Through Every Human Heart Page 13

  ‘We’ll need petrol soon,’ she said. ‘Have you got any money left?’

  ‘There is plenty. Could you stop somewhere along here?’

  She did as she was bid.

  ‘Move over,’ he told her, getting out and walking round to the driver’s seat which she obediently vacated.

  ‘Now get out, please.’ He drew out his wallet and extracted several large denomination notes. ‘I apologise about this, but I have to leave you.’

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ she protested.

  ‘I cannot help that. You will be safer here than you will be with me.’

  ‘No I won’t.’

  ‘Take this, and get out. Do I have to throw you? You know I can do that.’

  ‘He said you hated everyone, and he was right. You’re horrible, and disgusting. I don’t believe you were ever a priest!’

  ‘You’re right. I was never a priest. I just loved to get up before dawn, eat plain food, be cold all winter and sleep without a mattress. It was so disgusting and horrible it suited me perfectly.’

  She grabbed the money and got out, slamming the door exactly as he expected her to.

  A motorbike roared past. And another. Six seconds later, a third.

  He counted the seconds, right up to ten, and nothing passed, and it was safe to pull out into the road, and still the fingers of his right hand refused to turn the key. When he got to eighteen she was opening the driver’s door.

  He got out and let her in. He walked round to the passenger side and took his former place.

  Without a word, she started the car and they moved off.

  He saw the next speed camera sign as an alien, a square head with a striped neck, one big eye and one little eye. It seemed to watch him as they passed, trying to read his thoughts.

  They swung through a small village, with no one on its main street, and quickly out again into increasingly desolate countryside. White poles with pink tops marked the road. Snow markers, he guessed. Some sloped sideways, as if they’d been struck by passing cars. Away to the left one small tree was growing out of a boulder. Little else grew here, only straw-coloured grass, and clumps of old heather. Grey rock and pools of water, and mountains in the far distance.

  Something was happening on the road. The cars in the distance ahead seemed to be slowing, their warning lights on. ‘It’ll be a tractor probably,’ she said, ‘or sheep being moved. Normal happenings in this part of the world. Just as well it’s not rutting season or stags would be falling on us out of the hills. It’s most likely another geriatric caravan.’

  ‘Geriatric?’ he said.

  ‘People retire from work and go travelling in them. The older they get, the bigger the caravan and the slower they drive. Or else it’s motorhomes.’

  It was impossible to see the cause of the delay. The road curved with low hills on the right, and the moor on their left. She edged forward in second gear.

  ‘No, I think they are stopping the cars,’ he said.

  There was nowhere to go without making a dangerous u-turn. She was looking at the petrol gauge. Should he leave her, try to make his way somehow on foot?

  ‘What do you want to do? The nearest petrol is ahead of us,’ she said.

  He tried the phone again. Still no signal. They rounded the next bend. There was a little cluster of cars on the narrow left-hand verge, and a truck parked on the right, its nearside wheels in the ditch. Men were controlling traffic in both directions, stopping cars, waving them on. Ordinary men, he thought, although one wore an orange jacket. He couldn’t see any police cars. She was very calm. Surprising. Maybe she was one of those people who could shut things into compartments in their minds. Or perhaps she was so used to normality that the last couple of days seemed to her like a temporary aberration that would soon be put right. He still hadn’t asked her why she’d run from the police. And he was making things worse, making use of her, taking her further from the safety she deserved.

  What did you expect? You fail every woman in your life.

  Hiding in his bedroom, hardening his heart, reading Wild West stories behind the striped green curtains, with the cold glass of the window against his spine. Pretending to hear nothing but the whoop of Indians, the crack of cowboy guns, to feel only the heat of campfires burn his cheeks. Hardening his heart. Refusing to hear his mother crying.

  What could I do? I was only a child.

  But later? When you were taller than he was? When you began to doubt him? If you didn’t see it, did that mean it wasn’t happening?

  And Anna. More devotion he hadn’t deserved but had done nothing to discourage, even though he knew it was dangerous for her to boast about having him in the group.

  Because it pleased me.

  He stared at the barrenness surrounding them. A strange, melancholy landscape. Looking out of the plane, he’d been struck by how green this country was, how ordered its landscape compared to those at home, but here in the north there was little to please the eye. Low wiry bushes, and boulders and towering hills. The sky had grown dull, one all-covering mass of grey.

  I am perverse. I only want what I have no right to have.

  If the journalist was correct, if this was in fact a police roadblock for him, he would go to them, not crawl forward, waiting to be hauled out in view of all these people. Better to get it done. There had been too much running and hiding and stupidity. Without warning her, he exited the car, and walked quickly towards the tall, red-faced man in the orange jacket.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’ he asked.

  ‘Not me, pal. There’s been a bad accident. And here’s the rain now.’ He held his hand palm up. ‘Just what we need.’

  ‘Are there no police here?’

  ‘On their way, I think.’

  Feliks looked back at the girl. In the stationary line, it seemed every occupant of every car was straining to see what was going on. Only a few cars were being let through at a time. The air was tainted with exhaust fumes, thrumming with frustrated engines. There was a bearded man in a bright butter-yellow shirt on his knees beside a prone figure. Beside him, on a strip of weeds at the foot of the rocky outcroppings, lay a bicycle, with a pony-tailed fellow crouching over its chain. A middle aged woman with unnaturally red hair stopped him, barred his way.

  ‘There’s nothing to look at. Go back to your car please.’

  ‘What is wrong?’

  Then he saw the protruding boots, recognised the shape and colour. A blue and green checked rug covered most of Lazslo’s trunk. For a split second he hesitated, then, ignoring her and other voices around him, he went forward.

  ‘I know him,’ he said, pushing away hands that tried to stop him. Voices buzzed like disturbed wasps round his head.

  ‘Lazslo. Can you hear me? What happened? Lazslo, speak to me. Wake up.’

  He said none of it in English, bending down closer to the bruised, bleeding face.

  ‘Who is he? D’you know him?’

  ‘What language is that?’

  ‘Don’t move him.’

  ‘Leave him alone, you’re not helping.’

  They were all speaking at once.

  He stood up, and the people didn’t make any move to stop him. At the car he motioned for her to roll the window down.

  ‘He’s dying. I should never have let him come. He trusted me and now he’s dying.’

  She stared up at him.

  ‘It’s Lazslo. I think he’s dying,’ he told her, in English this time. The words were even emptier in this alien language. Flat, senseless noises with no meaning. Butter. Why was he thinking of butter? Suddenly he remembered. It was his birthday. Laughing, drinking too much beer, the whole crowd huddled together for warmth like winter birds. Or like penguins, someone said, though none of them had ever seen a live one. Lazslo arrived late with an oblong shape in white paper, tied with brown string. He’d missed classes, waited for hours in a queue, and when Feliks took off the wrapping paper to reveal the bright, beautiful slab of yellowness everyon
e had applauded, slapping Lazslo on the back. He’d blushed, overcome by their approval. ‘Squirrel! Squirrel!’ they had chanted. Viktor had composed one of his instant poems, honouring Lazslo’s achievement, declaiming it upside down, his huge hairy feet planted like bizarre white fungi against the wall.

  You didn’t deserve this, Lazslo. Not even for the years you spent kissing Janek’s bum.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  He’d closed his eyes. The rain was darkening the pale brown of his jacket. His fists were clenched in his pockets. She wanted to know what exactly had happened, but didn’t dare.

  ‘I will go back and stay with him. They have already sent for the police.’

  Why am I doing this? Why do I want to help him?

  So, what would you do, if he was yours to help, Dina? Get rid of the beard, buy him some nice aftershave? Would you insist on plastic surgery too, to make him beautiful?

  From out of nowhere, Grandfather MacLeod’s voice came, reverberating in the Gaelic, ‘Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised’.

  And there he was, all of a sudden, on the road before her, as on one particular day when as a child she’d seen him, walking down the main street, walking slowly down the exact middle of it, in his relentless, tight-brimmed hat, defying all the cars, because it was the Sabbath, and people had no business to be driving. The locals, who knew the way he would take, avoided those streets at that hour, or bullishly drove without moderating their speed (though they kept well in to the side). Tourists, who didn’t know who he was, and therefore presumed he was insane, slowed, swerved, or waited. Those few who agreed with him respected him for it; the rest of the world called it arrogance. She’d never been able to decide. Still didn’t want to. Because this was the same man who told her she was the apple of his eye, who secreted mini-packets of Smarties in his study and smiled with delight when she found them after many hints of getting colder or hotter.

  She’d have to move the car, but he refused to get back in.

  ‘Well, you could sit down on one of those rocks under the banking,’ she suggested, ‘where there’s a bit of shelter. I’ll park a bit further on.’

  The rock he chose was too high. She couldn’t get up. If she did, her feet would dangle like a child’s. He didn’t sit, but leaned against it, so she did too. His head was down, chin on his chest. The rain grew heavier. She suggested again, in vain, that they go back to the car. He wanted to stay where he could see what was happening.

  Later she would ponder how different things might have turned out if she had gone back herself, or asked questions or even spoken at this point, if she’d been her usual stupid, thoughtless self and twittered on because she wanted to know everything.

  ‘I think he was afraid all of his life,’ he said. ‘Always unsure, always looking about him. We used to say he was waiting for the sky to fall. In the practices, at school, he could score goals, and we kept hoping he would, but in a real game it just never happened. But there were some things he could do really well. He could fix machines. From quite young. Mechanical things, a pump, or a boiler, you know? People used to ask him to come and fix things. And he could remember everything. He could look at a diagram. Wiring, circuits, the plan of a building, he could see it all in his mind. I don’t know where this talent came from. They said his parents were as dull as wood. He should not have been here. He was afraid to refuse Boris. If I’d known I could have objected.’

  ‘Who is Boris?’ she said.

  ‘My father. He is still the President of our country. How, I don’t know. He made Lazslo come with me.’

  ‘Because you were friends.’

  He let out a short, sour sound. ‘Because he knew we were no longer friends. It is the kind of thing Boris likes to do, you know? Take two starving dogs, put them in the cage, then wait to see them tear each other’s throats. Did Lazslo say we were friends?’

  ‘I’m sorry, It’s none of my . . .’

  ‘I didn’t have friends. They were my . . . my chess pieces, you know? To move and manipulate, to sacrifice for glorious democracy. It is very odd. I hated my father. I gave myself to everything he hated, but now I find I am exactly like him.’

  Fearful of his mounting distress, she looked away, trying to frame some kind of answer, some kind of comforting word. Abruptly his hand was on her chin, and the fierce pressure of his mouth on hers made speech impossible.

  ‘Is this a private session or can anyone join in?’

  The journalist. Frank. Under a big golf umbrella. She was so dazed, so embarrassed and breathless, she couldn’t say a word. Nor it seemed could Feliks. But he stood up and she was scared he was going to hit the other man, who must have thought the same thing, because he stepped back.

  ‘I’m sorry, that was uncalled for,’ the man said quickly. ‘Miss MacLeod, you’re drenched, take this,’ It was the umbrella, black and white panels, a wooden handle. ‘Go and sit in my car. It’s not locked. You know which one.’

  ‘Don’t . . .’ Feliks tried to stop her.

  ‘Trust me, I’m a policeman,’ Frank said. ‘I’m on your side, OK? Have mercy on her, man,’ this to Feliks. ‘She’s soaking wet and shivering like a drowning lamb. Have some sense. Let her go.’

  When she looked back, they were really close together, but not fighting. There was a red fleece rug bundled up on the back seat. She got in, putting the closed umbrella on the back shelf. The fleece smelled of fabric softener. She pulled it around herself, but the more she tried to stop shivering, the colder she felt. The outside world was a blur behind the rain-battered glass. Then after what seemed an age, the front passenger door opened and Feliks got in. He put the plastic bags from their own car on the back seat next to her. She waited and waited till she could wait no more.

  ‘This is insane, he can’t be a policeman, can he? What’s he doing? Should we just be sitting here? And you were supposed to phone that man again. Are you going to phone him? If he’s a policeman why hasn’t he – ’

  ‘Stop!’

  She stopped.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Frank got into the car and set it in motion.

  ‘They’ve sent for an ambulance. He’s unconscious, but he’s breathing, so there’s no need to despair.’ No need for the harsh truth, Frank figured, when a lie would calm everyone down. ‘There’s a couple of chocolate bars in the side door. You take one, and give her one.’

  ‘I demand you tell me who you are.’

  ‘OK. No need to yell, I’ll tell you all you want to know,’ Frank said. ‘You’re scaring her,’ he added. ‘If I said that Dimitar sent his regards, would that reassure you?’

  Berisovic’s face changed, as if he’d been slapped.

  ‘Let’s just drive for a bit, shall we?’ Frank said, and to his relief, there were no protestations. Berisovic passed chocolate to the girl but took none himself. There were mountains a short distance from the road on either side now, so bare and smooth they looked as if they might slide down at a given signal onto the narrow strip of tarmac. Sheep nibbled at sparse grass behind fencing.

  When they’d gone a fair distance, he began, ‘I’m not a reporter, but you knew that from the start, right? My apologies, Miss MacLeod.’

  Time for the clincher. He glanced in the mirror, reduced speed to be on the safe side, then, from under the dashboard, pulled out a gun.

  ‘This is real,’ he held it up, ‘but it’s perfectly legal and I haven’t had to use it for a long time. Here, you can have it.’

  Berisovic exclaimed in surprise, and fumbling, dropped the weapon onto the floor.

  ‘Don’t worry, Miss Macleod, the safety’s on.’

  This time he made proper eye contact with her. Convince her, convince him. Both or neither. He spoke to Berisovic, but was careful to glance often at her in the mirror as he drove, keeping her with him.

  ‘I am a policeman, of a sort. I work for . . . let’s just say I work for people who want to make sure that you and Miss
Arbanisi come home together.’

  ‘Show me your identity card.’

  ‘We don’t carry one. This isn’t America.’ He didn’t look down to see where the gun had gone. All this would only work if he put no pressure on Berisovic at all.

  ‘Who is the man who has taken her?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but it’s being looked into.’

  It annoyed him how slowly the desk boys worked, despite all the gadgetry at their disposal. He’d caught a glimpse of their strange world a few times. ‘We don’t let them meet normal human beings,’ he’d been told. ‘We just open the door and throw a few buns at them now and then.’ Of course, they were all in the same boat; he couldn’t tell normal human beings what he did either. Now and again, particularly when he was absent from Brenda and the boys for too long, he was becoming afraid that he too was merely part of a machine.

  ‘How do you know Dimitar? You have conversed with him?’

  Thin ice. All he knew was the name.

  ‘Not personally.’

  ‘How did he look? Has he cut his hair yet? I told him to cut it. It was a ridiculous length.’

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s just say he’s a friend of a friend.’

  ‘An English friend? But I think his English is very poor. His accent is bad.’

  ‘Yours is excellent. But then, you studied English Literature didn’t you, when you were . . .’

  ‘And have your friends spoken to my father also? Did he send his regards?’

  This had to be stopped. Berisovic’s voice was rising, his sarcasm edging into anger. ‘Look, I’m not telling you what to do. You can do whatever you want. But if you trust me, we can work together, we can deal with the bastard who attacked your friend Cristescu and get the Countess back safely.’

  Berisovic reached down, picked up the gun and pointed it at him. ‘Bang,’ he said loudly.

  The girl squealed from the back seat. Frank braked, managed not to swerve. When nothing else happened, he gradually increased speed. It was getting late. He’d have to find somewhere to keep them overnight. Easy does it, old son, he told himself. One thing at a time. He’s been through too much. His world’s breaking apart. Give the man some hard facts to stick it back together.