Lie of the Land (24 page)

Her footsteps were quiet in the foyer, the fire door swinging open and squeaking to a soft close. Would she storm off to Fiona's? Unload on her? Would she throw him out?

Leaning over the half-completed jigsaw puzzle, Carl picked up a piece of red racing car. Something within him stirred, came to life. Shouting voices echoing from many years in the past, jigsaws fitting together under his concentration while his parents came apart. He gulped down another glass of water and went off to his room to wash. Face the day. All that shit.

In the reception area, a shaft of sunlight came through the frosted-glass window, lighting up the front desk. Carl went behind the desk, turned the guestbook to face him, its flat edge clearing the dust to reveal clean wood. He opened the book and signed in as ‘Total Arsehole'. In the ‘Number of Nights' column he wrote ‘Indefinite Stay'. Three months ago he had signed ‘Carl Shewan' for ‘Three nights'. Now someone else had booked in, and there was only a passing resemblance to the other Carl Shewan.

On the shelf below the desk he spotted the ID scanner, an old model, like so many he had seen before in train stations and hotels and not paid much attention to. He took it out, the keypad and separate downlink processor, and laid them on the desk. After a bit of fiddling and forcing, he managed to prise apart the book-sized processor's plastic casing, exposing its circuitry. He squinted at the meaningless serial numbers and chip sets. Ingenuity, dexterity, made flesh, or at least memristors. Single-occupancy geeks or
family men, who all had Government mortgages to pay off – they had made this, like they had made SCOPE and all the other kit that was needed to keep people safe from themselves. The people who had made the ID scanner were busy with their pieces of the puzzle. They only saw what was in front of them, the people who had been streamed into the only growth industry left, insecurity. They couldn't see the bigger picture.

Part of him wanted to crush the scanner under his heel, stamp on it, grind it into the dust. This gizmo should be obliterated, expunged from the cultural record: it was an aberration of nature. Instead of destroying it, he slotted both halves of the casing together again and put it back on the shelf. It didn't mean enough any more to bother with. The guys who'd invented it were just doing a job. It wasn't like they were guards at Auschwitz; they were just making little bits of rubbish, just as their training had shown them, and making precious money in the process. That was all. Maybe he should bury the fucking thing: HERE LIES FEAR – THE OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK.

He trudged up the stairs for a wash. The pressure in the tap was low again, and it took a good few minutes for four inches of water to dribble into the bath. He stripped off and climbed in, sat down in the cold puddle with his scrap of soap, removing the worst of the grime and stink of days. Cupping water over his head, the cold shock woke him up. His hair had grown to a soft crew-cut now and it needed cutting again. His beard was back. But what was the point in shaving? Why bother trying to look the way he used to look? Maybe he should start to sketch, like Terry, to forget who he was, to focus on something else that would eat up some time.

An hour later he was sitting up at the broch, watching, through binoculars, the crowd at the tiny church. He'd exhumed only two stones in the last week.

There was no minister or priest down at the church, so P.C. Gibbs, as the nearest thing, was joining together in matrimony the
happy couple. There would be speeches. Looks like the local councillor is doing the honours: plastered in make-up, even now, hair solidly lacquered. It was scarcely believable.

Scanning along the bay, he saw Alec John was down at his house, spreading some scraps for the hens. Winter was coming and they weren't laying quite so often now. But Gibbs, and one of Cutler's mob, would still be round to collect; so said the Year 1 plan in Howard's survival strategy, and by Christ the committee were not going to deviate from it, in public at any rate. There was no chance of him pulling strings with George on anyone's behalf. Given Simone's condition, George was likely to use those strings to strangle him.

27

Carl had joined Alec John up on the hill; both men glad to avoid the wedding.

Within an hour, Alec John whispered, ‘Down.' He pulled Carl by the sleeve and they lay still among the banks of heather.

‘Over there,' Alec John said, pointing. Propped on his elbows, he raised a small pair of black binoculars.

Carl could see nothing.

‘The wind's in our favour. Come on.'

Alec John crawled ahead and slid into a soft mossy gully. ‘We'll have to wait, he's on the slope.'

‘Can we not get any closer?'

‘It's not that,' said Alec John, peering over the edge of the gully. ‘The slope's rocky and it's too steep. If I take him there he'll roll all the way down and get smashed to bits. Bruised meat isn't very appetising, and he'll be harder to cut up. The slope's too steep for him if he goes further on . . . He'll come back, if we wait.'

‘For how long?'

‘Until he comes back.'

Twenty minutes later there was sign of movement. The stag had been eating the juiciest patches of grass that were hard to reach. If he'd fallen, it would have been the end of him, but the reward was rich, undisturbed grazing. With autumn curdling the air, it was worth the risk.

Alec John inched backwards into the gully. ‘He'll come on a bit and then hopefully stop once he's more exposed. He'll want to
check around for a bit before heading down into the glen. We'll take him then, with a bit of luck.'

They watched the stag come closer, picking his way along the ridge, wary of every sound and smell. He stopped.

‘Just a bit more,' said Alec John, his eye to the rifle's scope. ‘Another few metres will do it.'

‘Is he too far away?'

‘Ten years ago I might have, but I'm not too good at that kind of range any more. I can hit him, but that's not good enough. He could be miles away by the time he dies.'

They waited.

After what seemed like an age, the stag finally walked on towards them. But he soon stopped again, his nose in the air. He turned to face the long curve of the glen, and stood, almost side-on to the gun.

Alec John jerked as he fired, and the crack nearly deafened Carl. The stag's legs buckled and he collapsed as if his feet had been swiped from under him.

Carl rubbed his ear. ‘Jesus.'

‘Ha,' said Alec John. ‘Now that's not bad, not bad at all.' He clambered to his feet, pulled what looked like a stopwatch from his pocket, and strode away.

Something was dead, thought Carl as they rushed towards the animal. A huge living creature had been shot dead, right in front of him, and it all looked so ordinary, so workaday. Alec John was more interested in his pedometer.

‘Will you look at that?' he said, stopping right next to the stag. ‘A hundred and sixty-four metres. It's been a good few years since it was one shot from that range.'

There was no obvious hole in the deer, but then Carl figured that the exit wound would be on the other side. Still, there was nothing on the chest or head. He stooped to look at the beast, the mound of breeze-ruffled, brown-grey fur, and the staring eyes.

‘Where did you get him?'

‘Base of the neck. Severs the spinal chord and windpipe. I couldn't get a heart shot, and I knew he was turning for home. We were about to lose him.'

Alec John laid his rifle on the rough grass and took off his wax jacket. From the inside pocket he pulled a sheathed knife, a silver seven-inch blade with a plain black handle.

‘We have to bleed him first,' said Alec John. He knelt by the animal's side. ‘Find the breastbone, you're over the aorta, and then . . . in you go.'

Alec John worked the knife a little and then pulled it out. Like a bottle of wine on its side, the blood poured out onto the grass. ‘That'll take a few minutes.'

Carl felt his knees weaken. ‘I didn't know . . . Do you have to do it up here?'

‘Of course.' Alec John squinted at him. ‘I thought you said you weren't squeamish?'

‘Not when it's . . . meat, no. But this is different. A few minutes ago this was alive, eating and walking around. Now it's dead and we're sticking knives into it.'

At Alec John's insistence, Carl helped to manoeuvre the carcass onto its back. The stag was a good eighteen stones.

Finding his mark, Alec John set about the next part of the process. With a sound like tearing cloth, the knife was dragged along the deer's belly, opening the hide from dick to sternum. Taking great care, next he unzipped the fine membrane that encased the viscera.

‘This is life,' said Alec John. He rolled the stag onto its side, and a coil of tubing slopped out onto the rough grass.

‘All I can see is blood and death.'

‘That's where you're wrong. This is life.' He pointed in the direction of the village. ‘Our life. This is what's true now.' He continued to work the rest of the guts loose, switching knives to one with a curved blade.

‘People have lived around the River Lair for thousands of years. It's only recently they started going to the supermarket. This is back to how it was. Help me or don't, but realise that.' He started to clean the knives with handfuls of grass. ‘You might, in the middle of January, after a few months of fish and turnip. Now, you stay here, and I'll go and get the argocat.'

Alec John left Carl alone on the damp hillside with the dead deer and a pile of steaming organs.

•

Everyone was pumped up. There was a frenetic energy inside the community centre: the release of tension through vicious enjoyment. The bride and groom had long since departed, leaving a few revellers to warm themselves with dancing, home-brew and the few bottles of wine George had conjured from what he had previously said was an empty cellar.

Carl left the community centre, the sound of riotous fiddle, guitar and clapping following him into the fresh air. That kind of traditional dancing he'd never been able to master, and he certainly wasn't in the mood to try again. It was difficult for Carl not to view the whole event, both the ceremony and the dance, as some kind of hysterical, hallucinatory episode.

The night air was cold, and it sobered him up. The rain was on, just spattering, not the horizontal stuff of the week before. He'd had too much to drink. Should never have had that whisky either. Time to blow home.

‘Home,' he said to himself. Pissed again, home to Room 7. Not to his flat with all his own stuff, with lenses and other distractions and fighting the good-but-pointless fight. In a way, he still yearned for CivCon, and food riots, and Eric arguing with the PLC. All that business had kept him alive and kept him thinking. Now he had nothing to think about except that past.

As he headed back to the hotel, he didn't see the couple skulking
around the side of the community centre. A girl was giggling. Carl swung round, focusing on where the noise had come from, but there was no sign of anyone. A fading sign above the doorway read:
AUXILIARY HIGHLAND RATIONING CENTRE
102. Maybe George and the committee would get round to a renaming ceremony to boost morale. That would be another item discussed, and another step towards the new normality.

He sucked in some cold, salty air to clear his head. Crossing the road, he leant on the seafront railing, nothing but the cold sea-night in front of him.

He didn't want to pick up a gun again. He didn't want to learn how to shoot deer, to have something die at his hands. Never mind sins of omission – he wouldn't go on with learning how to shoot and slicing animals open, and that was that. It was sickening.

Alec John would have to be told in the morning. Giving him a hand was one thing, but no way was he going to put a bullet in anything. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.

Inside the community centre, the music started up again. Feet stamped and hands clapped, noises that indicated enjoyment. Not everyone, though. There were a few who wouldn't dance, who sat in corners, grimly sipping the rations the committee had released for the occasion. There were folk who hadn't turned up at all, not because they didn't like the bride and groom or hadn't been invited, but because they thought having fun wasn't right. Isn't that what some religious zealots thought, anyway?

Carl's dead editor had liked to dance.

What a colour piece I've got for you here, Eric, Carl thought. The resilience and resourcefulness of a community pulling together. Leadership in a time of hardship. It's all here. He spat into the sea. And just as much bullshit as you'll find anywhere else.

He stood on the pier for a while then went back along the shorefront, leaving the lights of the community centre behind. An owl hooted. Carl felt hungry.

There were footsteps behind him on the road. He turned.

Someone was there, coming closer in the darkness with the light behind.

‘That you, Terry?'

The silent figure came closer without speaking.

Carl waited for a response. ‘What're you creeping about for?' he said, relieved.

‘Just heading home,' said Terry.

‘Likewise. I've given up. Pretending to have fun is hard work.'

Terry walked away into the dark, switching on his torch. ‘See you.'

‘Yeah,' breathed Carl, watching the narrow beam of light move away along the shorefront. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Mañana.'

The ticking clock was the only sound in the dark hotel lobby. Carl stretched out his hand to feel the wall and the doorway to the residents' lounge, brushing his fingers over the framed photos. The place still smelled of fried fish from dinnertime. As he felt his way into the kitchen, he almost forgot to curse the darkness; he was getting used to moving about like this at night.

The wind was picking up now, pushing at the windows in gusts, getting stronger. Maybe it would clobber the hotel like it did the other night. Carl stood in the darkened kitchen. There was bound to be some fish, maybe some of that mayonnaise George had made, and a few bottles of lime-green fizz to wash it all down, if there were any left.