The Ice People (21 page)

Wicca’s leaders, of course, were no longer based here ever since they became the elected Speakers, or we wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of getting past the security squads. They’d been doubled, according to the screens, since Wicca had ‘lost ground in the polls’. In other words, now everybody wanted to kill them. But the children were still here, some of them at least. On our first morning, around nine am, two minibuses drove up in convoy and twenty or thirty young children got out and were escorted by female guards into the building. Too young to be Luke, though I scanned them, desperate. The guards were big women carrying stunguns, dressed in greatcoats of violent green. They looked harassed, and moved the children in quickly; the doors closed behind them in a matter of seconds. They were massive doors, which made the people look small. It was like a military operation. The kids were subdued and obedient.

I began to understand this was going to be tough.

As I was thinking that, the doors reopened and a woman with short blonde hair ran out and up to the first minibus, which was just leaving. She banged on the window till the driver stopped. Her body language was grim, urgent, and she dived inside the bus, stony-faced. Was it a bomb scare? we wondered, tensing ourselves. But she emerged again two seconds later, triumphantly waving a large brown rabbit with a floppy pink bow and impossibly long ears. The minibus tooted its horn and left, and she slipped inside the tall front doors, but not before I realised, with a spurt of hope, that it was Briony, with a new short haircut, she hadn’t left Wicca World after all. Kindhearted Briony, my almost ally.

It was another week before I managed to follow Briony when she came out at the end of the day. I wasn’t used to following women. I moved very fast after she rounded a corner, but to my surprise she was waiting for me there, poised, eyes hard, one knee forward, arms raised, like someone pretending to do karate, but the pose collapsed when she recognised me and anger was replaced by worry. ‘Ohgod, I nearly killed you,’ I thought I heard her say, then decided she must have said she nearly
called
me. ‘Don’t follow people, it’s dangerous,’ she said.

‘I’d never hurt you, Briony.’

She looked at me in a peculiar way. Her next thought was a kind one, all the same. She said ‘Luke’s okay. He’s got very tall. His mother sees him at least once a week, even though they’re so busy at the moment …’

I registered that she said ‘they’ not ‘we’, as though she and Wicca were separate, but it was probably an accident. ‘I have to see him,’ I said, hurriedly, walking alongside her down the street.

She stared briefly across at me with solemn blue eyes. ‘I can’t take the risk of bringing him again. They’re not very forgiving to traitors,’ she said, with a little shudder that was more than the cold. ‘I’m not in as strong a position as I was. I lost my job. Policy disagreements.’

‘I have to see him, or I’ll kill myself. And everyone else I can get my hands on. I’m
fucking desperate.
I’m not joking.’ I hadn’t decided what I would say, but the words tumbled out thick and fast.

She looked at the ground and walked a little faster. ‘He’s still singing. His voice hasn’t broken –’

‘I shall come back. I’ll blast my way in. If you won’t do something, I hold you responsible. Help me, for godsake. Just let me see him. I won’t make any trouble if you let me see him.’

‘I can’t. You don’t understand what you’re asking –’

‘I’m not asking, I’m tired of asking, I’m fucking telling you, I’ll shoot myself, back there on the doorstep, where the kids will all see it. Do you think that will be good for Luke?’

And so I bullied and lied my way in. I’m not proud of it, but it was for my son. Briony seemed amazingly attached to him (I’d started to find love in a woman surprising). She told me to come back at twooclock on Friday, and she would let me in through the service door. I must be dressed like a delivery man.

Look, I only wanted to save my son. I couldn’t foresee … I didn’t imagine …

The five of us met once more before the day. We considered, and rejected, perhaps too swiftly, my going in alone and bringing Luke out, depending on Briony’s good will (‘Never trust those bitches,’ said Timmy). Instead we decided to go in mobhanded as soon as she opened the door to me. So the die was cast. We drank. We were brothers. Paul looked at me with liquid eyes.

The day dawned thinly sunny and cold. I had slept badly, but at least I had slept. I spent the morning packing the boot with thermal sleepingbags, torches, tins, a huntingknife, some of Luke’s possessions – his camera, his microscope, his favourite crystals – but would he have grown out of them, and me? What if he’d forgotten me, or hated me? Perhaps the women would have brainwashed him. I packed the guns; of course I did. I was tempted just to take the ones we would be using, but accidents can happen, guns can get lost. Feeling reckless, and dangerous, for people were around, I hauled down the whole green bag in the lift and laid it on the floor beside the back seat. Most important of all, I packed our documents. Naturally I hadn’t got Luke’s passport, but passports wouldn’t help, the way we would be leaving. I had my copy of his birth certificate, as well as my own, and Samuel’s, and by excellent luck
his
father’s, my grandfather’s, carefully wrapped in tissue paper by Milly. (
Place of Birth
: Accra, Ghana. The keystone of our claim to freedom.) My sister and I had argued bitterly, after Mum and Dad died, over who should have their papers, and thankgod, I had won. Three generations of proof. I slipped them, carefully xylon-sheathed, into Samuel’s old brown leather dispatch case. Perhaps my father’s spirit might look after us; and my grandfather, who had believed in such things.

I’d decided to leave Dora to Paul. His most recent Dove, Lawrence, had a voice error, so Paul had passed him on to a Learning Centre, but regretted it, and was missing him badly. I knew he would make a kind owner for Dora – I’d never met a man as kindly as Paul. But at the last moment, just before the lads came, five minutes, in fact, before they walked through the door, I realised I couldn’t give Dora up.

She’d seemed to be watching me more closely than usual as I threw vests and jumpers into a suitcase. They have big eyes, Doves, with long quivering lashes, and she seemed to stare right into my soul. ‘I’m happy,’ she claimed – but her voice sounded quavery. And ‘Life is fun’ – but she didn’t sound sure. I picked her up, and her stubby little wings did their ‘cling’ manoeuvre, which was very like a cuddle. She felt warm and soft. Of course I couldn’t leave her, as simple as that – she was family. I was glad to have decided, and I carried her down in the lift to the car, and manoeuvred her sideways into the boot. ‘Sorry, Dora.’ I switched her to ‘Sleep’.

I went back up again feeling a bit better but wishing I had something else to give Paul. Some way of thanking him for all he had done – but then the doorbell rang, it was already twelveoclock, and the boys had arrived. Good boys, right on time.

We had a little whisky to give us courage. Ian produced some buzzers for us all. I did have doubts, but my hands were trembling, and we all took one, and then one more. I thought, my hands mustn’t tremble on the trigger. After two buzzers I felt a bit steadier. I played them Luke’s recording of ‘Wings of a Dove’.
Far away, far away … in the wilderness build me a nest, and remain there for ever at rest …

It was sentimental, but so was I – so were we, we men, we are creatures of feeling, of violent emotion, of love and anger, though some women think that we have no feelings, because we are sometimes short of words …
Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove.

And then we shook hands, all five of us, quite formally, and silently, and then laughed, and hugged, and went downstairs.

Outside in the street, the mean winter light seemed to make us look smaller than we were. Paul had very blue eyes. They looked worried that day, and perhaps he was not quite as young as I’d thought.

And then we were off. It was only just past lunchtime, and I’d got some sleep the night before, yet I found myself feeling curiously lethargic as the car sped on to the flyover with us all grimfaced, arms touching, quiet, our faces set in the flat white light. Something was going to happen, I knew, that would change everything that had gone before. These men beside me were my allies, my friends, my Roman phalanx, my noble Greeks. Going into battle. The car purred on, with Ian driving and Paul beside him and me in the back with the other two men lest there was a spot road check and I was recognised. The other four had all brought balaclavas; they would burst in behind me with the shotguns. I had the Magnum tucked into my belt, underneath my jacket, relatively light when I looked at the monsters the others would be toting, yet its presence was burning a hole in my jacket, pressing like a hand on my thigh and groin. The traffic thickened at the junction. There had been an incident with a transporter, and road police swarmed around like ants. We had to go slowly, quietly past them in a file of dully normal people, but nothing was normal, we would be too late …

‘Fuck this,’ said Ian, and suddenly pulled out and screamed past the queue of cars in our lane. A minute past two. I was cold but sweating, and I smelled the sweat of the others, too, acrid, fresh. Suddenly the building came in to sight. It looked – I don’t know – curiously motionless; I had focused on it so hard for so long that I expected it to be living and moving, waiting to confront me, ready for the battle. It stood still and gothic in the afternoon light which made it a different red from normal, rawer, duller, more like … meat. The windows glittered in the sun. I thought of an animal covered in flies. I wasn’t going to kill anyone.

I was breathing hard. My heart hammered. It was three minutes past, no, four minutes past. We screeched on to the pavement by the service door. Then everyone but Ian fumbled their way out, trying not to drop the guns. I felt breathless – and incredulous, because now they were going to put their balaclavas on. I halfwanted to laugh, but this was really happening, and Paul was pushing me towards the door. ‘Good luck,’ he said, and the little push became a little squeeze at the end, and I halfturned, and he looked at me, and I saw in that split second how much he loved me, and I’d never taken him seriously. ‘Thanks,’ I gabbled, ‘You’ve done
everything,
’ and I think I almost kissed his cheek, which was smooth as a boy’s, but there was no time left –

Six steps to the door. My legs were weak. It was fivepasttwo. Just five minutes late. She wouldn’t be there. She would be there. Luke would have been spirited away …

I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. I felt afraid to ring too loudly, too urgently, lest everyone hear me, but if nobody heard, how would I get in …? Then I heard the door begin to code, and braced myself, hugging the solid weight of the unfamiliar thing under my jacket.

The building spoke. ‘Delivery code,’ it said. ‘Inform delivery code’, but the last word ended in a strangled squawk and next minute the door was swinging open, and there was Briony’s frightened face. ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘I’ve disabled it, but come inside and shut the door behind you.’ I’d hoped, I’d expected that Luke would be there but ‘He went to the toilet,’ she said, ‘you’re late, and he was nervous, he couldn’t wait,’ and ‘Thank you, thank you,’ I havered genteelly, a homicidal maniac grinning at her with four heavies waiting just out of sight, and ‘Shut it behind you,’ she hissed at me, but I couldn’t bloody shut it, though I wanted to please her, though I’d never, ever intended to hurt her – I couldn’t bloody shut it, because mayhem, murder – I heard the sound of children singing, in careful harmony, not far off, and I knew all this was a dreadful mistake, that I had to call it off and go away – At that moment all four of them burst in behind me and nearly knocked me over as I stood there frozen; an instant of silence, were we all embarrassed? – and then they were shouting things from films like ‘Fucking get on with it’ and ‘Freeze’ and ‘Hands up’, and Briony was screaming, a thin high scream like the thin skin of something precious tearing, and then I realised it was Luke who was screaming, he stood there above us at the turn of the stairs, framed by a pointed Victorian window, and I leaped up six steps like an Olympic athlete and grabbed him, his boyish, miraculous shoulders, and said, ‘It’s Dad, Lukey, it’s Dad’, his eyes were enormous with love or panic, how could he be afraid of me? I pushed him down the stairs ahead of me as I heaved my revolver out of my belt,
no one would keep me from my son,
and then doors were opening off to the right and the guards had arrived in their grassgreen uniform, two of them,
with stunguns
, five, a dozen, running clumsily, pulling down their visors – I saw Timmy spin round curiously slowly and raise his rifle, I knew he would shoot – then the world exploded, I was battered, deafened, but I backed through the door on to the freezing street, clutching Briony and Luke in front of me, Luke seemed nearly as big as Briony, clawing at them frantically with my left arm and waving the Magnum in my right, saying a script that I somehow knew, ‘Don’t shoot, or both of them will die.’ But as I came out there was a little step, I nearly tripped and my finger tightened, I still don’t believe I could have squeezed the trigger but a thunderous explosion tore at my arm and a huge red flower, a gout, a flood, a great foul hibiscus of blood and flesh, instantly erupted from Paul’s thin chest, stopping him dead as he ran behind us … Stopping him dead. I think he died at once. He stared for a second, he looked young, he looked startled, he opened his mouth and a plug of thick blood on a stem of red jerked out of it, and Paul went down, I saw him fall, but we went on scuttling back into the car, just me and Luke and Briony, I know I yanked her by the hair …

The world was ending as we roared away, with Dora bouncing like a ball in the boot.

T
he weeks and months that followed were the strangest of my life. Strangest and most wonderful. They began in chaos, grief, regret. I had killed one man, and possibly more …