hung up. I drove a couple of hundred metres down the road and then pulled off it, parked in the shade of a high wall and waited.

o0o

Ten minutes, twenty, and here he came. Not in a jam sandwich, a
coche-patrulla
, a police car with sirens blaring and lights aflare (the Mexican kids at college just called them
coches
, with a particular twist of the lip to tell you they weren't talking about ordinary cars but they did indeed mean pigs, which the word also meant to them): fast but quiet he came in what was probably his private car, unmarked and unremarkable, barely breaking the speed limit. But he was still in uniform, he'd had no time or chance to change that. I was certain of him.

I gave him a fifty-metre start, and followed. It occurred to me then, briefly, that I didn't actually know why he had come, though I'd been absolutely sure that he would. To gloat? To bully or persuade or entice Sallah back from the edge—or else to push her over, literally or metaphorically, to cut his small losses and be assured of silence?

I couldn't say, I didn't know the man. I knew only the one thing about him, indeed, that he was spiritually flesh of my flesh, all my family incarnate in one man when I thought I'd left them a thousand miles behind.

Dangerous as a Macallan, ugly inside and no main beauty on the surface either; and stupid with it, stupid with arrogance, that was another trait shared between my kin and him. One phone-call from a stranger had fetched him, alone and unquestioning; he wasn't even watching for a tail.

I drove behind him, hating him, all the way back to the point. A heavy-set man, mid-thirties, glossy black hair and a five o'clock shadow; that much I'd registered, even through the windscreen and his hurry. The interior view concerned me more, though. Whatever he was hurrying towards, it was meant to be his own benefit and none of Sallah's. Already he'd broken what had seemed so strong in her, the absolute conviction that the world worked, that what was right was clear to be seen and engaging with it simply a matter of choice. She was wrong, of course, but admirably so and I'd loved her for it; and that was gone now, shattered like the movement of a sprung clock and probably irreparable.

Irreparable from his side also, his fault unredeemable. Anger had worked this ambush, my anger had fetched him to me; now, now was the time to unleash it.

Second time today I'd broken all the vows in the world, reclaimed my heritage, made myself monstrous. On the football sand it had been a momentary inspiration, pure ego, weakness disguised; here it was cold and deliberate, and for cause. This I could live with, and its consequences also.

Actually, I could live with the other also. Being weak was not a worry, it was an old and half-forgotten habit that felt like coming home.

o0o

The road here hugged the cliff-edge, before petering out among rocks and grass. The sun was bright in my eyes, hot on my skin but my blood was hotter beneath, remembering the chill on Sallah's face.

All I needed to do, all I did was to focus, to reach out with my mind's hidden strength, to allow my fury a moment's release.

As God is my witness, was my only witness that day—if there is a God, which I doubt, which I usually deny—all I meant to do was bring pain and ruin to a vile man, to destroy his life and his career, to save Sallah by putting him in hospital and on the pension list. The rocks were my targets, not the sea. A tumbling wreck I wanted, and I was ready to nudge, to push, to bend steel if necessary to make it happen.

All I did was use my talent to set his tyres alight. No more than that. Just a touch, just a thought of pale flame in sunlight and there it was, a fierce shimmer in the car's shadow and soft explosions after.

Not my fault, surely not my fault that he was stupid or unlucky or just surprised and not thinking straight: that when he lost control, when he felt the car veer he turned the wheel left instead of right.

Nothing I could do then, nothing but watch as the car skirred the wrong way, left the road to hit air and not rocks, seemed to hang like a cartoon joke for a moment before it plunged out of my sight.

Nothing to do but slam on the brakes and skid a little myself, fight the Beemer to a halt on the bad road and sit still for a breathless second before I kicked the stand down and set reluctant sandals to the tarmac, walked slowly and shakily to where blackened tracks marked a fatal take-off.

I stood and looked, looked down; saw a crushed chaos of metal and presumptive flesh, saw it tip and roll in the tidal suck, saw it sucked under.

o0o

Not wanting to count, but that made two policemen I'd killed in my life, and neither one intentionally. This should have been easier to live with than the other, but not then was it, nor later. Still not. Among other lacks, I don't have my family's traditional insouciance.

o0o

A few minutes I guess I stood there, not really thinking, only tasting defeat and acceptance, not justice but a just return for arrogance. Mine, as much as his. Then I mounted the bike again and drove slowly back to town with a sense of finality riding my shoulders all the way, a barrier between the sun and me.

This much at least I had expected and planned for, that I would be packed and gone by sunset. Even if my designs had worked as they were meant to, I couldn't have stayed. Room and job both were sacrifices to the day's necessity; Marina and Sallah both, and all my easy pleasures. A bad man's unintended death didn't even add urgency, only bitterness.

I parked in the courtyard, in the shade; trotted up the stairs, bent to find the key beneath a geranium pot, let myself in. Shoved armfuls of clothes into a rucksack, carried the rest of my gear down—little enough: a few books, a few folders, a few precious mementos—to stow in the bike's panniers; went back up for one last look round, nostalgia and practicality mixed, then locked the door, dropped the key through my landlord's letterbox and drove away with no more farewell than that.

Hit the road as so often before, but no longer pretending I was rootless, or a free spirit, or young and alone in a wide and wonderful world. Comes a time when running and hiding can't cut it any more, even for a craven soul like mine.

Where was I going? I was going home.

Go slowly, come back quickly.

That hadn't been the plan, actually, neither part of it: I'd left home, left town, left friends and family and life behind me in a roar and a
hurry, hurry
fury, and I hadn't planned to come back at all.

But once gone, once irrevocably somewhere else—Manchester as it had happened, but it might have been anywhere: I'd simply driven until I wanted to stop, not looking ahead at all, only making a trailer for the road-movie of my future life—the air and the tarmac and everything I touched had been suddenly gluey, and my toes were growing roots. I wasn't finished with the going yet, I knew that, I might be gone but I wasn't gone nearly far enough; but it was suddenly impossibly hard to go further. Once stopped, I couldn't get started again. Took me months to get out of the country, though I'd known all along I had to go. Things to do and people to see, I had, people to
find
: and there couldn't be many of them and the world was broad, and I was damn sure they were none of them on this small archipelago with me. With us.

If they had been, my Uncle Allan would have found them, long since.

o0o

Two years ago, that was: me with my eyes wide and all my antennae outstretched, gazing at the far horizons. Looking and looking but too stupid scared to leap, perhaps; clinging, at any rate, finding excuses, finding months'-worth of things to do, people to see, anything that would keep me yonder side of the Channel a week or two longer.

And here I was now, most reluctant of prodigal kids returning, in no kind of hurry to see the old homestead one more time but hurrying none the less. A slow going I'd made of it to be sure, but the coming back was manic, taken at a sprint, longest possible distance in the shortest possible time.

Always is the longest in distance, this particular journey. Count it, measure it. Name it. Heaven to hell? Freedom to slavery, fantasy to reality, there to here? They say you can't go home again, you can't step twice into the same river; sometimes I say that you have to. And it's one mother of a slog getting back there, so much ground to cover and the roads not built for returning traffic.

Hard work also, swimming against the rush of your life. I was tired after just the run up the coast to Santander, which was always going to be the easiest stretch of the journey. Tired but not sleepy, no question of sleeping: I caught the overnight ferry but never for a moment thought of joining the crashed-out backpackers on the banquettes. I munched a cheap burger—no BSE scare for me, I
knew
how bad my blood was, what madness I carried in my veins—and chugged my way slowly through a giant bottle of Coke for the caffeine kick of it; spent a lot of time up on deck, watching lights define the darkness on the water; finally found my way to the video lounge for the in-float entertainment and watched
The Dirty Dozen
for what might have been the dozenth time in a world that liked to round things off nicely, but almost certainly wasn't.