The One Safe Place (42 page)

"Right, we've got him. And what do you reckon we do with him now?"

"Whatever we like, mam, for what he made happen to my da and Uncle Jim."

"Kill him, you reckon? Or torture him first? Cut him open like in one of them videos and make him watch his guts fall out?"

Darren felt apprehensive and queasily excited. "Ooh, God, mam..."

His mother stood up to drag her chair away from the door. "Here you go, get a spoon from the kitchen."

"What for?"

"So you can poke one of his eyes out and feed it to him and he'll have to watch. Sound good?"

"God, mam, I don't know."

"Go on then, lad, you tell me what you want to do with him now you've got him."

Darren felt suddenly as useless as she'd said he was, unable to think of a single idea. He'd caught Marshall, and what happened to him ought to be up to the family—and then inspiration came to him. "Put him in bed with my granda and see what granda does to him."

"That's it, is it? That's why you brought him. To get more of the family in trouble than already is."

Darren was sick of her trying to make him feel guilty or stupid or however she wanted to make him feel. "Never mind asking if you don't like it when I say. What are you going to do to him?"

His mother flung open the door and craned her head out to check that the front room was still shut. "Not a thing."

"How do you mean, you're just going to..."

"I'm not going to nothing. See if you can understand one sodding thing you're told once in your useless little life. I'm going out. I don't know about him, and I don't want to know."

"But what do you—I mean, what'll I—"

"Not interested. Got that? I don't even know he's here. He's nowt to do with me, and don't you dare tell any sod he is. You brought him, you get rid of him. I don't care what you do, but I don't want him in this house when I get back."

She curtseyed in the hall so as to see herself reflected in the kitchen window, and used both hands to pat her hair and tug her skirt down. She stalked to the front door and threw off the chain and slid the bolts back, then she swung toward Darren, who was loitering in the hall. "Get on with it," she said, and slammed the door between them.

"Who's that?" Marshall called, his voice rising and shaking. "Da? Are you there?"

"My mam's gone out. Stay where you're put." Darren felt as though saying that or even thinking it up had exhausted him. If his father had been here he wouldn't have walked out like that, leaving Darren to deal with the situation. He would have known what to do with Marshall—and all at once Darren did too. He'd show his mother he could get rid of Marshall. She mightn't like how he did it, but that would be her fault for telling him to. He listened outside the front room to make sure Marshall was doing as he was told, then he went to find the gun.

Marshall kept having to remember why he needed to stay still: so that the people in the clothes lolling over the chairs wouldn't do what they might do to him. Though he was unable to distinguish many of their words, he knew that their low fierce voices were talking about him. "What's up with him?" he heard one say, and knew it was mocking him, because it must know the answer. He pressed his back and shoulders against the cardigan on the chair to crush anyone who was inside it, and prayed that his movement wouldn't draw the attention of the others to him—that they wouldn't poke their heads out of the collars and close in on him. He must be crushing their voices by leaning back; their snarling was lower than ever, low enough that he wished he couldn't hear the few words that were audible, wished fervently that he was mishearing them. Had one mentioned drilling his brain? He felt sweat pouring out of him as he moved only his eyes in search of something, anything, with which he could defend himself. Now a voice wanted to know what they were going to do with him, and he seemed to hear answers which made him shrink into the womb that was himself. There couldn't actually be people in the clothes—that was just a nightmare—and so he couldn't really be hearing the voices either. No voices could say such things, not outside hell. He squeezed his eyes tight to ward off the threat of a spoon being inserted in the sockets, then opened them so wide he felt them tremble like bubbles about to burst; he couldn't bear to keep them shut while he was surrounded. The shabby walls propped themselves up again, rebuilding the set of a room which felt as cluttered and unstable as the inside of the skull, and then, as if whatever film he might be in had provided the prop, he thought he saw a weapon almost hidden by a pile of newspapers and gloom in one corner. He was wondering whether he dared check that it was what it looked like, or whether knowing it was there if he needed it could be enough, when a woman's voice in the hall said "Get on with it" followed by a slam.

Was she talking to him or to the people hiding around him? "Who's that?" he cried, and realised he'd given himself away. "Da?" he pleaded, feeling abandoned by his friend. "Are you there?"

"My mam's gone out," his friend shouted. "Stay where you're put."

At least the voices had stopped. The people in the clothes must be wary of giving themselves away now that they'd heard there was someone else in the house. Marshall sat and waited for his friend to bring him whatever he was going to bring. But his friend's sounds were moving away, farther and farther, so far it seemed impossible they were still in the house—at least, the one Marshall had thought he was in. He was losing his sense of where he was again, and beginning to fear that even his friend wouldn't be able to keep him safe. "Da?" he called, praying his voice wouldn't rouse the people around him.

There was no response. The other boy's sounds had grown tinny and blurred, a transmission which a radio was no longer able to grasp. Marshall stared around the room in case anything was sneaking toward him, and everything straightened up from starting to creep into another shape. He sucked in a breath which tasted of all the stale smells of the room, tobacco smoke and newspaper and unwashed clothes and some indefinable species of rottenness, and was trying to wait as long as he could bear, even a little longer, before repeating his plea, when he understood why his friend hadn't responded: because Marshall hadn't called him by his proper name. For a moment Marshall was afraid the name had been swallowed by the hole he could feel growing in the midst of his brain, and then he remembered. "Darren," he shouted in panicky triumph.

His friend said a word. Though Marshall couldn't identify it, at least it meant Darren had heard him. The sounds of his activity continued, too distant to be reassuring. He was looking for something; maybe he could use some help. "Darren?"

That brought a rush of footsteps, which sounded as though they were several rooms away an instant before the door was flung open. "What?" Darren demanded. "You're worse than some old shit who can't get out of bed."

The idea of illness triggered Marshall's question. "Why did your mom go out?"

When Darren only stared and opened his mouth in a grimace of disbelief, Marshall began answering for him. "I know she's a nurse. Did she have to go to the hospital?"

"What do you think, lad? Don't know why you have to ask."

"I don't suppose I did really, sorry, but did she leave anything?"

"Left a lot of fucking stuff. Nowt you'd want to know about, though."

"I mean, you know what I mean. Anything for me?" Marshall heard his own voice turning harsh. He was desperate not only for an answer but also to shift the expression from Darren's face, which looked as though invisible thumbs were wrenching both corners of his mouth down. "You know, to take?"

"Greedy cunt, aren't you?" Abruptly Darren straightened his mouth. "All right, just stick there and I'll see what she's got."

"Shall I help you look?"

"No chance, lad. You reckon you could find anything the way you are?"

"No," Marshall admitted, and tried to grasp what his friend was feeling which looked like relief. "Only you sounded as if you were looking for something before."

"Aye, well, maybe we won't need it. Up to you. Now just shut the fuck up and do what the fuck you're told," Darren said, his voice growing louder and flatter as if he was shouting at someone beyond Marshall, and stomped out of the room.

Marshall felt unable to move until he comprehended how he had managed to infuriate his friend. At least Darren had left the door open, and the thuds of his feet on the stairs sounded not unbearably far away. Now they were shaking the ceiling above Marshall, and now they were tumbling downstairs so rapidly that Marshall was afraid his friend had fallen until Darren came marching on invisible strings at him. "Swallow this, lad, if it'll stop you whining."

Marshall peered at the object the other boy dropped on the pinkish desert of his hand. Though he couldn't judge its size, dwarfed as it was by the largest dune, it looked familiar. "Didn't I already take two of these?"

"Right, and there's another."

"Doesn't your mom have anything stronger?"

"She said you have to take three before they start to work. Don't look at me like that, lad, I can't do nowt about it. Stick it up your arse for all I care."

"I'm taking it. I mean, thanks for everything you've done for me." Marshall threw back his head to help the pill down his dry throat, and swallowed hard until he could no longer feel it bulging his insides. As he lowered his head, the set of a room raised itself to meet his eyes, and he couldn't keep quiet, even if he sounded more ungrateful than ever. "Will she have something stronger at the hospital?"

"Aren't you satisfied yet? She'll have some stuff where she's gone all right. Maybe you want some of that. That'd do for you, no messing."

Marshall couldn't make sense of the tone of his friend's voice, and hadn't time to try. "Can we go there?"

"That's what you're after, is it? Fucking hell." To Marshall's bewilderment, Darren sounded both disgusted and delighted. "I don't reckon she can say much against it," Darren said, wiping away a snort with the back of his hand. "Fair enough, come on. I'll take you where you can get some."

"Is it far?"

"As far as you'll be going, lad, and no mistake."

"Couldn't you get it for me?"

"What do you think I am, your fucking servant? Got a butler at home to wipe your arse, have you?" Darren visibly controlled himself—Marshall saw his face reform in a series of movements stuck together. "You want to take it as soon as it's got, don't you? Can't do that if I have to bring it back."

His urgency didn't quite override Marshall's doubts. "I know, only..."

"What? What's your fucking problem this time?"

"You said my mom said I had to stay in your house till she came."

"Jesus." Darren jerked his fists up and shook them, almost hitting himself in the face. "I know I said that, but you want to get home to her, don't you? You want to talk to her, any road. Can't do that if you stay in the house."

He was making Marshall feel sad behind his eyes and in his chest, but Marshall had to overcome that and think. "I don't need to speak to her now you have. Suppose she comes to fetch me and we aren't here? I mustn't be meant to go outside while it's cold or she'd have come for me by now in the car."

"She's a nurse like my mam, is she?"

"No, but—"

"She knows more about it than a nurse does, you reckon?"

"She's always looked after me. Like you're trying to, Darren," Marshall added in case he was sounding ungrateful. "Only your mom didn't say I should go out either, did she? You'd have said by now if she had."

Incredulity dragged the other boy's mouth down as he shared his stare with the room. Then his attention veered to one corner, and Marshall saw that what he had thought he'd seen before was still there. "Is that real?" he said.

"What do you reckon you can see, lad?"

"That's a gun under those papers, isn't it? A revolver."

"What do you know, I can see it too."

Rather than reassuring Marshall, that confused him, all the more because he couldn't grasp why it did. "Yes, but I mean, is it, you know, really real?"

"That's a song, isn't it?" An uninterpretable smile flickered across Darren's lips, and he seemed to be restraining himself. "I don't know what you're pissing on about."

"You know, real like it can shoot. It only looks real, doesn't it? It's not a real gun that could hurt anyone, it's just a toy. You wouldn't have a real gun in the house in Britain."

"Want to find out?"

"Sure, if—"

That had been all the excuse Darren needed to stop holding himself back. He darted to the corner, kicking aside strewn newspapers and an ashtray full of fractured stubs, and stooped to grab the weapon. As he straightened up he twisted around and levelled the gun at Marshall, who ducked, almost sprawling off the chair, before he saw that Darren's finger wasn't on the trigger. "Don't do that," he protested. "Never point a gun at anyone."

"Not much fucking use having one then, is there? I thought you thought it wasn't real."

Marshall fought off the notion that he'd made it real by being scared of it. "I still don't think it is."

He watched Darren close his free hand around the hand on the butt and hook one finger around the trigger. The gun wasn't quite pointing at him. "How much do you bet?" Darren said.

"I can't bet anything. You have all my change."

The barrel swung toward him, so slowly he saw it catching at the air. "So bet that," Darren said, "and maybe you'll get twice as much back."

That would be twice a few pounds, as far as Marshall could remember. He dug his spine into the chair so as not to dodge while the gun found him, opening its round mouth as it came. Now the mouth was facing him, for the moment emptily, or was it filling with more than darkness? Perhaps his senses had grown so acute that he would be able to glimpse the bullet in the instant before it blew his head open. Apprehension hit him in the stomach, folding him over himself. "I believe you," he almost screamed.

The gun followed him down, and he thought he saw Darren's finger tightening on the trigger. "Bit fucking late, lad."