Lie of the Land (16 page)

Carl checked the date on the front of one paper: four months before Glasgow became the third city under Civil Contingencies Enforcement. He used to go out then, socialise, go to the theatre, plays at the Citizens. He had a life. They tried to ban that play at the time, fuck knows if he could remember the name. It closed after four nights; didn't tour. Funding was cut. Official threats.

Eric. Lesley.

He leafed through some more issues, opened another bundle, stopping as soon as he saw the masthead and the headline's first word. He knew which issue he was holding; his first big scoop, the flats in the East End built on contaminated land. The same front page was hanging, framed, back in Glasgow on his bedroom wall. It may as well have been on the moon now. He unfolded the old newspaper and spread it out tenderly on the floor.

The date was five years before the privatised insanity of CivCon, when targets were plentiful and you could be sure of hitting one if you pointed your nose in the right direction.

For years this front page had hung in his room and he'd barely noticed it. Now he touched the dried-up, yellowing newsprint with his fingertips.

And then he saw it clearly. His old life was no longer invisible; it was present and alive in his longing for something that he couldn't return to. This was all he had been, right here, in 500 exclusive words, part of an award-winning series. How many articles had he written altogether? How many deserving targets had he harried over the years? His words, or rather the paper they'd been printed on, had become a resource of a different kind now. The paper was more important than the words. In fact, the words served no purpose. Truth was now measured in calories, and his investigations were all closed – spiked on thousands of SCOPE transmitters. Maybe the village would use the paper for something. It could still have a vital function to perform, like wiping arses or as bedding for animals. The committee would
decide. Truth was now a full stomach and a warm room: the same as it had been before SCOPE, for many. No wonder people never wanted to know the truth he'd been trying to serve up, in steaming piles, on a plate. They had other things to worry about, like eating and paying the bills.

Carl tossed the old newspaper back onto the pile, the layered strata of his fossil life. It hadn't amounted to much. That was that. End of.

He went outside.

And there was the village, houses strewn along the edge of the northern headland; the viewpoint flagpole; guys on the pier; dark clouds brewing over the Atlantic. Out in the distance.

For the first time in a few weeks, he wished the pneumonia had finished the job.

He went round the side of the house to the shed. With a heavy nudge from his shoulder, Carl opened the door.

There was only one small window and the light was poor. The shed smelled of engine oil and creosote. As his eyes got used to the gloom, Carl could see a workbench along one wall and the guts of an outboard motor in pieces on the dirty concrete floor. Rusty saws hung on nails; a grass strimmer; a stack of old paint pots in one corner; oars, rakes and spades standing in another.

In a dark wooden chest he found literature of a different kind, also yellow with age like the newspapers. Internet printouts: women and girls of all ages and races, with their muscular male jockeys and sex toys. The detail was difficult to make out, so faded were the colours. Carl pushed the pile of loose pages out of the way. At the bottom of the chest was a grubby olive-coloured case of some sort, fastened by brown leather straps. As soon as he grabbed the case, he guessed what might be inside it.

It was a rifle — but only an air rifle. And he couldn't find any pellets. He held it in his hands, cold and heavy, took aim through
the window at the boatyard across the bay. It felt good to aim at what he'd love to hit.

Brandishing his ammo-less peashooter he went back outside and back into the house to find Terry.

‘You got any pellets for this?'

•

His hangover easing, Carl took the track at the head of the bay up towards the stalker's house. It was set apart from other houses, more in the hills than in the village. The noise of the biofuel generator made his brain hurt.

He knocked on the porch door. There was no answer. Peering through the dusty glass in the porch window, he could see walking-sticks in the corner, each one with a carved horn on the end, along with walking-boots, wellies and jackets. A barometer hung on the wall, and the framed photo of a woman. He knocked again.

No response.

Carl slung the air rifle over his shoulder again and headed back down the path. A dog barked behind him.

‘Hello there,' said a voice from round the side of the house. A scruffy Border collie trotted round the corner. ‘What can I do for you?' Alec John stopped. ‘Oh, it's you.'

Carl unslung the air rifle, walked back up the shell path. The dog came trotting towards him, tail wagging. He took a step back.

‘Hi. I found this in Cathal Sullivan's shed. Terry said you might have pellets for it.'

As he got closer to Alec John, Carl could see there was blood on his cheek, and on his forearms, and all over the plastic apron he was wearing.

Alec John took the gun and studied it. ‘You won't get much with this popgun. Maybe more rats and crows than Cathal did. It's in good enough condition, though.' He walked around the outside of the house. ‘I'm sure I'll have a tin somewhere.'

The stalker disappeared into a low-roofed concrete outbuilding. In the middle of the straw-covered floor, on a metal bench, the headless, skinless carcass of what Carl assumed to be a deer was splayed. Chains and hooks hung from a shiny metal runner that curved along the underside of ceiling beams and into a steel-lined cooler; saws and cleavers and knives glinted in the dangling strip light.

Carl tried not to gape at the remains. Pelt and waxy dermis in a pile. Hooves and head, minus the antlers, and a huge rubbery tongue lolling from a blood-crusted mouth. The smell of flesh.

Jess waddled in and stood, panting, near Carl. Alec John opened a few drawers and cupboards until he found three small round tins. He shook them. ‘Here we are,' he said, prising the lids off. ‘They're still pretty full.' He put the tins down on the trestle table next to the skinless, headless deer. ‘Help yourself.'

‘Thanks,' said Carl, eyeing the inside of the animal's ribcage. ‘Is that an ordinary saw you're using?'

Alec John went back to work on the deer's hind-leg, sawblade rasping through the femur. ‘Aye. A joiner's.' He smiled. ‘Once upon a time, if we knew the hygiene inspectors were coming we would get a proper butcher's saw out for them to see – they were sticklers for that – but once they left we'd get this out.' He paused, the saw still at work. ‘You look much better than the first time I saw you, up close.'

Carl couldn't meet the man's eye. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Getting there.' He picked up the tins of air-rifle pellets. ‘Thanks for these.'

The stalker jagged a hook into the carcass, hoisted it up by a chain pulley, and pushed it along the ceiling runner and into the cooler. He shut the heavy metal door with a thud. ‘You're welcome.'

Alec John watched Carl walk back down the track. After wrapping cuts of meat in old newspaper, the stalker put the parcels into big plastic boxes and loaded them into the trailer of his six-wheeled argocat.

He went back round to the front of his house, dog trotting at his heels, and opened the front door.

As always, his wife's smiling face met him in the porch – the framed photo an icon of her enduring presence.

18

‘What the hell's he doing with that gun?'

George was standing at the kitchen window, watching Carl fire pellets at old tin cans arranged along the fence posts.

‘Terry Sullivan gave it to him,' said Simone. She was gutting a pollock in the sink, slitting the soft white belly, pulling out the guts. Tail next, then the head, spine grating under the blade.

‘Well,' said George. ‘Trust that guy to have a gun.'

Father and daughter stood watching.

In total, Carl had about 300 pellets. After a few pot shots – without hitting a target – Carl did a quick calculation. How many pellets would he have to fire before he became reasonably proficient? How many would fly wide of their mark and be lost in the grass?

He lowered the gun and studied the line of five tins he'd placed on top of five fence posts. Perhaps he should rethink his target practice. If only there was some way to gather the pellets up once he'd fired them, so that he could re-use them. He looked around the garden for a solution and noticed Isaac sitting on the back step.

‘Can I have a shot?' the boy asked.

‘Maybe,' replied Carl. ‘But I've got to rig something up first.'

Isaac wrinkled his nose. ‘When can I have a shot?'

Carl ignored the boy and sized up two rowan trees at the bottom of the soggy garden. They were just the right distance apart. He went to the shed, Isaac on his heels, and dug out an old bed-sheet covered in crusted splashes of paint. He also found a length of rope and some string.

He rigged up his target range and pellet catcher. The tin cans
were now suspended by string from the rope he'd tied to both rowan trees. Behind the line of dangling cans was the old bed-sheet, staked into the ground so it wouldn't blow about in the wind. A sheet of plastic, to catch the falling pellets, was staked out on the ground with old tent pegs. His theory was ready to test.

He raised the rifle and fired. There was no satisfying
ping
of projectile on metal. But, he saw the pellet hit the sheet and, on inspection, he noticed there was a spent slug, intact, beneath the line of cans.

Bingo.

Pleased with himself, Carl loosed off a few pellets, then turned to offer Isaac a shot. But there was no sign of the boy.

He looked back at the house, saw Simone and George at the kitchen window, probably wondering what the hell he was doing shooting at tin cans in the garden. Should've asked about his little pellet-catching set-up before raiding the shed.

Simone had been playing her flute earlier, something by Debussy, Aeolian analgesic that must be resisted. Life has to be rougher than that.

He fired another pellet. There's always some fucking committee, or council or cabinet or conclave, he thought, enforcing and reinforcing their own particular worldview. People in authority were always giving you some spiel or other to justify their own positions. Whether it was shaman communing with ancestors or government ministers rhapsodising about fantasy futures, there was always a message to sell.

Ping
.

A dangling can jerked on the line.

About fucking time.

‘About bloody time,' muttered George at the kitchen window.

Isaac was sitting on the floor, wearing his visor and gloves, his little body jerking around as he played a game. ‘Mum, is Carl going to be my new daddy?'

George rolled his eyes at his daughter.

‘No, darling,' said Simone, ‘he isn't.'

Isaac took off the visor and considered, with relentless logic, his next line of enquiry. Before he could ask his next question, Simone hopped directly to what she knew was the next phase of the conversation.

‘Dad's in a place called Bristol, Isaac. You know that. It's very far away. I told you that before. And he's probably dead. I told you that as well. But we're all okay here.'

The brutal facts needed confirming, and reaffirming; repeating them was making the brutal facts stick in the boy's memory. It was easy for her to rattle off the salient points of the situation, even the one that involved her mother. If she just repeated the same phrases to Isaac as soon as he asked her a question, Simone could say the words like a mantra, and not have to think about their meaning. And that was no bad thing.

Soon, she'd have to tell Isaac something new, that he was going to have a little brother or sister.

•

In Room 7, Carl wondered how to disassemble the air rifle. Isn't that what people did, take guns apart to clean and oil them? Kneeling on the floor, he had the parts spread out on old newspaper. He was going to look after it.

At the head of the bay, beneath the bridge, there were rats in the rock embankment, so George had said. He'd also mentioned that he might be able to persuade Adam to take Carl back on the work crew. Carl said he'd think about it.

Well, he'd thought about it: Adam could shove his offer.

There was something satisfying about the feel of the metal and wood in Carl's hand; the snug fit of the rifle stock against his shoulder. And the
ping
of the cans! That made him feel good. Taking aim. Having an effect. When you don't have any real power,
even over yourself, you'll take whatever fetishised substitute comes to hand. With a screwdriver and pair of pliers he undid the rifle's mid-point hinge and exposed the spring piston inside. He poked it with the screwdriver.

In a heartbeat, the spring shot out of the stock, whizzed past Carl's face, and cracked off the plaster wall behind him so hard that it also bounced up and hit the ceiling before landing on the bed. Instinctively, Carl dropped the gun and jumped towards the door. He stood for a second, then went to look at the spring, now three times as long as it had been when compressed inside the barrel. An inch-deep hole had been gouged out of the plaster where the spring had hit the wall. Carl picked the spring up, the oily metal spiral flexing in his hand. Better a hole in the wall than his skull.

He looked at the space in the rifle stock from where the spring had rocketed, tried to slide it back in, and realised it wasn't going to fit. There was probably a special tool to do that; a tool he didn't have.

He thought of Simone. So much for the tool he did have.

When would her bump start to show? Everyone else would know the truth when it did. Carl knew that she had seen him looking. She knew the pregnancy, or at least the size of her stomach, was making an impression on him. The information had registered. But what Carl was doing with that awareness he himself hardly knew. The baby was growing inside him as well. It might have been taking all Simone's nutrients and energy, but it was stealing his fucking headspace, the dark shadow of it moving across the sun, blocking out everything else that he needed to think about. In a few months' time the eclipse would reach totality, and there would be no more light.