The walker, p.21
The Walker, page 21
When I woke up it was day and Erien was gone. Back at the tents, I couldn’t find Hayley or Agate. I sat and listened to the flies, which made an endless empty noise like death. I don’t like trips. This trip is turning bad I thought, but I could hardly think because the flies had taken my thoughts away. After a while I noticed someone was sitting next to me. I heard a man’s voice. If you pull their wings off they still make that noise, it said. I fell asleep again and I heard the voice in my sleep. It’s all turning to death here, it said. Turn, turn. Round and around goes the wind. The voice went on, speaking sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. And there were some things in a language I don’t recognise. And I was walking in the dunes and there were old white bones in the sand, it was a whole field of death.
But all the time I was still sitting there, and when I realised I was awake again the sun was nearly gone.
Here the typing broke off, and the translator’s scrawly handwriting announced again ‘pages removed’. The next page began in mid-sentence.
or if I might be getting sick. As I walk around, I think everyone looks sick. Pascal says their women are on smack and I wonder if they have been giving it to Hayley. She won’t even look at me when I pass her. Waltraud stayed in their tent all day yesterday, so only the children have been running between the camps.
Midge came up to me and said he wanted to show me the new game the Ratman taught him. You play it with orange pips, says Midge. You take a handful of orange pops up onto the dunes. Then you make a trail, one for each footstep, counting the number you leave on the sand. I can count up to a hundred, he says. After a hundred, you turn back and try to find them. See how many you can find. So, I said, what about the ones you can’t find? Those are the ones the Walker has taken, said Midge. When you leave the trail, the Walker comes to follow you.
Who’s the Walker then? Midge said he was Walker the Wizard. I told him he should stay clear of Walker the Wizard.
Guillermo and the rat man have gone. At first I thought Erien must have gone with them but he came back in the night, shivering and totally freaked out. Said he’d had a bad trip and stayed out in the wetlands because he was surrounded. Surrounded with what I asked. I was very angry with him. He’s going to get shot out there. He said don’t get uptight, don’t put that neurotic trip on me.
In the morning I saw Waltraud picking oranges, but she moved further away, then next time I looked she’d gone. Later I tried to talk to Hayley. I knew she and Waltraud have been shooting up and I reminded Hayley when we decided to join the commune we swore to each other that we would never do smack. No shooting up. And if things started going bad we’d leave. But I couldn’t get any talk going. Not about anything. I told her I’m worried about Midge but all I got out of her was, he’s okay.
Some days have gone since I wrote in this. The Ratman came back yesterday, without Guillermo and without the Cadillac. He just walked in over the hill. No explanations. I have been crying a lot. First I stayed out in the dunes but then I came back to be in the tent with the others. Neb has joined the Walkers. I knew he would. Maybe he was always one of them. So. Ok. Who cares, said Agate. But Erien is getting totally paranoid. He is no help to us, he just sits there for hours, his hands shaking. I talked with Agate and Pascal about getting out, taking Erien with us if we can. We would have to take the dune buggy, when we can get the petrol.
More ‘pages missing’.
cutting up the rabbits in front of the children. He takes the eyes out Midge said, with the point of his knife, then looks at them through a black thing that makes whirring noises. What does he mean? Binoculars? A microscope? A camera, perhaps. Does the rat man have a camera? I realise Midge would never have seen one of those, at least, not since he was old enough to know what it was.
I feel sorry for Midge. He looks lonely and worried, the other children are too young for him to play with. He followed me out to the trees and helped me pick the fruit, and he was even trying to cheer me up, telling me the grapes would soon be ripe. He was counting the grapes in the bunches. I can count to five hundred now he said. When we got back he showed me his treasure. Orange pips, dried white in the sun and tied in one of the cloths. There are five hundred of them, he told me. He had another cloth, full of dried animal bones. Probably rabbit, but who knows?
Neb is starting to spook me. When I found the store was open and rifles were gone I went to look for him and eventually I found him up on the dunes wandering around and looking as if he was smacked out of his mind. I bawled him out for going over to the Walkers. He acted like he didn’t even hear me. Stared at me as if I was someone from another planet.
Pascal has found an old can at the dump with some petrol left in the bottom of it. He’s buried it under the bus, till we can get some more. We have to go out and see if we can siphon some from one of the army trucks. We searched all day yesterday but didn’t find one. There’s an army road, a track really, on the other side of the dunes, about two hours walk away, and sometimes you see trucks parked there. But we haven’t been lucky the last couple of days. We’re worried Neb may have figured out what we’re trying to do. What if Erien tells him? We don’t talk in front of Erien now, because he can’t keep his mouth shut. HE just lies around and talks shit all day like a total junkie.
Midge has gone missing. It’s a whole day and a night now. Hayley screams and cries for a while and goes off shouting for him, then she falls asleep. She doesn’t even know when she last saw him. I have been all over the dunes calling and looking for tracks. The Walkers are mainly hanging around their tent. I went over and yelled at them. Told them they were a bunch of useless freaks and they should get out there and help with the search. I called Neb to come out but he didn’t answer, so I thought I’d go in and get him, but the Ratman stood in my way. He took hold of my wrists. Said he’d snap them if I didn’t shut my mouth.
Briony stared at the last lines on the page, as if somehow she could will more lines to appear. We’ve found him, she muttered to herself. He’s right here.
She did not want her concentration interrupted right now, and wasn’t keen to get caught up in conversation with Donna, who came flouncing in a few minutes later, obviously in search of a sounding board for her latest discoveries.
‘I had lunch with Alec,’ she said. ‘He was hanging around me all morning and I’m starting to worry he’s going to get people asking the wrong kind of questions about me. Besides, I’m also starting to get this vibe from him — you know — he’s a bit too interested in me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he’s a bit too interested in me for a man supposed to be involved with someone he just got into trouble.’
35
It was raining when Nell left work on Friday. Her hair was awful in wet weather. It reacted by crinkling and expanding, then blowing in all directions as the wind caught it. She twisted it into a thick coil at the back of her head and captured it under the beret. Rita had lent her a nice beige raincoat — trench-coat style with a wide belt — but her sandals were hardly the right thing for this weather. They were looking a bit the worse for wear already.
The entrances to Leicester Square tube station were jam-packed with people, pushing their way in or out and annoying each other with their wet bags and umbrellas. She wanted to buy an Evening Standard, but couldn’t battle her way across to the seller on his stand, which was protected with a large sheet of transparent plastic. This didn’t stop the wind getting through and whipping at the edges of the piled up newspapers. They were trapped under a brick so they wouldn’t blow away. She saw a hippy with straggly hair lifting the brick to read the front page and being shooed away. As he turned, his hair blew across his face and a shadow flickered across the screen of Nell’s memory. A second later he was gone, sucked into the crowd.
The flat seemed dingy and cold when she got back, so she switched on the reading lamp and the little electric fire that was so far the only heating they had. It was an hour till either of the twins would get back. Rita worked ten till six at the Way In, an hour later at either end of the day. Julie had a longer journey, so it meant that every day except Monday, which was one of Rita’s days off, Nell had an hour to herself in the flat for reading or playing records that the twins didn’t like. It was her favourite hour of the day.
Equipped with a cup of instant and two ginger biscuits, she sat cross-legged in front of the fire with the table lamp aimed over her new copy of Hard Times. It was one of the texts for the history of the novel course in first term. So was Anna Karenina, and that meant she was a step ahead. The letter from her department said all students would be expected to have read it before term started.
Nell thought she would like to sit there and read all evening. She didn’t feel like going out again, especially not to some noisy dance with a lot of people she didn’t know and she was sure the twins would not like Pink Floyd. But since she’d already paid for the tickets, they’d have to go through with it now. At least they wouldn’t have to leave before eight and Rita and Julie would take at least an hour to get ready so she might have two hours for reading. Nell was starting to keep a little ledger of hours in her head. ‘A good English student will do at least four hours reading a day,’ said the letter from her department.
She was just getting into the story, imagining the streets of Coketown and the little cramped schoolroom where the children were drilled in facts and definitions, remembering some of the primary school teachers she’d hated, when the lamp suddenly went off and the fire started to make low twanging noises as its glowing bar faded.
Damn, she thought, the meter must have run out. But then, on second thoughts, it couldn’t have run out. They had put in a pound in five pence coins before they left for work, because they wanted to be sure there would be plenty of hot water for baths before they went out this evening. Maybe there was a power cut. She walked around the flat, trying a few switches. They were all dead.
Then she thought she heard the sound of water running in the bathroom, so she went out to check and found the hallway full of steam. The bathroom was thick with it and she could hear the bath tap at full bore. The hot water was all going to waste down the plughole. It must have been on for ages to have got through all the money they’d put in the meter.
Furious, she switched it off and went to bash on the door of the other flat. There was no answer.
Maybe they just put the bath on, then went out and forgot about it. She called, loudly. No answer. She stood for a minute, not knowing what to do or to think. Then she heard the front door and Julie came stomping up the stairs. She must have got off work early.
‘What’s up?’
‘I found the bath running. It’s wasted all our hot water. Plug wasn’t even in. They must have switched it on and gone out or something. All the electricity’s gone off. It’s run the meter dry.’
Julie went to look, and Nell followed. Julie turned the tap on again and the water came out cold.
‘What a nerve. I mean, what a bl—blinking nerve. I hate sharing the bathroom with them. They complain all the time, about every little thing, then they go and use up all our hot water. Just like that. They never pay their share of the hot water. Well, they’re going to have to pay us back this time or I’ll dob them in to the landlady. I’m dying for a cup of tea and now we can’t even put the kettle on. I haven’t got a single five pee left now, because I put them all in there this morning. I don’t suppose you’ve got one, have you?’
‘One,’ said Nell. ‘At least it’ll let you boil the kettle. Shall I go and get some change? The fruit shop will still be open.’
‘I’ll go. I’ve still got my coat on. You make the tea.’
Nell went back into the sitting room, picked up her book and coffee cup and took a couple of steps towards the kitchen. But something was wrong. She turned round and there was a man standing in the doorway of her bedroom, a tall man with long straggly hair.
‘Hello, Nell,’ he said.
The face that she never saw, never could see, even in her dreams, was staring at her now. She took a couple of steps backwards, fighting for breath. Then, still clutching the book and the coffee cup, she stumbled out into the hallway and half ran, half fell down the stairs, dropping the cup as she scrabbled at the catch on the front door and tore her fingernail. Next she was on the pavement, screaming for Julie, who had only just crossed the road and now stood staring at Nell in blank disbelief, the terror catching at her too, like some instant contagion.
36
After she’d read the translator’s first instalments a second time, and a third, Briony’s mind was going round in circles. The document could certainly do with some improvement as evidence: there were no places identified, no names and few identifying details, other than the observation that the Ratman looked like a rat and had a taste for cracking wrists and lifting eyeballs out of their sockets. And the languages.
It was now even more urgent to find out whether Quin had been issued with a passport in the past couple of years and — more particularly — with a visa for the United States. She picked up the phone and dialled the passport office again.
‘What name was it again? Just hold on a minute and I’ll see if there’s any information yet.’
‘It is urgent,’ said Briony. ‘I made that clear when I put in the search request the day before yesterday and when I gave you a reminder call yesterday.’
‘Just hang on a minute,’ said the girl on the other end, as if Briony had been complaining about a mixed up appointment at the hairdresser’s. Briony counted to ten while she waited, but could feel her temper rising. She drew heavily on a piece of scrap paper with her biro and got the thick sticky ink on the ends of her fingers. ‘Stupid cheap bloody things,’ she said and pitched the biro across into the waste-basket.
‘Beg your pardon?’ asked the girl, returning to the phone.
‘Nothing. What have you found?’
‘Nothing yet, I’m afraid. We’ve been a bit busy with applications. We’ll have a look for you next week, all right?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Briony snapped. ‘I need to speak to the head of your department, please.’
‘Just a minute. I’ll see who I can find.’
Surely Macready never got messed about like this. Briony had had enough of not being taken seriously and was ready to give someone a rocket.
‘Hello, can I help you, Miss er—’ The voice conjured the image of a hefty male civil servant, the kind you’d see getting his shoes polished in the Burlington Arcade.
‘Detective Inspector Williams of the Metropolitan Police. On Wednesday I sent a request for information through to your office, marked high priority. It seems no action has been taken yet. I need the information by the end of this afternoon without fail.’
‘I see. Perhaps you could just give us the details again, Inspector Williams.’
She drew a deep breath and exhaled audibly down the phone, before reiterating her request.
‘I’d like to know by five this afternoon, please.’
‘Well, that may not be possible. We’ll do our best, of course.’
‘This is a murder inquiry. It’s essential we have that information without delay.’
An hour later the phone rang.
‘Inspector Williams? Nicholas Trench from the passport office. It seems we may have found a record here. Passport and visa for the United States issued to Mr Mathew Quin of Gresham College residence hall, Russell Square on the 20th of September 1967. Date of birth on the passport is the 20th of May 1946. Would you like copies of the documents dispatched to you?’
‘Immediately,’ said Briony.
She went and knocked on Macready’s door, then Palgrave’s. Neither of them was there. Jimmy walked past, carrying a large corkboard. She followed him back to the incident room and watched him awkwardly manoeuvre his way through the door.
‘Don’t lift a finger or anything, will you?’ he said.
Obediently, she took one end of the board. ‘Sorry. I’m in a daze. Efficiency of some people just blows your mind, you know? You wouldn’t believe how long it took—’
‘It’s going on the wall over there, see, where I’ve cleared the space?’
She passed the screws to him one by one and watched as he fixed the board to the wall, grimacing at the last turns of the screwdriver.
‘Okay. Ready for the photos. In that envelope and make sure you don’t get them out of order. Top one first.’
They were photographs of Walker’s latest parcel.
‘Know what?’ said Jimmy, speaking with a tin tack between his teeth, ‘I reckon this Walker or whatever his name is—’ he took the tack in his fingers and stabbed it into the board ‘—has got something like this over at his place, wherever that is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A pin board. I wouldn’t be surprised if he keeps pin-up photos of his little achievements, you know? He likes the look of what he does, this one.’
Briony had to force herself to look steadily at the sight of the bloody pink mess that had once been the Reverend Burroughs’s tongue.
‘What you got to remember, see,’ Jimmy paused to capture another tin tack in his teeth, ‘is that he keeps the best bits to himself. He sends the eye, then the tongue. The messy bits. But he’s got quite a collection of other things. A finger, a kidney, an ear.’
‘What makes you think he takes photos?’
‘Nothing, really. Just a hunch.’
‘Don’t try telling Macready that. You’ll have to be more specific. Go on — think harder. What makes you think he takes photographs?’
‘Obvious. He’s a bit of an artist and artists take pictures of their work. He’s a collector and photography’s a collector’s thing, you know. Anyway, what are you doing here at six o’clock of a Friday night?’
