Mr. In-Between (25 page)

There remained a nagging desire for some expression of liberation. He considered burning the house to the ground, but the thought of the inevitable violence of the conflagration bored him. He thought about simply destroying the house's contents, but they meant so little to him that taking the time to smash them seemed somehow more petulant than exultant. He thought about squatting and planting a shit in the middle of the carpet and found that, for a moment, the thought appealed. But once the moment had passed so had the thought.

Instead he moved steadily from room to room giving each one a last tidy-round, putting his things in order. He disconnected the water at the stop-cock and pulled all the plugs from the sockets. He ensured all the windows were locked. He gave the vacuum cleaner one last, quick polish.

He had no clear idea of where he intended to go. He felt neither guilt nor anything which might accurately be described as regret. Instead there was unspecific irritation and a restless boredom. And there was tiredness: tiredness which came not from lack of sleep but fear of it.

Finally, resigned to the fact that he was unable to generate a sense of occasion, he paused once more before leaving to retrieve his knife from the sock drawer, his lighter from the kitchen and his overcoat from the hallway, for although it was spring he could not yet shake the winter chill from his bones.

He closed the door on the house, slung the bag over his shoulder and began the walk to where he did not know.

He had not gone far when the familiar Aston drew alongside him. Smoothly and near silent, it pulled up to the kerb outside a local newsagent within sight of a primary school, from the playground of which it was possible to hear the voices of children playing being carried on the grimy breeze.

There was no surprise, no nauseating lurch deep inside him, no urge to drop his belongings and break into a mad, headlong dash for life and freedom. There was just a sense of inevitability which felt more like returning than leaving.

He lowered the overnight bag to the gritty pavement, turned and squatted at the rear window of the car.

Behind the inevitable oval Raybans, Phil wore no expression. The collar of his white shirt was starched and smart, his tie understated and formal. He moved his head not one increment in acknowledgement. Jon was very proud of him.

In the rear sat the Tattooed Man, in a black overcoat and dark grey suit with a subtle, indistinct check. He wore a red floral tie loosened at his neck. He looked relaxed and comfortable and his smile of greeting was as feral and luminous as ever. His face crinkled with the same indulgence, the same unabashed fondness.

‘Well,' he said. ‘Good
morning
to you Jon. How've you been keeping?'

Jon smiled in return. He could feel the distortion of the skin at the corner of his eyes.

‘Oh,' he said. ‘You know. So-so.'

The Tattooed Man laughed heartily. He patted the seat next to him.

‘You coming then, or what?'

Before he could answer, Phil had emerged from the driver's seat, taken his bag and thrown it into the boot alongside two calfskin suitcases. Jon stood and faced him. Phil broke into a wide grin. Jon could not help but reciprocate. Wordlessly, they shook hands. It was a good moment.

When he was in the car the Tattooed Man offered Jon a Murray Mint. Jon accepted and they sat for a while in companionable silence, the Tattooed Man crunching down on sweet after sweet, Jon making his last until it was a thin sliver on his tongue. The only other movement of which Jon was aware was the occasional flicker of Phil's eyes in the rear-view mirror as he negotiated the city traffic, imposing a stately gravitas on its verminous anarchy.

At length the city began to dissipate, its last tendrils losing hold on the sleek, speeding body of the immaculate old car. The inner city gave way to trading estates, trading estates to the satirical blandness of suburbia, suburbia to uncongested motorway. Eventually they left the motorway for straight, ill-maintained A-roads, then A-roads for quiet country roads upon which there was little to impede their progress and upon which Phil, with stolid solemnity, drove at maniacal speed.

There were cattle in the fields, moronically ruminating and even some early lambs, unsteady on spindly legs and foolishly bewildered. They stopped for a while to watch a ewe giving birth, easing from inside herself a steaming grey lump of tissue which began to form itself into the semblance of a lamb. The farmer or vet who attended wore a red baseball cap emblazoned with the Budweiser logo.

The Tattooed Man watched, enraptured. Jon watched him for a while, then lit a cigarette and offered round the pack. The Tattooed Man took one without shifting his gaze from the neonate in the damp and muddy field.

‘Astonishing,' he said.

Jon agreed. Phil remained diplomatically silent, casually tipping ash out of the window.

Soon they were on the move again.

‘Where are we headed?' Jon asked.

Redundantly, the Tattooed Man nodded ahead and said, ‘Cornwall. Now that everything's quietened down I thought I'd treat myself to a few days off by the sea. It's been a long time since I spoiled myself.'

He unwound his window, placed his elbow in the open frame and placed his jaw on the back of his fist. Jon copied him and despite a cool spring breeze made arctic by the extreme velocity at which Phil insisted upon driving, they sat mirroring each other like this, watching white clouds scud and skim across the horizon like it was the surface of a pond until the wind drew tears from their eyes and it became difficult to see.

They stopped at a craggily picturesque Cornish seaside town that had yet fully to emerge from its annual hibernation. The Tattooed Man bought Jon and Phil a cream tea in a hideously quaint restaurant full of bigoted and evil old women. The Tattooed Man called them the Tory Dead and Phil laughed so much he sprayed the table with moist crumbs of scone.

In an arcade Jon and Phil took turns on a frenetic and Technicolor arcade game. Despite his apparent inability to resist napalming civilians (for which points were deducted) Phil consistently won. Each time he did so he clapped Jon companionably on the shoulder and called him a fucking loser. Equally companionably, Jon told him to go and fuck himself.

They took a walk on the breezy front, parallel to a beach deserted but for the insane, the foolhardy, dog owners and the newly in love. They stopped at a beach-front shop and Phil bought a football. The Tattooed Man huddled in his overcoat on a striped deckchair and watched the oddly coloured sea while Jon and Phil kicked the ball from one to the other, shouting insults as they did so.

When they were tired, the three of them walked back towards the town. They sat dangling their legs over the harbour wall, eating fish and chips from paper with their fingers. They watched decayed fishing vessels bob lightly on the incoming tide. They talked about the nostalgic aromas in the air, sea water and fresh fish and salt and vinegar. Then they fell quiet and just watched the boats.

Back in the warmth of the car, Jon found himself fighting to stay awake against the hypnotic hum of the engine.

‘It's the sea air,' said the Tattooed Man. ‘It's tires you out.'

The sun was low in the sky and the breeze was picking up when the Tattooed Man leaned forward and tapped Phil on the shoulder.

Obediently, Phil turned the car on to what was little more than a half-erased impression of a track leading off from the road. The car bounced and jostled up a gentle but persistent gradient for perhaps ten minutes. They passed neither house nor car nor person nor animal.

When they finally reached a plateau Phil killed the engine and the Tattooed Man said; ‘Here we are, then.'

Shivery with sleepiness, Jon stepped from the car, huddling into his overcoat against what had become a robust, chilly wind.

They had parked close to the edge of a cliff. The ragged stone edge of England stretched deserted to their left and right. The descent of the sun into the sea far to the west cast shadows of industrial black on to the fierce solidity of the cliff-face. At the cliffs edge, sparse grass shivered. At its base, water boiled and crashed and hissed against outcrops like broken, fossilised teeth. Gulls wheeled in loose circles against the reddening strata of the sky, which were cross-hatched by luminous vapour trails. Testament to escape and arrival.

‘Look at that.' The Tattooed Man had to raise his voice against the wind. ‘That's my favourite view in the world.'

‘It's a long way down,' shouted Phil. He stood precariously at the edge, the wind buffeting bubbles into his white shirt and tossing his tie over his shoulder.

‘There are those with further to fall,' shouted back the Tattooed Man, and laughed at his own ponderousness. ‘Phil's right,' he yelled. ‘Go to the edge, Jon. Take a look.'

Jon walked forward and looked down at hissing white foam and black rock which shone wet like vinyl. From the corner of his eye he watched Phil perform a little cliff-top jig to generate warmth.

The Tattooed Man put his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and stood at Jon's side. They stood wincing against the wind while it whipped at their coat-tails.

‘It's all done and dealt,' said the Tattooed Man. ‘Done and dealt, chapter and verse. It's time now to move on.'

He took a step back. Without turning, Jon could picture the overcoat being brushed to one side as the Tattooed Man retrieved a pistol from deep inside its folds. He inhaled sharply when the gun was pressed hard to the base of his skull.

The boiling sea far below, stained by the sunset, made white noise in his head.

‘There is a single choice which determines the course of your life entire,' recited the Tattooed Man. ‘You elect to jump or allow yourself to be pushed. Those who elect to jump are of course free to choose in which direction.'

Courteously, he withdrew the gun and put his hands back in his pockets.

Jon wanted to turn to him and see his face, to memorise exactly the expression he saw, ambiguous though he knew it would be. But the moment was not right and anyway the sunset was dramatising, casting into the solidity of shadow and relief what was in truth equivocal, protean. He had no wish to make a lie of what was to be his final indivisible, incandescent moment.

He looked into the sun, bright enough still to blind him, and prepared to jump.

About the Author

Neil Cross (b. 1969) is a British novelist and screenwriter best known as the creator of the multiaward-winning international hit BBC crime series
Luther
, starring Idris Elba, and the international hit horror movie
Mama
. His highly acclaimed memoir,
Heartland
, was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2006. Cross has also written several thrillers, including
Captured
,
Holloway­ Falls
, and
Always the Sun
, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Cross continues to write for TV and film in the United Kingdom and the United States. He lives with his wife and two sons in Wellington, New Zealand.