Benighted (29 page)

“Hm,” Paul says. “You’d prefer them wild?”

“No. God no. Then we’d have wild animals all around us.” I scan to and fro: we’re not too near the trees and no one near us is looking our way; I can’t see any shooters. It’s just too many nights out in the cold that makes me feel that the forest is around us every day.

“So this isn’t because you had a bad dog experience?” Paul says, unafraid of dogs and dark woodlands and strangers.

“Well, yeah, I’ve had those, too.” I say it to make him laugh, but he doesn’t, he just hugs me with one arm and keeps walking. I don’t mention what those are, training for dogcatches, collaring used-up greyhounds and family pets turned savage.

“Is it me,” Paul says, “or were you reaching for an imaginary gun when you heard that dog?”

“It could be either of us.”

“Is that how you work on moon nights?”

“Yeah. Action girl. The new, sexy me. Chicks with guns. Like the image? Moon-night clothes, heavily wrapped up in protective gear. Impenetrable. Kind of a wet-suit look.”

“I knew a guy in college who had a wet-suit fetish.”

“That’s weird.”

“I think he liked the rubber-clad yet sporty connotations.”

“That’s still weird.” Though there are Internet sites dedicated to moon-night gear, sleazy shops that sell reproductions of it—or, I suspect, worn-out gear that some sly entrepreneur sells out of the back door when it fails its durability test and is set to be destroyed. Every now and again, someone sends an e-mail circular drawing our attention to such sites, and every time, I don’t look. I don’t want to know. Paul’s arm, muffled by his coat, is solid, definite. I reach across him and tuck my hand into his sleeve, rest my gloved hand inside it, and the movement of his wrist is warm and responsive and all I need, and I bless him for not being fascinated with wet suits or rubber-clad sportswomen. With so much threat in my life, so many injuries and harsh, physical damage, it’s better to be with a man who just likes flesh, who thinks it’s there for good uses and not bad.

“Do you want to go through the woods?” We’re at the end of the path. A cluster of trees is ahead of us. Without the sound of an engine in my ears, without a dirty window between me and them, they’re oddly vivid, like images through a magnifying glass. I listen for the silence of them, but all I can hear is the sound of footsteps on the path, voices in conversation, the whisper of the traffic on the streets all around us: the nonnoise of a city in action. There’s something wrong about this view of dark trees, as if I’m missing something. This doesn’t feel like my life.

“I don’t know,” I say. Anyone could be in those trees. I spent a long time learning that.

“You scared?” His hand cups my head.

“Sort of,” I say. The feel of another person beside me is something I’ve gotten used to; it’s been a long time since I let anyone touch me. All the time before Paul, there was space around my body, not blank space but resilient, elastic, crackling with static, keeping me inside it. It feels so much better to be defused. His hand on my head is a consolation I did nothing to deserve, and I owe him something for that. “I—I’m not used to the idea,” I attempt. “Apart from the fact that I’m possibly being stalked, I mean. I don’t go through woods at night unless I have to, unless I’m in a van with a partner and cages and weapons.” For just a moment, his arm stiffens around my neck, and I press on. “The thing is, for me this is seeing something familiar from a different angle. Dark woods give me the spooks, I’ve lost a lot of skin in places like this. I’d—sort of like to see if I could walk through it now, when it’s different, but it’s not so much because I want to. More like I’m daring myself.”

The look on his face is a little nonplussed, but he doesn’t make sarcastic remarks and he doesn’t nod with false understanding. We go into the woods. The leaves underfoot are curved and brittle with frost, they crush underfoot with a soft, rustling sound. I keep reaching out to touch the branches, the bark, textured wood pressing its shape through my woollen gloves. It’s dark here, darker than I’m used to. With no floodlights from a van casting a dull yellow glow, colors are subtle. Lichen shades eggshell blue against the trees, ivy leaves hang white-veined from their stalks. My heart beats inside me and my cheeks are flushed with tension and I keep hold of Paul’s hand. It’s damp underfoot, the smell of rain is in the air and my gloves are wet where I’ve touched the trees.

“Look,” says Paul, and I see that there’s a clearing ahead. There’s a rough bench, a fallen trunk with its top hewn flat enough to sit on, and on either side there are flower beds planted with rose bushes. Most of them are bare, the stalks pruned down with only a pale circlet of wood at the stump showing where the flowers grew, green stems and arched, maroon thorns, but there are a few blooms left, deep, blown roses. From a distance, I think they’re white, but closer up I see they’re a pale lavender, a fine, fragile color, somehow old-fashioned.

“Here.” Paul takes hold of a stem and tilts it toward me. “Put the flower against your mouth.”

“What? Why?” There are smart remarks I could make, but I don’t, I smile as I ask him.

“They taste good after a rainfall. They’re full of water. Here.” I lean forward, over the thorns and the frosted ground, and lay a soft, cool petal against my lip. Paul shakes the blossom just a little, and rainwater runs into my mouth. The taste is startling, sweet like nectar and at the same time fragrant with the flower’s perfume. I close my lips around it, and the sensation possesses me, scenting my mouth, hazing my eyes. Blinded, I lean back against a tree, my mind on nothing but the taste of roses.

Paul’s in front of me, his lips against mine, tasting of the same scent. I kiss him without opening my eyes, pulling him close, the chill air brushing my cheeks and his mouth the only warm place in the world.

“We’re supposed to be watching,” I whisper.

“It’s okay…”

“Someone could shoot me.”

Paul wraps himself around me, his arms holding me against the tree, his back between me and the outside. “The bullet won’t get to you,” he says. “Not while I’m in the way.”

My heart beats fast, and I no longer know why. I open my mouth and let him in.

TWENTY-SIX

O
nce, when I was twenty-four, a group of teenagers started up a little campaign against DORLA. They sent boxes with mousetraps inside, envelopes with razor blades inside the flaps to slice the fingers of anyone opening them. A letter bomb arrived but didn’t explode; a computer virus was sent that shut us down for two days. Death threats were posted to the home addresses of some of our higher officials. We begged the government for metal detectors or X-ray machines, but had to make do with appointing people to put on rubber gloves and open all incoming letters. It was a godsend of sorts for some of us—those missing a hand or foot, with permanent limps or missing eyes. People who’d been put on disability suddenly found themselves doing active duty, being paid as if they mattered. All our mail arrived late and opened, and some letter openers got their fingers cracked in mousetraps or their faces splashed with bleach.

It lasted about two months before we caught them. And when we did, we interned them, about twenty people in all, we locked them in the cells for six months before we let them speak to their lawyers. We set up searches, made arrests. We arrested people who knew the prisoners for failing to report them. We arrested members of their families for providing them with financial support. We arrested people who’d expressed admiration for their cause. We arrested everyone who’d ever made a prank phone call to our offices. The public railed against us. People wrote us hate letters, shrill with disgust, and we arrested them.

Within a few months more, it died down. There’s only so long most people can stay angry about a cause. By the end of the year, we were back to dealing with the usual round of hate mail and abusive phone calls, but there were no more razor blades in our letters.

None of us were killed in that campaign.

Silver bullets have taken out two of our people. I don’t think there’s a man or woman born headfirst who doesn’t want to see the killers burn.

With this investigation, every day becomes Day One. Phone lines are choked, people dash down corridors, people return from the watercooler to find their in-boxes overflowing. There are taps on the phones of all our free-range prisoners. Their houses, unoccupied now for days, are under constant surveillance. Pictures of Darryl Seligmann have been sent to the police; people are interviewed who knew him at his last place of residence, and the one before. Colleagues of the people we’ve imprisoned are being watched. Attacks on the building step up; another Molotov cocktail is thrown, things are pushed through the mailbox. We bring in whoever we can; vandals get sentences handed down fast.

This is a legalistic hunt. Seligmann has already committed a crime, he was already a wanted man, so we go after him. No one knows where he is. Lyco after lyco gives us “kept to himself” and “unpopular” and “I didn’t really know much about him” until there are paper stacks inches high, and still we can’t find him. We look for him openly, we co-opt the police and scrape money together from somewhere for a reward and sound the alarms. But the others, Albin and Sarah and Carla, are invisible. No one but us knows where they are. We don’t speak to their colleagues, we just send people to follow them. We watch from the outside, and as far as the lyco world knows, the three of them have just vanished. We’re waiting. Sooner or later, someone has to make a mistake, and when they do, we’ll have them.

It’s been four years since I saw a purge. I want to see this one.

The lights are bright down in the cells. One of the fluorescent tubes is broken, it strobes on and off so fast it buzzes. It’ll be a while before it gets replaced. I have a cart of food for them; on the smooth, sterile floor of the detention area, the wheels murmur. I hear Albin’s voice say “Hey,” and the sound of people scuffling to their feet.

I draw parallel with them. Ellaway looks the worst. There are bruises on his face now, around his neck, one eye is swollen shut, and he cradles what looks like a broken finger in his one undamaged hand. He’s staying here for a while, then. There’s no way DORLA will release someone looking like that. He squats in the back of his cell, and looks at me with black, glinting eyes.

Albin looks bad too, his face blotched and cut, his nose knocked out of true. Carla has a bruise on her forehead, black and glossy as poppy petals around a corrugated scab in the very center. It’s the sort of wound you make shoving someone’s head against a wall. Sarah’s face is unmarked, but she holds her neck at a bad angle. It gives an almost quizzical tilt to her head. There’s a nerve you can pinch in the neck; if you do it right, you can produce vomiting, blackouts, the symptoms of a migraine, serious effects. It looks like someone didn’t do it quite right.

I stand with a cart full of food for these people, and don’t say anything.

“Ms. Galley,” Albin says. “Have you come to—to advise us?”

“I brought your dinner,” I say, and pull out the first food tray.

“Will you be our lawyer?” Albin says.

I turn, a tray of food in my hands. “What?”

He comes up to the bars. His hands are clasped in each other, and he stands a little distance away from me. “They won’t let us call outside, and they won’t let us talk to anyone. They won’t assign us anyone in here.” He touches his battered face. “You’re the only person we know.”

“You don’t know me.” I look away from him, send the food through. “You don’t want me.”

Ellaway makes a hissing sound in his corner.

“Please, Ms. Galley. We need someone. Look at us.”

I look, and look away, and keep on handing out the food.

“Please, we need someone on our side.”

I back away, stand against the opposite wall. “I’m not on your side.” There’s a bright, harsh echo in here, and I speak softly, keep my voice beneath it. “Those people you killed were friends of mine.”

“We didn’t kill anyone.”

“You’ll get a lawyer when they assign you one,” I say. The wall is cold against my shoulders. “They’ll assign you one when you’ve got something to tell them.”

“We’ve told you everything. We’ve confessed. I don’t know what else you want us to say.”

“There are two men dead. One of them had three children. One of them was nineteen years old.”

“It wasn’t us.”

“Why would you do that?” I close my eyes. I should hand out the food and go, but I keep talking. If Seligmann were here, he’d be throwing out a new curse every time I spoke. Something about Albin’s bland denial keeps me talking to him. “Why would you go to the trouble of forging bullets and shooting two men?”

“We didn’t. Ms. Galley—”

“Give me something better than that and I’ll be your lawyer,” I say. My eyes are drifting behind closed lids. “I just don’t understand why you hate us so much. You’d think you’d get tired after a while.”

“We don’t hate you.” It’s Carla’s voice, and I open my eyes. She doesn’t speak softly. She cries it out like a child.

“We didn’t, anyway,” Sarah mutters. “You’re not the one who can’t move her head.”

“You’re wasting your fucking time,” Ellaway says. Something stiffens inside me at the sound of his voice. “She’s not going to help us. She’s going to let us rot here, unless she gets fed up with your bullshit and decides to get a leather belt.”

“Is that what happened to your face?” There’s no softness in my voice.

“Fuck you,” he says, and turns back to the wall.

“You should mind your manners,” I say. “Really. Why else do you think you look the way you do?”

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t you people get bored listening to him?” I ask. “Why don’t you give him up? We could move him to another block.”

“Dick, give it a rest,” Albin says. “Won’t you help us, Ms. Galley? Just ignore Dick, you can’t pay any attention to what he says.”

“She’s already my lawyer.” Ellaway raises his voice. “I don’t see her helping me out.”

“Dick.” Ellaway turns around. “I’m trying to beg for help here. You have any better ideas, let’s hear them, and if you haven’t, then keep quiet and keep out of the way.”

The two of them glare at each other, Ellaway crouched with straw around him, his suit stained and ripped at the collar, Albin on his feet looking down. There’s a pause, one of those silences that stretches out second by second and makes people cover their ears, waiting for it to crack.

I press my hands together. “I’m not going to help you,” I say. “I can’t.”

“Please. We need someone.”

“Yes,” I say. “And till you start telling us things, no one’s going to be assigned. And no one’s going to listen to anyone but an assigned lawyer. I can’t help you. You’re beyond help.”

Albin looks at me. “Do you like any of this?” he says.

“What?”

“Look at us. Look where we are. Do you like working in an office above cells full of straw with us in them?” He raises his hand; the bruise I saw last time I was here is indigo across his knuckles.

“You think you can make me want to help you?” There’s no feeling in my voice.

“Most people work in offices with a mail room downstairs.” He looks around him at the concrete floor scattered with anemic, frayed-looking straw, the white walls smudged with black fingerprints and small brown traces of blood. “Not this.”

“We have a mail room, too.”

“Please. No one knows we’re here. You have to help us.”

“I’ve told you,” I say. “I can’t.”

I look at them, these people who killed Johnny, who shot Nate, and I wait for the hatred to rise. The memory of Seligmann’s skin rasping my palm as I slapped him tingles in my hand. If I wanted to, I could go inside any of these cells, lock the door behind me, add some bruises of my own. Upstairs, with the images of Johnny and Nate clear in my mind, I would have said I could do it. Now I’m down here, where it’s white and echoes fragment our voices on the tiles, I can’t recapture the feeling.

“It’s out of my hands,” I say. “Lawyers can’t appoint themselves. You won’t be given a lawyer until you confess.”

“We’ve confessed to everything we’ve done!”

“All right, I won’t argue with you. I’ll just say that we hear that a lot. And really, for your own sake, you should believe what I’m telling you, because it’s the truth. I don’t blame you for not wanting to confess. It may go hard with you if you do. But you will be better off in the end. And that’s the best advice I can give you.”

“Won’t you even hear our side of it?”

“Frankly,” I say, wheeling the cart around, “I don’t want to. I don’t think I’m going to like anything you’ve got to say, and I’ve got enough problems as it is.”

“You know you could help us if you wanted to.”

“When did I say I wanted to?” I don’t know why this man is acting like I owe him.

“Lola, please come back.”

I stop the cart and turn around. “Don’t ever call me by my first name again, Albin. Ever.” He looks at me out of blackened eyes, and I turn away.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and people scuffle in the straw around him. “I really didn’t mean to offend you, but please come back and talk to us, no one else will even talk to us…”

“You’re making a mistake,” I say. “What the hell made you think I’d care about saving you?”

“I don’t know, maybe you’re a nice person?” There’s a thin note of desperation in his voice.

I push the cart forward. “I’m a nice bareback, Albin. Think about the difference.”

“Does there have to be one?” He’s raising his voice, trying to keep me here.

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” I say. “Once upon a time.” The cart whispers under my feet. “But apparently, there does.”

Upstairs, part of me wants to go back down and keep talking with them, try to understand. But prowlers don’t help you, they don’t care if your mind is beating itself like a fly against a window: they aren’t going to open the window and let me out.

There’s a message on my answering machine from Sue Marcos, saying that someone I called in her building has been by and brought them some food. Her voice is more tired than pleased, but I e-mail the neighbor anyway, to say thank you, and that I’d avoid sausages as Julio is tired of Debbie cooking them. I’m just finishing up when another call comes in. It’s Adnan Franklin, wanting to know what’s happened to his client.

“Why?” I ask him. “Is there a problem?”

I can hear Franklin sigh into the telephone. “Yes, Ms. Galley, there’s a problem. He’s missed an appointment, I can’t get an answer at his home number, and his secretary tells me that he was taken from his place of work by a man and a woman a few days ago.”

I turn in my chair to look out of the window. The pane is grimy, and beyond it, I can see the sunset, a mackerel sky with cold fronds of cloud streaked across it. “I don’t know anything about that, Mr. Franklin.”

“The secretary described the woman, and it sounded like you.”

“How did she describe her?”

“Ms. Galley, my client seems to have been arrested.”

“I only want to know how the secretary described her. I’m not unusual looking. And if all you have to go on is a small, pale woman with dark hair, or something of the kind, then I’m sure you’re too good a lawyer to leap to conclusions.”

“Is our client in DORLA custody?”

The sun is hidden behind the clouds. They shine very white over the city. “I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“As far as I know,” I say, “he isn’t. If he’s missing and no one’s told me he’s here, then he’s probably not. But if he is and I haven’t been told, then it’ll be a secret, and I won’t know anything about it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I can’t help that.”

“Ms. Galley, please tell me. Is Mr. Ellaway in your custody?”

I look out at the dusk. There’s a break in the sky, high up, and the moon is already visible, a faint opal crescent. “Not to my knowledge,” I tell Franklin. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, really I am, but I just don’t know where he is.” A wind rustles through the trees as I speak, but the clouds stand still in the sky, translucent and narrow and shining bright enough to dazzle you.