Darkmans (4 page)

‘Through every conceivable orifice.’

Beede’s nostrils flared at this cruel defamation, but he drew a long, deep breath and swallowed down his ire.

‘Okay.
Okay
…’ he murmured tightly. ‘So what do you think I “disapproved” of exactly?’

Kane threw up his hands. ‘Where to begin?’

Beede folded his arms. Kane duly noted the folding. ‘All right then,’ he volunteered, ‘you thought she was a tart.’

Beede blinked –

Tart?

‘
You
know…’ Kane’s voice adopted the tender but world-weary tone of an adult describing something simple yet fundamental to a wayward toddler – like how to eat, how to
walk
(‘So you put one foot…
that’s
it, one foot, very slowly, in front of the other…’)‘…a tart; a harlot, a strumpet, a whore…’

Beede opened his mouth to respond, but Kane barrelled on, ‘Although you shouldn’t actually feel bad about it. I was fine with it. In fact – if anything – it was an
incentive
of sorts…I mean romantically.’

He paused for a second, musing. ‘Isn’t it odd how the disapproval of others can often contribute so profoundly to one’s enjoyment of a thing?’

Beede opened his mouth to answer.

‘Tarts especially,’ Kane interrupted him.

‘Well she certainly dressed quite provocatively…’ Beede ruminated.

Kane waved this objection aside. ‘
Nah.
It was all just an act. Smoke and mirrors. A total fabrication. She was a sweetheart, an innocent. Her bad reputation was down to nothing more than a couple of stupid choices and some bad PR.’

‘But you still broke up with her,’ Beede needled.

Kane shrugged.

‘Indicating that perhaps – at some level – it
did
actually bother you?’

‘No,’ Kane shook his head. ‘It wasn’t ever a question of virtue with
Kelly. It was simply an issue of trust.’

‘Ah-
ha…
’ Beede pounced on this idea, greedily. ‘But isn’t that the
same
issue?’

‘Absolutely not.’

Kane smiled at his father, almost fondly, as if touched – even flattered – by the unexpectedly intrusive line of his questioning. ‘She wasn’t a tart. Not at all. But she
was
a thief, which is a quality I find marginally less endearing.’

Beede seemed taken aback by this piece of information.

‘She stole? What did she steal?’

‘
Huh?
’

Kane’s attention was momentarily diverted by a sudden commotion outside in the car park.

‘I said what did she steal?’

Kane struck his lighter again –

Nothing

‘You really want to know?’ he murmured.

‘I just
asked
, didn’t I?’

‘Yes. Yes you did…’ He sighed. ‘She stole tranquillisers, mainly; Benzodiazepines…’

Kane struck his lighter for a final time and on this occasion a flame actually emerged and it was a full 5 inches high (he always set his lighters at maximum flare, even if his fringe paid the ultimate price for his profligacy).

‘…Some Xanax. Some Valium. Some…’

He paused, abruptly, mid-enumeration –

‘Holy
shit!
’

The flame cut out.

A man.

There was a man.

There was a man at the window, gazing in at them. And he was perched on a horse; an old, piebald mare (the horse wore no saddle, no reins, but he sat astride her – holding on to her mane – with absolute confidence). He was a strange man; had a long, lean, pale-looking face underpinned by a considerable jaw, grey with stubble; a
mean mouth, sharp, dark eyes, thick, brown brows but no other hair to speak of. His head was cleanly shaven. He was handsome – vital, even – but with a distinctly delinquent air. He was wearing something strangely unfeasible in a bright yellow (a colour of such phenomenal intensity it’d cheerfully take the shine off a prize canary).

The window was horse-high, only; its torso banged against the glass, steaming it over – so the man leaned down low to peek in, as if peering into the tank of an aquarium (or a display cabinet in a museum). Kane couldn’t tell – at first – what exactly it was that he was looking for, but he seemed absolutely enthralled by what he saw (seemed to take delight in things – like a child – quite readily). He was smiling (although not in an entirely child-like way), and when his eyes alighted upon Kane, the smile expanded, exponentially (small, neat, yellowed teeth, a touch of tongue). He reached out a hand and beckoned towards him –

Come

Kane dropped his lighter.

As the lighter hit the table-top Beede turned himself and followed the line of Kane’s gaze. His own eyes widened.

The horseman kicked at the mare’s flanks and pulled away. There was a thud of hooves on soil (God only knows what havoc he’d wreaked on the spring flower display in the bed below the window) and then a subsequent musket-clatter on the tarmac.

Kane shoved back his chair and stood up. ‘Is the fucking carnival in town or what?’ he asked (noticing the quick pump of his heart, the sharp flow of his breath). He’d barely finished speaking (was about half-way to the window to try and see more) when a woman walked into the room. She was holding on to the hand of a small boy. She appeared to be searching for someone.

This time it was Beede’s turn to spring to his feet. The book on his lap fell to the floor. Kane spun around to the sound of its falling. ‘
Elen!
‘ Beede exclaimed, his face flushing slightly.

The woman did not acknowledge him at first. She merely paused, glanced from Beede to Kane, then back again, her expression barely altering (it remained bright and calm and untroubled. Almost serene). Kane saw that she had a large birthmark – a brown mole – in the curve of her nose, just to the right of her left eye, but it disappeared from view as a sheet of long, dark hair slipped out from behind her ear.

‘Did Isidore bring you here?’ Beede asked, trying (and almost succeeding) to sound less emotionally involved than before. She looked a little surprised as she pushed back her hair. ‘Of course not,’ her lips pursed together in a brief pucker of concern, ‘he’s at work today.’

She had a soft voice. The accent wasn’t Ashford but it was too vague for Kane to place it. As she spoke she released the boy’s hand. The boy walked straight past Kane and over to the window, but instead of looking through it (he was a little short for this, anyhow), he turned, shoved his back against the wall, and pulled the curtain across the top half of his body (thereby casually obscuring what remained of Kane’s view). Kane scowled (only the bottom half of the boy’s torso was now visible), glancing from the curtain and back to Beede again. ‘Did you
see
that creature out there?’ he asked, his head still full of what’d happened before.

‘This is my son, Kane,’ Beede murmured to the woman, in a light, almost excessively straightforward way.

The woman nodded at Kane. She smiled slightly. She was very lean. Her clothes were long and hippyish, but dark and plain and clean.

‘Elen is my chiropodist,’ Beede explained.

‘Hi,’ Kane muttered, glancing distractedly towards the window again, focussing in on the boy, who – quiet as he remained – was rather difficult to ignore.

‘Fleet,’ the woman said – her voice mild but authoritative – ‘please come away from there.’

‘I owed Elen some money,’ Beede continued (almost to thin air). He put his hand to his pocket, then thought better of it and leaned down to pick up his bag from the floor.

Kane noticed how he pronounced her name – not Ellen, but E-
l
en – as if the ‘l’ had quite bewitched his tongue.

The boy ducked out from under the curtain (leaving it drawn), walked back over to his mother and stood at her side. He was small and wild-looking (four years old? five?); an imp; round-faced and wide-lipped, with pale skin, brown freckles and black hair. He stared at Kane, unblinking. Then he smiled. He had no front teeth.

‘We were waiting in the bar area,’ the woman said, glancing for a moment towards the window herself (as if sensing Kane’s preoccupation with it). ‘Fleet found a counter on the floor and put it into one of the machines. He won some money.’

The boy jiggled his hands around in his pockets and gurgled, delightedly.

‘The barman said he was underage…’

‘He is,’ Beede interrupted.

Kane rolled his eyes, then displaced his irritation by taking out his phone and checking his texts again. The woman observed Kane’s irritation, but showed no reaction to it.

‘He gave me all of these,’ Fleet interjected, pulling several packets of complimentary matches from his pockets, laughing and rotating on the spot, his face turned up to the ceiling, the matches clutched tightly to his chest. His mother put out her hand to steady him. ‘He builds things with them,’ she explained.

Outside the horse was still vaguely audible as it moved around in the car park. While Beede continued to search through his bag, Kane strolled over to the window, pulled the curtain back and peered out. The horse was visible, but way off to his left. It had come to a halt in the children’s play area, where it stood, breathing heavily and defecating. The man was now struggling to climb off its back. But it was an entirely different man.

Kane blinked.

Entirely different. Tall. Nordic. Smartly dressed in some kind of uniform –

Imposter

He pushed his palms up against the glass and looked around for the canary-coated stranger, but nobody else was visible out there.

‘How strange,’ he said, turning just in time to see Beede’s hand withdrawing from the woman’s hand (he had passed her an envelope. She placed it into her bag, her eyes meeting Kane’s, calmly).

‘What is?’ Beede asked.

‘The man who peered in through the window a moment ago. The man on the horse. He’s changed.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He had a shaved head and a thin face. He was dressed in yellow.’

The boy suddenly stopped revolving. He grabbed on to his mother’s skirts. ‘Oh
dear
,’ he whispered, then pushed his face deep into the fabric and kept it hidden there.

The child was definitely beginning to work on Kane’s nerves.

Beede was staring at Kane, but his expression was unreadable (was it disbelief? Was it irritation? Anger? What
was
it?) The woman merely stared at the ground, frowning, as if carefully considering something.

‘Did
you
see him?’ Kane asked again.

‘Uh…
no.
No. And I’m late –
work.
I’d better head off.’ Beede spoke abruptly. He touched the woman’s sleeve (she smiled), ruffled the boy’s hair (the boy released his mother’s skirt and gazed up at him), slung his bag over his shoulder, grabbed his helmet, his goggles, and rapidly strode off.

Kane watched him go, blankly. Then he blinked (something seemed to strike him) and he focussed –

What?!

Beede disappeared from view.

‘Is anything the matter?’ the woman asked, observing Kane’s sudden air of confusion.

He turned to look at her. ‘No.’ He put his hand to his head.

‘Yeah.’ He removed his hand. ‘
No
…It’s just that…’ he paused, ‘Beede…There’s something…something
odd.
’

She nodded, as if she understood what he meant.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

She smiled (that
smile
again) but didn’t answer.

‘Do you know?’

He struggled to mask his irritation. She folded her arms across her chest and nodded again, now almost teasing him.

‘Then what is it?’

‘His walk,’ she said, plainly.

Kane drew a sharp breath. ‘His
limp
,’ he exclaimed (as if this information had come to him entirely without prompting). ‘He’s lost his
limp.
’

‘Yes.’

‘But how…?
When
?’

‘A while ago now.’

‘Really?’

She nodded. Kane scratched his jaw –

Two days’ growth

He felt engulfed by a sudden wave of feeblemindedness –

Too tired

Too stoned

Too fucked…

He looked at her, hard, as if she might be the answer to his problem –

Chiropodist

‘Did
you
get rid of it?’ he asked.

She smiled, her eyes shining.

Kane rubbed at his own eyes. He felt a little stupid. He steadied himself.

‘Beede’s had that verruca since I was a kid,’ he said slowly. ‘It was pretty bad.’

‘I believe it was very painful,’ she said, still smiling (as if the memory of Beede’s pain was somehow delightful to her).

He coldly observed the smile –

Is she mocking him?

Is she mocking me?

– then he gradually collected his thoughts together. ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly, ‘I have one in almost exactly the same place, but it’s never really…’

His words petered out.

She shrugged. ‘People often inherit them. It’s fairly common. Verrucas can be neurotic…’

‘
Neurotic?
’

Kane’s voice sounded louder than he’d intended.

‘Yes,’ she was smiling again, ‘when a patient fails to get rid of something by means of conventional medicine we tend to categorise it as a psychological problem rather than as a physical one.’

Kane struggled to digest the implications of this information. His brain seized, initially, then it belched –

‘But a verruca’s just some type of…of
wart,
’ he stuttered. ‘You catch them in changing rooms…’

‘Yes. But like any ailment it can be sustained by a kind of…’ she paused, thoughtfully ‘…inner turmoil.’

The boy was now sitting on the floor and inspecting his matches. He shook each box, in turn, and listened intently to the sounds it made. ‘I can tell how many’s in there,’ he informed nobody in particular, ‘just from the rattlings.’

‘We’ve met before.’ Kane spoke, after a short silence.

‘Yes,’ she said.

(He already heartily disliked how she just
agreed
to things, in that blank – that untroubled – way. The easy acquiescence. The cool compliance. He connected it to some kind of background in nursing. He loathed nurses. He found their bedside manner – that distinctively assertive servility – false and asphyxiating.)