The Cutting Crew (18 page)

Officially, it would take forensics a long time to identify these remains. That wasn't going to happen; he would stay here. But there was no need anyway. Whoever had done this to Rosh's property - our property in important ways - had saved us the trouble. Out in the middle of nowhere, they'd burned the farmhouse almost to its foundations, and they'd burned this body beyond even that. But when it was done they'd returned and left us another message. On top of his body, they'd carefully placed Sean's wallet and badge.

Chapter
Twelve

Like I said before, I grew up in Turtle. My parents were good people by any standard you care to name. My father was hardworking and capable. He never found himself fitting into any traditional niche of employment, but he eventually founded his own business and did well. One of my clearest memories from when I was young is of my father, glasses on, peering over a sheet of finances that he didn't entirely understand but was determined to master regardless: sheer tenacity, and it paid off. It never seemed to bother him too much that my mother earned more than him she had worked in the same store since she was a kid, and ended up being the manager - and it didn't seem to bother her either. My parents' marriage was a partnership in the truest sense, and I always got the impression that the work stuff and the money it brought in was just a means to an end. That end was being happy together, living a good life, and raising me well. They were the best.

And they still are. They don't live in the city anymore. There was a place two hours' drive away on the east coast that we used to go to every summer on holiday, and when my mother and father hit retirement age they studied their accounts and figured out they had enough to afford a down payment on a cottage there. That's where they live now. Despite the care and love with which they'd raised me, it was one of those strange, inexplicable tricks of life that I hadn't grown up all that close to them. In return, they know enough about my life to be proud of me, which obviously couldn't be much.

I remember those holidays, though. And the thing is, I was never that keen on where we ended up. I guess it was always fun - my parents made sure of that - but in lots of ways I was just kicking my heels: killing time until we were heading home again. It was the journeys I enjoyed the most: the trips in the car, listening to music and staring out of the windows; counting down the miles; wondering if when we passed over the next brow we'd be able to see the sea. And the service stations that we occasionally stopped at - I liked them more than anything else, and was always on at my father to take the turnings and let us call into one for a while. There was something magical about them: a sense of shifting home or of refuge. Of course, they were always disappointing, in that nobody really did anything there beyond buying a few snacks and scanning the magazine rack, but, even so, the second we were back on the road again I wanted to stop at the next one.

There was one time we stopped at a service station when I was quite young: maybe thirteen, surely not much older. I remember that we were on the way back from our holiday rather than on the way out, and that the holiday had been a good one. We were nearly back at the city by that point, but it was a hot day and my father had been driving for a long time, so he took the turning without any prompting from his son.

We pulled in; we all got out. The car park was enormous - space for a few hundred cars - with the main services at one end and a crappy little motel on one side. Trees everywhere else. That day, there was a gentle breeze but no cloud cover, and the summer sun was really punishing the tarmac. There was a surprisingly large number of holiday-makers: all glistening skin, bad outfits and red tan lines. We walked through them: up the slight ramp and into the main building, past the ice-cream van by the entrance. My mother and I waited by the phones while my father went to the toilet.

After a minute, my mother asked if I wanted anything from the shop, and I said no. She wanted a paper - my father had insisted that she didn't buy one all week, or else it wouldn't have been a proper holiday, and she was desperate to catch up with the news. I asked if I could wait for them both outside in the sun, and she thought about it and then said yes. After all, I was a sensible kid: she knew I wasn't going to head off anywhere I shouldn't, and that it would take handcuffs and chloroform for a stranger to take me away. So I went back down the walkway, squinting against the sun, and I'd swear to God that I knew something was wrong even before I heard it - before I turned my head to the right and saw it.

But of course, I don't believe in God. Perhaps I should just swear.

When you see something out of the ordinary, you don't take everything in at once. Because most things that happen to you, you're used to them - they're everyday sorts of things that don't take much in the way of processing, and that means that you're very rarely startled or surprised by what occurs in front of you. It all just washes over, and it's only once in a while that you're forced to take a second look and think before you can understand exactly what's going on. Your brain, fooled into laziness by how normal things usually are, rubs its eyes, realises it might actually have to work for a living for once, and then immediately scrabbles desperately for reference points - something that it can at least start from in order to make sense of what you're seeing. That day, my first thought was: fight. A playground fight, where two kids go at it and everyone else rushes around, circling them, crowding in until they couldn't stop fighting if they wanted to.

The commotion to my right was a little like that, but different enough to chill me at a subconscious level. Looking back now, I can break it down. We weren't in a playground; this was an adult place where things like fights didn't happen, because adults were the ones who stopped them - that was their job. But the people moving over were grown-ups, and although there was nothing voyeuristic or eager about the way they approached there was also a sense of powerlessness to it. The steps they took were faltering.

Latent civic duty was moving them over while their better judgement was telling them to stay still; and many were doing just that, perhaps pretending there was nothing to move over for. The ones who were paying attention clearly wanted to do something, but they knew that they couldn't: they were all twitching fingers, unsure expressions. A few people - afraid - were simply walking away as quickly as they could, looking as though they wanted to hide. I would understand later that what I was seeing here was group denial. The inability of any single person to take action resulting in nobody doing anything at all.

I walked over mindlessly, on auto-pilot and in slow motion, edging past the people who were moving away. When I got close enough, I stood and watched what was happening.

There were about ten rough-looking men in a circle, all facing outwards. Perhaps they were some kind of biker outfit, because they were all dressed in the same old black leather and a few of them were wearing matching bandannas. The majority of them no in were keeping the crowd at bay, utterly implacable, palms out and pushing, warning away anyone who came too close. It was the flip side of group denial: nobody was going to fuck with these guys and they knew it. There were simply too many of them, and this was business as usual.

Inside the circle, a man on the ground was being beaten by another two. He was around my father's age and he was wearing dark-blue jeans and a pale-brown shirt. He had his eyes shut: screwed up against the pain from the kicks and punches he was receiving. There was something terribly foetal about him, curled up like that for protection, and I shivered as I realised that he was preparing himself for the end of his life. After that, I felt every blow he took, and experienced the same innate feeling of powerlessness that kept everyone else from doing anything either.

'Keep back.'

A member of the audience had gotten too close and had been pushed backwards. He staggered a little, and the biker who'd shoved him raised a finger to warn him off.

'Keep the fuck back,' he said, over the sound of blows landing thick and hard and constant behind him. 'He's going to die anyway. Just let him die.'

Suddenly, something happened and people began to move away.

'Shit! Get out of the way.'

They scattered: first a few, panicked into motion, and then everyone - everyone apart from me. A woman grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back, but I shook her off. Something was telling me that I needed to see what was going to happen. That it was important.

With the crowd thinning, I saw that the beating had stopped.

Now, the man was resting on his forearms and knees, and he was looking up. His face was a bloody mess and his long hair was hanging down almost to the tarmac, matted and red. As I stared at him, a bead of blood fell from his ruined eyebrow and made a small, spidery circle on the ground underneath his chin.

I glanced at that, and then at his face, and I took a step back.

Because the man was staring straight at me. His eyes were bright white and clear, in stark contrast to his red cheeks and forehead, and the black, glistening clot of his nose. He kept staring at me and I couldn't look away. I didn't see what happened - not properly but one second he was looking at me and then suddenly his face had smashed forward into the ground, and a puff of red mist hung in the air. He didn't move, but after the briefest of pauses a solid rope of blood flung itself out from the top of his head, nearly reaching my shoes. And then another rope, slightly shorter.

Painting the ground. Another, shorter still.

I looked up and saw that one of the men was holding a gun with a silencer on it. And he was staring at me.

I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.

'Martin.'

I turned to see my father standing behind me. My mother was beside him. They both looked frightened but determined.

'Dad--'

I was big for my age, but he picked me up almost effortlessly, turned me around and headed quickly away from the men. He held me firmly, confidently, but I could feel a strange electricity in his hands and I knew that he was terrified. My mother was walking beside us, watching the tarmac as though every step was a test she needed her full concentration to complete. There was a crackle in the air. Later - again - I would understand that they were expecting a bullet in their backs at any moment, and also that we were all genuinely lucky not to receive one. At the time, I wasn't scared. That would come later.

As we got closer to the car, my father put me down, but he left a strong, guiding hand on my shoulder. I remember that suddenly everything looked surprisingly normal. There were people walking between the cars, smiling at each other. There were the sounds of lorries, cars, trucks in the distance. Trees leaning slightly in the breeze with their leaves fluttering, seeming to catch the light in that fractured way that the sea does.

Here was the process in reverse, then. Walking back to the car, everything looked normal and everyday, but a part of my mind was now screaming that it wasn't, and I simply couldn't square the two.

What was wrong? Why wasn't the sky blackening? Why weren't people's faces melting away? It was wrong - a trick was being played on me here. I was suspicious of this pretend calm and felt like narrowing my eyes and glaring. This was how nightmares were: everything right apart from one sinister thing you just couldn't put your finger on.

As we reached the car, my father rounded on my mother.

'For God's sake, Ann. What the hell were you thinking?'

'I just ... I didn't...'

I stared at them both, because I'd never seen either of them like this. Never seen my mother this flustered: this stuck for something to say. And my father's big hands were flexing slightly, as though he was in danger of losing it completely and hurting someone. But the expression on his face held more fear than genuine rage, with flickers of relief around the edges. Seeing your father scared is a bad thing. I don't think you're a child again after you do.

'I just thought he'd be fine.'

My father shook his head and unlocked the car. We were back through the city gates before anybody spoke again. There was never a question of reporting it to the police; someone else could do that. Even though the car was silent, I understood that a kind of peace was settling between my parents. My father's hands were shaking slightly and he took the remains of the journey slowly. My mother just stared out of the window, resting an elbow on the rim and hooding her face; she was crying but trying to hide it. Even so, ebbs of relief were thickening in the air, and I allowed myself to feel them. This was something that wouldn't be spoken of properly again. There would just be a sweet and desperate undercurrent in our lives, which would tell us quietly but clearly how precious and wonderful life really was.

'Martin?'

'Huh?'

I looked up to see that Lucy was watching me. She was leaning against the side of her car, smoking. Rosh was still inside the motel, booking us a room. In the rainbow light cast by the humming neon sign above us it was difficult to read Lucy's expression. I would have taken it for her standard issue nonchalance except that she sounded genuinely concerned when she asked: